“I am a stout believer in faith as a concept. It might be faith in one’s self, or faith in a higher power, or faith in the System. Either way, there is a power to it that many academics tend to dismiss as illogical. I used to be among them. Their faith in observable data is an irony I suspect would be lost on many of them.”

~Unknown

Much to my chagrin, I had been unable to coax Fudge into replicating his feat of Quantum Manipulation. Put pretentiously and perhaps predictably, convincing a canine to capitulate on matters of academic specificity was an ill advised endeavor. In the days that followed our visit to Bella’s place, I concluded that Fudge didn’t actually understand his Skill; not in the way I did, at least, and even I barely understood it.

Much in the same way simply possessing Perseverance had made it easier for me to intuit ways to apply the Skill, Fudge was likely operating on a similarly instinctive level. The Skill was a part of him, an extension of what had started as the Dog Skill. There was no Skill tree. Just Fudge.

Had the System taken liberties in interpreting the Skill during its formation to better connect my understanding of quantum theories with mana applications? How might Fudge’s interpretations of the Skill alter its function? Again I found myself bludgeoned by uncertainty. All I knew was that, among other failed experiments, hiding a treat and asking Fudge to ‘find it in a version of reality in which I didn’t hide it’ yielded precisely zero results.

In this, I finally found myself feeling fortunate for the changes to the Tamer Bond. Through it, and beyond the tirade of emotional impressions, I could maintain a vague sense of Fudge’s mana. Detecting the occasional dip in his reserves became possible. Deciphering what the mana was, or what it was doing, was a different matter entirely and one still beyond my capabilities.

Once again, I found myself pining for Mana Sense.

Ultimately, I was forced to accept that, for the foreseeable future, Quantum Manipulation would remain firmly in the domain of Fudge’s whims. Until Tina and I spoke about Fudge’s Advancement properly, the shiny new Taming techniques she promised remained a nebulous, potential remedy. I could only hope they would work.

In the meantime, I had plenty to keep me busy.

Working with a fully replenished pool of mana, recreating my earlier efforts with Recovery yielded promising results. Maybe. Without a way to accurately sense the fucking mana, my read on the efficiency of the impromptu ‘vortex’ technique was limited, at best. It was doing something, though. The proficiency points I was gaining attested to that much, but it wasn’t like the System was convenient enough to provide me with a mana regeneration rate or anything of the sort.

Wake up. Run. Practice. Eat. Sleep.

Despite my growing list of frustrations, I stuck to the routine. Every setback, every problem, was fuel for Perseverance. The more I struggled with my other Skills, the more my Core Skill would flourish until I could overcome them.

For the old me, it would have been so easy to let every vex justify a lapse. A mistake could justify finishing early; a late start could excuse leaving for tomorrow what should be done today. Back then and before long, a thousand broken promises to return into half-started projects weighed me down in the face of opportunities to rise.

I refused to let that happen again, even if it took literal magic to make it so. If I was a creature of habit, then I would drill better habits into myself with the sadistic glee of a dentist’s caricature.

The only exceptions were those forced upon me. Down time was part of my regime, an addition from my parents that had been non-negotiable. Officially, it was time to play - to be a kid. I’d already been a kid, though. Instead, I tried to fill the time in other ways.

It could be nothing overt, but my thoughts offered sanctuary.

Recently, my downtime was filled with thoughts of Marco. I’d been so occupied with my own Advancement that, for the most part, I probably didn’t pay him as much attention as a good older brother should. That was easily forgivable, though. Babies that age weren’t ‘online’ yet; the earliest years of my first life were well and truly lost to the void, and I dared not even entertain the idea of trying to retrieve them. No doubt, it would be the same for Marco. Everything he experienced for the first few years of his life would be lost to the fugue of infancy. Unless, of course, by some bizarre twist of fate my brother was also a reincarnated… soul? Person? Unless his circumstances somehow mirrored my own, I knew he wouldn’t hold the relative neglect against me.

That didn’t mean I didn’t care about the little guy, though. As Will, I’d already decided that my new parents were family. Marco immediately fell into that category as well. He was my baby brother and I was determined to treat him as such.

Unless of course he grows up to be an insufferable dick, but that’s a separate issue. My flexible views on family went both ways. Being related to someone was not carte blanche to abuse that connection.

By the end of the month, Marco would receive his Core Skill. To most people, the process was a mystery, closer to a divine bestowal than anything else. I knew better.

Marco would have an opportunity to request a Skill. Failure to do so would result in a random Skill being assigned instead. Seeing as how infants lacked the cognitive function to consciously engage with anything on a complex level, let alone the System, I could only assume the latter always occurred.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Figuring out why the System worked that way was beyond me. If the best minds in the world had yet to figure it out, then I doubted I’d have much luck winging it in a backwater farmhouse. It was frustrating, but unless something dramatically changed I knew I’d be forced to simply accept that it was the way it was.

Just because I didn’t understand something, didn’t mean I couldn’t make use of it, though. I knew that Marco would be offered a choice at some point. The question was whether or not I could somehow… make the choice on his behalf. I doubted it’d be as simple as perching over his crib like a gargoyle and whispering the name of a Skill ad nauseum. I’d have wagered all the money I didn’t have that there were people who practiced something similar for superstitious reasons, or at the very least tested it as one possible method to influence the ‘random’ Core Skill a child received.

Just because I received what I would consider an advanced education in my first life didn’t automatically make me smarter than other people. By all accounts, I was comfortably in the realm of slightly above average if my test scores were anything to go by. Arrogance wouldn’t serve me well, and I was under no illusions that genuinely brilliant minds didn’t exist in this world. If the solution were something obvious, it probably would have already been discovered.

Unless, of course, that knowledge was being suppressed somehow.

…

Fuck.

Was it unlikely? Probably. Was it impossible? In a world with magical Skills, I couldn’t write off the possibility. Assuming the possibility wasn’t just a pipedream, if I was going to dedicate time and energy to trying to influence Marco’s Core Skill, there was a different question I needed to ask myself.

Should I?

With experience came insight. While I was not dissatisfied with Perseverance - far from it - I could also acknowledge that there might have been some… not better, necessarily, but more theoretically optimal choices. Would I have been able to make the most of those options without Perseverance? It was impossible to say, and it was largely a moot point.

From the perspective of Marco, would it be better to have a choice thrust upon him by the System or by his older brother?

Surely it had to be the latter… I was not thrilled with my conclusion, but so long as I tried to get him a Universal Core like I had, then it’d minimize the risk of my intervention forcing him onto a path he didn’t want.

Universal Cores had their own problems, though.

Much of my down time was spent pondering the question, yet I remained indecisive. When the eve of Marco’s System Day was only a couple of weeks away, I decided to outsource the problem.

We were all sitting together on the front porch, Tina, Tulos, and I. Marco had been put down for the night - or as much of it as he’d sleep through - so Vigil was in the room with him to keep watch. Fudge was curled up next to me, sleeping off his dinner and sending me feelings of contentment through the Tamer Bond. There was no conversation, nor had there been, really. We simply enjoyed each other’s company beneath the dimming twilight.

I treasured those quiet moments. There were no expectations, no demands, just acceptance. We were a family.

I felt my chest tighten at the thought. Family. Home. Love. I really was a coward, one who shattered the silence to escape his ghosts.

“Is it possible to help a baby get a specific Core Skill?” I practically blurted the question, which attracted confused looks from my parents.

End me now. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Without thinking, I went to draw from Perseverance like a junkie looking for his next hit. I felt the Skill illuminate, but Recovery muted the effect enough for me to realize what I was doing and stop myself.

“We already told you this,” Tina said first. She’d been idly brushing her hair and didn’t stop on my account.

“You did, but I thought maybe it was one of those things you were keeping from me ‘until I was old enough.’” Finger quotes weren’t a thing here, but I like to think they were implied.

“No. There is no secret. Our Core Skills simply are.” Tulos added his own, rumbling voice to the discussion. “Why do you ask?”

“What do you mean why does he ask?” Tina cut in before I could respond. “You know as well as I do why he would be asking now of all times.”

“I suspected, but did not wish to assume.”

“That… Fine.” Tina narrowed her eyes at Tulos, clearly unhappy with the exchange.

Things between Tina and Tulos had been tense recently; it was something I attributed to the stress of caring for an infant. Compared to some of the shouting matches I remembered from my first go around, their tiny tussles were downright civil. Even so, I couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt for prompting the conversation to begin with.

I coughed to get their attention before responding.

“It is because Marco is about to get his Core Skill, yes.” I took a moment to swallow and wet my lips. “If there was a way, would you do it?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

My parents answered simultaneously before turning to stare at one another. I found it surprising that Tulos was the one who answered in the negative.

“Pardon me? No?” Tina sounded incredulous.

“It is not for us to choose Marco’s place in the world.” Tulos responded with his usual, even tone but I noticed an edge to it.

“Would you not want to give your child a-”

“No, I would not.” Tulos cut her off, and she looked pissed. “My Core Skill is considered valuable, my love. I do not wish for Marco to gain a coveted Skill, just a Skill that suits him, and he cannot yet tell us what that would be.”

The more Tulos spoke, the more I saw the fire in Tina’s eyes extinguish. That was a lot of words all at once by his standards. I watched as she took a deep breath and set her brush down in her lap.

“This is all a hypothetical, anyway. I do not wish to argue with you, my love.” Evidently, his words had not been enough to completely sway her.

“I agree.” They returned to slightly strained, but still companionable, silence. I considered saying something but then thought better of it. Best to let sleeping lions rest. I’d made my decision.