I fell into a simple training routine. It wasn’t exciting, but it worked. In the morning, after leaving home and heading to the beach, I would work on my endurance and running. Barefoot running in the sand was exhausting, but as such it would earn me experience. I kept pushing the distance the better I got at it, until I was running the full length of the beach multiple times each morning.

After warming my body up, I would get to work hunting jumpcrabs and braygulls. There seemed to be an infinite number of both on the beach. I would alternate the type of elemental magic I used each day, and focused on different styles each time I cycled back around. I had become an efficient beast murderer with earth magic, and could even fire a number of bullets with surprising force without depleting my MP too aggressively.

Compacting air as a weapon was without question the worst of the four. Air magic was useful for knocking airborne braygulls back to ground, but killing them with it was a whole different matter. My mental picture of some kind of “air cutter” just did not materialize. I wasn’t sure if it was impossible or if my level was just too low. I could apply some concussive force, and create small twisters, but overall my days of training for combat with air magic were the most disappointing.

Water magic was also hard to wield as a weapon, but I could use it to drown braygulls. The jumpcrabs wouldn’t drown, of course, so this was another element I mostly used against the birds. I suspected again that with some leveling up I could apply enough force with water to do more damage. If I could figure out temperature control and form ice, that would drastically change the usefulness of water magic. Fire magic, on the other hand, was easy to use offensively, but could get out of control fast. If I didn’t take down a gull quickly, it would fly away while on fire. Since I didn’t want to attract any attention, I limited my fire attacks to the jumpcrabs.

Earth magic was far and away the most useful for stealthy combat. I trained everything, mostly for the experience boost I gained uncovering new methods of using magic, but every day I ended up using a little bit of earth magic anyway to hit my self-determined kill quota.

Once my battles were won, I would eat the food my mother packed me, made more delectable and restorative with meat and vegetables from my inventory. While I rested and digested, I would dismantle the beasts into drop items, and then I would do some cooking with the meat and fire magic.

My inventory rapidly got heavy with jumpcrab shells and other dismantled drops. I spent a whole day, alternating between using magic and cramming my face with crab meat, carving out a hollow in one of the large rocky outcroppings, and using it as storage for the items I didn’t want to carry with me. A specialized piece of stone I shaped worked as a sealed lid to keep it hidden.

I used the stone I excavated to create a fish trap, and used offal from my inventory as bait. It wasn’t terribly effective, but I was able to bring in some small fish as well. They were worthless for experience but added some dietary diversity.

This continued until one day, I caught myself in a flow state while running. I had been at it for a while and hadn’t gained any experience. I was again hitting my limits and my growth had slowed. When I gave in and switched to crab killing, I noticed I was only pulling in 1 EXP every three or four crabs, at best. I was early on in level 4 and seemed completely stuck. I was also getting bored. I needed a change. Lunchtime was approaching, so for the first time since I turned five years old, I headed to the Church for lunch.

* * *

I arrived to find a few dozen kids milling about in and around the Church. The priests had set up a soup station, as promised; I got myself a bowl, and ate it with the bread I had in my pack. The soup was thin but had fish and vegetables in it. It didn’t restore any MP, though.

I sat and slurped my soup while examining the goings-on. I saw one child, with a scraped knee, get some healing at the altar from a kindly-looking priest. I watched the healing and appraised them both to get a sense of how much healing was being done and for what MP cost. I could probably get some more information about 6-point magic if I spent enough time here, although I wasn’t keen on that.

I would soon be even less keen on it.

“Hey, you,” a large kid said. He had approached from behind with a small gaggle of cronies.

I glanced at him and did a quick appraisal. It was one of the boys with an unarmed skill.

“May I help you?” I asked.

“Haven’t seen you around here before. I’m Rog. I’ll let you join my group,” he said, smug confidence exuding the child.

I sighed. I had zero interest in playing with these children. “Thank you, but I’m good.” I put my bowl down and started to walk away.

“Wh–hey!” he exclaimed, and marched over, grabbing me by the upper arm. “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you,” he growled. Not very menacing coming from a kid who was probably only eight years old, but he tried.

I looked back at him. “Are we going to do this here, where all the priests can see?”

Rog looked surprised, then let go, leaned back, and smirked. “I’ll see you later, kid,” he threatened, walking back to his cronies.

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This was one of the reasons I had avoided the Church. I knew I’d get entangled in the classroom politics of children. This was why, sadly, I only had 3/10 skill points towards 6-point magic instead of 4 from my latest level up, and had used the last for something else.

I was sure I would see Rog later. For now, I looked over the Church one more time. I noticed pretty quickly that there were different classes of children here. There were a few who were obviously incredibly well off, who looked a little too well-fed, with finer clothes, who got plenty of attention from the priests. There were a bunch of kids who looked more or less like they were in situations fairly comparable to mine. The rest of the children looked like the Church soup lunch might be the only meal they ate some days, with worn out clothes and tired expressions. Now that I had been to the wall and seen the outer reaches of the town, I had an idea where they were living.

I doubted the rich kids had any problems with Rog and his ilk. They probably were immune because of parents with power, or they just paid him off. It would be kids like me, or worse, these kids who already had an impossibly hard life, who suffered the most from bullies. I sighed again.

Before I left the Church, something caught my eye. One of the rich kids disappeared in the back with a priest while I had been eating, and had come back out. I did an appraisal and noticed something new. This child’s status now read “Protection (minor)” instead of nothing, which I had grown used to seeing. I wonder how much of a donation to the Church was needed to get a daily protection buff.

While appraising him, I tried to mentally hover on the status to pull up details. It worked, and a tooltip style notification appeared.

Protection (minor)

Buff

Reduces incoming physical and magical damage by 25%.

I quickly appraised the priest as well, to gauge his 6-point magic ability and how much MP he had used. Unfortunately, his MP was low enough that if he had full MP going into the spell, I wouldn’t have enough to cast it myself yet. Was that the same priest who had healed the other kid earlier? If so, then I might be able to squeeze out a buff on myself.

I wished, not for the first time, that I could get my hands on a 6-point magic grimoire.

* * *

It did not take long for me to encounter Rog and his crew again, outside of the Church.

He rubbed his fist in an attempt to look menacing. I stifled a laugh. “So, you think you’re tough?”

I felt bad for this kid. Obviously, this attitude filtered in from somewhere, probably his own father. I wasn’t in any kind of position to help this kid fix his family life, so all I could do was address the symptoms of it here and stop it from affecting me. It might be a different story if he ever asked for help, but I had to deal with things one step at a time. I lifted my fists, and made a beckoning motion. “Come on, then,” I said with resignation.

Rog’s nostrils flared as his expression changed to one of quick anger. “You punk,” he muttered, then came at me with a swinging fist.

Rog had a few years on me, and there was a big difference between a kid at age eight compared to a kid at age five. Of course, I’d been pretty active for the last year and a half, and while I hadn’t directly been training my muscles that much for fear of damaging my growth potential, I was very light on my feet. I also had decades of life experience from my time on Earth. I can’t say I was a black belt or trained boxer or anything, but I had learned a thing or two.

I could have obliterated these kids with magic, but I knew I had to keep that close to the vest. That’s why I had done a little bit of additional training before I had decided to go to the Church.

I easily sidestepped the punch, and landed a quick jab into Rog’s side. He yowled, exposing himself for the eight year old that he was, and turned back on me. His expression had ever so slightly changed; he probably didn’t deal with kids younger than him fighting back too often.

He came again, and I blocked the swing from the outside, which set him slightly off-balance, and I stuck a foot out as he continued past me, causing him to trip and land hard. This made him angrier, which was my intention.

He got up and swung at me one more time. I blocked this one from the inside, which kept him in front of me, and before he could swing with his left arm, I jabbed him twice in the face, temporarily stunning him. Then, while my fist was hidden from the other kids, I quickly summoned the stone item I had prepared before, smashed it into his stomach, and returned it to my inventory. He dropped.

I had prepared two things before I came to the Church. The first thing I did was waste a precious skill point from hitting level 4 learning the unarmed skill. It was easy, since I already knew how to throw a punch. I just punched a wall a few times until I got the skill, healing my hand between punches.

The other thing I prepared was a simple knuckleduster I made out of stone with my earth magic, which I had in my inventory. It was probably a little overkill. Rog was level 3, which was impressive since most of his cronies were level 2, and he probably got a lot of that experience from doling out punches to other kids. He probably had more than 1 SP in his unarmed skill, so I didn’t want to take a hit from him, but I doubted he could take much more than anyone else at this age.

I actually hadn’t been sure whether or not the knuckleduster would work. It’s a fist-load weapon, which technically means I wouldn’t be unarmed, but I had felt like unarmed might be synonymous for hand-to-hand or martial arts. Did those skills also exist in this world? I had only seen unarmed. This again raised some questions about the interpretation of language and how it compares to reality with regards to skill. More questions, I thought. In any case, Rog was now on the ground.

His nose was bleeding and he was clutching his stomach, but I could see he still had some fight in him. This was a problem. I really didn’t want to take things too far. I just wanted to do enough to keep him away from me in the future. I kneeled on his chest, and before he could push me off, I cracked him across the face.

Is it child-beating when you are yourself a child? A younger one, at that.

Now Rog had fear in his eyes, which is all I wanted. I could see from a quick appraisal that he was fine, I hadn’t really taken that much HP off him, but I knew that he wouldn’t know those finer details. This was more about the psychological effect and dealing out pain than actually hurting the boy. I had started immunizing myself to pain in my training, taking damage and healing myself, because I knew that in this world, so long as I still had 1 HP, I had the potential to be perfectly fine with healing magic, or even just from eating the right foods in the right quantities. Other kids didn’t have healing magic on deck, though, and could only be healed at the Church. They would only be able to eat whatever food they had available to them and recover naturally from rest and time.

I stepped back. I looked at the other kids. “Who’s next?” I asked, looking into each of their eyes.