Chapter 8
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Announcement
Warning: strong language.

 

The system kept harassing Ren for a total of two days, giving him a massive headache. At first Ren was shouting at it to shut up, then tried to ignore it (how do you ignore a voice in your head…?). After a while he noticed that the Calm mind skill leveled up to level 2. As Ren felt himself ‘chill out’, he encouraged the system to keep asking the same stupid question. At that, the system stopped immediately.

Ha! You shut up! I won. What is it? Did a tanuki get your tongue? Hmm? Ren teased back the system without delay. There was no way he wasn’t going to retaliate in some way, he wasn’t going to let himself be bullied again and take it lying down.

It was now the system’s turn to ignore Ren. Well, not that he minded, he enjoyed the peace and quiet.

Two months passed and Ren turned considerably bigger. His eyes and ears were now fully open and alert, his sight, sense of smell and hearing sharp. He could now run and jump around, although only on all fours. He enjoyed that his leg wasn’t in constant pain anymore and moved as he liked. It was also fun to have a tail, Ren found he could make much sharper turns. Furthermore cuddling with his tail was very comforting. Ren’s mother talked often to him, and Ren mastered the language spoken to him very fast thanks to his Code deciphering skill. As he wasn’t used to talking out loud he didn’t know what he should say to her, so he decided to carefully bide his time until he figured out what he should say for the first time.

His mother would go out once a day to hunt herself some prey to eat. Ren usually during those times was left in the burrow alone. At first he was scared to be left behind, even though he knew his mother needed to eat too. He was worried that she wouldn’t come back. With his luck after all this possibility wasn’t unlikely. He was also concerned about predators in the forest. He was a small and week little baby after all, he wouldn’t be able to protect himself if something showed up for some tanuki take-out. His worries weren’t warranted however, when it came to this particular issue.

One day when his mother was out, a large, ferocious looking animal showed up that looked like the cursed lovechild of a snake and a fox. It slithered towards him with a hungry look in it’s eyes, drooling acid that burned holes in the fallen foliage. Ren thought he was going to die when he saw the snake-fox thing preparing to pounce. He scampered deeper inside the den and hid behind the wall of one of the large roots of the tree, and waited for his demise trembling.

Fuck! He swore, cursing his bad luck. But the pain of his throat being torn out didn’t come. Instead, he heard a loud ‘thud’ and a short, sharp whimper accompanied with a zapping sound. Then it was quiet. After a minute or two, he carefully looked outside to see what happened. To his surprise, the snake-fox was lying on the ground looking thoroughly fried. There was a transparent dome shaped barrier fading into invisibility rapidly before the wretched creature.

I-is that magic? Did mom set it up for protection? Ren wondered as he breathed a sigh of relief.

[Miraculous escape from certain doom! 1/1000 chances good luck has been used.]

The system notified him dutifully.

When his mother came back she just calmly collected the carcass, and strung it up behind the tree to let the blood and the acid out.

 

Once Ren became well coordinated enough, he explored his home immediately. Contrary to his expectations, the burrow didn’t just consist of one large resting place as he originally thought. At the back of the ginormous sleeping room there was an oval door carved into the inner wall of the tree that served as their home. Because of this their sleeping room seemed as if it was a front yard to a house. The door was about two meters tall, way too small for Ren’s mother to pass through. Ren wondered if maybe a previous resident made the door. He tried to open it but he was so small he couldn’t even reach the threshold, let alone the door.

On this particular afternoon Ren was waiting for his mother to come home from her outing, when suddenly an unfamiliar figure showed up with a familiar scent.

It was a tall woman with jade white skin and long silver white hair. There was a rosy blush spread across her nose and the apples of her cheeks. She had plump, pink lips and a pair of sparkling sky-blue eyes. She was wearing a white poncho-like robe with red hem and lining. It was a knee-length outfit that bared the woman’s long, beautiful and strong legs and her slender white hands from the elbows down. Under her voluptuous breasts a wide red sash tied the robe firmly to her waist. She wore protectors on her shins and forearms, but wore no shoes. She was carrying the carcass of a deer behind her with her right hand, and in her left hand there were two dead rabbit-like creatures that had tails resembling that of squirrels.

Ren was startled at first to see a stranger, but than he recognized her scent. It was her mother in human form. He didn’t understand at first, but then realized that he himself had a Transformation skill. Ren figured his mother must have something similar, which is how she turned into a human. He found his mother’s human form very beautiful.

“I’m home, my darling!” His mother said to him as she crouched down to pet his head. Ren noticed as she came closer, that the blush on her face wasn’t a blush at all, but rather the pattern of her mask. She also looked concerned for some reason, which in turn made Ren worried. Without thinking he asked:

“What’s the matter, mom?” Then inwardly gasped at how casually he did that. Even though I wanted the first thing I said to her to be something profound...!

“Nothing, I just realized I came home in a different form then usual, and I got worried that I might scare you… Wait, did you just talk?” She took a closer look at him with sparkling eyes.

“I’m fine. I knew it was you from your scent.”

“More importantly, you are talking!” His mother exclaimed excitedly, as she put down her kills and picked up Ren to hug him to her chest. “You are barely three months old and you are speaking! Is my baby a genius?! You are so amazing, sweety! When did you learn?” She showered Ren with kisses and rubbed her cheek against his as she praised him.

Ren was so happy to be praised by his mother, that he didn’t know what to do with himself as this never happened before.

“S-since I could hear properly. And it’s all thanks to you mom, for talking to me all the time. That’s why I was able to learn. I’s not a big deal...” Ren thought if he was in human form, he would be as red as a tomato from blushing. But as he was in animal form it was his tail that wagged happily instead.

“Of course, it’s a big deal! My life spans a millennia, yet I never heard of a baby being able to talk at three months old. The earliest was one year old. All right, today, we celebrate. Mommy is going to cook you a delicious meal. Although you haven’t tried solid foods yet, I think this is a good time to start. Your cute little teeth have all grown in after all!” She pinched his cheeks lovingly, then walked in the oval door with Ren in her arms.

Inside there was the magical, medieval fantasy equivalent of a well furnitured flat. It was round, following the curves of the tree. There were no windows, and there was a second floor to which a twisting stairway led to. On the ground floor they were standing in, there was a large round bed with fur covers and lots of pillows and a nightstand with a book, ink bottle and a quill next to it. There was a cupboard and a wardrobe and a chest with who knows what inside. The chest seemed to serve as a coffee table (do they even have coffee in a magical fantasy world?) surrounded by comfy looking armchairs and a couch with plush fur covers. On the walls glowing mushrooms bloomed giving the room an earthy, mushroomy scent. Their soft green glow was strong enough to illuminate the entire room.

Ren saw a couple of closed doors, but his mother didn’t open either of them. Instead she headed for the stairway, and went up to the upper floor. Apparently, that’s where the kitchen and the dining area was with a table and two backrestless chairs that looked as if they grew out of the tree. The kitchen had an island counter and a stove – which was basically a stone slab with a magical looking circle carved into it situated on a separate counter. A teakettle sat on the stove. A round cylindrical container with magic circles all over stood beside the island counter. Next to the stove there was something like a spring with water continuously flowing out of the wall into an elevated basin. There also were two large chests that also had magic circles carved into them that glowed with a gentle blue light. There were shelves with a bowls and cooking tools on them. Dried spices and herbs hung from the ceiling in bunches fastened to tiny hooks with a string, permeating the kitchen with a herbal, spicy scent. There was a whole cut into the ceiling above the stove – surely to let out the steam and smoke from cooking – Ren thought.

Ren’s mother was chatting through the whole way, explaining what everything was. She sat Ren down on the island counter in a large woven basket, than headed downstairs to hang up the deer outside to let the blood out, and collect the rabbit-squirrels. She started to prepare a meal out of them with fast, well practiced movements. She fastened the cleaned skin on tanning racks (which she quickly took outside), used the disposing bin (the cylindrical container) to get rid of the guts and other unusable bits. The moment she opened the bin, there shined a bright orange screen-like surface inside.

“What is that?” Asked Ren curiously, as he climbed out of the basked to trot closer to take a look.

“Careful, that’s very hot.” Warned his mother, and reached protectively towards him. “That’s the disposal bin. We put the things inside it we can’t use and it incinerates them. When the container below gets full of ash, we take it outside to empty it.”

“How does it work?”

“With magic. See those symbols and circles? They draw in mommy’s mana, when mommy touches the top and the incinerating magic activates inside.”

“Then those things work with magic too?” Ren pointed at the chests and the stone slab with his paw.

“Yes. One of the chests keep things put inside cool while the other freezes them. That stone square is the stove, it can heat things up for cooking.” Said Ren’s mother as she took out some vegetables from one of the chests. Ren assumed that one would be the fridge while the other is the freezer.

[Would you like to use the skill ‘Code deciphering’ to understand the magic circles?]

A system notification popped up startling Ren. For a moment he taught that the system restarted his sexual harassment again.

Yes. Ren thought at the system, and wondered if he would understand magic circles faster than he learned the language as the Code deciphering skill was now level 2.

The demigod looked at her child with a smile on her face as she quieted down with eyes as wide as a saucer as she stared at the magic circles on the various items. She felt herself fill with immense pride that her smart little girl was already interested in magic. She vowed that she would teach her everything she knew, so when the time came for her to ascend into godhood, her daughter, her legacy would strive with a glorious destiny before her.

F7 watched their interactions from the background quietly.

 

Sorry about the delay. My hand got hurt around two weeks ago, and i couldn't type for a while. I'm better now, so I'm gonna continue the story. :D

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