In the dark room in a wooden cabin laid a small boy by the name of Al. On any other day he was just an ordinary orphan living on the farm property of his parents, but today something different happened.
"Where am I?" he pondered into the darkness of his room. Then, a flood of memories flowed into his mind. Memories of a boy and a happy family eventually falling apart and leaving him alone.
"This has got to be a joke." he muttered as walked familiarly towards the bathroom. There he saw an unfamiliar face staring back.
Brown hair, Vibrant Green eyes and a healthy fit and younger body to boot. This was not the same face he remembered seeing the last time he looked into a mirror.
It was only at this moment that he fully understood.
"I've reincarnated into another world." After a few moments of contemplation, he went and completed the morning routine here in his memory.
It was only after he finished washing up that he finally combed through the all the memories in his mind.
Ten thousand years ago, there was a giant rift connecting two completely different worlds. On one side was a futuristic city that was constantly bright known as the city that never sleeps. On the other end was the Magical Academy of Euglass, the strongest force on this magical continent of Forice.
Both forces prepared their forces causing a war that would last several thousands years. Afterwards, for reasons unknown to the general public, both sides reconciled and shared their technology and magic together.
Afterwards, both civilizations joined together to become the Glass Grand Council. Now, thousands of years later, magic and technology have developed together for a long time which has lead to the current Era of Magic and Technology.
Although both sides have made up and prospered, not all places have that same level of prosperity. Now I live in a small kingdom called the Nevali Kingdom. Although it is said that technology has been spread out, there are many places that still hold suspicion and disdain towards technology compared to the inherited magics of old.
Now I am 8 years old and today is the day that the entire population has their talents in magic checked out. This has been a feature carried out for hundreds of years in order to quickly find and train potential wizards for war purposes originally, but now it is just a way to quickly bolster up the various wizard forces and has become standard.
As I was pondering this, I heard a knock on the door and a familiar voice.
"Al get up! It's time to go test our talents!" I heard the excited voice of a friend of mine in this life.
"I know, give me a second." I responded, quickly getting changed into appropriate apparel and bringing a small snack in case I get hungry on the way.
The wizard talent test has always been at the various large cities where kids from all flocks of life get together and await the test. Although rich people may not care about this test as much as they may have already paid to have a test beforehand, for most poorer folk this is the most likely chance to quickly jump classes into high status.
As I finished bringing everything I heard my friend off in the distance, "I'll go up ahead, catch ya later." I quickly ate a bite of jerky that was made ready to eat quickly headed toward the square of the village I currently live in.
Unlike the concrete jungles of my previous life, life here feels so fresh and free. I passed by various wooden houses and waved to all the familiar faces in my memory working hard in the fields. After a few minutes I arrived at the somewhat bustling square. There were many kids from the village, all familiar with each other and many with their families. I then spotted my friend waving at me in the distance. I then quickly headed on over to meet him.
"Dude, what took you so long, got out of bed on the wrong side?" he asked. This is Fred, he was my friend since way back and after my parents had died, his parents had helped me survive till now.
"Yeah, I think I just was so excited for today that I couldn't sleep. I responded. After chatting for a little bit I saw from the corner of my eye that the village chief had arrived and quietly awaited. After a few seconds all the noise on the square quieted and the chief began his yearly speech.
Like almost every speech by an elderly man, it was long and droned on and on. After he finished his talk, he finally let us on the three carriages that he had prepared for us. Fred, I and a few others chose the carriage on the left and brought ourselves over. After some chatting and waiting, the carriages finally got going and now we were heading off to the big city. We were lead by a hunter in the village who was named Mark.
After a few days of boring travel we had reached about the halfway point. we stopped by a lake to give our horses a well deserved break and played by the lake. After a while of playing I decided to walk around in the woods to get closer to nature. Back in my previous life, it was hard to find a place as untouched and peaceful as this. As I wandered in the woods, I suddenly tripped on a tree root and fell over. After picking my self up I turned and looked at the tree root but found a shining object intwined in the roots.
I bent down and pulled out the object from the roots, it was then that I heard a mechanical voice echo in my head.
[Extraordinary energy detected. Activating System... 10%... 30%... 90%... System activation completed.]
[Welcome User, to the Extraordinary Research System]
A system? After a moment of confusion a wave of excitement washed over me as I looked at the blue projected screen in front of me.
After a few minutes of searching around I finally had a grasp of what this system does. I put in a topic like a question or an object and the system will try to calculate based on what I currently know about that object. It basically helps with research and learning as it put the knowledge right into my brain.
I try out the system right away by analyzing myself.
[Al, Human
STR: 3.8 (Base Human Adult:5)
DEX: 4.1 (Base Human Adult:5)
END: 3.5 (Base Human Adult:5)
SPR: 11.25 (Base Human Adult:5)
Overall Rating: Average Child with an above average spirit.]
After looking through the stats I was quite surprised. Although I knew that my mental based stats might be high since I have reincarnated, I didn't expect that my current body would also be talented since it is not just an average 10 for two lives.
STR stands for strength and represents both body strength as well as explosive power and the like. DEX stands for dexterity and applies to both body speed and hand flexibility. END stands for endurance and represents the bodies capacity to take damage as well as things like disease resistance. SPR stands for both spirit and willpower and it represents how fast the mind can work as well as of course willpower.
After scanning the various plants nearby, I finally decided to run back to the carriage so I don't worry everyone else by leaving too long.
After returning I scanned everyone around and found that all the kids averaged in stats around the 3.8 to 4.2 range. Among the adults, no ones stats reached anywhere past 6.8 and all of their spirits were at 5 flat.
After that, a few days passed. Each day I would wander around scanning every plant and animal I would spot around me. The system scan differs in detail based on the distance between me and the object. After a few days of scanning we finally were able to spot the tall looming heights of the city walls in the distance.
After rushing over there we found a long trailing line of people with carriages out on the side. After parking our carriage in the designated area, we lined up with our belongings in line to enter the city. The line passed quickly and finally arrived to our town. There we met the stern and strong looking guard at the gate.
"Do you have any form of identification?" He asked. Mark handed out a small stack of papers. After the guard took the papers he set the papers on a crystal on the side, a green glow flashed and he returned the stack.
"Papers confirmed, now walk through this." He pointed to this arch with a glowing blue crystal top of it. We all walked through one at a time and nothing changed on the arch. The guard then started work on the next guests as we stood there awkwardly. Then, Mark told us to follow him and we followed him over to a moderately clean hotel.
"Hey Phil, long time no see!" said Mark to the man at the counter.
"You say this every time Mark. It's not a long time at all." the man at the counter responded.
After a little small talk, Mark bought rooms for us all two to a room and we finally put down our belongings. Fred and I were both in the room together putting away our stuff and chatting.
"Hey Al, what do you think the test is gonna be? Like, would it be fighting a monster or something?" Fred asked.
"I don't know about fighting. If it were, many people would die in this test and there wouldn't be many of us who could pass." After a little more banter, time passed as it turned to dark.
After resting for a day, the sun rose upon another new day. Everyone woke up and ate a little before finally getting the chance to explore the city.
Although this city isn't as impressive as the cities back in my previous life, It has its own rustic style to it. As we walked through the city there was quite a lot of people who seemed curious about the city.
Because of the talent test, the city is in a festival mood with stalls lining the Main Street and bright colors everywhere. After getting something to eat from the various stalls we sat down at an open table to finish the meal.
"Al, are you excited for the test? I heard that the test would be starting tomorrow. Hopefully we can both become wizards." Fred said. I merely responded with a nod and looked around at the crowd around.
There are not many fights here because after the talent test no one wants to accidentally offend someone with a higher talent. There are also swathes of soldiers patrolling around. Although they seem to be in a cheery mood, from how they are keeping their hands near there blades and how alert there eyes seem even from a distance, they seem ready to apprehend any troublemakers at a moments notice.
A short break after eating led us all to separate temporarily. Fred mainly wanted to watch the area where the test would be taking place, while I want to go around and explore the city a bit more.
I continued to walk around the city until I encountered a strange building. It was a large mansion like structure with a crossed sword and staff symbol on a large sign atop the building. There were few people going in and out and each one was wearing classic adventurer type gear with mostly leather armor that had metal protecting the body's weak points.
As I walked in, I was greeted with the classic Adventurer's guild/Tavern that would be par for the course in a medieval fantasy setting. While coming in a few people took a glance at me before returning to whatever they were doing.
No one greeted me as the receptionists were all busy helping the other adventurers in the building. With no one to guide me I started walking around the building. The first place I walked towards was at the right wall.
On it was a bunch of papers pinned on to it with various quests. At the top of each sheet was a letter most likely corresponding to its difficulty. The requests only reached up to C-rank in difficulty and went down to F-rank in level. I guess this place uses the S-rank to F-rank system. After a while, I noticed a small bookshelf on the side with a bunch of books that nobody was using.
I trotted over to the shelf and looked at the various books stored here. Most of the books were old stories of adventurers written by many different bards, but some of them piqued my interest.
'Geography of Forrice' by Edd Valli? I looked through the book and it showed a map of the world with various annotations about locations of note. It mostly detailed the Nevali Kingdom and various different cities and cultures and told about the adventures of an explorer named Edd Valli.
"System scan." I quietly muttered. After a few seconds I felt a wave of knowledge flow into my brain about various landmark written in the book as well as a mental image of the map I could pull out.
I then looked through the bookshelf to see if there was any other books of note. After a few minutes of searching I found two books that might come in handy. 'The adventurer's encyclopedia on Flora Fauna and Monsters' as well as 'The Wilderness Guide' both seemed like important books to know about, especially if I plan to explore the world. I flipped through a few pages to see if the books contents would match the title. After a little checking and got to scanning the books to keep all of its information.
After a few minutes I was done scanning them and returned the books to the bookshelf. After a preliminary look over the building, I noticed a side hall that was labeled the training grounds.
I walked into the training grounds and found myself in a gym like area. There were very few people practicing, likely because of the talent test coming soon. There were three people, one was practicing his stance and swings of his sword while the other two were competing.
One had a spear and the other held a shield in one hand and a saber. After a few minutes of spectating I decided to leave and explore more of the city.
Time passed and a new day arrived and the fabled talent test would begin today.
