While my mother worked her way through the wares of the seamstress shop, I started to take stock of the rest of my situation. Since I had been in full control of my body for less than a day so far, it was still a bit hard for me to get used to moving around as a five year old.

I wondered if Sallia and Felix were aware yet. I recalled that the System had mentioned something about Intelligence tying in to how long it took for my brain to properly house my soul again. If Sallia and Felix had rolled low, they might take another few years to properly wake up.

I thought about that fact for a moment, not liking the idea of being alone for several years, before I sighed.

If they took a few years to become aware again, there was nothing I could do about it. I would just have to make the best use of the time and wait until we met again.

I concentrated on my Market items, especially my {Friendship Bracelet}, while simultaneously hiding my right hand behind my back. It took me a few moments to ‘materialize’ my friendship bracelet, which I quickly used to start tracking Sallia and Felix.

Both of them seemed to be located somewhere to the east of my current location. I gathered that meant they were either in the center of the city, and had reincarnated as rich kids, or were on the eastern side of the city, which, as far as I could tell, was probably a middle-class area. neither was close enough for me to make contact yet, since my parents wouldn’t let me out of their sight while I was this young. Since I was only two or three years old by the standards of our species, that was pretty understandable, if more than a little frustrating right now.

I sighed, and dematerialized my friendship bracelet. It wasn’t useful right now.

Then, I started sensing my body’s Absorption Essence reserves, trying to figure out if I could form runes yet. Sadly, I got the feeling that my body couldn’t really handle absorption essence yet. My current body was maybe a tenth of the way to becoming compatible with Absorption Essence, probably due to baths my family had administered when I was a baby.

I glanced around at my brothers, who were still making a ruckus, and then at my father and sister, who were now standing a little off to the side, before I materialized the {Lake-Gazer’s Dress}. I made sure to materialize the dress under my current set of clothes, since my family would raise an eyebrow at a new dress appearing in thin air, and other people would frown at me wearing the wrong colors.

My pink dress randomly swelled up in strange places as a new layer of cloth appeared on top of my body, before the lake dress resized itself to my current body. However, there were still bits of blue dress peeking out at weird locations on my body.

I concentrated on shrinking the skirt of my lake dress, while also making the dress as thin as I could. The blue bits of dress poking out around my knees and neck quickly disappeared as my lake dress became thinner, lighter, and smaller, until it eventually turned into something like a set of underclothes.

At the same time, {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} started to kick in again. Now that my body was in contact with ‘a lake,’ my body started automatically generating absorption essence again. And more importantly, my body also resumed the process of recreating itself, ensuring that I would eventually be able to use Absorption essence just like in my previous life.

My other three items wouldn’t be useful until the three of us set off on our own, and my swordsmanship Ability would take some time to get going, just like my runes. However, things were looking pretty good. 

I spent a moment thinking about how much more potential I had in this life. In my first life, I had been the epitome of average. There was nothing that gave me an advantage over the average villager besides my vague dreams of exploring the ocean. 

In this life, I had an extra magic system that lay totally outside of this world’s understanding of magic, possible access to both of the available magic systems in this world, my {Lake-Gazer’s Dress} to defend me and help boost my potential, and about a decade of swordsmanship training behind me from our time on the islands. If I put enough hard work in, I could make much more out of this life than my last one.

As I got lost in my thoughts, my mother finally came out of the tailoring store. 

“All right dearest, I have everything I need,” said my mother, smiling at my father. “Let’s go get something to eat!”

The six of us began making our way towards a smaller restaurant, located near one of the edges of the city. The building didn’t look fancy, but it also looked a little nicer than our house and the clothes I was wearing. I took a look at my family’s worn, patched clothing, as well as our relatively healthy frames, and nodded to myself. I could see why our family considered even a smaller restaurant like this one a luxury. I was also glad that, despite how worn our clothes were, and how rundown our house was, we weren’t so impoverished that food was an issue. Since we could even afford occasional luxuries, while I wouldn’t be living in a mansion anytime soon, I shouldn’t have a hard time living to adulthood either. I could work with that.

The six of us made our way inside the building, and I could see that the restaurant was structured kind of like a mixture of a bar room and a restaurant. There was also a second floor to the building, which I couldn’t see. It looked like people in nicer clothes went to and from that area. However, the first floor of the building was instead structured like a more open bar, where people in more ragged clothes, like my family, came and went.

I noticed, with some surprise, that our clothes actually weren’t the worst looking in the room. There were plenty of people who had even more damaged clothing than ours, and even a few men and women who had opted to wear… less. Though, even though they weren’t wearing as much clothing, everyone still strictly adhered to the color-coding that this city seemed hellbent on following.

Perhaps I’m assuming too much based on clothes? I thought. It took me a few moments to realize that, if our entire species didn’t have much access to the surface, we might not be able to manufacture cloth and thread very easily. In that case, perhaps wearing clothes that covered our entire body was a sign of being middle class, even if they were worn and patched clothes like ours.

I didn’t know much about the local economy, but it seemed that we might be less poor than I thought. We still weren’t rich, but perhaps we were firmly in the lower end of the middle class?

My mother and father quickly led the four of us to a table situated somewhat near the front of the room, in front of the bar. A couple men and women were sitting at the bar itself, chatting and laughing with each other while drinking alcohol from stone cups. They gave the area a pleasant, lived-in feeling.

My two older brothers and my sister all got seats of their own, while my mother simply situated me on her lap. I resisted the urge to pout.

A few moments later, my father finished double checking our table, and then nodded to my older brothers and sister. “What do you guys want this time? I’ll get the food for us.”

Jonathan looked at a stone board near the bar, where a few pictures of food were crudely drawn. “I’ll take a mushroom sandwich with bits of fish,” he said. My sister frowned as well, before she smiled. “I’ll take a mushroom soup flavored with shredded shadowcrawler.”

My mother paused, as if she were trying to figure out whether she should frown at my sister, before she sighed. “I guess a little meat isn’t a bad thing today. Jonathan, do you want a medium-sized spider to go with your meal?”

I suddenly felt very uneasy about whatever I was about to eat. Spider was part of the menu? I did my best not to retch. The idea of eating an arachnid frightened me far more than it should have, given the other things I had seen during my time on the islands.

Jonathan seemed to have a very different idea of what constituted tasty food. Upon hearing that he might get to eat some spider, he visibly brightened up and nodded.

My mother looked at Ruman. “Do you want some as well? The four of us can divide up one decently sized spider if you want some.”

I dearly hoped that ‘the four of us’ didn’t include me.

Ruman eagerly grinned. “Some spider sounds amazing, mom.”

I looked over the menu, and to my delight, noticed something else present on it.

Fish soup.

I had spent years eating fish on the islands. I had been heartily sick of fish during my time there, but now… I found myself craving the taste of fish. Sure, I had eaten almost nothing but fish on the islands, but…

Despite the fact that the islands had been a place filled with murderous wildlife, an ocean that sought to devour me and drown me, and a variety of horrifying mind-devouring environmental effects and items… the islands had also been  a place where I was happy. A place where I had people that I loved, and who loved me. A home that I would probably never see again.

“Fish soup,” I said. “I want fish soup.”

My mother looked at the menu for a moment, as if lost in thought, before she nodded. “You can have a kid sized bowl, I suppose. Fish aren’t too expensive, since the river has a decent fish population,” she said. “But if you don’t finish it, I won’t give you any part of the apple for dessert, all right?”

I nodded.

My father quickly confirmed what everyone was going to eat, and then my father walked up to the bar to order the food. About ten minutes later, my father returned with our meals.

My bowl of soup was noticeably smaller than everyone else’s plate of food, but since I was quite young, I suppose that made sense. I happily started digging into my fish soup, and also gave the spider my mother, father, Ruman, and Jonathan were digging into a dubious glance. The spider was… the size of me. The underground caverns we lived in were more horrifying than I thought. 

To dig for more information, and to take my mind off of the horrifying abomination my family was eating for dinner, I decided to ask if my mother could tell me any ‘stories’ about the past. I was tired of being lost and confused, and I wanted at least a general background on the world I was inhabiting. I had some guesses what the world looked like, but I wanted a more concrete idea of what kind of world I was inhabiting.

“Mama. Why we live underground?” I asked. I hoped that question would get me the information I wanted.

My mother looked in the direction of the fort which guarded us from the surface, as if she could see through the walls of the restaurant, and sighed.

“That’s a complicated story, Miria. Are you sure you want to hear it?” she said, in between mouthfuls of mushroom and spider.

I nodded. “I wanna know!”

My mother chuckled. “You’re very talkative today. Just yesterday, you were struggling to say the word ‘mama,’ and now you’re already forming semi-coherent sentences.” I winced, wondering if she had noticed something. Luckily, she simply sighed. “All right. I can give you a little story to help you understand the world we live in. It’s very general, but I can at least tell you a little.

“Once, we were all one species, known as the Ortha. This is the origin which all other intelligent species originate from.

“The Ortha, during the first era, built a glorious empire, which I don’t know much about. Legend has it that it was an empire filled with wonders and magic. Then, at some point in the past, they used their extraordinary magic to tunnel into the core of the planet. Somehow, they broke gravity, creating new and powerful wonders each day by harvesting the magic and metals that sustains gravity for this planet.” Gravity comes from magic and metals? I resisted the urge to frown. That was… very different from my understanding of gravity.

“Eventually, they made some sort of massive mistake with the gravity of their superstructures. This caused the center of the planet, along with the majority of the First Orthan empire, to drift off into the void that surrounds our planet. Most people assume they burned to death in the hot reaches of space, far away from the cooling comfort of the sun.”

Hot space? Cold sun? The center of the planet is missing? I felt increasingly baffled, as I confirmed that the rules might be a little… different here. Also, I had to wonder what our planet was shaped like, if the center of our planet was now missing. Was our planet just shaped like a donut now? Had the planet shrank? Had the core been replaced? I had so many questions about how physics worked in this world. The Islands world had been pretty similar to my first life as far as physics went, but I was suddenly aware of how different some dimensions could be from others.

My mother, who didn’t notice my strange mental tangent, continued speaking. “From the ruins of the first Orthan empire rose the second Orthan empire; a society based purely around magical might. Normally, about one in ten people are born as a Witch or wizard, and one in a thousand is born as a Shaper. The Orthan empire used this roll of the dice to determine everything. A person without access to either form of magic was treated as a second class citizen by the spellcasters of the empire. Everything was determined by magical bloodline and magical might.

“Some of the more immoral Ortha started experimenting with bloodlines. Since most magic is passed down from parent to child, and lack of talent is also usually genetic, they started thinking about what other useful traits could be encoded in the traits parents pass to their children. They took some of the lower class citizens, and began experimenting on them. Eventually, they created a few slave races. The Thyrians.” My mother hesitated. “the word ‘Thyri’ means ‘born to’ in old Orthan. So it was used to denote a slave race, with only one purpose in life.”

“Four Slave races were created from the lower classes of the Ortha race. The Orukthyri were those born to wage war upon other Orthans. Oruk is the word for ‘war,’ so the Orukthyri were ‘born to war.’ They have incredibly short lifespans, but they reproduce incredibly quickly. They are partially magic resistant, incredibly physically strong, and have incredibly thick skin and muscles, making it hard to penetrate their bodies with weaker spells, bludgeoning weapons, or swords.” My mother frowned. “They are… twisted, and they are not very intelligent. But they still have very basic societal structures in place. They organize themselves into war bands and roam the surface, destroying all they come across, and they far outmatch the other three remnant races. Though, Witches are still stronger, of course.”

I wondered why shapers weren’t mentioned as being stronger than Orukthyri. Maybe Shaping wasn’t a combat oriented magic system? If so, Felix would probably have a field day learning how to be a shaper. I didn’t know much about either magic system yet, but I hoped Felix would finally find a magic system that suited him.

“The other three slave races were the Undenthyri, those born to work the caves, the Lunenthyri, the household servants of the Ortha, and the Arlenthyri, the craftsmen of the Ortha, and those who built the equipment for the Orukthyri and the magically gifted Ortha.

“Then, several hundred years ago, some of the Ortha tried to cross from our… dimension into another. Many other magically talented Orthans worked together, successfully breaching the gap between realities and creating a bridge to another world. This was a day that became known as the Dawn of the Black Sun.

“The moment the bridge between realities was formed, we realized that the horrors in other worlds can be a disaster of their own, rivaling even the dragons the old religions worshiped. During the Dawn of the Black Sun, a black star tore itself out of the rift between dimensions, a star that was hot instead of cold. Much of the inner ring of the planet baked under its heat. Worse, wherever enough black sunlight touched the surface of the earth, strange creatures known as Outsiders were born from the shadows cast by the evil star. They are even more powerful than an Orukthryi, at least in one to one combat, and they are hostile to everything and everyone.

“Most of the Ortha died on the day of the black sun, and most of the other slave races died along with them. The Undenthyri, mostly being located underground, had the highest survival rate, and the survivors fled to the underground tunnels and cities to take shelter with the Undenthyri. After several generations, basically everyone has a good amount of Undenthyri, Arlenthyri, and Lunenthyri blood, and it’s pretty hard to distinguish who has which bloodline these days. Most people also have a little Ortha blood somewhere in the mix, from the few survivors that survived the Dawn of the Black Sun.” My mother frowned. “However, nobody has Orukthyri blood. Orukthyri are violent creatures, and any children of the Orukthyri are as mad and violent as their parent. Any amount of Orukthyri blood turns one into a mindless war machine, forming warbands and rampaging across the surface of the world. 

“Luckily, the Orukthyri have large frames, meaning they have a hard time fighting inside of the closed caves and passages of the underground cities. But surface settlements are still very vulnerable to Orukthyri attacks, which is why surface settlements are rare.”

I nodded. If incredibly powerful monsters occasionally looted and burned down anything on the surface, I could definitely see why surface settlements were rare and surface products were expensive.

“How do we know what the surface looks like now?” I asked, curious enough that I forgot to copy the lisp of a young child I was trying to imitate.

This time, Jonathan was the one to speak up. “Adventurers! Some people go to the surface and look for old Ortha ruins, in order to scavenge old knowledge of magic and ancient artifacts! Since we’re descended from servants, our ancestors didn’t bring much magic knowledge with them. So adventurers go around trying to find old research notes on spellcasting and shaping, and then sell them to Witches and Shapers. I hear that some Witches and Wizards even join in the expeditions to the surface sometimes, to try to advance our knowledge of magic. It happens often.” Jonathan grinned, a sort dreamy expression appearing in his eyes as he talked about adventurers. “Maybe if I get strong enough I’ll try seeing the surface myself one day, instead of just gazing at it from the fort. If I could bring back knowledge of a seventh circle spell, I’m sure the city council would even award me with a noble title of my own. It happened once already!”

“Jonathan!” Snapped my mother, glaring at him. “Do not go to the surface. It’s too dangerous.”

Jonathan frowned, but didn’t say anything. Apparently, this was an argument Jonathan and my mother had enough times that neither was willing to ruin the dinner by talking about it, but neither was willing to budge either. The table settled into a state of quiet, as I ruminated over what I had heard.

However, there was one thought that was especially dominant in my mind. One that my mother would absolutely hate, but sounded exactly like what I would want to do as a long-term goal.

Adventurers, huh? I could spend some time learning magic in this world, to see if I could become a shaper, a witch, or both. And then, after that, I could take to the surface with Sallia and Felix and see if we could find some old ruins. That sounded like exactly the kind of thing that would aware a huge amount of Achievement, and it sounded incredibly interesting as well…

 

acaswell

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