Brennan later found out that the answer to his question was yes—they would be eating the boar.
When George revealed himself in the door opening, Doris walked up to him and they had a hushed conversation which was followed by George walking out, perhaps to go butcher the animal or have someone else do it.
However his father did it, an hour later, Brennan was watching his mother put the meat in a pot. Delicious scents permeated the air, and he was surprised to hear his own stomach actually growling, something that amused Junia greatly until her own digestive system added its voice to the choir of hunger.
For the most part, Brennan was just caught up with what his skill was telling him, the mana in the stew fixing his attention on the stove. He had no idea how the magical energy might influence the flavor, but he was keen to find out.
Luckily, the food didn’t take much more than an hour to cook. To him, though he would hesitate to call himself a patient person, that wasn’t too long with his adult mind and the mana-rich food occupying attention.
Junia wasn’t content to wait, and made her discontent known to everyone, so much so that it took their mother chiding her and sending her away to cool off. Understandable, what with her being a seven-year-old.
Right before dinner, his father took a seat on the other end of the table and regarded him with a lopsided smirk. “I think he inherited my taste for boar,” George called out to his wife.
“Oh? If he takes a liking to this one, we might have to disappoint him next time. Zone food is expensive,” she replied casually. “Kane will not have a surplus every time.”
Zone food? Where did it come from?
“True. Makes today more of a special occasion,” her husband agreed, then turned to Brennan with a wink. “Hear that, son? You better savor the taste, ‘cause it might be a long time before we eat like this again.”
He nodded seriously before asking his question. “What’s a zone?”
George laughed as if he had just said something utterly hilarious. “Curious boy, aren’t you? Right, let me tell you.” The burly man leaned forward in his seat. “Zones are these big areas where animals and plants grow bigger and meaner, and we have guys in the village who make it their job to beat them back every once in a while. The meat and fruits they bring back, they trade with the next town over a lot of the time, but sometimes they have too much and sell to us.”
Brennan just stared, mouth wide open.
His father leaned back and scratched his head. “Ah, you didn’t get all of that, did you? I guess you can learn about them when you’re older.”
No, I think I get exactly what you mean. And if I’m right… there’s actual dungeons in this world. Or whatever passes as one. Do they have guilds as well? Are there adventurers in our village? Agh, so many questions, but I’ve already asked too much for one day.
From the side, Doris glanced between them with a smile on her face, filling the bowls with stew. After serving the two of them, she left to go get her daughter.
In the meantime, Brennan busied himself with staring into the small mana-infused chunks floating atop the golden brown liquid. Nothing big enough to choke on, perfectly suitable for a child his age to eat.
Having additional context, he figured this was the meat of some kind of magic monster or whatever they called it on this world. If he took that knowledge into account, the economy of this world became a lot less mysterious to him. If even a relatively backwater place like theirs had these zones, the larger settlements must have been tapping into these resources as well, and to a greater extent.
Conversely, he now knew that this occurrence was going to be quite rare as long as he lived under this roof. George was right. He needed to savor this opportunity, learn what he could.
When his mother and sister came back, he was more than ready to dig in. They didn’t wait anymore before enjoying their meal as a family. But when the first bite reached his mouth, the world fell away.
Indescribable. The stew, already great by itself, was enhanced by the rich, wild flavor of the mana inside the meat. All the juices of the tender boar he was chewing graced his taste buds with the heavenly taste of everything it had ever been, it felt like. There was too much to parse all at once. He attempted to focus on the mana, to figure out how it made this stew different from regular ones. It seemed to simply bring out the natural flavors more, but he knew there was another hidden tidbit to be gleaned here. There was a history to the boar’s remains, fading just as the mana inside ever so slowly dissipated into the environment, the same process that had mystified him during his uses of his new skill. Almost like more of its essence would be lost the longer it was left unattended after death.
Skill leveled up!
[Analyze (Common) Lv. 26] -> Lv. 35
[Focus (Common) Lv. 20] -> Lv. 29
[Sense Magic (Uncommon) Lv. 9] -> Lv. 25
What.
He didn’t even know how to react, a weird strangled sound escaping his throat as a result. Sixteen levels from just one bite? And his common-rarity skills gaining nine each? These gains were ridiculous.
“Is the food too hot, dear?” his mother asked.
“Ish good!” he said through a mouthful. This was beyond his expectations.
She reached out with a handkerchief to wipe the side of his chin. “That’s wonderful, but you shouldn’t speak when you’re still chewing your food.”
Looking around at his family, Brennan realized that they didn’t seem to be enjoying it quite as much as he was. His parents and sister clearly loved it, but it wasn’t to the same degree as him. Was that because they lacked Sense Magic, robbing them of a crucial part of the dish that they were never going to be able to perceive?
He recalled the previous times they’d had stew in the past few weeks where he was allowed to consume anything other than breastmilk. Remembering each instance, he thought his reasoning was sound. None of those other stews had been this great, he realized after careful deliberation.
The next bite was the height of disappointment. Not the taste itself, that was still excellent. Rather, it was the lack of levels that he got despite his best efforts to replicate the same deep analytical mindset he’d employed to get a measure of the ingredients just now. Eventually, once his bowl was empty, he received one more text box.
Attributes increased!
PER + 1
With dinner behind them, Brennan watched his family discuss the possibility of teaching him a reading skill tomorrow. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say his parents discussed that while Junia made random exclamations about what they were saying to get attention.
Obvious excitement at the prospect of being taught how to read went without saying, of course. Currently, Brennan wondered what skills his sister had given that the things she said indicated that she did in fact have access to the system. Most likely, she would be all too happy to tell him if he just asked, so he promised himself to do that someday when she was in a less obnoxious mood.
I didn’t know being the younger sibling could be so tough.
*******
That night, the priority became holding onto that feeling, the phantom taste lingering on his tongue when he thought back to the stew he had eaten. The feel of each individual fiber, the taste of the vegetables, the warmth of the broth in his throat. He summoned the impressions he’d gotten from them to the forefront of his mind, hoping to gain the crucial insight needed to perform magic somehow.
At first, Brennan had been hopeful. Surely the mana in the food would remain in his body for a while, and he could use that as a shortcut to start manipulating the supernatural forces, right? Well, it turned out that it wouldn’t. It quickly lost potency after he swallowed it, and dissipated entirely when it reached his stomach. Sensing that, he hadn’t even cared to pay attention to the exact nature of the process, too caught up in frustration. Now, he tried to correct that blunder, salvaging what little he still knew of what happened.
Did mana digestion count as its own separate skill? Probably, it wouldn’t surprise him at this point. Any magical feat was bound to have a skill to go with it. The logic made sense in his head: if out of all the people he had met so far, nobody had ever displayed mage-like capabilities, it stood to reason that they just couldn’t. And that would be because there was an entry barrier to magic. You couldn’t just gain it by thinking you wanted to shoot a fireball.
Hence he was stuck trying out odd methods to leverage the moderate advantage he held in the form of a selected skill that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. Such as this not-meditation session that consisted of him tossing and turning in bed in the hopes of having an epiphany as he pored over his experiences during the day. Mana in, eat, swallow, mana out…
Skill unlocked!
[Memorization (Common) Lv. 1]
Would you like to equip this skill?
You don’t even need to ask! Just give it to me.
Skill equipped.
He felt a brief surge of elation for acquiring his new skill, and then his mood promptly sobered again. It wasn’t what he aimed for.
This wasn’t magic. That sounded obvious when he said it in his head, but the fact remained that he wasn’t any closer to what he actually wanted. All these things sounded great, sure, and he would be celebrating them under normal circumstances. A memory skill was going to be insanely handy, he could already tell. The problem here was that he had a limited number of skill slots, and he didn’t know how many it would take to become proficient in the usage of mana.
Discarding skills was possible. It was also a waste of effort. As he found out, level progress would be lost if he ripped out one of his skills and tossed it away.
Aside from that, two of his slots were going to be taken up by reading and writing skills at the behest of his mother. Brennan wasn’t naive enough to think that would be the end of it. His parents would want to teach him more skills, so having a full list without full knowledge of what this world had in store for him—at minimum zones, among other things—was short-sighted.
Physical skills were going to become more prevalent in his life when he grew up, so he had to be ready for that too. If he had multiple slots taken up that his family didn’t know about, there would come a point where they expected him to justify himself to them.
Avoidance was in his nature, so he knew he was going to delay telling his parents about his actual skill list until the last minute if he had a say in the matter. But he couldn’t guarantee that he would, or that they didn’t know better than him. In terms of knowledge about the way of living in this land, he was still a kid. They might have useful nuggets of wisdom for him if he asked them for advice, and the most applicable advice came when the other party knew all the variables of his situation.
He sighed, his tiny lungs expelling air in the quiet of the night. He was getting tired, thinking about all of this. Goddammit, he just wanted to do some magic. How hard did that have to be!?
His unspoken question received no answer, and Brennan grew tired of the mental ranting. Today had been beneficial, so to make sure tomorrow would be the same, his body began to demand sleep the longer he tried to stay awake. It was a losing battle, he knew.
Before long, Brennan’s eyes slid closed, images of magic spells playing in his mind.