“You don't have to take me there,” Brennan commented, being led through the streets by his right hand. “I can manage on my own just fine.”
“Shut up,” Junia snipped at him, tugging on his arm to make him stumble. “You're lucky Ma made me do this. She’ll yell at me if I let you run somewhere else.”
He groaned. “I’d rather be doing chores than bother with this nonsense.”
“Say that again at dinner later,” his sister told him.
Brennan remained quiet, offering no further argument. She was right that he wasn't going to start that conversation with his parents, who seemed ridiculously adamant about having him hang out with his so-called peers. It didn’t make any sense, but no matter how he made his case, he wasn’t allowed to spend all day working. Not since he had turned three.
A year and a half had passed since his first time seeing a Zone with his own eyes, and he hadn’t been taken to one again, much to his chagrin. According to his parents, it was supposed to teach him a lesson about running ahead too fast. When he chose his Class he would have the chance to give it another go, they told him.
It just made no sense not to maximize his advantages in the time he was still small. The fact that they didn't see that wasn’t entirely his fault, yet he was simultaneously the only one who could convince them otherwise by telling them the truth of his situation.
Given that he had no plans of ever telling them about his reincarnation, he had to suffer through this period of forced socialization. Thus, he was on his way to meet up with a bunch of kids, Junia supervising as one of the older ones in the group at nearly ten years of age.
Great fun.
He stifled another groan when they turned the corner to the village square, a field of packed dirt with the occasional bit of grass poking out of the ground. Being placed a few dozen paces left of the main road, the place was in full view of many houses and other establishments, including the tavern and Village Hall.
To his dismay, he saw most of the other kids were already present, playing Landal's March—a game played between pairs, with one person riding piggyback on another as they held a stick to swing at adversaries doing the same.
This game was one he especially hated. Getting hit with a wooden branch sucked, and he was too small to be the person carrying someone else. He would see to it that he didn't have to participate unless they played something else.
Escaping Junia wasn’t impossible, just bothersome. If he was going to do it and catch flak for it later in the evening, it needed to be worth the trouble. And it wasn't like the months he had spent with these little menaces had been for nothing. Combined with his personal training, his power was slowly but surely shaping up into something respectable.
Skill unlocked!
[Sprinting (Common) Lv. 1] -> Lv. 16
Attributes increased.
STR + 2
AGI + 3
CON + 1
INT + 3
WIS + 1
SPI + 2
Achieving higher levels of coordination had done wonders for his physical improvement. He could comfortably say he had an upper hand against practically any three-year-old from Earth now, on account of sheer physical prowess. No, he wasn’t moving mountains. But he would say he was about twice as strong as a child his age should be.
Offsetting that advantage were the adults, who were similarly much stronger than they should be. Looking around, he saw a guy hauling an entire carriage with one hand, presumably for repair based on the broken wheel. Another old lady swung a hammer hard enough to crack a stone slab like she had borrowed the strength of a gorilla.
Other examples of casual superhuman strength could be seen around the village, and to these people it was just business as usual. Why wouldn't it be? For them, it had always been this way. For Brennan, not so much. He still hadn’t forgotten the time when he was a functional adult. The prospect of having to be in the child stage of life for so long before he could meaningfully protect himself grated on him.
Name: Brennan Kerrick
Race: Human (Lv. 0)
Class: N/A
Attributes:
STR - 4
AGI - 5
CON - 2
PER - 3
INT - 7
WIS - 5
SPI - 5
Skills:
- [Analyze (Common) Lv. 71] -> Lv. 91
- [Focus (Common) Lv. 65] -> Lv. 84
- [Sense Magic (Uncommon) Lv. 42] -> Lv. 50
- [Memorization (Common) Lv. 47] -> Lv. 77
- [Reading (Common) Lv. 44] -> 72
- [Writing (Common) Lv. 18] -> Lv. 66
- [Sprinting (Common) Lv. 16]
With only three skill slots left, he was thinking about what to take more and more. Many times, he'd felt the urge to just fill out his list and grind everything for the most efficient skill gain possible, but that whisper lingered in the back of his mind. The whisper promising potential, the sort that would require casting aside more immediate benefits. It was right, that was what he needed to do.
Is it really worth it?
His confidence was shaken, in the idea that he could reap the rewards he was envisioning from the path of magic. While it had hardly been a third of a decade since his rebirth into this world, he had gotten in solid progress so far. Enough that he was starting to be worried that he might be wasting his biggest lead over the other children by holding out for skills he might never get.
The rewards had been too nebulous to quantify. He needed something tangible, a checkpoint that he could point to and call it quits if the current path hadn’t yielded results after he reached it. Ultimately, he had settled on his Sense Magic skill. If he failed to realize a proper form of magic after it reached level 100, he would rethink his priorities. Find the original chapter at g.com.
There would be time. He was halfway there, and leveling it the rest of the way would take longer because of diminishing returns. Not to mention the limitations that barred him from leaving Craswidge so he could gain more experience. Even if he managed to sneak to the gate, the guards wouldn't let him out.
Today, Brennan was going to see if there was anything he could convince the other kids to do that wasn’t a complete waste of time. If not, he'd find a way to do his own thing and offer the bare minimum participation.
Junia called out to them when they didn't immediately notice her arrival. The moment her voice registered was a hilarious sight; the rascals straightened one by one, looking in Brennan's direction like a group of those meerkats he had seen in nature documentaries during his old life. Idly, he wondered if that animal existed on this planet.
Probably not.
Leading the pack, he saw a pair of young boys dismounting from their larger carriers. Their names were Tobin and Byron, eager six-year-olds whose shaved heads evoked a sense of unity from looking at them together. They weren't brothers, just friends, but the shared hairstyle they had gave that illusion even though they didn't look that much alike. Some time ago, Brennan had heard that they were over at each other’s houses practically all the time, and their parents were quite close.
Now that he thought about it, most parents had people like that in this village. Such a sense of community remained foreign to his modern sensibilities, despite living here for a few years at this point. There was this innate sense of danger around the idea of leaving your children to run around the neighborhood without close supervision at this age. Not to say that practice didn’t exist in his days on Earth, it was just a lot rarer in large settlements.
Then again, he hadn’t even been able to trust his own family at the time, so what did he know?
Regardless, the two were followed by a lanky boy their age. Sporting a bowl cut, Liam had this easy-going smile on his face that suggested he was the type to coast through life at his own pace, bobbing his head to a rhythm nobody else could hear. Even his running looked relaxed, more of a jog than anything. In conversations, he seemed to turn his head to whoever was making the loudest sounds.
Currently, that meant his eyes were on Mellie. “Junia! What took you so long?” the girl said, gesticulating wildly at her. Wheat blonde hair was bunched up in a knot behind her head, baring her long neck. She had begun to wear it this way upon entering her final set of years before Class selection. Her eyes were kind of far apart, and she had a wide enough mouth that every expression she made with it was amplified. Melisande was her real name, but people didn’t tend to call her that.
“My stupid brother,” Junia answered, shaking Brennan back and forth for emphasis. Knowing to expect it, he stayed steady on his wrap-around sandals. “But I didn’t miss much.”
“We can do something else if you want. I’ll grow crooked if I have to be the horse all day.” The voice came from the last boy in their midst. Cedric was the tallest by a head, towering over them. He ran a hand through his tousled, sandy hair to get the leaves out. Of the kids, he was the one whose parents Brennan had interacted with the most, considering Cedric’s father happened to own the local slaughterhouse. Their fathers were well-acquainted, from what he’d been able to tell during his visits to the place.
Junia laughed a bit too hard at the joke, saying, “Why don’t you pick one?”
Using that as leave to interject, Tobin started screeching for tag, and while Brennan didn’t disagree, he had to step away because of the volume. In his mind, he admired the patience the people raising this kid must have had, especially if they had high perception. Though admittedly, he wasn’t exactly sure how the perception stat worked as it increased. Maybe there was a way to turn off super-hearing or something. He would have to find a way to turn his own hearing down in certain situations, for peace of mind and to practice Focus.
A figure moved in his peripheral vision, drawing him out of his musings. He smiled when he saw who it was.
Agnes had to be his favorite out of everyone, if only because she never said much. As she stood before him, her voluminous mahogany bangs covered her downcast eyes, posture oddly still. The only sign she wasn't a statue being the rise and fall of her chest from the run over here. If not for that, any observer could be forgiven for thinking she was a life-sized doll in a woolen brown dress.
This was just how she was, he'd learned. He wouldn’t call her attitude similar to his. She participated more actively in the games they played like her contemporaries, albeit with far less verbal communication.
The two of them let a beat of silence pass. Although she gave no physical cues of acknowledgement or greeting, her body was faced toward him rather than his sister.
“Hey, Agnes,” he spoke with a nod.
A pause. Then, a wave.
At four years old, this girl was the second-youngest in the group besides himself. Having been the youngest in the group before him, Brennan briefly wondered how she dealt with the rambunctious kids among their number, before realizing the answer was likely: without saying a word.
He turned his attention back to the others to see Mellie arguing with Byron about who looked more like a cow, mentally preparing himself to steer the brats into something resembling a productive morning.
When a tug on his sleeve distracted him, he blinked. It was Agnes, pointing at the main road. Brennan saw the commotion she had noticed, a crowd of villagers blocked his view. But not for long. Decked in luxurious sets of robes and armor, the band of strangers making their way to the shops didn’t register as ordinary citizens of the kingdom. He knew what he was seeing.
Seekers.