“It being less difficult to obtain forgiveness for it after it was done, than permission for doing it.”

Earl of Peterborough

After a short explanation of what had happened down by the shore and a quick demonstration of my two skills Ignite and Boil, Grandfather was as equally astonished as my sister, but a great deal more furious about it all. We were both soon begging forgiveness for our foolishness down by the lake. Aleera more than me as I was still somewhat shielded by my age, assumed innocence, and ignorance but it was driven home fiercely that this was not . . . to ever . . . happen again!

. . .

“And that is precisely why we are all out here!” he admonished ending his rather long lecture on why we were on Ash Island and how we were to keep our magic hidden at all times from now on. It could be boiled down to three rules.

1. No magic unsupervised

2. No magic unless hidden

3. No magic not vetted by and practiced with an adult first.

No way I was following all of those rules but that wasn’t to be the end of restrictions to my freedom.

Having calmed a little after his fairly furious and lengthy outburst he continued, “We wouldn’t normally start this training till you were at least 5 years old but you seem to be far too intelligent not too. In fact, I’ve never seen a pair of smarter fools. There is no point in being sophisticated about your use of mana if you are completely lacking in common sense and wisdom the both of you. Besides having awoken your magic stat and displayed some level of talent in it, it is imperative that we start now.” He wasn’t quite pulling his hair out but still certainly unimpressed with the two of us.

He then went on to detail our itinerary, “Listen up Aleera and Kai, tomorrow we will start to learn you your reading, writing, and arithmetic. Aleera can teach you these while I am out with these." He pointed at a small pile of books set off to the side. “Once she has taught you those and you understand them we can move onto other subjects such as geography, history, trade, and languages of the Compass Kingdoms, which I might as well teach you both.”

“Then when I return we can start with a light run, swim, and climb before knife work.” Looking pointedly at Aleera, “Aleera you have been practicing your knife skills, haven’t you?” Grandfather questioned, already unconvinced of what her answer was going to be.

“Um, yes.” Mumbled Aleera, clearly guilty of every child’s mistake. . .

. . . Not doing their homework!

“Right. Well, after that we can look at your magical development. Aleera you have been practicing what I have taught you so far at least?” he questioned,

“Yes, Grandfather.” She replied a little more upbeat and honestly for once.

“Now, for Kai to have any skills at all is impressive but your application of mana is heavy-handed at best and what is worst is that it is dangerously obvious to anyone looking. If you are going to use mana in front of others or even near them you have to pretend it is a system-given skill of the world. The only way you can do that, to pretend it is a skill, is for it to be carefully controlled in order for it to be hidden. You have not been careful. You are not controlled. So that is what we will focus on first.”

Not being allowed a word in edgewise I was relegated to listening and nodding my head as the diatribe continued. How he expected me to understand all of this I do not know. But he seemed to be talking to Aleera as much as me going into great detail about how she would have to facilitate my training and supervision. It was difficult to tell if he was proud of my prodigious progress or vexed by it. Clearly, it was unexpected and unplanned. The lack of planning for it seemed to be the most frustrating aspect of it to my grandfather and what he was evidently trying to rectify right this second with an overabundance of planning. Even if no plan survives contact with the enemy which he seemed to be implying everyone other than family was. Even there, it seemed that anyone outside of our immediate circle was also one risk too many.

“We are all in agreement, then.” He paused here as if expecting us to agree fully when this was clearly a dictatorial relationship.

“Right, off to bed. I only have one spare roll so you will have to share, top and tail. Off you go and sort yourselves out.” Pointing we headed out of the room, tired and overwhelmed by the events of the day. The food was left cold on the table our first punishment for failing to follow the three rules.

Hungry we went to bed.

“Sorry,” I whispered as we lay down to go to sleep.

“Not your fault, Kai.” She replied. “Sleep, training tomorrow.” She said as she rolled onto her side.

Lying on my back looking up at another bare ceiling I pondered my mistakes.

Had I pushed too hard to hit the milestones before age 1?

Maybe, but they were clearly worth it.

Ultimately, I would do it again.

Perhaps, not tonight though.

Hungry, I closed my eyes and delved deeper into my body taking a break from my super senses. I opened my eyes to the world I had built in my head, my mind fortress. My false stats shone in the stone wall and sat above my hidden trapdoor entrance. As far as I can tell no one seems to have looked at or commented on my stats and skills but if they can see them one day it needed another update after today’s explosive developments and revelations.

Sophistical Status

Level: 5

Name: Kai

Experience: (900/3200)

Health: 300/300 Stamina: 163/163 Mana: 300/300

Vitality: 30

Endurance:12

Strength: 12

Dexterity: 12

Senses: 30

Mind: 30

Clarity: 14

Magic: 30

Free Points: 40

Skills:

Tier 1: Humming (Lv 6) Swimming (Lv 6) Singing (Lv 6) Running (Lv 4) Meditation (Lv 1)

Tier 2: Sense Mana (Lv 1)

Tier 3: Ignite (Lv 1) Freeze (Lv 1) Boil (Lv 1)

Even only adding in 1 level of the skills I would need to be able to get to the Tier 3 magic skills still would have pushed me up to level 5. This will be okay if they are unable to assign any of my free points which would now possibly plausibly be 40. This is all still somewhat like attempting to nail jelly to the wall. But that is the most I can be without being scarily honest with my family. There are always consequences to the truth and I am still worried about what they might be. If anything, today has reinforced my idea that it is safer to keep things secret even from my closest family. They only know a little of what I can truly do and their first response was to hide me away. What would they do if they knew everything?

I enjoy who I am and have learned to love my family. My mother who carried me and brought me into this world, possibly even saved me at birth. My sister spends all of her with me, caring for me, carrying me, and indulging my many whims. She may annoy me and stop me from some things but all siblings fight over something to some degree. My father who does his best for me has dreams for me and with love and affection drowns me. I know they all have my best interests at heart. I was, am, and still will be scared to lose any of that.

. . .

I moved on from my morbid thoughts, pondering that if they can reassign my points again I only have 20 free points to assign anywhere. If 40 were assigned to Vitality, Senses, Mind, or Magic I would be able to cover it with my true stats. Anything else I would be short by up to 10 points. I hoped that the training that they were talking about will help my endurance, strength, and dexterity to grow quicker to cover that imaginary gap of 10.

That or I needed to redo my mind fortress again, to focus on the physical. I did not trust my Ninja baby skills for a nighttime practice against Grandfather tonight so refurbishments it was.

Under my sham status, I mentally lifted up the hidden trapdoor before I went down the spiral staircase through my mental layers to my hidden Mind Fortress, a bunker to retreat to from the constant buzzing of my heightened senses.

Room 1 My Id (1x1)

The first room of my fortress I have not changed at all. It is still my core, my id, my stats, and my skills. The smallest of the rooms at the center of the Fibonacci spiral that I have built my mind fortress around. My two self-portraits stood on either side of me. The middle-aged man that I once was stands on the left. There my painted self is surrounded by the items that made up my life before I was reborn like a modern-day version of The Ambassadors by Holbein. Never so rich as them, the items that surround me are more memories of mundane modernity, something that in this world would seem simply magical and I miss them. But they are no longer available and there is no point pining over things I will not have for a long, long time lest I make them myself.

My portrait on the right now reflected who I am now. A small baby almost a toddler. No longer a fetus wrapped in the womb. Time feels surreal sometimes as I have spent so much of my conscious life inside my head. Inside the world, I built in my head, my mind fortress, that I formed to save my sanity in the womb. In the painting, I sit there surrounded by the items they had laid out for me for my Zhuazhou day. They represent a variety of futures I could take but selfishly I took them all and do not want to have to make a choice between them, at least I have not wanted to or had to yet. That being said I am no longer alone in this portrait unlike the other. My father, mother, and sister surround me, standing by a sailboat, sewing and spinning respectively. They are part of who I am now. The Mariners Windrose Compass is still engraved on the floor and I am sure my father would be keen to see such an important sailors tool embedded in the heart of my mind. My mother would love the ceiling and the constellation I’ve kept from my old world. Some of the most intricate of her weaving has been patterns involving the stars above the compass kingdoms. Patterns that she adds by hand to her woven cloth.

My real Stats still stand on the central wall from which it all spirals but I have been able to reorganise them into tiers. I wonder if one day I will be able to put them into trees of abilities but fear that will get far too complicated far too quickly.

Room 2 My meditation room (1x1)

I have kept this the same simplicity the best policy. My meditation room is where I gained some control after being overwhelmed by Super Senses. Without it, I would probably still be trembling and shaking overwhelmed by my Super senses. Relaxed, here I took a moment to appreciate my fortune in my family. It was still somewhere I could zone out, feel at peace, feel zen. I had even added a small bonsai tree to complement the tatami flooring and paper walls I had imagined to decorate the area. I had removed the screens that I used to represent my skills mana sense and echolocation. Purity in the simplicity of the room. Without distractions, I paused to meditate to gain a level of serenity before I moved onto the refurbishments I wanted to make.

Room 3 My control room (2x2)

This is the first room that I started to change. Mentally I boxed up the literature that I had recreated. I then proceeded to pull apart my library imagining stacking it by the door. I planned to rebuild it next door but a little larger. This gave me space for something else I wished to add to my repertoire. A control room. A cross between Nasa and a Star Trek Bridge, my critical operations control room was a spy room from which I could view the world while my body seemingly slept. I curved the walls giving me a circle in which I could sit. The 360 screens gave me a panoramic view of the room the image I representation of both my Mana Sense and Echolocation. If I focused on parts of the picture I could now zoom through to see beyond the surface image. The definition was raised higher by my heightened senses and extra screens for my new skills Sight, Scent, Detect and Taste. Facsimiles of me sat at each station ready to alert me to changes. Quietly waiting, processing without thinking beyond the bounds of the task I had assigned them.

Room 4 My library (3x3)

After constructing my control room I rebuilt my library. But first I had to jump ahead to room 5 draining my imaginary pool to push across my music room. Then I returned to Room 4 where I unpacked the boxed literature I started to fill the larger wall-to-wall shelving that flowed from floor to ceiling in my mind. I had always wanted my own library in my former life and now I had it of a sort. Admittedly many a row was still empty but they were beginning to fill up. Little wooden carved signs detailing the areas I am trying to remember fiction, non fiction, geography, history, animals, science, etc. Like my core room, I am keeping old world knowledge on the left and hopefully now that I have access to some books I will be able to fill up the right side with the world I now live in. Maybe I can even write my own guides to this world and novels to entertain. Who is there to claim patent or enforce intellectual property rights in a world that might not have ever heard of them?

Room 5 My music room (5x5)

The fifth room I remodeled as my music room. I had already pushed it across from room 4 so I simply pushed out the walls to match the larger space before extending them and wooden flooring. Significantly larger now I set up for a small orchestra to play. I cannot play all of these imaginary instruments yet and cannot carry the various lines simultaneously yet. But maybe one day.

Room 6 My dojo (8x8)

Faced with the routine my Grandfather has laid out for us. It did not seem like it would be long before he is handing me some form of weaponry to practice with. Always be prepared may have been the Scout motto but it is one I will happily follow. A few lessons I once had of Karate, Judo, and Kendo allowed me to recreate various areas for them. Plenty of films made recreating a boxing ring easy enough even if I don’t yet have someone to fight against in my head I can practice some of the moves I remember watching. My only concern was a worry about any bad habits I may form. Practice doesn’t guarantee perfection no matter how many times they say practice makes perfect. In reality, practice makes permanent and if you practice something wrong repeatedly all you will do is engrain your bad habits until they become incredibly difficult if not impossible to correct. Still, I know some of the basics low stable stance, etc. The question is; Will the system of levels help improve my skills as they increase or can bad habits follow you through each level never corrected no matter how high a level you achieve?

Room 7 My swimming pool (13x13)

The seventh room of my mind fortress I reflooded and recreated my swimming pool room but now significantly larger. Here I thought little about the depth of the pool mentally creating it as I had before. This proved to be a problem. Throughout my time in the womb when in my head and building my mind fortress I had always imagined myself as I was in my old life. An avatar so to speak of a middle-aged man. But now as I stood in my pool I realised that my mental image of who I now was had shrunk. It seemed I had regressed much like Benjamin Button aging backward as he moved forward in time and the initial pool that I created the same depth as my original pool was now a little too deep for me to stand comfortably in. Freaked out I formed a mirror to see what age I appeared to be but I appeared malleable looking like however, I wished to be a child or an adult. Only my perspective had lowered to be closer to my new reality. The water was now too high I had to add a shallow end to my pool. Toddler or middle-aged man no matter what I looked like on the outside my height remained smaller. Had I resized everything to my perspective? Not noticing the change before reaching room 7. I found the entire situation strange an odd quirk of my mental landscape, that once noticed, I found difficult to ignore.

Room 8 My running track (21x21)

Still concerned about the physical nature of Grandfather’s training. This room is now a running track for practicing the planned running with a bouldering wall around the edges to practice the planned climbing. While a set of all the athletic events and equipment I can remember I recreated and filled the middle with. Though I think I will need some skill to get a Skill or rather a lot of luck. The same concerns over forming poor habits played on my mind.

Room 9 My forest (34 x 34)

I have no previous experience foraging beyond picking blackberries and strawberries but survivalist training seems a necessity for traveling any further afield. So thinking ahead I am growing a mental forest to help me out later on. Maybe I can practice planting?

Finally, Room 10 My sailing sea (55 x 55)

My spiral fortress had gotten significantly larger and this last room was huge. Mentally drained from the refurbishments I had made it was simpler to fill it with water adding a dock and a small boat to sail on it with. Father seems determined to have me follow in his footsteps. So the sooner I get my sea legs and learn my port side from my starboard the happier he will be and hopefully more lenient in allowing me my foibles. Besides if I am not allowed home for a few months or god forbid it a few years. Sailing a boat might be the only way to get off Ash island.

Mentally exhausted from the mental remodeling of my mind fortress I returned to my body but not before taking a last look at my status. Surprised at the increase in experience over only a few hours tonight. It seemed to break down to the Mind Fortress, Ignite, Freeze, Boil, and Mana Sense skills leveling during the last day.

True Status

Level: 10 Name: Kai

Experience: 54,000/ 204,800

Age: 13 months, 1 weeks, 2 days, 22 hours

Health: 1100/1100 Stamina: 513/513 Mana: 1000/1000 Psi: 1070/1070

Trait: Long Lived, Fast Learner, Super Senses, Source of Mana,

Vitality: 110

Endurance: 22

Strength: 22

Dexterity: 23

Senses: 109

Mind: 107

Clarity: 38

Magic: 100

Free Points: 20

Skills:

Tier 1: Time sense (LV 22) Listening (LV 26) Meditation (LV 31) Swimming (LV 23)

Humming (Lv 20) Sneak (Lv 21) Whistling (Lv 20) Singing (Lv 20) and Drumming (Lv 20)

Running (Lv 10), Acting (15), English (Lv 15), Spanish (Lv 15), Japanese (Lv 15),

German (Lv 10), French (Lv 7) Dodge (Lv 1) Breath Control (Lv 1) Sight (Lv 11)

Scent (Lv 11) Detect (Lv 11) Taste (Lv 11) Bulosa (Lv 1) Draw (Lv 1)

Tier 2: Sense Mana (LV 30) Eavesdrop (LV 22) Memorisation (LV 20) Composition (Lv 20)

Recall (Lv20) Pain tolerance (Lv 8) Piano (Lv 20) Violin (Lv 20), Trombone (Lv 20),

Saxophone (Lv 20) Linguistics (Lv 15) Translation (Lv 15) Stealth (Lv 10) Quick reflexes (Lv 1)

Tier 3: Echolocation (LV 23) Expel Mana (Lv 29) Absorb Mana (Lv 29)

Mana Manipulation (Lv 12) Ignite (Lv 12) Freeze (Lv 3) Boil (Lv 2)

Tier 4: Mana Drain (Lv 20) Parallel Processing (Lv 11)

Tier 5: Mind fortress (Lv 16)

Skill experience: 4200

Origin experience: 0

Combat experience: 0

Crafting experience: 0

It's been a busy day.

Life is full of surprises,

I just have to accept that I cannot plan for them all.

I wonder what life will be like here with Grandfather and Aleera.