“So, why wouldn’t Harold be able to go through with it, and why is there a problem with Holly?”

“Puberty. The procedure requires the person to be young, most significant changes happen during this time and the procedure needs to, commandeer, this phase of their life.”

Harold looked worried at this news, he thought it was due to Fred disliking him, and believed he could resolve this through influence or trade, but it was actually due to him being too old. Wouldn’t that mean his younger siblings would surpass him?

“For a kid, you seem to know a lot about the human body.”

“…” Fred didn’t bother going into too much detail.

“So, what would you want for the procedure?”

“Plants.”

“Plants?”

“Specific plants, that I can’t find.” Fred handed him a list.

“No, we can’t agree to this.” Harold stood up and butted in. but he didn’t have a valid reason for his protest.

“Harold! Sit down.” Edward reprimanded. It was obvious what Harold was thinking, he always acted as if he was the next successor to his father, even when it wasn’t guaranteed, and this would reduce his chances to succeed even further.

“But!” Harold couldn’t think of anything to say and just sat down dejectedly.

Edward had a look over the list, “We can get you these plants before you leave for school,”

“The procedure is finalised in an ascension. And for best results, this must be before the start of puberty.

“I’m only level 6” Holly exclaimed.

“I might be able to create some puberty suppressants for you to catch up.” He rubbed his chin, “Servant, can you get me a natural crystal?” He called out to one of the servants standing in the distance.

“Yes, young master.” He scurried off, and a few minutes was back, handing Fred a nature crystal.

“Thanks,”, “Holly pass us your hand.” He grabbed her gently by the wrist and used mana sense. “You have about 7 months, and I could probably extend it another 7 before we start running into problems.”

They didn’t have anything else to talk about at this point, everyone had a lot to think about regarding the conversation.

___

Over the next week, Isabella had been getting up a lot later than usual, she had a happy and relaxing glow on her. On the other hand, George had a dark and gloomy expression. Edward had been spending the nights with Isabella

It was at this time, Rudy, and Delphine, along with their father came over.

“Fred!” they shouted in unison and hugged him.

“How have you two been?” Fred asked.

“Bored, except for the goblin hunts, but dad said we couldn’t ascend until we came over, do you know what that is about?”

“Yeah, we’ll explain later. For now, let us go inside.”

As the two entered the house, they met Harold and Holly, they had met before, but they were much younger at the time and don’t remember much.

“Good afternoon, Isabella,” Thomas hugged Isabella,

“Afternoon, Thomas, it’s good to see you,”

“Thomas!” Edward called out with outstretched arms.

“Edward!” Thomas met him for a hug.

After the greetings, Fred and Isabella talked in private with Thomas about the Adeptus program. Fred wanted to kickstart a considerable number of Astartes, primarily to be able to form a unit when he becomes of military age. It took a long time to Grow an Astartes.

Thomas was shocked by the revelation. “Thank you, Fred, for considering Rudy and Delphine.”

“Have some time to think it over and have a chat with them. It is a big change, and a decision should not be made recklessly.” Fred and Isabella left him to think.

Thomas told Rudy and Delphine about this, and they had a long discussion about it, but they couldn’t come to a reason to refuse, and so told Fred about their decision.

The operations went smoothly and took only a little over two weeks for each of them to come around.

Thomas and the two kids stayed another week before returning, Fred would see them again for school anyway.

Edward and Janet were staying until the start of school, Harold and Holly were transferring from Valence to Ludnus, as tensions were rising over Iberia, they didn’t want to keep sending their kids to a school on the other side of Toulouse.

While Luke and Lucy were too young to start this year.

Isabella and Janet didn’t get on since Edward came, but this all changed two weeks before they were scheduled to leave, which at first confused Fred until one day Isabella was very late to get up, so he went to her bedroom to make sure nothing was wrong, only to see all three of them in bed together.

He left straight away without waking them up.

___

During the summer, Fred received an audience with him down at the foundry with the foreman.

The foreman greeted Fred by the entrance to the foundry. “Good morning young master.”

“Good morning, Foreman, what seems to be the problem?”

“I’ll have to show you.” The foreman brought him to the back of the foundry where 18 cannons were lined up.

“12 of them have been used by the army for practice, while the other six haven’t been shipped out yet. However, we have a problem with the 12 and the military have sent them back for fixing.”

“Fixing?”

“Yes,” the foreman walked to the hole of the cannon and pointed inside, “the cannons have started cracking. Our current methods of forging the cannons cannot hold up to the abuse of being fired.”

“I see, any idea’s what is causing this?”

“They brought this issue to me about 4 months ago, so I’ve been using metal mana sense on the last 3 cannons we’ve made, the inner mould, used for the hole in the cannon is causing structural integrity issues with the cannon.

“That last cannon, I made without the hole, and it seems to fix the issue, but even with my affinity with metal, it would take 1-2 years to chip away at the centre to get it back to being a cannon. Furthermore, the sand used in the mould is mixing with the outer layer, causing it to warp a bit. Again, we can chip away at it, but that would increase the time.”

“Alright, keep six cannons in storage for now, in case they are needed, and let the military have 2 at a time to train with.” Fred would have to think up new plans.

___

He spent the next two weeks coming up with plans to set in motion. Then returned to the foreman,

“I have some plans for our cannon problems. Although it would be encompassing the steel industry in this city. First, I had plans to extend the city 7 miles upstream, I plan on turning the closest half into a shipwright complex and extending the ports, the remaining, a steel military-industrial complex, to support both navy and army.

But now, with this cannon problem, I was thinking of speeding up the steel complex.”

“That sounds like a heavy investment.”

“I’m not planning to do everything in one go, but I don’t want people to start building in these places before I get round to it.” He showed the Foreman the plans. “In the first phase, I want to build 2 steel mills and a copper mill with the room to upgrade to 3 more, as well as 1 warehouse per 3 metal mills.

I want to build two foundries for casting, with room to expand, and finally workshops along the riverbank. And then to address the cannons, I was thinking of water wheels in the river, so we can power milling machines, what do you think?”

“Water wheel? Milling machines? What are those?”

“O right," I thought these were a thing in the medieval period, I've seen windmills, maybe they compensate with magic or something. "Water wheels are like two giant carriage wheels with its bottom third in the water, but with wooden planks on the rims connecting the two wheels.

As the water passes downstream, it tries to drag the wooden planks, causing the wheel to rotate. It's like those windmills scattered about in the farmlands.

We can then use this rotation to power a milling machine, this can either spin the cannon or a metal tool, used for scraping metal, this would, in turn, allow us to cut away at the metal insides, or scrape off layers from the outside.”

“This, it sounds amazing and confusing.”

“Tell you what, I have the designs of most of the plans, help me set in motion the construction of the copper mill, as well as a foundry and workshop, and we can see where we are at, to continue.”

“I know an architect and City Planner on the mainland, we can employ the Architect who worked on this building as well.”

“Any more questions?”

“Well, I have a lot, but most of them would probably be answered once we have something running. However, I noticed these two sets of parallel lines that run through the complex, into the shipwright section towards the docks, it also goes beyond the city in the other direction, and it branches out into all of the large buildings, what are they.”

“Think of them as a type of road for now, and talking about them, try and set up one of the steel mills and foundry, while I’m at school. Get it done for when I come back for summer, and there will be a promotion for you. But don’t hesitate to ask the house for help on these projects.”

___

Before Edward left, He managed to procure the herbs Fred wanted from the mainland and managed to get them shipped over in time for Fred’s departure for school. Fred had not Ascended in the summer; he was just a few exp short of maxing out.

It would probably take him a week at most, once he reached Ludnus, he was in the carriage with Rudy and Delphine right now, with Harold and Holly in the carriage behind.

“So, how are you two feeling?”

“Great, the ascension wasn’t so bad as compared to last time, well except for the 2 weeks of deliriousness.” Rudy was the first to express his opinion,

“Thanks again, Fred.” Delphine blushed. “I feel a lot better.”

“you two lucked out, when I was going through with it, instead of an organ I had to insert a giant leech.”

“Ew, you have a giant leech in you.” Delphine’s face turned green at that, much to Fred’s amusement.

“Not anymore, the system morphed it into the gene-seed organ, that organ then grew copies of itself, and those copies are what is in you guys.”

“What, there is a leech in us.” Delphine panicked.

“Cool!” Rudy was just interested in the process and wasn’t as creeped out by it.

“No, no Delphine, it is no longer a leech.”

___

They arrived at Ludnus, and after a week, when Fred maxed his Exp he received two quests

*Ascension quest* consume the Esper drugs and absorb, 20 crystals in any mix of Lightning, fire, and metals in 5 minutes

*Ascension quest* absorb 40 lightning crystals in 5 minutes.

Fred finally received all the ingredients for the drugs and would take up to a month to perfect but was surprised by the need to absorb crystals on top of that. Then again last time he just needed to consume the drugs, this time his body should be able to handle a lot more than that.

He was in the last year of juniors for training, but after the ascension, he would have to revert to his current class year.

‘Status’

Status

Name

Frederick

????

Age

7

year

7

month

Ascension

2

Level

10

Body

Junior

Super-Soldier

Race group

Human

Culture

Franconian

Social

F Earl/ M Duke

Bastard

Exp

10240/10240

100%

Exp Mod

240% (child)

Sub-Race

Adeptus Astartes

Assimilation 10%, *1.9 modifiers to stat points

Military

Rank

Recruit

Level

3

Command structure

0

None

Affinity

Lightning

14%

Fire

4%

Metal

1%

Class

Class

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Stats

points

Condition

Health

150

37530

Stamina

150

33899

Mana

150

57440

Modifiable

Power

1402

74.59

Density

1585

84.32

Dexterity

1067

56.76

Vitality

1339

71.23

Endurance

1779

94.64

Intellect

2731

145.29

Wisdom

2688

143.00

He was sitting in his room; a pile of pills was on his tray. Normally for this, the person going through the Esper program would have been electrocuted while the pills were inside his body, this was to activate the types of pills and allow them to easily modify his brain, but he guessed the mana overload from the crystals would do the same thing.

“Here goes nothing.” He swallowed the pills and then a minute after his head started throbbing in pain, “AHHHHH!”, he gritted his teeth and focused on his mana to connect slivers of mana strands to each crystal. He then used this connection to absorb the energies from them.

This only added to the pain, and at multiple stages, he wanted to quit the process and just give up, but he knew if he did that, he wouldn’t survive the process intact. He was absorbing 12 lightning crystals, 4 fire and 4 metal.

___

Jessica was sitting on a chair outside Fred’s room, Fred asked her to stay there and prevent anyone from coming in. Rudy and Delphine were sitting with her, they could hear Fred’s screams of pain.

Rudy and Delphine joined Jessica, because of Harold. They saw how Harold regarded Fred and didn’t want him trying to cause trouble for Jess or interfere with Fred.

But luckily nothing happened,”

___

3 hours later, Fred had finished his ascension and was lying there, breathing heavily, there was smoke coming from his skin. At this point, he just fell asleep and didn’t wake for 14 hours.

When he woke up, he thought he could smell blood and looked around his room, there was nothing. But then he remembered what this was, it was the iron particle dust in the air. He had mistaken it for iron found in the blood.

He looked around the room again, and as his vision passed each section, a black filter kept flashing over the images, in the flack filter he kept seeing the nails in the wooden boards and beams. But it was only for brief moments.

Then when he looked at the door, 3 filters flashed over one another before returning to normal. The fist was a bulb of light with tendrils stuck in a weird pattern, with spots of light running up and down them.

He recognised this pattern, that was the nervous system, someone was sitting outside his room.

The other two filters replaced the nervous system with a thermal vision of the person and then a blood vein map of the person, before turning back to normal.

He had these visions in his previous world, he could learn to control them, but that would take time, and until then, would have to struggle with his vision going haywire. At the moment if one of the 3 visions would show a new image, he would get a quick flash of that vision.

He looked at his own hand and the 3 visions appeared again for a split second. He was starting to feel nauseated and felt his head go dizzy.

He looked at the table next to him and tried to feel the nails in it, he could definitely feel something, he kept focusing on it. Then the table shook and shook louder until Fred suddenly felt a splitting headache and his nose bled.

“I’m back baby.” He whispered to himself.

He had a bleeping message, like the time he turned into an Astartes.

*Notification* Congratulations you have completed the Esper program and have become an Esper.

*Notification* Congratulations you have completed your Ascension to stage 3.

Your Esper powers are affected by:

Control: Dex, Int

Power: Pow, Int

Creativity: Int, Wis, your understanding of science

- Creativity allows you to manipulate your elemental powers to perform complex procedures. However, it cannot ignore the laws of physics.

Esper rank 4 lightning, 10% assimilation

Ability to sense the electrons in your surroundings.

Ability to assert control over the electrons.

Ability to temporarily convert mana into pure lightning, without a skill.

Ability to resist damage caused by lightning in your surroundings

Gain a 40% affinity bonus to your affinity with lightning. (Modified by assimilation)

Esper rank 2 fire, 3% assimilation

Ability to sense the heat and fire in your surroundings.

Ability to assert control over the heat and fire in your surroundings.

Ability to temporarily convert mana into pure fire or heat, without a skill.

Ability to resist damage caused by fire or heat

Gain a 20% affinity bonus to your affinity with fire. (Modified by assimilation)

Esper rank 2 metal, 3% assimilation

Ability to sense metal in your surroundings.

Ability to assert control over metal in your surroundings.

Ability to temporarily convert mana into pure metal, without a skill.

Gain a 20% affinity bonus to your affinity with metal. (Modified by assimilation)

*warning* Emotions can assert control over your Esper power

‘Status’

Status

Name

Frederick

????

Age

7

year

7

month

Ascension

3

Level

1

Body

Junior

Super-Soldier

Esper

Race group

Human

Culture

Franconian

Social

F Earl/ M Duke

Bastard

Exp

0/40

0%

Exp Mod

240% (child)

Sub-Race

Adeptus Astartes

Assimilation 10%, *1.9 modifiers to stat points

Military

Rank

Recruit

Level

3

Command structure

0

None

Affinity

Lightning

24% (+24%)

Fire

8% (+20.6%)

Metal

4%(+20.6%)

Class

Class

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Subclass

Stats

points

Condition

Health

200

10008

Stamina

200

9040

Mana

200

15317

Modifiable

Power

1402

14.92

Density

1585

16.86

Dexterity

1067

11.35

Vitality

1339

14.25

Endurance

1779

18.93

Intellect

2731

29.06

Wisdom

2688

28.60