Another week flew by as I memorized the Omnicode definition of the word [Soul] and integrated it into the Infoscope. My work didn’t go to waste and I was rewarded with an initially blurry but progressively more defined visual of something within my body.

I put one Investiture point into [Soul] to try and determine exactly what it would change and witnessed tiny sparks of magical currents dancing over my soul. It seemed to be woven from shimmering emerald-green waves. A silver-blue pattern was sparkling beneath the emerald-green. It was much less distinct. Interesting.

I checked my mom’s soul. Her soul was spread all across her body! It looked like it was protectively wrapped around me as if it was hugging me, but not actually touching my body. It featured a distinctive silver-brown pattern. Hrm. Why does her soul have only one pattern and mine two?

I resumed my observations out of her belly with the Infoscope, learning more about my new home. Almost nothing nearby escaped my all-seeing ghostly periscope in the Village of Skyisle.

I observed little kids playing in the fields, chasing after what looked like flying cat-owls. I saw people working in the gardens beneath lush trees. Judging by the weather, it was late summer. I noted a beautiful gothic-style church built from light-gray stones standing on a river-island in the center of the valley. The ecclesiastic building featured blue stained glass windows and was surrounded by light-pink trees that reminded me of Japanese cherry blossoms. Judging by how teenagers went in and out of it on a regular schedule, I presumed that it was the local school.

In medieval Russia the Orthodox church served as the first educational facilities that taught people to read in Latin. During imperial Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church wielded enormous influence as the official religion, and virtually all children took a Russian Orthodox course known as the Law of God. I presumed that something similar was happening in the local church.

The Infoscope identified it as the [Church of Equality].

I identified all sorts of people enjoying simple life in a remote mountain village. Everyone here had all sorts of interesting specialties, but most people had focused on strength or magic. For example, people like my mother had taken up the [Magic] build and they worked with plants, while people like my dad had gone for the [Strength] build and worked with their hands.

That’s right, my dad here was a carpenter. The Infoscope labelled him as [Georgi Alan Agamemnon - Carpenter: LV 20].

He spent most of his time out cutting down trees in the valley or working in his little shop attached to the house, manually carving planks or fixing up things around the village in exchange for copper coins.

I saw the hard-working face of a man that I would someday hopefully grow into... that is if I didn't completely screw up my looks by messing with my chromosomes. Eh, I could always correct and sculpt my face later, if I looked like Quasimodo. I had my Modify and the Infoscope. It's not like my awesome skills would vanish on me... right?

Because of the mana cost involved and my worry of being spotted, I didn’t stray or move away from mom. Thankfully, nobody noticed my Infoscope. I could only see it myself because the Infoscope itself had a tendril that identified [Magic]. I couldn't see the Infoscope at all with my human eyes when I looked at it, so it was safe to assume that it was completely invisible to the other villagers as well.

When evenings fell I saw purple stars in the sky above. They were totally different from my earth! Also, a truly gargantuan moon or a planet loomed in the evening sky, sparkling with brilliant rings of twinkling lights. I had no idea if they were natural or man-made.

During the day I counted people. The village of Skyisle had approximately 1500 people living in it. Learning each of their faces and names was a slow process of identifying them, returning to my tummy-shaped home base, waiting until my Mana recharged then peering out some more.

I suppose, existence in my mom’s belly was akin to living in an aircraft carrier, since wherever she went I did too, often emerging in various places of interest. Her job as Agromancer demanded her to travel a lot around various farms, aiding plant growth or killing persistent weeds or insects with a variety of magic.

Why did so many people require the aid of an Agromancer? Nearly everything in this world had levels and a magical affinity of some sort or another. Weeds had levels, consumable plants had levels, trees had levels! Mites, bugs and snails that ate the plants had levels. Basically, anything and everything alive had a level and it required persistent magical monitoring and spellwork to fend off the parasites that were higher level than the useful plants. The valley gardens were an unending battle between Green mages like my mom and a variety of sneaky, adaptive or tough to kill magical pests.

I watched my mom’s work as she valiantly weaved a LV 20 circle of destruction against LV 1-15 Woodsnails. She chanted something that I couldn't hear, then grinned maniacally and clasped her hands together and her magic circle ignited with a green burst, expanding outwards and vaporizing a thousand tiny snails all at once. It was adorably epic gardening.

The magic circle she cast was rather basic - there was no deep fractal complexity to it, no extra layers, no tendrils and no moving parts within it. It contained 1420 [Green] mana in terms of energy and didn't exist for a very long time, detonating and releasing a potent wave of magical disruption that targeted the wooden bugs and exhausted itself after approximately five meters radius. It was made from exactly two words that had used only one level of Omnicode, simplified down to two base words: [Destruction] and [Woodsnail]. Basically, it was nothing like my Infoscope.

After I watched mom cast her spell again and again, I arrived at a mind boggling and disheartening conclusion - people of Skyisle simply didn’t use complex, refined spells like me and wasted absurd amounts of mana as if they were swimming in it! The amount of mana being wasted by her was irritating me to no end. If I could talk to her I would absolutely nag her about her bewilderingly basic spellwork composition. I couldn't wait to be born so I could shame her performance!

Magic was a hundred times cheaper when used with precise fractal math. It was like she was hammering nails with a microscope! This place needed a magical revolution yesterday!

My grand plans for the magical Renaissance had to wait. There was more to learn here. Maybe mom did inefficient spellwork on purpose? Some people were lazy like that. I continued my observations.

A grand total of 189 homes were spread out along the mossy hills of Skyisle Valley with an average of 8 humans per residence. People had big families in Skyisle as bigger families meant more help around the house with all sorts of skills. All of the spells cast by villagers were as wasteful as ones used by mom. I confirmed it by observing:

An old man lighting a pipe on his porch with a magic circle.

A lady hanging laundry out to dry with spellwork.

A teenager collecting apples from an apple tree with a spell.

The more I witnessed, the more excited I became. Magic was all around and people were using it wrong! Could I aid people here by teaching them Omnicode? It was possible as long as I could convince them to invest more points into Intelligence… Was this the problem here? Even if people spread out their points evenly investing in all 10 options equally they would need only 2000 Investiture points to reach where I was at now.

Hang on...

Everyone I identified so far in Skyisle was level 20 or below. Did everyone here get stuck at Level 20?!

I did the math with the Infoscope as my calculator. Reaching level 20 provided… 1050 Investiture points unless the numbers changed. I mentally drooled at the prospect of having 1000 Intelligence and resumed my research of the village.

I found it interesting that houses didn’t congregate close to each other - there was ample space between homes and this space was dotted with runestones.

People must have been aware of some aspect of my modified Identify spell, because there were runes above windows and doorways and within the red keystones in the house corners. They annoyingly zapped and drained all of the mana from the Infoscope, collapsing my construct whenever I tried to peer inside of any building. I guessed that people valued their privacy.

I was quite certain that they weren’t afraid of an unborn child with a magical periscope - the runes simply destroyed anything that tried to obtain information. It was a reasonable thing to have, but was quite inconvenient for me. Whenever mom was inside our family's house I couldn't even peer out of her!

Staying inside mom kept me safe, but as soon as I went out of her skin inside any house - my Infoscope fell apart. Damn clever runes! I couldn't even identify them, because any time I tried to do so, my spell simply collapsed. Even though my Infoscope was very specialised, it was still quite pathetic in terms of defense. In terms of mana differential it was basically a baby that was trying to fight the sun.

My daily observations had also revealed to me how the village was powered! The enormous windmills around town had a purpose. I couldn't see what was happening inside them, due to the anti-spying runes, but I was able to figure out what they did regardless. The windmills around the village converted the power of the wind to mana! Mana, which charged a variety of artifacts. The windmills were basically power stations of the village - people brought their tools, lamps, mobile heaters, weapons, etc to the windmills, placing them onto rune-covered stone tabletops to have them recharged.

Every morning “Runner” boys and girls grabbed small spherical runestones from the windmills and carried them all around town in mesh nets, inserting them one by one into the compartment within the giant runestones. The kids also removed the depleted runestone “batteries” and brought them back to the charging stations. It was fun to see them running around, carrying huge sacks filled with glowing, round stones.

The villagers had weapons too, some of them mundane and others featuring runes. They were quite medieval looking - crossbows for murdering far away things; knives, swords and rapiers for murdering things closer to themselves. Nearly everyone wore a pointy, stabbing implement on their belt and some carried crossbows on their backs. My mom carried a steel knife for protection. The runestones kept most beasties away from the village, but there were high level monstrosities out there in the forest that didn’t get deterred or stopped by runework.

I briefly saw a few of them roaming in the forest. Absurdly tall, elk-like things with shimmering red eyes, red mosses and grasses covering their antlers. As soon as mom spotted the herd, she retreated deeper into the ward, so I didn't get to see more detail. The Infoscope labelled them as [Blood-Elk LV 20].

Sadly, I couldn't figure out how the “battery” runestones or the magic weapons worked. Apparently whoever designed them had included a “no-spy” rune on them so that the design couldn't simply be copied by me. I thought that I had escaped copyright laws by being reborn in a medieval, magical world, but no. I knew that runes existed, but had no idea how they worked or what they even looked like, since most of the runework was hidden deep inside of the artifact-tools.

Since I didn’t need sleep, I spent the nights working on a design of a spell matrix that would allow me to attach my soul to the Infoscope. It was based on the magic tether I had made for the Infoscope and the heavily modified version of the [Transient Soul] skill. The damned copyright runes were a big, dangerous threat that loomed in my future if I went ahead with this plan. I had 14 weeks until my birth. If I fully attached my soul to the Infoscope, I’d be doomed to live within mom forever or fear being torn apart by the anti-spying runes, unable to come inside any of the houses. It was not a happy prospect and I had no solutions to this problem.

Why won’t you just leave me alone, runes? I just want to learn things without being killed! I’m not a spy in my own home, damn it!