At the same time as Vanya chided Elva, Allyce finally recovered from her shock over the ridiculous display that her son had just put on. Walking up to check him over she asked “Are you alright?”

Endrian smiled at the superfluous question and responded “Of course.”

“When did you learn to do all of that?” she asked.

“I practice my…” pausing with a somewhat sour look on his face, “dance, everyday and I have been working on my acrobatic movements.” Endrian responded while thinking ‘It’s not like I have anything to distract me. No books, TV, internet, cell phones, or even school, and without having to follow mother around I have nothing but free time.’ It also helped that Endrian had discovered he had perfect recall of all of his past life’s memories and experiences.

“Honestly, I am amazed at your ability.” his mom praised him.

“So does this mean you will start teaching me body strengthening now?” Endrian asked with a hopeful expression.

“No. I’m sorry Endrian, but like I’ve told you before you will have to wait till you are at least seven winters old. However, I will start training you in the use of the swords.” Holding up a hand to keep Endrian calm. “Only the basic stances or forms. We’ll see where it goes from their.”

Trying to suppress the excited grin on his face he quickly asked “Can we start now?”

Chuckling a little his mom flicked his forehead with her finger and said “No, I have some supplies to purchase before we can start.” Allyce was actually rather pleased, as this was the first time she felt like her son was truly acting his age.

Even though Endrian understood the severity of learning fighting skills, and had forty plus years to temper himself in his previous life where he had owned and used guns on a regular basis. It could not stop the child in him from coming out. There was just something about using swords to fight and not play around that made him feel like a five year old kid, which ironically he was.

Realizing that he probably wasn’t going to start training today he was able to bring his emotions under control. Once his emotions were stabilized he decided to go back to his routine. However, now that the competitive high and the excitement about starting sword practice had gone, Endrian started thinking about his run just now. In retrospect he realized that what he just did was, from a physics standpoint, impossible. He understood intellectually that physics should dictate that he fall on his face with the first transition of that wall run. Even though he knows that now, at the time he had the distinct impression that it would be easy. The more he thought about it the more confused he became. ‘While I don’t know what the measurement of gravity is on this planet, I am pretty sure that gravity is higher here at least based on the storms.’ He would never forget the first hail storm he saw. There was hail as large as a volkswagon bug smashing against the village shield.

‘I also don’t know my weight or the amount of friction that can be generated by the walls and my feet. That being the case I have no way to validate it was possible or impossible. Still just based on the physics from home I would probably have to be traveling at close to 50km/h and not lose any momentum during the transition.’ These were some of the thoughts going through Endrian’s head as he was trying to puzzle this problem out. Realizing that it was futile to even try and ponder, Endrian gave up to pursue something more productive. Like possibly running the course again to see if he could duplicate it.

At the same time as Endrian is puzzling over physics failing. His parents and the other mothers were having a rather quiet but heated discussion in Davian’s office.

“Do you think this is something we should be worried about?” Davian asked to his wives.

“While I’m not one hundred percent sure that little Ender used mana or some form of body strengthening. I am sure that there is a high probability he used it though I would wager it wasn’t done consciously.” Vanya said. “I am sure that I felt mana moving in his direction but I was more focused on Elva at the time. When I did pay attention I only felt a slight movement when he crossed the split level barrier.”

Allyce chimed in at this time. “I am sure that mana moved for him during the wall climb and then again at the split level barrier. I have been watching him and I am pretty sure he has been trying to feel mana. Every time before he goes to bed he will sit on his bedroll close his eyes and steady his breathing. Almost like he is sleeping, after some time he will open his eyes with a frustrated look and then go to sleep. I swear he is more curious than a baby kitten.”

“Why haven’t you told us this before!” Ratrece exclaimed. She had short steel colored hair with yellow eyes. The sides of her hair had tight braids in them to keep them off her ears and out of the way in a fight. Her light mocha colored skin gave a strong contrast with her eyes and hair. She was also slightly larger than Vanya but tended to be more rash. That was why she was the second wife.

“I felt there was no need. I was never able to detect any movement of the mana around him and everyone knows that you can’t be conscious of it until your awakening.” Allyce responded to Ratrece.

“So the question is what are we going to do about it?” Shyael asked interrupting Ratrece before she could get worked up.

“For now let’s distract him. No more competitions with the girls until after awakening.” Davian said.

“If I know Endrian, he would not be easily persuaded to stop competing. So, in order to distract him like you said, I have told him that I will start teaching him my sword forms. Though it will be without mana just the proper positions and seeing how they work with his body. To do that I have to go out and make some purchases for training swords. Also some leathers for padding.” Allyce stated before looking at Davian and Vanya.

With a sigh Vanya said “Even though Endrian is just a boy I am sure that he will be able to find a good pride of women that would be able to help raise our families position, at least based on his current accomplishments. I’m beginning to think that sending him to school would be a good idea. He could meet a noble pride of girls and that would help bond them to our family. However, he will need to stay alive until then and for that to happen we need to make sure he doesn’t awaken before it is time.”

When Vanya said this it caused a complicated expression to cross Davian’s face. Shaking his head to get rid of the bad memories of noble daughters, he said “Will that keep him occupied for the next two winters to his seventh birthday?”

Shaking her head Allyce replied “Probably not. Based on how he has progressed and what I have seen of his growth he will have mastered the basic sword forms and stances within one winter, six lunar conjunction cycles at the earliest.”

“Then buy a practice spear as well and I will teach him my spear art basic form and stances.” Davian stated. “Based on our current funds and the orders we have we can afford this. However, if Endrian is going to go to school we are not making enough. We will need to increase our forays into the forest to secure more materials for our bow production. If we can produce 10 bows each lunar conjunction we should be able to save up enough to safely move to Ampleforth.”

Shyael looked at Davian in surprise and then asked “Are you okay with going back to your hometown?”

Waving his hand like there was a bad smell in the air he said “Let’s not talk about that for now. I’ll deal with it when the time comes.”

“Since we have decided what must be done, I will be going out to get the needed supplies. Davian if he’s going to go to school you might as well start him on letters and numbers so he’s not too far behind the other children at school. Plus that will keep him out of trouble while I’m gone.” Allyce said.

Davian nodded his head and moved towards the inner court yard. Allyce headed out to do her shopping and the other mothers headed to their respective areas to continue training their daughters or working. When Davian arrived at the courtyard a number of the girls were running the course or at least attempting to. He watched them as they tried to duplicate the wall running feat with some success. He noticed Endrian watching them intently as well and figure it would be best to distract him quickly before he asked too many questions or worse.

“Endrian come over here,” he said.

Endrian turned his head when he heard his father’s call and then quickly moved to Davian’s side. After Endrian arrived Davian continued “Go clean yourself up and change your clothes. Your mom should have made you a set of clothes for special occasions, yes?” Seeing Endrian nod in agreement he said “Put those on and meet me in my office.”

A worried look appeared briefly on Endrian’s face as he thought ‘Am I in trouble. Is it bad for a boy to beat a girl here?’ These thoughts and similar ones ran through his head before asking “Am I in trouble?”

Shaking his head no, Endrian’s father said “No you’re not in trouble but since you are thinking about going to school we thought it would be a good time for you to start learning your letters and numbers.”

“Seriously!” he exclaimed and then without waiting for a response he took off at his highest speed towards his room to clean up and change.

After cleaning the dirt and getting rid of the sweaty smell from his body he changed and quickly returned to his dad’s office. Knocking politely on the frame of the doorway he waited until he was told to come in before pushing open the wooden door. It was the only wooden door in the entire house other than the front door going outside. While this one didn’t have a latch and pulley like the front door there is a small bar latch on the inside.

When Endrian walked in he looked around as this was the only room in the entire house he hadn’t been to. He could see a few books kept up high. This made Endrian both excited and frustrated. ‘Five years of wasted time. Let them play, give them chores, but heaven forbid you give the freaking knowledge that will help them!’ He couldn’t help making this exclamation in his head and his heart.

Davian took out a stone tablet and was etching some symbols on them. “This is a list of the letters in our language.” He explained. “This is called an alphabet. I will say the sounds that each letter makes and then I want you to memorize them and repeat them until you have the sound memorized and then you can try without the tablets.” He handed over the tablets to Endrian and then pointed to each character and made the sound associated with it then waited for Endrian to repeat the sound, helped make corrections and then moved on.

As Davian was getting ready to get up so that he could go back to work Endrian stopped him by saying “Dad I’ve got it memorized now.” Surprised and thinking that Endrian was trying to show off he took the tablets and pointed to random characters on them. When Endrian properly said the characters he was some what flabbergasted. What Endrian did next completely blew his mind though. Endrian proceeded to point to letters and spelled out words that he knew based on the sounds alone.

While Davian was thrown for a loop, Endrian was thinking ‘This is so unfair in so many ways. The letters look like a cross between latin and greek but they aren’t hard to figure out and the language is phonetic which makes things much simpler. On top of that I have an eidetic memory.’

Davian turned around and grabbed a book off of one of the shelves and placed it in front of Endrian. After opening it to a random page he pointed to a sentence and asked Endrian to read it out loud. Endrian looked over the sentence and spent some time sounding out the words but after a few tries he was able to say each word. Davian’s mind was going crazy and the overall thought was ‘My son is an absolute prodigy. He just learned to read in less than a day.’

“Dad do we have, or is there a book that explains what words mean? Because I may be able to sound the words out and say them but that doesn’t mean I understand what I am saying. Though some things I can probably guess what they mean by the words around it.” Endrian said.

Davian absentmindedly looked at his son while thinking about his request. “No we don’t have anything like that. There may be something like that in the royal libraries or the bigger schools, but not here.”

“Well I’ll just have to trouble someone to answer and questions I have then.” Endrian stated. “Can you please show me numbers now?”

Davian took one of the tablets, somewhat numbly, and cleared the letters on it replacing them with a list of numbers. There were 12 characters on the tablet. Davian explained the sound of each character and the number that it represented. The numbers were similar to the roman numeral system. On the table were the number 0 through 10. Davian again corrected Endrian on some slight mispronunciations then watched him with somewhat expectant eyes. Endrian didn’t disappoint him either, after a short pause he asked “So if I add 2 + 3 will I get 5?” After receiving a stunned nod of confirmation from his dad he asked “What comes after 10?”

In a very short period of time Davian covered the notation used for the different numbers all the way up to 1000. After everything was covered Endrian was feeling very confident in his math skills. As the number base was a decimal based system from all appearances then all his math knowledge from his previous world would easily apply.

After learning this world’s notation for math Endrian picked up the book that his dad had asked him to read from and opened it to the beginning. He started reading leaving his father in a shell shocked state. The book turned out to be about the wildlife and the flora and fauna in the nearby area. It also described different monsters and their tier of cultivation. Any words that he didn’t know the meaning of, which at this point were a lot, he asked his dad to clarify.

When Allyce finally returned she found Davian and Endrian sitting in Davian’s office. Endrian was reading a book while Davian was staring off into space. Every now and then Endrian would ask a question without looking up and Davian would answer with a lifeless voice while he continued to stare off into space.

Allyce was shocked speechless. She walked over to her husband and gently asked if he was okay. He turned and looked at her with lifeless eyes. Then when he realized it was someone other than Endrian asking a question he grabbed her and hugged her closely mumbling “He’s learned everything. My hard work… why are the heavens so unfair?” Allyce was blown away again but realized that she needed to help her husband recover and having Endrian in here asking him questions would not help.

“Endrian, finish up and put the book on the table. Then go change into your workout clothes we will start your training for with remaining light.” After she had given him instructions and received his acknowledgement she then proceeded to comfort her husband so that he could get back to doing the tasks he needed to do.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Over the course of the next two years Endrian trained in the different forms for single sword, dual swords, sword and dagger and spear. That coupled with his usual routines and his new chores. Which included helping his dad with the receipts and ledgers and balancing their budget. This had shocked the other women to no end but after the initial shock wore off everyone was pleased. Endrian was happy because he was able to read and get a better feel for this world. He was also able to verify that math is math no matter the notation. This was a personal desire of his that he thought he would never be able to verify. He had understood it intellectually but to see it in action was very satisfying.

He learned about the family business of making bows. Learned that the majority of his sisters actually helped with the construction or the securing of material. Getting materials consisted of forays into the forest to find special timber or to kill specific beasts that could be used to make the bowstring. He had also made a recommendation on the bow construction to Shyael, who was in charge of the bow construction, which was to recurve the ends of the bow. After a little testing they found that this added a lot of power to each shot. However it was less forgiving to those that were learning to shoot. For the experienced hunter this was a huge draw and it created a new line of products for our family to sell. Endrian made a note to himself that he should see about building a composite bow. This would be even better for the hunters.

Everything moved along at a decent pace. There was no rush but the days were full. At last it was coming close to the fated time when he turned seven years old. He still had anywhere from three to six months, or lunar conjunctions, left before he would be seven but since he was so close Allyce decided it was best to inform him of what was to come and explain why all the secrecy. So one night she sat down with Endrian to talk.

“Son I want to apologize for keeping these secrets from you for so long. From past experience children are usually not so inquisitive about doing things so it has not been much of an issue. This makes you very special, but it was also frustrating, I know. However, the reason we keep these things a secret is because in the past long before some children tried to awaken early, or some became very scared because they witnessed something they weren’t ready for. This caused them to draw more mana than their body could handle and they were crippled or in the worst but more common cases they died. At one point it was so bad roughly 3 out for ten children died or were crippled. So we have been watching you and trying to keep you from awakening early for your own safety.” Allyce said all of this in a rush like she was in a hurry for him to understand and to get the weight of this deception of her soul.

Endrian sat there for a few moments digesting the information that his mother had given him. After thinking things through he asked “Is this why you wouldn’t teach me body strengthening?”

“Partially. To be able to practice body strengthening cultivation you have to be able to sense the mana around you. This is not possible until you awaken.” she replied to his question.

“You could have just told me that I couldn’t sense mana until I awakened and I wouldn’t awaken until I was seven.” He said with some frustration. Thinking about the years of time he spent in meditation and breathing techniques to try and feel mana around him. He had begun to think he was incapable of every controlling mana or whatever power was out there.

“For you, maybe. But it was not a risk we were willing to take. You might be male but you are still our family and we will not risk your life on maybes,” she said as she leaned in and gave him a hug.

“Okay, next question; Once I start cultivating can I change whenever I want?” he asked.

“While you are in the first two realms of Gathering and Condensing you will be able to change your cultivation methods. Once you’ve reached the Earth level whatever cultivation method you used to transition from the Condensing stage to the Earth stage will be you cultivation path from that point on unless you destroy your cultivation completely and start over from Gathering again.” She stated this but gave him a strange look as this was not something a child would normally ask about. Then again what has Endrian ever done that would be considered normal for a child.

“Is that everything that I need to know?” Endrian asked somewhat frustrated still. ‘Almost seven years of frustration answered in less than a minute of conversation.’

“No there are two more things. First, when your awakening starts it will not be pleasant. It will feel like you have been kicked in your stomach, and it will only get worse from there. When you feel this you must let us know immediately. There is a ritual circle that will reduce the amount of pain that you feel while awakening, even then it will be harrowing.” Endrian’s mom said while take a bundle and passing it to him. “You must also be naked when the awakening. What I have given you is the robe you will wear for this. It is the only garment of clothing you are allowed.”

Many thoughts went through his head about why he would have to be naked but nothing really came to mind other than some sadistic deity somewhere getting his jollies of child porn in pain. So he asked the only thing he could come up with “Why?”

“What I am about to show you is the other reason why we are so secretive about this. Remember that I am still me and that there is nothing to fear.” she said to him. He aso noticed that she was wearing a robe he assumed similar to what he was given. Taking a deep breath she looked at him and locked her eyes on his. Then she started to change.