“Now son, what I need you to do is try to breathe in the flow of the world…” said the father.

“What, dad? I don’t get it...” said the son.

“I...it’s like this. You breathe and you try to connect with the soul of Embla. Immerse yourself in its flow. Once you’re connected you can pull in raw essence….Once you’re pulling in raw essence it won’t be long till you’re pulling in aligned essence…” said the father.

“.....” the other son could only sigh.

*****

By the time Edwin was ten years old, his acclimation to the world of Embla was completed. It took a while.

The first hurdle was getting all his lives in order and sublimating them and the machine parts of him, so they lay beneath the new “Jotnar” persona that was supposed to be developing.

Without that he’d risk growing up with either mental instability or mental incapacity.

At first it was hard, but that was because he was too stupid, there was too much “mind” and not enough “brain” for the installation and formatting processes.

Fortunately, the Jotun race’s cerebral cortex was just evolved enough, with a large enough basic capacity, to host the nanite creation routines that were the basis of the growth of all nemesis machines.

From there it was just a simple transition that allowed him to put the final touches on his going from being ED-108 to being Edwin vis-Oddmund.

A process that was more or less identical to the normal learning and imprinting that your standard Jotnar infant goes through going up, if slightly more in depth and demanding.

He ate a lot and listened and looked at everything. Memorizing everything. While he’d decided that he’d remain mostly organic, the nanites in his bloodstream slowly replaced his neuronal tissues. Dramatically expanding his base intelligence and computational ability.

While it didn’t necessarily improve the caliber of his thoughts, it did, improve his abilities to think and run “programs”

The first program Edwin booted up was his [Learning] program a key feature that was installed in all of the Nemesis race’s exploration vessels.

It took all his pre-recorded knowledge and then using that as context, it took the data he’d collected as an infant to help Edwin rapidly expand his understanding of his new world.

He’d learn the language by three. Using [Scan] and [Appraisal] function he’d be studying culture and biology by six.

By the time the boy turned six he’d have a fairly comprehensive, though narrow, grasp of his world.

This understanding would be expanded through interviews with his parental units Jarek and Olivia who’d been Knights who fought and traversed through the world that lay beyond Otmar and the Emerald Steppes.

*****

The first thing that Edwin would learn would naturally be his own name. The second would be the name of his new race, the Jotnar or Jotunn.

Who according to local folklore and religious beliefs, were said to be descended from the fallen gods and titans who came to this world after being betrayed and defeated by their divine brothers in the cosmos.

Going by the observations he’d collected both the living and dead members of the species he’d managed to come across and [Scan], Jotnar were this universe’s variation on hominids.

A mostly humanoid species with larger than average frames. The average Jotun could expect to a minimum of 8 feet tall by the time they reached adulthood and some members of the species had been known to reach 10 to 12 feet.

There were even tales of a few members of the species reaching 20 or 30 feet in height but those tales had been uncorroborated by Edwin’s findings. And were currently left to either hearsay or speculation.

The morphology of the standard Jotunn largely matched the data Edwin had on file from his time being a human.

The only differences being, of course the difference in average height.

As well as a difference in the spectrum of pigmentation for hair, eyes and skin. Which ran along the full color spectrum with one’s color being tied to one’s region of birth and one’s main elemental alignment.

Edwin, for instance was a dark green, like that of an ever-green tree, similar to his father and his eldest brother. The rest of his family, in which the full Oddmund clan was included, came in myriad variations of green, from bright yellow greens to blue greens.

With the only exception being his sister Vanessa who was a pale blue.

The majority of the community was also green which made sense since the continent, Harta, was known for being rich in Earth essence or earth aligned energy.

However there were a fair amount of red, blues, purples, yellows and browns mixed in as well.

Which according to his parents responses when questioned about this was actually somewhat uncommon for small towns like Rus, and more characteristic of larger cities.

The variation of peoples being due to Otmar County’s tendency of serving as a receptacle for the persona-non-grata of the surrounding kingdoms.

The second most significant morphologic difference between humans and Jotnar would be their horns. With the average jotun having one or more horns grow in before they arrive at adulthood.

With the horn length varying from individual to individual.

Jotnar were big, with a tendency for physical broadness and a base strength that was 2 to 5 times that of your average human.

They also seemed to be 2.5 times more developed on an intellectual level, compared to the average human. With inborn neuronal development equivalent to that of some “next-level” humanoids and cyber-biological species he’d run into while traveling the cosmos as ED-108.

Though their brutal, matter of fact, semi-simplistic, culture would seem to deny this.

Speaking of their culture going by the Rus itself and his parent’s accountings of the world beyond, most of Embla seemed to be somewhere between the post-agricultural, mid-industrial stage.

The presence of magic has hastened the development of certain technologies and techniques but constant conflict and a predisposition towards factionalism and violence has made it so that the average Jotnar tends to die by the time they reach 50, though the species itself has been said to able to easily survive for up to 200 years, or longer if they are one of those individual with the talent to manipulate and “cultivate” their internal essence levels.

Similar to what he’d experienced and witnessed in various other worlds, cultivation seemed to be both a skill and a class distinction.

A demarcation line between the extraordinary elements of a population and everyone else.

*****

“Come on boys...I can almost feel it...I can feel your breathing effecting the breath of the world…” said the father.

“Just a little more then?” said the other son. The younger. Eager to be done with the exercise.

“Don’t be so hasty.” chided the elder son.

*****

Edwin learned more about how the Jotnar cultivated essence as he watched his father, Jarek, a former knight of the kingdom of Kishor, walk Edwin’s elder brothers, Egon and Wallace through it.

As he often did whenever he caught them long enough.

By Edwin’s understanding, a cultivator in the family could bring both power and status, as it added to the family’s fighting force and influence.

Which understandably held great importance in a land where monsters attacked daily, and conflicts between individuals could easily escalate to point familicide blood feuds if not wars.

Egon, the eldest was the more diligent son, trying harder to listen to his father’s words, but Wallace seemed to hold more talent or affinity for the gathering elemental essence. His few efforts garnering more results, but not enough to be called success.

As Edwin listened, eavesdropping as he always did, he tried to follow along, it seemed essence, was all that different from ki, and mana, and prana, and host of other anomalous energy forms that ED-108 had learned to harness over the years.

Which were as whole not that dissimilar to a fusion of both sub-atomic and quantum particles, in that they were highly energetic and were highly influenced by outside observation.

After quickly figuring out this new particles kinks, which was fairly simple because its similarities to ki and mana were frightfully strong, Edwin switched to the cycle methods he’d used when he was ship.

Feeling the energy flow into his body and then out of him, his eyes and horn-nub glowing as he took in essence.

First the energy went in, then it went out, the process as easy and nearly thoughtless as breathing.

Or so it seemed.

Just as Edwin was considering what he could do with this new energy source which seemed to be in great abundance in his new world, he had a hiccup, a literal hiccup, that lead to a figurative hiccup in his essence-cycling.

An orb of red light flew from his open mouth and landed somewhere in the distance releasing a rumble like thunder.

There were some screams and bleating from frightened livestock.

“..... Oh, Bugger. That’s no good.”

True to his little boy cover, Edwin did what any child would do, once they’d screw up while playing with powerful forces beyond their ken and ran off.

Fortunately the only casualty of this incident would be a couple of old goats, who were incinerated by the blast.

And the only witness would be poor Vanessa who’d happened to be watching the local children near the hill that Edwin was watching his brother’s from.

She’d never tell a soul of course, she’d grown used to her little brother’s eccentricities and grown tired of people rolling their eyes at her when she tried to tell them about her brother’s peculiarities.