《Death's Embrace》Chapter 8: The Gamer?
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Xavior sighed in annoyance. He repeatedly told his mother that he did not need to go to kindergarten. For Odin’ sake it was kindergarten. Now Xavior may have been a dropout in high school but that was only in his senior year, and even then to be fair he only dropped out when he became boss of his small gang. When he was actually in school, he was in the green. ‘I mean I wasn’t a genius but still.’
These kids didn’t even understand how to brush their teeth correctly but his own mother expected him to not only to go there but to make friends with these brats? Needless to say, he was not happy at the moment. He could be at home doing so many other things, especially because he needed more progress in his training. It’s been 5 years since then, and yet he could still barely use his healing powers at all! After his little stunt back as a infant, his mother and father were shocked into a stupor. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much prejudice against Death magic like he expected and his father was truly ecstatic about the development. The moment he woke up, his father wouldn’t put him down, bragging to the world that his son was a prodigy.
It was really embarrassing for him throughout all of it but he felt happy that his father was so proud. Mother did the same thing, but subtly. Waiting for just the right moments to bring it up in conversation without feeling forced and acting as if it was completely natural. Xavior didn’t mind it much, it was refreshing to see his parent immaturity and youngevity. Both of them died of old age in his past life and in their last moments they were just like Xaviors.
So very tired of the pains of old bones. Their energy gone with their young age and bodies. Because of this, nothing made him happier than seeing the happiness and excitement of his parents. He missed it dearly. Even after they found out about his intelligence, he made sure to still act like a child in certain moments.
The joy of raising a child should not be stolen from them just because it was embarrassing for him personally. After fainting from using his healing power, him and his parents sat down to clear some things up for him. Apparently, he fainted from mana exhaustion. The reason he didn’t feel any strain from using his Death magic at the time was because the magic is famous for being very mana conservative. At the cost of this though, it’s harder to train.
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The magic is slow and hard to control successfully and any sort of progress besides making things wither will be a challenge. Now, while being able to kill things easily is amazing, it’s not so simple. Death magic is just too dangerous and there’s not many people who are willing to train a child in its use. Healing however had a different problem. While easy to use, the problem stems from how much mana it burns through.
WIth the exact opposite problem of his Death magic, his Healing magic is just to mana exhausting to be feasible in battle, even after 5 years of training it. Well, trying to train it anyway. Everytime he used the magic, for years, he would immediately faint if he was trying to heal anything bigger than a fingernail. While better now, the extent of his capabilities are healing paper cuts and needing a long nap afterwards. The only way for him to raise his mana pool was to actually work his mana like a muscle.
The more he used it, the more he had. If there’s one good thing that came from having such a mana draining skill was how much easier it was to raise he mana pool. Despite this, he had to make sure to be very careful, experiencing mana exhaustion to many time in succession can cause a person to become Mana Impaired. Just like a muscle, working it is good, but just the same overworking it can cause dastardly results. The only way Xavior has been able to train over these years was to somehow get him on the borderline of exhaustion without actually getting there.
There was no middle ground, his pool was just too small and healing was just too expensive. For most of the entire first year of training he had to poke himself with a tack to create a wound small enough to heal, secretly without his parents knowledge of course. His mother’s rage would not be light if she found out. Even then, he still got extremely tired afterwards. He sighed again once he was poked.
Looking next to him, he saw Elise smiling at him. He simply chuckled and smiled back before heading to one of the seats away from the other children. After the day Elise and him first met, she sort of just, followed him. Everywhere. At first he tried with futility to avoid her.
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Even though his body was of a child's, he was an bitter old man he did not sign up for being another person’s babysitter. He liked how adorable children were at times, that did not mean he liked children. She was persistent though and if he tried to run to much she would get angry and just make him float in front of her until he promised not to flee. Xavior was rather annoyed he still didn’t have a defense against that. She began to grow on him though, the child was bright and full of happiness. Eventually, he just gave up and took her everywhere he went.
As the day went by, he had to constantly refuse the caretaker of doing any sort of childish activities. He acted his age in front of his parents, but everyone else could go take their macaroni art and juice boxes and stick it where the sun didn’t shine. Although funnily enough he rather enjoyed juice boxes and the macaroni art was the only thing he actually did. He wanted to give it to his parents, give them something to remember him as a child. Elise was strangely content enough to simply sit next to me the entire day without complaint.
While the other kids were on the carpet listening to story time, Xavior focused on his other problem. The guy couldn’t use any other fucking magic. No matter how much he tried, he made no progress in doing anything other than killing and healing. And even those are more like powers more than anything. He just didn’t know what to do, or where to even really start.
Any organism are constantly doing two things at the same time, dying and healing. As an adult, around 50 millions cells die in only a day. Everyone and everything is constantly dying from birth. Around the same amount are being spawned in that very same day. At every moment, the body is healing itself.
Touching anything that’s alive lets him feel the Healing and Death within its body and use that as a tether to draw out his own magic that shares the type he’s observing. The problem with this method though is he doesn’t know what to do about using his sorcery domain. No matter how much he tries he’s not able to feel the mana in other peoples bodies. And because he can’t feel their mana, he can’t pull it out using this method. Thinking more on how to solve this problem, he was poked again.
“Yes, what do you need El?” he asks without opening his eyes. As he got closer to the child, he ended up giving her a nickname. Xavior couldn’t believe how happy she was after he called her it for the first time. She jumped in happiness and squealed for 5 minutes before grabbing his hand not letting go for that entire day. Waiting for a answer, the response he got wasn't what he was expecting.
“Hey hey, what does reincarnated mean?” a voice that did not belong to Elise responded. Xavior opened his eyes and surprise and almost fell back in his seat from how close this random child was to his face. He also did not, repeat did not yelp in surprise. If Elise told you otherwise, she’s a liar. Speaking of Elise, Xavior caught her openly giggling at the situation.
At the same situation, his eye couldn’t help but twitch a bit. “Kid, who are you and what in the world are you talking about.” he asked backing away. It was then he noticed something strange. The kid was african american like Xavior but with pure white dreadlocks that Xavior somehow knew wasn't dyed.
It looked good on him, having one alone lock hanging in front of his face, reminding him of Gohan SSJ2 form. He was dressed with a button up, jeans, and dress shoes. Definitely weird for a 5 year old in kindergarten with a wide smile. What surprised Xavior the most though were his eyes. They were purple and held a distinct level of intelligence.
Suddenly they flashed, and the pupil changed. He couldn't be mistaken, as a Gamer, he knew instantly. The boy’s pupil changed into the shape of a D-Pad. With a smirk that promised nothing but mischief, the boy spoke up once more.
“That’s what you are right...reincarnated?”
‘….how?’
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