I don't know when I passed out.

Through-out the evening, and at night, I'm sure I trained relentlessly.

The Storage was something like a basement seperated from the house, submerged into the ground, with a clear and obvious purpose.

It was large enough that I could do various excercises without being hindered. So used it to the max.

When my Energy began to run low, I tried eating more food, but it only gave me temporary buffs that offered energy for a short while. And I tried not to stuff myself either.

Ultimately, when I woke up the next day, I was quite sore.

I got carried away like an idiot.

After sorting my thoughts out, I forced myself to get ready for my trip.

But I wouldn't leave immediately after.

I had two weeks before my birthday. At that time, my "Child" debuff will weaken from 90% deduction, to 80%. As a result, my stats will double, and it'll be twice as hard to abuse this bug.

So I used my time grinding stats.

Now that I didn't have a fixed schedule that I had to return home at, I could dedicate more of my time to training.

Once my Strength reached 150, it stopped raising, because I had nothing else to train it with. 15 Strength seems to be the strength where you'd have no trouble doing just about anything in your every-day life. Lifting food repeatedly only got the stat up to 153 after a few hours, so I put that aside.

Dexterity also grew stagnant at 112, as I didn't have anything special to train it with, outside of my low-level bow and dagger. Mother's bow was too big for me to use properly, and hardly gave any points at all after a while, because of that.

Vitality and Agility were different though, as neither were dependant on the environment or a tool for me to raise; merely dedication was required.

Agility was raised easily passed 200, all the way to 241

Vitality I only got up to 135 though.

Even though Vitality doesn't have a limiter like Agility, it's still painful to raise after all.

When it comes to skills, I managed to raise Archery up by 3 levels, up to Beginner Level 20. Even if Elves are apparently great archers, I seem to be a slow learner with bows.

Alternatively, I leveled up Dagger mastery up to 21, while trying to train Dexterity and Agility, and Unarmed Mastery also made it to Intermediate Level 2.

Meanwhile, I've tried experimenting with magic a lot, whenever my Energy is low.

There are two things I've tried, when it comes to Wind magic.

First, I tried cutting with Wind. After all, there are a lot of fictions I'm familiar with, where someone can cut using Wind like some sort of blade.

And... it's actually possible. However, rather than just trying to use a thin strip of Wind, I need to use quite a bit of Aether to grind wind together for sharpness, in order to cut something. It's like trying to sharpen a sword moments before trying to cut someone with that sword.

Simply put, I don't have the precision to instantly create a blade of wind.

Even so, my "sharpened" wind blades are only strong enough to cut through leaves, and leave a mark on someone's skin.

As if to add insult to injury, I unlocked an ironic title:

Wind BladesmanSo long as the enemy's blood can be shed, even the flowing wind can be used like a blade. Few have taken this path, and even fewer have mastered it. But those who do, reach a level of carnage unobtainable by a mere sword.

Not even a bonus or anything. It's almost as if the title is mocking me for trying something that's almost bound to be useless—statistically speaking.

My wind just doesn't carry enough forward force to be able to cut anything more than skin, and the fact that I lack precision means that I need an extra step in order to actually attack.

Still—

The second experiment I tried with Wind magic had a much better result.

I obtained "Sound" Affinity.

It's just as the name suggests, with it I can produce and manipulate sound.

But mother didn't mention having it—yet she could produce a sound barrier, right? No, if I had to guess, she created a wind barrier that just happened to block sound as a consequence.

People in this world probably already know that Sound is carried through the wind, but they likely don't know how it works—vibrations in the air that our ears interpret as information.

I had tried to fluctuate the wind in a way that would produce specific sounds, but I never expected that it would turn into an Affinity all on its own. Once it did, producing and controling sounds became much easier, to the point that modifying my voice was possible with a bit of tweaking.

I'm trying to come up with some combat applications to it, but—it's really hard to make the sound only travel in one direction.

I'm aware that sound can be a dangerous weapon, but it'll be pointless if I can't aim my sound waves.

Thus, all I can do is produce noise, cancle nearby sound, or alter the frequency of nearby sound.

Producing noise is difficult; it's either all the same frequency, or random gibberish, and it goes out in all directions. I can determine a point of origin, and a volume, but I don't think I'll be able to use this sort of magic for attacking, in a while.

I've considered using a multi-layered spell, but adding multiple layers and instructions to different parts of my magic is still above me. I can do it, but only to some extent, and I'm not very good at it.

I decided to experiment during my trip.

In these few weeks, I leveled up a few times, reaching level 7. (Actually, two of those levels were from the last few months before my mother left)

And at my "birth-minute", I received my notification.

You are now 5 years old!

And when I checked my stats, everything had changed accordingly.

Aishean SendallRaceElf / HumanGenderMaleAffinityWind, SoundTitlesSon of Aseal

Son of Kradeal

Aien’s Gift

Wind Bladesman

Level7 (21%)Health: 203 / 203Aether: 3600/3600Energy: 45%Satiety: 94%

StatsPoints30Vitality135 (27)Intelligence240Strength153 (31)Wisdom94Agility241 (48)Dexterity112

Once it was time to leave, I grabbed a cloak my mother had used when she needed to enter the town, and then I cut it short. It was a simple cloak without any real benefits, so I didn't feel bad about adjusting it to my size. Luckily I had mother teach me sewing before, and my Tailoring Skill had reached Beginner Level 5. When it was done, I think it looked fine, but I could easily tell it was worse off than before.

Then, I used an iron dagger, and cut away my excess hair. Ever since I was born, I have not cut my hair even once. Now that I was heading towards human population, I needed to hide my identity as a half-elf, so my shoulder-length silver hair had to go.

I kept enough so that I could hide it under the cloak's hood, at most.

I considered cutting my ears short, but... Painful things are painful.

I could only manage to make a small cut before changing my mind.

Once that was settled, I immediately headed off.

My trip was quite uneventful.

As my mother said, there weren't any monsters along the way, and even the wild animals were limited mostly to just foxes and other small critters.

I had a safe trip, but it took a week to finally arrive at the town.

I would walk all day, and eat only in the morning and at night, using the food that was left at the storage.

I had the brilliant idea of taking all the food, so that may have slowed me down. It was quite heavy, but luckily my Strength and Vitality went up 6 points each in that time.

The whole time I kept my hood over my head in case I ran into humans, but I never did—not until I made it to the main roads anyways.

At that point, I avoided the few travelers I would have ran into, and managed to level up my Hiding skill to 21.

I didn't want to get involved with people at the moment, as it seemed troublesome.

What would I do once I was in town, anyways?

I asked myself that several times, but I couldn't come to a conclusion.

Mother mentioned taking me to the Beastkin kingdoms, but they're much too far for me. Maybe if I traveled with a caravan I'd be set, but as things stand, I couldn't make it. I would likely have to pay a fee, and it probably wasn't cheap.

The current region mostly had human Kingdoms, and 3 great Elven Kingdoms. If I wanted to meet up with the Beastkin, I'd have to travel far south, through various terrain, and even cross a mountain range.

Basically, I was stuck here—between two races that dislike me—unless I could find a way south.

It seems my mother was reluctant to take me herself, because then she would lose contact with father, but now it's too late for that.

What a troublesome situation I've been born into.

Still, I used my time trying to perfect Sound magic. Mother taught me how to use Wind Magic, so the basics on how to move it and how to command it were known to me.

But Sound magic was a whole different breed of magic I never even heard of, so I was working from scratch.

I managed to get my Sound magic "combat ready," by creating a canon of "sound nullification", and producing a high-volume wave within it. But it costed a massive amount of Aether for the result.

I could destroy a tree at the cost of half my Aether. Producing a loud sound cost a lot, and creating a "canon" strong enough to nullify the sound cost just as much, if not more.

But without the canon, I would have killed myself, or at least seriously wounded myself.

After learning I could do that much, I put a mental "Seal" on Sound magic for a while, and decided to focus on my Wind Magic for a while.

And finally, after several long days, I made it to Renant.

My first day in Renant took an interesting turn.

I expected guards at the entrance to the town, but there weren't any.

Of course not, the guards we off being payed by taxes to protect the rich.

Security was poor, crime was high, so on and so forth.

Well, no. Security wasn't that poor, but the town looked like shit, and the guards were in the pockets of the few rich people. (The difference between the "rich" and "poor" was massive in this town)

There were guards throughout the city, but I also saw plenty of pick-pockets, and children doing rather questionable things.

The moment I stepped into town, I equiped my dagger at my side, and tucked my pouch into my boot. I then began watching my surroundings with Aether Perception. At the moment I could only see a little under a meter and a half, but it was enough to watch out for thieves.

Of course, I was a small child, so it didn't seem like I had any valuables.

I was actually surprised no one bothered to ask where I came from though. It seems the mindset these people have is to avoid troublesome things, like abandoned children—or rather than that, it seems that there are a lot of abandoned children going around this area.

What could I do?

Go up to some random person, and try to get them to adopt me?

Hah, no.

They would instantly find out I'm an elf, and probably kill me or enslave me. At least I thought so.

I later learned that slavery was actually a thing in this world, but it was a privilege reserved for people with money and the luxury to do so.

It's possible some of the people I saw were slaves, but it's also likely that I was in an area where there isn't enough money to even buy slaves.

After all, such things are a luxury, and I don't see much luxury in a run-down town like this one.

Who would send a 5 year-old here?

Well no, mother didn't want to send me here, and I insisted, but...

Well, I ended up following a small gang of kids, who I noticed had pick-pocketed some people.

I followed them all the way to the slums, and to their "hide out", which was just a small hut, loosely put together.

But I didn't follow them inside, and decided to spy on them a bit, while also observing the surroundings.

They weren't a gang in the same sense as a street gang—they were a group of kids who all stayed out in the same house, probably orphans.

Nearly all of the kids I followed were older than me, but there were a couple about my age already inside the hut. They were probably related to the other kids somehow.

Starving children, stealing money to feed themselves and their siblings—my inner-altruist really wanted to help these brats out, you know?

I had money and food on me, so sharing wouldn't be that difficult. But then what do I do afterwards?

The food I had on me wouldn't last forever anyways, but I couldn't bind myself to this place.

So I decided to "donate" some food to them.

Author Notes:

I actually finished it yesterday. I mentioned before I had up to Chapter 5 written, but after posting Chapter 1, I started rewriting the chapters I already wrote. Chapter 2 had only a third rewritten, but Chapter 3 nearly the whole thing was scrapped, and only a forth was left.

This chapter mostly just needed a lot of reorganizing of information, and filling in some extra. When I got to this chapter, I decided to change the course for the story, so even the small changes meant that Chapter 5 was completely scrapped too (though I have most of the rewrite already written.)

However, this chapter has pretty much just become narration of what's happened during a time-skip. Inner monologues and narration is just easy for me, I guess.

Anyways, as usual, feedback and such are welcome.

If you notice any errors or inconsistencies, please point them out.