AaronDragon here..... Yaaaaaay!!!! i'm back and now all i have to do is write a whole new chapter 5 for Nick and wait for everyone to catch up to where i am story-wise..... Ah, the old waiting game...... Fun abounds......

anyway here's some more of Nick........... Editing will happen sometime not now......

Enjoy!!!

Nick

It only took me a week to figure out some important things about myself and this new body. The first thing I learned is that I really don’t have total control over it yet, and mostly do things by instinct no matter how embarrassing those things may be. I figured that one out day one, hard not to when I just kinda use the bathroom without any warning or control and whenever I see a nipple I go in to suck on it for milk without conscious thought or control.

The second thing and most important thing I figured out about myself so far is that my mental power is a HUGE double edged sword. I can passively pick up emotions and especially strong thoughts without any real effort, intent, or desire, the only problem with that though is all that information is overwhelming my own mind and I can't seem to ignore it or overcome that negative affect to do anything else. Then there’s the fact that to actually read people’s minds in the sense that I wanted to, like my being able to know their inner thoughts, motivations, secrets, and whatnot, requires active effort and intent on my part. I found that out when I actually tried reading my mother’s mind my first day in this world, I could only get bits and pieces from her since I was so distracted with all the emotions I naturally pick up all the time now. Basically until I get used to the empathic feedback I’m constantly getting when I’m anywhere near people, my real mental manipulation and reading abilities are all but locked away to me.

And the third thing that I noticed is that my own mind is outside of my own reach, it’s like there is some huge impenetrable wall blocking me off from accessing it. I felt something somewhat similar from my mother’s mind, but that time the resistance was next to nothing so a barely even noticed it was there. After trying and failing to gain access to my own mind with my ability a few times when I was alone and not bogged down to much by the emotions of everyone nearby, I figured that the impenetrable wall was due to my ridiculously high mental resistance stat. The wall protecting my mind didn't keep me from thinking or anything I was used to doing with my mind before, but it did keep my mental probes out of my own head which kinda derailed my plan for perfect photographic memory.

The final thing I noticed, and also the thing that made me unbelievably happy any and every time I thought about it, was so very simplistic, I had real parents who loved me unconditionally. I knew that they were my parents from what little I was able to read from my mother’s mind, and I knew they actually loved me because whenever either of them was nearby I could feel their love for me bombard my mind almost overriding my ability to sense other emotions. I couldn't even begin to describe the feeling that being loved like that brought me, especially because I had never really had something like that before and here I was now literally feeling that love constantly whenever my parents were around. The closest thing I could compare the love they had for me to was how I felt about Sarah in my past life, but their love actually seemed even stronger than what I had felt then. I had decided that I would do my best to return that familial love they gave me, but I wasn't sure if I could give them that love unconditionally like they gave to me. I didn’t even think there was such a thing as unconditional love until I felt it practically explode through my mind repeatedly, how was I ever supposed to feel something that I didn't even believe was possible before just recently, let alone feel that way towards someone? So I resolved to just do my best, at the very least I had decided that I would return the happiness that the love they freely gave to me brought by being a good son to them.

I didn't just learn new things about myself though, during my first week in this world I also learned a bit about my surroundings although the fact I didn't really understand what anyone was saying yet kinda limited what I could learn. Still, I was always good at picking things up just by watching, after all Sarah was the one who helped me to hone practically all of my interpersonal observational skills and she was so good it creeped people out.

Firstly there were seven people in the house so far that I’ve seen and know of. There were of course my parents, then two fairly young maids, a butler, and two men in armor that followed dad around sometimes I guessed were guards. I was sure that there were more people in this house just from what I could hear and all the random emotions I picked up, but then again I really didn't know the range of my mental abilities yet and hearing wasn’t the most accurate sense for judging something like this. I had decided to just assume that this house was large since I had only seen the room I was born in and the room I’m staying in now, and based on the size of the room I currently shared with my parents, which was practically the size of an entire floor for the average house back on earth, it was probably fair to say the rest of the house was big too. Out of a mix of both boredom and a need to distract myself from all the emotions and feelings that I picked up, I took up people watching by my second day.

The first people I really saw besides my parents were the two women I assumed were maids, or at least this world's equivalent of maids, and they were both attractive women. One had a large chest that I knew from personal experience had plenty of milk, a kind face with soft subdued features, milky white skin, blue eyes, and short curly pink hair. The other was younger looking and didn't really seem to talk all that much, she had cute features with a small button-like nose and soft looking cheeks, long dark green hair and eyes, and a slim figure. They were both always in matching black dress like outfits with an off white apron in the front. I had no clue what these two women were called, but I do know that they were fairly fond of me and gave off no emotions that would lead me to distrusting them.

The man I believed was probably the butler I had only meet a few times while he was in the company of either mother or father. The man was older with his hair having more grey than brown, but he carried himself with a strength that seemed to refute his age. He had sharp defined features, well maintained and trimmed facial hair, grey eyes, a fit frame that showed the man had no shortage of muscle, and he always seemed to wear this sort of black tailcoat-trench coat suit thing. I hadn’t seen the man smile once, but my father and mother seemed to like him, and I could feel his loyalty to our family screaming at me over all the other emotions I pick up whenever he’s nearby so I figure I really don't have anything to worry about from him.

Then there were the two men who wore steel armor and showed up with my father sometimes when he returned to this room during the day. Both men were tall and looked like typical warriors in a fantasy game with their plated armor and swords strapped to their sides, one had brown hair and a small beard while the other was bald and seemed to scowl all the time. One of the guards would give off this annoyed feeling that I picked up on whenever he was nearby, and I had already decided that since I couldn’t really tell which one that was I would watch out for both of them.

The most fascinating thing I saw while people watching though was my mother, on my third day in this world I saw actual magic performed for the first time by my mother. At least I’m fairly sure she used magic, that was the best explanation I could come up with for why when she was lighting a scented candle she just used her index finger which had suddenly burst into flames after she mumbled some gibberish. I already knew that magic was a thing that was probably as normal as science was on earth, but seeing it happen in person was still shocking and amazing all at once.

Disregarding what I had seen from just people I hadn’t really seen much of the house itself, but what I have seen, all of two rooms, has been fairly lavish and made with a mix of wood, stone and metal though at times these materials were practically fused together in ways that shouldn't have been impossible. I figured that spoke about the level of technology available here, and the weird fusing effect probably meant that large scale construction was mainly done with magic in this world.

After my first week in this world I had already decided what I needed to do first, and I had already begun to work at it. I needed to learn how to better control my mental ability, I knew that once I overcame the obstacle that my empathic nature posed I would probably have no problem using my power like I had originally intended. I had decided that since I couldn't stop feeling others emotions I should work on tuning them out so that the feelings won't overwhelm me, that way I can still tune into them and feel emotions when I chose to yet have those feelings fade into the background where they wouldn’t impede me any time otherwise.

I didn't know how long it would take me, but the night of my seventh day in the world of Gaia I began to train myself to better use my abilities…

It had been a month or so now and I was beginning to make some serious progress in my mental training, something that really isn’t all that surprising considering that the training was all I had to really do this whole time. I had even managed to tune out all the feelings that my power passively brought about, they were still there in the background and I still felt them but now I didn't need to specifically focus on them unless I wanted to. Ever since I had learned to do that, I had been steadily testing out my mental powers. It took some getting used to, especially since I really didn't know what I was doing with the power just how to activate it. I didn't even know how I was supposed to guide, orient, or control my power, or what interacting with another mind mentally would actually be like or entail.

Eventually I narrowed things down to me controlling and guiding a sort of intangible mental tendril probe that I sent out from myself and could use for all sorts of stuff involving another person’s mind. It actually really freaked me out when I managed to make it the first time, and I spent that whole day mastering how to move it and how far it could reach. I couldn’t really see with the tendril, but I could sense minds with it and I learned that my power and the tendril could reach pretty far when I began to sense utterly unfamiliar minds that were a decent distance away from where the ones I had sensed emotions from since the day I was born. I figured that meant my power had a range that covered the whole house and even a certain distance outside of it in all directions. By just touching a person’s mind with this probe I could begin to truly read a person’s mind, well that was only as long as I could get passed their initial mental shield which hasn’t proven to be at all difficult so far.

With some experimentation using some of the guards and maids of the house I had never met before I learned how to implant ideas and commands into other minds, a rather delicate process that was actually pretty fun once you got the hang of it. I could always brute force things and go with what I called direct mind-control which was basically me forcibly controlling the actions and thoughts of others, but quickly learned that I preferred to use a different method. I liked to subtle implant ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and concepts, a rather delicate process that I found to be far more enjoyable and essentially permanent unless I, or another with powers like mine, go back and change things in that person’s mind. Using that method which I decided to call mind-manipulation was almost like playing a game, and depending on the mind’s level of resistance or malleability the game can be easy or challenging. There were some things in another person’s mind that I couldn't change no matter how hard I tried though, usually those things were a person’s deeply rooted fundamental beliefs or core instinctual desires. Even with that limitation though I thought that my mental ability was amazing enough and I was more than happy with it, plus there was this nagging feeling that told me if I could break a person down mentally enough I would be able to alter those previously untouchable things in that person’s mind.

The only real downside to this power of mine was that if I used it actively like that without taking breaks for a little over an hour I would get a migraine that grew until it was unbearable and made me blackout. That time frame wouldn’t seem too bad except for the fact that mind-manipulation took time to do and mind-control shortened that timeframe considerably while requiring constant focus. I felt like by using my power more frequently I could increase the window of time I could use my power without resting or getting the migraine from hell, but I felt like it would take both time and effort on my part. The power almost felt like a muscle in that way, and in this time during my infancy I had devoted myself to strengthening, improving, and growing that muscle.

I was watching my mother who I learned was named Megan Styheart Nightingale and my father who I learned was named Logan Nightingale, talk about something right in front of me. I was in my new decorated wooden crib that was green this week, my parents liked to change the crib every week or two, and I was once again training myself to improve my mental abilities. I was also trying to learn the language that my parents were speaking, something that was made infinitely easier those times I managed to sense their thoughts while they spoke.

I looked at my two parents and moved my mental probe over to my father, letting it touch his mind and carefully moving past his mental shield.

Alright, let's try this again…

I wasn’t sure what exactly happened when I did this, but I really didn’t need to understand it for it to happen. I called whenever I received information from a mind like this reading, and whenever I actively tried to change or add things to another mind sending. When I read my father, I could actually understand what was being said through his mind.

That was one of the coolest aspects of reading, the sheer comprehension I could attain from another’s mind. A person’s thoughts weren’t confined by language since language was just a tool that a mind used to better frame and conceptualize thoughts, something that meant I could easily understand anything and everything a person thought since my own mind interpreted said thoughts as fluent English. I was even able to understand what my mother was saying since my father’s mind had to process what she said before he himself understood it as speech. When I read of one of them like this I had no trouble at all understanding anything that was said, even if I had no idea what the language they were speaking actually was or what its words meant.

...I already told you Megan, I decided the inheritance conditions for the business before we were even married as according with Nightingale family tradition. Those conditions are set in stone now and I couldn't change them now even if I wanted to, my family’s firm wouldn’t allow it and even if they did the guild certainly wouldn’t allow it since it would constitute a breach of an active outstanding contract. Nickolas will just have to follow tradition and try his hand at being a traveling adventure when he gets older, just like I did and my father before me and his father before him… (Father)

Logan, you would send our son out into danger? You know that adventurers nearly always die before they retire, and when exactly was our son going to pursue this insane adventurer career? Certainly you weren't planning on having him become an adventurer before he has graduated from a notable school… (Mother)

I just looked at my parents in shock, they would smile at me periodically and their tones were so calm and pleasant I would've never guessed that they were having an argument. An argument about my future no less, I was tempted to read further into my father’s mind to find out what exactly these inheritance conditions they were talking about were. Of course I didn't do that, I had promised myself that I wouldn’t dig deep into my parents’ minds or attempt to alter them in any way. That was a line I just didn't ever want to cross, it just seemed wrong when I already knew how they felt about me and unless that changed I didn't want to taint those feelings in any way by messing with their minds. The only reason I was even reading my father right now was because there was no one else nearby whose mind I could listen through, and I really liked listening to my parents and understanding what they were actually talking about.

...And I guess now I have the excuse of this conversation being about my future too, although if being an adventurer is what I think it is I might not want to inherit the business… Well, I doubt I’ll want to run it all that badly anyway, but I can at least give it a shot for a while… Well that is if I don’t get killed by some random monster or bandit while I’m out “adventuring” or whatever it is adventurers actually do...

My Mother made a wave in my direction and smiled at me before looking back at my Father.

Logan I swear to the holy mother Panria if your family’s tradition gets our son killed I’ll kill you myself… (Mother)

That’s more than fair dear, I’d be a little disappointed if you felt differently actually. (Father)

It’s good that you understand, but my son will be educated in a creditable school and he will graduate from that school. If your family’s tradition gets in the way of that then he will simply be the first generation of your family to break that tradition… (Mother)

Don’t worry, he won’t have to take over the business until he’s 25, that should be plenty of time for Nickolas to attend a school and travel the world. Then when he comes back he will be a man with experience and all sorts of contact and connections he will have gained from his travels just like I was. It’ll be perfect, and then I can happily retire and leave the business I his hands!

(Father)

Yes, well, what’ll happen if our son decides not to take over your business or just doesn't meet the conditions to legally do so? Did you ever consider that Logan? (Mother)

My father looked at me and gave me a smile before picking me up from my crib and holding me up to look me eye to eye.

Oh, there’s no need to worry about that, I can tell from his eyes that our Nickolas here will be an even greater man than I am when he grows up. That said if for some reason he turns down the inheritance or doesn't meet the conditions stated for him to legally take over than the rights to ownership of the business will pass to my next born child. If that child doesn’t gain the rights to the business then the legal rights will continue to pass down to my children until one does, or if none do the rights will pass to my brother. If my brother is unable to be the head of the business than the rights of ownership will pass to the Nightingale family’s collective business firm until one of my descendants is deemed worthy of the right to own the business. If even the family firm is for some reason unable to accept the rights to the business, then all ownership will be transferred to the merchant guild as my entire family line would likely be wiped out at that point… (Father)

So there is a fall back plan? (Mother)

Yes, there is one of sorts, but I doubt we’ll be needing it now will we Nickolas? (Father)

I made a noise that was basically baby babble and tried to pat his hand to reassure my father that I wouldn't let his business leave our immediate family’s control, but I still didn't have any real motor skills and my pat turned into a strange sort of half wave. Either way my father smiled and seemed to be happy with that.

Well as long as you’re happy with that and it won't interfere with Nickolas’ education or social networking... Speaking of Logan dear, when do you think it would be a good time to introduce him to Thomas’ daughter? (Mother)

You mean that future Baroness that you managed to engage our first son to before he was even born? How about after the boy is old enough to have been with his first woman… (Father)

Logan you can't be serious, Thomas is one of our staunchest allies among nobility and a respected patron and customer of your business. You can't just ignore the man because his daughter will be marrying our son, and you know he’ll probably have already gotten news of Nickolas’ birth by now. (Mother)

Well then at least let the boy learn to talk before you have him meet with his fiancée-… (Father)

I pulled my probe out of my father’s mind and let my own mind digest all the new information it had just gained. That exchange my parents just had seemed pretty damn important to my future in this world, and for the most part I was fine with them planning things out for me like that. I myself didn’t really have any clue how I was going to go about gaining control of this world, but I figured that I should start by finding some way to actually survive for the entire 1000 year time limit. I didn't see how school, traveling the world, or inheriting a business could detract from my main objective of world domination in the name of the gods. The only thing that I was a bit iffy on was the whole “I was born already engaged to some fiancée” thing that my mother apparently set up somehow, I was never really big into imagining my own marriage life or anything like that but I did always figure I would end up marrying for love. From what I understood of arranged marriages they were largely done for political reasons, financial reasons, or both. I wasn’t sure how I liked the idea of that sort of marriage for myself, but then again I guess if I could gain an advantage from it for myself then there was no real reason to complain.

I wonder if this world’s society allows for polygamy. Or maybe it’s like old medieval societies on earth where you could only have a single wife but as many concubines and lovers on the side as you wanted… Either way means that I can still have a romantic relationship with a partner of my own choosing, so I’d be fine with going through with an arranged marriage if either were true… I guess that’s just something I’ll have to learn myself later on…

I felt the beginnings of a migraine start to from behind my eyes, and I let them close as I stopped attempting to use my power altogether. Today I had lasted a good bit longer than yesterday, so I felt that I was improving my mental power’s time limit even if only by a few minutes or so. I felt myself get lowered back into my crib and wrapped up in a blanket before I felt myself begin to go to sleep.

...I wonder if it’s due to my blessing that I feel sleepy whenever I close my eyes for too long during the day, but am perfectly awake and energetic at night… Oh well, I’ll probably get used to that in time, just like everything else… I really should begin working with my biological ability soon as well, that might end up being my solution to my lifespan problem. I just wish I had someone disposable and who didn’t matter to this household whatsoever I could test some stuff on, I sure as shit won't be testing biological alteration on myself after all… Maybe I just need to wait until I’m old enough to talk and move around on my own until I try testing things like that…

I let my thoughts fade away into the blissful black of sleep, and curled myself up deeper in the warm comfort of my crib and blanket…

anyway imma go back to staring at half a page of E.S. and debate whether writing that, writing some D.I., or just reading something in the hopes it will inspire and motivate me to move past this writer's block is the best thing to do..... Ah but not before i study for my math final..... such is life, huh?

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AaronDragon Out.......