Marcus was soon engrossed in the books his father had brought home. Until he reached eight years old, his level could not increase. However, this limitation did not affect his max level. Currently, Marcus’s primary goal was to improve his max level as much as possible before he reached eight years old. Once he reached eight years old, he would focus on grinding his level. This would allow him to grow as fast as possible. Marcus also had the additional benefit of knowing what needed to be done to level up, which others could only speculate. Unfortunately for Marcus, finding the information to increase his max level beyond Apprentice was extremely difficult.

Every skill tree had six tiers with corresponding levels. Those levels were: Novice (0-10), Apprentice (11-29), Adapt (30-49), Expert (50-79), Master (80-99), and Legendary (100+). Even though the levels were broken into tiers, there was no significant difference between the levels other than what skill one could assign their perks.

Levels earned in a skill tree will contribute to the level of the individual, which one could use to increase stats, Health (HP), Mana (MP), and Stamina (SP). The average commoner would be an apprentice, and soldiers or artisans would reach Adapt. Truly gifted individuals would reach Expert and rare individuals would reach Master. As for legendary, this was out of reach for nearly everyone. The maximum max level was 99. Reaching level 100 in a skill meant they had exceeded the limit of the mortal plane. This was nearly impossible. However, once level 100 was reached, it was possible to continue to level with additional bonuses.

Eventually, the house went quiet, and the only light available was from Marcus’s Candlelight spell, one of the few spells he had learned. After ensuring his parents were asleep, he quietly bundled himself up. Then, he brought up the System display and went to the power section. He carefully selected one power and mana gathered in his hand. However, unlike when he cast spells, this mana was not his. That was because this spell was a power. Unlike normal spells, power spells did not require mana but had a cooldown. Eventually, the magic activated, and Marcus disappeared.

There was a brief flash of light before the scenery around Marcus changed. He had gone from a small building made of wood to a large building made of stone. The power Marcus activated was a teleportation spell to bring him to a sealed house. Marcus had no idea where this house was. It could be within the earth, on another plane, or an entirely different dimension. At least, that’s the explanation the vague mod description gave. However, that did not matter. This building would act as his residence.

Marcus made a quick round through the building to double-check his accommodations.

Marcus’s new secret home came equipped with nearly everything he could need. The basic accommodations for normal living, like a bedroom and kitchen, could house a dozen people. It also came with all the necessary accommodations for every profession. Once Marcus could start leveling, he would spend a good portion of his time within the space, at least until he turned 10 to attend college. However, this was for the future. Right now, Marcus was focused on creating a special foundation.

Marcus made his way over to a storage area and browsed the containers. The one thing he noticed was that the chests were significantly larger than their game counterparts. However, this worked to his benefit.

Marcus activated a new power as he pulled out a small leather pouch that he wore around his neck. He was going to utilize a mod feature that allowed the auto sorting and linking of containers. Marcus had opted not to give everyone an inventory skill. This was because he could go above and beyond it with his mods in a way that he had full control over. In other words, he and the people around him would have a unique inventory and no one else.

The first thing he did was connect the leather pouch to one of the chests. The leather pouch acted like a portal to the chest where items would be stored. Anyone touching the pouch and aware of its contents could obtain said items. Luckily, the mod ignored the size of the container. It just needed to meet the criteria of one. So long as he willed an item to be stored or retrieved, it would disappear and appear respectively in his hands. However, the storage was not without limits.

The first limitation was the size of the destination container. However, given the size of this chest, that would most likely not be an issue compared to the first problem, which was weight. So long as a leather pouch was on his body, he would feel the weight of whatever was in the chest, excluding the chest itself. Too much weight would be problematic as it would hinder him. Luckily, the weight was distributed over his entire body, not the pouch itself.

After this was completed, Marcus decided to test it out. He took the book in his hand and decided to move it into his inventory. The book instantly disappeared from his hands and appeared within the chest.

Marcus then took a second chest and linked it to the first one out of curiosity. To his delight, this doubled the inventory space but was useless, so he canceled it. The next thing he did was link an adjacent chest to the individual storage near the workstations. When his inventory became too heavy, he could move the items that he didn’t want on his person from one chest to the other. The items would automatically be distributed through the various workstations to be quickly accessed and utilized.

Marcus wanted to ensure effective inventory management due to another power, auto-harvest. Since Marcus had started his inventory management, he turned on auto-harvest, which had previously been turned off. Auto-harvest automatically collected items within a certain radius of Marcus so long as they met certain criteria Marcus could set. Currently, he set the range to the maximum and automatically collected items based on various criteria. The criteria included what they were, what they were worth, whether they were ‘owned’ goods, etc. The only real limit for what he could collect within the radius was based on whether he could obtain the item naturally. The combination of inventory management and auto-harvesting would be a tremendous timesaver when gathering resources. Unfortunately, unlike the inventory management, the auto-harvest only affected him.

Happy with his work, Marcus tried his way over to a unique display cabinet. In the center of this cabinet was a house on top of the mountain. Marcus touched the house atop the mountain with a smile, and he once again disappeared.

The surroundings instantly changed, and Marcus couldn’t help but glance in wonder. He was in another building. This time it was the scale of a mansion, made both of stone and wood. He was now in a mansion on a plateau on the northern end of the Throat of the World. Marcus quickly went over to the home’s basement and registered himself as the official owner. This house was unique because enchantments shielded it from the cold elements of the high mountain. It also had concealment magic to hide from dragons. This time, Marcus spent nearly an hour observing the overall grounds.

This house could easily accommodate two dozen people and had even more complicated workstations and luxury features than his secret base. Additionally, secondary housing was provided for a garrison of 50, though this was completely simplistic. The purpose of this was to house a garrison used to defend the walls blocking the only path to the house.

Marcus nodded in satisfaction but couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. Even though Skyr*m was modded, he couldn’t add whatever he wanted without limit. He was limited on how many mods he could have, and there were further restrictions. In this instance, he was only allowed three modded homes. He chose the three: the secret house, the mountain mansion, and the boathouse. He chose the secret house due to the teleportation spell that came with it and the safety the isolated house would provide. The mountain mansion was a prime pick because it came with a teleportation network to access any homes he obtained.

Additionally, the teleportation matrix could be completely controlled by him, allowing him to move people throughout Skyr*m in the future quickly. Of course, this also had limits as only one person could be teleported at a time, and there was a cool down. However, the ability to move people across Skyr*m instantaneously was too good to pass up. The mountain mansion also came with a teleportation spell and was defendable. The final modded home was the boathouse. Unfortunately, the boathouse had to be built and required various resources to complete. The benefit of the boathouse was a fully functioning naval warship that doubled as a mobile house. However, that was a matter for the future. Overall, the three-house limit didn’t bother Marcus too much. This was because he could theoretically add any property to the teleport system he owned that could also act as a home. Because this was real life and not a game, his property was not restricted.

For now, Marcus needed to return home. He made his way to a familiar display cabinet. A vague structure, similar to the secret house, floated there. He disappeared only to reappear within the secret house when he touched it. The reason he had gone back to the secret house was so that he could get back home. Unfortunately, the house he was living in did not belong to him but his parents. This meant the house could not be added to the teleportation matrix. However, this brought another reason why he got the secret house. The teleportation spell the secret house came with would send the target to the secret house unless it was cast within said house. Instead, the spell target would be teleported back to where they last teleported from. Unfortunately, the teleportation spell for the mountain mansion did not have this feature. With a flash of magic, Marcus then reappeared in his room. He quietly took off his extra clothing and went back to sleep, looking forward to the future.