[Congratulations, due to your evolution you have unlocked the Traits tab and the Achievements tab]

[Congratulations, due to being exposed to high concentrations of mana your affinity with the mana in your surroundings has improved.]

[As a result of this you have also gained the Mana Starved Trait]

Mana Starved

Your mind, body, and soul have grown accustomed to being overloaded with mana. The amount of mana you can contain and use is far greater than what you could before. The understanding of magic will come more naturally to you in the future.

Your daily requirement of mana has been vastly increased.

[Extended periods of discovery and early learning have given you the Quick-Witted Trait]

Quick-Witted

You can make decisions and learn things faster and now have a much higher reaction speed.

[Extended periods of exercise have awarded you with the Endure Trait]

Endure

You can act more competently at low reserves of stamina. You also experience a sizeable improvement in the amount of stamina you have.

[Over exposure to mana with a soul that is incompatible with your body has given you the Polluted Soul Trait]

Polluted Soul

The effectiveness of your constitution has been reduced by half and you will have added struggle when using spells and forming mana from your soul.

[Exposure to souls at an early age has increased the level of your soul-related skills and has awarded you the skill Minor Soul Control]

Name: Norman Venificus

Level: 0

Species: Humaniod (Basic)

Birth Season: Astral Summer of Earth

Stage of development: Infant

Attributes:

Strength: 1 -> 4

Dexterity: 1 -> 5

Constitution: 3 -> 4

Intelligence: 29 -> 35

Wisdom: 1 -> 7

Willpower: 4 -> 6

Charisma: 2 -> 3

Awareness: 1 -> 2

Poise: 1 -> 3

…

I slowly opened my eyes finding myself on a comfortable bed dressed in a set of new clothing which I didn’t recognize.

“It’s time to get up Norman, dad is going to be here any second now,” someone shouted as I heard a door swing open with a thunderous bang.

Hearing someone calling me by my new name for the first time was an uncomfortable experience.

The person who shouted after me didn't even bother knocking, rushing inside with the confidence of someone who didn't care about how their actions affected others.

“What…?” I said in a low and grumbly voice.

“I said that daddy was going to be here any minute,” the person replied in a voice that held the excitement of a hungry puppy.

I ignored the person talking to me while taking a second to gather my surroundings.

I was laying on a bed next to a large window that filtered light in tiny rays of sunshine into the small room.

I honestly didn't know how I managed to sleep with how bright the room was.

There was a bedside table next to me which had two drawers, the surface was empty except for having a beautiful black flower in a clear ornate vase that seemed to emit a dark ebony glow that slightly warped the space around it.

There was a small empty bookshelf connected to the end of a fairly large desk and chair placed in the bottom left corner of the room.

In the right bottom corner was a dresser opposite the bed and finally, the door was in the top left corner of the room.

All of the furniture was a creamy shade of brown and was made out of neatly sculpted wood.

Just looking at it calmed the mind but if you looked at the wood closely you could see glowing veins pumping energy throughout the structure.

Strewn randomly on the walls were a small number of engravings of random people doing random activities like dancing, reading, running around, etc.

Where ever one of these engravings lay there was a higher concentration of what I dubbed "Soul sparkles" in that area.

The room was overall small and unimpressive, especially for a room that was part of a gigantic mansion like this one.

Aside from the slightly magical furniture and random designs on the wall nothing gave me the idea that it was anything more than the room of your average middle-class school child.

The girl continued to barge into the room until she reached the side of my bed.

“And you are?” I asked.

“I’m your sister, the one who has been with you in our room this entire time,” the girl stated in a voice that almost sounded offended.

“Really, what's your name then,” you couldn’t really blame me for my surprise she looked completely different than how I remembered her as a baby.

She had the physical development of someone who was about twelve in age but she was half that in height which honestly looked quite bizarre.

Apparently, in this world, people only really grew during their evolution so she's going to be stuck in that body for a while.

My name is Rina, Normen,” she managed to sound even louder and more offended than the first time I asked her a question.

“How long was I asleep for,” I asked while continuing to rub my eyes.

“You were out for five whole days,” Rina told me, swaying her waist back and forth in a cute manner while being right in my face.

I moved one of my legs off of the bed in a lazy fashion and was shocked by just how long it was.

I tried moving my other leg so that I could sit on the left side of my bed.

I then pushed myself up, struggling to shift my weight onto my new legs, the task being simultaneously more difficult and easier than I expected.

I wobbled a bit before standing straight in front of Rina, she stepped back a bit uncomfortably at my sudden action.

For all her talk about being my sister, I think that the realization that we had never actually had a meaningful interaction with each other truly dawned on her.

We were at best strangers.

I was almost ten centimeters taller than Rina which was nice as I could assert my dominance as the eldest much easier with the added height.

I took a breath and examined her more closely.

Her long hair was a dark shade of raspberry purple, it was straight and neatly combed into a long thick braided ponytail that reached to her lower back.

The bottom of the braid was tied with a small light purple ribbon tied in a bow.

Her face and facial features were a bit masculine for her age and gender but she still managed to look quite cute if not a bit too serious.

Her deep purple eyes were sharp and filled with a low level of determination and focus at all times.

She wore a black dress which went into a loose skirt at the waist.

Along with this, she wore a dark purple pair of thick cotton leggings and a pair of black lace-up boots with a rose pattern.

To complete the outfit she wore a wide bright purple cotton belt tied in a bow with long ends at the back and a pair of black flexible leather gloves.

She kept her posture straight looking at me directly in the eye which gave her this air of confidence and authority.

While her clothing gave the impression of a rich and sheltered child her aura was that of a disciplined soldier which made for a nice contrast that amplified both aspects rather than subtracting from either.

I always liked the idea of having younger siblings so seeing her filled me with anticipation.

This was going to be a nice change of pace I was sure of it.

I looked to my bedside table and noticed that above it stuck to the wall was a small flat mirror which finally allowed me to see my new body.

My short light blue hair was combed freely but neatly. I wore a pair of well-fitting black dress pants and black shoes with a button-up white dress shirt that wasn't tucked into my pants.

My clothing was simple, clean, and most importantly surprisingly comfortable.

The most extraordinary thing about it was that it wasn't far off from something I would have worn in my old life which was a neat coincidence.

My face was vastly different than what it looked like in my previous life, my eyes were sharper and purple, my nose and lips smaller, my ears were more tucked in, I had a much lighter complexion, and due to my age, the overall shape looked less mature.

I turned to my sister to finally address her in earnest.

“You look excited” I pointed out with a snarky tone.

She moved back a bit more at my voice, her eyes were very expressive so I could tell that she was thinking something but I couldn’t put my finger on what.

In any case after her brief internal monologue, she took a breath moved an inch closer, and started moving with a bit more confidence than before even if it was still less than what she entered with.

“You should too” I heard a sweet voice saying from behind me.

I was so startled by this that I fell over landing back on my bed.

I wasn't expecting it and I was already having trouble keeping my balance with my new body.

“This is the first time we get to see our father and you don’t even look like you care” Rina added making use of my panicked state of mind.

The girl who shocked me giggled as I fell over.

She had naturally curly royal blue hair which was combed, braided, and clipped together in such a way that it looked tidy while still having a natural and messy feeling to it which amplified her childish femininity.

This along with that naturally cheerful expression that seemed plastered on her face made her someone it was impossible to hate or say no to.

The girl wore a classic-looking light blue dress with frills at the bottom.

She had white socks and black shoes with a similar-looking cotton belt as her sister tied around her waist except hers were white instead of purple.

Her style of movement was very upbeat and happy contrasting her sister's more strict and restrained movements.

All this while her soft eyes were both intelligent and unknowable.

They truly made a pair together, so much so that you would have been shocked to learn that they weren't actually related by blood.

They looked like the classic twin duo from an early 2000s sitcom.

Seeing how they looked I was beginning to think that joining this family must off altered our DNA for all of us to look so similar.

It sounded ridiculous but considering the fact that I took a nap and got five times bigger, it wasn't hard to believe that something like that was possible.

“Yea, what kind of son isn’t even excited to see his father for the first time” Emma jumped in.

Because unlike the two of you I’ve already seen him.

I guess my memory of things so far into the past was unique to me in this family, that was good to know.

“Why are you acting like I have a choice, I just woke up, cut me some slack already, geez” I was starting to get upset with their constant nagging.

I didn't like people breathing down my neck and rushing me especially when I just got up in the morning.

When did my sisters become so talkative anyway?

How did they even learn the language so fast?

Come to think of it I've been really talkative recently as well, just before I had my evolution I couldn't speak a single word and could barely understand complex sentences.

All of a sudden I started speaking the language as naturally as I breathed, and so did my two siblings who before this couldn’t form a single word.

It was probably a mixture of the system and my voice being more developed, but that would mean that the system subtly influenced you more than just with skills.

Having something capable of altering your mind and body like that sounded cool when I read it in books or saw it in games but now that I was experiencing it.

It was terrifying.

Could the thing or things that controlled the system just shut me off, change my memories or completely destroy my sense of self at any time they wanted?

And if the answer to that question was yes was there anything that I could do about it?

I was lost in thought laying on my bed .and my sisters were getting even more impatient.

“Are you even listening to us? We have to get downstairs quickly,” Rina screeched at me like a crazed banshee, her face clearly showing her displeasure.

Emma also had a dissatisfied look on her face but she also seemed to be observing from the sidelines not wanting to get too involved.

As a matter a fact when she entered and saw us arguing she must have just stood on the sidelines for a while before briefly entering the conversation.

“I guess that she’s not as assertive as her sister.”

I somehow managed to get lost in thought again.

“Let’s just go,” Rina said in a shout. She looked like she just got done running a marathon.

She grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the bed, something I didn't appreciate but wasn't going to make a big deal out of right now.

We left the room quickly and I forcefully detached her from my hand which made her winch while sending me a cold glare.

“I can move on my own, thank you,” I said in a casual tone.

She seemed to recede into herself again as I walked forward to stand next to her.

Almost unconsciously she moved away from me but my other sister put herself between the two of us.

“My name is Norman, what's yours,” I politely asked my other sister to smooth over the newly built tension.

“I'm Emma, and I already knew your name, Tresha told us once we got up.”

I just nodded, I didn't know who Tresha was but the only other people who seemed to live with us were the maids so I just assumed it was one of them.

While we walked down to the dining hall, where our father was supposed to be on the bottom floor I started to think about my two sisters and how I should be dealing with them.

They didn’t have the hyperactivity and lack of social awareness you would expect from such a child.

They also seemed to have some sense that other people had different motivations and goals than they did.

I can tell this by the way they tried to convince me to get changed faster than a normal child would just demand you do what they wanted.

So the fact that they tried to use shaming tactics to get me to do what they wanted by calling me a bad son is significant.

What is also significant is that Rina tried that tactic first while Emma simply followed her lead.

It was likely that this method was not her normal way of getting people to do what she wanted if she even developed one at this point.

“I’m home!” a masculine voice shouted as I heard footsteps coming from below me.

I found it weird that the maids weren’t there to greet him when he got home considering that they were there when he came home the first time I was brought here.

I also found it strange that I could hear what he was saying all the way on the third floor when I couldn’t hear anything coming from outside the room we were in as babies which were on the second floor.

As we made our way to meet our father I realized that this would be the first time that I got to explore the mansion outside of the room we were born in.

Despite this, I had little interest in looking around.

One, because even if I looked around it would be hard to tell where the interesting things were without help, and two, because I would get to explore it later anyway now that I could actually move around and communicate on my own.

The third floor where our rooms were located wasn't interesting, only being a series of dark wooden doors.

Three of which have our names engraved on the frame.

The second floor seemed more eventful having more unique-looking doors but I didn't pay too much attention to them and went to the next pair of stairs at the end of the hall.

The ground floor had a much more open-concept design, coming from the stairs was a wide-open area with the softest carpet I had ever felt in both of my lives under my feet.

All of the floors I had gone down so far had those little engravings on the walls and doors in random locations even the ceiling wasn't free of them.

In the center of the space, which we entered from the stairs was an enormous bonsai tree that seemed to perfectly fit into the floor and carpet.

The gray tree trunks had multiple engravings, some of what looked like events in history, and others just looked like magic circles and symbols straight out of a fantasy novel.

The symbols glowed with an ebony glow similar to the flower that was in my room yet these seemed to pulse.

The color applied great contrast to the leaves of the tree scintillated with a blue hue lighting up the room like a disco with small shards of light going everywhere in the pattern of the leaves.

Despite the disjointed lighting, the room was still adequately bright and I could see everything in the room clearly.

The rest of the rooms were connected simply through rectangular holes in the walls with no true doors.

To the left was where we were supposed to be, the dining room.

As I entered the dining room, I again thought that it looked rather plain for somewhere so expensive.

There was a massive table in the middle that looked like it could fit fifty people made out of the same material my furniture was with a magically floating amber flame in the center above which shimmered with a soft amber light across the room.

But apart from that the walls we plan and baren with only a symbol of a bubbling flask with the shape of a ghost forming out of the fumes it released.

I guessed that our dad didn’t have much of a sense of style or maybe it was a cultural thing here for people to not be too extravagant in their furniture and home decor.

As we entered the room our father gave us a big smile and said that it was nice to meet us.