I stared into the stranger's eyes as my heart began to beat rapidly.

A sense of building dread filled my soul as I waited for the other shoe to drop.

There was no way I was going to see someone else reflected in a mirror without something terrible happening.

But even after what felt like an eternity passed, nothing changed.

The two of us just continued to stare at each other neither side moving a muscle or trying to gain any ground on the other party.

The deafening silence was only shattered by a sudden knock on the door.

“May I come in?” A feminine voice asked causing me to break eye contact with the figure in the mirror.

“Yes you may,” I said with a surprisingly neutral attitude.

The female maid slowly opened the door while her other hand balanced a freshly cooked meal on a plate.

She slowly walked into the room noticing the abnormal place I was sitting.

“What are you doing on the floor?”

I simply looked at her before looking back at the mirror. I stayed on the floor refusing to make any serious movements.

“What the hell is that?!” the maid shouted, jumping backward and letting out a yelp.

During her shock, she accidentally threw down the plate of food she brought for me.

I tried to grab the plate before it hit the ground but all I ended up doing was throwing the plate forward dirtying my hand and getting more food on the floor than if I did nothing at all.

As I have shown time and time again my reflexes were garbage.

The maid looked to me for answers once she regained her composure.

“What is that thing in the mirror?” the maid said perplexed.

“That's a good question, I’ve been trying to figure out that exact thing myself,” I said in a tone that bordered the edge of sarcasm but still managed to remain respectful.

“My only clue is that it bears a striking resemblance to the class I picked up during my advancement”

“You actually managed to pick up a class. All of us thought that your advancement got interrupted by something so you weren't able to finish it”

“Did the class you picked mess up your body while your soul was being fused with it?” the maid asked putting her hand to her chin and trying to think.

“Well, that's sort of true but -”

“Hold on a second, I’m not qualified to get this information nor do I want to get involved. You will discuss this with the head butler and your father, In the meantime, I will get you another plate of food and clean the floor” she said in a confident tone before quickly leaving the room.

The maid hurried out of the room without listening to what I had to say.

***

A few minutes later Kent nonchalantly entered asking me to move out of the way of the mirror.

The moment I did so the figure disappeared without a trace and didn't reappear until I once again put my body in the path of the mirror.

Kent just stood there looking at me in silence before taking a deep breath.

“Well, this explains a lot” Kent clasped his hands together then slowly pulled out the chair from under my bookshelf and placed it next to my bed.

He then sent me a solemn but calming expression before motioning me to sit down.

I stretched out my tongue at him and chuckled back to signal to him that I was alright.

He immediately dropped the serious tone flipped the chair around so that he could place his hands on the backrest then sent me a relaxed smile.

Any sign that he was worried a moment ago was gone as he moved as though he was about to talk to a good friend about their favorite team winning a sports match.

“Ok first off, good job Norman. I didn’t expect you to be able to get a class that was all the way at the Wise rank the very first time you had an advancement. That is truly an achievement worth celebrating as most children your age can barely get a class that's rated Unconcious” He said with a docile smile trying to ease the tension in a different way but I responded with a cold glare with made him relax his attitude.

I was fine. If anything his treating me differently than normal was showing me was making me feel worse rather than better.

“The rank of the class I got is actually Ancient and for some reason, I think your praise is going to be followed by a massive but,” I said with a derisive spirit.

I had already experienced enough of these conversations both in my old life and in this one to know where this talk was going.

“There would have been, that is if you weren’t a member of this family. Luckily for you because of your heritage, the problem any normal 5-year-old would be facing now is just going to resolve itself” he announced flatly.

“What do you mean by ‘the problem is going to resolve itself’ and what would that problem have been exactly?”

“As a class increases in rank, most of the time it becomes more useful and more powerful for the person who obtained it. That being said use is not how the rank of a class is actually determined.”

“The rank of a class is simply how much the class can affect the soul of the person it is fused with”

“Because of this, in theory, you could have a class that is ranked as Ancient which gives subpar stats, terrible abilities, and is extremely hard to use even though you rarely ever see that happening in practice”

“For a normal kid your age, if they were to obtain an Ancient class during the process of merging, the class would either take them over completely on the spot changing their personality and mindset permanently, immediately turn them into a Taken, or slowly bring them down the path of mental illness among other equally nasty eventualities.”

“Of course, since the vast majority of children will never get offered a class above Delusional anyway this has never been much of a problem and children are told not to pick Awakened classes no matter how good they seem even if this advice is often ignored.”

Using the natural break in Kent’s explanation I took the opportunity to ask some questions.

“So why weren't we given this warning, is it because our souls are naturally stronger than the average child so we were at little to no risk”

“Precisely that, but to add to your point a bit it's not just that your souls are naturally stronger, its also that you have much greater control over it, not to mention the training you’ve been doing massively improving your ability to fend off issues like that one”

“We simply saw no reason to limit your potential choices by filling your minds with non-issues,” he said as if he was explaining to his parents why he didn’t tell them something important.

“So essentially, right now I'm suffering from success.”

“Yes, but even with that you are going to be rewarded greatly for your trial”

“Yea eventually… if I showed you all the requirements just for me to get the first level in my class you would go insane,” I said in a jolly tone that intentionally failed to hide my distraught.

“Oh, I know what that’s like. I got my first Ancient class when I was just fifteen.”

“Could you imagine that at the time I was considered a once-in-a-lifetime genius for achieving that, now their giving away Ancient ranked classes to five-year-olds”

“It is truly a time to be alive,” Kent said as he looked down at the floor with a defeated expression.

“Crazy how a norm that has existed for centuries can be completely broken by a single child who wasn't even trying to.” A stark bitterness was evident in Kent’s tone when he said that.

As much as I would like to brag about how amazing I was for getting an Ancient class so early the truth of the matter was that since my experience in my previous life was counted in my advancements I only got an Ancient class when I was supposed to be in my forties.

Looking at it from that perspective I was actually far behind my teacher rather than ahead of him.

Even when it came to learning magic I would constantly find things from my past life that helped me understand concepts better all the way from my hobbies to my actual profession.

The knowledge I had gained throughout my previous life was a lot of the reason I was able to keep up with everything despite how young I was now.

Picking himself up from his depression Kent continued to talk to me.

“As I said before the actual difference between the ranks of classes is how much it improves the soul of the creature it merges with”

“This means that for low-ranking classes you won't really notice much of a difference in your soul when you fuse with them but that completely changes when you reach the Wise rank,” He said giving off an excited smile.

“Just try to use one of your family skills right now to see what I mean,” Kent said with a smile.

I looked into myself trying to activate the most essential skill I had related to my family which was Soul Sight.

I formed my soul into the familiar shapes I had grown accustomed to and I immediately noticed a major difference.

My soul felt a lot ‘heavier’ and more unstable than before.

If making the symbols for the skill before was like writing on paper with a pencil now it was far more like writing on concrete with a jackhammer.

Every single movement was taxing especially the small and precise ones.

Once the skill was actually completed my entire perception environment around me changed.

My small lonely bedroom was now filled with the souls of those long passed.

Not just those of humans which were the only ones I could see before when I used Soul Sight but also plants and animals, all moving around the room aimlessly, especially where the wall had those strange carvings.

Most of them felt weak and old, I had a suspicion that some of the creatures and humans I was seeing had already been dead for thousands of years.

I looked at the little soul that was trapped in my family pendant to see how my new vision changed how I would perceive her.

To my surprise, her body seemed solid now, taking a form more like a tiny porcelain doll rather than a wisp, even if her extremities still seemed to fade into the distance.

Inside of her were channels formed from whatever made up a soul all weaving together inside connecting with her meager physical form in complex but purposeful ways all coming together to form a sort of soul-based internal circulatory system.

The lines of soul energy inside her seemed extremely weak to me as if she was running out of juice.

I already knew that the souls in our pendants got weaker after each use but hearing about it and seeing it happen with your own two eyes were two different things.

I looked at Kent who was sitting down next to my bed giving me a warm smile.

Just like the soul in my hand his body was filled with these soul channels that connected parts of his body to his soul and vice versa but they all felt a lot more vibrant and lustrous.

Unlike the trapped soul who was simply circling the same small amount of energy around her body over and over again, there was a mass of soul energy in the center of his body that was constantly pumping new energy into the system.

This core still looked blurry to me and I couldnt really make out the difference but something about it felt extremely old to me, it was older than the vast majority of the souls I found floating in the house and was vastly older than the soul trapped in the pendant.

Looking away from him for a second I looked at the walls of my bedroom and I was completely shocked.

Just like how Mary and Kent had channels inside their bodies connecting them to their souls so did the walls and furniture of my room.

Everything that wasn’t the wood itself like the books on my bookshelf or the mirror that hung on one of the walls where connected through these channels.

The house was a living creature no different from me or Kent as far as the soul was concerned, having millions of channels going to and from a singular source that I couldnt identify from my current observation point.

Not having anything else in my surroundings that were interesting to look at I focused back on my eyes and realized how stable they were.

Typically when I used this skill my eyes would begin to hurt or I would run out of energy quickly but now I felt like I could keep this going for hours without much of an issue whatsoever.

This was amazing here I was thinking that It would take me years before I started seeing actual benefits from gaining my class but apparently, it was a major buff as is even if it took me years to achieve the direct benefits.

And this was just with my soul abilities, since my soul was also the producer and storage facility for my mana it getting stronger meant that my mana poll must have undoubtedly increased by leaps and bounds as well.

“That's why I started going Feral while I was sleeping,” I muttered to myself coming to a realization.

“Yes, that's my theory as well, If you were paying attention to my lectures you would know that creatures tend to start going Feral when they are overexposed to mana” Kent began to lecture me on the topic.

“While this mana is typically forced unto you by a Taken, a deep delver, or by just being in a mana-rich area for too long, in your case, the overlord of mana came from your own soul producing more mana than what your body could handle”

I had just assumed that the reason I was facing that problem was due to the damage I took when facing that Sentient ranked class during my advancement but apparently those were two separate events.

I got heavily injured during the advancement causing me to go into a coma, while I was in said comma the maids applied for medicine and my body slowly recovered but my soul which was undamaged and recently massively strengthened due to receiving my first class produced massive amounts of mana that my weakened body couldnt handle.

Leading to my body showing signs of going Feral.

I could definitely see how the maids must have been freaking out seeing all their effort into making me get better and being rewarded with me slowly turning into a monster.

And since no one could have predicted that I got an Ancient-ranked class at such an early age everyone must have assumed there was some sort of physical issue they weren’t able to find caused by my injuries.

Even when they hired a professional they wouldn’t have found anything because they would be looking in the wrong place.

All that combined with how I saw Tresha acting when I woke painted a very clear picture in my mind about what must have happened while I was asleep.

The only mystery was what my sisters were up to during all of that.

“So what happens now?” I asked pensively expecting some sort of punishment for worrying everyone.

“Now we start preparing to celebrate your advancement as well as your achievement of getting such a high-ranked class at such an early age”

“After that the vast majority of your time will be spent visiting doctors, taking medication, and resting, until your body heals and we figure out what to do about your even more corrupted soul, and now an overabundance of mana”

“What about training for the Astra”

“There will be no training for the Astra. You will be lucky if your even healthy enough to attend it in your current condition.”