“Is everyone set to go?” Kent asked as he looked at the three of us with our large bags parked behind us.

‘Yes sir” we all replied together each of us had spent the night before packing and we all had to wake up extremely early today so we could have enough time to make it to our destination.

I looked at my two sisters with a dismissive glance as I saw that both of them seemed to have loaded their entire bedrooms into their backpacks.

I kind of understood where they were coming from of course.

This was the very first time they would be leaving home in their entire lives and nothing could really prepare someone for that kind of experience.

With that being said where it got ridiculous was with the asinine reasons they brought some of this stuff along.

“Why do you need a sock filled with rocks for you to go to an athletics competition again?” I asked Rina as I saw her makeshift weapon hang off the outside of one of her bags.

“We aren't allowed to bring our own weapons so what happens when I get attacked while we're at the event?” Rina answered quickly with a worried expression.

Emma who was nearby face paled as the new possibility entered her mind like a parasite. She then quickly ran to her room to prepare a sock rock device of her own.

When she returned not only did she have a makeshift weapon in her right hand but also a green glove with the symbol of a bee on its back.

“You know you can’t bring that with you. Put in back before I am forced to cancel this entire trip,” Kent said in an unnaturally stern voice.

“I’m not planning on using it during the tournament I just want it nearby in case something bad happens” She pleaded in the most disarming voice I had ever heard as she placed the hand with the glove behind her back and took on a helpless stance.

Kent was having absolutely none of it though. He simply stared daggers at her until she finally went back into her room to leave the glove behind.

The entire time we were waiting to leave she had a glum look on her face as if she was looking for pity from the rest of us.

Right before leaving, I took one of the two pendants I now had around my neck.

Connected to a silver chain was a clear see-through eyeball that seemed to come from some sort of gigantic snake.

Instead of myself, the Crystal-like object reflected a man in a purple clock with bloody bandages all over his hands. Since I had already grown accustomed to the strange seen I paid it no mind and continued my study.

When I stared into its iris I felt the temperature of the room go down by a few degrees celsius as unintelligible whispers and hisses echoed in my mind.

As I tried to understand the ramblings it felt as if a knife was being drilled into my forehead.

After the pain became unbearable I closed my eyes and looked up at the ceiling.

Kent once had a similar quest to complete when he was unlocking one of his classes so already knew what was meant “Consume the eye of an Awakened Rank Monster once you have comprehended its mysteries.”.

The problem was simultaneously much simpler and much more difficult than I could have imagined.

All one needed to do was look in the eye.

That's it, no crazy skills, years of training, or strange impossible-to-find potion required.

Similar to when learning or upgrading a skill every time one looked at an object which contained a Mystery information would flood through their brain and sensations would pulse through their muscles.

Unlike that peaceful, almost ticklish effect gaining a skill had on a person however, this was a very violent and painful process that felt as though long needles were slowly being pushed into one's brain before injecting a scolding liquid inside of it.

Sadly, the unbearable pain wasn’t the only problem that came with the process.

If one wasn’t careful enough or tried to rush the process there was a high likelihood that they would become Feral.

A typical session of practice was simply looking at the eye until my brain couldn’t handle it anymore.

Stop and assess the information that flooded my mind, and repeat it until I actually understood something which I would then promptly right down.

After a week or so of this process, I would then look at all the notes I had made, see what I remembered, and what I didn’t, then tried to organize the information in a useful way.

That meant looking for connections, putting similar sounded pieces of information in boxes, and seeing how everything if anything could be applied in real life.

As of right now, the only major clue I had was that the Mystery held within the eyeball had something to do with the process one could use to make the Elemental Equalizer for some sort of compound element that mixed Fire mana, Earth mana, and a third element I wasn't sure about as well as outlining a few basic principles one could use when making spells using said compound element.

Since I had already learned how to make the Elemental Equalizers For both fire mana and earth mana a lot of the information given was a lot easier to understand than what I would have gotten otherwise.

An unintended but welcome side effect of my new form of training was that my understanding of both fire and earth magic was rapidly improving in comparison to the past three years of slow improvement even with my being unable to practice due to medical problems.

Despite my relatively rapid progress I still had an extremely long way to go before I could complete that portion of unlocking my class.

It took Kent about three years to understand his first mystery which meant there was no way I would be getting this done in time for the event.

This was disappointing because when I looked at the quest I need to complete I actually had some hope.

[Quest]

Preparation 1 (Warlock)

Prepare mind [Incomplete]

Prepare body [Complete]

Preapre soul [Complete]

According to Kent, you would just know when you had actually fully comprehended a mystery.

Consuming one was a far more dangerous and complicated endeavor.

I knew at least that much even if I wasn’t given the specifics on how everything worked.

Typically when a Wise-ranked Taken was born a Mystery would be formed in their eyes but sometimes this exact same phenomenon could be noticed in especially strong Awakened-ranked Taken.

Of course, despite my progress in the quest and in understanding my first mystery and despite my extended efforts, I was not close to forming a contract with a god that I was willing to sign, nor was I able to get close to one percent of the experience I needed, nor did I have the slightest inkling as to what understanding the basics of freedom and deception could have possibly meant.

The more I learned the more getting my first level in my class seemed like a distant dream.

***

“Ok everyone as long as we are all set it’s time to leave. Make sure to not make any trouble for me on the way to the hotel or when we actually get there” He gave another stern voice before walking out of the door expecting us to follow suit.

Despite my image as the uncaring older brother my heart was pounding, this is the first time after more than five years that I would get to see what the outside world looked like.

It was an exciting yet terrifying experience.

I didn’t deal with new well and this expedition would not only be a massive change of pace but would also be rubbing against some old wounds from my past life.

While on the surface this would be a sports event equivalent to the kid's version of a national athletics competition, in reality, it was a high-stakes socializing exercise where the future leaders of this country would be battling it out to form connections or gain information on future rivals.

Socializing as it where was one of my least favorite activities, not something I was bad at mind you but something I hated doing to the core of my being.

Leaving the house felt like I was going through a portal to a new world.

As my first foot left the door the fresh humid air filled my lungs leaving me with a deep sense of appreciation for life.

Above us was a radiant sky of mostly dark blue clouds with a few pink and black ones all streaked across the vast blue sky intermingling and fusing together to create a picturesque scene above our heads.

The radiant clouds were thick and heavy giving the hint to those who bothered to pay attention to them that it would be raining soon.

In front of us stood the same carriage that brought me to my new home when I was a baby.

The dark flaming horse that had been pulling the carriage along for all those years looked a lot smaller and less majestic than I remembered him.

The flames of his mane looked a bit dimmer while his black skin was cracked and dry with many white lines spreading across it.

Standing right next to the vehicle were Tresha and Gaine the two maids most responsible for us.

Tresha looked mostly the same as she was when I wasn’t even a year old yet, time was being extremely kind to her.

Gaine on the other hand looked far different than how she did before she had turned 15 a couple of months before we turned five.

She was a lot taller and now truly had the body of a woman. Her hair was was now light blue with dark black ends while her skin had become a great deal paler yet was even more full of life, gaining a slight wooden texture that could just bearly be seen when you looked up close but was definitely felt when one rubbed their hands over her skin.

Across her body was a deep glowing black intricate tattoo spread all across her skin in a subtle manner.

It was quite minimalistic for something that was across her whole body yet still drew plenty of attention due to the deep contrast.

Ever since her advancement Gaine had taken a weird role in the family.

She had gained a new class that allowed her to learn our family skills without being a part of it and with it gained all of the rights and privileges of a family head, at least when it came to the knowledge of past users of our family ability.

Because of this, she was outpacing Rina, Emma, and me with learning it by leaps and bounds.

In some ways, she had become like an older sister to us, and in others a superior.

Sometimes she even fell back into her habits as a maid helping with the cleaning and taking care of us without her realizing it.

In any case, she had now gained masses of new responsibilities she had to take care of.

She stood near the flaming horse resting on its side while petting its back being careful to make sure that her delicate hands didn't get burned by the flames produced by its hair.

My sisters repeatedly talked about how jealous they were of her and the things she got to do that they didn’t but honestly I could barely imagine how much suffering she must have been going through on the inside.

Similar to me she was a person who liked normal. Someone who didn’t like things to change especially suddenly.

Now she was forced into a role that had never existed in the entire history of our family without anyone to really guide her or who understood the struggles that she faced.

All the while knowing that she would need to carve out a path for the people who would undoubtedly be coming after her to fulfill the same and similar roles in the future.

She was figuring everything out as she went along and it was clear on her face that she wasn’t taking the whole thing as well as she had at first imagined.

This event would be a much-needed break for her but at the same time, it would be another new thing that she needed to become accustomed to in a time where what she really wanted was normalcy.

Since we would be taken care of by staff once we got to the tournament, Tresha and Kent were coming along to attend to our father who was actually one of the organizers for the Astra and thus was a part of the advanced party to make sure everything was going well.

Gaine’s role was similar to ours except she would be tackling the task from a completely different perspective.

Where my sisters and I would be on the ground level interacting with the other kids and seeing how we could best form concessions with them her role would be in the stands talking to parents, persons of interest, and spectators all while looking from the above, seeing the entire event with more impartial eyes.

As we went to the carriage I looked back at the house one last time.

Now that I knew it was equivalent to a living creature whenever I looked at it I felt as though I was looking at a gigantic beast.

It was strong and dangerous but also warm as it treated us as though we were one of its very cubs.

Uncaring of my efforts I still couldn’t describe the building outside of the emotions I felt towards it.

My mind was still unable to keep a single memory of how it actually looked within itself wherever I tried to give it any thought.

The constant feeling of there being a hole somewhere in my mind never left me even after the carriage finally started to move.

***

When we were finally far enough from the house that we couldn’t even see it in the distance I looked outside of the window.

How it felt to do so now in comparison to when I was just a baby was a night and day difference as I could actually move my head around to observe things properly.

As I did so, patterns in the people and architecture that I saw around me became more and more vivid, as I took those patterns and mixed them with the knowledge I had learned during our lessons to form a basic understanding of what the culture and everyday life was of the people who lived here.

Similar to the first time I looked out of this window I noticed that many people, both men, and women, were walking around with weapons on their person.

I even saw a few with simple armor that fit naturally over their clothing covering most of the vital areas.

What I didn’t put enough attention to before was how people seemed to only move in groups.

Even the people who had all the hallmarks of being loners still decided to move around in small groups despite the signs that they didn’t really know each other.

Right in front of me, I saw a young boy with black hair, black clothes, a short sword on his hip, and a weak deminer separate from a group to enter some kind of store.

All the individuals of the group turned to him with sharp eyes staring at him and their surroundings until they were sure that the boy was safe in a building.

Once that was over they all continued to walk together in silence as if nothing happened.

I observed this paradigm of behavior way too often with way too many different clusters of people for it to be a coincidence.

It also made sense based on this country's history, it was originally founded by a group of adventures in an area rich in mana which had access to the underground.

Put simply before a couple of years ago this place would have been infested with deadly monsters in every nook and cranny in excessively large numbers,

Although things were relatively safe now that the worst of it had been cleared out and purged deep, scares still held firm in the culture of the people living here.

While I was observing more things about the people around me I suddenly felt my entire body constrict.

My vision became blurry and I could have sworn I saw giant tree roots wrapped around me.

I felt as though thousands of wires were embedded deep into my body and were slowly being ripped outside of me inch by painstaking inch.

I fell onto the floor and tried my best not to scream in pain, the entire world became white but after I perceived a few minutes passing, I felt like the last couple of wires finally left my body.