Runemaster 4

(Click HERE to read the previous chapter in this series)

Aden awoke to find himself crying, the final words of his dream making him apprehensive about his new calling, if he could call it that. He'd wanted to live his best life this time around, to stay healthy and to do some good in this new world. But fighting against a cunning god of death to restore the balance of the entire world was far more than he'd signed up for.

Not only was it clearly a monumental task, with unimaginable consequences for failure, but it also wasn't clear whether he could trust the information he received. The two gods were in the middle of a feud, so it was entirely possible that this was merely some sort of scheme intended to smear his brother's name and maybe get a loyal servant out of it.

If his version was true, though, then that meant that Aden had an important role to play in order to save the world, so ignoring it entirely seemed like a terrible idea. He was glad to help make the world a better place in whatever way he could, but he had to be sure whether this god's agenda was really one he agreed with, especially if he was going to be his avatar. He'd play it safe for now, and whenever the god told him something, he'd employ some good advice from his last life: trust, but verify.

At least as an avatar, he'd receive guidance to avoid critical mistakes. He'd promised himself to live a long and healthy life this time around, but he was barely a couple years old, and he'd already faced the threat of death for his ignorance. He would learn what he could from his avatar role, but until he determined whether he could trust his personal death god, he'd just live his life doing as much good as possible. He'd decide later whether to choose a side in the twins' feud.

Wisdom +1 (Total: 31)

Trust is important, but blind trust feeds both ignorance and evil.

ADMIN NOTE: Good call. I certainly don't expect immediate or blind trust, and I vow to prove myself to you.

With that settled in his mind, he returned his attention to his present situation. He realized that the tears flowing down his face weren't caused by his ominous vision; his sister had snuck up on him and woken him up from his nap with the weight of her curious gaze, which was always unnerving. It didn't help that she was just a couple inches in front of his face when he awoke. All of this together excited his infantile instincts, and a wave of startled fear ran through him.

His sister looked to be a couple years older than he was, though admittedly, Aden didn't know much about how this species aged. Regardless, her bright blue eyes were opened wide in fright as she looked down on her crying baby brother. He felt bad for her and started to fight back the tears, but a heartbeat later, he realized that his crying would work to confirm his status as a perfectly normal baby, so he just let the tears flow.

She tried to shush him, going through all the motions she'd seen her mother try, but of course with far less skill, until their mother came into the room in a rush. She looked around, took in the scene, and gave her daughter a knowing smile, "Ignored what I said and woke him from his nap, hm? What am I going to do with you, Ryl?"

Ryl, his sister, abashedly apologized to both Aden and their mom, then took her leave. His mom gently rocked him back to sleep, muttering all the while about her amusement.

Over the course of the next year, Aden—or Kadir, as he was now called—used his knowledge from his previous world to piece together a rough timeline of developmental milestones. In college, he'd once taken a course on developmental psychology, and with his bonuses to Intelligence in this life, he found it was easy to recall even the minutest of details. Of course, he wasn't human, so the milestones might differ somewhat, but it at least gave him a rough idea of what would be normal and what would probably convince his parents to kill him. Now that he recognized that those details had been within his mind all along, he grimaced at his nearly fatal mistake. He should have known better.

Wisdom +1 (Total: 32)

Learning from mistakes is the path to wisdom.

By the time he was two years old, he had already completed most of his quests, and he'd even gotten the second part for the Elden language quest. Now that he'd finished the listening and speaking portions, he had to practice reading and writing, and he got bonus credit for being understood. Learning to read and write proved impossible without direct instruction, though, so he mentally set that task aside for now.

His walking was also progressing slowly, but that was a good thing because it was, more or less, the pace that a normal baby should develop at. It was as the god had said: his mental characteristics were boosted by his previous experience, but his physical characteristics were limited by his current body. Even so, his increased mental capacities, along with knowledge from his previous life, made it easier to see the mistakes he made with his physical body, so it was much easier to train his body to do difficult things.

Difficult things like balancing with four arms, two of which he had no idea what to do with. As he learned to walk, he often found himself falling over because his extra set of arms threw his weight in an unexpected direction. It wasn't that complicated, but it was frustrating. He eventually got the hang of it, but he still sometimes found himself at a loss for what to do with four hands when two would do just fine. He practiced every day to improve his Strength and Dexterity, each of which he'd learned about through his Skills screen.

– Strength (Attribute) describes a person's muscle mass and ability to use it. Affected characteristics include carry capacity, lifting force, melee damage, attack power, jump speed, run speed, grappling (power), etc.

Current Strength: 4

– Dexterity (Attribute) describes fluidity of movement and the ability to react quickly and efficiently. Affected characteristics include ranged weapon effectiveness, stealth, dodge, grappling (technique), balance, weapon sense, motion sense, accuracy, etc.

Current Dexterity: 5

Now that he could speak Elden with natural ease, it was only a matter of learning the word "characteristic" before he'd be able to try changing his characteristics, as advertised by his Admin Privileges Skill. He hadn't come across it yet, but—

Wait. Why hadn't he tried saying it in English? He now had the physical ability to talk, so why not try it? His language quest had come with a warning to not speak English, but that only referred to how people would react if they heard a language from another world, right? He was apprehensive about trying it at first, even going so far as to ask for another audience with the nameless god for clarification, but all he got in response was a message in his action log.

Request denied.

Admin Note: A little caution goes a long way, but too much caution gets you nowhere. Don't be too afraid to live.

Aden took this as an invitation to try speaking the word aloud in English, but only when he was absolutely sure he was alone. It was only one word, anyway, and it should sound like childish nonsense to anyone who overheard.

He chose to try later that night, while everyone else was asleep. As he whispered the word, "Characteristics," he was greeted with another pop-up message, similar to the skills window that he was used to.

Characteristics

Name: Kadir Pelichros

Occupation: None

Level: N/A

Age: 2 years

Health: 12 hit points

Mana Capacity: 87 mana

Mana Regeneration: 8 mana per second

ATTRIBUTES

Strength: 4 (+)

Dexterity: 5 (+)

Constitution: 4 (+)

Intelligence: 31 (+)

Wisdom: 32 (+)

Charisma: 15 (+)

SKILLS

(Skill Name - Level)

Admin Privileges, Limited (Passive) - N/A

Spell Writing - Level 0

Observation - Level 1

Language: Elden (13%), English (97%)

Aden noted that, with the exception of the Elden language, the basic skills from his quests were not listed. He chuckled, recognizing that there's only so much potty training you can do before it stops being a skill and becomes an expectation. Seeing his attributes all laid out like that also helped him to realize just how far ahead his Intelligence and Wisdom were compared to his other stats. Each of the attributes had a small (+) next to it, which he gathered meant that he could use an unallocated point to increase it. A glance at his action log confirmed his guess with a successful Wisdom check.

Before allocating those points, though, he decided to get more information about the two attributes he hadn't learned about yet, Constitution and Charisma.

Constitution (Attribute) describes the body's physical resistances and overall health. Affected characteristics include hit points, disease resistance, poison resistance, natural armor, potion effectiveness, pain resistance, blood flow, etc.

Current Constitution: 4

Charisma (Attribute) describes the ability to effectively interact with and influence others to achieve one's goals. Affected characteristics include persuasion, intimidation, musical intuition, acting, attractiveness, speech, etc.

Current Charisma: 15 (includes 5 temporary points for Status: Toddler)

The moment Aden read the words disease resistance, he determined that he would be sure to always allocate some of his points to Constitution. Perhaps, with a high enough Constitution, he would never have to worry about getting sick again.

Before he could put both points into Constitution, though, he remembered the parting advice he'd received from his patron god: "a balanced soul is always in its element." With a sigh, he instead decided to raise his two lowest skills at the same time, bringing his Constitution and Strength up to 5. Eventually, he should be able to train his strength without spending Attribute points, but as a toddler, it was sometimes a struggle just to stay standing, so strength training was out of the question for now.

After adding the points, he was met with a new popup:

WARNING: Allocating points to physical attributes will often result in visible changes to your physical body. Do you wish to continue? Y/N

The message gave him pause, but would it really be an issue? As a toddler, he was in a phase of life when rapid growth was not only normal but expected. He imagined himself as the parent in this situation: what would he do if his child became larger or stronger, literally overnight?

He smiled at the memory of his own daughter, from when she was a toddler, and selected "Yes" to continue the process. Immediately, he felt a change begin. His muscles tightened painfully, and it took all of his mental capacity to keep from crying out. He cringed and shivered as a new layer of tissue seemed to crawl into place beneath his skin, thickening his hide ever so slightly. When it was done, he felt both heavier and lighter: heavier because of the extra mass, but lighter because of the added muscle to bear up his weight.

He worried suddenly about the degree of his physical changes. He hadn't expected a single point in two attributes to cause such a reaction, but now he worried that too much might have changed. He silently prayed that his changes would not get him killed, even as his head unexpectedly drooped in sleep.

When he came to, his mother was lifting him and commenting on his new weight, making a joke about growing boys. It seemed she had, indeed, written off his added bulk as a normal growth spurt. This was exactly the result he was expecting, but he still let out a little sigh of relief at her reaction, anyway.

She took him to their simply adorned table and fed him a breakfast of sliced fruit, talking to him softly in baby-speak. By now, he was able to freely communicate with his parents, as long as he kept it simple, asking them the sorts of questions he remembered his daughter asking when she was his age. He smiled inwardly at the delighted smile that bloomed on his mother's face every time he asked about simple things, like trees and flowers. And he couldn't keep the smile from his face when he realized that she was describing interesting differences from Earth.

It seemed that his mother was well-versed in the sciences of their world, and he listened with rapt attention as she described how plants got their nutrients primarily from ambient mana in the air, similar to how they drew energy from the sun back on Earth. The way she described it, mana appeared to be a form of radiation that was emitted by all living things.

A sudden ping from his action log confirmed that his understanding was sound with another successful Wisdom check.

With his mind on the subject of radiation, he naturally thought back to his cancer, and he asked the next question almost before he realized it, "Mom, what happens when people get sick?" His sister, Ryl, had briefly been sick with some sort of cold a couple weeks ago, so he figured the question was safe. He couldn't start discussing cancerous growths, but maybe he could learn some basics.

His mother thought for a moment before responding, "Well, there are lots of kinds of sickness. When Ryl was sick, she was only a little sick, so her body's mana was enough to help her body heal back up, strong and healthy, in just a few days. Most of the time, that's all it takes."

She didn't continue, likely hoping to avoid talking about death with a toddler, but Aden's curiosity demanded more. Her answer had opened his mind to the possibility of healing with mana, so he asked, "Can you heal someone else with mana, or just yourself?"

His mother paused for a second, and she gave him a warm smile, "Aren't you just the best little brother? It's wonderful that you wish you could help your big sister, but she's all better now."

She thought another moment before continuing, her words hesitant as she was clearly trying to explain a complicated subject in as simple terms as possible, "When someone is very sick, their mana sometimes isn't enough to heal, so they need someone to share mana with them. When that happens, the whole village gets together, and we all give a little of our mana to a big magic circle that gobbles it up and shares it with the sick person.

"We can only give a little at a time so we don't run out of mana and get sick, too, but after everyone shares, we all get to be happy together when the sick person gets better."

"Can you share with someone who's just a little sick, like Ryl, so they get better faster?"

"I guess you could, but it would be a big waste. You can't get enough mana to heal someone like that without a lot of people to share their mana, and then the spell might actually hurt them by giving them more mana than they could handle. Besides, why would that many people sacrifice their precious mana over something small, like the sniffles?" She smiled down at him, and he felt the warmth of her motherly attentions bear down on him, "They'd have to be someone really special, with something very important to do. Otherwise, it's just bed rest and a little patience."

Aden thought on this for a long while as he watched his mother busy herself about the house. He helped here and there, but for the most part, she didn't need the help of a small child. That left him alone with his thoughts for most of the afternoon.

Though his Spell Writing skill was still at level 0, he was already making plans for how to learn and practice magic. Healing magic was a priority, since it should allow him to heal from even the worst of ailments. No cancer this time around, whatever fate had in store.

It didn't worry him that his mother said it took a lot of mana, either. He had a couple of theories about how to fix that. From what he could tell, his mana pool was derived from his age multiplied by his Intelligence, added to the previous year's total. Of course, it was possible he was missing something; his ignorant assumptions had gotten him into trouble once already.

Regardless, while most babies didn't have much Intelligence to benefit from early in life, he had 25 extra points from his previous life that were giving him extra mana each year. What's more, he fully expected his Intelligence score to grow, just like every other child, because his knowledge mostly came from a different world.

A quick check of the action log showed that he'd gained a point of Intelligence just for listening to his mother's explanations. Just as his patron god had promised, he had some great advantages over other spellcasters in this world, all because he had the knowledge from his previous life.

On that note, Aden's speculations really began. He could verify his theories about the link between Intelligence and mana with some simple math each year, but his next theory would require research and testing. What if the reason healing took so much mana to heal was that they were simply flooding the person's whole body with mana? Maybe a deft application of mana directly to the affected areas of the person's body would be more mana-efficient, allowing for faster healing at a much lower cost.

The thought sent a thrill of excitement shooting through him. In his previous life, he had been neither a researcher nor a doctor, but now, thoughts of both professions excited him. He had learned a lot about germs and bacteria that likely weren't common knowledge in this world, and he could use that knowledge to do a lot of good. Even if he wasn't going to become some sort of magical doctor, healing skills would prove useful no matter what he did.

Then and there, he decided to let nothing stop him from becoming the best healer he could be. This "avatar" business may or may not be the best way to heal the world, but he could at least heal some small part of it a little more literally, through healing magic. Even if he never had a far enough reach to heal the whole world, he knew from personal experience just how big a difference healing could have in a single person's life.

It felt good to have a goal, something to work toward. His quests were one thing, but this wasn't just a task assigned to him by the far-off admin. It was a dream worth pursuing, one that would make the world a better place, accompanied by the resolve to make it a reality.

He couldn't wait to get started.