An Unborn Hero

ding

For spying on a private moment, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 10.

Achievement unlocked: [Novice].

Novice (Common)

You have reached level 10 in a skill, but don't rest on your laurels; 10 is far from the true maximum. Unlock new sub-skills to increase your skill caps. Boosts experience gain for all skills below level 10 by 10%.

"Private moment?" thought the hero, staring down at the blob. Which, with her new skill level, finally resolved into two blobs. Two blobs that were wriggling around each other fairly vigorously. "Eww! Mum! What disgusting things are you doing in front of your daughter?!"

The movements stopped and the blobs separated, but the hero wasn't around to notice, on account of zipping straight back to her morula and shutting off [Soul's Eye] with extreme prejudice.

"Well, I mean, I was just conceived, so logically they must have been doing that sort of thing recently. But... eww! I don't want clouds of Dad's sperm swimming around my little ball of cells! Eww!"

"What's wrong, dear?" panted Kellela Catter back on the outside, where her husband had suddenly backed off.

"[Detect Scrying] just fired again," replied the [Master Enchanter], Hayedalf Catter. "I swear we're being watched!"

"You've been saying that for days. And while that hood you came back with yesterday was certainly... spicy, this is getting old. Are you sure you aren't imagining things?"

"Skills don't break. Besides, I double checked." He pointed at a small device on the bedside table, which was flashing an orange light. "I'm the best damn enchanter in this kingdom. I'm absolutely certain that's not broken."

Kellela dragged herself out of bed, still naked, and waved her hands around, chanting a bunch of words that sounded incredibly mystic to the uninitiated, but that she knew basically translated as 'Oi! Mana! Stop lazing around and get your wriggle on. I have work for you!' The mana did indeed get its wriggle on, spreading around the room in a net, the view of which would have been certain to get the hero her next skill level had she still been watching. Of course, she wasn't, so the net failed to find anything of interest.

"Nope. I've got nothing. No-one here but us. No-one spying. No active magic in the area. Zilch. Nada."

"Well, yes. Of course there's nothing now; since they were watching, they know we're on to them. Red light for active scrying, orange if any scrying was detected in the previous hour. Besides, [Detect Scrying] keeps telling me that the scrying is coming from you. You swear you aren't just messing with me?"

"I swear! Why would I interrupt you half-way through? I don't have that sort of fetish."

"Well, something weird is going on..."

"Why would anyone even want to spy on us in bed? I mean... Let me rephrase. Why would anyone capable of breaking through all the wards on this place undetected want to spy on us in bed? With that sort of ability, there's far more entertaining places to scry."

"Think it's related to the Recorder of Merit incident?"

"Goddess, I hope not. I had to sit through a full security sweep yesterday, thanks to that blasted department of records in the basement."

"Well... Tomorrow I'm going to strengthen the wards."

"You did that this morning!"

"Then I'm going to strengthen them more. I swear, a fly won't get into this place by the time I'm done."

The mood thoroughly ruined, the pair of mages climbed back into bed and tucked themselves in for the night.

Meanwhile, the hero was wondering if a skill existed for rinsing her memories out with soap and water. Maybe a mental sub-skill for [Robust]. She would have been perfectly happy had the couple in question been safely on the other side of a TV screen, but sharing a room with them was icky. Living like a parasite inside one of their bodies while the other body was busy pumping foreign liquids into her home was worse. Still, there was grinding to do, and it wasn't going to do itself.

Reactivating [Astral Projection], this time the hero dropped straight downwards, carefully avoiding the icky couple and popping out of Kellela's back, drifting through the bed and the floor beneath, coming out in a new room. The range on [Astral Projection] still wasn't great, but it had reached the point she felt comfortable exploring another room or two.

[Sense Soul] showed nothing, the room not containing any life complex enough to need a soul to drive it. [Sense Vitality] showed slightly more, with an odd glowing patch within her range. Something alive without a soul? She didn't know what sort of creatures had souls, so it was hard for her to draw judgement. In fact, what she was looking at was a patch of mould hidden away behind a cupboard. That may have caused another 'eww' if she'd known, but thankfully, she didn't.

[Sense Mana] showed a few objects, but nothing she could make out with her blurred vision. She was actually in a kitchen, and the objects were enchanted knives, pans and equipment, but her blurred sight was nowhere near sufficient to work that out for herself. Not being able to see the structure of the room, short of someone enchanting all the walls, was a huge handicap.

"Wait, I'm being silly. Now that I'm outside, why haven't I tried to see with light?" thought the hero, her frustration finally culminating in a decent idea. "Back on Earth, I could see perfectly normally despite being dead, so it should be possible."

Thus began another training session, visualising how sight used to work and staring around the room for any hints of light. It took another few sessions of recovery and reuse of [Astral Projection], but, now that she was out somewhere where light actually existed...

ding

You have learnt the interesting party trick of seeing with your eyes closed, upgrading [Soul's Eye] with [Sense Light]. Level cap of [Soul's Eye] increased by 10.

For observing a new aspect of reality, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 11.

"Yes!" thought the hero, thinking equally hard about doing a fist pump. She couldn't wait to have fists again, to do it properly. If only she'd stopped to consider what light actually was, she might have gone further. A human eye may only be receptive to specific frequencies, but her soul could stretch further. She was only a small burst of realisation from infra-red vision, or radio, ultra-violet, or even x-ray, which alas wasn't as useful for seeing through clothing as TV would have you believe unless you also learnt to emit them, or else you stripped all the oxygen and nitrogen out of the atmosphere.

In visible light, the room... didn't really light up, on account of the way it was approximately two in the morning, and her low skill level resulting in even light-based sight remaining blurry. A rectangle sort of glowed in a way that suggested that it might be a window with some moonlight outside, so the hero floated over, but felt the connection back to her body tugging at her before she got close enough for a good view.

"So... is my vision crap, or is there not much light?" she thought. "I suppose my parents are in bed, so it's reasonable to assume it's nighttime, and there wouldn't be much point leaving lights on if there's no-one else in the room. I'll need to take another look in the morning. And in the meantime, this distance restriction is annoying."

She had been looking at everything carefully, as far as she could, but she felt she could do more. Yes, some level-up messages talked about repeated use, but most talked about something specific and meaningful. Like spying on private moments...

Putting that aside, perhaps there would be more to gain from deliberately stretching the link back to her body, rather than simply popping in and out repeatedly. She spent the remainder of the night inching closer to the window, returning to her safe little ball of cells each time the pressure got too much, then straining again the moment she'd recovered.

ding

For pushing your limits, [Astral Projection] advances to level 7

The level added another foot to her range. Still not enough for a good view from the window, so she kept on stretching, only to be suddenly jerked backwards as if she was on a bungee cord.

"Hey! Who's yanking my chain?! Oh, Mum's up? But it's still dark outside? Well, whatever. If she's going somewhere, she'll need light. Time to finally get a proper look around."

Of course, a powerful [Court Mage] would never bother with something as mundane as candles, instead invoking a basic light spell with nothing more than a flex of her will, such crutches as gestures and vocal chants unnecessary when such a basic spell was used by a practised user of magic. The light illuminated a slender lady with pale skin, but the hero's blurred vision was too poor to make out details like eye colour. She could see her hair colour, though, and Kellela's neon-pink pixie-cut identified her as either a resident of a proper fantasy world, or as a serial abuser of hair dye. The hero would be happy with either option, but offered up a small burst of sympathy for her awful bed-hair.

With hair like that, if only she was a decade younger, she'd make an awesome magical girl. Maybe she could play the role of an older, retired mentor of the new generation?

ding

For taking your first proper look at the world, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 12

The hero dismissed the latest blue box and gave a metaphorical frown, her attention drifting away from her mother briefly.

"While it's nice that everything I try seems to work, aren't I levelling too quickly?" she thought.

The hero occupation granted double experience for magical and combat skills. [Soul's Eye] and [Astral Projection] could be magic skills, if you squinted and stretched the definition a little. Likewise, [Robust] could easily be classed as something combat related. And then they gained another fifty percent from [Early Bloomer I], which if things were multiplicative, meant three times the levelling speed for all her current skills.

Looked at another way, it only meant three times the levelling speed.

She still had no way of accurately judging time, but trying to calibrate based on clues like when she'd seen other blobs around, she'd only spent around a week in the world thus far. Even if all her boosts applied, someone else would be able to do the same within three weeks. Getting a skill to level ten was only worth a common achievement, but nevertheless, it was an achievement. It felt like it should be harder than that.

The goddess had said something about reincarnates having higher stats than locals. There were no stats of any kind on her status. Would they appear later? There was no point having a strength stat when she had no muscles, for example. Alternatively, maybe that sort of stat wasn't a thing at all, and what the goddess referred to as higher stats meant a higher innate levelling speed.

That was actually true, and it certainly played a big part in the hero's rate of progress, but the effect wasn't so great as to explain everything. She was still underestimating the difference her unborn condition made. No need to sleep, eat or even rest, beyond waiting for her soul to recover between bouts of [Astral Projection]. No distractions. No hormones. Most importantly, no brain trying to earn its keep by throwing up random ear-worms at four AM.

Her poor mother had taken a full month to learn [Soul's Eye], and a further two weeks for [Sense Mana]. Levelling the skill to a useful point had taken even longer. Had anyone informed her that someone had learnt [Sense Soul] by accident, she'd probably have spat blood.

Unaware of the amount of envy she was storing up for her future, the hero resumed her look around, where a now-naked mage was sitting on what was very obviously a toilet, her face a mask of concentration. [Soul's Eye] was deactivated with the reaction time of an Olympic athlete.

Kellela paused in her night-time micturition, glancing around suspiciously. A brief bout of chanting resulted in another net of mana wrapping itself around the room, but discovering nothing.

"Darn Hayedalf is infecting me with his paranoia," she muttered, completely oblivious to her accidental voyeur.

Unnamed Human

Age: -9 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (12/50)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

- Astral Projection (U) (7/10)

- Robust (C) (3/20)

>> Hardened Soul (R)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer I (U)

- First Skill (C)

- Novice (C)