An Unbound Soul

It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that Kari came to visit, during which time I managed to gain a level in [Mana Sense], but failed to make any sort of headway into actually using magic. I had to admit Mum was right; I doubted I was going to get anywhere without a teacher. A quick knock came from our door, and Dad went to answer. Despite the lack of a lock, even the most enthusiastic knocker always waited for permission before entering.

"Welcome. Glad you could make it."

"And thanks for inviting me. I'm always willing to eat food I don't have to cook. Doubly so if I don't have to clean up afterwards, either. Hi Lucy!"

"Good evening."

Ha. She shared my old Earth attitude to food. Kari wasn't an unknown face in our house, and was as close friends with Mum as Dad was with Clana, but it had been many weeks since she had been over for a meal. Social gatherings between adults tended to happen in the tavern, and get-togethers between individual unrelated families were rarer. Kari was dressed completely in red, from a pale red dress to a scarlet shawl. She looked a little older than my parents, maybe around thirty in Earth years, but I wouldn't have liked to hazard a precise guess. Done greeting my parents, she turned to me.

"And you must be Peter, our new miniature magic enthusiast. It's nice to have a co-conspirator at last."

"Hewwo Kari."

Kari waved a hand, conjuring wisps of flame from nowhere, and making them dance around herself. [Mana Sense] showed mana building up around her and then changing... colour? flavour? It was shifting into something different and then bursting into flame. I was starting to hate [Mana Sense] already; it was the magic equivalent of the blurred vision I'd had when I was born. Enough to see there was something interesting there, but not enough to show me what it actually was. The flames flickered in increasingly intricate patterns, and for a moment the beauty of it pushed any attempts at working out what she was doing out of my head. "Wow, prethy"

Kari sprouted a big, smug grin. Apparently she liked to show off... Then with another wave of her hands the flames vanished, and the mana returned to normal. "So I hear you wanted me to teach you about magic?"

"Yesh, I have mana shenshe ath wevew two, buth no idea where tho go from here."

The grin dropped off Kari's face, her mouth switching to a perfect o shape. Huh? Did I just say something weird? Anything that could have been misinterpreted, given my speech impediment? Nope and nope, as far as I could tell. Kari looked up at Mum, obviously shocked at something, but it was Dad who spoke. "Did Lucy not warn you? Wanted to save the surprise?"

"Not at all. I was very clear that Peter wanted to learn magic."

"Well, yes, but I thought you were joking. Okay, in retrospect, you were pretty explicit about it. Not sure why I thought it was a joke."

I peered at Kari. So Mum had warned her about the whole intelligent baby thing, but she'd thought it was a joke? Why was she waving fire around at me then?! Wouldn't that be dangerous? What if I'd tried to grab it or eat or something, like regular babies would?

"His intelligence stat is eleven. Don't worry, he can take whatever you throw at him."

There was a pregnant pause, giving birth to lots of other little pauses, until Dad couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Hello? Kari? You okay in there? I was expecting a snide comeback of 'what, higher than yours?'"

The pause resumed. Kari appeared to have crashed. Maybe she needed a reboot? No, wait, she was moving again. "How the h..."

Nope, she stopped again. And then tried yet again, this time in a more controlled voice. "Learning [Mana Sense] was the correct start. The next step is to get [Commoner] to level ten, then switch class to [Apprentice Mage]. Once you switch class, you can start picking up some basic spells or try to learn more direct mana control skills. But if you don't mind me asking, how did you learn [Mana Sense]? That's not the sort of thing you should have been able to do without a teacher."

Yay, some concrete info at last. So I couldn't learn any magic until I'd maxed out [Commoner]? That sucked. And it wasn't as if learning [Mana Sense] was hard. I just had to drain my mana pool. Ah, of course, I could only do that because I had [Inspection]; without that, I would have had no way to use up my mana. "Feewing outh my mana poow whiwe draining ith with inshpecthion."

"Yes, that would work; it's always easiest to sense your own mana. I'm impressed you worked it out on your own, though. In fact, I'm impressed with everything. Right, I've decided. I'm making you my apprentice!"

Umm... What? Didn't I get a say in this? Apparently, Dad felt the same way. "Oi, that's a bit hasty, isn't it? You haven't even sat down for dinner yet."

"Hasty? As if I have a choice. At the rate he's going, he'll surpass me before he's even out of diapers. I need to step in while I've still got a chance!"

I felt my eyes narrow as she said the forbidden d word. May her torment be agonising and eternal... She looked back from Dad to me and flinched; apparently my excrement related animosity was leaking. Kari deflated slightly and sighed. "Okay, fine. Dinner first."

I nibbled slices of overcooked, mushy carrot while everyone else ate some sort of vegetable pie. It wasn't as if we never ate meat, but it certainly wasn't an everyday thing. Maybe once every one or two weeks. I wasn't sure which of the mystery animals the meat came from, and wasn't sure I wanted to find out. The thought of eating those weird creatures from the pastures was discomforting, to say the least. Was the inside of a rainbow beast as colourful as the outside, even if their milk wasn't?

The meal over, Kari started sharing more concrete information about mage classes.

"So, I'll try to give you a bit of an outline of how the magic class and skill trees work. You start off by learning [Mana Sense] to unlock the [Apprentice Mage] class. Once you take [Apprentice Mage] some basic spells will immediately unlock in the System's shop. The exact spells you have available will correspond to the affinities of mana you are attuned to. Putting the description of affinities aside for a moment, taking any two spells from a particular affinity will unlock a new class for that affinity. For example, if you learn [Warm] and [Ignite], you would be able to change class to [Fire Mage]. If you take classes from multiple affinities, you'll unlock higher ranked complex affinity versions. For example, I've maxed out [Earth Mage] and have now switched to [Life Mage]. Once I max this one, then I'll be able to take [Wood Mage]."

Wait, if each class was one rank up, doesn't that mean [Earth Mage] was rank three? She's only thirty-ish, and she'd maxed out a rank three class? Why was rank four considered so high then? "Wow, you've maxed outh a ranw three cwash?"

"Ah, no. You see, [Apprentice Mage] is a rank one class. Any class with 'apprentice' in the title is rank one. It's not something that comes up for most people, since apprentice classes are only seen relating to magic or combat. After that, simple affinity classes are rank two and complex affinity rank three, so I've completed a pair of rank one classes and one rank two. It's far too early to start talking to you about rank four magic classes, and I don't know much about them, anyway. I'm unlikely to reach those heights in my lifetime."

Oh, so she wasn't quite as high as I thought then. I didn't have a good grasp on what was considered fast progress, but I knew both my parents were still rank two. If it took until thirty for them to complete rank two, that would be roughly one level per year, implying rank four at seventy, given the way the level cap doubled for each rank. A rough estimate, but one that implied that reaching rank four would be tough.

"Choosing the path you want to take will require you to know the affinities you are attuned to. Your affinities are fixed at birth, a property of your soul itself, so you only need to check once and your options will never change. There are three ways to find out. The first two are specialised magic tools and the rank four version of your [Inspection]. I guess a sufficiently puissant mage could replicate the effects of the magic tools with their own mana, too. In any case, those options aren't open to us as we have neither the manpower nor the tools. Which leaves option three, the blatantly obvious one. You pick up [Apprentice Mage] and go look in the shop. The disadvantage being that you have to actually switch to a mage class before you can find out your options, but I get the impression that you're going to want to pick a mage class regardless of what affinities you're attuned to, so it doesn't matter."

So basically, until I maxed out [Commoner] I wouldn't even know what sorts of magic I'd be able to use, let alone be able to actually use any? That was rather irritating, but she was right. As long as I could use magic at all, I was still going mage.

"There are fourteen affinities, split into seven pairs. Fire and ice. Earth and air. Water and lightning. Light and darkness. Life and death. Body and soul. Space and time. You can be attuned to one side of each pair at most. Some pairs might be missing for you completely; very few people are attuned to either space or time, for example. Talking about the abilities and limitations of each affinity is a humongous topic, and to be honest, I've only researched my own options in any sort of detail. I can give you a brief overview of each some other time."

Hmm... Actually, some of them seemed a bit dodgy. What if I switched to [Apprentice Mage] and found my only attuned affinities were death and darkness? Demon lord was not on my list of future job considerations!

"And with that, we've covered one option of the many. While it's the route I know best because it's what I'm aiming for myself, there are other options available. It might be that you don't want to specialise in individual affinities at all, in which case [Apprentice Mage] lets you pick up [Mana Control], which in turn lets you switch to the [Thaumaturgist] class. Going that route allows you to manipulate raw mana and spin it into whatever attuned affinity you desire, without the aid of spells. Your strength in any one affinity would be reduced in exchange for flexibility. Or maybe crafting will be more your thing, in which case you can take [Basic Runecrafting] and become an [Enchanter]. Then there are all the support skills you might want to consider aiming for. [Mana Finesse] is definitely worth it, and if you're going to be casting a lot, then [Enhanced Mana Recovery] or [Enlarged Mana Pool] are handy. Finesse comes from practise while holding a mage class, recovery is unlocked by getting [Meditation] to level ten, and [Enlarged Mana Pool] by running out of mana repeatedly."

So in the worst case, I could still go [Enchanter]. [Thaumaturgist] wouldn't help if I could still only use attuned affinities, but it was nice to know there was an option even if I had no affinities available. Nevertheless, that was a lot of skills she'd named. "Soundsh wiwe ith thawesh wothsh of shouw pointhsh tho wearn magic."

"Indeed. Although it helps that spells are half price compared to regular skills, the same as combat artes. And now that I've gone over the basics, what else do you want me to talk about? You can't take your next step until you finish up [Commoner], but we can talk all you like."

"Umm, you've awready covered pwenthy for thoday, thanwsh very much."

Kari gave me a betrayed look, as if she was some sort of abandoned puppy. No, really, you've talked enough already. Seriously! This is a dinner table, not a lecture theatre. Kari huffed and looked back at Mum. "So what's up with this whole hyper-intelligent baby thing, anyway? I mean, I know there's been some weird rumours going around the village, but I wasn't expecting this."

"He was born with a high rank intelligence boosting trait, that's all. It took some getting used to, I'll admit, but to us it's normal now. I suspect that we're going to be in for a serious shock if we ever have another child, though."

I could hear Cluma screaming in the background, a sound I'd long since learned to tune out. Dad looked forlornly in her direction, the walls of two houses not being enough to silence it. But while I may not be a normal baby, I wasn't completely convinced Cluma was either, so they probably shouldn't use her as their benchmark.

"You should offer to swap for a few days. Get the proper full baby experience for yourselves."

Mum and Dad grimaced at each other, but I couldn't say I was against the idea. I might get to fluff Clana again, not to mention eat her cooking. She would be very thankful after handing off Cluma for a while, right?

"No thanks. I think we'll stick with what we were blessed with."

Pity... The lecture over, Kari summoned her flames again. Now I knew what it was she was doing, using a mana control skill to convert ambient mana into fire affinity, but I still couldn't track the process with [Mana Sense]. She threw earth affinity into the mix, forming small stones in mid-air, and having the flames dance around them. Then she moved on to actual spells, which again seemed to involve more than a baby-safe amount of fire. This was all good training for my [Mana Sense], even if I couldn't make out the details, ready for when I grew into a proper mage myself.

ding

Skill [Mana Sense] advanced to level 3

Class [Commoner] advanced to level 4

And I was determined it would be sooner rather than later.