An Unbound Soul

I managed to last until my first birthday without picking up any more questionable traits. Or any more traits at all, for that matter. I had no idea if four was above or below average and really didn't want to ask; any questions about traits risked me leaking information about my [Abnormal Soul]. But after tomorrow, that would all become irrelevant.

Birthdays weren't lavishly celebrated here, but they were acknowledged, at least for children, and today we held a little party. Clana and her family came around, and brought cake. I even got to eat some. Alas, despite how gorgeous it was, my mind was stuck elsewhere. Tomorrow we were going to visit the town clinic, run by a man called Richard. Apparently, he had a skill that would tell him my traits. Tomorrow I'd be found out, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I could avoid it by telling my parents my set of traits now, but then I'd have to explain why I already knew them but hadn't said anything. Was that better or worse than Richard seeing them? I suppose seeing the trait on its own wouldn't be too bad. It wasn't like it outright said I was reincarnated from another world. In a way, it was actually a bit of relief. That trait had always been a weight hanging over my head, and tomorrow, for better or for worse, the weight would be gone.

The party finished, evening came, and I spent a restless night playing various scenarios in my head of how tomorrow was going to go. Mum had admitted that she'd been in a complete panic when I was first born, but had assured me everything was fine now. I think she'd long since stopped worrying about what I was, so the part of my brain that was being logical was insisting everything was going to be fine. Unfortunately, humans were not inherently logical creatures, and the rest of my brain was drowning out the sensible bit with progressively worse invented horror stories. Even if a year was longer here—meaning I'd learned to walk long ago, despite today being my first birthday—there was no way I could be independent. Independence demanded a lot more than an ability to walk.

Eventually, morning came, and Mum carried me towards the clinic, Dad trailing behind. It was a beautiful sunny day, with only a light breeze. For some reason, my various horror scenarios tended to play out in heavy rain, or at least mist. The clinic itself was an extra room bolted onto the side of Richard's house, containing little more than four beds, which were themselves just straw mattresses raised slightly off the floor. There was certainly no medical equipment, or any of the trappings I would expect from a 'clinic'. I knew this world had no advanced technology, but from the looks of this place, I really didn't want to get sick here.

Richard greeted us, looking at me with interest. Apparently he had visited us before, but while I remembered visitors around my birth, I couldn't see properly back then, and his face wasn't one I recognised. Then, for a brief moment, his face flickered. If I hadn't been looking straight at him at the time, I wouldn't have noticed the change in expression, but now it was obvious. What was previously the smile of someone welcoming us was now the smile of someone trying very hard to smile. The bulk of my brain immediately started flooding my poor logical section with I-told-you-so's.

"Right, where to start... How about the light-hearted one? He's inherited his father's [Xenophilia]."

What? Why? He was supposed to deal with [Abnormal Soul], not spout out that one! "You didn'th have tho shay thath one!" I complained, my age condemning me to a heavy lisp even if I'd finally mastered the local language.

I clung tightly to mum, and I could feel my face flushing. And, through the cloud of embarrassment, I realised that I actually cared more about that than I did about [Abnormal Soul].

Wait... There was something else important he said there, that I was too busy burying my face in Mum's chest to notice. Did he just say Dad had [Xenophilia]? Well... he did seem rather friendly with Clana, and there was that incident when I first realised she was catkin. To think I was worried about them finding out my secrets, when instead I was getting all the juicy gossip on Dad instead.

While I was playing through all that, the conversation with Richard carried on without me.

"Does he have [Genius] like we suspected?"

"No. There are four traits in total. Along with the rank one [Xenophilia] are the rank two traits [Early Bloomer] and [Curious]. I'm not able to see the name of the final trait, which means that it's rank four or five."

He couldn't see it... After all this worrying, he couldn't even see [Abnormal Soul]! Well... That kind of spoilt the whole day. And from the way he spoke, it sounded like rank four was high, while five was the maximum.

"[Genius] is only rank three, so we can rule that out. There is a rank four version of [Genius] called [Erudite] but his intelligence stat is too low for that. It's probably something else entirely. On the other hand, both intelligence and wisdom are at levels appropriate for someone coming of age, so whatever it is must provide them some boost. I'm afraid I can't think of anything that fits the description, but I'm not well versed in uncommon and high ranked traits. It's also possible that it's a unique. Don't worry, though. There's no such thing as a negative trait. Even if it has some sort of downside, Peter is sure to come out ahead."

The last sentence was directed at Mum, who was looking unhappy. "What? Oh, I'm not worried about the trait you can't see. I was thinking about the ones you can."

Hmm? Was having [Xenophilia] going to cause me problems? The other two certainly weren't bad or weird in any way.

"How so? [Early Bloomer] and [Curious] have nothing but upsides."

"Do you really think this village of ours is big enough to contain someone who holds [Curious]? Peter is sure to want to leave once he grows up."

Ah... I see, so that's what was worrying her. I had this unexplained intelligence and mystery trait, and the only thing she was concerned about was that I might want to leave? By this point, the part of my brain that was being logical all along had the paranoid part of it on the ropes. While the invisible wrestling match contained within the confines of my head, Dad spoke up to reassure Mum.

"That's a long time away yet, my dear. We still have many years ahead of us as a family. Besides, even if he wants to head out to see the world, it's not as if he'll forget to write to his old folks. Right Peter?"

Yup, I agreed completely. "Wite!"

ding

Charisma increased by 1

"Impressive. Apparently, his lisp is so cute that he earned a point of charisma from it."

Eep, was he still reading my status in real time? Well, it didn't matter; it wasn't getting any worse, despite the way dad was now snorting with laughter. "Yup, you were right all along. He really is my son. Just, you know, with a few more brains."

The hard part about traits over, Richard read out the rest of my status. There were no surprises in store there, although he did point out that [Curious] had doubled my soul point income, which was a significant advantage even without any other traits. I thought everything was done, until Richard looked right at me while discussing my mystery trait.

"You could take him into town and find someone with a higher level in [Analysis], or else you could wait for him to read his own status. Given the rate of his mental development, I doubt you'll have long to wait."

He emphasised the not long to wait while staring straight into my eyes... He knew I could read my status! How?! Oh, it was all the fault of [Xenophilia] again, wasn't it? The way I'd reacted when he read it only made sense if I already knew about it.

"We've waited this long, so a bit longer won't hurt. I don't think it's important enough to need to take a trip back to Dawnhold. Thanks for your time."

"You're welcome. Take care."

As we left Richard's house, I was in two minds about how well that had gone. I was hoping to get rid of the weight from over my head, but now nothing had changed, except that Richard had immediately spotted that I already knew my own traits. But Mum had been more concerned that one day I'd want to leave the village than exactly what my other trait was. They'd shown over and over again how ridiculously over trusting they were. Really, why had I ever been worried? In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they knew I could read my own status, and had deliberately chosen not to pressure me.

"Abnormaw shouw."

"Sorry?"

"My other thraith ish abnormaw shouw. Ith'sh ranw four, and yesh ith'sh reshponshibwe for me being, weww, abnormaw. Ith awsho mawesh me highwy reshishthanth tho shouw magic."

That wasn't really a lie; the reason I got the trait was the same as the reason I was overly intelligent. Both parents needed a couple of seconds to process my butchered speech into something intelligible, after which Dad gave some commentary.

"I've never heard of that trait. It's nice that it has no negative effects, but a resistance to soul magic isn't something that would be useful in your day-to-day life. No sentient race is capable of using soul magic in the first place. There are rare monsters that use it to send victims to sleep or cause other mental effects, but you would never see one outside of a dungeon. It would be handy for a delver, but the high-level ones all have enchanted gear that can do the same thing. But if it has the same effect on mental stats as [Genius] then I can see how the addition of a strong affinity resistance could raise it to rank four."

Monsters, dungeons and delvers... I'd already asked about monsters, but it turned out they weren't something we needed to worry about at all here. They existed, but only occured in regions of high mana density—mana fields or dungeons—and there weren't any nearby. Even then, the surface mana density was limited even in the worst areas, and the stronger varieties of monsters only dwelt within dungeons. The regular non-magical wildlife wasn't seriously dangerous, so this world didn't require adventurers in the traditional fantasy trope sense. Any responsible adult could head into a forest and pick herbs without any need for combat skills. Or even children, depending on the exact local wildlife. Instead, the equivalent occupation was delving; those who delved into dungeons, fought the monsters there and brought back precious metals and magical resources that couldn't be found anywhere on the surface.

Of course, it went without saying that I was considering becoming a delver when I grew up. But at the moment, it was still only a consideration; I didn't have enough information to make an informed decision. Given that I was living in a fantasy RPG, what more appropriate occupation would there be for me than diving into dungeons and slaying monsters? It would certainly be more interesting than farming, but there were still questions. Did delvers earn skills and levels through combat faster than safer occupations? What was the casualty rate like?

My parents didn't know a lot of detail. We didn't even have village guards or soldiers who might know more about combat skills. Heck, the village didn't even have a fence around it, and not only had I never seen anyone lock their front doors, but I'd never seen a front door with a lock. This really was a closely knit and highly trusting community. If we were ever targeted by bandits, they'd go through the village like a hot knife through butter. Trying to express concern about that to Mum failed because I didn't know the words for bandit or criminal, and couldn't explain well enough to get across what I meant. It just wasn't something anyone seemed worried about, and it wasn't as if this village was brand new, so empirical evidence would suggest they weren't completely wrong.

While I was busy with my internal monologue, Mum chimed in with the obvious observation.

"So you really can access your own status then. Is the reason you didn't say anything because it called you abnormal?"

"Yesh... Shorry."

Mum gave me a squeeze.

"Silly. You need to stop worrying so much."

No, you all need to start worrying more. Seriously! But... I had to admit, the whole mindset was nice. I really didn't think I wanted to spend my life farming, but nevertheless, spending my life in a place like this wouldn't be entirely bad. It was relaxing, not in a physical way, but mentally.

As we arrived home, I once again tried to look into the System's store in the hopes anything had changed since my birthday yesterday.

No skills currently eligible for purchase.

Guess not. But now that I'd admitted that I could access my status, nothing else was holding me back from asking how it worked.

"Can you expwain a bith abouth shthathush and wevewsh, and how tho geth shwiwwsh? Ath the momenth ith thewwsh me I have nothing avaiwabwe tho purchashe."

I couldn't wait until I had enough teeth and mouth control to talk properly... My parents could understand me well enough, given a bit of processing time after each sentence, but strangers tended to struggle. It was why I usually keep my mouth shut while around other people.

"That's a pretty big subject. Let's see, where shall we start?"

Dad went on to explain the basics. The reason I couldn't buy any skills was because you had to actually do some learning for yourself to earn rank one skills, rather than the System doing absolutely everything for you; if I wanted [Basic Farming], I would need to actually plant seeds and tend fields first. Not for long, but I did have to do something. Being a fresh one-year-old who had only recently added walking to his skillset, with talking still a work in progress, that was kind of limiting. Fortunately, he did point out one that I could learn, and it was a good one. A proper isekai staple and the rank one version of the rank three [Analysis] Richard had just used on me to read my status; [Inspection].

Fortunately, the educational aspect was only for rank one; higher rank skills had other requirements, generally needing to get a lower rank skill to its level cap, like the way reaching level ten [Inspection] would let me buy the rank two [Appraisal].

It wasn't just traits that were ranked; classes and skills were also assigned a rank between one and five. Classes were your job, and let you buy higher rank skills and level them quicker. Skills were what you could do, while traits described a bit of who you were as a person. Levelling a class was surprisingly boring; higher rank classes gave stat increases, but right now there really was no result other than the extra soul point. Not that levelling was pointless; you couldn't change class without capping out the level of the previous one, a cap which got progressively higher with each rank. Each class also had its own set of requirements that had to be met before you could switch to it, like owning the [Basic Farming] skill before you could switch to [Farmer].

My traits were supposedly fixed now, short of some sort of traumatic event that fundamentally altered my personality. Dad couldn't tell me much about titles, which were apparently rare. They were supposed to be granted for particularly spectacular actions, but beyond that fact, the only thing he could tell me was that negative titles were a thing that existed. He also helpfully informed me I shouldn't let my health reach zero. Well... Obviously.

It was fortunate that the System was so pervasive, so even my poorly educated family could give me a decent overview. It was more or less required knowledge, like the way that everyone knew that breathing was an important thing that they should continue to do. There was one gaping hole that he'd skipped, though.

"How do I wearn magic shwiwwsh?"

His face fell, making it obvious he didn't know. I'd already waited a year—or over a year, if I was going by Earth time—to get my hands on magic. There had to be someone who could teach me... Did we have any mages in the village, or was everyone a farmer?

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about magic. I believe there's a rank one skill that you need to buy before you can start learning to do anything with it, but I have no idea how to get it. Richard can use healing magic, so we'd be better off asking him."

Wait, what? Healing magic? So, that 'clinic' was just somewhere for people to sit while he cast spells at them? How good was healing magic? Maybe I didn't need to worry about getting sick after all. I apologised to Richard in my head, only to be surprised by Mum chiming in.

"There is a skill called [Mana Sense] that's the first step, but you do need to speak to a proper mage. Richard isn't the only one; there are a few earth magic users around here too. Very useful for tilling fields. How about we invite Kari over for dinner one evening?"

So not only did Mum know more, but there were several mages in the village, including one who sounded like she would be happy to teach me. Magic, here I come!

"That's a good idea. It's been a while since we last had a get together with Kari. But there's still a couple of hours of daylight left. If you're interested in learning [Inspection], I can give you a tour of our fields right now. With everything you've been doing with your mum, you can't be far off. It probably just needs a bit of variety."

With the explanation over, and a good chunk of the day still left, Dad made good on his suggestion for my new skill, and we set off towards the fields.