Shades of the New World

'Citizens in this country are apparently divided into grades, and our family is receiving oppression from above, since the inn owner that Theor works for seems to have some personal hatred for my family,' Evin concluded.

Evin could probably solve most of the family's financial problems, if he somehow convinced his parents to listen to him… But he didn't know how things worked here, not to mention the fact of how his parents would react to having their two-month-old baby making decisions for the family.

But the amount of food that reduced every day was forcing Evin to consider the matter seriously. Less food meant worse health. Ask any historian about one-year-old children's death rates in medieval times and you would hear a horrifying number of one in four.

Evin didn't wish to gamble his life on a 75 percent chance, not to mention the fact that there was someone out there actively trying to starve him to death.

He didn't wish to do this, but he decided that he needed to get more information as soon as possible.

…

The day after, Evin began to actively start babbling more. Although he wished to ask his parents about the things he wished to know about, he still had to do things moderately. And over the next few weeks, Evin begun talking, albeit in a slightly broken way.

Lora was overjoyed at her boy's genius, constantly showering him with attention and praise. Theor was also quite happy, as well, making sure to talk to Evin as much as possible even though he seemed extremely tired. But Evin was a bit surprised to see them reacting to the situation rather tamely. Back on Earth, a child who could almost speak at his age was almost unbelievable. Perhaps it had something to do with him being a mage?

In any case, sfter some time passed, Evin decided to tackle the crux of the problem. 

"Hungry, ma," he said in a small voice after his mother breastfed him.

"We'll have some more in the evening, don't worry, ok?" Lora replied with a smile as she put the boy on the bed.

"But hungry, I'm telling da" Evin said again.

"Shush, child, don't be unreasonable. Your father's working out there, trying to feed us, we can't worry him like that," Lora replied.

"Why?"

The familiar question was thrown at her again and Lora noticed she was developing an acute hatred for the accursed word. Evin would question everything and anything, and Lora was getting tired of making up a nice and clean excuse for everything.

"Well, your da's employer is a very bad man, who makes your father work a lot, but doesn't give him enough food," Lora said absentmindedly.

"What employer?" Evin asked, his eyes beaming with happiness. Finally, the conversation turned to what he wanted.

"An employer is someone who has a lot of people working under him, called employees. The employer pays his workers coins so they will continue working for him," Lora explained.

"Why can't da employer?" Evin asked, pondering.

"Because he's a 3rd grade citizen…" Lora grumbled under her breath, but how could Evin not notice the golden opportunity that his mother threw at him.

"What 3rd grade citizen?" Evin asked in a curious tone. Lora, knowing that she fucked up, tried to divert the topic to something else.

"Evin, do you still have that lodestone you carry around, why don't you tell me more about that? I don't really see anything special about it, but you say that it shines brightly and pulses as well. I'm really curious about it, can you tell your mama more?" Lora asked in a cutesy voice.

"Ma, what's 3rd grade citizen?" Evin asked again, not even caring that he wasn't talking in forced baby lingo anymore. Lora tried to divert the topic many times afterwards, but Evin did not wish to let the matter go.

"Ugh, I know that mages are smart from birth, but I'm pretty sure you're one of those exalted Children of the Empress," Lora sighed.

Another interesting word entered Evin's ears.

'Children of the Empress?'

"What's Children of the Empress, ma?"

Finding a chance of having to not explain the societal structures of the kingdom to a child, Lora hurriedly started talking about the Children.

"They're like really, really smart children who are almost smarter than most other adults. And because of that fact, people started calling them the Children of the Empress, since Final Empress is the almighty ruler of our World," Lora narrated.

"Am I one?" Evin asked curiously. This could be the solution to the problem he was facing currently.

"I sure think so, but there are a lot of rumors about them. I heard that some of them could even talk and cast magic from birth. Although I've never seen one myself," Lora said.

Her last words forced Evin to think about the matter much deeper. If what Lora was saying was true, then Evin's situation could quite possibly be a common occurrence. These Children of the Empress were most likely reincarnators.

'But how can they know about the language and magic from their birth? Unless… they're originally from this world?' Evin felt like he had discovered something huge.

'But if they're truly reincarnated, then why don't my parents know about the truth of the matter?' Evin started thinking meticulously. Some dots started to connect in his head and he had cooked up a possible conjecture in his head.

Evin guessed that only some people know about the truth of these Children of the Empress. Aran was definitely one of them, with how he acted with Evin. There was probably no way for him to be one hundred percent sure about it, but the mage undeniably harbored suspicions towards him.

As for his parents not knowing about it, well, that could be chalked up to the difference of knowledge between educated people and simple commoners. Commoners didn't need to know that those genius children that they were praising were just frauds and posers. They didn't need to know about such knowledge, and the people in the know didn't bother to tell them about it.

With his newfound knowledge, Evin decided on a course of action and started implementing it. Over the next few days, he started to display far more intelligence than before. He would've never done such a thing before, but now he had a proper excuse to do so. Soon, everyone in the house got used to his intellect.

A week later, Evin fixed all his speaking problems and started asking his mother all sorts of difficult questions. But stubbornness took over Lora for some reason and she refused to talk about any of the things that he asked about. Evin couldn't know what the problem was, but perhaps she felt overwhelmed with her child's sudden growth.

So, Evin decided on a different approach. After making sure that his mother was gone, he trapped a young girl in one of the few rooms of the house and slowly closed the doors behind him. He crawled to the bed and motioned the girl to pick him up. The girl complied and picked the boy up to the bed.

"Elina, what's a 3rd grade citizen?"

"It's how the kingdom calls their citizens like your mother and father. I would be considered a 4th grade citizen, while your father's employer would be a 2nd grade citizen," Elina began and explained the social structure of the kingdom.

There were three social levels in the kingdom: Nobility, Magehood and Commonality. Nobles were divided into divided into six tiers: from Dukes to Barons, with Marquesses, Earls and Viscounts in between. The King stood atop them as royalty.

Mages were also divided into six tiers: At the top of the helm stood a Mage King or a Mage Queen. This position could also be overlapped with the position of a King. The kingdom's late king, Rowan Arcwall, and founding king, Judeus Arcwall, held both positions at the same time. But the current king Roland Arcwall was a normal person with no talents in magic, so the position of the Mage King was held by another.

Under the Mage King were High Mages. They were the arms, feet, eyes and ears of the Mage King. They were each responsible for various important matters relating to the kingdom's mages. There was the war faction, responsible for training mages to be better used in wars; the research faction which was responsible for developing and creating new applications of magic; the infrastructural faction, responsible for making life easier in the kingdom with the help of magic and the educational faction, responsible for the training and education of new mages.

Under them were Heavy Mages, Light Mages and Scholar Mages. They were the ones that made up the general mage populace in the kingdom.

Aside from the Scholar Mages, who focused on magical research, Heavy Mages and Light Mages were mostly used for war.

Heavy Mages specialized in building to huge spells to launch far beyond the capabilities of a Light Mage. Their powers shined during city sieges, when harassing enemy camps, or when ambushing enemy battalions on the move.

'Basically, magical heavy artillery,' Evin commented when hearing about them.

Light Mages, on the other hand, specialized more in close combat. Instead of the huge spells that Heavy Mages could cook up, they were more prone to create much smaller, but cost-effective and quick spells. They were also expected to be good at close quarter combat.

And finally, were Specialist Mages, who did special things. Elina did not know anything more about them, sadly.

But the topic that Evin needed to hear most about started coming out of Elina's mouth. The distinction of the commonality. Commoners didn't have fancy names, like High Commoners or Specialist Commoners. They simply received grades from the kingdom, four of them to be exact.

1st grade citizens were knights and distinguished members of society. The family of a mage was also elevated to this status automatically. But this couldn't apply to Evin since he needed to graduate the academy for that, or he needed to have a lot of money to buy the title for his family.

2nd grade citizens were people who either owned business properties, and soldiers. So merchants, blacksmiths, inn owners and farmers would fall into this category.

3rd grade citizens were people who worked under others. Peasants, workers, builders... service workers in general.

4th grade citizen like Elina were slaves or criminals.

Evin asked about how Elina came to Theor's house and the girl's answer was that Evin's grandfather, Ssatsko, found Elina in the forest nearby, shivering and starving, and took her into the house. Since she didn't have anything to identify her, the citizenship bureau graded her as a slave.

She also told Evin something interesting.

"I'm afraid I'm the reason why your family receives this ill treatment," she said suddenly.

"Why is that?" Evin asked

"The inn owner, master Norna… he wanted to have me as his bride," Elina said with a tinge of fear in her voice.

"Wait, how old are you?" Evin asked, exasperated.

"I'm not sure, my memories before I was found by master Ssatsko are very slight. But I'm sure that I'm either 13 or 14," Elina explained.

"How old do people usually marry?"

"15 to 20 is the norm for most, I might dare say," Elina said timidly.

"So I suppose you refused, and now that inn owner is trying to find trouble with us now," Evin concluded.

"I'm afraid so. I'm deeply sorry for causing this much trouble," the girl said, a slight shiver in her voice, clearly uncomfortable.

Evin realized that there was something else she didn't wish to talk about, so he didn't press the matter. He was just glad that the girl even bothered to entertain Evin's questions.

"No, no. Don't worry about these things. Everything will be fine soon. But I need you to tell me, how can a 3rd grade citizen become a 2nd grade citizen?" Evin asked expectantly.

"There is one way as far as I know. A 3rd grade citizen can take an examination in the citizenship bureau and if they are successful, they will be considered a 2nd grade citizen, but they need to have something to sell, or else they will just continue living like a normal 3rd grade,"

'Lora makes a lot of cool things, and Theor could perhaps sell some baked goods. I could also think of some new "inventions" to sell,' Evin thought inside.

'But we will need to take some great risks when attempting this. First of all, we lack the necessary capital to do anything… and if we fail, then the situation would be much worse than it is. Ugh, this is so frustrating,' Evin hated being poor. Even if he had a hundred ideas that could help him with his situation they all required some amount of money to work.

'But that all depends on whether we can become a 2nd grade citizen in the first place'

"Could you tell me about the citizenship grade examination?"

"I'm sorry, I don't know much about the details, but I heard that one has to be at least literate to attempt it"

"I suppose that's true. Can you read and write, Elina?"

"No, I'm sorry, but I think your mother knows how to, I've seen her preparing for the exam when master Ssatsko was around," Elina said, bringing Evin joy and happiness.

"Thanks Elina, you don't know how much you've helped me," Evin thanked the girl and started thinking about how to persuade his mother.

…