Chapter 2 – Jackpot

Chapter 2

Mat observed Rellan—his father, even if it still felt weird to think of him that way—sifting through a messy pile of papers and scrolls scattered on his desk. It was a familiar sight, Rellan was some kind of researcher. Mat wasn’t sure exactly what he studied. From the sketches of dilapidated buildings and weird hieroglyphs covering the walls of his study, he hypothesized some ancient civilization.

In the last six months, he spent many hours observing him meticulously go through dozens of books and ruined tomes, writing tiny annotations on journals and spare pieces of paper. Guided by an order only he understood.

There had not been any fireballs or flashy displays of magical power yet, but there were many inexplicable events. His parents moved and carried things around the house with little to no effort, no matter how heavy the object was. Just now, when his father wrote, his hands moved unnaturally fast and graceful, while his handwriting remained perfect. He could even swear he saw the ink move on the paper by itself a few times.

Rellan always wrote using the same pen, yet he never once witnessed him add ink in six months. The little silvery stick was a bit underwhelming from afar, but after he got a closer look, he spotted a series of small, strange, interlocking symbols carved on its sides. The delicate craftsmanship was superior to anything else he had seen in this world thus far.

What worried him the most was not if magic existed, but that he hadn’t been able to perceive anything mystical yet. In each novel he had read, the main character always discovered how to do magic in a couple hours to a day at the latest. Mat had not made any progress in half a year.

Either he had no talent, or he was missing some key detail—he hoped for the latter.

I didn’t go through the trouble of getting reincarnated to end up as a background character that gets killed off-page.

Mat sighed. Each time it was his father’s turn to watch over him, he ended up looking at him work on his theories for hours. With recurring ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ among other exclamations whenever a piece of the puzzle only he could see fit together.

He had been fascinated by his work at first, but since he could barely understand the new language, let alone read, it got boring fast.

Mat had no idea what his father was searching for, but he admired his zeal and patience. Occasionally he cursed some Philip ‘something-something’ for cutting his funds, though he never raised his voice. He was 99% percent sure ‘something’ wasn’t a nice adjective, but an insult of some kind.

Mat liked listening to his calming voice. Rellan had a different accent from anyone else’s.

Even if there were many words he didn’t know, he usually got what people meant. Boredom turned out to be an excellent motivator to learn the language. The only problem was that he couldn’t make people talk about what he wanted to know.

Being limited to the house or the lawn outside, there was only so much he could learn. He counted on his tiny hands the times his parents brought him along during their errands around the village.

With unpaved dirt streets and wooden buildings with thatch roofs, it hadn’t been an impressive sight, but the cheerful atmosphere and tropical climate held a charm. It reminded him of some tourist destinations he wished to visit in his previous life.

Ignoring Rellan’s ramblings in the background, Mat patiently waited for the weekly notification. It should b—

*Ding*

Weekly Summary: Life Experience: 46 XP – Skill Experience: 100 XP

No profession detected… all XP siphoned toward race enhancement.

• Name: Matthew James Reece
• Race: Human
• Profession: None

Body stats

• Strength: 1
• Dexterity: 1>2
• Constitution: 2>3
• Mind: 5>6
• Spirit: 6>7
• Perception: 3>5

Skills (1/7):

• Meditation (lv1>16)

Not much had changed apart from his stats increasing a little as his body developed. There must be some approximation since his strength value remained the same while he had grown a little stronger.

Learning from zero to move your limbs or flex your fingers was terribly frustrating. There was nothing worse than inhabiting a body that refused to follow your commands. He had improved a lot, but there was still a long way to go.

Now my sight is only partially crap. Hurray! And my limbs graduated from wet noodles to well… something slightly better, I haven’t thought that far.

Locked in his unresponsive body, Mat discovered a few things. The most important and frustrating was how hard it was to gain new skills. Despite all his knowledge, he was unable to learn another. He worried about only having seven, but that now seemed an unreachable goal.

He needed to perform an action to learn a skill, the knowledge of it wasn’t enough, otherwise, he would have learned a ton from his past experiences. Okay, maybe not a ton but at least some.

Being constantly watched and only able to crawl didn’t leave many chances to perform notable actions. Crawling clearly wasn’t a skill.

He tried drawing on the floor and walls of the house to test his theories, but with his mediocre dexterity and improvised charcoal from the fireplace, the results only astonished his parents—and not for their beauty. Making an innocent expression and pointing to his sister, Keandra, worked. That was until they spotted his dark nails dirty with coal. An amateur mistake, but it had been hard to clean the evidence without being able to reach any water.

I’m sure I can draw better, but I don’t think it’s worth it, at least not yet.

On the plus side, his past life had to count for something. He got most of his levels in Meditation in the first month, then it slowed to a crawl—no pun intended. It made sense that the higher the level the harder it got, he just didn’t believe the difference could be this large. He must have reached the limit of his past experiences and now it was all uncharted territory.

I should have paid more attention to those meditation tutorials on YouTube.

As for his second discovery, after the weekly update, he messed around for a day with his interface. When he focused on the word Human it opened a new window.

• Race: Human
• Grade: Red ★
• Next enhancement ➔ 2,823/10,000 XP

He didn’t know what the enhancement did, but it couldn’t be anything bad or too drastic. Anyone could reach it in less than five years with just the XP from Life Experience. His parents must have done it and they didn’t look different from a normal human. It couldn’t be anything drastic or harmful.

This window also proved the red color must refer to some kind of tier system. With each new discovery, new questions were added to the list. What did the star indicate? Was it some kind of secondary grading system? Why was there no star beside his skill? What did the enhancement do?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The best way to find the answer to the last question was to reach 10,000 XP. He got 100 XP for each skill level and 30-50 XP for Life Experience every week depending on his actions during said week. The first time he started crawling he got almost 80 XP and around 60 XP when he first visited the village.

Life Experience was a straightforward name, the details of how it worked were not. He could guess the life of a baby dependent on his parents wasn’t ideal.

Mat had a choice to make. Gradually piece together the rules and sneakily gain experience or ask the people who already had the answers. No point reinventing the wheel when he could get access to the information put together by an entire civilization.

Seems it’s time to start speaking.

At six months old it was a bit early, but he had too many questions. He didn’t delude himself into thinking he could pass for a normal baby forever; he was going to slip sooner or later. Might as well make clear he was a bit odd.

If he said his first word today, maybe in a month he could ask some simple questions. He was already considered weird since he always called his parents before he did his ‘physiological needs’. Peeing and pooping himself was already humiliating and he couldn’t stand to bear it a moment longer than necessary.

His first word was nothing special to him, though it might be for his parents. Having them both present would be ideal. He wasn’t sure how he felt about his new life and family. They had even given him a new name, Kai, but he never thought of himself like that. He was Mat, Kai was another person.

Don’t lose yourself in stupid thoughts, dumbass.

He wasn’t ready to let go of his name. He was an Earth teenager who got reincarnated.

This new world could be exciting, and his family was nice enough, he just hadn’t spoken to anyone in half a year, and he barely understood what was going on around him. There was a barrier between him and anybody else.

Naturally, his decision to start speaking was for purely logical reasons. No emotions involved.