Chapter 3 – The First Step

Chapter 3

Finally able to communicate with other people, time moved faster. There were always new things to learn and places to explore.

In his previous life, Mat had been unable to travel for both health and financial reasons. Comfort was taken in having the whole world at his fingertips, to know and see what was happening on the other side of the planet in seconds. Now he had no way of knowing what was going on with the other side of the island he lived on, let alone the planet. It was a new reality he had to adapt to.

It didn’t take him long to confirm magic and spellcasters existed. They shaped the Essence of the World to their desires. Alana didn’t exactly call it Mana, but there was no better translation for magic energy in his opinion. He asked how he could become a mage, but his mother smiled and told the first of a long series of ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older.’ Her smile reminded him of when he proclaimed he would become an astronaut in elementary school.

Oh, sweet innocent times…

He was dying to learn more about magic, it was freaking magic! But showing so much interest in something he should not even understand would be suspicious. He could wait a little longer.

Damn! I wanna know! I should have thrown a tantrum, Mat berated himself. Some people—namely his sister, Keandra—said he cried in his sleep that night. She was lying.

New discoveries caught his attention. His village was called Whiteshore, located on the northwest side of Yatol Island, the third largest of the seven major islands of the Baquaire Archipelago. He had wanted to ask about other nations and their relation to the archipelago, but that would be an unusual question to come out of a toddler.

Mat cursed himself for being such a patient person. Why can’t my stupid brain stop thinking of the consequences? Just why! Future problems should be for future-Mat to worry about.

Despite his sound reasoning, he stuck to his initial plan. He didn’t care if people thought he was a weirdo, he just had no idea how they would react if they found out he had the memories of his previous life. What would they think and say, would they throw him out of the house and burn him at the stake?

That was one thing he didn’t wish to know.

To make sure he didn’t betray himself, he decided to only ask questions about things he could point at, and subjects mentioned by someone else first.

He was walking by the seaside with Alana, looking for seashells brought to shore by the waves, when he pointed to the sea.

“All the water you see is part of the Shallow Sea for miles and miles, further than you can imagine,” Alana explained with a shining smile as she looked at the sea with the same gaze she gave to his father, Rellan.

“What does shallow mean?” Mat innocently asked, staring at the waves sparkling in the low sun.

“It’s the opposite of deep, it means there is little water. If you were to go under the water, it wouldn’t take you long to reach the bottom. Do you understand, Kai?” Alana looked at Mat, who smiled and nodded.

“However, it isn’t called ‘shallow’ only for that, the main reason is that there is very little mana in this region. You don’t have to worry about it, it’s not a bad thing. Thanks to the low mana, most humans aren’t interested in these islands, let alone higher races. And only a few animals become scary awakened beasts. We are safe here, blessed by the guardian spirits of the archipelago.”

Alana kissed him on the forehead. “Now, my smart little boy, let’s go home. You’ll have time to become a researcher like your father when you grow up.”

After such revelations, Mat heard none of this, he was completely lost in his world.

That may explain why I can’t perceive any mana, maybe I’m not completely untalented. More importantly: ‘higher races’? What the actual fuck!

By the time Mat was able to put order to his thoughts, they were already in front of their house and his mother was cooking dinner.

I must be patient. I’ll get my answers…

* * *

Slowly learning about Elydes—as this new world was called—Mat reached his second birthday. It was an important milestone in the Baquaire Archipelago. As they had done with Kaendra, it was tradition to bring every child to the sea for their first ‘swim lesson’, usually a glorified small dip.

The aim was to learn the Swimming skill—the first and only skill for most kids—and introduce him to the workings of the Guide, aka, the interface that showed his status.

It usually took a couple weeks to a month to get the skill if the parents gave consistent lessons and the child was cooperative. Keandra always boasted about how she got Swimming in a week, but with his sister’s stubborn and bold personality, that was only to be expected.

Putting aside his overachieving sister, Mat prepared for the big day. He would finally be able to get some answers.

• Name: Matthew James Reece

• Race: Human

• Profession: None

Body stats

• Strength: 1>2
• Dexterity: 2>3
• Constitution: 3>4
• Mind: 6>7
• Spirit: 7
• Perception: 5

Skills (2/7)

• Meditation (lv16>28)
• Acting (lv1>7)

The growth in his stats had been frustratingly slow. The most important change was his new Acting skill that popped out five months prior.

Mat wasn’t sure how to feel about that, it was like saying he was good at deceiving his family.

Knowing children were not expected to interact with the Guide before two years of age, he wasn’t too upset he only gained two skills. There were already many things to learn in his everyday life in the village. He also mastered the new language and was trying to teach himself to read.

The first step had been to ask his father to read him something and ask a few questions, while not showing too much interest.

There was a distinct lack of children’s narrative in his collection, but Rellan was happy he showed curiosity in his work and was more than eager to read him a manuscript about some long-lost civilization. He loved those books, even if they were written with archaic words.

They also had an abundance of illustrations—maybe because they were handwritten—that gave him an easy excuse to look at them later. He then patiently went over what his father read and pieced the puzzle together.

While not the best method, he enjoyed it. He was a tiny Indiana Jones, sitting on the floor of his father’s study and deciphering an ancient text to discover its hidden secrets. The unmistakable smell of old paper only added to the experience.

He was sure his parents had a hint of what he was doing after he spent so much time with his nose in those thick tomes. They must believe he imagined himself reading like his father, never considering he would succeed.

Walking down the familiar path to the sea with his family, this place felt like paradise. They were surrounded by palm trees and colorful flowers.

One more detail made this day even more exciting.

• Race: Human
• Grade: Red ★
• Next enhancement ➔ 9,926/10,000 XP

He was so close to his goal, which made the idea of getting a new skill more appealing. The weekly summary was in a few hours. If he got lucky, he might reach 10,000 XP by then.

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Rellan and Alana entertained most of his innocent questions, but they were tight-lipped about the Guide. As for his sisters, Mat felt bad trying to corrupt Eleni to disobey their parents. While Keandra refused to answer, saying he was too little to understand—coming from a three-year-old it was truly something. Most likely she didn’t know much either and didn’t want to admit it.

Reaching the beach of white sand that gave the name to their village, Mat enjoyed the warmth under his bare feet. It was early spring and not yet scalding, making it perfect together with the chill breeze coming from the sea.

Most importantly the tide was fair. The six moons orbiting Elydes influenced the sea in complicated ways. Usually, the moons somewhat balanced each other out and the tide was ‘fair.’ When they aligned, they could create extremes of both high and low tide.

Fishing was the main livelihood in the archipelago, which was why each village had a tideseer who studied the moons and predicted the tides. In Whiteshore that was his mother’s duty.

There was no magic involved, just tons of charts and mathematical formulas. Alana had shown them to him, but this time it was he who decided he was too young to understand.

It was still early morning, the only people around were the fishermen, their small boats with white sails visible in the distance.

The day must have been successful, a group of three were traveling in a tight formation. Kai knew it meant they were dragging along a fish too big for their boats. Looking at the darker waters on the horizon, Kai was filled with equal parts of unease and wonder.

Alana had assured him no scary awakened fish came close to the shore, but after looking at the behemoths the fishermen dragged behind, he couldn’t stop being slightly nervous.

Thankfully, for more than a mile the water was clear and shallow, his little legs could barely scratch the bottom. If something decided to swim to shore, he would see it coming.

His mother was the swimming teacher of the day, but before they could start there was one last step. Alana walked to the waves, with one hand toward the sea and one holding the pendant on her neck.

The pendant depicted two concentric circles crossed by a line, a sacred symbol in the archipelago. The outer circle represented the sea, the inner one the islands of the Baquaire Archipelago, and the line the people who inhabited them.

The islanders made offerings to their ancestors and to a number of spirits that were said to inhabit the archipelago. The entities venerated changed from village to village, except for two. The most important and powerful. Today he needed to ask the favor of one of them.

Alana started to solemnly speak, “I ask for the favor of Kahali, the venerable spirit of the sea and protector of our shores. Grant us your favor and accept my son into your waters. May he join his ancestors as a descendant of the sea.”

She continued chanting her plea for Kahali’s blessing, throwing Mat an encouraging glance. She told him what he had to do a hundred times and it wasn’t anything complicated.

He must kneel with his hand stretched forward a palm beyond the waves and wait for the water to touch him first. Only then would he be allowed to dive into the sea.

Unless you were truly unlucky and chose a period of falling tide, it was inevitable for a bigger wave to come, but how long it took varied. If it happened in the first seven waves you were considered blessed by Kahali, but if you had to wait for more than seventy it was a bad omen. The spirit of the sea cared for all the sons and daughters of the islands, but he had his favorites.

Mat found it odd to give importance to something that wasn’t your merit. He didn’t care, it was only luck—or fate if you wanted to be fancy.

Standing with his family watching him in anticipation, he admitted he might care a little bit. Just a tiny bit.