I felt a bit relieved when I confirmed that the old lady couldn’t tell that I had a treasure. It didn’t matter in one way or the other, but I wasn’t against things going my way for once.
“Mana, huh? I don’t have much talent, so I expected that he would take after his father and become a warrior. Mages are useful and can become quite powerful, but the requirements are a lot more troublesome. I want Ai to follow the path that he chooses for himself, but I don’t want him to follow such an arduous path.”
“Well, this is just my first impression. He still has a lot of room to grow. That won’t take place if you shelter him so much.”
My mother went silent after hearing that. It seemed that she also realized the fact that she couldn’t keep me inside the house all the time. Considering the words that she said before, I believed that kids after they turn five are forced to leave their homes. To do what? I had no clue.
In any case, I got curious about the stuff regarding mana, but I couldn’t ask such direct questions. The best plan still was to improve my information gathering skills by learning enhanced hearing and then listening to other people’s talks.
Fortunately, my mother decided to give me a hand with that… from the next day onward, she began to take me out of the house to see how things were outside. I could see some kids a bit older than me running around and playing with each other.
‘It is true… they aren’t older than five.’
Maybe they went to some kind of school, but I doubted that a world that I needed to take over would be that convenient. They certainly would be forced to learn something, but not in a conventional way.
While I was looking around, something stood out that I hadn’t noticed before: the village was surrounded by massive trees. Their towering trunks stretched high into the sky, their thick leaves forming a lush canopy that seemed to protect the village from the outside world. I hadn’t paid much attention to the trees before, but now I could see how they created a natural barrier, almost like a fortress of wood.
The village itself didn’t look particularly new, but the wilderness beyond it was teeming with life. It was peaceful, too peaceful, really, and the tranquility of it all made me feel like there was little to fear from the outside for the time being. Still, a sense of worry was in the back of my mind. There was something about this place that made me feel both protected and yet... curiously detached from the world beyond.
I decided to ignore that and then try to listen to the conversations of the surrounding people… Still, I couldn’t hear anything in detail. I wondered if that would improve if I increased my dexterity.
‘This can wait. It will take a while until I have a new slot for a new skill.’
There was no need to rush things. Besides, I was still learning how this system worked, so I had to be mindful of those kinds of choices. I gained a treasure after completing the first one thousand challenges, but I didn’t gain a second after the next thousands. I didn’t know how much a treasure could level up, but it should have a limit.
In the end, it took more than six months to have the chance to learn Enhanced Hearing, but at least it was another passive skill. At this point in time, I could understand most of the words that I heard in the village, so my knowledge was increasing fast.
Level: 05 (10/500)
Current Treasure: Mind of Steel (Lv 15 - 20/1500)
Health: 10/10
Mana: 710/710
Stamina: 310/310
Strength: 01
Dexterity: 01
Magic: 01 + 30
Vitality: 01
Willpower: 41 + 30
Endurance: 01 + 30
Luck: 01
Free Points: 40If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Active Skills:
[Empty]
[Empty]
[Empty]
[Empty]
[Empty]
Passive Skills:
[Languages Understanding Lv 35]
[Focus Mastery Lv 15]
[Enhanced Vision Lv 08]
[Enhanced Hearing Lv 03]
[Empty]
‘I am starting to understand why it is a huge deal when people are born with treasures.’
Putting myself aside and my daily focus on gaining proficiency that should be above average, I could imagine that this many bonuses would make most people stand out from the others in many aspects. Apparently, my father has a treasure too and perhaps those soldiers had that as well… that would explain why they looked fine even if they had been fighting for years. If they had made the right choices and turned the right actions into skills, they would be able to recover pretty fast. Even more so if they knew magic.
“No, no. You have to feel the energy of nature. Sense it while it heals the land and the plants.”
“I don’t get it.”
It took three more months of focusing on increasing the levels of Enhanced Hearing day in and day out before I could finally hear something useful. It was the voice of the old lady and of an unknown girl, and it seemed that they were talking about magic or something similar.
Enduring all the headaches as I started to hear more and more voices, was finally paying off. With a bit of focus, I could also decide where my ears would pay attention.
“Healing magic combines the powers of earth and water, but it also uses the power of wind and fire too. The details are still unknown to most people, but everyone has those elements inside their bodies. For healers, they have to focus on earth and water because you can sense it all around. It is less dangerous, too.”
“Why can’t I learn to focus on wind and fire?”
An obvious question that naturally a kid would ask. I could tell the answer to some extent, but it was better not to assume too much.
“Healers have an affinity to fire and wind as well, but they only need it with advanced techniques. For the basics, you only need to focus on water and earth. Everything in nature is growing, and it is made of water and earth, so you need to sense their growth to be able to improve your healing proficiency.”
That was something interesting… As I listened, I started piecing things together in my mind. If healing magic relied so heavily on sensing the earth and water around, then it stood to reason that the same principle might apply to the other elements as well. I began to wonder: could I improve my proficiency with an element simply by staying in contact with it? Perhaps the more I was surrounded by fire, wind, or earth, the stronger my connection to those elements would become. It was an interesting thought, and one that seemed to open up a whole new range of possibilities.
I could already think of ways to exploit this idea. For instance, if I spent more time near rivers or forests, it would likely enhance my control over water and earth. But the more I considered it, the more I realized that I could do the same with wind or fire. A secluded place with strong winds could help me connect to the wind element, and maybe there were ways to seek out natural sources of fire to strengthen my connection to that element as well. It was a simple but clever strategy, and I was already eager to try it out.
‘However, it feels too simple and everyone must be doing that as well… I have been living here for a while and the possibility of learning those affinities didn’t show up until now. Maybe they couldn’t actually turn into skills…’
Taking baths wasn’t enough to obtain the water affinity, maybe there is also the matter with time and talent as well. My mother said that she didn’t have talent, but maybe things weren’t so simple.
The things that I could do were still limited, but I could at least do a little of everything like trying to test my lung capacity underwater… maybe I couldn’t do that since my mother wouldn’t allow it, but I at least could bury my face underwater in a jug or something.
Covering myself in sand or plants would be an interesting possibility as well. Healing magic would come in handy, even more so for someone like me who had a time limit on this planet to complete the first true challenge… I imagined that failure would mean death, and I was certain that I wouldn’t have second chances like in that room.
Over the next few months, while my mother wasn’t paying attention, I did those tests… went outside and got myself dirty with sand, then tried to sink on water as much as possible, and I also tried to feel the heat of the fire while it was cooking the food. It would be better to improve in a single element and notice any differences… even without the help of the system, that should be easy to notice.
‘I imagine that obtaining the wind affinity should be the most simple… I just have to head to a windy place. Like the summit of a mountain. Wait a minute…’
I tried to recall everything I had heard from the old lady about magic. She had mentioned how a person could improve their affinity with the four basic elements: fire, earth, wind, and water. Then, once you learned to combine earth and water, you could begin to develop the healing affinity. It all made sense up to that point.
But as I thought more about it, a question came to my mind: were these the only options? Were fire, earth, wind, and water the only elemental affinities that one could have, or could there be more? Maybe there were other rare or hidden elements out there, waiting to be discovered, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there might be more to it than what the old lady had shared.
The thought of unexplored possibilities excited me. If there were other affinities to be found, I would need to figure out what they were and how to unlock them. But for now, I had my hands full with the basics.
‘I don’t have time to be cautious… Those elements are too vanilla. I want to see if I can learn about the electric affinity or something else. Maybe there was a way to tap into that energy, much like how healers focused on earth and water. I could imagine it, drawing power from the atmosphere, controlling the electric charge in the air, or perhaps even harnessing the destructive power of a thunderstorm.
The idea was fascinating, but also a bit dangerous. Thunder magic, after all, could be dangerous and unpredictable. It wasn’t something that could be easily controlled, not like the more stable earth or water elements. Still, the potential was there. If I could learn to control it, I could become an immensely powerful force.