《King of the Fall: Origins》 Fragment 1: The Prologue
Origin, noun.
The point or place where something begins, arises, or is derived.
Everything has a starting point; An origin if you will. This world has a starting point. It was not this lush with greenery in the beginning. Settlements, be it majestic cities or humble hamlets, were not built. Heck, they were not even populated. Tell you what, this world wasn¡¯t even populated in the beginning. However with the passage of time this world has gotten very far. While it is not comparable to my native world, this level of evolution is still applaudable compared to it¡¯s actual age. You might have already guessed it, but this world is not where my origin lies. Well technically it is since I was born anew in this new world. For some peculiar reason I have been reborn in a new world with my memories intact. Various fictions from the old world depict situations where divine beings communicate to the newly deceased, preaching about a second chance and so on. Nope. I never experienced any of that. I died, then I was born anew, well technically I got a short message of sorts, although I did not notice it until later. Nothing exciting about it, I didn¡¯t really have time to formulate my thoughts to something comprehensible while dying, so I ended up just being born without really noticing it. When I finally gave up, I was already out of my new mothers womb screaming my heart out in frustration. You see, I used to be able to see through many things, be it human socialization, mathematical problems, language peculiarities, puzzles and so on. Reincarnation however was a new subject to me. I have never thought about it before. I admit I¡¯ve stumbled upon the concept quite a few times, but I¡¯ve always disregarded it as fantasies made up by people regretting decisions they¡¯ve made in their lives, or people haunted by bad fortune. Well haunted for a lack of a better word, since I don¡¯t really believe in ghosts either. But now I¡¯m here in this situation utterly destroying my non-belief in reincarnation. Everything has a starting point; Even this reincarnation. Regretfully I never achieved greatness during my life in the old world. Given the time I spent in the old world you would think that I at least left a mark somewhere, but I have to regret to inform that I have not. 44 years in that god forsaken world and I didn¡¯t even leave behind some loved ones. No children to takeover my ambitions, no lovers to weep for me, and no family whatsoever. Ever since I was a kid I always dreamed of making something of myself. Accomplishing something and leaving a mark on history. All sorts of things feudal. I often imagined myself being an heir to a dynasty with long traditions of power positions in society. Well perhaps these imaginations stem from the lack of family that has been part of my whole life, but nonetheless my childhood was quite alright. I donned a crown and waltzed around the orphanage as if I was the king, and all the small, princess-dress-wearing girls my age were subordinates or perhaps their offspring belonging to my court. Things took a turn. The other kids mocked me and eventually I resigned to my fate and started befriending the books on the lowest part of the bookshelf and kept my imaginations locked away. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. I wouldn¡¯t go as far as to say that I found comfort in reading books, but at least it kept me busy. In the 44 years I lived in the old world, 15 were spent in a orphanage in which I, not surprisingly, have no lingering attachments, and the rest of them, 30 years give or take, were spent reading books, reviewing them, and writing small rant letters about them. However due to that, I have quite some knowledge stored in this brain of mine. I don¡¯t really like bragging but I have a good memorization ability and the memory capacity to use it to the fullest. Being a literary critic was not my only occupation. I used to dabble in the culinary arts when I was younger, cooking food for, well, myself. To seek inspiration, I spent most of my savings eating at fancy restaurants and writing a small piece about it. Turns out the influence of my usual writings made my food rants quite professional and suddenly I find myself being a literary and a culinary critic. Isn¡¯t that just life? Books and cooks, knowledge and food. Well in fact it was just that. It was life. I never really got around to do anything else before the day I passed away came. Some would call it a boring life, myself included. Some people would call it paradise, and some people would probably, well, I don¡¯t really know. Never got around to socialize that much either. My death wasn¡¯t all that memorable. Nothing like the accidents that happen in various fictions. I did not break every bone in my body after some tragic car accident. I did not wander around in a dark alley only to get stabbed by an acquaintance, and I sure as hell did not save somebody by running maniacally out in front of a truck to push a little girl away. I was diagnosed with diabetes. Diabetes. This cursed illness of mine basically took away one of two joys that I had found in the old world. So as any sane person would¡¯ve done, I made a decision to end my life. I mean, who can live without food right? While I know it¡¯s possible to survive with all sorts of treatment, I just can¡¯t bear the thought of having to measure what I eat, and limit myself on all the delicious treats and what not that I could be missing out on. So I did what had to be done and I did it with my back straight. I pulled out one of my favorite fantasy fictions and whipped up my favorite dish, pecan pie. Naturally I savored every last bite. The taste of the pecan pie completely enveloped my taste buds, to such a degree that not even paradise could feel so heavenly. Then my head started getting fuzzy, my eyelids kept closing, my body got unresponsive and finally I started shaking. So yeah, while that happened I didn¡¯t notice I was suddenly encased in a womb-like shaped container filled with thick liquid, distorting some almost animalistic screams. Everything has a starting point; This is the start of my adventures in this new world, this is my origin.
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Take me away from this!Let me hear about your origin!
Fragment 2: Toddler Stage - part 1 As I came to, my eyes were fixed upon another pair of eyes of seemingly limitless depth. It felt like someone peeked into my soul, if only for a brief moment. Perhaps I was still feeling a little bit delirious after being reborn again. The fuzz and blur disrupting my vision was hardly gone since my eyes had not adjusted to the outside world yet. From the verbal reactions of what seemed to be a couple of midwives shortly after the birth, I deduced that I must have been a healthy baby boy by normal measure perhaps a tad heavy but nothing worrisome. The days were slow and I kept fading in and out of consciousness. My thoughts were scattered and intangible, my body unmovable and my senses were acting up. The only relief besides feeding periods was screaming my heart out. It was hard to focus my mind on specific tasks. Despite hitting dangerous levels of curiosity, I could barely keep myself awake. My eyelids felt like steel gates denying visual access to my surroundings. What little physical energy I spent trying to keep my eyelids open, ended up draining whatever stamina I had, thus leaving me in a state of physical exhaustion. Roughly a week elapsed like this. In and out of consciousness while trying to get a grip of my bearings. I spent days trying to discipline my body. If I cannot get just a decent amount of control of this body, it might just drive me crazy! My situation had started to worry house servants tending to my needs. Usually a baby would be able to stay awake for at least a couple of hours, and become somewhat stable after some time. Newborns would look around discovering new things, or at least the things they could see within their visual range. In the end they did nothing about it. I guess they weren¡¯t that worried about me after all. Reasoning with myself that it had only been 1 week and I probably had not shown any clear signs of an unhealthy growth rate, I let it slip out of my mind and refocused on my goal; Gaining proper control of this body. Resolving to gain control of my body, I started making light exercises to the best of my ability. This was by no means push-ups, jogging or anything of the like. Blinking was one of my favorite exercises since it increased the time I was able to keep my eye lids open. ¡®If I could blink effortlessly without my eyelids forcing themselves to close, perhaps I could spend some time focusing on my surroundings properly.¡¯ Such were my thoughts before I decided on blinking as an exercise. While it may sound easy and I might have approached it in a nonchalant manner, it was by far the most physically exhausting exercise I had ever done.
Three months went by in a blur when all I could do was extremely light exercises to train my body. My mother and the house servants had long past noticed that my constitution seemed weaker than normal, and had upon that discovery brought me to the local doctor. While he was no expert on medicine, he did weave his hands through the air for a bit as if conducting an orchestra or perhaps writing calligraphy in the air, with a brush in each hand. Perhaps my eyes had deceived me, but I think he actually drew something in the air, since I was seeing some quite vibrant colors. My eyesight however was still fuzzy so I couldn¡¯t exactly make out what it was. My gut feeling told me it was something interesting, but with no means to study it, I made a mental note in the back of my brain. My body was starting to get stronger. Or at least that¡¯s what my instincts told me. In terms of actual physical achievements, I had succeeded in keeping my eyelids open for longer periods of time, giving birth to quite the intense stare. I had no chance of knowing that my stare was intense, but the epiphany came only moments after a few house servants were gossiping over my bad, after changing my diapers.
New skill acquired! Intense Stare (passive)
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Accompanied by an almost indistinguishable bell sound from seemingly within my head, a semi transparent window popped up in front of me. If my arms had not been weak I would¡¯ve immediately reached out to touch it, as something like this seemed outlandish. Alas, my arms were too weak so all I could do was stare at this window. I had not noticed at first but the window was fully readable, and apparently I had acquired a skill called ¡®Intense Stare¡¯. Piecing everything together, this happened while the house servants seemingly whispered about me. While I couldn¡¯t make out what they said since I couldn¡¯t understand the language yet, it seemed quite obvious they were talking about my eyes. One of the house servants, a young female of above average height, even pointed at me and then gestured sneakily with her other hand at her own two eyes, showing a grimace of slight discomfort. One the one hand she could be talking about my eyes. Given the circumstances it would probably be possible to narrow it down to my stare. On the other hand she could simply be talking about how she felt uncomfortable watching me. So, either I had an intense stare or I was ugly or otherwise unseemly to look at. I put my stakes on my stare being intense, since the floating window had said so. Another piece of the puzzle that was still missing it¡¯s place was the floating window. What was it? If it can be trusted then it should be a system comparable to a game system, where a person''s progress is recorded and shown visually to the person. Thinking to further explore what the skill ¡®Intense Stare¡¯ meant for me, a new window suddenly popped up in front of me.
Intense Stare (passive)
DescriptionEffects
By continuously blinking you have learned to keep your eyelids open longer than the average person, resulting in an intense stare. By staring at your surroundings, and enriching your sensory perception through mental images and thoughts, your perception presents more insight.Enhance visual perception Increase presence
¡®Interesting!¡¯ Was the first thought that popped into my mind. These windows had seemingly given me a skill which I had not intended or expected by myself, as one would logically expect it from a system such as this. That is, if my previous conjecture about the windows being similar to the system used in many role playing games from my old world. This was subject to be studied further. And yes, this is the shameful state of my life after 3 months. I can see my surroundings, no more blurriness or fuzziness. My sight is clear as glass and sharp as it had never been before, not in this life or the one before. Apparently I was living in a world where keeping track of my progress was a possibility. At the very least I knew for sure that I was able record my progress, as made evident by the floating window. Oh, and I excrete and pee uncontrollably in my cloth diapers. I should practice control of my bowel movements. But in any case, a quick whiff would determine that my gastrointestinal health was quite alright.
One year later¡­
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I think I missed something in the prologue!There should be more about this origin, right?
Fragment 3: Toddler Stage - part 2 Night has fallen and the muffled sounds from house servants sliding across the cold stone cobbled floor had disappeared. The immeasurable amount of candles that usually lighted up the dark inner-workings of the castle, were blown out - or rather, the mana source was stopped, effectively turning off the candles. Inside one of the bigger bedchambers, the beautifully adorned curtains were fluttering in the wind. The windows were purposely left open. I was the reason the windows were left open. Every time I was put to sleep I threw a tantrum pointing at the window. Eventually I had to succumb to sleep, since my stubbornness couldn¡¯t possibly compared to my sleep needs. The reason for leaving the windows open, was the calming night breeze. During the recent months I started to spend most of my nights sitting in a cross-legged position, trying to grasp at elements pertaining meditation. While I had not actually had any major breakthrough, I was pretty sure being closer to nature would help my mind shifting states. I was basically grasping straws here. My body was still weak, but my mind was strong. Stronger than any of the other children in this castle. In my previous life I had chanced upon some quite startling research into the ways of meditation, exploring everything from ancient martial arts and their breathing techniques to other more modern notions such as hot yoga. From the research a theory was drawn up closely resembling the same discoveries martial art masters had made during their lifetime. To put it in simple terms you can think of the body as the refinery and the surroundings as your raw material. While the body not only serves as a refinery but also a dispenser or a utility tool if you will, the refinery aspect is what I¡¯m trying to achieve by meditating right now. To explain why I¡¯m doing this I would have to elaborate on the discoveries I¡¯ve made this recent year. For starters I¡¯ve acquired parts of the puzzle pertaining to my identity and who I am. Following my early conjectures I¡¯ve certainly confirmed that I am indeed of noble birth. As excited as I was about finally living my dream, I had to be able to live first which is why gaining control of my body took precedence. On that note, I¡¯ve gotten quite good at controlling my body despite it being weak, but I¡¯ll explain more about that later. My name is Dumas. I¡¯m not exactly sure of my surname and much less my full name. If the logic in this world follows the logic in my old world, however slightly, when pertaining to social structure, this world probably has some sort of special way to name nobles depending on the region. I¡¯ll have to figure out my name and research more about my dynasty, surely this is as exciting as anything could be! If it really turns out that I¡¯m a high ranking noble, I¡¯ll have to enjoy it while I can. I mean nobody knows if I can get a second chance at life like this again. Oops. I got slightly sidetracked there. I should keep on going. These days my mother has been accompanying me and a few chambermaids around the castle in which our family resides. Explaining to me, that as a future noble I should know the ins and outs of my own family¡¯s castle, my mother showed me everything about the castle she knew. Everything from buttery to various servant latrines and garderobes everything was shown to me. The castle was designed symmetrically with a great hall in the center. From the great hall several hallway entrances could be found leading to various places. Two hallways leading to the west wing and two leading to the east wing. Situated in the east wing were all the nobles. This included the big bedchambers for my family, as well as the lesser nobles employed as the castle. The west wing was used by the countless of servants both as their workplace and their resting areas. Things like the buttery, pantry, servant sleeping dorms, small smithies and many more interesting rooms were located here. Attached to the west wing on the outside were the stables, which the constable took care of. I must say, I¡¯m quite with the amount of horses here. From just a quick look the stables are about the size of the castle itself, and the castle is not small. Doing a quick headcount of the servants in my mind would take a while. When my father tends to his lordly matters and has to rule his demesne, the castle steward takes care of the castle. I¡¯m guessing there are probably a few hundred people in this castle and the surrounding manor houses. Every single person I met on my mother¡¯s guided tours of the castle, stopped in their tracks, straightening their legs in the process. Proceeding with their salute, they would bow thirty degrees, with the left arm following the line of the body and the right arm across the chest forming a fist, followed by their greeting. The usual greeting from the servants was something along the lines of ¡°Greetings Third Young Master!¡± I later learned that this type of greeting was common etiquette for people meeting nobles of higher rank than oneself in my father¡¯s demesne. I seem to have forgotten to talk about my own family. In any case, I am now blessed with a loving mother and a strict father. In addition to this I also have 2 elder brothers and an elder sister. Being the youngest of 4, not to mention that my constitution had been weak from birth, I was naturally pampered and well taken care of. My oldest brother, who was also set to be the heir of my father¡¯s titles, was one who excelled in most things he did. While people would not call him a genius, at the very least he would qualify as one who could be dubbed gifted. Named after an old war hero, probably one from this realm, his name was Bacchus and his area of expertise was ironically military prowess. Not only had he spent countless of hours training his body and his swordsmanship, he was also quite gifted in warfare as made evident by his numerous victories in minor skirmishes around the demesne to quell bandits. Being 15 years old than me, my oldest brother had already become an adult last year, according to the standard of this world. This meant that I would rarely see him, as he had taken up his work as a knight of the demesne and was employed by my father not as the castle marshall, but the field marshall of the demesne army. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Being a field marshall at the tender age of 16 was nothing to scoff at. It was for most people a considerable achievement, meaning that neighbouring realms had already heard of some of Bacchus¡¯ exploits. Of course, he couldn¡¯t do his job properly right off the bat, so his work was overseen by the previous field marshall who had also acted as his mentor since he took up the sword 8 years ago. My second brother however is something else entirely. Unlike me he wasn¡¯t born with a weak constitution, he was just plain weak because he never really did anything besides growing plants. One could easily mistake him for one of the gardeners, when he changed into more comfortable attire and strolled around the castle guardians. Despite being overly interested in plants, he also had quite the affinity for magic. Curiously enough his name was Merlin, which immediately made me think of my old world. And yes, magic. It really does exist in this world. I couldn¡¯t believe my eyes at first, but using my ¡®Intense Stare¡¯ I gleaned a bit of extra useful tidbits of information. Naturally a castle as big as this had some servants capable of magic. Hopefully this could be one of the means to an end, for my future endeavours. Watching my 12-year old second brother wielding his magic freely to manipulate the plants in the garden I was awestruck. I secretly noted magic as one of my future goals. My last sibling was one I had never met before. Ever since I was born she had never been at home. The reason for this was that she was currently residing in another court, learning about etiquette over there. This, of course, was just an excuse. The real reason was that she was a hostage being kept my a rival family, my father had lost a war to. By having a family hostage one could effectively cripple a whole demesne by keeping the family of the hostage on somewhat servile terms with life threats. That is of course if the family of the hostage values the life of the hostage. I imagine some nobles could easily from away a daughter at a whim, if it could let him attack a rival enemy lord freely. Since my the people around me haven¡¯t talked to me much concerning the state of the demesne, I don¡¯t really know much else pertaining to myself but this. Heck I don¡¯t even know what the name of my father is or what the name of his demesne is. But I will have plenty of time to find this out at a later time, what takes precedence is gaining the ability and freedom to do what I want. Enjoy the life of a noble in a lax environment. A few other discoveries that has some relevance to this goal, is concerning the floating windows. During the last few months many windows have been popping up, giving me information about my bodily improvements. This further proves my theory on the floating window system being able to record my progress somehow. Additionally it requires my knowledge of it, to be recorded as progress. For instance, the other day when I had walked around all day, I saw down thinking I could walk no further. I closed my eyes and focused on the sore spots on my body. It¡¯s really hard to explain this feeling, since I¡¯ve never felt it before but it¡¯s something like an instinctual inner-body analysis. By analysis my sore spots and comparing them to how they fared earlier, I concluded which muscles had improved. Suddenly a window popped up saying this:
Due to strenuous physical exertion you gain: +1 Vitality +1 Strength
So basically I had trained my body sufficiently, and I had acknowledged my improvement. It wasn¡¯t as if I acknowledged it blindly, since it was based on my analysis of my own body. Now while it all may sound sort of vague, keep in mind that I carried over some abilities from the old world. On the one hand I was still able to remember things easily and on the other hand I still retained my previous memories. Knowing the name, position and even the function of my muscles was a given. With excellent memory and several decades of reading, wouldn¡¯t one expect at least expertise of this level? Finding good use of my old memories, I started searching for something that could help me overcome my predicament and surely mediation was the thing I needed. I fused some theories in my head and ended up with an outline of a plan. For the next few years I should keep meditating while using inner-body analysis to keep my body improving. This would be done by night so the adults wouldn¡¯t know about it. However meditation alone is not gonna bring about results. It needs to be done after physical training. I resolved to put together a training plan and spend a few nights every week meditating. This should give me some stat points. The additional stat points should be quite helpful, seeing as the last few ones somehow strengthened my body. And this is basically how I got to sitting below open windows during nightime. The night breeze helped me relax and calm down. Being relaxed and calm enabled me to easily filter out unnecessary thoughts. While I say ¡°easily¡± I still haven¡¯t had any breakthrough, so perhaps I haven¡¯t really filtered out all of my thoughts. But my gut feeling says this is the way to go, and so far my gut feeling has proved to be quite accurate. Another gut feeling however is telling me I have to take a break from meditating and pay a visit to the chamber pots in my latrine.
Thanks for reading this far! Rate and review it, tell me what''s good and what''s bad - much appreciated! Additionally I know my chapters are rather short. This one is about 2k and the others are just above the 1k mark. Hopefully the next chapter is even longer!
Wait - was he always this weak?So did he manage a breakthrough?