At night, light could still be seen in the library of one of the biggest clans of Nacesai City. Inside there was only a six-year-old kid reading thick books.
The boy had messy short hair and dark circles under his almost black eyes due to the lack of sleep. His name was Yale Roanmad, one of the legitimate sons of the Roanmad Clan. Yale's father was an influential figure in the clan, but he had a lot of sons and daughters, legitimate as well as illegitimate.
Usually, illegitimate children had almost no rights in the clan, unless they displayed extraordinary talents and then became recognized by the clan. However, they were only allowed to live in the clan until they grew up when they would need to become servants or lose the rights to live in the clan domains.
Yale's mother was one of the official wives of his father, and even the servants gossiped about how there was real love between his father and mother. Under such circumstances, Yale's standing in the clan should have been a very good one. However, his mother died when he was born.
Since that day, his father, as if blaming Yale for her death, never showed any hint of goodwill toward him. Instead, he would rather ignore him completely; Yale had only seen his father in official clan affairs.
Thus, even if the clan didn't suppress him and he was still in a better position than the illegitimate sons were, there is not all that big of a difference. In fact, some illegitimate sons of his father hated him and were always thinking about how to disturb him. However, because Yale loved reading books and studying them, he spent most of his time in the library or in his room, and those areas weren't places where illegitimate children, who had not been recognized by the clan, could go.
If Yale were a normal six-year-old kid, he would have suffered a lot with his mother dead and with his father ignoring him.
Compared to other kids his age, Yale wasn't exactly normal because he belonged to a rare group of people that can retain memories from before they were born, in other words, memories of their past lives.
In fact, Yale barely qualified as a member of that group because compared to others with the same condition, he remembered only a little bit, while the others retained the memories of all their past lives or almost all of it. Furthermore, his inherited knowledge of his past life was mostly miscellaneous, not very useful.
However, even if it was only a little, that was enough to make the difference between him and other kids of his generation because the small fragments he remembered included part of his own past life's death, the pain, impotence, and regret he felt in those memories aren't something that normal kids would understand because it seemed unreal.
Yale knew the taste of death and didn't want to taste it again, his previous life was a life without too many difficulties, but in the end, he died painfully. Even though he didn't remember the details and didn't understand how the death could bring so much suffering that couldn't be described just as painful, Yale was sure that he didn't want to suffer it again.
Yale knew that his present life is the opposite of his past life in which he didn't sense that he had met any obstacles, even in his clan there was the law of the jungle, the strong is always in the right. Therefore, Yale refused to be weak and ending up dying again, so he was extremely hard working since birth.
However, his hard work wasn't related to obtaining physical strength like was usual in kids of his age that were eager to strengthen their bodies, but rather to acquiring knowledge because from his diffuse memories told him that knowledge was power. In fact, the lack of knowledge was what led to his painful death, although he wasn't sure what kind of knowledge he had lacked. Therefore, he learned to speak and write a lot faster than other kids thanks to those few memories he had and began his current lifestyle that was basically that of a bookworm.
The clan servants in charge of him were astonished by his intelligence and hard work, but no one suspected his condition as someone who has reincarnated, all the servants thought he was a clever child who lacked love and eventually he was buried in the world of his books to avoid feeling lonely.
Even though he had some fragments of memories, they couldn't influence Yale to the point of becoming his previous life's extension like famous people with memories of their past lives that appeared on the books Yale had read. Yale was only Yale, he couldn't be considered a dead man in the body of a kid, so even if Yale was more mature and hardworking than other kids, he was still a kid, and his lifestyle became nothing more than a reflection of his current situation.
As to how the other children thought about him, Yale did not care because they were just normal children, even if some of them became evil in the future, there was nothing Yale could do in his situation.
Furthermore, since all the children were less than ten years old, they were protected by the World and acting against them would cause the aggressor many problems, only if the child provoked the aggressor first, the protection would disappear. The World Laws protected the children, but they weren't meant to allow them to become arrogant towards their elders.
Also, because of the World Laws, Yale knew that he would be safe until he was ten years old, so he decided to focus on his goal and unlock the legacy left by his own past life. Yale knew that getting that legacy was the only way he could succeed in his future and the sooner he unlocked it, the better. Yale already knew that he couldn't trust the clan to become stronger since his father ignored him, and without good resources or teachers, any help was welcome.
He became aware of that good fortune he had obtained as a legacy of his past life on his fourth birthday. At that time, a voice appeared in his head.
[This is the Last Wish System, created by the last wish of your past life, if you want to unlock it, you must gather a vast amount of knowledge.]
Yale was shocked when he heard it, but as he could see the words he just heard in his mind, Yale understood that the voice wasn't his imagination. Even if he didn't remember what that last wish was, his intuition told him that the Last Wish System was a good thing.
Yale liked to read and study from the very beginning. Thus, his new circumstances only made him study even harder, to the point of becoming the clan's most well-known bookworm, spending almost all of his free time in the library or in his room reading books.
After the appearance of the message, Yale realized that the more he studied, the easier it became to learn and memorize new things. Yale was even more assured of the Last Wish System was what he needed more than anything else did.
The library had a public section for all the official members of the clan, there were no restrictions to read inside, and it was easy to get a borrowed book or two from the library to take to his room.
There were also restricted areas where different conditions were required to read books. Although Yale had the premonition that those books would help the Last Wish System more, he had no means to meet any of the requirements.
Of course, with the help of his father, it would be possible to read some of the less restricted books. However, his father even refused to talk to him, and it seemed that becoming a bookworm had upset his father even more. Yale heard that his father was someone who believed that men should only use their fists to speak and that training the body was the only way for a man.
He had that lifestyle until that night when dark circles appeared under his eyes due to lack of sleep. That was the first time he stayed in the library after midnight, and probably his servants were already rushing to look for him because it wasn't time for a child to be awake. The servants did not pay much attention to Yale since he used to read silently and didn't cause problems, but there was no way they did not realize that he wasn't in his room for so long.
That night, however, he felt that he was almost at the point where the Last Wish System would react. Yale had spent the last two years for that moment, so he continued without realizing that the sky had darkened hours ago.
Yale had read a lot of books since he was born, a frightening number for a six-year-old kid. Even though the people knew that he was a bookworm, no one could even imagine how many books he had really read.
When Yale finished the thick book he was reading, the Last Wish System finally reacted in his mind.