"Honey, Honey, look he's waking up." a soothing voice spoke, coming from a woman. I opened my eyes gradually. My vision was blurred. I had never heard such a heart-warming voice before. 'Was I in heaven?' I thought.
After a couple seconds, my vision became clear. I was flabbergasted to see a beautiful woman peering down at me, She had a mesmerising smile, walnut hair and beautiful green eyes.
"Pass him to me, let me hold my son." I heard a man say, as he picked me up from the arms of the woman. 'Wait! What!' I shouted in my head. I had just realised it, he said 'son'. I'm a baby! The man had a good build, with a sharp jawline. Almost as good looking as my old self. They both looked like they were at least in their mid 20's.
So I wasn't in heaven.
"Have you thought of a name yet?" the woman asked, or should I call her mother.
"Zeref Amara, just like his grandfather." my 'father' returned. I wasn't too keen on the name but I had no chance to argue. If I suddenly talked, it would be really weird. Wait. I didn't even know if I could talk.
The system somehow helped to translate their language to the English I was used to. Thank God!
"Rosaline, you need to change his diaper, He smells like a sewer!" my father pinched his nose. 'how dare he act like this against a king!' I thought as I used my left leg to kick his face.
"Ow! Damn! He's going to be a fighter for sure!" he said smiling at me, rubbing his left cheek.
My anger turned into tears and I started to cry, 'I didn't even want to cry! Stupid baby body!' I moaned in my head.
"Give him to me! Look what you done!" My mother shouted as she snatched me from his arms and my tears automatically stopped. Did mothers have special powers?
**
4 months had passed and I could finally start crawling. What a task that was. I noticed something very strange pop up though, after 1 month of me opening my eyes for the first time.
I had two bars on the top left of my vision, one named HP and the other named MP; the HP bar was always full at 100 HP and only went down when I got injured and the MP bar was always fully empty. HP was short for Health Points while MP was short for Mana points (similar to the magic energy of my old world).
I had figured out how they would react through a series of experiments. For example, I jumped off a bed to see what would happen, and turns out my HP bar fell to 5 HP and off course I wept, crying my eyes out.
From the series of experiments and weird HP and MP bars I concluded that I was gifted with some sort of Game like System. This would come in handy in the future, if it was like in the games I played in, back in my old world. It could help in making myself stronger in the aspects I wanted to improve.
What amazed me the most was that my mother Rosaline had cast some sort of healing magic on me after scolding me. I had come to the conclusion that this world was similar to the one in my last life at least, and my body was special. I had a system in my head. I would get notifications for most things such as when I was hungry:
[You're suffering from hunger, you will lose 5 HP every hour]
Or when I lost HP due to an injury:
[You have sustained 65 damage]
This struck me as extremely peculiar but I had already gotten used to it. In fact I already had a goal, to find out more about this world and my first step was to somehow sneak into the library room, which was near my room.
After my mother had put me to sleep - at least that's what she thought - she left me in my cradle and left the room to go wash the dishes. This was my chance! I climbed the cradle and jumped off it. Oof! Bad idea.
[You have sustained 50 damage]
'Stupid baby body!' I thought as I rubbed my miniscule legs. I crawled to the door and opened it slowly with all my strength. I peered into the corridor looking left and right, then I charged for the library room, crawling at my fastest speed, to which I can only thank my luck for, was already open. Thank god! I crawled into the room and grabbed a book from one of the low shelves.
It read 'The History of Vrimeon', I was surprised I was able to read it, maybe it was the system.
'It doesn't matter' I thought, as I started to read the book.
**
After an hour of reading I had gotten the gist of where I was. There were 5 kingdoms and Vrimeon was the largest - the one I was in, I knew this as I heard my parents talking about moving to the main city of this kingdom. That means at the moment we were in the outskirts. Most importantly, we were in a medieval period, where technology or science hadn't advanced as far as in my old world.
I skimmed for another book and my eyes fell upon a dusty old book, to my surprise this book I found was the jackpot, it was the one that would answer my MP issue, the title reading 'Basics of Mana control and manipulation'. I yanked the book off the bottom shelf, but I accidentally dropped it on my foot.
'Stupid baby fingers!' I yelled in my head, as my foot screamed in pain.
[You have sustained 20 damage]
[Your HP is now 30]
I tried to hold it in as best as I could but my tears couldn't stop formulating around my eyes. I screamed and wept in pain.
'Curse this body!' I thought for the thousandth time. My mother came running from the kitchen and ran straight for where the crying was coming from, peculiarly from the library.
"Oh you naughty child!" she said lovingly as she picked me up with both hands and started to cast her healing magic on me.
[HP is being restored]
My eyes felt heavy as I cast into deep slumber.
**
I tried for another week every night trying to get into the library room, but each time it wasn't open. Then one day my mother had slipped up, she was tired so she had already slept and left the library room open. HaHa! This was my chance!
Now my body had become a bit more sturdy, after the drop I had only sustained 20 damage and I got used to the notifications.
[You have sustained 20 damage]
I crawled into the room next door and crawled straight for the mana basics book. I yanked it off the lowest shelf once again and opened it. I was reading so hastily in case my mother came in again, surprisingly my reading speed and comprehension was way faster than an average human being, thanks to my system. So it did have its perks apart from its stupid and annoying notifications.
From the book I had grasped that in this world instead of magic energy, they called it Mana. Mana was the principle behind everything and life, the same as magic energy in my previous life. At the age of 7, children awakened their mana pool.
This was found just below the diaphragm, and constant meditation and the exercise of mana would improve the quality of the mana in the mana pool and the depth of it. Mana pools also had different stages, each stage determining the purity of the mana and the depth of the mana pool.
They were ranked from stages 1 - 9, 1 being the smallest mana pool with the most impurities, making it quite inefficient and stage 9 being the biggest mana pool with the best efficiency and purity. The efficiency of the mana output also increased with each stage; so a mage at grade 5 would require less mana and effort to produce the same attack as a mage with mana pool at grade 4.
From then on I decided to meditate everyday, I could feel the mana around me in the atmosphere moving about abundantly. The trick was to pull the mana particles into the centre of your body using your mental strength - make the mana obey you; using visualisation one should see the droplets of mana falling into a visualised container, for me I decided to go with a spring as my container. Day by day my mana pool started to fill up drop by drop as I meditated at night. I knew this would take huge amounts of time but it would be worth it at the end of the day.
**
3 Years Later:
"Honey! Where's my sword and my back pack, I'm leaving for hunting." My father shouted from outside our house. I was still asleep but his constant shouting broke my slumber. I was extremely drained by the meditation last night, in fact I was so close to breaking through to the first stage.
"I think it's in your dimension ring!" my mother replied. A dimension ring was enchanted with a spell that could house many things.
"Oops! Yes I found it!" my moron of a father replied.
'Honestly! How loud can one be?!' I thought. My father jumped on his carriage, said his goodbyes and left for hunting. I still didn't know much about my father and mother, but I could tell we were a middle class family.
"I guess, it's just you and me huh Zeref?" my mother spoke softly as she picked me up from my cradle. She bathed me first before feeding me some sort of porridge.
I was an orphan in my old life, so I never experienced things like this. Getting comforted by a mother or getting spanked by your dad, this was all new to me, and I thanked that blue figure everyday for reincarnating me and blessing me with such beautiful parents.
"Zeref, it's your birthday in a week's time! How time flies! We are going to hold a huge party, so we need some things, we are going shopping today, is that fine?" my mother explained, talking to me.
"Okay!" I replied, not saying any more. I had also picked up their language; the system helped me understand what they were saying but they wouldn't understand if I suddenly started speaking English. Therefore, I picked up slowly on what they were saying and matching their words along with the English subtitles.
It took a great amount of effort but It was worth it.
'How has 3 years passed already' I thought, in confusion, 'Strange'.
Honestly, I wanted to stay home and read more about mana manipulation but my mother made me tag along in her adventures. Even though I could walk now, I couldn't walk that far so my mother used levitation magic to cast me in the air when I got tired, my body followed her floating through the air. At first it felt odd, but also felt quite comfortable. My enemies in my previous life would have laughed if they saw my current state.
We reached the centre of the busy town, many market stands were built here and there, and all sorts of shops were present, from blacksmiths to butchery shops.
"Get two swords and a shield for the price of two swords!" an old man shouted.
"Two for one offers are being held now!" another woman screamed.
The centre of town wasn't very pleasant for my infant ears, so the loud bustling and noise annoyed me and the horrid stench of sweat and body odour wafted through my nose, as we passed people, who never showered in their lives
"Just one more thing, Zeref, hang in there." my mother said softly after an hour of rummaging for goods, which seemed to me like an eternity.
'Are women ever satisfied when shopping?' I smiled at the thought, soon my eyes had gotten tired from the long journey and I drowsed off into sleep.