"There will be little to display," a voice out of sight responds almost pleasantly. "However, if you insist, i do not mind summoning his status before his proper naming ceremony. Come, let me see the- what?"
While the person called 'Father' was busy answering my own father, i had simply questioned the word 'status' in my mind and before me appeared a large hologram-like window. At the top was the word 'STATUS' in full caps and taking up most of the top left side was a digital rendering of my entire infant self. Taking up the upper left of the window was a list labeled 'Stats'.
Just like in a video game, i had Strength, Endurance, Agility, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Luck stats. Surprisingly, even though i was an infant, i actually had numbers beside my stats. The lowest among them were only two digits.
Strength: 15
Endurance: 30
Agility: 15
Intelligence: 150
Willpower: 120
Luck: 111
Affinity: ALL
"By the gods..." Father gasps at the same time that my father exclaims, "By Mythos, he's born with the strength of a grown man!"
While they were still gushing over my stats, i had moved on to the bottom half of the window which was labeled, 'Skills & Abilities'. Only a single skill existed and this was 'Divine Translation LVL MAX'
Yep. This was pretty generic.
The only thing strange was that, near the top above the image of myself where my name was listed, there was a series of unknown characters. Even with a skill called Divine Translation, this was complete gibberish to me.
Once the others caught up with me after marveling about how my translation skill was a golden ticket to any royal court for work, it turned out that the stuff beside my name really was meaningless.
"With a skill like Divine Translation, he's sure the have a scholarly or even magic class in the future," my father says after my mother started coming around and conversation died down. "But look at these stats, even if his intelligence wasn't higher than any of ours, once he grows up he'd still be the strongest lad in town."
"Our son..." my mother murmured tiredly, stretching her arms out to my father. "Give me our... Chuck."
I soon found myself in the tender and warm embrace of my mother whose long blond hair was sweaty and hanging down about her face. Even in her current condition, my mother was absolutely beautiful with almost glowing gray-green eyes and a kind smile despite her tired state. My dad was pretty big, too, so i had high hopes for my future.
"Honey, he has your eyebrows," my mother says lovingly to my father. Upon hearing this news, my father seemed to be overjoyed while i started bawling for the first time since i was born.
***
My new home was pretty busy for the next few days. People of all ages came to visit after the news of my birth had spread around. Many of these people were not even related to me, but those who simply wished to see the rumored blessed baby.
I had mixed emotions about the way people referred to me, but my parents seemed to love the way people would look at me with adoring envy. I did not like being in the limelight, they enjoyed parading me about the front room of our house. After opening my status window 'all by myself' almost a hundred times, i just started crying every time i heard the word 'stats'.
Things started to calm down after those first few days and the visitors dwindled down to only a handful of people within the family. It was often my grandparents from either side or and aunt and uncle from different sides. Whenever it was not them, it was my older brother coming to show off his over-powered little brother.
From the way these people reacted, i could tell that my stats at birth were a big deal, but i could not see the issue. Certainly, in a world of magic and might, there would be people with Strength in the triple digits or even higher. The fact that i was born with AVERAGE stats for an adult simply meant i had a head start- and not really much of one.
The only thing among my stats that i was impressed by was 'Affinity', which my mother and her family boasted about greatly from their magical heritage. Like in most magical worlds, there were different types and elements of magic and an Affinity determined which ones you had a talent for. Apparently, i had universal talents.
I did not even know what all kinds of magic there was, but i was excited for when i finally learned enough to try some of them. With an affinity like 'ALL', i doubted i would have any trouble learning magic.
I was starting to feel like my 'generic blah' life would still be plenty of fun.
Soon came another fun and surprising event, my naming ceremony. I was less than two weeks old, but the ceremony itself took place every three months. During this ceremony, all the recently born children in the world are paraded through their home towns or villages or even cities to the local temple.
Some places had cathedrals, others sprawling abbeys, and a few only had small shrine buildings with a single priest. The town where i was born, however, had the average temple building that was a three story triangular structure of thick wooden beams. The entire building looked as old if not older than the town itself.
The town itself was pretty nice from what i could see of it.
My parents carried me in a sling that they exchanged between them now and again. i was dressed in a light cloth gown that was white, like both my parents, and even the sling i was carried in was ceremonial white.
The streets were paved with roughly level and even cobblestones that were old enough to be breaking apart in place. The buildings all around were not strange or unique. They were more old fashioned and nostalgic than anything else with uniform naked wood buildings that occasionally sported paint for shops of different types.
Families lined the streets with their own kids, some still in their first year of life and in their parents' arms while others held the hands of their relations. The other infants and toddlers had obviously already been through the process like i and a few dozen others were now.
If these babies watching from the street were as intellectually developed as i was, i was sure i would be meeting pitying gazes. This, of course, was only when my father would be carrying me. When my mother was carrying me, i spent half my time being discreetly fed or staring at neighboring bodies because i was too low to see over others.
After than twenty minute parade, i found myself in the large, open walled first floor of the temple. The second and third floors were supported along the outside of the middle with immense pine trunks that were likely as old as the building. The floor itself was darkly heat treated oak boards.
Scattered around the outer areas of the floor were what looked like stone statues of varying materials such as granite and slate and even pumice. These statues depicted what i could only assume were the gods of this world and there were over a dozen of them. Filling the spaces between these shrines were short shelves and tables that looked like simple reading areas.
In the hands of every statue were several sticks of burning incense and all of them together had the entire room smelling like expensive woods and exotic flowers.
In the middle of the supports the room was actually recessed down into a sermon or ceremony area. In the middle of this area was a small well or pool in which i quickly guessed we were going to be baptized. Of course, it was straight to this area that i was being taken.
After everybody present had ringed themselves concentrically around the cobbled stone pool, all of the babies were presented still in their slings by their fathers while robed elderly men and women circled the pool.
What these people were doing was going around murmuring prayers while oiling their thumbs to 'anoint' the other infants by pressing on their foreheads. After this anointment, status windows began appearing in the air. I could just barely make out the numerous zeroes in their stats.
After witnessing the first batch of fellows in the front row with me be poked in the face by old people, i immediately summoned my own status window with a brief thought. This brought me once more into the spot light as people began gossiping about the 'coherent child' and 'blessed baby'.
At least i was not getting mucked in the face like the rest of these normal babies, so for once i did not care about being on display. However, one elderly lady who came up to us still tried to anoint me. The second she started dabbing here thumb with a small glass bottle or vial, i started glaring daggers.
When she finally took notice of my face after he prayers, i nodded with my chin toward the status window nearby. When it seemed that they finally noticed its existence, i once again nodded toward the bottom of the screen before jerk my head off to the side.
It did not take a genius to know when the sentient infant was using his Diving Translation to tell you to take a hike. Looking shocked and even offended, the lady said something about prayers and blessings 'for the parents' before hurrying on to the next baby. My mother was obviously worries about this by whispering to my father, but he merely laughed it off in a great booming voice.
From the little i had learned about my family from their discussions, my parents were not exactly wealthy but were well off with wealthy and prominent backgrounds.
Dad was some kind of beast hunter as well as law enforcement that took jobs through a freelance agency. With his size and strength, he was obviously one of the top dollar workers.
My mother used to work for the same agency until she met my father and decided to settle down. As his personal healer. She was well versed in combat magic but she preferred the more passive support roles and with a giant tank like my father around she could stick to the job she liked.
He was obviously where my physical stats came from and she was where my magic came from. Between the two, any jobs they took were over with quickly and without problems. So they had that kind of reputation and my father enjoyed being competitive.
I was basically his trophy son alongside his trophy wife in a more or less trophy life.
After the first circle of children were anointed, their parents would approach the pool and name them before all the gods and persons present. At this point their names would then appear in their statuses and maybe a few other blessings or information if they were lucky. My father, however, had instigated this days ago so that i was already named.
All that was left was for the oldest and most heavily robed priest, who my father addressed as 'Father', at the pool to dunk me in the water and say some prayer. Even though i had a status window hanging next to my head and had met a godly being who told me gods existed in this world, witnessing the end of each baptism before me really made me question gods.
The air around each soaking wet baby would shimmer as if with heat and by the time the priest finished their chanted prayer they would permanently burn with a vague ethereal fire that was little more than a small heatwave around their body.
From the average reactions of people in the room, either only a few of them could see it and were used to it or none of them could see this divine power at work like i could. For those who i think could see it, they would close their eyes and offer up prayers as if this were the appropriate reaction.
My power hungry and curious little self was reaching out towards the pool in anticipation of my baptism. THIS was something i wanted to experience.
*