After I crossed the portal it felt like I had entered a tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, I could see pinpricks of light that were rapidly enlarging in vision. Slowly the scene of a dining room came into view. Even before I could make out the dining room, however, a fork laden with a chunk of tender-looking meat swam in front of my vision. The vision at the end of the tunnel was Zoey's perspective. Quickly my own view began to match up with Zoey's view. It was as if I had been shot out of a cannon in a completely dark room with only 2 pinpricks of light, and my target was exactly that light, on the other side of those 2 holes was Zoey's face.
As Zoey's vision became my vision, the rest of my soul lined up with Zoey's body. It was like putting on a glove that had been tailored to fit perfectly. It was an indescribable feeling, I suddenly felt as though my past life fit like a glove that was one size too large. Nathan's doing no doubt, he seemed to take some sort of pleasure in causing suffering so much so that he would pay attention to minute details even such as this.
After adapting to the sensations of the new body, I gradually looked around. Or I tried to, my vision seemed to currently be fixed in place. It was then that I noticed everything seemed frozen. Not just the people, or the fork in front of my face, even the steam that should be rising from the piece of lamb on the fork was frozen in place.
I don't know if this was normal in reincarnations, or if Nathan did something to give me time to adapt, but I decided to take advantage of it. Nathan had given me a system, now how do I go about summoning it? I began thinking of various command phrases "menu" "status" "open sesame." Nothing happened. Well, that's not good. I just want my "system." At that moment, in my mind's eye, a screen appeared. I was very glad that the screen appeared in my mind and wasn't obscuring my actual vision. Before I could get too relieved though I read one of the first couple of lines.
PHYSIQUE: LUNAR 9 FORMS BODY (SUPREME GRADE)* [UPGRADEABLE]
Fuck Nathan, I said above average, av-er-age. Not Supreme grade! I swear I could hear him laughing and replying unashamedly, "The definition of above average is very different for a person of my level than for one just starting out." Wait did he actually reply? Doesn't matter, let's see how bad the rest of it is.
NAME: ZOEY SEEKER
AGE: 5
LEVEL: MORTAL
PHYSIQUE: LUNAR 9 FORMS BODY (SUPREME GRADE)* [UPGRADEABLE]
SPIRIT ROOT: YIN 5-ELEMENTS ROOT (SUPREME GRADE) [UPGRADEABLE]
TALENT: SUPREME GRADE [UPGRADEABLE]
PROVIDENCE: SUPREME GRADE [UPGRADEABLE]
HP: 50/50
QI: 1/1
STR: 5
AGI: 11
CON: 5
CHA: 28
LUK: 20
ABILITIES: NONE
SKILLS: SWIMMING LVL 1, CLIMBING LVL 1, LANGUAGE(ETERNIAN) LVL 2, LANGUAGE(CENTAURIAN) LVL 1, LANGUAGE(ENGLISH) LVL 3*, ARITHMETIC LVL 4*, LOGIC LVL 4*, MISCHIEF LVL 2, DIPLOMACY LVL 1, GEOGRAPHY(ETERNIA) LVL 1
INBOX: 1 ITEM
Supreme everything? What was Nathan thinking? At this rate, some young master would definitely turn me into his cultivation furnace. Well, there's no use worrying about it now that it was done, the only thing I could do was get strong enough to avoid that fate. Was there any way to see more detail on these? I focused my thoughts on my physique and another screen appeared.
LUNAR 9 FORMS BODY*: A descendant of the Moon Goddess. This body possesses an extreme affinity towards yin qi and morphing its appearance
Effect 1: 100% increase in stats between moonrise and moonset. It is not affected by being inside structures, underground, or the solar cycle. So long as a moon is above the horizon this bonus will take effect. Changes to a 200% increase during a full moon. Moonlight must be able to reach the user for the full moon effect.
Effect 2: Cultivating under moonlight will be 100% more effective—changes to 200% under a full moon.
Effect 3: 90% reduced cost for yin techniques used under moonlight.
Effect 4: Form of the Hominid: Can change your appearance to that of another human. The size of the target must be no more than 10% different than the user. Forcibly changing to a target outside this range will result in the features being copied and scaled to the user's size.
Cost to activate: 10 Qi (1 Qi under moonlight)
More effects will be unlocked at higher realms.
*The unsophisticated tests in Eternia may misidentify this as the lesser APEFIST PHYSIQUE (GOOD) or LUNAR BEASTFORM BODY (SUPERIOR)
Well, my number one worry was comforted at least, I might not get sought after by jealous young masters after all. My physique seemed both overpowered and unreliable. What would happen if the moon set during a fight? I would suddenly get weaker by a large margin. But something was bothering me. The text kept saying "a moon" not "the moon." As my mind dwelled on this, Zoey's GEOGRAPHY(Eternia) activated and everything became clear. There were a total of four moons in the skies of Eternia. Two of them orbited in a pair, but between that pair and the other two moons, there was rarely a moment when there wasn't a moon in the sky. This made the 100% bonus to stats much more reliable. So only the moonlight and full moon effects were unreliable, but even then, it mostly just meant waiting for nightfall.
As for the form of the hominid. I originally couldn't use it, but now all I had to do was wait for nightfall. I couldn't wait for the dark to see what mischief I could get into. Wait, mischief? Why would I want to get into mischief? Then I remembered seeing MISCHIEF LVL 2 in the skills section. Zoey's personality seemed to be affecting me.
Nathan didn't explain this part to me. I was under the impression that since Zoey didn't have a soul yet, it would be like acquiring a blank slate for the personality and I would get to fill in the slate with my own personality. But that's not what was happening. It was more like Zoey and I were two halves merging together to become one whole person. Zoey wasn't disappearing, and I wasn't taking her place. Instead, we were completing each other, becoming more than we were apart.
I forcibly suppressed the sudden desire to run into town and imitate the children of the town while committing all sorts of pranks. However, I couldn't help but giggle at the thought of putting frogs into the toilet chambers of various townsfolk and leaving witnesses so that their own kids would take the blame. This might be problematic.
Thinking of the other skills I acquired from Zoey, my mind turned to the language skills. Then I realized the system wasn't in English, it was in the beautiful flowing script of Eternian and I could understand it perfectly as if I was a native speaker thanks to Zoey's level two skill which indicated she had intermediate proficiency in the language. Just as one would expect of an educated child, she could easily hold conversations, and read and write her native tongue. The nuances of the language that would indicate level three or advanced proficiency were something that an Earth child wouldn't learn until middle or high school.
Aside from Eternian and English, I also had a language called Centaurian. It only had beginner proficiency. This indicated that Zoey could hold basic conversations in Centaurian, anything advanced may require Zoey to ask for a simpler version. Her reading and writing skills in Centaurian were even more basic. In Zoey's defense, Centaurian was a character-based language with thousands of characters rather than the much smaller alphabet she was used to in her native tongue. As such, she hadn't even memorized a hundred characters yet.
Centaurian was the common language of the planet. Being the daughter of a merchant family, she was required to learn the world's language. Centaurian was called such because the planet was named Alpha Centauri. Neither Zoey, nor I, had enough knowledge to know if this was the same Alpha Centauri I knew of on Earth, but it was an amazing coincidence nonetheless.
Reminded of Earth, I wondered why I didn't have a GEOGRAPHY(EARTH) skill. Math, logic, and English were clearly brought over from my previous life as denoted by the asterisk, but why not geography? I might not have been great, but I should at least have level one right? As I tried to think about the layout of countries and continents on Earth, I drew a blank. I knew the Earth was blue and that was it. Any knowledge I used to have was among the memories taken from me.
Oh well, no use crying over what was already lost. Let's look at my spirit root next.
YIN 5-ELEMENTS ROOT: Spirit root capable of absorbing yin, wood, water, fire, metal, and earth qi. Cultivators look down on roots with a wide variety of elements as they are difficult to cultivate and produce less effect in any given element than an equivalent single-element root.
Yet again my worries lessened. It seemed no one would be chasing after me for my physique or my root. I was a bit concerned about finding a fitting cultivation technique though. They seemed to be rare in Eternia. I could take a single or dual-element cultivation technique. There's probably a yin-water technique or something similar. But, I would be building a weaker foundation than if I had a more appropriate technique. We would have to think about that later, let's look at talent and providence.
TALENT: SUPREME GRADE: The user possesses a great cultivation intuition and can easily learn and master techniques. As well as intuit improved versions of techniques. Cultivation speed is enhanced. The tests in Eternia are unable to directly infer a person's talent. Instead, they watch a person's growth over several years and measure it indirectly.
PROVIDENCE: The user is the child of luck. Great things always come her way. Affects the LUK Stat. Eternians have no way to measure providence directly or indirectly. They will however attribute any occurrence that is clearly due to luck as a part of a person's ability rather than dismissing it.
Seems like Nathan knew what he was doing after all. The only supreme anything the Eternians will see if they test me will be my spiritual root, which they won't like because of the multiple elements. Leaving it entirely in my hands to reveal how much ability I had.
Looking at my stats in more detail, they worked exactly like I expected. The average adult male would have ten in all stats, except luck which varied wildly between individuals. Adult females were the same except they had one less strength and one more agility point. Each increment of ten represented a twofold increase so a person with a strength of thirty was four times stronger than a person with a strength of ten not just triple. Strength and agility were further broken down into arms, core, and legs. They could be trained individually and the system would take the highest stat, but clearly, a balanced strength or agility was better than focusing on one area. There was no intelligence or wisdom score. I'm sure I had them, but they weren't something I could affect. More importantly, my magic or qi came from my cultivation, not my stats. My current one qi is what every living being had simply by existing.
There were guides on how to increase each Stat. Strength exercises for strength. Yoga and reflex/speed games for agility. Endurance exercises for the constitution. And for charisma training, diplomacy-based skills were a must. Even mischief could raise charisma oddly enough. And now my terrifying Charisma score was partially explained. Two points came from level one diplomacy and mischief each, and another four came from level two Mischief. As for why my Charisma was still ten points above average, I had no idea. My strength and constitution were disappointing, but they made sense, I was still young. As for agility reaching the adult standard already, kids are fairly bendy and quick. I would have to train to not lose that agility, as opposed to strength and constitution which would teach the adult standard without much effort. Then there was luck which was clearly affected by my providence, I wondered if charisma had a similar ability powering it, but hidden.
Lastly, there was that inbox item. What did Nathan want to say that he couldn't say face to face? Opening the inbox, I saw a short message and an attached technique. Dammit Nathan, I didn't want any handouts. My anger seemed to be working again. I decided to read the message before I got too angry though.
Eternians won't have a cultivation technique that suits you. So to prevent your talent from being wasted, I'm including a technique that will be a perfect match for young Zoey. This will be the one and only handout. Acquiring spells, battle techniques, and resources will be entirely in your own hands.
P.S. Don't try to read the manual until you are old enough to cultivate.
Even though Nathan's thoughts seemed to match my own, he still seemed condescending. Calming myself back down, I took a peek at the title of the cultivation technique.
Yin-Yang 5-Elements Qi Gathering Technique (Supreme Grade)
I hope Nathan knew what he was doing. I don't have any yang. This cultivation technique could hurt me. I hope he wasn't just doing this to take one last jab at my previous life. I guess I'll have to wait to find out though. I can't even read the manual until I'm older.
I got ready to close my system, but before I did one last thing caught my eye. I don't think it was there before. Under physique, there was another entry.
BLOODLINE: SEEKER FAMILY BLOODLINE (UNKNOWN GRADE)
Curious, I looked closer.
SEEKER FAMILY BLOODLINE: Every Seeker family member seeks after something, which is how they obtained the name. The family patriarch seeks wealth, and Zoey's parents seek knowledge, what is it that Zoey seeks after? This obsession brings both benefits and detriments to the user. Effects currently unknown.
I wish I hadn't looked. It appears that this bloodline was a ticking time bomb. How long would it be before I was holed away somewhere chasing after something that would never be enough? That's not what I wanted, I wanted the power to set my own course. I hastily closed the screen before I saw any more bad news.
Finally focusing on my environment again, I noticed that both my arm and jaw were sore. Everyone was staring at me silently, but they were no longer frozen. Steam was no longer rising from the fork in front of me. I took a bite, it was cold. Just how long had time been resumed and everyone just stared at me while I stupidly held a fork in front of my face? I could feel my cheeks heating up in embarrassment.
I turned to look at my new father who bore the appearance of a mad scientist. The effects of the cursed bloodline were immediately evident. He dipped his quill in ink in such a way that it reminded me of an eager reporter clicking a ballpoint pen in anticipation of an interview.
"So how was it?" he asked.