When you realize that your life is not what it should be what would you do? Will you fall apart and disappear? Will you face It and find your center? Or will you do everything you can to forget and live as if nothing has happened. No one knows because many don't have this problem in the first place. How would you fare?
It happened on my sixteenth birthday. It was the most horrible realization at the time. This entire time, the 16 years I had lived here, I was not who my new parents thought me to be. I was not their son, and I didn't even know if I had taken the place of him.
I sat there staring at my birthday cake, apparently some things transcend dimensions, tears and snot running down my face. My new parents, Ignis and Elizabeth, looking on in concern wondering what in the world could be wrong. My father Ignis was the first one to speak to me, "Therion, what's the matter? I know we don't have much but normally you are fine with it." Hearing that felt like a hammer blow, they had done so much to make their son happy, and here I am doubting if they consider me their son.
The rest of this new world would consider me a monster at birth just because of my affinity. The entire reason my father and mother were out here in the Deadlands was so they could raise me in relative peace. They went through so much because of me. Anger surged in my chest, if only I had been normal, we would be living in a mansion. "Maybe I shouldn't have been born at all." I mumbled quietly under my breath.
My father and mother, with their enhanced attributes from their high tier, heard what I said. Immediately he got out of his seat and walked over to me with a solemn expression on his face. He knelt down in front of me, grabbed me by my shoulders, and spoke in a deeply affectionate voice, "We wouldn't have it any other way." Somehow my mother had gotten behind me, embraced me, and said, "You will always be our son no matter what happens. Did you awaken your past memories?"
Startled I broke out of their hold and stared at them. "You knew? Why didn't you say anything until now?" My mother, with a pained smile, said, "The System was preventing you from realizing it until you are ready, and your soul is capable of supporting your full past self. If I or your father had said anything it could possibly warp or damage your soul." She paused a second and took a breath before continuing, "As for how we knew, it was quite easy to tell. You were acting differently, you learned common as if you already knew it, and sometimes you would say or do things that kids your age shouldn't know about. It started when you were around 5 or 6."
My father after hearing our conversation seemed to understand and started bombarding me with questions, "How old were you when you died, what tier did you reach, and what was your affinity?" He looked on in anticipation before getting hit in the back of his head by my mother. She gave him a glare and he understood something. "Before that know that you are our son and nothing will change that." He then looked at me expectantly and my mother glared at him but didn't stop me from answering.
Scratching the back of my head, I smiled warmly, cursed myself for being stupid, and stuttered, "I was 19 when I died, and I don't think this is the same world that I was in. We didn't have the system there, but humans can be quite crafty creatures." I wiped the tears and snot from my face and continued, "Even though there was no essence in that world it was awesome." I stopped to think for a second and said, "Well there was a little bit of essence there, but we didn't have the system."
My father was shocked at that, and my mother smiled warmly before saying, "Now that we have that out of the way, there is some cake that needs to be eaten." With that the rest of the day was a rush of celebrating, reminiscing about times long past, and enjoying the presence of my new family. That night I laid in bed thinking about the differences between Earth and Cythar.
Earth had many things that Cythar did not. Tecnology that could do just about anything you could think of. A generally peaceful environment to grow up in. My old family. Entertainment of just about any kind. But Cythar was very different in many ways. The biggest difference is the presence of essence which literally is world changing. The next biggest difference is the system it is involved with every single part of this world's culture. It is expected that it would shape how you live, especially when you gain reality bending powers when you turn 18.
From what I have learned over the years, but not really thought of, it goes something like this. First you need to form your core which you do in the week leading up to your 18th birthday. It takes a long time because you have to gather the correctly affinity of essence from your surroundings. I could try to do it before then, but the system would reject it and the backlash could kill me. When you finish forming your core, you awaken your two starting core cards. The core cards are always an energy card, and a field card. Then your affinity 'mutates' them to be more in line with your affinity. After that there are a few main parts of the power progression in this world.
The energy card generates a certain amount of energy depending on the rarity of it. That energy is then stored in your core to be used for many different activities. It acts as a form of filter from then on which will passively filter essence from your surroundings into your core. Alternatively, you can actively draw in essence and pass it through the filter. The downside of doing it that way, according to my parents, is the energy card can get strained or damaged if you do it too long.
The field card is a special type of card that can only be sustained in your core. It accumulates a number of charges each day which can be used in two ways. The first is a type of random generation and the other is a direct creation of a card. The random generation is done by gathering the number of charges you want to use on it and consuming them to generate a card. That card will be a random thing that will be influenced by your field card. The direct generation is used after you have generated a random card or received a card compatible with your affinity. By memorizing the pattern in the card, you can generate a copy of it. The quality of the copy is directly proportional to the accuracy of the card to the original.
Another important aspect of this system is cultivation of your core. By accumulating a lot of essence in your core you can slowly expand it by stressing its limits and healing it using said essence. After a certain point you will gain enough space in your core to support another core card. When this happens, you will gain the opportunity to get to the next tier. That requires two things, besides an empty core slot, a sufficiently powerful card that you created, and a core full of essence. Upon tiering up you will be able to create or fuse cards of the next tier and the system will give you a few options for a trait.
Traits are a powerful upgrade to your abilities and are always based on what you did system wise before you tiered up. They will either introduce a powerful new change to your 'Build' or reinforce how you go about it. There are a few ways you can get a trait besides that. One is to be born as a powerful race. For example, a trait almost every parent has told their children about is the dragon's draconic trait which gives the dragons another core card. That card is their dragon heart.
Besides those everyone has a few basic abilities granted by the system upon awakening that are collectively called card collecting. I had seen my parents using them, I just never thought about how weird it is due to the system. The two abilities are card harvesting and card storage. Card harvesting is an ability that allows you to use your affinity to harvest the essence of the world and form it into a card for later use. Card storage is an ability that applies to any externally carried form of storage. It allows the user to store and extract card in them.
After laying there thinking of all the possible routes for a build I could take, it sunk in. I have the death affinity, whatever I do will be influenced by my death affinity. Also, I will have to create a build from scratch that will be able to defend me from all that would want to harm me. Definitely no pressure, right? With that last thought sleep finally caught me and dragged me into a fitful sleep.