My unconscious mind wanders, and soon I find myself back inside the spiraling void of nowhere, but this time I’m not alone. I can feel the presence of my sister beside me, and like an anchor, it holds me from drifting back out. The next moment I snap back, and my vision is blurry and my ears are ringing. Before my senses come back, I feel a strange energy filling my chest. A link to that place solidifies and my status updates.
As the fog in my mind clears, I find myself in a bed with my sister lying beside me. I barely look up when Mom embraces me.
“Callen, thank goodness,” she cries. “You had Mommy so scared.” I feel myself melt into her embrace for a time before I notice the presence of someone else in the room. Mom also notices my attention shift and reluctantly pulls back before introducing him. “Callen, this is your dad, Marek. He’d been stationed in Port town after we even knew you and Callia were coming, but he’s really excited to meet you." I take in the sight of a large six-foot man with brown hair and a bulky frame. My first impression is that he looks like a Viking, but I can tell beneath his stoic and stiff expression is a nervous tenderness.
“Dad.” I announce in my infant voice, but while I say that, the new energy in my body seems to resonate in me, and memories of a past I thought washed away seep back into me. His expression breaks in joy before snapping back to concern as I flinch with a headache from the connection to my former life. I feel myself getting drowsy before I faint again, barely noticing as Mom and Dad panic.
Viking; I should have no idea what that means, but it is the first word unique to that previous life and the fulcrum to my connection. I feel my affinity responding in some strange manner, forcefully drawing out my mana while recalling everything I had lost in the Void. I faded in and out of consciousness as my body slowly recovered and then exhausted itself. While I was nearly immobilized by exhaustive and uncontrollable mana use, I was moved into a smaller wooden house in a suburban-like area. I got to meet Grandpa Renack and spend time at home. This continued for the next two years as I learned who I was.
In my previous life I lived for 24 years. A peaceful childhood in the State of Colorado growing up and briefly working retail before I joined the military as an aircraft maintainer at 20. Basic training and then tech school—no issue. Eventually I was being stationed in Germany, but some idiot forgot to strap down a pallet properly; a shift in the plane from turbulence and the pallet slid right into me, crushing me like a bug. However, even as I remember who I was, it doesn’t interfere with who I am. A distinction in my mind and soul lets me accept everything I lost, and while still sad, it's a loss I had long accepted.
The boredom of being unable to leave bed from frequent collapses leaves me little to do but continue my practice, but in this time frame my sister unlocked a different affinity, and while she still gained access to our lost memories, it only gave her a light headache. Instead, she took full advantage of her ability to move and started trying all kinds of different activities, eager to take her chance to surpass me. Her eagerness to learn everything forces Grandpa to step in and try to guide her to essential skills shaping her future as a self-proclaimed future “Ultimate Huntress.” He soon found Callia was extraordinarily talented and seemed to have an incredible capacity for new skills.
My sister finally passed me. It seems her restless personality was more suited for open spaces and physical activities, and while I had a large lead after all the experience from the mushroom swarm pushing my skills to a personal limit, the years of inactivity and inability to utilize my mana had let my sister surpass my total XP. In this time we had worked out that there were different ranks for skills, each providing different amounts of XP. Tier 1 was skills like Listen or Run and gave 10 XP per level. Tier 2 were skills requiring fundamentals from tier one, like focus leading into meditation, which was worth 50 xp per level. The highest tier we had unlocked thus far was Tier 3, which requires a Tier 2 to lead into; for instance, Focus unlocks Sense Mana, which then unlocks Control Mana, and Tier 3 is worth 100 XP per level.
In addition, Callia learned from Grandpa all sorts of information about the system, like why we couldn’t use our stat points until we reached whatever our community considered adulthood. Nobody unlocked their stats until they reached the age considered independent by their species living in the same region. Humans in the capital wouldn’t unlock until 18 years old, while humans on the outskirts often unlocked around 15. In addition, the earlier in someone's growth stat points are distributed, the more their physique grows, which, while not a significant factor for humanity, has massive implications for animals and monsters.
Giant monsters often leverage their weight and reach to outperform similarly leveled humans, and the difference becomes more pronounced the more extreme the difference. Giant sea monsters often take a team of multiple similarly leveled people to confront and can often escape even if they can't win, which is why humanity has nearly abandoned all coastal settlements. Port Town was only viable because of the Wither Tree, which was an ancient tree that attacked large sea monsters that approached and seemed not to care about human presence.
While Callia and I settled into our new lives, Mother seemed to thrive being surrounded by those she cared for. It turns out she was specially trained by the noble family in skills specialized for early childhood care and had been trained to raise a noble child until she was released from her duties. In the new community her unique skill set made her new job as an orphanage caretaker easy. The orphans often spent time with us, and soon we had made many new friends. My recovery was a quick thing once the mana drainage had passed, and soon I was finally able to explore the town myself.
