How undignified, thought Tyr, pawing away at his still-moist cheeks.

  He hadn’t expected his extended family to be waiting for their arrival. It made sense in retrospect; his usual arrogance would have predicted such attention under normal circumstances.

  His mind was currently in turmoil over the fact that he had been reincarnated into the one society—or one subsection of society, at least—that seemed to have reached some post-scarcity utopia that cared about the common people instead of enriching the nobility.

  What are the chances? he seethed.

  It would take time to get over that. For now, he had to present his best face to Emory and his family. At least, after he finished taking in the breathtaking sights of Valorwood.

  Their carriage had touched base on some kind of empty hangar bay made of crystal, set into a lower section of Valorwood. No railing marked the edge where the platform dropped off into certain death. Beyond lay the vast expanse of wooded plains, stretching far past the horizon. Somewhere, a speck in the distance, was their estate.

  Strangely, he already felt homesick.

  As gorgeous as the view was, he was more interested in the walls of the hangar bay. The structure seemed to be mostly made out of crystal, teeming with lattices of diamond-colored mana.

  Is Crystal another major affinity of mine, then? Makes sense, since either Mother or Father have it. Probably Father.

  But Crystal must also be relatively low if I can only see it here, and not other examples like the armor Garrett and the maids are wearing. Or is the concentration here actually visible to everyone, some quirk of the design? The mana looks solid, instead of the usual flowing liquid.

  He decided not to ask and spoil himself further. And not to get his hopes up too much. Despite his self-confidence, there was a chance that Sky was his only proper affinity. The vast majority of people had none at all.

  Perhaps it would be better to temper his expectations, especially after the recent tragedy that Mother had revealed to him.

  Instead of picking at that fresh wound, he focused on the towering figure before him.

  Uncle Emory was a grizzly bear of a man with an imperious stance. Tyr eyed the man’s bushy beard with envy—it had been carefully groomed and oiled, though it went a bit crazy around the neck, bulging outward and curling about in a wild tangle. His mane of hair danced around in the wind.

  Whatever air currents from outside of the hangar bay were battering at the man seemed to avoid Tyr, sparing him from being flung about the hangar bay like a ragdoll. A protective cantrip from his family or one of their entourage? They hadn’t bothered to extend it to Emory, though the man was weathering the storm quite well on his own. It even lent him a somewhat powerful presence, admittedly.

  Tyr’s immediate reaction to his Uncle had been dislike, though it was possible he was being unfair. Just because the man spoke to him like he was a child wasn’t an indictment of his personality. Tyr was a child, and had obviously just thrown a tantrum. Though he didn’t like the glances Uncle kept throwing at his mom when he was ignorant enough to think no one noticed.

  Or is he looking at me? Well, at least some of those glances are drifting down to her bare ankles. That’s your brother’s wife, guy!

  Tyr wrapped his arms around Mother’s neck and clung tight, affixing Emory with a pointed glare.

  After their initial staredown (Tyr hadn’t blinked the whole time!), Uncle seemed content enough to ignore him for now. Instead, Emory was actively engaging Father in the most fake-pleasant family interaction Tyr had ever been forced to witness. And in his past life as James, he’d seen a lot of weird relationships between Stanford students and their overbearing relatives.

  This was the worst, by far.

  “Set me down,” Tyr ordered his Mother, mostly keeping the quaver out of his tone. Dignified. Regal. “Please.”

  As Mother lowered him to the floor, Tyr suppressed a smirk. His first use of ‘please’ looked to have shaken her to her core. An absent grin had broken across her face like the sunrise after a long, stormy night. Her lips were moving. Was she offering a silent prayer of thanks to one of her gods?

  As Tyr’s miniature combat boots touched the ground, he straightened to his full height of three feet tall and adjusted his suit.

  Father and Uncle were still yapping pleasantries as if it was a heated debate, clutching at one another and squeezing the other’s biceps manfully. Were they comparing physiques? They kept nodding and grinning wider and wider, until their faces looked deformed beyond natural limits.

  What the hells are they doing? They look deranged.

  After a long minute of this spectacle, Emory waved for them to follow him. The entire group finally departed the crystal hanger bay. It led to a series of wide tunnels that seemed to have been carved into Valorwood itself. The wood gleamed with good health, emanating an intoxicating bouquet of fresh sap and dark, resiny oudh.

  Hand in hand with Mother, Tyr marched behind the rest of the group, taking his time to appreciate the organic splendor all around him.

  Unfortunately, despite how much Earth mana and adjacent affinities like Wood and Plant must suffuse the entire structure, he couldn’t detect any signs of their energy signatures. No Nature-type major affinity for me, then?

  As they were walking, Tyr must have reached the exact interval from when he had been born. Three years and zero seconds old.

  He came to a stop as a strange sensation filled his body. Time stretched out for one indeterminable moment before reverting to its normal pace—his Will increasing by a decent chunk, enhancing his processing speed. His perception sharpened, detailing the world in excruciating clarity. The sound of everyone’s footsteps was like a rockslide.

  Grimacing, he forced his eyes closed and clapped his hands against his ears. Just the sound of his palms brushing his earlobes hurt.

  A System notification flashed across his vision.

  [ First Gate reached. General Skills and Achievements unlocked. ]

  [ Status]

  [ General Skills]

  [ Achievements]

  [ Titles ]

  [ Class ]

  [ Profession ]

  Finally. He was now an active participant in the System beyond being able to view his Status.

  Titles would unlock on his sixth birthday, Class on his twelfth, and Profession on his fifteenth. It all seemed rather arbitrary to Tyr. What foolish deity had cared enough about child labor laws to restrict them from having a Profession before fifteen?

  Admittedly, for most people it was a reasonable measure. Back on Earth, they had discussed future career paths from a young age, but hadn’t sworn an oath that locked them in to being an astronaut or the President when they were seven years old.

  It still bothered Tyr.

  Couldn’t the System make an exception? Just the once? He was actually more like twenty-seven, even if the age displayed on his Status disagreed.

  There was no response. Curses.

  Now he would have to wait another three years for more access. From what little others had bothered to share with him so far, the Second Gate—unlocking his Titles—wasn’t as big of a deal as the rest, though it did lead to a quantitative jump in power.

  Achievements were already a massive leap compared to before, as evidenced by the sensation he had experienced from at least one of them unlocking and boosting his mental attributes. On top of that, General Skills allowed a path of continuous progression in relatively mundane activities, enough to satisfy all but the most envious of toddlers. Going from nothing to those two was a bigger leap than adding Titles on top of his existing System boons.

  Unlocking all three of them at once may be a bit excessive. Perhaps if Titles were available to three year olds as well, they would become too powerful. Hordes of toddler soldiers with superhuman attributes, Fire Magic cantrips burning down cities during a tantrum, chubby-cheeked thieves stealing whatever bauble had caught their eye.

  Perhaps it’s for the best. Put like that, isn’t three already a bit too young, actually? For everyone else, at least. Hello? Explain yourself, System.

  It didn’t.

  Undaunted, Tyr rubbed the palms of his hands together.

  [ Status ]

  Name: Tyrus Hollan

  Age: 3 years

  Race: Human (D)

  Bloodline: Vision of the Omniscient (D)

  Attributes:

  Strength: 5

  Dexterity: 6

  Constitution: 1

  Will: 7 > 9

  Perception: 4 (8) > 5 (10)

  Charisma: 4 (8) > 5 (10)

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  Skills:

  [ Gaze of the Dominator ] - 4 (Sealed)

  After the brief confirmation that his Achievements had boosted his baseline stats, he brought up the relevant screen with a thought.

  [ Achievements ]

  Lineage of Envy - Bloodline (Unique, Hereditary). Congratulations! Through no effort of your own, you are granted privileges due to blatant nepotism from a very, very remote ancestor. Lord Envy has selected: +20% Charisma.

  Excess Affinity - Totality (Mythical). One of your affinities has exceeded the upper limit of 100. Whether it was through gruesome experimentation such as the unnatural fusion of a chimera, accepting eldritch horrors into your soul, or some other sinister design, you have surpassed the known natural limit for one of your affinities! +15% Will, +15% Perception, +10% Charisma.

  Reincarnator, Zero Mana World (Rare). You remember your previous life. You come from a homeworld with no mana-based magic, but myths and legends have seeped through the barrier of that realm, igniting a longing within your previous self. +10% Will, +10% Perception. Doubled efficiency in learning new languages. +50% efficiency to learning about subjects that didn’t exist or were considered fantastical in your own world.

  Unbroken Pacifism (Uncommon). You have never intentionally attacked another member of your species, or any sapient species at all, through physical or magical means. No worries, accidentally stepping on bugs and swallowing spiders in your sleep won’t count against you. Loss of all related boons if Pacifism is broken. +2% to Will, Perception, and Charisma per year this Achievement is maintained. Currently: +6%.

  Tyr reread all of them again. This was insane. More than he had hoped for. He wasn’t sure what other people’s starting Achievements looked like, but he had to imagine he had most people beat.

  The sheer number of percentage buffs instead of flat attribute increases made him weaker in the short term than he could have been otherwise, but each point he gained in the future would stretch further. Maybe if he had been reborn in some monster-infested forest, he would prefer a +10 Strength Achievement. For him, this was perfect.

  All together, he received +36% to Charisma, +31% to Perception, and +31% to Will. Basically every third point in his mental attributes would grant him one more for free.

  The +20% to Charisma from Lord Envy instead of something like Will or Constitution seemed a bit of an unfortunate waste, but given the man’s name, Tyr wouldn’t have expected anything else. He already had Vision of the Omniscient; this Achievement was purely a secondary boost that, given the tone of the description, must have been haggled out of the System with extreme prejudice. It seemed the System had gotten the shorter end of the stick on that one.

  His Mythical Achievement only granted 15%, though to two different attributes, and 10% to a third. The jump from 15% to 20% must be quite steep. That 5% would make quite a difference once his base stats inevitably reached the billions, and that was just a passive boost from an Achievement.

  Tyr began analyzing each boon he had received.

  Pacifism was essentially a default Achievement everyone received at birth. He had overheard it mentioned with some frequency. As far as he was aware, both of his parents were practitioners of the Path of Pacifism as Healer and Scholar Types, though Unbroken Pacifism must be quite rare in adults. He imagined most people had a lesser version of the Achievement, perhaps granting 0.5% or 1% to mental attributes instead of 2%.

  Since everyone had Unbroken Pacifism since birth, the only reason it wasn’t rated as a Common Achievement was because the majority of people either abandoned it completely, or circumstances had forced them to break their streak and settle for the lesser version.

  Tyr wondered if there was some equivalent Achievement for those interested in combat. A percentage boost to their physical attributes based on consecutive days of violence? Or were the gains from killing monsters—or, goodness forbid, other sapient people—considered enough of a reward on their own?

  That made sense if the System sought to balance the scales for noncombatants such as Scholars, Healers, Merchants, and the like. There must also be combat Achievements, such as killing more powerful monsters than yourself or winning a large-scale battle, that would be impossible for a Pacifist to benefit from.

  A Warrior Class could always have a Crafter Profession that allowed them to receive noncombatant Achievements, but a pure Crafter would have far more difficulty surviving on a battlefield in order to earn combat boons.

  The scaling from Pacifism would help make it viable for people to pursue dedicated Support and Servant builds. Fifty years to double your mental attributes, and who knew how long a S-Grade human could live?

  The Reincarnator Achievement was rather self-explanatory, though some of the finer details would require experimentation.

  Was Alchemy a ‘fantastical subject’, for instance? Alchemists had existed on Earth as a sort of mystical precursor to chemists, though their quest for a universal reagent or the philosopher’s stone had been impossible to achieve.

  Though perhaps they had simply lacked the means at the time. Sufficiently advanced technology could be indistinguishable from magic. Probably why the Achievement mentioned Earth had no ‘mana-based magic.’ They had basically controlled electromagnetism and enchanted bits of circuitry to create computers. That level of technology could be considered a type of magical crafting, harnessing and manipulating fundamental laws of the universe.

  He vaguely recalled there was a way for some elements to be transmuted into gold back on Earth, though the cost must have been prohibitively expensive. Still, modern technology had shown itself capable of replicating some of the grand goals of alchemy, even if they hadn’t found an elixir that granted eternal life or the like.

  Blacksmithing was another obvious one. Blacksmiths absolutely existed on Earth, but they couldn’t make magical gear. So would Tyr gain a boost to learning how to craft magical weapons, but nothing for mundane constructions like steel blades?

  With all of his Achievements revolving around his mental attributes, he doubted he would be working the bellows and hammering away against an anvil, but there was no telling what the future would end up holding for him.

  Excess Affinity - Totality was simply badass. Even the edgy name was cool.

  This is what I’m talking about! Over 100 on an affinity? What can it be, that I haven’t noticed it in my daily life? Hopefully it’s not something too weird and untrainable.

  The fact the System guessed he was some unholy abomination because of this one was a bit concerning, but it was an absolutely lovely spoiler. Though…

  This might cause a bit of a stir at my Trial? Maybe that’s not a good thing? No, it’s going to be amazing. Do they admit three year olds into whatever the most prestigious academy in Savra is?

  The Lineage of Envy was also self-explanatory, though it was the first time he had heard of ‘Lord Envy’ as the actual name of their founding ancestor. Another aspect of the wording also caught his attention on second glance: it emphasized that Envy was ‘very, very remote’ from him.

  Until now, Tyr had assumed the System presented him information in English, even though the majority of his thoughts were in the local language, Empyrean, nowadays. He only really noticed the difference whenever he encountered a new term, such as his Mother calling Valorwood an emblema-schema (superstructure?).

  As he focused on the word ‘remote’, he realized he couldn’t tell which language it was actually in. Did the System directly translate its messages into his thoughts, offering him the illusion that he was reading words across his vision? In that case, the ambiguity of ‘remote’ was intentional.

  It could either mean that Lord Envy had been born aeons ago, or that he was physically so far away that even the System considered the distance noteworthy. With multiple ‘very’s.

  Both, if it used that specific term? It also says ‘has selected’. Present tense. Is our ancestor actually still alive? Um, how old is House Hollan again? Tyr rubbed his jaw. Lord Envy, is it? Are you why I’m like this? And here I’ve been blaming Father…

  “I guess it is about that time, huh?” Leon interrupted, checking his silver pocket watch.

  Tyr blinked, noticing that the others had also stopped and were staring at him. His increased mental attributes allowed hm to think faster, but he had probably spent at least thirty seconds standing in place, holding them up as he parsed through his various ideas.

  The corner of Emory’s lips drooped with annoyance, though the others in their group seemed to think it nothing out of the ordinary. It was a momentous occasion for Tyr, after all. All of them had probably mused over their own Systems for hours at a time at some point, especially when selecting their Class and Profession.

  Tyr shook his head and fell back into step with Mother. It wasn’t like it was difficult for him to think and walk at the same time, especially with his enhanced Will. He allowed his mind to wander over to the next, newly-unlocked section of his System: General Skills.

  [ General Skills ]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  [Empty]

  Available:

  Walking [Common] (Level 1)

  Focused Mind [Common] (Level 1)

  Even though his options didn’t seem to retroactively take everything he had done into account, it had only taken him a few steps and a bit of monologuing to unlock his two available choices. Demonstrating existing aptitude in a General Skill seemed enough for it to be offered in his archive.

  Focused Mind would likely prove useful, but Tyr managed to restrain himself from selecting it. Better to consult his parents and other experts first. He didn’t know if he could easily abandon a Skill after selecting one, and it would be awkward to use one of his seven limited slots on a redundant Common Skill.

  By the time he was finished contemplating the results of reaching the First Gate, they had arrived at their destination.

  The smooth tunnel opened up into a casual lounge. Various chairs, sofas, chaises, and stacks of cushions filled the room. Crystal screens lined the walls, displaying flickering images with a speed his Perception couldn’t keep up with, though most of them were dark. Servants glided throughout the room, bearing trays of drinks in fluted glasses and fancy-looking finger foods.

  Tyr hesitantly took a few steps into the room.

  The first thing he noticed was that most of the occupants laying about were younger girls.

  All of them had dark features and brooding expressions like Emory, though their dresses and robes were colorful, and jewels and bits of vibrant cloth had been tied into their hair. A bit of self-expression to break the monotony, but it still made them all look the same, as if they were all wearing uniforms marking them as members of a family. Or a cult.

  One of them was a grown woman that seemed to be in her late thirties, plump in a matronly way, with her copper hair styled in a tight bun. Aunt Trisa, he guessed, sipping golden wine as she reclined in an armchair that looked like a cloud. Her eyes were kind and soft.

  She was loosely surrounded by four girls, ranging from around eight to twenty years old. The twenty year old was relaxing on a sofa while she read a thick silver tome; the fifteen year old was sewing with a quilt and needle; the twelve year old looked to be meditating atop a pile of cushions; and the eight year old shoved candied walnuts into her face, her cheeks bulging like a chipmunk’s as she watched the too-fast crystal screens.

  Most interesting of all, a little boy, around five years old, stood off to the side, hand resting on the pommel of the sword at his hip. Was he trying to look impressive? The boy was posing in an awkward parody of his father’s stance—pigeon chest puffed out, chin tilted up so high he was practically staring at the ceiling.

  An older male cousin, huh? No way he wants to be a spellblade as well. Tyr sniffed. I will crush you.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Tyr noticed something concerning.

  All of the girl cousins were staring at him. Their expressions seemed almost…feverish.

  He smiled at them uncertainly.

  The twenty year old slammed her tome shut and sat up on her sofa. “Look at those cheeks—!”

  “—his hair! The suit! I can’t!” The fifteen year old flung her quilt and sewing needle at the ground with exultant force.

  “That little baby smile! Oh my goodness, just—”

  “Get him!” Chips of candied walnut sprayed from the eight year old’s face as she pointed at him.

  Tyr frantically spun around, boots scrabbling on the floor, desperate to flee. He only made it to the doorframe before the horde descended upon him.