Chapter 4: Chapter 3 – Like a Ninja

It has been a month since I volunteered, and I have given up waiting for them to log me out. Everything feels real. If I stub my toe, it hurts. I found that out the hard way. In this month I learn a few things. First was that magic is common; at least low-level magic was. As the levels advanced there were less and less people that had the aptitude for it. I found out that my father was an earth mage and my mother had a tiny bit of wind magic. My magical abilities were currently greyed out in the display. I could not use them until the awaking ceremony was held.

Second was that randomly bleeding from your crotch is super embarrassing. That is right, I got to experience my first period while out shopping with my mom for groceries. I stained my dress, which by the way she made me wear. "Boys wore pants girls wore dresses" my mom had informed me when I asked for pants. I pointed out a few women in pants but got a harrumph followed by a snide comment of "they aren't women they are adventurers" like that explained anything. Anyway, back to my point, I had figured that by playing sports and doing all the rough and tumble boy activities I had bled plenty of times from scrapes to nose bleeds, so periods were not going to be an issue! But how wrong I was. At least with my prior wounds they were "manly" in my eyes and I knew why they would happen. What was even more frustrating was that I cried all emotionally and I had no idea why I did. Afterwards, my mom got super excited and gave me a speech about how I was turning from a girl into a woman, I won't bore you with the full hour speech but needless to say one of us was happy and one of us wanted to crawl into a hole.

Third, getting points to level up skills is easy in the beginning. Once I accomplish a task, I get a notice saying that I got a point in that skill. The problem is that the skill is not usable until you get the completed amount. My cooking has gone from 1 of 500 to 25 of 500 for the beginner skill even though I have cooked over 36 times. My dishes may not be fantastic, but they are at least getting better. At this rate I will have to cook a thousand times just to get the beginner skill in cooking. And having the skill verse not having the skill makes a huge difference in everyday life. The skills, at least for me, give me simulations to follow or prompts on when to add what. It is like having an expert guiding you all the time. The higher the skill the better the teacher.

The fourth, was that everybody in this world acts just like a real person. I cannot tell them apart from real people at all. I learned that my mom wants me to be a girlie girl so I am made to learn skills like embroidery, sewing, cooking and every other girl skill she can think of. I think she just wants me safe at home instead of venturing out which is sweet but not what I wanted. When I told her I wanted to go adventuring she started crying which made me regret saying it. I have grown more attached you see so I will have to think of a way to not hurt her when the time comes to go to the dungeons. I am pretty sure since I picked dungeon crawler there will be reasons for going since this game is super detail oriented. From the child playdates the parents set up I have had I picked up a little news about what was going on outside our town and from what I gathered everything was peaceful. There were no talks of wars with other nations, no monster outbreaks in our area and no adventures have failed to come back from going into the small local dungeons around us. If things remained that way there would be no reason for me to leave. That is if I could trust in the knowledge and rumors of kids. It is a tough call. The other thing about these playdates is that my mom made no secret about wanting to find me a good husband and half the playdates were with girls who had their brothers tagging along.

Well enough of that, I have to focus on what is going on today. With summer coming to an end, I found myself with my parents in our town square. Well, I should say me and every other kid that hit the age to be tested. My parents ditched me! Ok they were right over there but far enough away I felt abandoned.  I was sure that a pout could be seen upon my little face. There was a permanent wooden stand smack dab in the center of town. When my mom first brought me into town to shop, I noticed this lone stage because it was weird that a street that had shops running up and down it would leave such an area unused. Especially because at most times it was blocked off and nobody went near it. This was because there was a natural mana vein here. There was no fancy tester for us! No globes that glowed or aged wise person to tell us what to do; nope we just got onto the stage with the simple instruction of "let the mana enter your bodies until something happens". It was so vague in my opinion. I was expecting a globe that would shatter when I touched it. It was such a let down from what I was imagining.

So here I am standing on a stage with 8 other kids waiting for my powers to come forth. While I and the others were trying to do this, there was a town fair going on all around us. Mostly men drinking and women chatting in groups while occasionally pointing at us. I felt like a piece of meat being haggled over.

I could hear the women that were closer chatting about the children. Quibbling about why their child was better. Whether it was potential, skills, money or good looks. From what I could overhear girls needed to be pretty or skillful while boys needed money or talents in magic. In the end, they were all waiting to see what magic each of us had. Magic it seemed was the biggest factor. Even if it was not as important in girls apparently, they still cared. I tried to ignore them and watched what the other kids were doing so I could follow along. Most stood there with their eyes too wide, like startled deer, unsure what they had to do but as time went by some of the kids began to sit down with their eyes closed. I imitated them after the third one sat down. Once I sat there with my eyes closed, I began to feel an energy all around me that was trying to enter into my body. This must be the energy that triggers us to be able to use our magic.

I focused on that energy and began to let it in. It was so relaxing that I lost count of time. I heard gasps from time to time and louder chatter but it felt far off and I easily ignored the noise. A Notification window opened up with a percentage indicator, as the energy entered into me, that was gradually increasing as I took in more and more of this energy. Once the percentage hit 100% it auto closed the window and a new window popped up with a message "Would you like to activate Angel of Mercy bloodline YES / NO"

I clicked yes and magic surged out of me. With the power gushing out of me I opened my eyes and quickly looked at the other kids. It would not be nice if my magic interfered with theirs. One of the children was holding a stone, another whose eyes glowed in a pulsating purple light, a few had water flowing around them in different degrees from a trickle to one who's whole body was covered the last one had one arm that was covered in fire. All of them were now covered in a golden dome with me at the center of it. The comfortable feeling increased briefly and then began to fade along With the glow around us. A peaceful look was on all of the children's faces. The anxiousness they had before was nowhere to be seen.

As the feeling faded, I began to refocus on the conversations that I had tuned out before. Unfortunately, with all of the people talking at once I could only make out bits and pieces of the conversations. Things like "oh ... at ... girl ... powerful water magic", "what ...purple ... Strange" "... golden?" "Pity she's ... Weak... Magic" "is she ...gaged?" and so on. It was all jumbled together, but I did see a couple of women with hungry looks pointing at me and the girl surrounded by water. Either way I didn't want to be stared at so I started to make my way off the stage.  As I approached my mom, I saw that she was now standing with 2 other women. I began to make plans with the worst-case scenario, if they became too pushy or tried to force me into marriage I was going to make a break for it. I could even materialize wings if I needed to. Some of these women looked desperate for some reason.

"Hi mom," I say smiling at her and the two women she's with.

"Hi sweety, you haven't met Dominic's and Jim's moms. This is Suzy," she paused to point out the lady on the left of her. A stout woman that was very tanned. She probably was a farmer's wife I thought since they did more outdoor work. "Dominic is only a year older than you, does well in his studies and has moderate air magic." She paused and then pointed to the lady to her right, this is Fiona. She is Steven's mom. He is your age and is that one over there." She pointed to a bit that was on stage with me. If I remembered correctly, he was the one that had his arm on fire.  I had briefly met both boys before during my playdates but since boys and girls were not allowed to be together without proper supervision it was brief and then they would go off to do other things.

"Nice to meet you", I said and did a poor curtsy since I was not used to doing it. I ignored the boy comments, just no, that was not going to happen. 100% positive, I'm pretty sure they were trying to matchmake me with one of those kids.  Sure, I was a kid too at the moment but even if I wasn't, I'm so not going there.

"Did you see my magic?" I asked in general to get the conversation away from their kids. "I got holy magic. Isn't that great? I'll probably get to go to living saint academy" I finished beaming.

The school known as the Living Saint was a church funded academy that focused on healing and protection magic. It was mostly girls that went there so I would not have to worry about meeting too many boys hunting for brides. There was also the Royal Academy which trained every type of magic, but I didn't think I could get in. The cost was above our means. It was made up of almost all the children from the people running the country and just a few charity cases for children with strong magical abilities.

"Yes, you did very well," my mother said with the other ladies nodding along but exasperation and helplessness flashed in her eyes; probably because I ignored the boys. Ever since I had said I wanted to be an adventurer my mother became determined to teach me all the skills a "girl should know" and while doing that she would bring up the local boys hoping that I would show an interest. She must be worried about how powerful my magic was. A good indication of how powerful you could become in magic was first how much of your body was covered and then how far it was extending away from your body when the ritual was first done. So the kids with just a little bit of magic, like the one that held a rock or had just little streams of water were viewed as weak where the girl that could cover her whole body and had it hovering about an inch away from her clothes was probably as strong as this little village has ever seen. Then there was me with an aura that covered everybody on stage. There has never been anybody with this level of magic in our village from what I was now hearing.

I mingled with the other girls that just got their magic and were happily playing with their new powers. I learned that the boy with the purple eyes got a type of identify magic that was used in buying and selling items. He was disappointed because he wanted to be a mighty warrior, but his father cheered him up somehow because we could see him smiling across the square. Most of the girls had water magic so they ended up splashing people as they lost control again and again. The villagers would smile and move away. It was hot so most people did not mind getting wet. One boy had wind magic, that I failed to notice earlier that kicked up a breeze that also helped to cool off people. Unfortunately, a few got hit by a rock from the earth magic a boy had. He was quickly moved away from others to practice. I kind of felt bad for the kid since he was doing what every other kid was doing so I walked over to those that were hit and pulled up my new spell list to see what I now had access to.

Spells:

Light heal – a minor healing spell that is good for scrapes and bruises

Aid – Temporarily increase another's health

Minor golden armor – a thin protective barrier

Blinding Flash – a quick bright flash of your aura (works better in darker environments)

I also noticed that I my level went from zero to one and my angel blood line was active so I had those skills associated with it active all the time.

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Demonic Counter - Heal spells do damage to demons equal to healing value

Flight – Medium level flight

Holy Aura – A 3-foot aura that reduces pain and adds boost to all healing spells

Speak No Lie – People with angel blood are unable to tell lies

Pacifistic Blow – any attack against others will always fall short of killing them (monsters and demons excluded)

Vision of Diagnosis – Ability to detect ailments at a glance

It took me a second to notice but as I focused on a man with a small bump on his head an information panel about his health appeared to his left. The text in green read

John Longsted: 

Headache

Minor - Laceration on head

Minor – Contusion on head

A luxating patella on left leg (Trick knee)

I walked within three feet of him trying to be subtle because while I was pretty sure I could cast without losing control others did not. It was risky to use any spell if you did not know what you were doing. Healing was worse because it entered the body of others and would be way worse than a small rock to the head. So channeling all my tv ninja skills I Thought "light heal". A bright golden aura quickly flared out around my body and a lesser glow on the man I was casting on could be seen by …. EVERYBODY! Crap crap crap I saw the look of shock on the guys face as he first looked at the bright light bulb that I now was and then at his hands then back at me. A look of anger crossed his face and he stomped over to me. I could see my father and mother coming from different directions as well with looks of displeasure on their faces. The man reached me first and grabbed my arm to keep me from running off. "Who's kid are you? Where are your parents? How did they raise you to not even know that you are never to cast on others unless permission is given or you were attacked?" I could see veins pulsing on his forehead and the window next to him now showed

John Longsted: 

Elevated Blood Pressure

A luxating patella on left leg (Trick knee)

Well at least I knew my spell worked and its limitations worked although I am unsure how I was going to get out of this. Evidently, a ninja I am not. Television made it look so easy.

***

Across the street from the platform two men ate on the balcony of a restaurant watching the kids. "I want that child" an overweight man said without removing his eyes from Alice, "why was she not on the list?"

"Sorry sir, you had requested children under twelve and she is thirteen," a muscular teen said. "If you want her it will be extra since everybody has seen her magical power others will be vying for her."

"Get her."

"Of course, Baron" the youth smirked just thinking about the money he would soon get.

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