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Leaving the village
🕑 Added 2022-08-29 14:39:27 +0000 UTCSeth cleaned up his bed and walked out of his room. His parents’ house was quite small, only having two rooms, a hallway, and a small kitchen. In the hallway, he could hear his father’s snores coming through the thin wooden door.
Entering the kitchen, he found his mother cooking some simple food on the stove. She didn’t even turn back as she said: “Seth, honey, can you go wake up your father? The food is almost done.”
Seth felt quite emotional hearing his mother’s voice after so long. Looking at her slightly hunched back and white hair threads, he spoke to the system.
‘This feeling emotional stuff is quite refreshing. Can you pull out the records and tell me what happened to my parents after I left for the academy in my past life?’
When he started his journey of becoming a God, he never came back home. He shut all his feelings and forced himself to thread forward, never looking back.
<Your father died in the year 679, during a bandit attack on the village. Your mother passed away alone, mostly from grief, two months later. >
‘I see. Five years after entering the academy, I have already created a destruction source. I could have saved them…’
Seth took a moment to calm his troubled thought before making a promise to himself. ‘This time you both won’t have to suffer because of your son’s stupid ideals. This time I will give you both a good long life. If you want money, you’ll have money. If you want power, you’ll have power. Even if you want a throne each, I’ll give them to you.’
With that thought in mind, he walked out of the room and headed toward the loud snoring noise. Entering his father’s room, he found the man sleeping on the side with saliva leaking from his mouth on the gray pillow under his head.
Sighing, he moved next to him and nudged him softly. His father frowned and tried to push back Seth’s hand, but after insisting for a few more seconds, he finally opened his eyes.
“Father, mom told me to call you to eat. It’s already morning.”
“Mmm.” His father grunted slowly and wiped the saliva from the corner of his mouth. Lifting himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed, he said: “Tell her I’ll be right there.”
Seth nodded and walked back towards the door, only to be stopped by his father’s words from behind: “Seth, happy birthday.”
With a smile on his lips, Seth closed the door and walked back into the kitchen. His mother has already set the table and was sitting down while cutting a cucumber into small pieces.
“Is your father coming?”
“Yeah, he said he’ll come in a minute.” Replied Seth as he took a seat and stared at his mother. She was a frail, fair-skinned woman with dark, dark brown eyes, an angular face, small ears, and bushy eyebrows. Her long black hair was messy and full of thin white threads.
She wasn’t old, only 36, but her life was difficult. Besides the household chores, she would also work the fields outside the village every summer day for a few bags of wheat. In the winter, she would also do menial jobs around the village for whatever she could get.
His father eventually came as well, and the family ate their breakfast. The bread was quite hard to bite into and the soup was meatless, but this was the best his family could do. Once everyone was done, his father went to get ready for work and his mother started cleaning up the bowls.
Seth stood up, grabbed her shoulder, and said: “Mom, let me clean up here.”
His mother gave him a weird look and said: “Who are you and what did you do with my son?”
“How did you figure me out?” replied Seth with a fake surprised expression.
His mother chuckled and put down the bowl she was cleaning.
“Thank you, Seth. Tonight, mother will make you something sweet for your birthday, but now I’ll help clean the snow from the trails.” She said as she wiped her hands on a piece of cloth and started walking outside.
“No need, mom.” Said Seth as he continued washing the plates, but his mother ignored his words and left the kitchen.
He finished in around ten minutes. Once done and left alone at home, he walked back inside his room and sat down on the bed.
‘System, can you find a way for me to make some quick money from the historical records?’
<Host, this village still adheres to the barter system. >
‘Damn, that slipped my mind. Guess I can only wait until I finish making my sources or head to the nearby town.’
With that thought in mind, he asked the system to show him all the information available for any type of energy besides the destruction one and started reading it while absentmindedly cleaning the house.
It took Seth four whole months to finally got a hang of the theory to create every one of his sources without errors. During this time, his life continued like normal and it was already spring.
His parents found his enthusiasm to always clean and help around the house a little weird at the start, but soon got used to it. He even started cooking the meals to relieve a little of the burden on his parents.
Sitting on the branch of a tree in the backyard, he kept staring into the distance while muttering: “In my past life, I was already taking the academy’s test now…”
<Simulation complete. You can begin the energy absorption process. >
“That’s right… I don’t need the academy to form my source in this life.”
Closing his eyes, Seth started feeling the energies around him and dragging the ones he needed inside his body, fusing them with his soul. Because of his past life experiences and with the help of the system, he could easily recognize most of the energy types and could skip the long process of identifying your energy type in the atmosphere. By the evening, he opened his eyes and heaved a long sigh.
“I guess I can’t form perception and lust sources like this. My perception has some golden energy inside, which is positive energy from helping around the house, but I need negative energy as well to form a balance. As for my lust source, well, I will have to head into the town first.”
<There are no energies in the atmosphere for you to draw upon.>
“I know.”, replied Seth, as he jumped down from the tree. Walking inside the house, he started cooking dinner, knowing it was about time for his parents to return. He was also thinking about how he should tell them he wanted to leave the village.
In his past life, he was too focused on growing stronger and he knew his parents would disagree with him leaving, so he simply ran away from home, but this time, he would not do the same thing.
After everyone had dinner, his father was about to stand up when Seth said: “Father, can you please wait for a moment? I have something I want to talk to both of you about.”
His father gave him a weird look and sat back down. This son of his has changed a lot ever since his 15th birthday, but it was a pleasant change. He was a lot more mature, and he was even entertaining the thought of finding some work for him inside the village soon.
Seeing both his parents look at him, Seth cleared his throat and said.
“Mother, Father, I want to leave the village.”
Seeing both of them frown and about to speak, Seth continued: “Wait. Let me finish first.”
“Our situation is not good, and the entire village is quite poor. Probably both of you are quite satisfied with this life, but I know we can do better than this. I want to travel to the capital and take a chance at the academy’s admission exam.”
“I know that there are low chances I would even make it through, but I still want to try it. If I fail, I promise I will return here and start working in the village.”
He knew entering the academy was nothing difficult for him, but wanted to make his parents not worry.
His father was the first to speak: “No way. Not even considering the fact that’s a half-year journey by carriage, you’ve never even left the village before. You don’t know what dangers are out there. If you leave, chances are you’ll never return here alive.”
Seth smiled as he remembered his journey in the past.
After walking to the closest town, he stole enough food to not starve and lived inside the marketplace there. Finding out information about a merchant caravan heading for the capital, he sneaked inside his luggage and lived off his merchandise all the way to the capital. Four months of not making a sound or leaving the carriage, having to relieve himself in there, and so on. It was difficult, but the thought of giving up never came to him.
Seeing the dumb smile on his son’s face, his father got enraged and yelled: “What are you smiling about, smelly brat? Do you think life outside is as easy as the one you’ve been living here?”
“Honey…” his mother grabbed his father’s hand and stopped him from further berating Seth. Looking at her son, she said: “Your father is right. What if you stumble upon bandits or wild animals? What would you do then?”
“Mother, I won’t walk directly to the capital. I’ll head to the town and find some work to make some coins. After that, I’ll find a carriage heading for the capital and pay for them to take me as well.”
The family kept arguing for over an entire hour, with Seth easily finding a solution for every situation they threw at him. Since his parents were both tired and Seth was too headstrong, they agreed on the condition that his father would escort him to the town.
Realizing this was the best he could get, Seth agreed as well, and they settled to start their journey tomorrow. It will take them three days to reach the town, but luckily the spring nights were quite warm.
On the morning of the next day, Seth took his goodbye to his mother and started walking toward the edge of the town with his father. They only took with them a bag with some bread, the clothes they wore on them, and a cloak to cover themselves on the way and sleep on at night.
As they walked out of the small village, his father smacked him on the back of his head and said: “Your mother cried the entire night. Are you happy?”
Seth sighed and said: “I know, but it is better like this in the long run. Are you really satisfied with living a poor life like this for the rest of your life? Look at mother, her back is already hunched and her hair has turned white when she’s not even forty of age.”
His father wanted to smack him again when he dared to speak back, but there was something in his eyes that froze him in place and made him continue listening.
“And what about you, father? How long can you keep working so many jobs for a few pieces of meat? You are already old yourself and, once you can’t do rough work anymore, what will happen then?”
“I didn’t want to say this in front of my mother, but even if I fail the academy, I plan on finding other work inside the capital or any other city. Once the two of you are too old to take care of the family, how am I supposed to take care of you inside this small village? I will have to work myself to death and will still not make enough to sustain the entire family.”
Hearing his son’s words, the old man sighed and started walking towards the town first. What could he say? His son was right, and he knew it. The tone of his voice and the look in his eyes made the old man realize that his little boy had grown up and he couldn’t treat him like a child anymore.
Seth sighed and followed his father while carrying the sack of bread on his back.
‘Don’t worry, father, give me a year or two and I’ll take all these worries off your shoulders.’
