It was hellishly bright outside, and not just in terms of light. It was bright in terms of mana flow. Basically, I was used to filtering out the pattern of mana flow within my mom and outside there were countless other patterns of mana akin to magnetic fields being projected from a magnet. Identify went nearly berserk trying to shove all the information all at once into my soul-mind, giving me an enormous migraine. I adjusted the reception, by reducing the [mana] perception control fractal and reduced the brightness of view and proceeded to identify the surrounding terrain.

Each of the Infoscope’s many info-gathering tentacles provided me with a 360 degree view of the outside. My mom was an enormous, silver-haired, blue-eyed woman that stood in a giant field. No wait. She wasn’t a giant. She was human sized. My Infoscope was simply very, very small. I adjusted the perspective of the view, cautiously moving the Infoscope away from her body.

A truly fantastic sight greeted me once I had filtered out the radiance of mana.

Grassy meadows stretched into the distance, filling up with green and red trees, which slowly went uphill, turning into a deep forest that caressed tall, jagged snow-capped mountains. Azure glaciers sparkled above the forest and above those there were rolling, thick, white clouds. Fog slowly rolled down from higher levels of the valley. Waves of wind danced through the meadows, swaying orange, blue and yellow flowers back and forth.

Colors of the world around me seemed incredibly saturated. I wasn’t sure if this was because of how the Infoscope worked or because the air was so clean and crisp here. I didn’t bother to adjust the saturation of the view. I liked how vibrant and alive everything looked.

I turned back towards my mom. Now that I had moved a bit further away from her, she was far less gigantic and looked like an ordinary girl in her 20s. She was wearing a dark gray, 60's style summer dress, tea length, with ruffles at chest and straps. She also had leather armor on her arms and black leather boots. An antiquated-looking cottage with a triangular, moss-covered roof stood on our left. A water wheel slowly spun beneath the cottage, catching a current of a small brook.

I observed the rest of the picturesque village located within a serene mountain valley. It reminded me of the Caucasus mountain villages in the South Ossetian Autonomous Soviet Republic. Red bricked buildings were strewn all over various foresty hills, topped with wooden upper floors which were capped with green-tiled, mossy rooftops. Large windmills lazily spun above the buildings. Twinkling waterfalls cascaded through the rocky moss-covered valley walls, coming down from monumental glaciers. The valley descended into a view of the distant, sparkling blue sea. Tiny waves danced far, far down below. Wow!

The Infoscope labelled the entire stunning view as [Skyisle Valley]. Ah. My last name suddenly made sense. Second name was probably the family name that me and my mom shared. The soft a in the end between Alan and Alana differentiated male and female, a bit akin to Russian language.

The only downside was that my remote viewer ghost-construct lacked ears, so I couldn't hear anything. I put sound identification on my list of things to add to the Infoscope later.

Regardless of lack of sound, the sight of this bewitching, rustic village was enough to get my heartstrings thrumming. Home. This was my new home. This was where I now belonged...

Identifying things left and right was rapidly moving up my XP and draining my mana.

I focused on the cloudy sky. Something was moving up there. Was that a flying mountain? Holy crap! That was definitely a flying mountain back there amidst the clouds. Damn. My mana dropped down to 0.1, nausea overcame me and I snapped back towards my body in an instant as the Infoscope construct fell apart.

I had a lot to think about.

Tu du! 2022/1800 Experience optimum reached! Initiate level up?

The System prodded me and I confirmed the level up.

[Tu du! Level up to LV: 6!]

Name:

_______ Alan Skyisle

Age:

30 weeks

Species & Subtype:

male - human - foetus

Level:

6

Experience:

203/2450

Health:

6/6

Stamina:

6/6

Mana:

6/6

Mana regen:

6 m/hr

Strength:

0

Agility:

0

Dexterity:

0

Vitality:

2

Charisma:

0

Magic:

1

Luck:

0

Intelligence:

75 [+89]

Wisdom:

0

Soul:

1

Skills:

[Transient Soul LV 6]

[Universal Comprehension LV 1]

[Infoscope LV 75]

[Modify-Chromosomes LV 50]

[Info-Tether LV 5]

Investiture points:

30

I identified my exact age in days and hours and learned I had only lost a day in this level up. Excellent. Also Vitality had grown a little bit.

I didn’t immediately slot the acquired points into intelligence. Levelling up was definitely becoming harder. Was I boxing myself into an intelligence corner? Was there something else of value that I could improve in myself?

My health, stamina and mana haven’t grown one bit. Would they slowly and naturally go up? Surely that was the case since the System was locked with a mathematical equation! Or did I screw up my natural growth by unlocking the System? Did I now have to invest some points into Vitality to gain more health and points into Agility for more Stamina? It’s not like a newborn was expected to be very agile. In fact most babies as far as I recall didn’t learn walking until they were 9-18 months old after being born. Was I doomed to slowly learn how to walk for nearly a year? I filed this future problem away for later, pondering about my external world observations.

The architecture of the village and my mom’s outfit led me to conclude that I was reborn in a civilization that wasn’t as technologically advanced as the world in which I had perished priorly. Perhaps magic halted the technological advancement here or maybe this was simply a very remote mountain village without high-tech stuff. Either way, I was definitely in an entirely new world!

According to the gathered info my mother was an Agromancer or in Omnicode, expressed as [Wizard, Green Affinity - Plant Magic control] on higher tiers of the fractal label.

I wanted to look at her longer, learn more about her, but unfortunately I was running out of mana pretty quick. There was a lot of stuff outside that the Infoscope had identified. Much more than my mind could even begin to process!

I had built a magical tool that was far more powerful than I had anticipated - the amount of information that it had absorbed from the surrounding environment in just a minute was enough to overwhelm my mind.

The problem was that the Infoscope identified everything everywhere and had 360 degree sight. I had a lifetime of experience having two eyes and two arms and the magical construct I had built had hundreds of info-gathering receptors. No matter how much extra intelligence I could invest in, I knew that there was no way for me to stay human while running the Infoscope at full power.

If I could identify my own soul, then maybe I could disconnect it from this body and tie it to the Infoscope itself? I could have the body of a tool made for gathering information. All I had to do was cast away my humanity and forsake this organic body... and I could become "homomagicus" - a term that I just made up for a being made from information and magic! Well maybe not, since being human had some advantages when it came to interacting with people, but having an "escape pod" in case I died would be really handy to have. A contingency plan was important. The Omniscience probably wouldn't give me another chance if I blew myself up again.

Step one of this plan was figuring out what the soul was. I needed to add a tendril to the Infoscope that could define and perceive souls.

I pointed the Infoscope at the word [Soul] in my status menu and began to identify every extra bit of the Omnicode version of it.

It would be a lot of fun to discover what secrets my Soul held!