《Death's Embrace》Chapter 5: Myths and Legends
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Soon after Xavior went home from Eve and her strange child’s place, he immediately got to thinking. Originally, he wanted to wait until he could at least safely walk before doing any sort of training but he now knows how naive that thought was. Although Elise is a rarity and not the standard, that doesn’t make it any less daunting. Right now, if she had the mental capabilities, that child could kill Xavior. He may just be overthinking things but that doesn’t make it any less true.
What if Xavior made her so angry she slammed him against a wall hard enough to kill him. She wouldn’t know what she was doing, hell she wouldn’t even be doing it on purpose, but that just makes the pit in Xavior’s stomach all the more deeper. She doesn’t even need to try, she could just accidently kill him. A baby! The plan was to use this time to study up on path to follow while gradually figuring out any of the abilities he got from Odin, but that plan was no longer viable. He needed to figure out his abilities now.
No more waiting and no more taking it easy. Just because he can’t train physically doesn’t mean he couldn’t train in every other category. ‘Hell, I’ve read plenty of webnovels where children trained the Ki/Chi branch almost immediately after birth. No, I wasn’t being naive, I was being Lazy.’ Xavior thought in anger at himself.
His mother sat him on the couch and called out that they were home to his father. As she was about to head into the kitchen, Xavior stopped her. “Mama” he said still on the couch.
“Aww, does someone need a little changing?” she asked coming back. He couldn’t blame his mother for making such an assumption. Usually, he only talks when he wants to be changed. In fact, it’s the only times he talks. That doesn’t stop the feeling of embarrassment though.
He shook his head and held out his hand. “Phone” he demanded with the most serious expression he could make as a 6 month old baby. She stopped in her tracks and looked surprised for a second. This was Xavior’s first word besides ‘Mama’ and ‘Dadda’. He made a constant effort to be a normal baby before this, but that was just an excuse to be slothful.
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This world has super powers, freaks, and mutants. There was no reason to pretend to be ‘normal’. “Phone? Do you want mama’s phone?” she asks while bending over to look him in the eyes. It made Xavior slightly uncomfortable but he didn’t look away, only nodding in response. To his surprise, she only smiled and handed it to him.
“This is much better than you stealing it, it’s about time you stopped pretending to be a dummy.” This caused Xavior to widen his eyes in shock. He had no idea how to react to this. ‘How long has she known? How did she find out? Maybe some type of mindreading power? Why didn’t she say something from the beginning.’
At his perplexed expression, she giggled. “Next time, when you want to hide how intelligent you are, delete your search history.” she said with a sly smile while getting up and heading into the kitchen. To this, he felt like such a fool he wanted to bury his head and die.
‘Duh, my fucking search history! No normal baby would be able to read yet alone spell all of the topics I searched up. She has probably known for months that I was intelligent yet kept it to herself. Why would she do that though? Why didn’t she say anything? Does Father know too?’ he asked himself. He was thinking of a million things per second and the more questions he answered, the more mysteries popped up. ‘What else has she noticed about me? What does she know? Ugghh whatever, right now I have other things to focus on, like not suffering Death by Powerful Toddler!’ he screamed in his mind, giving up on that tangent for now.
He began focusing on the current situation. First he looked up Odin in Google to research more about him. Almost immediately, what he found out shocked him to the bone. Apparently, there are more things different in this world than simply the addition of superpowers. Nothing here, in this entire world, was myth.
Well, not nothing, but most mythologies here actually have some basis. Here, Odin isn't a being who might or might not be real. Here, Odin is a god who is real. There is no discussion whether he’s real or not, it’s accepted as common knowledge. Not a theory but a fact.
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Not just Odin either, most gods Xavior knows of are accepted as real beings. From Greek and Roman, to Egyptian and Norse, all of them are widely accepted as real mystical entities. Because of this though, the ‘myths’ themselves are changed or rather tweaked a bit. Apparently the information Odin told Xavior wasn’t common. Most people don’t know how gods are actually created but essentially anything that has to do with creation was deleted from the books.
Most of the ones he’s searched up didn’t have any of their original creation stories still out there. ‘Well I suppose that makes sense. If basically all of these gods are real, and they are all claiming that they either created humanity or the world, then a lot of shit just wouldn’t add up.’ Still though, this wasn’t the only shocking thing. First off, people like Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and even Hitler were basically gods. Legends, they called them.
While they didn’t have the title, they had the strength to bitchslap a bunch minor gods without trouble. Hell, there are several reports of Alexander literally fucking up an entire small pantheon. Not only were they super powerful, they are all still alive till this very day. ‘Hitler is still alive! What in the fuck??! And let’s not forget the bunch of well known demigods and monsters too from each pantheon. How in the hell am I supposed surpass all of them?!’ Truly realising about all of the powerful beings in this world all at once really gave Xavior some bad anxiety. He had to actively take control of his breathing for fear of having a panic attack.
After taking a moment to calm down, he deleted all of the extra tabs he created and decided to focus. The whole point of grabbing the phone in the first place was to discover more about Odin in particular. He needed to know what he could do now rather than discover it later on. If he knows his move set from a young age then he can train them up far sooner than if he waited. ‘Let’s see here.’ he says while looking at a list of Odin’s domains.
‘Whoa, there’s actually a lot. There’s wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, sorcery, poetry, frenzy, and the runic alphabet. There’s apparently a lot I can do but not now. I can’t focus on Battle right now simply because of my age. Wisdom and Knowledge will go nicely with War and the Runic Alphabet but all 4 of those are out just because I can’t do anything with them right now. Besides the first 3 seems like passive abilities so I’ll make sure read a lot while I’m still growing. Royalty and Victory also sounds like passives and right now I need active abilities to practice with. Hmm.” he ponders.
‘That leaves Healing, Death, Gallows, Sorcery, Poetry, and Frenzy. Well Poetry is definitely out. What am gonna do, bore my opponents to Death? What the hell even is a Gallows?’ he asks himself while searching it up. Apparently the Gallows is a spot used for hanging. Odin is the god of it because one day he hung himself from the tree of Yggdrasil for Knowledge.
‘Yeaaa, while that’s neat and all, doesn’t seem very useful right now. But Healing, Death, Sorcery, and Frenzy might be just what I’m looking for. Hell yea! Necromancer Class here I come!’ he thinks in excitement. There, however, is one problem he stumbled on almost immediately. ‘Now how the hell do I use any of these powers?’ Knowing what he should be able to do is fine and dandy but he doesn’t actually know how to do any of them.
The first thing he needed to do was choose a path to focus on, and honestly Healing seemed the easiest. The problem of how to practice Healing was still apparent. Not to mention what to even practice on. ‘I could try sneaking a knife out.’ he thought.
‘No, how would I even do it without Mother or Father catching me. And even I could, what if the healing doesn’t work. Mother knows I’m intelligent and she would expect an actual answer as to how I injured myself. It’s too risky.’ That’s when he noticed the dying fern in the window of his home.
Both his Mother and Father always forgot to water it so even though it’s been getting plenty of sunlight, it was still dying. It was high up though, and his tiny baby body wasn’t able to reach the sill. There was only one thing he could do.
“Mamaaaaaa!!!”
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