Daniel's tension only rose as they made it home and went upstairs. His grandparents were there in the living room, with his father off to the side again reading a book. With a deep breath, Mum marched straight to Grandfather and handed him the bundle.

"Brian asked me to pass this on to you from his uncle. With his uncle's thanks."

Grandfather raised an eyebrow and then turned toward the sound of a chair scraping backward.

"I told you I wouldn't accept this," Dad said with a quietly menacing tone. He was visibly furious and Daniel could feel himself shrinking back at the sight.

"Now Marcus, will you listen this time before you let your temper loose again?" Grandfather answered with a put upon sigh.

"And now you've involved my family?"

"Your family? YOUR FAMILY?" Grandfather shouted, his voice heating up in response to Dad's anger. Daniel jumped at the sound, and his mother led him over towards the fire out of the way. "What do you think all my work is in aid of, boy? You complain about problems that no one but you is foolish enough to notice. It is past time to grow up and let go of this childishness."

"Stop this," Grandmother interrupted, forcing her way between the two men. "If you are going to start shouting, then do it elsewhere."

Dad's eyes rolled wildly at this, his breathing heavy, but he stalked out the door, and Grandfather stomped after him. Grandmother closed the door behind them, then came over to join Daniel and his mother at the fire. Mum was trying to calm Daniel down and stop him from shaking. When had he become such a coward? Was it even possible as a child to stay calm when giant adult men start shouting? The noise had skipped his consciousness and went straight to triggering a panic response. There were a lot of obvious excuses but he could not easily accept them. His mother comforting him was helping, but his reliance on her also made Daniel more frustrated with himself.

Shouting started up again, this time muffled since it was coming from somewhere downstairs. Daniel was starting to calm down at least in comparison to before until he noticed his mum's unease. Her visibly increasing tension was contagious to Daniel, and he moved over to sit on her lap. At this point, he wasn't sure which one was doing the comforting and which was being comforted. From his perspective, his parents had appeared mature for their ages. His mum was twenty-three years old with two kids and one more on the way. That was a stark contrast with himself at that age. But looking at it from another angle, they also lived with their parents. Or in-laws, in his mum's case. What sort of consequences might be waiting for her if his grandfather took offense to her actions? It wasn't as if there were no worst-case scenarios where Daniel's own life could take a significant turn for the worse.

Eventually, the shouting stopped and was followed by a slamming door and then a lone set of footsteps coming back up the stairs. Grandfather appeared shaking his head, his face still flushed. As he approached them, Daniel stiffened up, realising all over again how terrifying angry adults could be.

"He's gone to walk it off. He'll be back when he calms down."

Mum stood up as he approached, turning around and depositing Daniel in the chair she was leaving.

"I'm sorry Father. I didn't want to start trouble"

"But you did," Grandfather responded after a pause, his face a mask. "I would not have expected you to bring things out into the open like that. So why did you?"

"I...I was not going to at first," Mum started hesitantly "I was going to hide it till later. But when I told Anne to not mention it, she said she didn't want to betray her father, and I.. it made me think I could do better." With a deep breath, she continued, picking up conviction as she went "I am sorry. I owe you a lot. But I have to support my husband before I worry about upsetting you."

"Ha!" Grandfather barked out a single exhalation of pent-up breath. Then his expression softened as he turned to look at Daniel "She didn't want to betray her father," he mused while shaking his head. "Just like my idiot son at her age."

Grandmother laughed at that.

"Listen to me, both of you" Grandfather started, surprising Daniel by reaching out one hand to Mum's shoulder and the other to Daniel's head. "Family always comes first. My grandfather taught me that. Marcus might argue with me about some things, but that much at least he had always known. I'm glad to know you two are the same. At least I have one side of the family keeping our traditions."

"I'd settle for Rory even giving us grandkids, no matter what he would end up teaching them," Grandmother added

"Another idiot son. Maybe I should have Anne here take over when I get too old."

Daniel perked up at that, almost giddy with relief and rebounding quickly. Aha! You fools! My evil empire starts here!

"I'd be great at running a town." He would be too. There was game magic here, and he had played games with town management elements. He could click a box marked 'increase taxes' that should be good enough to make him an expert.

"Oh, you would?" Grandfather responded, sounding amused. "But it's not just the town, girl. Could you handle a bunch of farmers arguing over land?"

"Of course, I could," Daniel said with confidence. He knew the answer to this one. "Kill them all! Burn the farms to the ground!"

"Maybe you should stick with Henry for now," Mum said. Traitor! You'll pay for this!

Dad didn't return before Daniel went to sleep, but he was back the next day. Grandfather's eventual calm of last night had been replaced with barely contained frustration, and Dad was stiffly ignoring this reaction. But Daniel heard no signs of it bubbling over into a shouting match again. He wanted to understand more of the details but shied away from bringing it up again. He had always known his family was keeping some things from him. What family wouldn't keep things from a little kid? He didn't believe it was being done with malice towards him at least. But in the wake of his visit downtown, he spent the next few weeks trying to reassess some of his assumptions. His status, and especially aberration, had his caution ramping back up. Schooling was going to be a minefield he was sure of it, but that didn't mean he couldn't find one to step on early if he wasn't careful. He needed to avoid actions that might come across as a reaction to his status. This included changing his behavior too much or asking questions prompted by the knowledge he shouldn't have.

One of the first things to come under review was his understanding of how their home worked. He didn't think it was too much of a stretch to explore more, and he was old enough to have that much freedom. He really felt he should have done more of this already. After exploring the house and outside in its entirety, it felt strangely small to him. Larger than the nearby houses, and the only one with a garden, it failed to match up to fictional comparisons. Somehow his mind wanted to categorise it as a minuscule mansion instead of a big townhouse.

He found out that the kitchen was bigger and busier than he had thought, and many of the morning people ate lunch and breakfast here. He also discovered that one of the outbuildings on the grounds contained a large communal laundry for washing clothing, and another was some sort of storage where people picked up cleaning supplies in the morning. Apparently, those he had thought were servants coming in during the mornings to clean were more like some sort of roving cleaner squad that did multiple houses.

Mum's comments about the downtown food halls made him think they were trying to do something along the same lines. Something like a kind of community centre, not that Daniel had ever been in one of those. The idea fed into the consequences of skills. Did the cleaning squad contain someone with a level 1000 dust removal skill? What would such a person be capable of? He could certainly see that leading to more specialisation of jobs.

Looking back, there were a number of odd comments about activities that might involve a skill that now held a different meaning. That was possible evidence of a gap in the auto-translate, for him to misunderstand things in that way. Worryingly, he saw the chance that it was a gap created by his blessing. That could make for another way for him to give away potentially dangerous information. Another thing he considered was the probable meanings behind the existence of the profession section in the skills tab. Was uncle Henry a scribe or a Scribe? He remembered some people being referred to by their professions in slightly strange ways, and this could be another place he was missing the hidden significance of words. He really wanted to know what the hell kind of profession a Landtrust was? Someone explain without him having to ask! He desperately needed school to include examples of other people's status.

Daniel's fifth birthday eventually showed up. At the same point in the afternoon as before, he felt a shift, and following up with his status showed his stats having increased by one-fifteenth. Ding! Level up! Someone tell me grats in guild chat, please. More interesting was a new racial skill. He had expected something related to magic, and the one he got could maybe apply to that, but was more general in scope:

> Guidance gained.

> Guidance: Ability to acquire guidance skills.

Daniel added 'What is a guidance skill' to his list of dunno questions. A few days later he was messing around with his tablet, and he found three new skills in the log which hadn't been there before.

> Eldritch Flexibility learned.

> Basic Juggling learned.

> Eldritch Running learned.

A quick search showed they weren't on the main Skills tab but were in the separate pages for both general and profession from that tab. And there they all had level 1 next to them in brackets, and could not be interacted with. Again he was missing online definition searches. Online dictionary learned, please? Hello? Alien Magic Jesus are you there? Daniel defined Eldritch as something vaguely to do with scary space tentacle monsters. Adding to that would be weird strange knowledge or beings from outside reality. Did remembering a youtube video about improving your running form count as scary outsider knowledge of running? He guessed it did. He noted that he had flexibility, instead of eldritch stretching or yoga. Although thinking about it, yoga was eldritch stretching. Perhaps it was because he had been trying to train his flexibility and not his stretching. But then the same could be said about coordination and juggling to some extent. His skills not being on the main tab made him think they weren't selected or turned on. He certainly couldn't feel a difference from them, but maybe he could level them up?

He thought it was significant that he only had skills for the three things he had decided to train. He considered trying to add to the roster but ultimately held off. Schooling wasn't too far off now, and he was probably good without adding more space tentacle effects.

Another few weeks and Beatrix's birthday came and went. She evolved from a level 0 crying lump into a level 1 crawling doofus. Daniel gave communicating a go just in case and was rewarded with a goofy grin. One distinction from Daniel as a one-year-old was the people she was anchored to. Daniel had been chained to his mother and father at that age. Beatrix was the same but also added Daniel to that list. Unfortunately, he was starting to suspect that she was a reincarnated doggy, and having her try to follow him around like one didn't help.

The day after her birthday came an announcement that Dad would be leading a portion of the guard to the border in the spring. The revelation gave Daniel a sudden interest in local geopolitics. Apparently, the country to the east, Lisirrast, was overrun by monsters just over ninety years ago. Who were these monsters you might ask? Orcs? Dragons? Space Pirates? Very bad people? They were a group of 'don't tell 5-year-olds about this' type of monster. Daniel assumed this meant horny tentacle monsters killing everyone and then having sex with their corpses because there was no one to stop him from doing so. So the local god, Lord Kyburad, had let people escape into his sanctuary, which was the country Laston was in and which coincidentally had developed a monster invasion problem on its eastern border. The current population was nearly all descendants of Lisirrast refugees.

Daniel took the story with a pinch of salt. A mysterious savior showing up at the last minute to save people from a sudden monster army? That Lord Kyburad sounded an awful lot like an evil mastermind. And if you didn't like that angle, consider that the royal family of Lisirrast had somehow married into Kyburad's line. This meant that the current King of Kyburad's Sanctuary was actually a god-king, and therefore super-duper in charge. All because of our Lord and Saviour God Kyburad, who conveniently never seemed to actually show up in a place called Kyburad's Sanctuary. It was probably bad to treat the real world like guessing the plot twist in a movie, but Daniel was just an innocent little kid so he didn't have to know better.

As spring and schooling finally came close, Daniel thought it was time to accept some disappointing truths. Apart from his birthday, his stats had not changed in all this time. His 'hobbies' were not helping. His skills were presumably inactive, and more importantly, were not leveling up. He was reminded of two sayings, the first was 'Hard work pays off' which clearly did not apply when Magic Alien Jesus got to have a say about it. The second was 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do' He could remember thinking his family was a bit lazy previously, but now it made more sense. Who wants to exercise in a world where your stats are locked and your skills don't level? Apparently, Daniel did. The day after deciding he was wasting time, he remembered he had time to waste. If anything it made things more enjoyable, since the pressure was off. Take that Alien Magic Jesus I don't need your approval!