A warming early spring breeze brushed through the forest. With the flap of its wings, a red bird ascended to the sky. This sight was not rare in the woods, but this bird acted strangely. It seemed to zigzag above the trees for a few minutes before it suddenly stopped and began to circle in one position.

A deer ate its morning meal amongst its herd. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary this morning. The newly budding vegetation was delicious, and the sound of rustling trees and chirps of birds was comforting. However, the deer did not understand why it lost control of its body with a stinging pain to its side. Nor did it understand why its herd ran away as its vision grew dark.

A young man approached the deer carcass. He appeared to be about 12 years old but had recently only turned nine. Marcus glanced at the deer, and, with a thought, the deer was harvested by the auto-loot feature. It took all the useful components of the animal while leaving the rest to scavengers.

Marcus was about to return home but suddenly stopped at the frantic chirping sound of a bird. Of course, bird chirps were not unexpected, but the chirps stopped once he shot the deer. No, what alarmed Marcus was which bird was frantically chirping.

“Shit.” Marcus cursed under his breath as he heard the brush rustle behind him. He leaped forward, turned around, and knocked his bow as the world slowed down around him in one swift motion. His eyes locked onto the sabercat, attracted by the scent of blood, as it charged and lept in his direction. Marcus loosed his arrow, and it found its mark but was not immediately fatal. The sabercat was nearly upon him, and he reflexively began to cast the spell, but he could tell he wasn’t going to make it. In desperation, he opened his mouth “FUS!” A force of energy shot from his lips as he spoke as it struck the sabercat. The saber cat’s pounce noticeably slowed enough, and it missed the timing of its attack only to tackle Marcus. The forest became eerily quiet, which only accentuated the sound of dripping blood.

“Marcus!” A male voice suddenly shouted in panic. Marcus’s father rushed over from a distance as fast as he could. Even though Marcus had insisted on hunting alone, his mother had only acquiesced when his father had agreed to secretly follow. Marcus’s father quickly rolled over the sabercat and revealed a grizzly wound in the abdomen. A wicked-looking sword, conjured by magical energy, was inserted into the saber cat’s heart.

Marcus groaned as he righted himself, as his father took a sigh of relief. Half out of spite, with a thought, the sabercat was harvested. Out of habit, he cast his healing magic to make sure he was okay as the red bird that was previously warning him landed on his shoulder.

The red bird had the appearance of a Northern Cardinal, but it was abnormal. It was solid red, the size of a falcon, highly intelligent, and seemed young despite its age. “Thanks, Asuka,” Marcus said with relief as he nudged her head. Asuka rubbed against the side of his face and expressed her relief. As a wood elf, he could communicate with animals, Asuka being one of the two he was extremely close to. It wasn’t as if they actually spoke and understood one another verbally, but they could come to a mutual understanding. Asuka had become particularly attached to Marcus, especially after he continued to cast his unique recovery magic, which seemed to cause her unique changes.

Marcus’s father sighed as he looked at his son. “… Don’t tell your mother if you want to go hunting again.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Marcus replied, knowing how overprotective his mother could be.

“By the way, did you use a Dragon shout?”

“Yes.”

“Then, given you haven’t had any formal training, are you also a Dragonborn?”

Marcus shook his head. “No, but I have a blessing from Akatosh that is extremely similar. The only major difference between myself and a Dragonborn is that I cannot store souls to learn shouts at later times.”

Marcus’s father tilted his head. “How do you know that a Dragonborn can store souls?”

“Inherent-”

“Inherent knowledge, I get it.” Marcus’s father replied.

Marcus could not help but make a wry smile at his father’s immediate response. He had used that excuse many times, although his parents never suspected anything.

The ‘FUS’ was one of the shouts Marcus had learned. Unfortunately, with one exception, he could only learn the first word of shouts, and they were lackluster. The first issue seemed inherent, and it was as if he was missing something, which made progress difficult. As for the lackluster effect, it seemed as if that had something to do with his age. Shouts were inherently a burden on the body of a mortal, which was why there was a ‘cooldown’ between shouts, as serious issues could occur if used in quick succession. Hopefully, the shouts would become more powerful as he grew up.

Marcus’s father glanced at the harvested carcasses, completely unfazed before giving a loud whistle. No one would question anything harvested by auto-harvest. They conceptually understood it as Marcus collecting and thus wasn’t strange to them.

With the clatter of hooves and a loud nay, two horses quickly made their way over to the father and son. The larger and healthier looking of the two, a brown mare, made its way over to Marcus and nudged the side of his face with clear concern.

“I’m fine, Cynthia,” Marcus said as he patted her head to cover her at the side of his slightly distressed appearance.

“I’m going to head over to the mine before going home,” Marcus said to his father as they slipped onto their saddleless horses.

“I’ll go with you.”

The two quietly made their way towards the abandoned mine near the town. Marcus made the same round he made every month within the mine as iron or was automatically collected. Even though there was not much iron within the mine, the auto-harvest mod negated that problem. Interestingly, mines could regenerate to a certain extent thanks to the game foundation or mods. While the exact reason and mechanic were unknown, so long as the amount of ore did not exceed what one could gather within the game, it would regenerate in a month. It was possible to excavate further, but that would permanently remove the ore. To Marcus’s surprise, the indigenous people did not know this. They were incapable of seeing the actual results, acting as if it didn’t happen. However, this mattered little to Marcus, who had spent every month collecting iron ore for the last four years. Even though the mine was abandoned, it was still extremely large, so the amount of iron ore he collected was astounding. Marcus had plans for this ore and the rare gems he also collected in the future.

Once he returned home, Marcus’s mother gave him a thorough checkup. She was thorough because she was somewhat suspicious for no reason but could only relent. Marcus couldn’t help but break out in goosebumps at the terrifying level of a woman’s intuition before he shut himself in his room and entered his secret house. He did so because his parents were aware of its existence and had visited it themselves. Given the only way to enter the secret house was Marcus, there was no harm in letting others know.

Marcus made his way to his storage and tossed them to the adjacent container to be automatically sorted. The first thing he did was prepare the leather as it would increase his smithing. The game omitted this step, but the lack of smithing knowledge and materials Marcus had at his disposal made the leatherwork extremely useful. Next, Marcus made his way over the alchemy station as he processed all the materials he had gathered. This was also something omitted by the game and had the additional benefit of increasing his alchemy. Thankfully, his mother was adept with alchemy, and she had instilled as much of her knowledge into him as she could.

Once Marcus was finished, he teleported back into his bedroom and made his way to three small strong boxes. With deft hands, he pulled out lock picks and began to try and unlock the chests. Going slowly and carefully, Marcus eventually successfully unlocked them all before locking them with their keys. Interestingly, the chance of breaking lock picks seemed to correspond with how fast and how much one tried to brute force the lock. Lock picks wouldn’t break as easily as they would in the game, so long as you took your time. Of course, this wasn’t to say the lock picks wouldn’t break. If not for the many lockpicks his father inconspicuously had, Marcus would have broken far more lock picks than he had.

Eventually, the sunset and Marcus brought up the system. His days had nearly become routine since he turned eight and began to level. The first 15 levels in every skill did not contribute to his actual level to his annoyance. Thankfully, the first 15 levels were extremely easy to reach, thanks to his knowledge on how to level. Marcus was extremely potent, and archery and seeking thanks to his previous life, and these two skills were abnormally high, much less for his age.

Thanks to today’s grinding, he had finally reached level 14. He had put ten levels into MP, two into HP, and two levels in reserve. Assigning a level would fully restore all stats, which could be life-saving depending on the situation. Marcus glanced over the vast constellations that made up the skill tree. Some of the mods he had chosen vastly expanded the skill trees, tripling the number of perks. This allowed for far more diversity and specialization compared to a vanilla experience. It also added the additional benefit of removing many prerequisites allowing one to save points and focus on the perks that they wanted.

Additionally, the number of skill points was doubled per level to another mod, allowing for a broad breadth of perks. These mods also affected local indigenous people, but they couldn’t control which perks were assigned and often had many unassigned, unable to do anything with them. Most would be able to assign them by training a specific perk, but these were unknown.

Marcus closed the system with a sigh as he exited his room and entered the living room where his parents were.

Noting the serious expression on his face, his parents both gave him their full attention.

“Mom, Dad, I want to travel.”