An Unborn Hero

In a meeting room at the royal palace, the kingdom's [Chief Scribe] was sat at a table, staring at the cup of tea in front of him as if it was personally to blame for every flaw in the universe. Opposite him sat an imposing figure in full plate armour.

"So, there was a third?" asked the [Royal Knight] rhetorically. "Again, [Novice] is a perfectly normal achievement to gain for a youngster. What, exactly, makes this so suspicious, rather than a simple case of someone being tardy in naming a child? You know how some nobles can be in refusing to acknowledge the existence of their offspring until they earn their first uncommon skill, so they can get them disinherited quietly in the case that they don't."

"As I've already explained, no noble raises their children inside Rumah Magika. On top of that, they were out of order. No-one gets [Early Bloomer I] before [First Skill]. Nor does anyone get [Novice] less than a week after [First Skill]. Yes, taken individually, the achievements themselves are perfectly normal, but there's no way to explain all three away with a single child. Nor can we explain the location of the [First Skill] achievement. And yes, some people refrain from publicly announcing their children, but they don't leave them nameless."

The knight drummed his fingers on the table as he pondered the situation. Despite his scepticism, he wasn't the sort of pig-headed individual to disregard a possible threat out of hand based purely on personal biases, and the scribe had made perfectly valid points. Not to mention that he obviously believed them himself. The [Royal Knight] hadn't even needed to use the cup of tea to tell that much.

"I'll need a list of everyone who has had contact with the Artefact since the first anomaly, and access should be immediately restricted to those who have already been working in the department of records for a minimum of ten years."

"Huh?" asked the scribe, caught unawares by the switch in direction.

"If this is, as you suspect, a trial run for masking achievements from the Artefact, then it stands to reason that the perpetrator will need to check the results."

"That's... logical," nodded the scribe. "I'll get you that list by tomorrow."

"Please do. Also, you said that two of the achievements reported a location somewhere within the upper-class residential district?"

"Yes. The coordinates are too coarse to narrow it down further, alas."

"Then please cross-reference your list of contacts against those who have business in the residential district. Start with those who have homes there, or close relatives."

The [Chief Scribe] considered that. The lower-ranked scribes would never own property in the upper circle of the capital. Not only was it too expensive, but some amount of political capital was required just to buy the land, however much money you had. It was likely some of them did have relatives, but there was another suspect. After all, when an Artefact did something unexpected, who was the very first person anyone in the kingdom would call?

"As you wish. If you'll excuse me."

The [Chief Scribe] gave a polite nod, then left the room, returning to Rumah Magika, where magical sirens were going off and all hell had broken loose.

The little hero was starting to worry about trauma. It seemed that every time she poked her metaphysical eye out, her parents were having sex, or were in the bathroom, or had simply decided to forego clothing for the day.

"I thought that breastfeeding would be a small price to pay for early skill grinding, but I'm starting to suspect I've made a terrible mistake... Hurry up and go to work, you pair of lovebirds! Still, they're both lookers. With parents like this, the genetic lottery is pretty well fixed in my favour."

For all that the goddess was a murderer and exploiter of child soldiers, she did make sure her hero got some measure of compensation, and had chosen the parents to reincarnate her to carefully. And she'd done it in plenty of time, too. It hadn't occurred to the overachieving zygote, but the behaviour of her parents was not that of people worried about imminent murder by demons.

The deities of the world were sensible enough to realise that it took a non-zero amount of time to go from conception to mass-demon-slaughterer, so had arranged for their hero summoning well in advance of when she'd be needed. The fact that the hero was running to her own schedule actually had the potential to be a problem. With demonic armies at the door, heroes would be welcomed with open arms. In a time of peace, the powers that be would be less happy about having what was effectively a living nuclear warhead wandering around untethered.

Knowing nothing of these dangers, the little hero continued her efforts to extend the range and duration of [Astral Projection].

ding
For treating your body as some sort of holiday home instead of the permanent residence it was intended as, [Astral Projection] advances to level 8.

Less than a foot more. The range increase was dropping off with each level, and the hero hadn't managed to unlock any sub-skills. Any dreams of flying over the city like a bird were draining fast. At least with this skill; the hero had no intention of giving up completely. No way did she want to remain tethered to her mother if she was going to keep behaving like a cat in heat.

They'd slow down a bit once she missed a period or two, surely? They wouldn't want to risk their baby?

The hero gave a ghostly sigh as she poked her ectoplasm back out once more, gingerly looking around. This time, she was happy to find her mum in burgundy robes, hastily shovelling toast into her mouth with one hand as the other swept up a pile of notepads into a satchel. She went running out of the house with a piece of toast still in her mouth.

"Why the rush? Probably spent too much time making out this morning, and now she's late. Not that I should talk... Anyway, outdoors! My first proper look!"

She'd zipped into a few other rooms in the morning, but didn't want to risk stretching her link while her mum was walking around, in case they accidentally went in opposite directions and broke it. With her range even more limited than normal, she'd seen little out of the windows beyond a neatly kept garden surrounded by a white wall. Now she'd be stepping outside for the first time since getting [Sense Light]!

"Well, this is boring," she thought a couple of minutes later. "It's all just walls!"

She zipped up into the air as far as possible, but every estate they walked past was surrounded by walls higher than she could fly.

"No wonder I couldn't see anything from the windows. Who builds walls metres high around everything?! I suppose the street is nice enough, but I wanted to see more than boring brick walls and cobblestones. Why is Mum walking? Isn't she supposed to be a mage? Can't she teleport? Or at least take a carriage."

She was fortunate the literal army of street sweepers couldn't hear her thoughts. Keeping a street pristine in a pre-industrial civilization, where the streets were full of horses, was a full-time occupation for hundreds. And even that was only looking after the richer districts. The poorer parts of the city were left to take care of themselves, where enterprising kids would collect the mess and sell it to farmers for fertiliser.

As for why her mum was walking, well... she wasn't. She was running. There was a difference. A human could outrun a carriage, at least over a limited distance, and that was before accounting for all the time it would take to set it up and get going. Nor could she teleport through the wards that protected the capital. The hero's complaints were therefore quite unfair.

Her mum made it to an even larger wall—ten metres tall, at least—sprinting through a grand gate and sparing only a small amount of breath to shout something to the guards. They didn't react to her at all, as if they were used to the scene. Another two minutes later and the pink-haired mage had made it to her workplace.

"Wow..." thought the hero, staring at the five-story tall structure of crystal and metal, patterned with a thousand shades of mana, none of which the hero could get a good look at, partially because her mana vision was still blurry but mostly because Kellela didn't stop. She'd been working there for years, after all. She was used to it.

ding
You have seen Rumah Magika. [Soul's Eye] advances to level 13

"Wow..." the hero repeated. "Hey! Outside! Go back outside! I want more levels!"

Of course, no-one could hear her.

"Maybe I should work on a telepathy skill? Actually, that's a good point."

She looked back at Kellela, who was in conversation with a male in similar robes, but the hero only had [Soul's Eye] and lacked any sort of mystical ear. Lip-reading was hard enough at the best of times, but with the handicap of her blurred sight, it was downright impossible.

"I need a hearing skill of some sort. It's nice I can see now, even if it's a little blurry, but I'm completely deaf! I want to know what they're talking about."

Despite what she thought, the hero wouldn't have been happy to overhear the conversation, which consisted mostly of suggestions that the speaker knew exactly why Kellela was late, and needling remarks about how heavily she was panting.

The unstimulating environment continued when Kellela—instead of mixing up bubbling potions, casting epic spells or doing anything else the hero considered 'magic'—instead sat down at a desk and started poring over pieces of parchment, scribbling notes into her notepad. The writing was all too blurry for the hero to make out, even if she could read the local language, which she couldn't. Worse, the entire room was filled with others doing the same thing.

"Bugger this. I'm going to see if there's anything more interesting going on somewhere else," commented the hero, dropping through the thicker-than-usual floor.

Of course, since the hero was deaf, she didn't hear the alarm that went off the instant she passed through the ceiling of the prison cell below.

"What the hell is..." started the hero before being jerked back upwards as Kellela leapt up in response to the alarm, fleeing to the emergency shelter in such a hurry that she knocked over her ink pot. "... that?"

ding
Achievement unlocked: [Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal]

She was yanked up through the floor back into the room of boredom, which was suddenly a lot less boring, with lots of people running around and bashing into each other. Sticking close to her mother, to avoid any further yanking of her chain, she zipped above the press of bodies forcing themselves in through a doorway. Once inside, they pulled a heavy, metal door shut and bolted it.

Then things got boring again, as everyone sat down and waited.

"Well... What was that all about?" complained the hero, looking up her latest, ominous sounding achievement.

Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (Rare)
You have lain eyes on the Arcane Infernal while having no means of defence, or even any skills over level 50. Worse, it has lain its perception on you. Yet somehow you still live. If you wish this state of affairs to continue, you should probably keep running. Preferably until you reach another planet. Nevertheless, even if it'll only be temporary, you deserve some reward for your brief survival. Mana capacity increases by 20% and your resistance to mana drain increases by 50%.

The hero thought back to the brief glimpse she'd seen of a five metre tall monstrosity, fixed to the floor with chains thicker than her pre-death arms, utterly black to her mana sense. An obviously magical circle was inscribed around chains and monster alike, very clearly separating the room into an inside and an outside. The entire inside of the circle lacked the normal glow of mana. The monster itself was vaguely humanoid, but the proportions were wrong. Arms, legs and neck were extended, the head was too tall, the torso too thin. Furthermore, it was completely smooth, with no eyes, mouth, nose, fingers, toes or hair. The skin shimmered with colours as blotches of reds, blues and greens expanded, contracted and drifted around. Despite the dearth of mana around it, the monster itself had shone more brightly to the hero's mana sense than anything else she had seen in her admittedly short life.

The head had snapped up the moment the hero had first sensed it, and despite the lack of eyes, she knew it had been aware of her. It wasn't as if the hero had eyes herself, after all, so she knew that wasn't necessarily any sort of impediment.

"Why the hell would anyone leave a monster like that chained up right beneath a perfectly normal office?!"

Spoiler

Unnamed Human
Age: -9 months
Occupation: Hero (L)
Skills:
- Soul's Eye (U) (13/50)
>> Sense Vitality (U)
>> Sense Soul (R)
>> Sense Mana (U)
>> Sense Light (C)
- Astral Projection (U) (8/10)
- Robust (C) (3/20)
>> Hardened Soul (R)
Achievements:
- Early Bloomer I (U)
- First Skill (C)
- Novice (C)
- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)

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