Chapitre 4: Celestial Paragon
Once everyone's affinities were tested, they moved on to the next part. This would be where skillsets, professions and special talents would be revealed.
They were required to complete different tasks, all associated within a certain area of expertise, but most of the results were not easy to see for others. The end result would be transferred by a special magical item onto a piece of crystal.
The crystal piece could be activated with a tiny amount of power, as such pretty much everyone could use it. Once activated it showed the results in writing, like a still image painted on it or a photograph one might take on a world with technology instead of magic.
"So what is the first task for this test?" she looked around to see a few simple tools. This task was about creating something.
Not sure what was expected of her, she took a small piece of metal, quickly used her magic to carve it into a little doll shaped like a bird and then called out to summon a spirit to animate it.
"What is this?" the supervisor looked at her little puppet and was really impressed. "Such great craftsmanship, this doll is really impressive child. I don't know how you made it so quickly but you did well!"
Happy with the praise, Myra smiled and relaxed a little bit. It seemed like she would not get scolded for doing something wrong if she did her best here and used her powers to the utmost.
The supervisor quickly left again, leaving Myra to her own devices once more. He never seemed to notice, that the metal bird in her hands was soon trembling, before flying off into the forest.
The artwork of making a replica of a bird alone was impressive for a five year old child, if he had noticed that she also bound a spirit to it and enchanted it with weight reducing magic, there would have been an immense uproar.
Again Myra looked around for the next test. It seemed to be inside a little hut this time.
"What are we supposed to do here?" Myra asked the old woman guarding the entrance.
"Child, there is a wall inside that will ask you questions. You just have to put your hand on it and do your best to answer them. If you don't know the answer also say that you don't know and it will be skipped. Once a certain amount of questions have been asked and answered in some way, the test will complete."
"Alright, thank you Granny that sounds easy enough." Myra headed into the hut after another child came out and quickly found the wall, the old woman had mentioned.
As the questions were designed for a young child, Myra didn't really have any issues with most of them. She had a harder time with questions about the land, or history as she never learned about these things before and could only rely on what little she absorbed from Lynn.
< Describe a way to accumulate magical power >
"Oh, that's an easy one." Myra put her hand on the wall again and sent the information that was asked.
"This wall is really rather stupidly made. The spirit inside only knows how to ask simple questions and now it has to understand all these magical concepts I told it. How bothersome, this will surely take a while."
When Myra finally came out of the hut again, the old woman was really surprised. Most children would only be in there for five minutes at most, but Myra took nearly an hour.
"Thanks for your time Granny, I think you need a better spirit for your wall though, it's not really smart enough for handling all the questions you wanted answered."
Wondering about the child's words, the old woman quickly headed inside the hut to check the magic wall. She was a skilled mage and artificer herself, retired a long time ago and now just spent her days in the village teaching kids. Never would she have expected for a five year old to call her spirit item dumb.
She looked through the questions and the answers the girl received. Most were answered in a way that was simple and to the point while some questions that could be seen as common sense remained unanswered for some reason.
If she had just looked at those few answers she would have guessed that the kid was a little bit slow, to not say mentally challenged, in order to not know the answers, but looking at other questions it was really not making any sense.
'Did the girl not answer those easy questions on purpose?'
She quickly found the question about magic power accumulation. A few kids would figure out simple ways to do so early on in their lives and this was also the reason why they even included such a question, to spot talents early.
She expected answers along the lines of 'I call power from outside' but the answer she received from Myra was quite different.
"This answer! This could be a whole thesis on magic power accumulation! How did that child even learn about this?"
All of the excitement and confusion of the old woman was unknown to Myra though. She just moved on to her next test.
Most of the remaining tests were about practical use of abilities. She did well on some and badly at others. Her singing of the few words included in the test impressed and entranced everyone around her and even made the people clap at her performance, while her absolute failures at farming made many people laugh.
Myra looked down at her own crystal collecting all the results and tried to figure out what it was supposed to mean.
'This crystal thing is rather confusing'
It did not look like she had any special skillsets for a profession that was common in the village, at least her aptitudes for many things like farming and mining were below average. There were however several others listed that caught her attention.
It seemed like smithing and making things out of metal would suit her, but she could not remember having ever before worked as a smith or jeweler. With a strong logical talent, jobs like runeworking were definitely on the list of recommended professions, as were all kinds of jobs related to crafting magic items.
It was no surprise that her talents for magic and the magical knight path were also included, what did come unexpected though was that she seemed to have a talent for handling some weapons. Maybe it was related to the smithing abilities? Did she create weapons in the past?
Her musical aptitude was through the roof too, which made her want to try some songs, before she found that she didn't even remember a single one. She'd leave that question for later too.
More questions she could not find any answers for, but she was happy that she did not cause an uproar like with the last test.
"Have all of you completed the tests for this step of the ceremony?" the elder asked the kids and they all nodded, some raising their crystals while others just waited for more instructions.
When everyone was done with their assessment for their skills and talents, the last part of the ceremony would be the part about heritage and bloodlines.
Having a certain bloodline was very important for some families and clans, to the point where you were only considered a direct descendant with the right bloodline.
People who had a bloodline also had a special name or title that reflected this bloodline. Everyone else, even if they were of the same family, were not allowed to use the bloodline name.
In a way it was like a profession title, just one that you had since birth that reflected a heritage instead of an acquired skill or title.
"Now for the third part of the ceremony, use a drop of your blood on the crystal that you got and put it in the magic circle on the little altar in front of you." the elder explained, starting the last test.
Once Myra got her crystal back, there seemed to be some changes. Her name 'Myra' was there from the beginning. It should have been the name her adoptive parents registered her with. That was not the only thing listed there now however.
*************
Myra Elení Aer – Celestial Paragon
Unknown Primordial Bloodline
Unknown Divine Bloodline
*************
'What is a Celestial Paragon?' she wondered. 'Maybe it's because I was not born on this world? Probably. What's with these strange bloodlines?'
Without any real reference to the information provided Myra did not think too much about it and once the ceremony ended, she quickly returned to her family.
She really wanted to discuss the results with them, but with all the people around wanting to know more about her, they decided it would be for the best to go home.
Some villagers still tried to find out more information about Myra, but they soon gave up when neither the girl in question, nor her parents and siblings would tell them more. What caused such an uproar earlier quickly died down as an 'unexpected malfunction' of the affinity stones.
Those who were aware that it would not be so simple were still interested in Myra, but seeing that her family didn't like to be bothered they decided it might be for the best to leave them alone, rather than offending a possible future genius and her family.
--
"Sis you were amazing! Did you see their faces! You made all of the stones tremble like some earthquake caught hold of them, how amazing is that?"
Ethan seemed really excited that his little sister was a never seen before genius in their village, making Myra blush a little bit.
"What did you get on the other tests? You must have some magical bloodline or something right? Or maybe some blessing with that kind of affinity! Ouch,… " his words were interrupted by a little knock on his head and a glare from his mother.
"Don't pry into your little sister's matters. It is rude to ask about the outcome of the ceremony."
"Yes mom, fine." Ethan calmed down and had a depressed look on his face, which made both of his sisters giggle.
"If you have any question's sis you can always ask me though!" he continued after a moment, giving his mother a wary look in case she wants to hit him again.
Myra nodded. She did indeed have some questions, but she was not sure how much of it she should reveal, even to her family.
"What's a paragon?" she asked after a while, not sure how to phrase the question in a different way.
"Paragons are the peak one can achieve at a certain rank for their foundation." Logan started to explain to his new daughter, before Ethan could reply. "They have bodies that are better suited for training magical power and don't need a lot of resources to make training even possible in the first place."
"If you are a paragon, it would make you really lucky!" Lynn added. "Especially as we don't have lots of treasures here to temper our bodies. We just have to make do with what we got."
Many questions still remained for Myra, but she nodded and was happy that at least some of her questions could be resolved. She would figure out her strange bloodlines and the weird name on her own at some point, without troubling her family with it.
In the end, she was still aware that her body was not simply born into this world, rather it was created by her in some way. How? She would not be able to explain someone the steps in detail, as it was more of a natural reaction, but it was still obvious that bodies were not simply created on this world.
--
In the following months and even years Myra learned quite a lot of things, but it still did not seem enough. She learned about minerals and metals from the miners, she learned a little bit of smithing from the village's blacksmith and even some tricks from wandering merchants about jewelers, even though their village did not have anyone who was skilled at this profession. Her runecrafting was also advancing by leaps and bounds as did her musical skills, both of them were more of an intuitive step by step approach rather than someone teaching her.
She also learned the basics of spiritual and magical power and it did not seem as if she would have a hard time with either. The way Myra advanced made everyone realize that their little village would soon become too small for her. If they wanted her to learn more and advance further in her studies she would have to travel to other places.
Her older sister Lynn was still around, but would soon leave with a paladin of the goddess Cordia, who was one of the many gods and goddesses on Gaia. The paladin accepted Lynn as his disciple and would teach her quite a lot, not only about this goddess of justice, but also all the other things a proper paladin would need, like various magical power techniques, riding and all the little tidbits ranging from etiquette to the empire's laws.
Ethan on the other hand had already left Firestone and was currently learning in one of the mage academies in the capital city. It was harder to train a mage, even if just the basics, if there was no proper teacher available. There was no mage in Firestone who could help him with his magical studies and going to an academy was his only way to advance further.
With two of her siblings no longer around and her oldest brother rather busy in the library, Myra focused most of her time learning what the villagers could teach her. She soon reached the point, where her teachers could no longer keep up with her though. Not only were her affinities, her physical abilities and her talent far beyond her peers and even beyond her teachers level, but with her memories waking up bit by bit with using certain skillsets, she soon did intuitively what others could only struggle to learn in years and decades.
Myra only had simple materials to work with, but with her masterful craftsmanship she could quickly make quite a decent profit with the pieces she created, saving up a little bit of money. As her parents did not want any of it, she just used it for her own gear, as well as for saving up some spare coins.
Her own gear was a mix of some fine fabric as well as thin leather pieces, comfortable to wear and move in. Nothing too exceptional in bigger cities, the materials were already some of the best one might find around the village. The materials quickly changed into finished products in Myra's hands. A pair of thin leather pants, a top made of decent quality fiber as well as a mix between a trench coat and a hooded robe. All of it was covered by tiny gemstones and runes, made by Myra herself. While it could not compare to something made of much higher quality materials, for the materials used it was definitely at the very top end of what could be achieved and not only showed her skills compacting all these rune designs to fit, but also her experience and ingenuity for even thinking of so many different nice additions.
Her gear would be able to change in size, it would not get wet easily and provide a rather decent protection against natural elements as well as elemental attacks like fire and cold. It had a rather high resistance against physical attacks as well and neither fabric nor leather would get dirty. She would even be able to repair it with only a slight investment of her power if it ever got damaged by more powerful hits. The dark cloth and black dyed leather along with her dark red eyes and black hair, which had by now grown almost to her waist, made her look a little bit scary. As for weapons she was using a long dagger, similar in size to a short sword, engraved with all kinds of runes and with a core of magical steel. Not only was it sturdy and would not break easily, but she could also use it to help her channel magical energy for creating her spells.
What made her gear the most unusual though was that it was created with techniques that were totally unknown on this world. There were several techniques known in the country and even beyond, but Myra used her own approach, working on things in a very different way than any craftsman had ever seen and also achieved results that others would not expect to be possible.
It was not the level of power that made her items special. Without using all the strength of her spirit, which was hard for her small and still weak body to bear for any longer amount of time, her current power in this world was still limited. Similarly the power she could use safely to make items was also limited, as was the strength of said items.
Together with the low quality of the materials, the limits on these items were substantial. What was outstanding though, was the flexibility of the spell and runework, the variety of enchantments and the ease with which they could be used.
She also wanted to try herself at making a dimensional pouch, but she had neither the materials for it, nor enough power, not to mention that she had no recipe or any idea of where to start. She might be able to try anyways if she had the materials and power, hoping that her hidden memories would help her out, but there was no chance for her to succeed currently.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone