None of us moved, just staring at the dismembered limb lying limping on the floor.

  Unexpectedly, Gerald started to laugh, a loud booming laugh that reverberated throughout the room. When his laughing died down, he ran his remaining hand over the stump where his arm previously was. When his hand finished passing over his stump, a green glow started coming from the stump of his arm.

  As the glow got brighter and brighter, the flesh around his stump started to wriggle and wriggle. Eventually, after a few seconds, new flesh started to expand from the stump. As the new pink flesh grew out and formed an exact copy of the arm I'd just inadvertently cut off.

  Gerald stretching out his new arm, clenched his hand experimentally, ensuring that his arm had regained its full functionality,

  "Well kid, we're really going to have to @&* #@& #*^@ [Mana Control] and [Mana &#@*^&] when you're old enough to understand me, in the meantime, we're just going to try and keep you out of trouble."

  Ding! Lorian Common (C) has reached level 4

  Gerald reached down towards me again, slowly and non-aggressively this time. This time, my affinities didn't react to try and stop Geralt. After Gerald scooped me up and carried me towards Emily. When we finally reached Emily, Gerald sat me down on one of those colorful mats next to Emily.

  After sitting me down, he knelt down next to Emily and myself. "Okay Emily, you're going to have to have a new friend staying here with us for the &()##&(* future."

  And that was the start of my mana skills training. Well, training is a loose term. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to convey a question or just ask something of someone when your vocal cords aren't developed enough to make any noise beyond simple baby cooing noises.

  All that I really did all day was sit on what I learnt through [Identify] was an uncommon ranked meditation mat all day as Gerald would spew out random strings of knowledge throughout the day.

  This is how my life continued for almost 6 months now. Fortunately, I was able to develop two valuable skills over this period despite Gerald not really teaching me anything. These two skills were [Meditation] and [Mana Sense]. [Mana Sense] was shockingly easy to learn when I leaned on [Spatial Perception]'s ability to detect mana around me, once I figured out how to trigger that part of the ability it was almost too easy to get [Mana Sense]. And with [Meditation], well, there's not much beyond sitting around a baby can really do.

  I will say though, [Meditation] really was a life saver for me. I'm not sure if I'd have been able to stay sane without its help. One thing that I am more grateful about then you'd possibly be able to believe though is that [Lorian Common] had finally levelled up enough for me to be able to understand whole conversations without missing random words. It seems like level 6 is the magic number for language skills.

  I'd even started saying a few words to my parents when they visited and to Gerald. They were so excited when my first words were Mum and Dad, I think they miss me being around. Hopefully, I'll be able to move back in with them once I unlock [Mana Control]. Though Gerald doesn't seem to be in a real rush to teach me the skill yet.

  Even if I can sense the mana around me and see it with [Spatial Perception], the stupid thing is just too slippery for me to control it. Even Emily hadn't started her training on [Mana Control] and she was almost 2 years old now. Mind you, based off what my [Identify] skill is showing me, my language skills are still more advanced than hers so if I can't handle it yet, she definitely can't.

  While nothing of note happened during this time, something amazing happened the day I turned 6 months old.

  Ding! Congratulations on surviving for 6 months. 100 XP Awarded

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  Ding! Child of Earth reached level 2. 5 Attribute Points Awarded

  Shocked, not expecting a level up, I realized that I've never actually looked at my class before. Mentally kicking myself for such a huge oversight, I opened up my status and looked at my class.

  Huh. I honestly can't believe that I've never thought to look at my class before now. Also, getting some bonus attribute points is pretty sweet too. I'll worry about those points in a minute. More importantly, I've learnt some valuable information from this Class info. For starters, it's a tier 0 class which implies that the classes can advance to higher tiers which I'm assuming means more attributes. The other thing I noticed was that classes are able to award skills. Hopefully, when I advance past tier one, I'll get some awesome skills with my next class. The only thing I'm not sure about is how many levels I'm going to need to advance my class.

  I guess I'll just have to ask Gerald. Slowly standing up, I walked slowly towards Gerald's room.

  'Thank God I can finally walk, I'd have gone insane if I needed someone to carry me around everywhere.'

  Over the last few months, my physically attributes had slowly increased as I grew in age, which allowed me to walk like with the experience of a veteran toddler, much to the dismay of Gerald who now had to spend half of his time making sure I didn't run off somewhere.

  Can you really blame me though? You'd want to get out too if you were effectively locked up in a room for 6 months without having anyone to talk to, you'd want to get out and see what's around you too.

  As I was just about to get to Gerald's door, it swung open as Gerald stormed out of his room.

  "What do you want kid? This ain't the time for a conversation. I've got to convince Emily's parents she's not ready to be reintroduced to society just yet, we'll talk later."

  And with that Gerald continued to walk out of the house without looking back, leaving my questions unanswered.

  Oliver's Status at the End of The Chapter