An Unbound Soul

Ouch. That hurt. I lay unmoving, trying to fit together my fragmented memory of the last few minutes. I'd been running from something... Then there had been a truck. Very definitely a truck. No way I could have mistaken it for anything else from that close up. Frankly, I was lucky to survive that... But then there'd been more. Floating in darkness, a feeling of pressure, more pain, a blinding light. Presumably I'd been rushed to hospital, but I couldn't match the sensations to anything I would expect a doctor to do. I could have been dreaming, or half delirious. It was best not to try moving my body or neck; I didn't know what was broken. Probably everything.

Oddly, I wasn't at all in pain anymore. Probably pumped full of morphine. I just felt extremely lethargic instead. Carefully opening my eyes, the room I was in was thankfully not too brightly lit, but all I could see were blurs. One of the blurs leaned in.

"Xjev e cieavogam cecz cuz. Zuas peni ot Peter."

My ears didn't seem to be functioning a whole lot better than my eyes, but nevertheless I was pretty sure that wasn't English. I thought I picked my name up at the end, though. A foreign doctor? They probably hadn't noticed I was conscious yet. I should probably try to speak to them.

"Ah ah ah."

Huh? That wasn't right. Why was my mouth not doing what I wanted it to?

"Ah ah."

"Aww, tu davi. Motvip vu vji duuoph."

"Davi et ov ot vu katv motvip, ov't ecuav voni zua hewi jon jot gostv giif."

"Zit. Et nadj et O duamf tvesi ev jon emm fez, zua'si sohjv."

A second voice had joined in, and this one sounded female. Don't just ignore me and have a conversation between yourselves in another language! I'm trying to get your attention here!

As I was railing against the unprofessionalism inside the confines of my own head, one of the blurs leaned in again and picked me up.

Wait, what? How?! I wasn't exactly big boned, but I was still over seventy-five kilos. They shouldn't be able to just pick me up like that! Besides, I probably had a broken everything. It wasn't safe!

Whoever had picked me up was exceedingly gentle, cupping their hand around the back of my head and supporting my back against one arm. Even in my befuddled state, the inconsistency between my mental image of myself and what I was feeling couldn't be ignored. Either this person was very, very large, or else I was... not large at all. A small but highly excited part of my brain was screaming something about trucks and isekai. It was typically not a part of my brain that I permitted to infringe on my day-to-day life, but in this case, I wasn't being given much choice. Was it possible that I had been reincarnated?

My train of thought was rather epically derailed by something soft being pressed against my face. I'd been reincarnated, but I was a baby. Weren't we supposed to pop into the world as young teenagers, or at least wait a while before getting our memories back? That's how the stories went, wasn't it? Why was I a baby?! Babies had to... drink. My senses were broken and I could hardly move. And let's not even start on the issue of excrement! This was going to be awful!

By this point, my body seemed to decide that if its brain was going to crash, it would have to take matters into its own hands. Or gums, as the case may be. As I sucked away, I shuddered at the thought of the embarrassment and shame that awaited me over the next couple of years.

The feeding session lasted an excruciating half hour. Or at least, half an hour of Earth time. Who knew how they measured time here?

Wait, I was assuming that because I'd been reincarnated, I wasn't on Earth anymore. It was true that I didn't recognise the language they were using, but that didn't mean anything. Earth has thousands of languages, and I doubt I would recognise more than ten of them. How to find out? My eyesight wasn't good enough to check for obvious signs, for example Mum having a big, fluffy set of cat ears on her head. For that matter, if I was reincarnated to another world, why should it match Earth's expectations of what a fantasy world should look like? Mum could be an eldritch tentacle horror for all I knew.

With that thought striking me in the head with almost as much force as the truck, I quickly performed a count of my limbs. Left leg, check. Right leg, check. Arms? Present and correct. Fingers? Uncertain. I couldn't see them, and my sense of touch wasn't good enough in this position. Maybe I'd be able to find out once Mum put me back down.

It was very odd how rapidly I'd taken to thinking of this person as 'Mum', though. I could only assume the obvious love and care she was treating me with had flipped some sort of switch. Presumably the other person was my dad, then. Trying to look around didn't work too well; my head wouldn't move properly and my blurred vision wasn't good enough to pick him out, anyway. The best I could do was move my eyes around and aim at the blur I assumed was my mother. Hopefully, this vision problem was just because of my age, and not some sort of disease.

Mum placed me down on some sort of soft surface. Maybe it was a cot, but I wasn't up to rolling around to find out. Then she... Oh damn, it seemed we were onto the excrement part of the equation already. That was definitely some sort of nappy. Ignore it. Ignore it! Fingers, yes, how many fingers did I have? I started poking my face with my hands, trying to check everything was in the right place. Fortunately, it seemed that everything was. As far as I could tell with my barely functioning body, I was a perfectly healthy baby human. Which reminded me of something else I needed to check. Unfortunately, it had just been hidden away under a tightly wrapped piece of cloth, so was out of reach for now. They called me Peter, and that was a boy's name, so hopefully it was safe to make an assumption. Perfectly healthy baby human boy it was, unless proven otherwise.

Actually, that was another thing to worry about. If I'd just reincarnated, how did I know my name? It was just... obvious, which on reflection was rather strange.

Did they know I was reincarnated? They didn't seem to be treating me as if they thought I was intelligent. And what about my family and friends back home? It wasn't as if I was anyone important, but that didn't mean there was no-one who would mourn my passing. I wish I'd at least had a chance to say goodbye. Plus, there were a few TV series and novels I'd never get to find out the ending of. There was a serious lack of closure!

The small and embarrassing bit of my brain was shouting to get my attention again. Right, if this was any sort of half-decent isekai situation, I should have some sort of status and level. The old me would never lay there shouting 'status', hoping for a status display to appear, but I'd just been breast fed and had my nappy changed. My standards of shame—and, to some extent, sanity—had been considerably lowered. Speaking was out of the question, though, so I just thought 'status' really hard instead.

Name: Peter

Species: Human

Class: Commoner (Level 1)

Soul Points: 0

Health: 6/6

Stamina: 2/6

Mana: 15/15

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 1

Endurance: 1

Intelligence: 10

Wisdom: 10

Charisma: 5

Skills: None

Traits: [Abnormal Soul]

Titles: None

It came out! It really came out! Writing popped up right in front of my face! I'd reincarnated into a fantasy RPG world! Or been kidnapped by some evil corporation that wanted to perform experiments on full-dive VR systems. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to tell the two options apart. Anyway, functionally it made no difference, so starting from the top: name confirmed as Peter. No family name. It was often the case in fantasy stories that only the nobility had family names, and that matched with my class of commoner. Did the fact that my name appeared on my status explain how I was able to recognise it?

Species confirmed as human. Gender or age didn't show up at all. No idea what soul points were for, or if it was bad that I didn't have any. I'd lost a lot of stamina for some reason, but given what I'd just been through, I wouldn't question it.

I had mana! That meant magic! Fantasy world checkbox, checked.

Physical stats were all as low as could be. Of course they were; I was a baby! Mental stats were much higher, presumably due to inheriting my previous life's memories. No skills. Fair enough; again, baby. That trait, though... That did not sound good. Could I get more info? Maybe if I focused on it really hard?

[Abnormal Soul] - The structure of your soul is completely alien to the lands you walk. You are immune to the effects of soul magic, unless specially tailored towards you. (Rank 4)

Good, that wasn't as bad as it sounded. Just a side effect of arriving from another world. I had no idea if rank four was high or not, or what ranks even were, but I don't think it changed anything either way. And if I could get extra details like that, perhaps I could check out some other things the same way?

[Human] - A sentient race. Known for their adaptability and growth, humans are born weak but develop rapidly. They can show equal talent in either physical or magical disciplines.

[Commoner] - Default class. No special features. (Rank 1)

[Soul Points] - Used to purchase new skills. Earned by levelling and acting in accordance with your class.

So soul points were a form of currency used to purchase new skills. In that case, it was expected I'd have none, and I'd look forward to earning some. The last entry in the status stated that I had no titles. I'd have expected 'reincarnator' or something, but if that wasn't how things worked here, I wasn't going to complain. It seemed like I didn't have any world-breaking cheats either, aside from the obvious of having adult intelligence at age zero. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I was never one for playing computer games on easy mode; if there wasn't a challenge, what was the point? But with my life at stake and no reload button, maybe I should be thinking differently.

With the contents of my status out of the way, it was time to address the elephant in the room. Why the heck was my status all completely clear despite my atrocious eyesight, and all written in English?! Presumably I wasn't actually 'seeing' it, and something was writing it straight into my brain somehow? But that didn't change the fact that English was obviously not the local language. Did it show up in a language appropriate for each person? That would be useful, but however did it work? Was that even a sensible question, given the existence of magic? But then again, how did that quote go? 'Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic', I think it was. For all I knew, 'magic' was handled by a bunch of nano-machines floating in the air and a big computer somewhere.

Anyway, regardless of how it worked, an opportunity to use magic was awesome enough to tolerate being a baby for a bit. It would be incredibly selfish to complain, even putting aside the fact I appeared to have survived dying. Could I practise magic despite being a baby? Probably not; I had no idea how to even start. Besides, however cool it may be, I had more important things I needed to do. Picking up the local language for one, not to mention relearning how limbs were supposed to work. And mouths. I flailed around randomly for a bit, trying to get a feel for my new body.

"Muul ev jon hu. Xi'wi tasi huv ep ipishivod upi jisi."

Hah, in my excitement, I'd forgotten my parents were here. No matter. I seemed to have been born to a loving family, and neither of them seemed stressed, so we probably weren't about to be invaded or murdered or eaten by the local wildlife. I had time. Actually, I was getting rather sleepy. A quick glance at my status showed stamina had dropped to one. I guess that for a newborn, simply being awake was a major drain on resources. Nap time.

I smiled to myself as I easily drifted off to sleep. This new life was looking promising already.