01.02 - That Time I Got Reincarnated As an Elden Child

I slowly regained all my senses after my new body reached the age of one or two. Telling time was hard to be honest.

Before that, there were some flashes of lucidity in between a mindless haze.

Being an infant sucked. It really, really sucked. Imagine the worst headache of your life, then break two ribs, knock out a few teeth and take a couple of kicks to the balls. This was still worse.

I lacked the ability to walk, let alone talk, during the first few lucid episodes. Couldn’t even decide when to shit myself.

Suffice to say, the sights and sounds of what must have been the people around me made no sense at all for the first couple of months.

And don’t even get me started on the food. Solid foods were a pipe dream for a while.

Then I got my monkey paw’s wish.

Teething. It hurt like hell. Worse than anything I could recall. No wonder we don’t tend to remember those days.

That’s gonna leave some psychological scars for sure.

Speaking of scars, I wonder how my parents dealt with my sudden demise.

As for my new family… It was a bit… unusual. To say the least.

I went by the name of ‘Gry Steward Morgenlicht’.

Gry sounds like a girl's name, right?

Because it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I am NOT a girl.

My new ‘mother’, Aurora, just wished I was, for the better half of my life.

Then my sister was born. But Dawn’s arrival didn’t exactly please Aurora either.

Dawn shared most of Aurora's features, including her scarlet hair and brown eyes.

I shared almost none of their traits, except for certain features around my ears.

Not like I saw much of my ‘mother’ anyway.

She was mostly absent.

Dawn and I were cared for by two maids and a butler.

We grew up in a small mansion at the outskirts of what must have been a bigger town.

I say two maids, but they were not always the same, constantly rotating in and out of employment. None of the new hires could stand working for my ‘mother’ for more than a month or two.

The cooks also changed a lot.

The last Gardener was fired recently, without a replacement in sight.

Our butler, Alfred, was the only real constant in my new life. He was cool, despite the old man's age. He called me ‘Grey’, maybe partially for the color of my hair.

What a difference an ‘E’ can make, not just for blessings.

Why does a baby have grey hair?

My ‘mother’, Aurora, is half Elden. I am three-quarters.

What’s an Elden? Think of them as Elves. At least in appearance.

As for their general mannerisms… fictional french nobility might be a good fit.

As for my absent ‘father’…

Let’s just say he had certain interests and the power to fund them. From what I picked up, he is the local Elden Lord.

As for how he is connected to Aurora... I am almost three. Aurora is almost seventeen. You do the arithmetic.

Mixed bloods apparently still had a higher status than human folk. But that didn’t guarantee an easy life.

It seems my ‘mother’ had hoped for a daughter to continue the cycle and keep her own status intact. Well, though luck. Not that I couldn’t sympathize.

Betrayed by her parents, abused by my progenitor.

Hooked on drugs since her teens, and now fooling around with the local youth. Maybe to distract herself. Maybe out of spite. I wouldn’t know.

It seemed neither Dawn nor I would ever be involved with our progenitor.

That prediction changed suddenly, at least for me.

A day before my third birthday, a strange package arrived.

That evening, Aurora and Alfred had an unusually heated argument I happened to listen in on.

“But my lady, he sent it as a present for the young lord!” Alfred insisted.

“A present for his bastard child?” Aurora asked. “I couldn’t care less. Pretending to care about us now of all times?”

“But if we sell it, and the Lord Ruler happens to…” Alfred said.

“Enough.” Aurora said. “That Wonder Egg is wasted on that bastard child! It’s worth at least thirty times your annual pay! My house, my rules. Or do you yearn for the streets?”

“Please,” Alfred said, “my lady, be reasonable. There is no way we could explain it to the Lord Ruler. Those contracts are Bound by Blood.”

Not like I cared much for a present from that man.

If she sold it, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about the bills for a while.

Then again, fools and their money are easily parted. Especially addicts.

That night, curiosity got the better of me. I snuck out of my bed and stumbled towards Alfred’s study, where the package remained.

It was time to count my blessings.

At least two of them.

First, I made sure things would be fine, even if I came to regret my actions later on.

Then I checked my surroundings.

The room was small, filled with furniture that wouldn’t feel out of place in Victorian England. There was a desk by a window, and shelves filled with books and accounting documents.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Time for step two.

I slowly took the item from the already opened package.

The moonlight that fell through the faraway window was reflected by the golden ornaments and blood red symbols on what looked like an otherwise almost regular egg.

Except for its size.

I stumbled backwards as I tried to balance it.

It was way bigger than my head, nearly too large to handle with my small frame.

The time to try my second blessing was now.

//======== Know Your Enemy - B Tier ===========

Shows information about your Target, including details on Level, Classes, Skills, and Stats. You lose 5% total exp, if your Level is below that of your Target.

//========================================

I immediately lost 5% of my almost non existent experience point pool.

A translucent status screen appeared before me.

//========================================

Wonder Egg - Lvl. 42 - Draconic

Potential Tier: A - SSS

Classes: Undefined

Skills: Undefined

Stats: Undefined

Familiar: Undefined

Hint: Hatching Condition: “Blood is Power”

//========================================

There it was.

Level 42, huh? Great, except I had no idea what the bloody hell that meant.

I had not encountered anyone openly talking about Levels.

The only reference of a high Level I had come across was over nine thousand.

My own Level was 13, which had already changed for other reasons.

The servant's Levels ranged from 13 to 17. My mother’s Level was 22. Alfred’s Level was 37.

Level 42 sounded great. At least compared to most of the people around me.

Yet going by the eggs monetary value, it could feed the family for more than a year.

If Aurora didn’t immediately part with the money that is.

What if I didn’t contract with it and my progenitor got wind of Aurora selling the egg?

What would Aurora do once she found out that I contracted with the egg against her will?

I sat there in silence for a long, long time.

Then I made peace with my decision.

‘Bound by Blood’, Alfred had said earlier.

Did he mean the egg, or their own contracts?

‘Blood is Power’, the hatching conditions hint red.

Was that meant to be taken literally?

Only one way to find out.

I climbed on Alfred’s chair, and grabbed a pair of scissors.

Back on the floor, next to the egg, I tried to draw a little blood.

My underdeveloped hand eye coordination struck again.

I cut way too deep.

Blood ran down my left hand.

The first drops fell on the egg while I struggled to get the bleeding under control.

The Wonder Egg began to glow.

Small cracks formed around the locations where the first blood drops had touched the egg.

They grew larger and larger.

Its glow intensified.

The following explosion ripped open the shell and knocked me over.

It blew out the windows.

The room was a mess.

The sound reverberated through the whole house and woke my baby sister, every servant, and Aurora too.