"Are you sure?" asked the [Priest].

I nodded.

"I'm sure," I said. "I want to be an [Ice Mage]."

"All right," said the priest. He turned to my father. "Would you like to assist? She's your daughter, after all. I always think that it lends a Spark a certain bit of something extra if a parent helps. It may not actually change the spark itself - but it gives it a touch more ceremony and personal connection."

My father laughed, before he picked me up and kissed my forehead. "Of course I want to be there! How could I miss my daughter getting her first spark?"

The [Priest] smiled. "I'm glad to hear it." The [Priest] checked the church, and confirmed that today, it was nearly empty. He gave the last two churchgoers a few quick responses to their questions, before he shooed them out of the door. He turned back towards us. "That'll be all of the questions I answer today. Follow me - Let's get your first spark absorbed."

The [Priest] led us out of the temple and towards the front of the village. A few villagers greeted us as we walked by them, but quickly left once they heard that I was going to get my first spark. Several of them wished me well as we walked forward, which made me smile.

I didn't know the people of this village very well, but so far I had a good impression of them.

It didn't take us long to reach the front of the village-bearing-beast. It continued to plod along, with each of its steps oddly stable as it walked through the wilderness. The [Priest] gave the creature a fond pat on its back, although I couldn't help but doubt whether the massive creature even felt the [Priest]'s touch. With a creature large enough to literally build a town on its back, someone petting it with their hand must have felt like a piece of dust landing on its back - basically unnoticeable. The [Priest] took a few more steps towards the globe of light that the creature was following, before he beckoned me forward.

"All right, Miria. Here's what I need you to do. Stick out your hand. I will extract a spark of flame from the ember, and then pass it on to you. After that, it's going to hurt a little bit. I need you to push through the pain, and focus on absorbing the energy from the spark into your heart. It should feel natural - kind of like raising your arm up and down. It might take you a few seconds to get the hang of it, though. All you have to do is guide the energy towards your heart, okay?"

I scratched my head.

"Why do I need to guide the spark towards my heart?" I asked.

"Your heart is where the root of the System is located, and so the System will take over once you guide the spark over to it," said the [Priest]. "You just need to get the energy from your arm to your chest. Otherwise, the spark will eventually run out of energy and go to waste. Granted, a single spark doesn't really mean much to the giant globe of energy in front of us - but it's very tiring for me to extract them, and if our towns get really overzealous in taking sparks from the ember, it could cause it to shrink and weaken. Let's not waste resources, okay?"

I nodded my agreement. The [Priest] smiled at me. "Good. Your father will help you, so you're not alone. Just do your best. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," I said.

The priest reached his hand out towards the globe of flames, and a moment later, I felt a ripple of essence expand out of his hand and towards the globe of flames. It didn't feel like the [Priest] was seizing sparks from the flame - it almost felt like they were communicating somehow. A moment later, the ember quivered, and spat out a tiny little spark of fire. It floated back towards the [Priest] and alighted upon his palm as though he were a [Fire Mage] instead of a [Priest]. The flame itself looked almost like the type of flame I would get out of a match - tiny and unimportant.

That is, it would have seemed that way if I couldn't feel the massive, churning bundle of alteration and binding essence intertwined within the tiny spark of flame.

The [Priest] placed the spark of fire onto my hand, where it melted into my skin like a candle thrown into the ocean.

Then, I felt pain. It wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be - perhaps the [Priest] was anticipating the low pain tolerance of a regular child. Still, even though it wasn't that bad, I still felt kind of like someone had just stuck a hot needle into my skin. It wasn't unbearable heat, but it was still very unpleasant. Worse, the little spark didn't leave - it remained buried in my arm, constantly emitting prickling heat and pain into the rest of my body.

I spent several seconds focusing on trying to drag the little seed of flames into my heart using my usual essence manipulation methods - but I quickly found that they were ineffective. I couldn't manipulate the little spark using my regular essence manipulation abilities - it was like trying to drag a piece of wood around using a magnet.

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I quickly realized I was making things more complicated than I needed to. My essence wasn't needed for the job - because something innate to my biology was capable of pulling the little seed of flame around my body, the same way my body was designed to walk and jump and move my arms around. The reason I was having such a hard time moving the spark around was because my habitual essence manipulation was the wrong path from the beginning.

I tapped into my innate biological instincts instead, and about a minute later, I figured out how to drag the spark around. From there, I pulled it towards my heart - where it promptly got vacuumed into something else. Something I couldn't quite picture or understand, but that I realized had been there since the moment I was born into this world. The mild pain and discomfort in my body disappeared, and a moment later, I re-opened my status screen again. I looked at it, and grinned.

Name: Miria

Age: 2

Spark: 1

Current Spark: Ice Mage

Previous Sparks: None

Level: 0/20

Stat points: 0

Basic Attributes

Strength: 38(-80%)

Resistance: 37 (+18) (-80%)

Vitality: 17(-80%)

Sense: 57 (+55)(-80%)

Agility: 17(-80%)

Mind: 18 (+22)(-80%)

Mana: 96(-80%)

Traits:

Child: All stats are reduced by 80%. This Trait will constantly decrease in effect as you get older, until it completely fades away at the age of 16

Unusual energy: You have two unusual forms of energy, both of which are different from the standard two forms of essence that create 'mana.' These strange forms of energy act as completely separate mana pools, and may allow you to do odd and unique things.

Strange Runes: You have two mysterious runes inscribed on your body, each of which provides you with a unique spell and a substantial boost to your Mind and Sense stats, and a partial boost to your willpower stat.

Mind: +22

Sense: +55

Resistance: +18

Unique Spells:

Miniature Gate, Abyssal Perception

Skills:

Basic Ice Manipulation: Stage 0

Feats:

None

"My status screen changed!" I said. "I have {Basic Ice Manipulation} now, and it looks like I can level up to level 20 now.

The [Priest] laughed. "That sounds right to me. Once you reach level 20, you won't be able to gain any more levels until you absorb your next spark. Level 20 is also where sparks start to become a bit more interesting. Every time you absorb a new spark, if you already have a copy of that spark, you'll get more specialized options for how the new spark will help you improve. This is part of what makes spark combination so interesting - different specializations and different feats give you completely different results as you go further and further into the System. Of course, you can also opt to take a completely new spark every 20 levels - there is nothing stopping you from doing that either."

I nodded.

"What are feats?" I asked.

"Every 10 levels, you'll get a unique, special ability that fits what you have done with your class and what you have accomplished with your spark so far," said the [Priest]. "You get a few options each time, but not many. 2-3 is normal."

"What about Skills?" I said. "How do they work?"

The [Priest] grinned. "Practice!" he said, before cackling. "Each skill has a total of 20 stages it can reach. Well, 21 if you count 'stage 0.' That's the point where the System is actively helping you perform the absolute basics of a certain skill. To progress further, you need to push yourself - and by doing so, you can slowly work to raise the stage of any skills you get."

So it's basically the same as the grades of the Market, I thought. The Market had twenty stages for ability evolution, and the local System had the same. I strongly suspected that they were just different names for the exact same underlying System.

"How about levelling up?" I asked.

"That one is more odd," said the [Priest]. "The first thing to keep in mind is that all sparks can grow if you absorb energy from newly dead monsters. That's how the village has raised our craftsmen, in fact - we see that their level isn't keeping up with what the village needs from them, so we dump some extra monster corpses on their doorstep and let them absorb the spoils of war. You can also level up just from practicing your skills, and sometimes you can also get levels from accomplishing a 'great feat'. The standards for a great feat aren't very clear, but generally if you do something difficult or important, you get levels for it."

So it's like influence achievement, I thought. The systems weren't quite the same, but I was surprised by how much overlap there was between the Market's system and the local system.

After the discussion, I thanked the priest for his time, and my father took me home. I was eager to get working on my new spark, and to rebuild my third rune with a more useful ability - I wanted to make the most of every second in this world, to prepare for our fight for more lives.

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