Chapter 3: Early Life II

Age 13

Ceunon was a bustling city, where one could easily get lost amongst the many traders who came to the northernmost outpost of Galbatorix's empire, arriving at the docks having traveled north up the shore of the north sea. The abundance of traders aiming to sell their goods resulted in the emergence of many workshops and market stalls, where dedicated craftsmen of every profession sold their wares.

Looking back, I realized that I was perhaps fortunate in the location of my rebirth in the land of Alagaësia, as while Ceunon was part of the Broddring empire, little to no imperial presence could be seen within its walls. Unlike in the dark alleys of Dras Leona, or the seat of Galbatorix's power Urû'baen, the number of guards and soldiers that walked down the roads and paths in the city was definitively smaller. Perhaps, this was due to the distance between the city and the capital, or perhaps due to Galbatorix's arrogance.

In any case, all the better for me.

It would be highly unlikely that the ever-busy traders would notice some rare gems and metals going missing. Even more unlikely that in the case they did, the guards would find them again. After all, they are all now reforged into something much more useful. I did after all need to make my equipment and weapons.

While I would not dare compare myself to the legendary elven blacksmiths and forgers, that spent centuries forging the swords of the riders, my personal weapons were not entirely off the mark. They would most certainly suit me for my first few years of my future journey, until I get something more adequate and powerful.

My first creation for myself was a melee weapon that I could wield as a support to my primary weapon: Magic. As such, I forged in the back of my father's blacksmith workshop a thin but balanced sword made of steel, the properties of which I replicated after several dozen failed attempts of introducing carbon atoms to melted iron, frequently using my microscope substitute spell to ensure the correct balance between the two elements.

I then proceeded to shape and create a hilt for my sword, which was made from a carefully carved ivory horn of some wild animal a trader from Beirland managed to obtain. The result was a weapon resembling an Estoc sword from the 17th century, known for being quite stiff, long, and thin. I particularly aimed to forge it slightly larger than what would be the ideal weapon length for my current body size, as I knew that I would continue to grow in the upcoming years.

I then proceeded to add a few basic enchantments to the sword, so as to prevent it from rust, and to further increase its durability. While this did not produce the same effect as enchanting it directly while forging, it would be enough to make it better than any sword forged by even a talented blacksmith.

Using the leftover materials stolen from the merchants, I also created several pairs of throwing knives, to which I applied similar enchantments. Sharpening them to a lethal degree, I proceeded to wrap them in fabric alongside and stash them away in a hollow area of the oak next to my house, alongside my newly created sword and its sheath.

I would need to spend some time getting accustomed to combat with these new weapons. While my primary weapon was my magic, I would require some sort of backup against large hordes of enemies or when I was running low on energy.

The craftsmen and traders of the city were a figurative gold mine in my pursuits to not only learn crafting, tanning, and smithing, but also to train myself in the mysteries of the mind. Perhaps due to its isolation, similar to Carvahall, it was extremely difficult to find any or some competent magical users in Ceunon. The weak were for useless to me, while the strong I was wary to approach.

This however was a blessing in disguise, as I would not want some lackey of Galbatorix to detect my presence.

While I was often working in the forge with my father, creating cheap but reliable swords, repairing shields and horseshoes, I would use every opportunity to slip into the mind of unsuspecting passerby's and customers. Their thoughts, feelings, and memories were open books for me to read, and the busy streets were libraries of knowledge to plunder.

It's just free real estate.

I primarily focused on craftsmen and merchants, not only to learn their skills from their memories, but also to gain pieces of information about their travels and experiences. Many had visited quite a number of locations in their lives, exploring the entirety of Alagaësia. This type of knowledge would be invaluable in the future when I myself decide to leave my home.

After all, not everything can be learned in one place. Alagaësia has yet so much to show me.

The oldest of traders had often seen particularly incredible feats of magic in their youth, before the rise of Galbatorix and the fall of the riders. Feats that gave me valuable insight for my own spells and creations. One old wreck had seen how a rider with but a few words in the ancient tongue, caused the swords and clubs of a band of Urgals to melt and then boil them alive, whilst they were raiding a trader caravan.

An interesting spell I will be sure to make use of in the future.

The minds of blacksmiths allowed me to gain valuable skills that soon allowed me to quickly surpass my father in his craft. Not that I ever demonstrated the full extent of my skill in fear of discovery.

Butchers showed me how properly skin animals, how to dice their meat, and how to preserve it for longer periods of time without the use of magic or spells. Carpenters introduced me to the intricate focus required in their craft, as they carved wood in many different shapes and forms. Hunters were even more useful in teaching me how to track and skin different animals of the forest.

Unfortunately, while I was able to extract and delve into the memories and knowledge of countless individuals, the mind arts were limited in the aspect that they could not give me the practical experience said individuals had. While my theory behind the skills was supreme, my practical experience and hand-eye coordination were lacking.

Nothing that could not be fixed with some practice.

Heck, judging by the fact that the plot starts in approximately 87 years, I have all the time in the world.

And while I will most certainly not dedicate entire decades to hone my skills in craftsmanship, a few odd years practicing with both my hands and magic should suffice. An excellent opportunity to further improve my control and knowledge of the ancient language.

The magic of the mind was truly a wonder.

In fact, it could be singlehandedly considered the most necessary and important ability demonstrated by all competent magic users. To invade someones mind and successfully defend your own could be considered both the ultimate offence and defense during magical combat.

In my research of the cesspools of magic flow in the body, the mind was responsible for not only ensure the smooth running of magical energies in the body but was also the place where a magic-user first began to formulate a spell. Therefore, if you stop the mind, you stop the danger.

Have a dangerous mage that is about to blow you to smithereens?

Manage to enter his mind and you can not only stop him from uttering the spell and disrupt his internal magical flow but also sometimes, with enough strength, incapacitate by shutting him down faster than an old windows PC.

This was further confirmed by my knowledge of the books, where in multiple cases, Eragorn was unable to cast any spells, or cause damage to his opponent, simply because he could not focus due to a mental attack. No wonder Glaedr insisted he learn and develop his mental defenses. A strong mental attack can be the strongest ace any magician can have. If properly developed of course.

Yet another reason why Galbatorix is a broken character.

Add one dragon to support a dragon rider and you have a solid and extremely difficult mental wall that is incredibly difficult to penetrate. Manage to control and have the support of thousands of dragons more powerful than yourself and you have a practically unstoppable object and an unbreachable defense.

Not to mention, Galbatorix's already strong proficiency in the mental arts due to his perverse sense of pleasure in breaking people down. I admit it can be thrilling sometimes to immediately know all there is about a person, but certainly not to this extent.

There is no debating it. Galbatorix is just overpowered.

But for now, baby steps. Baby steps. Eventually, I will match him. Not now, not in a month, not in 60 years, but I will.

Never stagnate.

My increasing fortitude and proficiency in the mental arts was in part thanks to my mother, who would often relentlessly beat my mental walls and defenses to smithereens only for me to raise them stronger again. She did not enjoy it, did not truly see the point of it when I asked her, but a cute smile and some hugs can go a long way. If she began her attack, however, she was always determined to completely obliterate them, leaving me with headaches for hours on end.

Truly a wonderful woman.

I however soon reached an unexpected roadblock in my studies. A few months ago, I was practicing and trying to increase the speed at which plants and wood would grow at my command. As it turns out, the only limitation of my half-human, half-elf genetics was the slightly increased difficulty to control plants and trees. While it was not something that could not be eventually compensated with large amounts of effort, it was still extremely time consuming to reach the level of my mother, for example.

Suddenly, I heard said person approach behind me as I was training under the shade of my favorite oak tree.

"I am so proud of you, my son. You truly are growing to become a wonderful mage" she stated with glittering eyes.

My eyes widened slightly as I was somewhat stunned by her sudden declaration.

"There is yet much for me to learn mother. Many aspects of magic are completely unexplored. I do however have a wonderful teacher." I replied.

"Not anymore" she answered with some hints of sadness in her tone.

"You will not teach me anymore!? Was I that terrible of a student mother?". I questioned turning to look her in the eyes. Is she no longer willing to teach me? Did I mess up somewhere? Did I make a mistake?

"You misunderstand me Vidar. You take magic studies like a fish to the water. Your knowledge of the ancient language at your age is already startling. Not to mention your already strong and only growing magic capacity. I have never seen an elf except for perhaps a young dragon rider have such reserves at your age."

"Does that mean-"

"Yes Vidar. You have learnt most of what I have to teach you, at a truly frightening pace. Your dedication to your studies was admirable, and I can no longer find any flaws in your knowledge of the vocabulary of the ancient language. While I will continue to train you to develop your magical defenses, and ability to use nature, you are on your own now. Try not to get to big of a head or blow yourself up when testing new spells. That would truly be disappointing" she said with a kind smile on her face.

"I- Thank you mother. You taught me well and your lessons will not be forgotten. Does this mean that I will eventually need to find a new teacher if I want to learn more of the ancient language?" I answered with the most sincerity I could muster in my voice. Her help was truly crucial these past few years.

"Yes, that is correct. While the knowledge I gave you is most certainly sufficient for now, It is still lacking to that of the elven mages in Du Weldenvarden who spent centuries of their time researching and practicing magic. I suggest that you finish your learning and preparations and then continue on your own. I know you always wanted to explore the world.

And while your father may be disappointed, as he will have no one to carry on his blacksmith business, he understands that it is for the best. Having a half-elf in the public eye is already an extremely big risk with the imperial agents walking around. You would have to be careful in your travels, but it is much better if you do not stay in one place for long periods of time. We cannot keep you in our little cottage forever now, can we?" she stated as she scrutinized me with her sparkling golden eyes.

"No, you cannot. I like to think myself of a free spirit that wanders around learning new things wherever I go" I replied with my own eyes gleaming too.

"Now go, your father will be here soon, and you know how he is when he has nothing to fill his already large stomach" she bid, as she turned and began walking back to the cottage.

As I looked back at the setting orange sun over the farms and grass hills, I truly could not grasp what I did to deserve such caring parents at the start of my new life. Perhaps my sudden death in my old world was the direct cause of world peace? Or maybe, saved millions of lives? Who knows.

If you could ignore the looming shadow of future events, life was good.

Age 15

The bushes seemed to rustle in front of me, hiding the entrance to a dark hole at the base of an imposing cedar tree, deep in a forest behind my family's house. Small bones and skulls of smaller animals and deer were littered on the ground.

"Come on you big ugly brute. Show your ugly head so I can rid it of you forever" I loudly proclaimed as I approached the den.

First an angry growl and then a loud roar came out the dark hole as its occupant rushed out to meet me. A 3-meter tall, 300-kilogram black bear rushed to me on all four paws as it desperately tried to get rid of the annoyance disturbing its peaceful slumber.

You must be asking, why would anyone provoke this imposing and frankly, quite dangerous animal?

To train my senses and physical abilities.

I proceeded to swiftly put a blindfold over my eyes and dodge the bite of the bear, aiming to predict its movement merely through my strong elven hearing and the vibrations of wind in the air. While the bear was not the fastest or most elegant of opponents, it made up with its incredible brute force and stamina, allowing it too to continue attacking for prolonged periods of time. Making it a perfect training partner and testing dummy.

Thank you for your unwilling contribution. You will be remembered.

Having long stolen all the possible knowledge on sword fighting and some techniques from the garrison posted in the city, I focused on balancing out my physical abilities with my frankly somewhat ridiculous prowess in the magical arts. And while I managed to perfectly replicate and execute each swift turn and dodge with my sword after only a few months of practice, I wanted to have my body in excellent condition before I even attempted any body modifications.

To do so, I continued to train my strength, stamina, speed, and reflexes. While the first two can be improved by ever-increasing weights and exercises from my past life, the last could only be really trained in a dangerous situation.

Hence, my current situation of dodging a swipe from the bear's claws by doing a frontflip over its head.

I even created several different spells to help increase my martial prowess. Shamelessly borrowing an idea from our favorite physical training expert Might Guy, I developed a spell to simulate the feeling of weights all over my body. This proved to be quite the challenge, as my first attempts instead to increase my own gravity almost led me to an early death, as I failed to consider the effects on my internal organs. On my first attempt, I nearly blew up my heart and ruptured the blood vessels in my brain. Thankfully, I focused only the smallest amount of energy and this did not lead to any lasting consequences.

Eventually, instead of increasing the gravity of my own body, I covered myself in a layer of magic, similar to a ward. It's effect however was to cause resistance whenever I began to move my limbs. This could obviously be regulated, and the difficulty increased, as it proved to have a positive benefit of only a small drain on my magical energy reserves. Having this training spell practically all the time not only prompted my strength to grow to compensate for my poor movement but also led to small increases in my magical capacity, as it was constantly drained and refilled after rest.

Furthermore, I also formulated a nifty spell to accelerate the rate of my muscle growth. Muscles are of course simply a large collection of fibers bound to the bones with tendons and ligaments. Muscle growth in fact, is the result of said muscles getting damaged during workout, promptly fusing, and increasing in mass and size.

Thank you random youtube workout tutorials.

Hence, I worked and created an incantation that would, for set periods of time, increase the chance and rate of minuscule damage occurring to my muscle fibers. Applying it before every workout, this eventually resulted in my rapidly developing my physical body, as while my muscles got tired quicker, my baby fat was quickly used up for energy and only a stronger muscular exterior remained.

While I did not wish to develop the physique of a buff bodybuilder, which would only hamper my speed in battle, my worries proved to be unfounded. This was primarily because of my elven physiology, which seemed to naturally compress my muscles as they developed. And while I was not as thin as a normal elf, my half-human body was lean and durable. I knew that in the future, as I reached my peak strength and maturity, my physical power would only increase.

In order to not ignore both my magical and natural senses, after some months of practice, I was able to begin wearing a blindfold while fighting the wild animals in the forests near Ceunon. Sensing in terms of magic involved a similar concept to my mage sight, where instead of casting a spell to see visually, I would open my mind to all the little organisms around me, and try to look at my surroundings like a big picture. The more I practiced, the larger my radius of observation grew.

On the other hand, sensing sound with my elven ears alongside the vibrations of the air around me proved to be a much more difficult endeavor. To practice, I would have to trust my inborn instincts and hope for the best. With practice, however, everything can be improved.

I would frequently leave my parents for hunting trips similar to the one I was on now for several days, progressively aiming to find more and more dangerous foes to increase my physical ability and rudimentary combat experience.

Talking about dangerous foes, it seems that I irritated the bear to a yet unprecedented level. Constantly dodging whilst not even looking at your opponent can probably do that quite well. I had not even managed to break into a sweat after an hour of nonstop dodging. Welp, time to finish this breeze of a battle before the bear loses complete interest in me.

As the bear rushed towards me for one final time, a flash of silver caused it to stop right in its tracks. A few moments later, its head separated from its body as it slammed down to the ground, as my sword sheathed itself and returned to my belt. I could not but smirk slightly when removing my blindfold to take a look at the result.

One of my proudest achievements in the last year of training was the ability to develop and control my forged sword with only my magic, without once needing to use my hands. With this technique, similar to when I first lifted a small rock all those years ago, I telekinetically control my sword through a spell and later my mind. This would allow me to not only use another weapon such as my throwing knives, but also be able to pressure an opponent on two fronts.

Not to mention the fact that I look extremely cool while doing so.

While the spell necessary for this achievement required not only extreme focus of the mind, its cost in magical energy however was quite mediocre. This was mostly due to the simplicity of a levitation spell. Of course, the greater the distance between me and my sword, the greater the magical cost. This, however, could be trained and expanded upon in the future. Currently, I was able to directly control the movement of my sword in an 11-meter area around me.

Another limitation of my newly developed magical technique was the possibility for a strong magical user to potentially interfere and negate the spell I was utilizing. While this would be quite difficult without knowing the specifics of my incantation, a capable magic user would surely be able to slow the speed of my sword, or even potentially, stop it completely in its tracks. When fighting against non-magic users however, this technique would be devastating.

And while it took an incredibly long time and a prolonged period of testing on wild animals, in the last few months, I was finally able to master my direct mental control over one floating object, with the ability to multitask and remain completely aware of my surroundings.

If I is so wished, I would technically be able to also use the same incantation on my many throwing knives directly, which I kept hidden under my travelers' cloak. This however would require a much higher level of focus and would hamper my own physical speed and abilities with my current level of proficiency with the technique.

Once again, when the actual plot comes around, my mastery of this technique could potentially allow me to control multiple projectiles whilst retaining my full physical prowess, making me a deadly foe for entire garrisons of soldiers of the empire.

I quickly skinned the bear, removing its fur and claws, whilst leaving the meat to the other animals in the forest. I then put both the claws and the pelt into a small pouch on my back and muttered a few words in the ancient language to remove any blood on my clothes.

While I would be able to gain a decent amount of coin for the large pelt, not that I needed the money with my ability to extract small amounts of gold from the ground, the meat would be useless to me.

And while, my mother, as an elf, and dedicated vegetarian, heavily frowns upon the practice of killing living beings without the extreme necessity to do so, she reluctantly gave me permission to go out and hunt with the persuasion of my father.

Speaking about the extraction of gold, one of the main questions I had when I first considered the technique was why so little magicians or even elves used it? Is it not an opportunity to get filthy rich with minimum effort?

As it turns out, I must have overlooked the information in the novels for upon inquiry from my mother, this technique required large amounts of magical energy to find and bring up the mineral, and hence, was not suitable for many magic users with small or intermediate magical reserves.

I did however manage to find a workaround to this problem. As I remembered from the many hours spent watching the National Geographic channel in my past life, gold is often, more likely to be found washed up in the sediment near flowing water and rivers. Hence, locating and extracting the gold from a surface level and then condensing it from dust to solid via magic would require much smaller amounts of energy.

Maximum Effort! Heh.

Most importantly, Ceunon was a city located on the banks of a flowing waterway, providing me the perfect opportunity to exploit this loophole. I would, however, need to do so during the hours of dusk, in order to avoid prying eyes and witnesses. Soon, after a few nights of extraction and compression of gold dust, I had several solid cubes of gold the size of a glass cup stashed away in a small secure chest inside the oak next to my house.

In fact, said oak could be considered my temporary vault and storage area, as I made a hollow area inside of the tree to store my weapons, traveling clothes, some medicinal herbs and ointments, and valuables including either stolen or extracted precious metals. I had no need for books, or the scrolls located inside of my family's cabin, as I had already memorized their contents.

Adjusting my hooded black travelling cloak to cover my face and silver hair, I began quickly running back home, using the branches of the trees in the forest as leverage to give me an additional boost. Perfectly landing and jumping from branch to branch, I moved at a fast yet comfortable pace. When there were no longer any branches to land on, instead of falling back to the ground, I began to use the thick trunks of the trees as leverage.

Once again inspired by the concept of tree-walking in Naruto, I would use the ancient language to temporarily increase the adhesiveness of the soles of my feet. This adhesiveness would enable as soon as my feet made contact with the trunk, and release a half of a second after, so that I do not fall onto my face when jumping off.

While I was yet unable to find my balance when moving to ceilings and standing upside down, and neither was I able to replicate water-walking, these could interesting projects for further improvement in the future.

As I emerged from the trees, marking the end of the forest, I took a deep breath to enjoy the fresh evening smells of nature. Or at least, I tried, until the scent of smoke and fire entered my nose.

My blood went cold as from the direction of the cottage, my home, a large plume of dark smoke was rapidly rising into the air, like a dark premonition of danger.

"If someone hurt my family-" I stopped midway, trying to rid myself of such horrible thoughts as I fell into a full sprint and rushed home, hoping I was not too late.

Author Notes:

"I act on impulse and go with my instincts."- Gordon Ramsay/Me buffing my character

Once again, another chapter is finished.

Vidar is growing, but is that danger in the distance? I really do love cliffhangers.

Can anyone guess where I got the inspiration for Vidar's sword from?

Do tell if his progressions begins to seem unrealistic.

Comment, review, and criticize. Feedback is important.