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nA couple of hours later, the typical alarm clock named Cinyah roused the boys from their land of slumber. Unfortunately, while Brance had seemingly gotten a good night’s rest after the events several hours prior, the dark bags under Cynrik’s eyes signified that he didn’t.

nInstead of jumping out of bed like he regularly did, still slumped in the depression caused by his bankruptcy in the RWT, Cynrik just pulled his blanket over his head and faced the wall.

nTaking notice of his older brother’s unusual act, Brance couldn’t help but be slightly curious. But Cinyah’s abrupt appearance in their room for good morning kisses, he couldn’t be bothered with his brother’s mood and greeted his mother with a smile.

nScooping up her youngest, Cinyah spun him around while planting kisses on his forehead and cheeks. “Good morning, my baby. Did you sleep well?” she cheerfully asked before placing him back on his bed.

n“Mhm, I had a good dream too, Mommy,” hearing Brance’s loving greeting made Cinyah’s smile nearly reach her eyes. “I’m glad; go wash your face and head to the table before breakfast gets cold while I deal with this grumpy boy,” diverting her attention from Brance, her line of sight fell on the bundle of blankets piled against the wall.

n“Yes’m” as much as Brance wanted to witness what was about to happen, he felt it was too troublesome and thus ran off to the bathroom to wash his face.

n“Now, now, my little Cyn, what’s wrong? You’re normally so chipper in the morning,” Cinyah didn’t pull the blanket off her oldest child and instead opted to sit on the bed beside the ball of blankets, causing several grumbles to emerge from the blanket pile.

nGiving a slight giggle at this, she placed her palm approximately where Cynriks head should be. “I’m sorry, darling, I don’t speak grumpy; you’ll need to use your big boy words.”

nKnowing full well he was worrying her, Cynrik decided to pull one of his multiple stored answerless questions that had been bouncing around his noggin as of late. This one, in particular, he wasn’t able to get any information about due to his lack of clearance online. While anyone could access the internet with their Watcets, both Cynrik and Brance had unbreakable parental controls that blocked them from getting any solid answers online.

nPeaking his head out from the blanket shielding his body, he casually dropped his question onto Cinyah. “Mom, why haven’t I gotten any skills related to my Fire yet,” hearing this, Cinyah’s doting expression quickly changed to a curious one.

n“Well, my darling boy, that’s because you haven’t raised your Proficiency high enough yet. Once you reach a certain percentage, you’ll naturally unlock these skills,” her answer only made Cynrik come up with several questions and seeing her child becoming confused and disheartened, she delved further.

n“Let’s put it like this,” Cinyah brought up her hand, and a small ball of fire burst to life and danced in her palm. “Unlike Skills, Affinity relies heavily on how well you handle it; this is what we call Proficiency.”

n“How much you use your Affinity and how well you use it will slowly increase this special Stat. If you want to get more skills, you have to raise your proficiency stat. For example, like Mommy is showing you, the first thing someone can do with their Fire Affinity is a simple and small fireball.”

nCinyah slowly began injecting more mana into the flame, causing it to grow at a visible rate until it was the size of a basketball.

n“As your Proficiency number gets bigger, so does your control over your element, until soon you can do things like this,” shooting Cynrik a gentile smile, she closed her hand on the medium-sized fireball, and it straightened out, taking the form of a sword.

nSeeing the Fire sword made Cynrik’s mouth drop open. In truth, he hadn’t even noticed there was a Proficiency stat, the reason being; it was hidden, similar to a collapsed folder on a computer file. So if he wanted to view this number, he would have to request Tobs to show it to him.

n“Mommy’s Proficiency is at 36 % of Tier 3; it was at 25% of Tier 2 that I realized I could form my flames into a small dagger. Once I achieved Tier 3 only then, was I able to make a sword,” with a sigh, she waved away the fire sword and brought her hand to her chin.

n“At your age, this isn’t something you should be thinking about until you are in middle school, so I overlooked teaching it to you.”

nCarefully removing the blanket Cynrik was hiding under, she tapped her lap a couple of times, signaling him to sit in her lap, to which he responded by doing just that.

nWrapping her arms around her young son, she planted a kiss on top of his head. “I forgot how fast you grow, my little Cyn,” they sat like that for a short while so Cinyah could collect her thoughts before she continued.

n“When your Proficiency and Tier with your Affinity goes up, you will notice that you can control your flames to do what you want better. I’ve seen High-Level Reavers who can literally create Seas of Fire that followed their word and others who can create all kinds of weapons and objects made out of flames. They can only do this because they’ve raised their Proficiency and Tier to a very high level.”

n“You’ll come to learn more about it once you get to middle school; for now, just keep making fireballs, and you’ll slowly raise your numbers until you can make a sword just like Mommy,” doing her best to encourage Cynrik, she was lightly patting his head as she spoke.

n“Don’t be in a hurry to grow up, my darling son,” giving him a tight and warm, loving hug, she let him go to the bathroom to wash his face.

nWatching Cynrik’s back as he briskly ran off to the bathroom, she couldn’t help but be worried about how quickly he was growing up. The only thing she could do was be there for him and hope he would rely on her and Rikard, as he just had. Even though he asked questions that were way above his age, she didn’t put much thought into it since he had always been a bit too smart. She only wanted the best for him and would do her best to give both him and Brance a loving environment to grow up in. One that she never had growing up since she was raised from a young age to fight. She wanted her children to have a good childhood where they could just be kids and not worry about anything.

nBut whenever she watched her boys train, she would get flashbacks to her brutal childhood. Making these kinds of parallel’s scared the hell out of her, but the only thing she could do was accept that her boys would be thrown into the world of adults a lot sooner than she was happy with.

nShe had long ago sworn that she would do anything and everything to protect these two boys. No matter what hardships occurred, she would be there for them to fall back to; even if they were fighting way above their weight class, she would be right there to pick them up. In her mind, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t as strong now as she had once been; she would still step in if it were needed.

nGiving birth to not one but two children had taken a significant toll on her. This was the curse the world gave women. To be a mother, they would have to sacrifice their own power to help their babies grow. This was shown in the simple XP gain Cynrik and Brance had gotten from drinking their mother’s milk.

nWhat neither Cynrik nor Brance knew was just how costly this was. The cost for them receiving their 10 XP daily for several years was steep. She would never tell them that each meal she fed them had cost her a full 1k Essence; thus, her level and stats had dropped significantly over the years.

nWhen she gave birth, she was nearing level 50, but now, after giving her children nearly 3 Million Essence worth of her XP, she was sitting in the low 30s. However, Cinyah wasn’t bothered by this loss. The one thing she had always wanted was to be a Mother. Years of pain and training may have been wiped away with the birth of her children, but to her, this cost meant nothing; she was finally happy with her life. She had two dear children and a husband who would do anything for her even though he was a bit of a meathead.

nAgainst all odds and past transgressions, she had finally gotten the happiness she always wanted and would fight to keep it to the bitter end if she had to.

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