Ten Thousand Years (I)

I think my internal monologue is taking too long. I have a trip planned, so I'd better summarize the next ten thousand years as best I can. Later I will try to remember some other details if necessary.

As anyone could imagine, the first years after the advent of the goddess were chaotic. Power plants and generators, everything that created "artificial" electricity, stopped working. And the fossil fuels disappeared, leaving only what was left in the gasoline tanks of the vehicles.

I want to omit the details of what happened in the shelter, but I must say that starving to death is not pleasant. Fortunately, I found out that my Gift [Immortality] didn't need magic to activate. But, unfortunately, one suffers all the pain of dying before being revived as if nothing had happened.

My survival abilities were just as terrible as my magic capabilities, so my list of "experiences which I can't recommend" kept growing.

If there is anything salvageable from what happened at the shelter, it is the artifacts left behind by people who, unlike me, were able to pass on to a better life. Among the artifacts was one to which I owe having survived the following years without losing my sanity.

[Morpheus's Pillow]

{Rank: C}

{Minimum Magic Required: 1}

This artifact had a minimum magic requirement, "MMR," that even I could meet and allowed me to sleep until my magic ran out. Each "Magic Unit," or "MU," as I call it, allowed me to sleep for a week. That means I could sleep for up to ten weeks at a time without suffering from hunger or any other need.

No words can describe how valuable that was in times when everything was scarce. Of course, I also had to recover my magic after each use. Usually, one day of starvation was enough.

But while the pillow did an excellent job for me initially, once small farming communities had formed, I wanted to join them. I had two important reasons for this.

The first was that when I was hungry and thirsty (in between the periods of using the artifact), the wear on my body was accumulating. Each time my body couldn't support it anymore [Immortality] returned my physical state to a perfect condition, of course, in the only way it could.

You would think that slowly starving to death would be the worst way to die, but that would be wrong.

The second and more important reason for joining a community was that the damn goddess didn't just strip the world of technology. She also introduced magical beings, the kind you can find inhabiting fantasy worlds. Of course, the monsters could not be missing. And waking up to be the dinner of one is high on my no-recommended list.

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Joining different farming communities, I realized that while my hair and eye color was unusual, I was not alone. In the new world, many people had changed their appearance according to their Gifts. So there was everything, purple hair, pink eyes, etc. The most curious thing was that the children could inherit these physical traits, but not necessarily the Gift.

Of course, I mean the Gift that consists of a skill, like my [Immortality]. Artifacts like [Morpheus' Pillow] do not change the wearer's appearance at all and can be inherited after the owner dies.

Once the owner dies, he loses something I call "the connection" between him and the artifact. As long as whoever has "the connection" is alive, only the owner and whoever he allows can use the item in question.

But I'm digressing again.

After almost fifty years, humanity had already partly adapted to the changes. Of the "original humans," I was already one of the oldest, and many Gifts, be they skills or artifacts, had begun to be lost over time.

In their replacement, the humans, with the help of the new and less aggressive magical races: elves, dwarves, etc., were beginning to make new magical items and magic of their own. Although, as one might expect, the new "magic items" and "spells" were nowhere near in power to that of the original Gifts.

The latter was because, while the elves had an exceptional magical affinity, and as expected, the dwarves turned out to be master artificers. They could not use or understand the Gifts.

The worst was that the new generations of humans were progressively losing the [Appraisal] skill. So manipulating or creating something similar to the Gifts became more difficult with each new generation.

For my part, it was the opposite. The more years passed, the more my magic capability increased. Of course, this was not an attribute unique to me but to all humans with some degree of affinity for magic. Perhaps that is why the powerful magicians were mostly old in ancient legends and tales.

But since I didn't age, I'd make some excuse to get away from one farming community and join another every couple of years. The important thing was not to talk too much to anyone.

Why would I want to hide my immortality? Some would ask. Well, as an example, I would ask them to imagine a time of famine and suffering, where they would have to watch their children starve to death in front of their eyes... But it turns out that in the community, there is a source of meat that regenerates indefinitely. I don't have to go into details, right?

Of course, that's a more extreme case, but I had many other reasons. One of the most relevant was that I wanted to avoid attracting the attention of the goddess. What would happen if some people start to praise me like a god and the goddess thinks I'm competing with her?

In fact, that question is a crucial topic in my future, but it is from the present time, and in my monologue, I want to concentrate on ordering my memories of the past.

So, as I said, the years passed, and there came a time when my magic units "MU" reached two hundred, which was also the average magic capability of a human with an "affinity for magic," that is, a human who could use magic.

To be more specific, my MU increased by four every year, and it had already been almost forty-eight years since Ephereia took over our world.

I should clarify that the magic capability refers to the number of magical units one can accumulate "MU." And "Affinity" refers to being able to utilize that magic in the first place (and to what extent). The goddess gave all the "original humans" the affinity needed to use magic perfectly, but she didn't touch the capability.

I digressed, as always. My point with all of that was that I had finally reached the minimum amount of magic to use the artifact [Infinity Tower]!