At nighttime, Acaulii village is commonly filled with faint lights, and the roads are usually quiet as everyone has retired home for the day.
It's been a month since the child Ewan started to walk and talk. He was taken to the village chief's house by Old Man Basse. The village chief, who was initially shocked by the strangeness of the child, later became quite fond of him and was even indirectly made a babysitter.
Inside Old Man Basse's compound that night, Shandha was sitting with a bowl filled with the peels and piths of oranges. Clearly, they just finished eating a bunch of oranges after dinner.
"Goodnight, Grandpa," Shandha said as she stood up and headed to trash away the orange peels and other wastes before going to bed.
"Aiyaaaa, let's get you inside."
Old Man Basse carried the already little Ewan, who had already slumped and fallen asleep on his chair after basically gouging himself to sleep with food, inside to lie on the bed before going to sleep.
Ewan saw himself in a misty room. The place looked familiar to him because this was where he met the man last time, who told him his name.
"That person is coming again. Why is Grandpa not here? I wanted to show him the person."
Ewan was muttering before he tried to move his body, only to find out that he couldn't.
"Don't stress yourself; you can't move around here. We are currently inside your mindspace. Mindspace is the spiritual part of you; you won't exactly understand much about it. For now, you shouldn't even have been able to see this space or talk more of moving around here. You might see me as a person, but in my eyes you're just a cloud of smoke. The reason you're able to come here now is because I pulled you into a legacy memory I created. I created it so that I can tell you your name and teach you the fundamentals you need in your training, nothing more, nothing less."
The man opposite him reiterated indifferently.
"Who are you?"
"My Grandpa said to ask who you are."
Ewan's tiny voice sounded.
"I am your Father," the man said slowly.
"Then where are you?"
"Why did you leave at the stream where grandpa found me?"
Ewan didn't stop asking.
"You were in a stream?"
"No wonder I felt like you were constantly in danger."
The man looked at him with a hint of confusion in his eyes.
"Child, I can't tell you about this," he said to Ewan.
"Ewan, listen carefully to what I'm going to teach you." he quickly changed the topic again.
"Mana exists everywhere, in different states, forms, and even levels. Everything is mana." The lecture started.
"The states mana exists include the following: liquid state, solid state, gaseous state, elemental state, soul state, and spiritual state. Of course there's also a chaotic state, but you don't need to know that now."
"As for the forms of mana, well, that one is pretty interesting. mana can take myriad forms, such as healing mana, destructive mana, and so on.
There are far too many forms of mana, and I don't need to explain them all to you. You have to go and experience everything by yourself."
Little Ewan nodded his head as he listened to the man who was talking about mana. Of course, there wasn't really any head for him to nod.
"Next is mana levels. It is easy to understand this. When things exist, they don't just exist; they usually go through some process of change called growth or decline. As mana grows, it evolves. Those evolutions can happen in different ways, and one of the many ways it does is by training it. By constantly breaking and repairing it, it'll grow as time goes on."
"An example of such a situation is the fire and paper which comes from wood. Fire is an element that can destroy paper; that's a wood element. However, in a small World, fire will burn at the level of that world's fire law. I will teach you about laws later, although you probably won't need them now. However, if you take a paper from a higher-level world, the fire from the small world would not be able to burn it. This also means that fire from a higher-level world can burn fire from a lower-level world. I don't exactly expect you to understand all of these now, but listen carefully."
The man looked at the cloud of smoke in front of him in silence for a minute before he continued.
"Living things are a combination of manas from different forms, states, elements, and levels. Even non-living things can also be a combination of manas. But today we're only talking about living things, humans to be precise."
"Humans go through plenty of stages of training as they try to evolve to higher beings, or manas."
Little Ewan, who was listening quietly this whole time, looked up and tried to ask a question.
"So can I call people manas?" Ewan interrupted.
[....]
Ski looked at his son speechlessly for a while before rubbing his temples.
"Would you like to be called mana?"
Ewan frowned a little and said
"If anyone calls me mana, I'll give them a knock. Hehehe hehe."
The little man was very pleased with himself.
'Maldie, you weren't wrong after all. He turned out just like you,' Ski muttered under his breath.
"Why are you knocking people, young man? Who taught you to knock people?"
He couldn't help but ask the little guy.
"My elder sister knocked my head when I did something wrong. It hurt my head, so I decided to do it to anyone who does something wrong," little Ewan replied.
Ski kept looking at him for some time before he snapped out of it and said
"Just don't knock your elders."
"Why?"
"Just don't do it."
Ewan looked confused. But Ski continued the lecture already.
"Trainers are divided into Foundational Walindalu (Wâlindâlu), also known as World Beings: these are people like you who are very weak and ordinary. Any random thing could kill you anywhere, anytime, and you won't even realise why you died. Of course that is only for the weakest class of you; When you train and grow, you'll become stronger and eventually stand at the top of your World. But that is just for your World. To the whole Chaos Verse, you're just a joke. Secondly, Universal Walindalu; they don't exactly have an alias, because they don't need it. They're the real experts who can do things that will be difficult for your mind to conceive. Your father here is also a Universal Walindalu. And finally, there's the fabled Cosmic Walindalu, also known as Eternal Beings: These are people who are fit to be called Gods. Nobody really knows if they exist or not, as everything about them seems ethereal and mythical even to the ears of the Universal Walindalus. Don't mention this to people."
"From what you were saying, I figure you likely fell into a small world. And you were probably separated from your brother, too."
"Brother?"
"I have a brother?"
"Where is he?"
"What is his name?"
Ewan quickly caught on to that. And didn't stop asking.
"Yes, you have a twin brother."
Vasuan Ski nodded slightly.
"What is his name?"
"Where is he?"
Ski thought for a while and told him that he didn't know either.
"I don't even know where you are."
But that is good. If I don't know, there's no way those guys can find you two.
They probably even think that it's just one.
I can imagine the look on their faces when two of you pull up in front of them, hehehe.
Ski was still thinking when little Ewan impatiently called out again.
"Hey, Boring Man!"
Ski looked up again and frowned.
"I am your Father, ok?"
"I know, it's just that you're boring," little Ewan replied.
Ski looked at him oddly. He couldn't help but ask again.
"Do you even know the meaning of boring?"
"Elder Sis said that it's people who don't like doing exciting things."
[.....]
Ski looked at him speechlessly again.
"Do you even know what you're talking about?"
"What do you think is the meaning of exciting?"
Ewan rubbed his tiny palms together, licked his lips, and confidently said
"Knocking people."
[...]
Ski totally looked defeated at that moment.
"Maldie ah Maldie, you made a photocopy, a complete photocopy," he said absentmindedly.
"Who have you knocked?" he turned again and asked Ewan.
"Nobody ...yet."
Ewan replied, a little depressed.
"My Grandpa doesn't allow me outside. Except for the time he took me to the Village Chief's house, I have only sneaked out once with my sister, but we didn't go far before Grandpa caught us."
"But Grandpa promised to allow me to go outside anytime I want once I've reached a year old."
'It looks like he was adopted by an old man,' Ski thought as he looked at him gently.
"Let's continue the lesson..."