Chapter 4: Chapter 4 - No Pain No Gain
A few weeks later.
Dolian stared at the calendar right beside him and noticed the weird messy letters and numbers written on it. Ignoring the weird calendar on the wall, he placed his focus on other parts of the room he found himself.
The room Dolian found himself in was a familiar room with a familiar white ceiling—his bedroom. Finding himself inside his crib, Dolian closed his eyes for a bit and vaguely imagine himself floating in the air.
With just a thought, he can feel his body turn weightless and he flew up into the air, defying the laws of gravity and hovering up from his crib. Removing the warm cozy blanket that wrapped around his body, he spun around in midair and transformed into his previous body's appearance, his appearance as Dolian Observa.
His body quickly grew in size, turning into a tall man around 180 cm tall, with a slim yet athletic frame. He wore a simple white shirt over a pair of black pants, with no shoes or socks to cover his feet. Then as he descended to the ground, he pressed his foot softly to the ground and could feel the soft ground being wrapped by his warm body.
Now standing on the white marble floor, he snapped his fingers and, as if he was a God, the whole room shattered and transformed into dust that scattered with the wind before he then found himself standing within a magnificent palace that seemed to belong to a giant.
The palace was ridiculously tall, with it being hundreds of meters tall. Strange orbs of light illuminated the entire palace like magic. Then as he took a single step, he seemed to ignore the concept of space and distance entirely and appeared right in front of a human-sized golden throne.
Walking up to the throne, Dolian sat on it without reserve and stared at the wide hallway ahead of him with a slight grin on his face.
"In just three weeks, my ability to lucid dream has already reached such a high skill level." Dolian leaned forward as he started to think about his current progress.
'I can already lucid dream on command, an ability that shouldn't be naturally attained even if one wanted to. This means that, even if I don't have a quirk, I still have an enhanced mind from the result of two mind-related quirks that came from my parents.'
'My father's quirk, Mind Tether, allows him to connect his mind to the mind of others. Using his quirk, he can go from mind reading, seeing other's emotions, and even hypnotizing others under certain conditions and through rigorous training.'
'On the other hand, my mother's quirk is named Psychologist, although she likes to call her quirk Mind Dragon. Her quirk basically grants her supernatural mastery over Psychology, giving her the capability to become a world-class actor (if she wanted to), have a keen insight into the minds and characters of others, and other useful abilities ranging from becoming psychologically invisible to inducing uncontrollable fear on others; it is kind of like a supernatural version of my own innate talents back on Earth that has been clearly enhanced already ever since I got reincarnated into this world.'
'Even though I haven't noticed it clearly back then, my own ability to "see" the minds of others and their character has undergone a qualitative change. I can even confidently say that if I trained hard enough with enough time, possibly years or decades, I can manipulate others to do my own bidding without them noticing.'
'Heh, even without quirks, I'm already kind of unique.' Dolian chuckled as his eyes turned more resolute, "If I'm already so gifted without a quirk, I wonder how ridiculous it would be if I gain the quirk of one of my parents, and perhaps even gain a brand new quirk from the combination of their two quirks."
"I can already see that if I do gain a quirk, it would inevitably be related to the mind. It's like fate itself arranged me to have a mind-related quirk after taking the role of a psychiatrist in my previous life."
Shaking his head in exasperation, Dolian stood up and walked down a flight of stairs, and then the palace around him promptly disappeared and turned into an endless white plane with a black sky that extended indefinitely into the void.
Ahead of him stood a strange, white humanoid figure. The strange figure had a muscular body that was sculpted for combat, and the way it stood gave the aura of an experienced fighter that has undergone numerous fights, possibly hundreds or thousands.
Entering the same stance as the white humanoid entity ahead of him, Dolian squinted his eyes as he grinned.
"Come!"
Not wasting a single second, both fighters rushed to the middle and flung their legs into the air.
With a loud thud, both of their shins kicked against one another, making Dolian feel a surge of pain. But he ignored it and swiftly responded by falling to the ground, turning his body, and sweeping his legs towards the white figure's legs in an attempt to break his balance and go for a quick killing blow that would end the fight in an instant.
Unfortunately for Dolian, his enemy was just as smart and jumped up to avoid the kick. the white figure quickly went for another kick to punish Dolian's failed attack. As if Dolian read his opponent's mind, he raised his leg that swept the floor to the air, spinning once more in a circle as the back of their legs clashed.
Retreating back using the kinetic force Dolian's kick brought, the white figure patted its painful leg and glanced at Dolian. Dolian did the same as he can already feel his leg throbbing with slight pain, but he held in the pain and took on a fighting stance once more.
After gaining the ability to lucid dream and remain dreaming even while feeling bouts of pain, Dolian realized the true value of lucid dreaming.
In the world of his mind, he has the ability to not just do whatever he wants, but he can even use it to actually learn and develop his skills!
He can watch the TV and see martial arts instructors of various martial arts teaching people how to have self-defense, using them as a basis and recreating those skills in his mental world. Through that, he can train in martial arts even as a baby in the real world!
Not only that, but his skills can constantly grow as his enemy is basically himself! The white figure he constantly clashed blows with has the same level of skill and nearly the same thought process as Dolian!
But that minor difference between their ability to think eventually gave him the tiny advantage that he needed to win, and with a fierce ruthless blow, his hand swooped in for the killing blow, grabbed the white figure by the throat, and slammed him down to the ground.
With a loud thud, Dolian watched as the white figure dissipate with the wind into thin white dust. Breathing roughly, Dolian sat on the plain white ground and snapped his fingers, causing all of his injuries and exhaustion to disappear.
He then closed his eyes and recalled the entirety of the fight, noticing all of his mistakes, and creating ways to solve them.
Finally, after all of that, he opened his eyes, not in his dream, but in the real world. Greeting the same white ceiling once more, Dolian yawned with a high-pitched voice, capturing the notice of his mother who was sitting on the chair right beside his crib.
"Good morning!" Hope greeted Dolian with a gentle smile and approached Dolian.
Staring at her child, she softly sighed inside her mind as she couldn't help but think, 'My baby boy is growing so fast.'
'He's only a month old and he's already so big!' Hope lamented inside her mind and grabbed Dolian from the crib.
But as she was about to walk to her chair and play with her boy, she heard Dolian say with strange sounds, "Kabuwa!"
Dolian pointed at the ground while closing and opening his fingers like a child. With Hope's ability as a professional psychologist and the enhancements given to her by her quirk, she easily knew what Dolian wanted to do.
"You want to try crawling again?" Hope asked with a smile and slowly crouched down to the ground.
"Hemm!" Dolian nodded his head, a response that he decided was safe enough to use after witnessing his parents nod enough times for a genius child, the character he depicted himself as, to know a nod's general meaning.
'I'm glad that I decided to show my intelligence because I would have been more limited than I already am. At least I get to do stuff that a one-month-old baby isn't supposed to do. Heh, I'm not a normal month-old baby in the first place, I'm a super baby!'
Granting his wish, Hope carefully placed Dolian on the ground who then assumed his balance through trial and error before finally successfully reaching a crawling position. After that, Dolian struggled to move his arms and legs and moved from one inch to another, slowly but surely.
Watching her baby boy struggle and show determination to learn how to crawl made Hope emotional. While she didn't want to see Dolian struggle like this, she knew that this was important for a child's development and inwardly cheered him on.
Crawl by crawl, failure after failure, Dolian steadily picked himself up after every misstep until finally reaching a full-body mirror placed at the opposite end of his room.
There, Dolian saw a baby boy with a strangely large body unlike what his age implies. If one didn't know, they might think that he's already 8 months old already. He then noticed his patch of black hair and black eyes, a pair of black eyes that he held negative feelings for.
'If I had golden eyes, then maybe that would increase my chances of inheriting a quirk. Sigh, that's something that I couldn't control. I should instead focus more on what I could do and not on what I am unable to do or control.'
Seeing her son stare blankly at the mirror with furrowed brows, she chuckled softly and picked him up from the ground, "What are you staring at the mirror so intensely for?"
Resting Dolian's head on her breast, she patted him softly to soothe his slightly anxious heart. Even if Dolian was a mentally strong person who experienced a lot of struggles in his two lives already, he was still scared of the fact that he might not have any quirk when he grows up.
With no quirk, he might very well die an uncontrollable death in the near future as a powerless, normal, human being.
He was already deeply traumatized by his death to that truck, the truck that represented his inability to control his own destiny.
Just as he closed his eyes and let his furrowed brows relax, he heard his stomach grumble, a grumble that he was already used to.
'Sigh, being born with genetic advantages has its own disadvantages, one of which is that I need to sleep a lot…' Dolian smiled wryly in his mind as he saw his mother open up her breast.
'And I need to eat a lot.'
Without any ounce of shame inside his mind, he planted his mouth on his mother's breast and drank some milk. He drank more and more until he felt full. Only a fool wouldn't take every advantage that they could get.
'If drinking my mother's milk means I'll have a stronger body, I'll throw away my pride without any hesitation!' Dolian burped and stared into his mother's eyes.
"Bwuh!" Dolian opened and closed his hands once again like usual, but this time, he added an extra motion of swiping his finger from left to right.
"You want to read with mama?" Hope asked with a proud smile as Dolian nodded his head.
"Sigh, you're such a bookworm." Hope chuckled faintly, "Now I'm being forced to read books with you around rather than laze around."
Shaking her head at this unexpected development from having a child, she walked down to their living room, grabbed an unfinished book that Dolian seemed to have a particular interest in, sat down on their sofa, and opened it.
Flipping it to the page they have previously stopped at, Dolian fell silent and stared at the book with intense focus, but still showed to his mother that he wasn't understanding what he was reading and was trying to know what the strange runic symbols on the paper meant.
'Once he knows how to read, I can already see his room being cluttered with all kinds of books.' Hope shook her head with a smile, imagining her baby boy in the future as a young teen wearing cute glasses and a scholar's robe.
As she was thinking about Dolian's future, Dolian was instead reading the book while also feeling helpless inside.
'I can't wait for the day I become old enough to have more freedom. For now, I'll just work as hard as I can every single day and not waste my time. If I want to survive in this world where gods walk among humans, I must not waste my precious time, especially if I don't have a quirk.'
As he read the book with vigor, slept peacefully while training with all his might inside his lucid dreams, drank milk to develop his immature body, and did as best as he could to create a public persona that was most beneficial to him, a few years passed.
'Tomorrow is already my 4th birthday!'
AN: This chapter has 2313 words.
Hehehe, enjoy this time where he's still relatively human because he's gonna Braun soon.
Remember to PS, comment, and save this novel to your library to not miss a chapter. If you want to, you can also drop a review so I can grow as a writer.
(March 12, 2023 - 472nd day of writing)
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