{
The auto keyword in this instance allows a developer to initialise a variable without explicitly stating the type of magical energy stored inside during the initialisation.
This allows the user to create a single skill that could perform different behaviours based on the type of magical energies provided to it. The keyword auto has quite a few other roles based on how the developer uses it.
}
Peter was studying a documentation file inside his IDE skill after breakfast when he heard his name being called.
Closing the skill projection, he pushed himself up from his chair.
"Peter! Peter!"
He sighed, dragging the chair to the window. Climbing on top of it, he unlatched the lock and leaned forward, sticking his head outside.
Below, a bunch of children stood waiting.
"I heard you the first time. Stop screaming. I'm coming."
"Okay!!!"
Peter leaned back and carefully closed the window. Last time he forgot, and the whole study room was covered in dust.
‘Mother wasn’t pleased…’
He had to clean every nook and cranny himself while she watched.
After putting the chair back where it belonged, Peter made his way to the stairs. Gripping the railing tightly, he climbed down one step at a time. The stairs were still a challenge for a four-year-old.
In the kitchen, Mariah was busy cooking. Rose had stopped coming a few months ago. Recently, Peter overheard Mom and Dad mentioning that her father was looking for a man to marry her.
‘Should I go check up on her today?’
"Are you going to play?" Mariah enquired, her lips twitching in amusement.
"Yes," Peter meekly nodded his head, puppy eyes fully on.
"You can," she nodded. Peter could already predict the but coming from a mile away.
"But I better not hear any more complaints. Is that clear, dear?" And there it was.
"Of course!" Peter bolted for the house entrance before she could think of anything else.
One week of being grounded was plenty enough. Nobody needed nasty repeats of what killjoy looked like.
The air outside the door was dry and hot, with the sun shining even brighter than before.
"You're late," said the tiny boy leading the group, his face scrunched into a scowl.
"Heroes always make late entrances," Peter teased. He never realised how entertaining kid banter could be, at least not before his death.
Hmph.
"And who made you the hero?" the girl on the boy’s left retorted. She was the oldest among them, already ten.
Their group was the second most notorious child gang in Shimon Village. Then again, there were only two.
Theirs consisted of all the tiny ones, too small to be included in the older group.
‘Who cares about them anyway? They're just jealous that the villagers fear us more after all the pranks we've pulled.’
"Monica, darling, don't be like that," Peter teased, laughing inside as he walked towards the group.
The little gang had four members: three boys and one girl. Monica was the oldest, while Peter and Charles were the youngest. It hadn’t taken Peter long to figure out that Charles saw him as a rival. And like most kids their age, Charles had a habit of declaring that he’d marry his sister one day.
Monica, of course, was mortified when Peter started using that against her.
Like now.
The moment Monica scowled at Peter’s teasing, he took off running, throwing his head back in laughter, sprinting through the village. The rest of the group quickly followed, caught between chasing and cheering.
"Just you wait, you little midget! Once I catch you-" Monica roared, her nose red, either from anger or sheer embarrassment.
"Catch him!" Monica ordered, sprinting after him.
The two boys nodded, quickly splitting up to surround Peter.
In the end, he was caught.
"Okay-… okay! Sto-…stop! No more tickling!" Peter pleaded, laughing breathlessly. He lay sprawled on the grass, half in Monica’s arms, while the others pinned his limbs to keep him still.
Huff… huff…
He lay there, gasping for breath after Monica finally stopped.
‘Damn her and her running skill.’
"What should we do now?" David asked, more than willing to let others decide.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Despite being the son of a blacksmith, he was surprisingly meek. At seven years old, with black hair and black eyes, he blended in with the rest of the group.
Like everyone else, he wore a simple shirt and pants, which were once white but now permanently stained from years of dust and wear. They were washed often, but without modern detergent, the original colour had long been lost.
‘I’m probably the only one who wears new clothes. The others all get hand-me-downs. Maybe that’s why kids here wear gender-neutral clothing.’
"Let's go see Rose," Peter suggested, glancing around at the group.
They agreed almost instantly. A few months ago, Peter had dumped a bucket full of cow dung on an older kid who mocked them. The fool still hadn't figured out who had balanced the bucket on top of a half-open door while he was inside.
And so, they marched along the familiar path leading to the village, the same one Peter took every time he visited. Every so often, they waved at a few adults working in the fields.
The village was small enough that not much stayed hidden for long, which had earned them a certain notoriety for all the chaos they caused.
Peter had his suspicions about why they were tolerated. Part of it was because most of the group were the children of important people in the village. A farmer wouldn't want to anger the blacksmith who repaired his tools just because the blacksmith’s kid decided to ride his cow like a horse.
‘Much less the only child of the garrison commander and the village’s sole accountant besides the village head.’ Peter never realised in his past life that accountants could be such important people in a medieval society.
Another reason was that they were all still young, and Peter made sure they never crossed a certain threshold.
“Look, the Minions brought their devil master with them,” the old guard grumbled, picking his nose.
Peter smirked. “Is it just me, or does anyone else smell something awful?”
The guard growled.
“What are you trying to imply, brat?” He barked, showing his yellow teeth as he leaned forward.
“That you should bathe more often, old man. It’s getting harder to tolerate as the days pass.” Peter teased, moving his face away.
“Mind your own business,” the guard snapped, and the children burst into laughter.
Peter stepped forward. “Then stand aside. We need to pass.”
As they crossed paths, both muttered complaints under their breath.
“Little piglet.”
“Smelly old man.”
 
***
David asked, "Why are we visiting Rose?" once they passed the church.
“I heard she’s getting married. I want to know to whom,” Peter replied, glancing around the street.
At this hour, the village was mostly empty as most people had already left for their farming fields.
Peter did, however, spot Tina, Aunt Emilia’s tamed creature, a cat with fire affinity. He silently prayed for the unfortunate mouse she had her sights on, which would soon be roasted alive before being eaten.
Tina noticed them too, but was more interested in her hunt than playing with the children.
“Mhm, Mum told me that Uncle John took her to visit the nearby village in the south,” Monica informed with a frown, pulling twigs from her long hair.
‘I wonder what happened to that crush of hers…’ Peter wondered, curious.
“So, she’s leaving the village forever?” David asked, looking visibly disappointed.
‘Aww…’ Peter also didn’t want her to be gone. She was his first friend. One-sided, but still.
“Probably.” Monica shrugged, clearly unbothered.
“What do we do then? We can’t visit her if she’s not here.” Charles turned to Peter for his opinion.
“Well, we can play something. What do you all think?” Peter suggested. He wasn’t against having some fun; he needed something to ease his anxiety.
Next month, Charles and Peter would be turning five. Birthdays weren’t a big deal in this world, but the fifth one was important. Children gained access to their status window and discovered any inherent skills once they turned five.
Both Charles and Peter were worried about it, though for different reasons.
Peter tried to be an optimist, but he had a lot of secrets. He was a reincarnated person, and so far, no one knew.
‘I’d like to keep it that way.’ By using his skill from an early age, Peter had been actively increasing his mana capacity.
Even his skill itself, after years of diligently studying it, was far more impressive than he had initially thought. IDE was his ticket to greatness, an overpowered cheat for sure.
He silently thanked whoever had bestowed it upon him.
‘I’m afraid the powers that be wouldn’t take kindly to an unknown kid growing stronger than them.’ He was paranoid. To avoid being discovered, he had spent years working on a grand project using his IDE, to ensure his potential didn’t come to bite him in the ass the moment his status was revealed.
‘This might not be a Souls game… but better to be prepared than caught off guard.’ Peter thought, trying to be optimistic but failing. Only time would tell if his efforts had paid off.
“Let’s play The Princess and Her Knight then,” David declared, deciding for all of them.
“Okay.” Peter nodded before flashing Charles a mischievous grin. “You can be the princess this time instead of your sister, if you want.”
Peter bolted in a random direction, laughing as Charles chased after him.
….
IDE was an amazing skill due to what one could accomplish using it, if one knew how to use it. For someone without Peter's memories, it would be practically useless.
It allowed him to study, write, and edit skills within the system.
Over the years, Peter had been researching the system’s built-in skill libraries using the IDE. To him, The System appeared like an enormous, intricate piece of software. A vast and complex program that he would probably never fully comprehend, but he didn’t need to.
He wasn’t particularly interested in dissecting its entire source code. What mattered was its skill library, a dedicated repository containing every skill that had ever existed. With IDE, he could analyse these skills as lines of code, breaking them down in ways no one else could.
Of course, modifying the system’s core source code was beyond his reach, and even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t risk making a change that could disrupt the system for every human connected to it.
But he could create personal Class blueprints, customising skills to his liking.
Skills were usually rigid. A fireball, for example, consumed a fixed amount of mana, had a predetermined shape, size, and speed, all unchangeable under normal circumstances.
With IDE, though, Peter was starting to wonder… what if they didn’t have to be?
Due to this, people preferred skills like Fire Manipulation over a simple Fireball. While Fireball was easy to use as it was automated to function as intended, Fire Manipulation offered more flexibility, allowing for creativity and adaptability in combat.
During his studies, Peter discovered an interesting perk of the system: it protected users from certain detection skills unless they were directly targeted.
That was probably the reason no one had come to murder him yet. If the world were truly as brutal as he feared, those in power sought to eliminate anyone with too much potential.
He hoped that wasn’t the case.
Anyhow, he had been working on duplicating a personal version of a rare skill. If successful, it would let him hide any abnormalities in his status screen.
Such a skill was extremely rare and not something one could easily acquire. Sure, weaker versions existed for those with the right means, but not this one.
If Peter’s assumption was correct, skills like this couldn’t simply be learned.
They could only be: Inherited, meaning granted at birth, if one was lucky or Acquired from a skill scroll, a rare item found in dungeons under normal circumstances.
And since Peter hadn’t been born with it and had no access to skill scrolls, his only option was to recreate it himself, before his status was revealed for the world to see.
He had a massive advantage when it came to skills.
For most people, acquiring a skill required dedication and practice. A swordsman, for example, had to train diligently before unlocking Swordsmanship as a skill, unlike Peter. He didn’t have to.
He could simply copy an existing skill and create his personalised version of it.
‘Ugh… I need to stop talking to myself like this,’ Peter thought, picking up a sweet cookie from the plate and taking a large bite.
‘So tasty… I need to acquire the cooking skill at some point.’ It was one of those skills that Peter didn’t care enough to personalise.