Mystical Journey - Youth 4

Soon, winter came and a snowstorm engulfed the entire Grano town, turning it snow white. A thick layer of snow covered the streets and plazas, and crisp crackling sounds could be heard from footsteps upon the snow.     

After Christmas, Garen received a set of high-end drawing equipment, as well as a pretty-looking violin. Mom intended to make him acquire artistic and elegant musical skills.     

Surprisingly, Trish got pregnant again soon. Days passed in boredom.     

As the autumn of the second year came, the third kid was born.     

Vivien, Vivien Thomas was his sister’s name.     

The good news was, Garen’s kindergarten life would soon be over, as the four-year-old him would soon enter primary school.     

His brother Jason’s body had also become stronger; he was 4 years older than Garen. At 8 years old, he was now indulged in music and football. He went to the preschool when he was five, and as he entered third grade, his height had grown rapidly even for someone of the puberty age, he was already about one head higher than Garen.     

“I heard you’re coming to school soon?” Jason screamed while rushing into Garen’s room on one random day.     

“Yes.”     

There was only one primary school in the town, so both siblings would be in the same school, which made Jason excited.     

“Is there something that matters?” Garen was practicing his violin, that redwood violin was pressed between his shoulder and neck, the precise control of his power allowed him to pull out a pure, uniform sound with ease.     

After a month of teaching her son, Trish no longer taught him; after she taught him the standard pose, she decided to let him self-learn online. After all, simple things like violins were completely possible to self-learn so long as the pose were fine.     

“No… nothing.” After that glare from his brother, Jason shivered, and he hurried out of the room. He wasn’t entirely sure why was he excited, but being happy was all that mattered.     

Compared to kindergartens, primary schools were much more normal, grade schoolers were so much stronger than kindergartners, in terms of intelligence and socializing.     

As he saw Jason run out the room, he continued his own violin training course.     

Mono practice, scale transformation, complex music variation Etude.     

With only one glance on the video’s bow style, Garen could replicate any sounds without any mistakes, as he was sensitive to minute changes to the vibration, it allowed him to swiftly master the technique.     

That was why he could be this masterful in a month.     

But, oddly enough, the tunes that he played had a cold icy feeling, instead of a melodious feeling, it spooked people.     

The more precise his controls, the more obvious this feeling became, just like a psychopath who played violin in a puddle of blood after murdering his victims.     

Oddly, this oddity didn’t attract his parents’ attention under his cover-up, he suspected that this was a problem originating from the Heart of Frost.     

Following the Heart of Frost’s peak modification, he’d achieved a realm whereby he could exude a calming aura just by standing around them.     

Heart of Frost’s official second level was to use the frost breath for battles, but Black Claw of Sethe’s strongest point was not about its near infinite control on cold poison. Instead, it was the ability to absorb the chill from organic enemies. This Secret Technique’s complete philosophy revolved similar to the Yin-Yang philosophy. In its system, all creatures were made from Yin’s Coldness and Yang’s warmth, and if one had mastered the Black Claw of Sethe, it would cause two special damage effects, one being the Yin Coldness’ damage, and the ability to absorb opponents’ Yin Coldness in their bodies.     

Once the opponent’s Yin Coldness was absorbed, their body’s heat would not be contained, and the outer cold poison which had berserk properties would continuously destroy the balancing ability of the body. This way, it could cause immense internal injuries.     

If the opponent wasn’t an expert who specialized in healing, they would find it extremely hard to counter such complicated moves.     

On the other hand, the yin coldness absorbed by Garen could be used to strengthen Garen’s Secret Technique and enhance his vitality.     

Following the greater realms achieved in Sethe’s Secret Technique, its damage and absorption power would also be strengthened.     

As Garen played the violin, he identified that he had indeed reached the peak of the first level. It was just that he wasn’t aware of when he could make a breakthrough.     

After his violin session, he wiped the pine oil off the strings to prevent corrosion of the strings, he then carefully stored the violin in the box.     

The time to enroll in primary school soon arrived.     

Little Serin was still the same class as Garen. This was neither luck nor was it planned, but because the primary school only had one preschool class…     

Aside from the two of them, all the children of age would join this class.     

Serin’s father was a security officer, whereas her mom was a housewife. Compared to the three children in Garen’s household, they obviously looked more well off, hence Trish asked Serin’s mom, Mrs. Feller, to pick up her children when she fetched her daughter from school.     

The primary school was on the right side of the town’s central plaza, up ahead were some shops, including a buffet restaurant, a stationary shop, florist, and some eateries.     

The life in primary school was better compared to kindergarten, but the actual situation was about the same, the curriculum was like to torture to Garen, and he had to act like his peers sometimes.     

The saving grace, however, was the fact that he could now freely use a computer, not the notebook that belonged to his mother but the desktop that he built.     

This was greatly useful for him in understanding the knowledge system of this world.     

His daily life continued to repeat itself, schooling, eating, finish school, goes home, violin practice, computer games, sleep. This repeated in an endless loop.     

Preschool, Standard 1, Standard 2, time flew by without any mishaps.     

Everything was calm as time flowed by.     

Garen observed that nobody surrounding him had any trace of abnormality, except that the families living in the town maintained their ancient prayer ceremony where they prayed to their own ancestors. Aside from that, there were no differences or anything special.     

Not only that, there seemed to be a certain barrier between the residences of the northern bound town and the rest of the territories. The people of the north were seen to be the representatives of the pastor, whereas the remaining villagers were seen to be the representatives of the mayor. The territories of the pastor had a small river stream, and as there was a deeper, more dangerous forest nearby, there were cases of wild animals attacking human beings outside of the forest. There were even cited cases of people being poisoned by venomous snakes or deaths from cheetahs’ and wolves’ attacks. Hence the primary schoolers typically refrained from playing near the river on the north.     

“That place is very dangerous, big grey wolves will come out to catch children for snacks.”     

This was quoted from the teacher, word for word.     

According to Garen’s own observations, the north side did have fewer inhabitants, and the situation there was slightly worse. The thugs of the town would sometimes be seen on the streets and were mostly the familiar faces of the town, and they would normally join the festivals organized by the town.     

They usually donned an attire that obviously looked like a thug but at the same time, they also seem to be a bunch of organized folks. They were oddly disciplined and aside from the occasional brawl in the north, the rest of the citizens of the territory were all lawful people.     

As though there were someone pulling the strings from behind,     

The primary schoolers’ lives were boring, but soon there would be an interesting event.     

A school-organized picnic.     

As the two classes of Standard 2 students merged, including the school ten-odd teachers’ participation, they all set the journey to the forest nearby.     

Totalling over 40 students, wearing an assortment of clothes, each of them was excited, and so were the accompaniment of the parents.     

The forest vicinity of the picnic was guarded by the security officers, and there were patrol officers passing through this area daily, establishing it as a safe zone.     

Garen had just advanced to Standard 2, but aside from Serin, he didn’t have any friends, hence he preferred to stay at the back of the line.     

The group followed in a line and soon, they reached the safe zone and put out the tablecloth, took out their ready-made lunches from their bags. As a primary schooler, it would’ve been way too tough to have them find food out in the wilds.     

Some of the teachers were guarding the outer boundaries of the forest, and the rest of them brought the children along for preparatory works.     

The so-called picnic was actually bringing ready-made food from home to be eaten in the forest….     

Garen found a shady area to lay out his own white tablecloth, beside him was Serin who wore a white skirt and had a left ponytail tied. She always liked to follow Garen around at all times with shimmering eyes.     

Sandwiches with roasted meat, corn-mixed vegetable salads, canned fish, canned fruit, little bear-shaped biscuit, sandwich jam with toffee… Each of them was taken out from Garen’s bag and were placed on the tablecloth.     

“Can we be a group?” His classmate since kindergarten, Serin came over and squatted in front of Garen’s tablecloth, she looked at her own pitiful two-piece sandwich and fruit juice, and looked at Garen’s awfully scrumptious preparation, her tender face almost couldn’t contain her drooling.     

“Eeleen, then let the three of us form a group.” Garen nodded without being bothered. Actually, it was the same, be it two or three people. Compared to those naughty kids, Eeleen liked to nap more compared to the rest, while Serin was quiet.     

Of course, there was another reason, it was that these two Lolitas turned out cute and tender, even though he didn’t know how they would look like when they grew older, the kid version right now looked very cute. Just that, in comparison, Serin’s skin was better, while Eeleen was slightly darker, a little bit scrawny, maybe due to malnutrition.     

All the good food on the tablecloths made the kids surrounding them distracted, and have glared in their direction.     

The kids in town rarely had that many delicacies. As there wasn’t much interaction with the outside world, there were many ingredients that were hard to find. These snacks and sweets were bought by Trish and Emmer during their occasional trips home from college. Of course, these things were way beyond any child’s imagination, as most of the things could only be observed from the front of the television.     

Just the toffee alone had 5 brands, it was exceptionally luxurious.     

To be honest, Garen didn’t like these, but a kid should have a kid’s mannerisms, so he didn’t prepare anything else.     

Sitting on the grassland, the shade was obviously more cooling. As the sunlight brightened, the grassland was baked in golden rays, and it got warmer.