"Brother, stand here," Thirteen said, pointing at the spot beside him. "I want to experiment with something."
Thirteen noticed that his brother's training was not progressing as fast as their father wanted it to.
Their Father was a Swordsman, and he was teaching Mikhail the basics of swordsmanship. Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, it just seemed that the boy wasn't suited for swordsmanship.
On the contrary, their sister, Shasha, proved to be promising as a Fencer.
Their mother, Alessia, was a Fencer. Every time she held a rapier in her hands, her loving and caring mother persona would immediately shift to a warrior princess, whom even their father was reluctant to fight due to her deadly capriciousness.
But it was because of her skills and character that he fell in love with her. They had been living together happily since the day they decided to tie the knot, even when faced with the Patriarch of the Leventis Family's opposition.
Gerald was then disowned by his father for defying his will, but he didn't care. Even after he was disowned, he still used the Leventis name, almost giving the old man an aneurysm.
Fortunately, Gerald's Mother stepped up and tried to mediate between the two.
So, despite being disowned from the family, Gerald still carried the Leventis name, which belonged to one of the Ten Prestigious Families.
Thirteen proceeded to poke his brother's pressure points one by one, as if doing some kind of diagnosis.
His personality had drastically changed after the incident, but their family gradually learned to accept that the five-year-old boy would no longer act his age and was now more like an adult.
Thirteen was calm, collected, calculative, and at times, very sly, so Gerald and Alessia were subconsciously treating him as a teenager rather than a child.
"Raise your hand like this, Brother," Thirteen ordered. "Good. Now try to raise your right leg like this…"
Mikhail obediently followed his brother's orders, ignoring the fact that the latter was younger than him. The reason for this was simple.
Thirteen sparred with him and their sister, Shasha, from time to time.
No matter what they did, they couldn't beat the young boy in battle, so they recognized his strength.
Little did they know that this was also Thirteen's ploy of establishing the hierarchy among his siblings.
By showing that he was stronger and smarter than them, they'd start relying more on him and treat him as if he was their eldest sibling.
Gerald and Alessia could only scratch their heads at this development, but since their youngest child wasn't doing anything to harm his siblings, they turned a blind eye on some of his actions.
'I see… so that's it.' Thirteen rubbed his chin as he looked at his brother's fighting stance. 'This is a bit surprising, but I guess this makes sense.'
Thirteen then walked towards his Mother and asked for something that made Alessia arch an eyebrow.
"Mother, can you give me some Jinn Cores?" Thirteen asked. "Ten Tier 1 Cores will do. But if you have a Majin Core, it will be better."
There were two kinds of Jinns that were prevalent in Solterra.
The first one was the ordinary Jinn. These monsters relied solely on their powerful bodies to fight.
The second type of Jinn was called Majin. They specialized in magic.
Of course, there were Majins who could use both physical and magical attacks, making them one of the most dangerous creatures to fight.
"What are you going to use them for?" Alessia asked with curiosity.
"I'll just play with them," Thirteen replied.
"… Play with them?" Alessia blinked in confusion.
Thirteen nodded. "Yes. In the future, I will ask for more. So if possible, please prepare a lot of them, Mother."
Alessia didn't mind giving her son some Jinn Cores, but she was truly curious about what he would do with them.
In the end, she gave Thirteen a Magic Pouch which contained twenty Jinn Cores and three Majin Cores.
"Thank you, Mother," Thirteen replied. "You will not regret this decision."
After getting what he needed, Thirteen made a gesture for his brother to follow him.
The two went to Thirteen's bedroom because what he was about to do was something he didn't want others to see—not even his parents.
After firmly locking the door, he ordered Mikhail to remove his shirt and sit cross-legged on the floor.
His brother didn't ask anything and simply did as he was told.
Although he was young, Mikhail could sense that his younger brother only wanted what was good for him, so he obeyed without question.
"Now, close your eyes," Thirteen stated as he placed fifteen Jinn Cores around Mikhail's body.
He also placed Three Majin Cores in front of him with a smile on his face.
His original plan was to only teach Mikhail a basic skill, but since his mother had been generous, he decided to go all out and give his brother the best Martial Skill in his arsenal.
As a System, he knew many kinds of Martial Arts. In fact, all Systems did. They could grant these skills to their hosts once they accumulated enough System Points to purchase things from the System Shop.
But since his power and authority as a System was stripped away from him, he was unable to impart his knowledge to someone the way he did to his hosts.
However, there was still another way.
Thirteen had diligently studied all of these Martial Arts, along with other information that he had recorded inside his Core.
He even made sure to use a Forbidden Technique to ensure that the skills and information would not be taken away from him, regardless if he died or not.
That was the preparation he made before facing off against his Father.
He didn't know what the outcome would be, so he could only do everything he could, just in case the worst case scenario happened.
Thinking back, he was glad he did these things in advance.
Now, even though he was no longer a System, all the information he needed was still inside his core, which was transplanted by the System God, inside his new body.
Using a marker pen, he started to inscribe runes on his brother's body. Mikhail found this ticklish, and he even laughed a couple of times.
Thirteen smiled seeing how happy his brother was. However, in order to stop him from moving, he gave him one good smack in the head, making the latter cry.
But, seeing that Thirteen raised his fist a second time, Mikhail immediately stopped crying and no longer moved his body.
"Good boy," Thirteen said as he lightly patted his brother's head before continuing to inscribe runes on his body.
When he was done, he admired his handiwork before inscribing a rune that symbolized "wisdom" on the back of his right hand.
'Now, time to start,' Thirteen thought as he picked up one of the Majin Cores with both hands in front of him.
He then started to chant in a language that wasn't found in Pangea.
This was the language of the Elves, who lived in Solterra.
A moment later, the rune on the back of his right hand started to glow, allowing him to use the Majin Core as a medium to empower the spell.
While it was true that there were several restrictions on his body like Skill Ban and the likes, what he was using wasn't a skill that was available in Solterra and Pangea.
It was Rune Magic.
A type of magic that used an external source of power to activate special Runes, which symbolized words of power.
This was a loophole that Thirteen was exploiting. His Father must've never expected that the Black Sheep of his family would be using Rune Magic in a world where Rune Magic didn't exist!
Also, he didn't expect Thirteen to have such knowledge because the latter no longer had access to the database of Systems!
At this exact moment, the System God, who was watching Thirteen's antics, snorted after being one-upped by him.
However, a smile appeared on Deus Ex Machina's lips because his son didn't know that he was breaking one of the rules of the world he was currently in.
"Laugh while you still can, you fool," Deus Ex Machina smiled. "He is coming for you now."
The most Omnipotent Being that governed Solterra and Pangea detected an anomaly within its Domain.
Its gaze then landed on a five-year-old child, who was doing something that he shouldn't be capable of doing as it was not supported by the laws that the Omnipotent Being had set upon the world.
Even so, it didn't make any move to stop whatever Thirteen was doing because it was analyzing his actions and contemplating whether it should take the necessary actions to erase the five-year-old child, who was breaking the rules of its world, or not.
