Three-Year Summary — Valemont, Age 5 to 8 (Act II Continuation)
The three years that followed Rooga’s awakening passed gently, like a long breath of peace after the storm.
Valemont flourished again, and the echoes of grief that once haunted its fields slowly turned into songs of life.
Darius’s land had become the pride of the borderlands — its harvests feeding not only the village but nearby towns as well.
The soil thrived under the blessing of Maori’s roots, the crops glowing faintly with residual mana.
Yet growth brought more than bounty.
With new settlers arriving every month, the once-quiet estate had turned into a lively community — one that demanded management.
It was Lyra, not Darius, who bore that weight.
She spent her days balancing ledgers, negotiating with traders, and reorganizing the workers into shifts.
When Darius laughed and said, “Let it grow,” Lyra would snap back, “If it grows unchecked, it will consume the village itself.”
Her administrative schedule became law; even the villagers called her Lady Steward now.
Selene found a fragile rhythm again.
Her grief mellowed into quiet strength, and she began teaching small lessons in magic to the children of the estate.
But when Rooga approached her about learning, she would always hesitate.
Her spells were built for destruction — blazing and absolute. “This isn’t for you,” she said once, her hand trembling over a burning sigil.
He didn’t argue.
Elara, now twelve, grew gentler.
The fierce pride that once drove her to challenge Rooga had turned inward.
She trained harder than anyone else but treated her brother with near-sacred care, afraid of repeating her past mistake.
Every time Rooga stumbled, she was the first to reach him, murmuring soft apologies he didn’t need.
Riaz, only five, inherited the Valemont blessing — the same regeneration that flowed in Darius and Elara’s blood.
He trained with relentless energy, often pushing himself until he bled, but his body healed before anyone could scold him.
And whenever he fell too hard, it was Rooga who appeared first — his steady hands lifting his brother back up.
Peace had touched others, too.
Kaen and Nira — longtime residents of Valemont — welcomed twin children, a boy and a girl.
Their laughter filled the once-empty courtyard, and even Darius, stoic as stone, was seen carrying one on each shoulder from time to time.
The estate had begun to feel more like a family than a farm.
Maori’s expedition continued deeper into the corrupted land under Lyra’s quiet supervision.
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Piece by piece, her roots reclaimed what darkness had stolen.
The villagers whispered that the goddess had begun to sing again — her voice carried by the wind that danced through their fields.
Few knew the truth: each night, Lyra and Maori’s envoys purified a small portion of land using the stored Aqua Bloom vials Rooga had unknowingly created years ago.
And still, the boy knew nothing of it.
As for Maori herself — she had grown vast.
Her great tree now reached higher than the estate walls, and her presence could be felt in every drop of rain that touched Valemont soil.
Though she rarely manifested, Rooga often visited her grove, sitting under her branches just to talk.
Rooga’s growth was quiet.
He never trained as hard as his siblings. His days were spent wandering the estate, helping craftsmen, or playing with the younger children.
He practiced swordsmanship only when Kain dragged him to the field, and his magic lessons were sporadic.
His reason was simple: the HUD.
He had noticed something strange — every spell he learned stopped progressing at 99%.
No matter how hard he trained, the numbers would never rise.
Remembering what Aqua Bloom had become when he reached perfect mastery, Rooga decided not to chase 100%.
He feared the kind of power that came from total control, the kind that destroyed as much as it created.
He tried learning other spells from Selene, but her affinity lay in destruction magic — raw, overwhelming, and frightening.
Lyra, too, brushed him off with a tired wave. “You have eyes, don’t you? Watch and learn,” she’d say before vanishing back into her mountain of paperwork.
So he stopped asking.
Instead, he learned from observation — watching the flow of mana in nature, in tools, in people.
He began to understand magic not as something cast, but something lived.
- Chera, the harpy, still refused to sleep anywhere but next to him, her wings now large enough to wrap him completely. She had become his living blanket — half companion, half quilt.
- Roghar, the lizardman warrior, still shadowed him from afar, but most of his time was spent guarding Riaz. Whenever Riaz trained too recklessly, it was Roghar who caught him before he broke something important.
- The village itself had doubled in size. New homes stood along the road to the estate, and traders came weekly to buy crops, enchanted wood, and mana-laced fruit.
Children played openly, no longer afraid of the corrupted beasts beyond the forest.
The scars of tragedy faded into roots of peace.
His family had mended, the land prospered, and the goddess’s light returned to Valemont.
And yet, beneath all the laughter and warmth, secrets still stirred — the hidden expedition into the corruption, the mysterious limit of his HUD, and the question that sometimes whispered in his dreams:
If everything has reached 99%, what happens when the world itself reaches 100?