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“What do you think Anna?” Jen asked as the family walked down the stone-paved road.

“It’s a bigger town.”

“Yeah, it is, anything you find interesting?”

“Nah.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No?”

George asked, “Nothing interesting?”

Anna replied again, “It’s a bigger town?”

Ihere was indeed bigger than their home village.

Their hometown, which didn't have a proper name, was just a simple tiny farming town. Only after passing through the gate did Anna learn that their village was referred to as a number Four. One of the eight farming towns placed on the nearby border.

Farming Town Four was made up of twenty normal houses plus one village chief house–which was a bigger building and acted as a storage centre for supplies. Each standard house had a small farm attached, but there were also larger connected farms five minutes away from town which the whole town worked on.

[The percentage of people with visible attributes is much higher here.] (White)

[I think it was just that our hometown was just far below average.] (Red)

Most of the people they walked by had browns, blonds, and black hair, but occasionally a few had brightly coloured hair, indicating their attribute. Unlike their home, where only one person had green hair.

Ihere was a proper town with a small–but still there–main street, some side alleys and houses that could fit around four hundred people.

Today the family was here to collect some new books and meat–a once-a-month treat. They were also keeping an eye out for anything else interesting, specifically anything Anna found interesting.

[Hmm… I’m glad it didn’t happen… but I wonder what would happen to our appearance… if we didn’t hold back the changes.] (Lilly)

[Hrmm? Oh yeah, you only had one gift, ummm, yeah. Not sure, five gifts is a lot.]

[Did it not mix together… for you?] (Lilly)

[Actually no, my hair was a bright red but my eyes were a slightly darker red… a blood red. Ha! Get it!] Red laughed to herself, but quickly stopped knowing it wasn’t funny to start with.

[Not funny, you should have laughed at Jen’s joke if you thought that was funny.] (White)

[Even I know that Jen’s wasn’t funny.] Red replied, [Mine might not be great, but it’s still better than that.]

[Do awakened effects always… appear separately?] Lilly asked, [The ratio of multi-attribute users was a lot lower in my home… I didn’t get to talk to anyone about the experience who actually went through it.]

White slightly pained replied, [Rarely they can mix… or it is just a different colour altogether–usually for three plus multiple attribute individuals. Other… effects can cause a mixing, but they usually happen after an awakening has occurred.]

White’s information caused Red to ponder, [What would it be if all our attribute’s colours mixed together?]

[Probably a pinkish colour? We have reds, white, pink and greys.] (White)

[...Yeah… I’m going to hope it doesn't affect our appearance.] (Red)

[Fair enough.] (White)

As they were having this internal talk, George yelled out, “Billy, Mern, good to see you.”

Jen pulled on Anna’s arm so she wouldn’t keep walking.

The individuals who George called out to, turned around and waved. Then Mern walked towards them, with a small kid attached to his leg.

“Good to see you George, been here long?”

“Nah, but it seems like you have. You even brought little Billy with you today.”

Billy was one of the town’s kids that Red occasionally played with, and Mern was his dad–they lived on the opposite end of the village.

“Only a few hours, Billy was right pissed though, woke him early for this. I see you’ve brought your own as well. Say hi Billy.”

“Hiello.”

“Morning,” Anna (White) replied.

Billy gripped Mern’s leg tighter and stayed quiet, “Sorry about that, he has been nervous all day. First time in Ihere you know?”

George replied, “Wow what a brave boy, good job kiddo.” He crouched down to Billy’s eye level and gave a thumbs up. “I was an absolutely nervous wreck when I first entered a larger town, you’re doing a way better job than me.”

This comment caused Billy to smile slightly.

Jen asked, “You going to be here much longer Mern?”

“Nah, on our way out actually. You guys?”

George replied, “We’ll still be another hour, I guess we’ll see you at the village later then.”

“Yeah all, take care you three.”

Jen said, “You two as well.”

Mern started to walk, and Billy turned and waved, “Bye…”

“Bye.” Anna smiled and waved back.

“Always a pleasure talking to him,” Jen muttered.

“We should visit sometime,” Said George.

“Doubt that will happen, I think you’ve been banned by Juilet after you and Mern got drunk.”

“I still don’t get why I was blamed for him breaking things, I had left by then.”

“Never question an angry wife.”

George coughed, “Yes ma'am.”

Then they both laughed and continued their short shopping spree with Anna looking around.

Home and laying in bed, while the night was out it wasn’t sleeping time yet. Dinner still had to happen, but the three of them were passing the time by being in their Soul Space.

Normally they would be up helping around at this time, but they (Red) decided to walk home with Jen and George instead of taking the cart. So the parents thought it would be best for Anna to rest.

Red raised her uncovered foot from the pool, “Talking about gifts earlier got me thinking, what are we supposed to do with all of them?”

“What do you mean?” White replied.

“I mean, as you said, we need to hide our gifts.” Red raised her five fingers on her left hand, “But that also means we might not even properly use most of them, or maybe even any to their full extent.”

“Yes, because five is far too many,” Replied White, “But we can get away with just having two.”

“True, but what two?” Red asked, “Leaving my own bias aside, the best options are Fire and Blood.”

“I don’t think you left your bias aside.”

“What? They are the two most effective gifts we have. Fire is useful for combat and utility, and it’s not a mana drain like some gifts tend to be–” Red stared at White, “–Blood, on the other hand, is amazing, it’s self-healing, physical strengthening, and we can even make blood constructs if we really want to. Plus as you mentioned, we can use it to increase our mana. I’m just going to need your guidance on that.”

White closed her eyes, “The only thing I will agree with you on is Fire.”

Lilly just watched the situation unfold lying down on her side. She felt the mountain of fatigue gained thanks to Red’s long walk. She only slightly regretted staying connected to the body during the entire walk.

White continued, “Furthermore, it’s not like we can’t use attributes that we don’t announce, they just have to be hidden. Red, thoy–*cough*-You had to have hidden Blood before when you were a mercenary, there were many things you would have to have done to gain an advantage in combat, and hiding your own cards would be one of the easiest.”

“I mean yeah?” Red shrugged. “I also did many other sneaky things when required, to a reasonable level.” A harsh glint flashed in her eyes and a ferocious smile unconsciously curved up for a second, “But when I hid my Blood gift, I did it with full knowledge that it would be revealed.”

“Why was that?”

Red’s eyes gleamed with nostalgia for a moment, “It depends.” She shrugged, and laid down with her hands behind her back, “I’ll admit, I didn’t have the most flashy use of my Blood gift compared to some famous examples, but a body that was tougher to cut and stab, and eyes that were such a deep crimson, people had their suspicions but most could be shot down just by me saying I had greatly trained my body and my Fire gift’s traits. Slightly worked until they saw my wounds stitch back together. That was just the visual reasoning of course. However, by the time I got famous, that and the other reasons didn’t really matter because enough people had found out. Through their own deductions or me telling them.”

White sighed, “Word travels fast in some networks.” She thought back to the communication network the church had, and how overly massive she felt it was.

“For sure it does,” Red laughed. “But as I said I had other reasons as well. Trust is a big thing for mercenaries, well at least it was from where I was from. We basically always worked in teams of at least ten, even the lowest number I went with was five, but I did tend to jump ahead into the fray, grabbing the enemy's attention. But it was still a team-based endeavour. Whenever a hunter or even a mercenary from another country came to visit, the culture shock was always a good show.”

White smiled, seeing it as kind of nice. Trust…, “It is very different than what my, or even most countries I knew of did. That level of trust seems useful, and it would make working together easier…” White went quiet for a moment, understanding that it was something the three of them didn’t do, “...It does make sense to talk about it for that reason. And two attributes aren’t that uncommon, so many would expect it of you if you were that strong.”

Red laughed again but sadder this time, the aura of which was very contained though, indicating it wasn’t something that affected her much. But for White or Lilly who saw and felt Red as 100% happy, excited, annoyed, or couldn’t care, type of individual. It was a stark change, “Yep it is. But sadly there are different types of trust and different emotions also exist. Jealousy was also a big one, honestly one of the biggest obstacles in the face of a working team. And weirdly enough, lots of people are less jealous once they learn the ‘Secret’ to someone’s strength. Especially if it is out of their reach, some will still contain some envy but at a healthy level… one where it won’t hurt a team if it leaks.”

Another wave of silence filled the room. White didn’t want to respond to Red’s reply and hoped she would say something else or Lilly would speak.

Red leaned back up, interrupting the silence, “But yeah… We’ll probably keep Blood hidden, but I will need to train with it more. To keep its effects less noticeable.”

“That’s fine, but I would like to have some time to train with Moonlight. While I would like to learn some more offensive spells for it, I understand this isn’t the time or place. However, for the same reason as your Blood, I would like to train it a little bit to make the healing spells less noticeable.”

“Good idea, but what should we choose as the second gift? If you want to make Moonlight one of the hidden ones, then that means it’s either between Manipulation or Space. And out of Space and Moonlight, it is probably easier to hide Space than Moonlight.” Red compared White’s two attributes as she knew Lilly was a little iffy about using Manipulation. “That’s of course if we choose Fire as the first, which I would like, as I’m probably the most experienced in combat here. I would feel safe for all of us if I could use it whenever.”

“Fair, but having any light-based attributes or even healing ones as our public attributes just puts a recruiting target on your back for certain churches.”

“Depends on the country, but I’ll relent.”

White and Red continued their discussion but then a quiet groan spoke up.

“Can we continue… this tomorrow?” Lilly asked, “I really want to sleep with the body…”

Lilly didn’t care about talking in the discussion, as she felt she would be useless for anything about their attributes, but she did feel she should be at least nearby… in case wanted for her knowledge on a certain field.

“...”

“...”

“Yeah, it’s been a long day,” Red replied.

“Dinner, possible story, then sleep? Sounds good to me.” Said White.