I stared up at the sky of my new world.

  It’s too green, I thought, not for the first time. But is it the sky that’s changed, or me?

  Whether there was something in the atmosphere scattering light differently or the rods and cones in my eyes didn’t transmit blue to my brain the way a human’s did, this life was quite a drastic departure from both my previous one and what I could remember from Earth.

  The greenish sky and the too-orange sun in it were only a small part of the differences. The reddish-brown terrain was dotted with shrubs growing low to the ground with purple-black leaves, and the choppy ocean was also a briny green—which, like the sky, could be something in the water, but lent credence to the idea that it was actually my eyes.

  At least I still only had two of those, unlike my arms.

  It had taken me a while to suss out the name of my new species, or at least what they called themselves. The closest I could come up with was the Uli, which basically just translated to person or man. Just looking down at myself, the most notable change was the color and structure of my body: I had a fairly thick, orange skin, which covered six limbs, instead of the four I was used to.

  From what I could tell, the six-limbed structure was normal on this world. I glanced at the bush nearby, where a small rodent-analogue that had been sneaking up on me scurried away on six legs. Whatever common ancestor most animal life descended from here must have been hexapedal.

  The Uli had evolved to be bipedal, not unlike the hominids that would go on to become humanity. It was too early to draw any conclusions about upright stature and sapience, but it was interesting, at least, that we had that in common. In doing so, they freed up their front four limbs to be used for tool-use, though our tools were largely limited to stone and bone. I hadn’t seen any trees; wood was unavailable from this civilization.

  My hands and feet were slightly different too, most notably because the stem hexapod which had won the game of life here only had four digits per limb. My hands felt a bit incomplete with only three fingers and a thumb.

  Some of the biggest changes were hard to see on myself, though, and most apparent when I looked at other members of my tribe.

  “Mali-iq Rumi!” one of my younger mothers scolded, grabbing me by the arms and dragging me back into the large, yurt-like tent we lived in. I could have overpowered her with my stats, but I let her pull me back inside. “How many times must I tell you to stay inside? You’ll bother the men!”

  I glanced up at the woman, taking in her Uli features.

  The most obvious difference was the nose. Despite being hairless, save for the dark hair at the crown of the head, the Uli had a distinct rhinarium covering their noses, which were fairly prominent with large nostrils. It was a bit like a bear’s nose, except that it sat on a flatter, orange face. Below it was a wide jaw with large teeth, mostly similar to humans save for the two lower tusks. The ears were also larger, slightly pointed and sitting higher on the skull.

  I had grown used to these faces, but I didn’t think I would ever describe them as anything other than ugly.

  One of my older mothers shook her head at the younger one. “Children do not learn with words. Punishment is the best teacher.”

  “Last time I tried to spank the boy, all I had to show for it was a bruised palm. He didn’t even cry,” one of the other mothers said. “I’m not sure he even feels pain.”

  I did feel it, but my Body stat—or rather, my Brawn stat, as it was called in this world—was disproportionately high for my young body. It was easy enough to ignore their discipline.

  “Oh, he just wants to look around,” a fourth mother, the nicest one, said in my defense. Her name was Ro-oma Ubul, and she was the only one of my group of mothers I would actually go to if I needed something. “He isn’t harming anything.”

  “It’s for his own good,” the mother that dragged me in huffed. “If he’s out of the creche, one of the older boys might challenge him.”

  “Unlikely,” Ro-oma said, frowning. “He’s clearly not yet Bloodied.”

  I waited to see if they would say anything more about that, but the conversation turned back to more general gossip about the tribe; now that I was back in the creche, I was just another one of the children to be communally watched over by the collective of my father’s mates.

  Meandering over to the edge of the yurt, away from the other children, I plopped down with a sigh.

  Had this been my first reincarnated life after Earth, I probably would have found it fascinating. While my life as Mali-iq Rumi so far had been rougher than Tovar’s, the novelty factor could have outweighed that, and I would have been driven to acquire stat points like I had as a human peasant farmer.

  But I already had a full life worth of stat points, and I was limited in how I could train. I was exercising and rapidly gaining a lot of muscle to catch up with my Body—now Brawn—though it would likely be years yet before I could push myself hard enough to start gaining new points in that stat. I meditated to pass the time, but with my high Mind stat—now just called Brain—I could focus so easily that it was far from enough to train it. Stuck in the creche, there wasn’t much else I could do to improve that, either, especially with no access to materials to study.

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  The worst part of it was my third stat, which I had no basis of comparison for prior to my time as Tovar. In my previous life, the admin had warned me that my Will would be “simultaneously the stat least impacted by starting a new life, and the most”. I figured that it would be the least impacted because there was no physiological issue with using the fullness of my Will, even as a baby. But now I knew what he meant when he said it would be the most impacted.

  Because this world had no mana.

  In place of Will, I now had the Blood stat, and like my Will when I was first born as Tovar, it was only at 1. Except, my 72 stat points I had gained when that was Will were still present, just inaccessible to me.

  Like in my early years as Tovar, with only 1 in Blood, I couldn’t feel it, and couldn’t intuit how to use it. I tried my breathing techniques, but whatever the source of the energy the Blood used was, like the mana to my Will, it wasn’t external and in the air. Given the name, I was pretty sure it was wholly internal.

  None of my siblings knew, and when I asked my mothers, I was told I was too young and shouldn’t worry about it yet. There was a hint of fear to their expressions whenever I asked, which worried me.

  I couldn’t ask my father. I still hadn’t even been spoken to by the man.

  Learning about Blood might have been exciting, had it not been for the fact that Will and the use of mana had been my primary focus in my last life. I had spent most of my time learning spells that used mana, and without it in this world, my skill list was absolutely gutted. All that was active in this world was my physical skills, and while I had felt like I had put a lot of work into those last life as well, the actual count told a different story.

  The worst part was that, despite still having those skills, I wasn’t sure how useful they would be. We had no metal, so no blades, and no wood, so no staves. Bone and stone could approximate those, but overall it was a pretty depressing state.

  That all paled compared to the real issue, though.

  “Hey Malimali,” my sister said, crouching down next to me and interrupting my downward spiral. “Whatcha thinking about?”

  “I miss my wife,” I grunted. Though, the Uli language didn’t have a word for wife, with the closest approximation being mate.

  My sister laughed. “You don’t have any mates! You’re so weird, Malimali.”

  I glanced up at the girl, who was maybe a year older than me. Nadi-ul Mabu was, at the very least, my half-sister, since we were all my father’s children in this creche. It was possible that she was my full sister, but I didn’t even know which of my mothers had given birth to me, let alone which had given birth to her. I could make a guess based on shared features, at least, and I was pretty sure Nadi was the biological daughter of Ro-oma Ubul. At least it explained why, of all the Uli I knew, I liked those two the most.

  While I hadn’t seen my reflection to judge my own inherited traits, if pressed I would guess that my biological mother was the one who dragged me back inside, Loma-ar Nuiq. If that was the case, she certainly didn’t seem too attached to me, aside from keeping me inside the yurt.

  My new life seemed to conspire against me, because the lessons that I had learned in my last life weren’t holding up. It had taken me years before I learned to open myself up to my new family, and in this life, the family structure itself kept us all at a distance. I had learned to live presently in my life, to the fullest and for the moment, but in my years so far as an Uli, I was confined to the creche. Kept alive, but that was about it. I had no idea what I could even aspire to live for in this life.

  At least I seemed to entertain my sister. “What can I do for you, Nadi?” Nadi pouted, and crossed her four arms. “I mean, what can I do for you, Nadinadi?”

  The girl grinned, her lower tusks just starting to protrude above her lower lip. “Show me the upside-down thing again.”

  “The headstand?”

  “Yes! That.”

  I leaned forward, planting my head on the ground, then stabilized myself with my two upper arms before kicking up with my legs.

  Having four arms meant Uli had an extra body segment for those limbs, which took some getting used to. It actually opened up some interesting avenues of calisthenic training, once my physical development could fully keep up with my Brawn.

  Part of being an upright, bipedal species meant that Uli needed quite strong legs and back to hold up twice as many body segments. That made my lower body rather heavy. By comparison, the upper arms were generally a lot weaker, well beyond the difference in human arm and leg strength. I planned to balance that out with training in time, but as a child I mostly had focused on figuring out my mobility, flexibility, and balance. Given the difference in leg strength and arm strength, balancing entirely on my head and upper two arms had surprised my mothers and the other kids, since it was so difficult for an Uli.

  That had kicked off a round of experimentation in the creche, with none of the other kids accomplishing my feat. That made sense, since they must have all had a Brawn of 1, or maybe raised a point or two if they were older. Most of them lost interest after failing, but Nadi still liked to watch me do it and try to figure it out.

  “I don’t get it! When I do that I just flip right over and land on my back.”

  “You need to hold your body rigid and straight,” I said from my headstand. “You’re too floppy.”

  After a moment’s deliberation, I pushed my hands into the ground, taking some of the pressure off my head. Paying close attention to how that felt in my upper shoulders, I pressed myself just a tiny bit off the ground, then immediately lowered myself back onto my head. With a bit more training to develop those shoulder muscles, I could probably manage a full handstand—a significantly more impressive feat for Uli than a human—but I was still worried about tearing something.

  Just need to keep taking it one day at a time, I thought to myself. Whether it was calisthenics or finding this life’s purpose, I couldn’t rush it. I just had to keep trying, slow and steady, until I figured it out.