Light.
That's what I first saw when I opened my eyes. It slowly grew to encompass my whole vision, and I squinted. As my vision adjusted, I became aware of a blonde girl gazing down at me.
Wait.
Down? That wasn't right. From the looks of it, I should be taller than her.
She was one gorgeous girl--wait, no. She was definitely a woman.
'Who is she?' I thought.
By her side stood a young man of roughly the same age, his hair was a light brown, and his big, awkward smile was directed at the magus. He looked strong, proud, and impressively muscled.
My sixth sense was screaming at me. There was magical energy in the air. And a lot of it. Yet my sixth sense was dull. Did someone drug me? My eyes widened, almost panicking. Had I been brought to the clocktower? Had the lords finally found me after all these years?
Yet I sensed no hostility from the two, just a kind of familiar and nostalgic warmth. It took a second for me to realize what this warmth was. It was the warmth of a family. I closed his eyes in contentment. How long had it been since I felt this way? So what if these people were strangers--I felt content being with them.
The woman looked at me with a warm smile and spoke, yet I could not understand what she was saying. Her words were indistinct and difficult to make out. Was she even speaking Japanese? The man said something in reply, and his face lost some tension. I still had no idea what he said. A third unintelligible voice joined the conversation, I couldn't see who was speaking, but I could tell it was a woman.
I tried to get up and look around, yet my body felt weak and sluggish. I couldn't even muster the strength to sit up; when I tried to ask where I was, all that came out was, "Ahh! Waah!" Garbled whining and moaning.
The brown-haired man said something else, then suddenly leaned down and picked me up. How was this possible? I was a forty-year-old man. I was skinny, sure, but for someone to pick me up so easily. It should be impossible. And then the brown-headed buffoon began making silly faces at me. Was he trying to taunt me? I just got hit by a truck, and you're doing this?
....
A few hours later, I was put to bed by the red-haired woman. I'm pretty sure she was the maid of this family, judging by her clothes and how she acted. I looked at my hands. Hand far too small to belong to me. I finally realized it.
I'd been reincarnated.
Who would have thought something so ridiculous would happen to me? I sighed and attempted to rub my nose, yet my weak baby body didn't even let me do that. I just closed my eyes and fell asleep.
....
Let's jump ahead a few weeks.
Everything was so boring as a baby. I'd been thinking about what could have caused me to reincarnate. Maybe I was caught in a mana disaster? This place is overflowing with ambient mana.
The two people I first saw when I came to were my parents. Paul and Zenith. I'm guessing they're in their early twenties. Clearly younger than me when I died. I'm jealous they'd gotten to make a baby at that age.
Early on, I realized I wasn't in Japan--the language was different, and my parents didn't have any Japanese features. I would guess I was somewhere in Europe. They also wore some kind of old-timey clothing. I didn't see anything that resembled home appliances. The furniture, utensils, and the like were all fashioned from wood, crudely, might I add. We didn't even have electric lighting, only candles, and oil lamps. Perhaps my parents were so poor they couldn't afford electricity? No, that couldn't be the case. They had enough money to hire a maid.
There was the small chance I had been reincarnated into a magus family, but I didn't sense a bounded field around this house, or any spells for that matter. So the chances of that were very low.
Speaking of magecraft, I took time to open my circuits. I know it was dangerous for this infant's body, but there weren't any repercussions. I still had all my thirty circuits, but that wasn't surprising. The circuits were located in the soul, after all. What was surprising was I still had my magic crest. I could feel the thirty circuits stored in it hum when I passed Od through it. When I willed it to manifest, I was giddy with excitement. A magic circle, about three times the size of my hand, floated above the back of my hand.
An intricate, small, purple seven-pointed star slowly spun clockwise in the center, this was the physical representation of the crest split gifted to my family by the Animuspheres, the core. Around that core, three gold-colored ring-shaped magic circles spun counterclockwise at different speeds, each representing the research of my grandfather, my father, and me respectively.
Every spell I refined was present, not a single one lost. My family crest looked like a sixth-generation one, but it was only a third-generation. It was thanks to my predecessors and my hard work and genius that it turned out this way.
I didn't know how or why I still have it, but it wasn't bad, so why question it?
Anyways, I found something odd about my circuits, both the ones in my soul and crest. They seemed to have... Evolved somehow. I found something in each circuit, it didn't seem harmful, but I'll keep an eye on it for now. In the meantime, I'll condition my magic circuits, they'll deteriorate if left unused.
....
Another half a year passed. After six months of listening to my parents conversing, I'd begun to pick up some of the language. And I finally learned my full name. I'm Rudeus Greyrat now. I was learning how to speak at an alarming rate; was it because I was so young? I started learning to crawl around this time as well. Being able to move was a huge blessing. I'd never been so grateful to have control of my own body.
"As soon as you take your eyes off him, he slips off somewhere," Zenith, my mother, said.
"Hey, so long as he's good and healthy," Paul, my father, replied, watching me as I crawled around. "I was worried back when he was born and never cried."
"He doesn't cry now, either, does he?"
I wasn't exactly the age to whine because I was hungry. I only cried when I tried and invariably failed to stop myself from soiling my pants. Even though I could only crawl, I learned a lot from being able to move around. The first thing I learned was that this was definitely the home of a rich family. The house was a wooden, two-story structure with over five separate rooms, and we had one maid on staff. I first assumed she was my aunt or something, but given her deferential attitude toward my mother and father, I doubted she was family.
Our house was located in the countryside, outside the window stretched a peaceful landscape. There were only a few houses I could see dotted in the distance. We really were out in the sticks. I couldn't see any telephone poles or streetlights. I often wondered why my parents used such primitive technology, even magi didn't take it this far. I got my answer one early afternoon.
....
As the things I could do were pretty limited, I'd usually look at the scenery. I stood on a chair as I usually did to get a peek out the window. I continuously projected and vanished a small knife in my hands. Projection was the basics of basics, but it got my Od flowing. I lazily looked out the window and my eyes widened. My father was in our yard, swinging a sword around. What in the world was he doing? Was he a knight or something? I suddenly felt myself losing balance.
Uh-oh.
In my daze of astonishment, I started slipping from the chair. My baby hands waved around, trying to find something to stop my fall, but there was nothing. I fell, smacking my head on the cold, hard ground. I let out a cry of pain as I hit the ground. I saw my mother drop the vegetable she was peeling, her face going pale as she brought her hand to her mouth.
"Rudy! Are you alright?!"
She rushed to my side and picked me up. As she met my gaze, her expression slackened with relief, and she stroked my head. "Aww. You're fine, see?"
'Easy there lady,' I thought. 'Careful with my head. I just whacked that thing.'
"A fall like that and he still won't cry?" I noticed our family maid, Lilia, had also walked up.
Given how panicked they looked, I must have had quite the fall. I mean, I did land on my head. Maybe that meant I was going to be permanently stupid. My head was throbbing, I wanted to use a healing spell, but my Zenith and Lilia would see. My mother looked calm, though, so I probably wasn't bleeding. Just a bump, in all likelihood. She peered carefully at my head. The look n her face suggested that injury or not, she was taking this pretty seriously. Finally, she rested her head on my head once more.
"Just to be safe..." She began. "Let this divine power be as satisfying nourishment, giving one who has lost their strength the strength to rise again."
I felt my eyes widen as I realized what this was. The flames in the fireplace grew as the magical energy condensed around my mother's hand.
"Healing."
Green specks of light fell from my mother's hand, and the pain in my head was instantly gone.
"There we go." She joyfully said, "All better. You know, mommy used to be a pretty famous adventurer." Her voice was filled with pride.
I was internally screaming. Why was she using magecraft out in the open like this?! And without a bounded field no less. Do you want the Clocktower to assassinate you? My father, hearing the scream from earlier, poked his head through the door.
"What's the matter?" He asked.
He was breathing heavily, probably from swinging that sword around.
"Honey, you have to be more attentive," My mother chided, "Rudy managed to climb up onto the chair. He could have been seriously hurt."
My father seemed much more composed. "Hey, boys will be boys. Kid's got a lot of energy."
This kind of back-and-forth conversation was common between my parents. But Zenith wasn't backing down today, probably because I'd hit my head.
"Honey, he isn't even a year old yet. Would it kill you to show some more concern?"
"It's like I said. Falling and stumbling and getting bumps and bruises are how kids grow up to be tough. Besides, if he does get hurt, you can just heal him."
"I'm just worried that he might get hurt so badly that I can't heal him."
"He'll be fine." My father assured her. My mother clutched me more tightly, her face going red. "You were worried early on about how he wouldn't cry. If he's this much of a little scamp, then he'll be fine." My father continued, and then he leaned in to kiss my mother.
'Alright. Get a room.'
After that, my parents put me to bed and headed upstairs to make me a little brother or sister. I was left to wonder about what just happened. I was obviously born into a magus family, but which one?
....
In the wake of all that, I paid extra-close attention to the conversations my parents had. In doing so, I noticed them using many words I wasn't familiar with. Most of these were the names of countries and regions and territories. I didn't want to jump to conclusions, but with the second magic being a thing and the kaleidoscope being an old vampire who loved pulling pranks there was only one logical explanation.
I wasn't on Earth anymore. I was in a different world.
A world where magecraft wasn't shunned and the age of the gods had yet to fade.
If I lived well in this world, maybe I can rid myself of regrets lingering from my old life.
Maybe, I wouldn't make all the stupid mistakes I made.
Maybe I could finally live right.
....
....
Lilia used to be a royal handmaiden for the Asura Palace harem and a guardswoman for the newborn princess. However, due to a poisoned dagger and some circumstances, she ended up in the Greyrat household as a maid.
The child of the said household was giving her plenty of trouble to deal with. The child's name was Rudeus, and he was the spitting image of both his parents. His face was similar to Paul's, and he had Zenith's nose. His hair color was right in between blonde and light brown. He had the same mole Paul had under his left eye. Even his eye color resembled his parents, with his left eye green and his right one blue. When Lilia stared into them, she swore stars twinkled back at her in the green one and snowflakes fell within the blue. If you looked past that creepy smile he wore when he looked at women, you could see a kind of intelligence and knowledge not meant to be present in a child's innocent eyes.
It creeped her out so much she even tried a charm of banishment on the child, though it didn't work. He still had that disturbing smile the next day. Rudeus never went outside, even though he must have wandered the house at least fifty times by now. Lilia doubted there was a place the child didn't know of in the house. It was odd why he didn't go outside, but Lilia chalked it up to him being too scared.
....
And so, Lilia lived in fear for a year or so.
....
At some point, however, when he was one and a half years old, Rudeus's ever-unpredictable behavior changed. Instead of disappearing and reappearing at random, he would coop himself up in Paul's study and mutter to himself.
It wasn't exactly a study, just a room with a few books.
Rudeus would shut himself in there and not come out for the entire day. One day, Lilia took a quick peek, and there he was, staring fixedly at a book and muttering to himself while carving odd symbols on pebbles he asked Zenith to get for him. What he said didn't sound like any language, and the symbols he was carving seemed foreign. Almost alien, not from this world.
Besides, he was too young to be talking already, and certainly, nobody had taught him to read. Which meant the boy was just looking at books, not reading them, while making random sounds. The carving was probably just a way to waste time. Even so, Rudeus sounded like he was speaking with an actual, meaningful cadence for some reason, and the symbols he carved seemed well thought out.
'That's so strange.' Lilia thought as she watched the young boy carve yet another stone.
And yet, she strangely felt none of her usual revulsion toward him. Ever since the boy had taken to hiding away in the study, his hard-to-define, unsettling oddness had abated a fair bit. He'd still smile or laugh creepily, sure, but Lilia didn't get chills whenever she held him anymore. He had stopped burying his face into her chest and panting.
Why had she been so unsettled by him, anyway? In recent days she'd gotten a sense of earnestness and diligence from him that she was loath to interfere with. Lilia spoke with Zenith about it, and she'd gotten the same impression. From that point on, Lilia figured, maybe it was best to leave the boy be. Sure it might sound irresponsible, but Rudeus wasn't a normal child. Maybe, this was for the best.
Any interference might cause the boy to revert to the way he'd been before.
....
....
....
It had been roughly two years since I'd been reborn. My legs had finally developed enough that I could walk. Also, I was finally able to speak this world's language. Wanting to avoid the mistakes of my previous life, I'll need to make a plan.
First was setting up my base of operation.
I'd already set up a rune-based bounded field around the house. In this world, monsters, or what I call phantasmal beasts still roam the land of humans. The field was supposed to deter monsters from coming near this house. Recently, I set up another field around Paul's study. It should keep any outsiders oblivious of the mysteries kept inside. I still didn't know this world's opinion of magecraft. I'd seen Zenith use it out in the open, but better safe than sorry.
There were only five books in this house. I didn't know if books were expensive or not. Maybe it was because Paul and Zenith weren't big readers? Probably a combination of both. Paper was hard to produce in the old days. I looked at the writing on the cover and sighed--I couldn't read-- I'll have to learn all over again.
....
I made some peculiar discoveries with my magecraft.
One thing was that my energy output had greatly increased. I used to have an output of around six hundred units, but now it shot up to one thousand and six hundred. And the next day it became two thousand and six hundred. And the next four thousand and six hundred. I didn't know where all this Od was coming from. It certainly wasn't the ambient mana in the air, and my circuits still could only generate six hundred units. So how? I'll have to monitor this.
That aside, I made some discoveries regarding astromancy. It seemed the sky in this world is similar to the one in my old world. Almost every star was in the same spot, and the eighty-eight constellations were all present in the night sky. If I strained my eyes hard enough, I could make out the seven planets of our system. This was incredibly lucky, it meant my astromancy had a high chance to work in this world. I'll still have to make a few adjustments, but it should only take me a day or so.
I found a small purple gem in my workplace. It looked like amethyst. I turned it into a familiar and used it to scout the surrounding area.
I had some work to do, the unfinished projects from my past life weren't going to complete themselves.
....
....
About six months passed. I made even more discoveries about this world, more specifically, myself. I found out where all that extra Od was coming from.
I had something similar to a magic core in my body. I had a kind of pool that generated magical energy, and pathways connecting to that pool conducted the magical energy produced. The pathways were spread all over my body, branching out from the mana pool like branches. They were like my magic circuits, but couldn't generate energy themselves.
My magic circuits were also connected to this pool of mana, but they couldn't directly use the magical energy produced. I ran the energy this pool made through them once, and it felt like creating an artificial circuit. Even more painful than shoving a hot iron rod up your spine. The same thing happened when I tried to use Formalcraft, except this time it felt like I was dying.
I bet you're thinking, 'If your circuits can't even use the energy, then why was your Od output increasing?'
Remember the things I found in my circuits? They acted as a converter of sorts.
The mana of this world had some kind of...impurity mixed in. A different type of magical energy was mixed in with the kind my circuits could conduct, making the mana thicker. It was like trying to suck mud with a thin straw.
The "things" in my circuits acted as purifiers, removing the waste energy my circuits couldn't use and returning it to the mana pool. Surprisingly, the waste energy produced by my circuits could still be used by my mana pool.
It was an extremely efficient process, not letting a single drop of energy go to waste.
....
My eyes felt off these days. When it was winter, the vision in my right eye greatly increased. And when I looked up at the stars in the night sky, I somehow knew exactly where they were. It was as if they had mutated into mystic eyes.
....
....
Another six months flew by. Paul's been reading our two story books to me, now I can more or less read on my own. Once I could read, I found the contents of our books pretty interesting.
The five books in our house were "Wandering the World", "The Ecology and Weaknesses of Fittoan Monsters", "A Textbook of Magic", "The Legend of Perugius", and "The Three Swordsmen and the Labyrinth."
The last two were fantasy novels, but the other three made for good study. "A Textbook of Magic" really caught my attention. I was a magus, and seeking knowledge was basically my job. By reading this book, I learned the basics of the magic of this world.
First, Magic was categorized into three types, attack, healing, and summoning magic. That was it. There seemed to be lots of other things you could do with magic, but according to the textbook, magic was something birthed and developed in battle, and therefore not used much outside of combat.
Second, you need magical power, or mana, to use magic. Meaning anyone could use magic so long as they had magical power.
Third, there were only two ways of performing magic: incantations and magic circles. In the older times, magic circles were the norm, but incantations took over when one magician succeeded at greatly shortening them. The shortest ones took only five seconds. With my high-speed incantation skill, it probably won't even take one.
Four, the amount of magical power someone has is pretty much determined at birth. It was like my magic circuits--it wouldn't change naturally. But my Od output was growing day by day, so why was that happening? The book also said magical power was inherited. I knew my mother could use healing magic, so maybe it was alright to have some expectations for myself.
Still, I was uneasy. A magus believed in no one but themselves. I didn't trust my genes to do the heavy lifting.
....
For the time being, I need to study the magecraft, or "magic" of this world. I decided to try the simplest spell in the book. The book contained both incantation and magic circle spells, but I didn't want a magic circle exploding in the house. The book said the most proficient of wizards could cast without saying anything or drastically shorten spells.
I wasn't sure why this was possible, maybe it was because of familiarity? Well, anyway, I wouldn't know if I didn't try. With "A Textbook of Magic" in my left hand, I held out my right hand and began reciting the spell.
"Let the vast and blessed waters converge where thou seekest. I call forth a refreshing burbling stream here and now. Waterball."
I felt my mana flow into the various pathways connecting to my mana pool. It was different than activating my circuits. It felt like blood rushing through my body, pooling in my right hand, and then, it felt as if that blood had extruded through my palm, a sphere of water about the size of my fist manifested itself.
I looked at the ball of water floating in the air. I didn't condense the vapor in the air. I wondered if this was an advanced form of projection or flash air, maybe summoning.
A moment later, the ball of water fell and splattered onto the floor. It seemed concentration was required to maintain a spell. I groaned as I looked at the puddle on the floor. Using a simple water manipulation spell stored in my crest, I evaporated the water back into the atmosphere.
I held out my hand again and closed my eyes.
'Concentrate... Concentrate...' I felt the blood pooling in my hands again. 'That's it. There we go. Yeah, this feels right.'
I formed an image in my head as I recalled how things had gone last time. I wasn't sure how much mana I had, but I figured that I couldn't just keep using it over and over. I wanted to form a mental trigger, like the one I used for activating my circuits. Maybe it would help lessen the mana required. I drew a deep breath. My mana coursed through my body, from my toes to the top of my head, collecting in my right hand, filling it with power. Then, I felt that power pop into being before my palm. Now, bit by bit, so very, very carefully, my thoughts fell in line with the beating of my heart.
'Ocean, sea, lake, river, water, Waterball, wetness, wet...wet panties...'
Whoops. That slipped out. I calmed my mind and tried again.
'Water. Water water waterwaterwaterwaterwater--'
"Hah!" I cried out in pure reflex as my hand shot out before me, fingers spread.
In that instant, the ball of water came into being.
"Woah, what?"
Splish.
In my shock, the water ball fell to the ground.
"Wait." I hadn't shouted an invocation, had I? but the... why? Did a mental trigger really work that well? Was using magic without chanting really this easy? I was a complete beginner.
"If it's that easy, what's the point of having incantations at all?" I mused out loud.
This wasn't like a Greater Ritual, where incantations were an absolute requirement. Maybe the incantation acted as a mental trigger for beginners. I was used to using mental triggers to activate my circuits. Could that be why I could use it? Maybe using an incantation allows magic effects to trigger automatically? If this was the case then it had some advantages. It was easy to teach and easy to use.
"But maybe some people find the first option easier."
I flipped through the book, but there was nothing about casting spells without incantations. That was odd. What I'd just done wasn't difficult at all. Did I have some special talent? I doubted the other mages of this world weren't able to into it at all. After casting thousands of spells, the body would grow accustomed to incanting. Even if they tried to cast wordlessly, they wouldn't know how. Therefore, it wasn't something that was ordinarily done, and hence the book said nothing of it.
"Yeah! That makes sense."
All right. I had it. In the future, I'd first attempt a spell by chanting the incantation, then practice single-mindedly by mimicking how it felt without using the incantation.
"Okay, let's try this again," I muttered, holding my right hand out in front of me. A water ball formed in front of my hand and plopped to the ground.
And then another, and then another.
It took about twenty water balls for me to feel tired, and by that point, I was having too much fun to realize I was running out of mana. I passed out on the twenty-first.
....
"Honestly, Rudy," My mother said, "When you get tired, you need to go to the toilet first and then go to bed."
I woke up to find I'd fallen asleep with the book in hand, and wet myself in the meantime.
Dammit.
I couldn't believe I'd wet myself at my age. That was humiliating. Dammit. How could I-- Wait. I was only two years old. Anyways, my magic power seemed pretty high. Twenty water balls would be useful in battle. Right?
....
The next day I felt fine after conjuring my fortieth. It was after the forty-first I began to get tired.
"The hell?"
Given yesterday's experience, I know casting more would make me pass out, and I would like to avoid that. Then it hit me. That put my limit at forty-two Waterballs. Twice what I'd managed yesterday. I was right. My mana was increasing.
The following day I was able to cast eighty-four.
And the day after that my count increased to one hundred and sixty-eight.
I'd been lied to! What was all that crap about a person's magical reserves being set at birth?! People were just assigning limitations to talent when it didn't have any. How dare adults tell children where their limits were?!
"Guess I shouldn't believe everything I read," I muttered.
Maybe the book was saying there was an eventual cap on one's mana that you can't break no matter what. No. It was still too soon to come to that conclusion. I'll just continue to push my limits and see if my mana grows from there. It shouldn't be too difficult--I knew plenty of taxing magecraft spells.
....
....
I was right about my mana growing day by day. It doubled every day as long as I exhausted every bit of mana in my mana pool.
I was getting frustrated. No matter what I did, the damn spell refused to fly. Fire and wind spells just hovered in the air before dissipating, and earth spells would fall to the ground.
....
My magecraft was improving, though. I added a bounded field in my study that showed the stars above. That way I could use astromancy any time of the day. I was still in the middle of figuring out how to deploy it instantly, though. Currently, I was working on a fire spell called "Pyriphlegethon." It's supposed to look like any ordinary fireball spell, but when it makes contact the fires will flow like water and cover the entire target. This world had a stronger connection to the root, so establishing thaumaturgical foundations would be easier.
Besides that project, I also started working on my first mystic code: a cloak with a hood. I found some insects that looked like the silkworms of my past life in the nearby forest. I sent my familiar to catch some and found out they can indeed produce silk. Or a kind of substance resembling silk. It was going to take a long time before I could get all the cocoons required, though. I'll come up with the design of the cloak while I wait.
....
....
Two months later, thanks to a mistake in my studies, I managed to get a waterball to fly. As a result, it finally became clear why incantations were a key in the prosses. Turns out, spells have an order of operation. First, you call forth the element, set the size, and then the speed. This is where incantations would come in handy, without them, the caster had to hold that process all in their heads. It was harder to do, but it shortened the time required.
....
I'd recently made a breakthrough with my magecraft. Through my experiments, I found out my magic core couldn't channel pure Od. It seemed the energy my circuits considered "waste" was a key component in this world's magic. Without it, spells refused to work.
I decided to call the energy my circuits could channel Od, and the energy my core could channel Mana. That way, it would clear up some misunderstandings.
That said, the "waste" energy in Mana had some interesting properties. It behaved like a kind of ether or ether clump. It combined itself with Od, forming simple elements like water and earth, turning energy into matter. I guess this was how I could conjure water and earth without any nearby.
"Wait... ISN'T THIS THE FIRST MAGIC?!" I shouted as the stone bullet I conjured fell to the ground.
Yep, this was an imitation of the first magic, though it was a pale imitation. It could only create simple materials, and anything too large or complex was also off the table. That said, it still had plenty of uses. When I projected a sword using Od and filled the gaps within using Mana, the Mana reacted with the Od, forming an actual, non-hollow sword that didn't fade with time. In essence, if I reinforced a projection using Mana, the projected item would become "real" in a sense.
"I think I get it now." I muttered as I looked at the stone bullet and projected sword that still refused to fade, "Od is purer and can flow more freely but is weaker than Mana. That's why it can project more complex things but the projections fade with time, while Mana is thicker but more powerful, so it can only create simple raw materials, but the materials stay around much longer. By projecting something using Od and reinforcing it with Mana, the projected item gets the best of both worlds!"
As I said, I made a breakthrough with my magecraft. If I can master this, I might just recreate the first magic. I could feel the shit-eating grin spreading across my cheeks. The first thing I need to do is master structural grasp, projection, and reinforcement.
This was going to be an interesting project, that's for sure. I grinned as I projected a small dagger.
Maybe I'll break the laws of physics while I'm at it.
Notes:So, what do you all think? Not bad, I hope. I apologize if there are any mistakes. I am only a thirteen-year-old.
Anyways, Please like, share, follow, and comment.
As always, good luck with your game of life.