Kari's POV

I wrapped my favourite red shawl around my shoulders as I stepped out into the street. Lucy had invited me over for dinner, which was nice. We haven't had a get together for a while now so we're long overdue a catch up. Dunno why she made such a weird excuse for it though, claiming that their baby was interested in magic. I mean, magic is the awesomist and I'll happily talk about it all day, but I prefer there to be some sort of functional ear on the receiving end. They need to know when to smile and nod at appropriate times. A one-year-old kid wouldn't cut it. To be fair, that isn't going to stop me from trying. Early indoctrination for the win!

I sighed, realising I was getting worked up again. This is probably why I've never managed to get any boyfriends to stick around. Magic is not boring though, whatever they claim. Yes, it can get complicated, and the class and skill trees are so convoluted that you'd need a five-dimensional map to plot them out properly, but it's totally worth it. I really don't understand anyone who slaves away all day with a hoe when they could just wave a hand and have the soil rearrange itself on demand!

I reached Lucy and David's home, giving an energetic knock. David was the one who answered.

"Welcome. Glad you could make it."

"And thanks for inviting me. I'm always willing to eat food I didn't have to cook. Doubly so if I don't have to clean up afterwards either. Hi Lucy!"

"Good evening."

"And you must be Peter, our new miniature magic enthusiast. It's nice to have a co-conspirator at last."

"Hewwo Kari."

Aww, he greeted me back. How cute! I waved my hand, conjuring up a few wisps of flame and made them dance in intricate patterns. It wasn't a spell, rather an application of [Greater Mana Control] and [Mana Finesse] that only held together as long as I concentrated, but it sure looked pretty and was great for impressing the kiddies.

"Wow, prethy"

Hehe. I shouldn't really feel smug about showing off to a toddler, but I can't help it. I've gotta say, he communicates well given his age. Maybe he can lend an appreciative ear after all?

"So I hear you wanted me to teach you about magic?"

"Yesh, I have mana shenshe ath wevew two, buth no idea where tho go from here."

Umm... What? Putting aside the contents of that sentence, the fact remained that it was a sentence. I looked up at Lucy in shock, but she seemed completely unperturbed. David was grinning madly.

"Did Lucy not warn you? Wanted to save the surprise?"

"Not at all. I was very clear that Peter wanted to learn magic."

"Well, yes, but I thought you were joking. Okay, in retrospect, you were pretty explicit about it. Not sure why I thought it was a joke."

Peter tilted his head at me in confusion. Don't you start too! Fortunately, he didn't, leaving David to chime back in.

"His intelligence stat is eleven. Don't worry, he can take whatever you throw at him."

...

"Hello? Kari? You okay in there? I was expecting a snide comeback of 'what, higher than yours?'"

...

Right, reboot. There are four adults in this room. One of them just happens to be tiny. What was it he actually said? He had [Mana Sense]? Then that one-year-old kiddie is already level three? How the heck did he manage to learn [Mana Sense] in the first place?

"How the h..." I caught myself and stopped in time. No swearing in front of kiddies! Let's try again, a little more politely.

"Learning [Mana Sense] was the correct start. The next step is to get [Commoner] to level ten, then switch class to [Apprentice Mage]. Once you switch class, you can start picking up some basic spells or try to learn more direct mana control skills. But if you don't mind me asking, how did you learn [Mana Sense]? That's not the sort of thing you should have been able to do without a teacher."

"Feewing outh my mana poow whiwe draining ith with inshpecthion."

Whatever he has in the brains department, he's sorely lacking in tongue and mouth... Or maybe not? It's not as if any other kid that age would do any better. It must be horrible having such a disconnect between mental and physical abilities. I can see why magic would appeal. Wait... I received yet another shock as I finally processed what he had said. He also has [Inspection]? Then he's level five? Bloody hell, what are they feeding this kid? Direct injections of Kendra's coffee? Must keep calm...

"Yes, that would work: It's always easiest to sense your own mana. I'm impressed you worked it out on your own, though. In fact, I'm impressed at everything. Right, I've decided. I'm making you my apprentice!"

Oops, that started well, but went downhill towards the end.

"Oi, that's a bit hasty, isn't it? You haven't even sat down for dinner yet."

"Hasty? As if I have a choice. At the rate he's going, he'll surpass me before he's even out of diapers. I need to step in while I've still got a chance!"

Yup, I definitely lost control there. And now Peter was frowning at me. Why? Does he not want to learn from me? Oh. I just realised what else I had said in the middle of my excitement. Does he... No, I'm not even going to ask. There may not be many, but there are at least some questions that are best left unanswered.

"Okay, fine. Dinner first."

Dinner turned out to be a vegetable pie. Lucy isn't the best cook in the world, but in terms of ratio of tastiness to my own personal effort put towards the meal, she's definitely got me beat. You can't divide by zero after all. Peter was munching on slices of carrot, apparently not yet up to the difficult task of eating a slice of pie. Glad I'm not a baby; that would really suck. We spent the meal sharing news and chatting, but eventually it was time to get back to the actually important topic. Time to put on my serious face.

"So, I'll try to give you a bit of an outline of how the magic class and skill trees work. You start off by learning [Mana Sense] to unlock the [Apprentice Mage] class. Once you take [Apprentice Mage] some basic spells will immediately unlock in the System's shop. The exact spells you have available will correspond to the affinities of mana you are attuned to. Putting the description of affinities aside for a moment, taking any two spells from a particular affinity will unlock a new class for that affinity. For example, if you learn [Warm] and [Ignite], you would be able to change class to [Fire Mage]. If you take classes from multiple affinities, you will unlock higher ranked complex affinity versions. For example, I've maxed out [Earth Mage] and have now switched to [Life Mage]. Once I max this one, then I'll be able to take [Wood Mage]."

"Wow, you've maxed outh a ranw three cwash?"

"Ah, no. You see, [Apprentice Mage] is a rank one class. Any class with 'apprentice' in the title is rank one. It's not something that comes up for most people, since apprentice classes are only seen relating to magic or combat. After that, simple affinity classes are rank two and complex affinity rank three, so I've completed a pair of rank one classes and one rank two. It's far too early to start talking to you about rank four magic classes, and I don't know much about them, anyway. I'm unlikely to reach those heights in my lifetime.

"Choosing the path you want to take will require you to know the affinities you are attuned to. Your affinities are fixed at birth, a property of your soul itself, so you only need to check once and your options will never change. There are three ways to find out. The first two are specialised magic tools and the rank four version of your [Inspection]. I guess a sufficiently puissant mage could replicate the effects of the magic tools with their own mana, too. In any case, those options aren't open to us as we have neither the manpower nor the tools. Which leaves option three, the blatantly obvious one. You pick up [Apprentice Mage] and go look in the shop. The disadvantage being that you have to actually switch to a mage class before you can find out your options, but I get the impression that you're going to want to pick a mage class regardless of what affinities you are attuned to, so it doesn't matter.

"There are fourteen affinities, split into seven pairs. Fire and ice. Earth and air. Water and lightening. Light and darkness. Life and death. Body and soul. Space and time. You can be attuned to one side of each pair at most. Some pairs might be missing for you completely; very few people are attuned to either space or time, for example. Talking about the abilities and limitations of each affinity is a humongous topic, and to be honest, I've only researched my own options in any sort of detail. I can give you a brief overview of each some other time.

"And with that, we've covered one option of the many. While it's the route I know best because its what I'm aiming for myself, there are other options available. It might be that you don't want to specialise in individual affinities at all, in which case [Apprentice Mage] lets you pick up [Mana Control], which in turn lets you switch to the [Thaumaturgist] class. Going that route allows you to manipulate raw mana and spin it into whatever attuned affinity you desire, without the aid of spells. Your strength in any one affinity would be reduced in exchange for flexibility. Or maybe crafting will be more your thing, in which case you can take [Basic Runecrafting] and become an [Enchanter]. Then there are all the support skills you might want to consider aiming for. [Mana Finesse] is definitely worth it, and if you're going to be casting a lot, then [Enhanced Mana Recovery] or [Enlarged Mana Pool] are handy. Finesse comes from practise while holding a mage class, recovery is unlocked by getting [Meditation] to level ten, and [Enlarged Mana Pool] by running out of mana repeatedly."

"Soundsh wiwe ith thawesh wothsh of shouw pointhsh tho wearn magic."

"Indeed. Although it helps that spells are half price compared to regular skills, the same as combat arts. And now that I've gone over the basics, what else do you want me to talk about? You can't take your next step until you finish up [Commoner], but we can talk all you like."

"Umm, you've awready covered pwenthy for thoday, thanwsh very much."

What? Nooo... My precious ally! I've hardly talked at all! Why did you build up my hopes just to mercilessly dash them? Well, even if he has no questions for me, I have plenty for him.

"So what's up with this whole hyper-intelligent baby thing, anyway? I mean, I know there's been some weird rumours going around the village, but I wasn't expecting this."

"He was born with a high rank intelligence boosting trait, that's all. It took some getting used to, I'll admit, but to us it's normal now. I suspect that we're going to be in for a serious shock if we ever have another child though."

David was peering into a plain, unadorned wall as he said that. Why a wall? Oh, actually I could hear a faint screaming coming from that direction. Was Camus and Clana's house that way? Didn't they have a kiddo of their own recently? Yup, I could easily imagine what David was thinking.

"You should offer to swap for a few days. Get the proper full baby experience for yourselves."

Lucy and David grimaced at each other.

"No thanks. I think we'll stick with what we were blessed with."

I grinned at them. Can't say I blamed them. I spent the rest of the evening impressing Peter with cantrips and little spells. From his expression he was definitely trying to follow what I was doing with [Mana Sense]. It was good practise and would help with levelling, but probably wouldn't actually show him anything useful. [Mana Sense] was just too coarse for that, even at high levels. It was a skill more for detecting the presence of mana than for being able to see what the mana was actually doing. But then all rank one skills were like that. That's why they were rank one. If they were powerful, they'd be higher rank. But if this is what he could do now, then I looked forward to seeing what the kid would achieve in the future. Maybe he'd even make it to rank four. I grinned to myself as I headed home. Tonight had been a very interesting evening, and I would be waiting impatiently for the opportunity to hold some serious lessons.