CHAPTER TWO

Magical Boy

I was six months old when I eventually managed to climb out of my crib for the first time in preparation to explore the world beyond the nursery. Well, I almost managed it. Sadly, my stubby little legs made for poor braces against the shock of falling onto the hardwood floor even with my fluffy blanket as a cushion. The pain that lanced up my feet caused me to cry out — which was super embarrassing, BTW — and alerted the nursemaids of my attempted escape.

Luckily, my nursemaid thought little of my fall other than a hyperactive baby fidgeting around too much in his crib. She was just relieved that I hadn’t injured myself badly.

“There-there, baby, I’ve got you,” she cooed into my ears while she rocked me back and forth in her arms.

No! I won’t give in to temptation this time! Away from me, temptress!

But I did. All it took was one look at those giant mounds of flesh, and I was salivating and unable to think of anything else. After feeding time came nap time, and as I drifted off to sleep, the last thought in my tiny little brain was that I would need a less painful way to escape.

That chance came the very next day during playtime. That’s what our nursemaids called it, but it was really practice time for us babies to crawl around on colorful mats and experiment with fluffy objects that I knew were meant to test our intellect.

“Number One’s still the quickest crawler of the lot,” one of the researchers observing us noted.

Yep, that’s the name they’d given me, Number One. It was as if I didn’t deserve to be given an actual name.

“He’s going for the blocks now,” a second researcher in a lab coat reported.

“Let’s see what he does with it this time,” his partner replied.

Just to poke fun at them, I’d once rearranged all the blocks on my side of the mat into two circles with one circle inside of the other. This meant absolutely nothing to me, but it had blown the researchers’ minds so much that they’d reported it to the major, and he, being as gullible as they were, had given me a brand new pacifier as a reward.

Unfortunately, that first stunt meant I was watched more than the other babies during playtime, and so I had to perform another thrilling act to satisfy their curiosity quickly.

“He’s stacking them up one by one!” the first researcher reported.

“At six and a half months, that’s impressive,” his partner replied. “What do you think it means?”

“I... I’m not sure,” the first researcher answered. “We should consult with the madam.”

Thank God for these two idiots. If it were anyone more observant, I might have gotten stuck there for the rest of playtime. They were out of the playroom in a flash, and in their rush, they’d conveniently left the door ajar.

That was easy... Now, let’s see if the other adults are up to no good again.

I glanced over to the opposite end of the room and found that the adults were indeed up to their usual shenanigans. Our guards and nursemaids, all young and single, were way too busy flirting with each other to pay much attention to their babies. This sort of thing happened daily like clockwork and was the main reason playtime was perfect for my disappearing act.

Lucky bastards... Just wait until I get to my teens. I’ll be one hell of a heartbreaker, you’ll see.

With a heavy heart caused by seeing a guard cop a feel of my nursemaid’s butt, I crawled over to the door and shoved my body through the bit of space between it and the frame. Once outside in the hall, I pumped my tiny fists in the air.

Freedom~~m!

I didn’t know until this moment that breaking the rules would be such a rush and resolved to do it more often as transforming into a rebel might be what would lead me to become extraordinary in this second life.

I’ve got about half an hour. More than enough time to complete my mission.

About a month ago, my nursemaid had carted my crib from the nursery to the white-paneled room with all the big machines inside it. On the way there, however, I’d spotted an open door that led into a place filled with treasure, the kind I hadn’t seen since my rebirth.

I crawled my way back to that special room while relying on my memory to lead the way. But it turned out my memory wasn’t super reliable as I was nearly caught by the adults after I’d crawled into the wrong room twice. That moment in the cafeteria was particularly harrowing because I could almost swear that one of the soldiers — a lean, brown-haired man with a stubble beard — actually smirked at the door where I’d hidden behind.

Fucking hell, that was close.

Eventually, I found the room I was looking for. It was little more than a square space that would have meant little to any other baby but me. You see, this room’s walls were lined in shelves on all sides, and these shelves were filled with books. Well, they looked more like research papers, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, can we?

Hell yeah~~h! I’ve hit the mother lode!

With hungry eyes, I pulled out a folder from the bottom row of the shelf to my immediate right. However, as I flipped open the cover and looked at the title scrolled on its first page, I discovered that there was a big flaw in my brilliant plan to secure information. I couldn’t read the damn thing.

Are you shitting me?!

Just because I could understand them well enough didn’t mean I would immediately know how to read and write the Armestys language. So much for thinking I was some kind of genius.

No, I won’t be deterred. I will learn the damn words even if I have to come in here every—

I was lifted off my feet. A second later and I was staring into the dark blue eyes of the brown-haired soldier who had followed me from the cafeteria.

Dammit, he did see me after all...

“What are you doing here...” He glanced down at the tag on my shirt. “...Number One...?”

The soldier frowned.

“They didn’t have to think too hard on that one, huh...”

The soldier caught sight of the thing wrapped in my hand. It was the first page of the research folder I’d pulled out of the shelf which I must have ripped out when he’d picked me up.

“A Case Study for Infusing Newborns with the Spark of Magic, by Matilda Meyer,” he read out loud.

My ears pricked up instantly. Was that really the title?

Through sheer force of good luck, I’d found a research paper that could have answered the most important question I had. The excitement of this discovery must have been apparent in my face because the soldier gave me a curious look in return.

“Were you... trying to read this?”

I wondered if I should risk it and clue him in on the fact that I was far more intelligent than a regular baby should be or do I let this chance to gather information slip away so I could continue blending in with the other babies of my nursery... Hell, I already knew my answer because I’d made a promise to never hold myself back from being extraordinary in this life. So I threw caution to the wind and nodded my head.

Seconds ticked by while he gazed at me with wonder while I was sweating buckets inside my pajamas.

Please, God, if there was ever such a thing as a nice Armestian soldier then let this man be it...

Then he laughed, causing the knotted tension in me to lessen considerably.

“I guess you’re what they call a genius baby, huh.”

Yes-yes, let’s go with that... It’s a way more convenient justification rather than believing there was an adult man inside of me.

I gave him my cutest baby grin, the one I’d been practicing in front of my reflection for just this kind of situation. And I could tell from the way his eyes lit up that he bought it. No wonder. I was, in my opinion, super adorable.

“Tell you what, Number One,” he drew me closer to his face so that our eyes were level, “if you promise not to go running off like you did today, then I’ll drop by your crib every day to read you a bit of these things you want to know about.”

Two little points of light flared out of the back of his eyes, causing his dark blue irises to shine momentarily. He meant for me to see them, as if to say he knew all about the ‘spark’ that interested me.

“What do you say?”

What else could I say? It was a pretty sweet deal, and so I agreed with an enthusiastic nod. And that was my first meeting with Lieutenant Leon Wolf.

The lieutenant showed up at my crib every day after nap time to spend a half-hour teaching me a ton of new things like how to pronounce and spell his name, which he’d done with the help of the nameplate pinned to his black uniform’s left breast pocket.

I wasn’t at a level where I could say it out loud, but I did manage, “woof,” whenever he appeared. He took this as a sign of progress. So did I, and at least I now knew which squiggly lines of letters stood for Lt. L. Wolf in modern Armes, which is what he called the country’s primary dialect.

None of the other military officers and researchers said much about his visits. Mostly because I think they were afraid of him as he had this unruly look built into his tall, muscular physique that would have intimidated most people. I also noticed the respect in the gazes they gave him whenever he passed them by, leading me to wonder if my new benefactor might actually be an upstanding guy.

As for the major, he didn’t interfere in anything that seemed to speed up our growth as test subjects. And I believe the “Woof” he’d heard me call Lieutenant Wolf bought us his silent assent.

Still, to appease his superior, Lieutenant Wolf made sure to teach me about the fatherland first and foremost.

“Armestys is a unitary state bordered on three sides by hostile neighbors who hate us for our rapid technological and arcane developments, impressive cultural and social achievements, and most importantly, the unrivaled strength of our military,” he lectured in a dry tone that made me think he didn’t completely buy into the propaganda. He even yawned twice during his speech.

Lieutenant Wolf also showed me a map of this world he called Aarde.

There were two major continents on the east and west with a third smaller continent at the lowest point between the other two. The eastern continent was called Ashya while the western continent was named Eura. Both were populated by humans.

Hearing this caused my face to fall as my dreams of a fantasy world of elves, dwarves, and sex-crazed goblins had been shattered. Wolf didn’t notice he’d just crushed a child’s dream, though.

“Armestys is over here.” He placed a finger on the easternmost area of the central region of Eura on the map. “The Republic of Essex to the north, the Queendom of Leonia in the west, and the Turian Empire to the south — they’re all our enemies, kid.”

As for that third continent at the bottom which he called The White Havens, Lieutenant Wolf had only a few words.

“We never go there unless we’re looking to die,” he said in a warning tone. “Humans aren’t allowed in that place...”

Could my fantasy dream still be salvaged in this White Haven? That thought lightened my mood considerably.

It took another two months for Lieutenant Wolf to finish with history lessons before he finally moved on to my first taste of magic.

Magic, as Lieutenant Wolf explained, was the science of transforming matter into energy and vice-versa. This practice of altering reality to suit the needs of the caster was what the people of this world called sorcery.

“The Law of Conservation states that all matter is energy. Therefore, all energy can be assembled into matter while all matter can be disassembled back into energy,” Lieutenant Wolf recited, before adding, “This first rule of magic is easily witnessed within the two primary schools of sorcery.”

As he picked up a glass of water in his hand, Lieutenant Wolf’s eyes lit up like before, almost like a spark had come to life inside their depths.

“Transfiguration makes use of a caster’s energy to disassemble matter into a more malleable state so that its material can be reassembled into a new form,” he explained.

Lieutenant Wolf tightened his grip on the glass, causing blue sparks — the kind that flies out when metal grinds against metal — to pop out of the tips of his fingers just before the water inside the glass turned to ice.

“Goo, goo, goo!” I screamed in delight, although I was fanboying even more internally. Finally... goodbye, mundane world! Hello~~o, magical powers!

Lieutenant Wolf pulled out the chunk of ice he’d transfigured from the glass and placed it into the palm of his right hand.

“Conjuration makes use of a caster’s energy to disassemble matter into elemental energy which then serves to fuel the power of a spell,” he explained.

As the lieutenant’s eyes lit up once more, the chunk of ice in his right hand began disintegrating into these blue sparks that floated over to his left palm to form a floating disc of ice that was roughly the same volume as the water it had taken energy from.

With his now free hand, Lieutenant Wolf opened the window beside my crib and launched his ‘Ice Wheel’ across the lawn so that it would tear through the trunk of a tree twenty meters away.

That was freaking awesome!

And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Every eight-month-old baby in that nursery had looked up with faces alight with wonder at what they just witnessed.

“You brats pissed your diapers watching that, didn’t you?” Lieutenant Wolf teased.

They probably had. I certainly did. Luckily, my nursemaid had time to change my diaper while the lieutenant got chewed out by the major for causing harm to a tree of the fatherland without permission. He came back to me, red-faced and irritable, with one final lesson for the day.

“I talked about how we use energy to manipulate matter, but can you guess where this energy comes from?” he asked.

It took me a few seconds, but it eventually dawned on me. As for an answer, I smacked my chest with my palm King Kong style.

“That’s right... It’s what we call the spark, and here,” he poked me playfully in a spot below my chest, “is where your spark of magical energy lives.”

He formed a circle with his hands, with all the fingertips of one hand touching all the fingertips of the other.

“From now on, I want you to feel for that spark inside you and imagine it spreading throughout your body until you can feel that softly humming sensation on the tips of your fingers and toes and eyes.”

He inverted his circle so that both his thumbs would be at the top.

“If you can release that spark throughout your body, you’ll turn yourself into a conduit that can draw the surrounding natural energy into yourself, allowing you to become what most people on Aarde can only dream of becoming... an arcanist.”

“Um, lieutenant,” my nursemaid, who’d sat by my side for his explanation, cut in, “Number One isn’t even a year old yet. I don’t think he’ll understand...”

“He can...” Lieutenant Wolf ruffled my hair. “He definitely can.”

It would be exactly three years and four months later, mere days after my fourth birthday, when I would finally show the results of my training.

Just as I did every morning since he taught it to me, I sat up in my crib, resumed the lotus position, and formed a circle with my hands. Then I began searching for that spark inside me once again.

It was easy now as I’d gotten used to the warm sensation of that bundle of magical energy sitting within my core. The challenge was to send it out across my body like butter scraped over a slice of bread before it snapped back into place at the center of my being.

Come on, Number One... Feel that spark crackling through my veins and traveling to every cell in my body like a shock... just like yesterday.

Then it finally happened. I felt my fingers and toes hum with power before feeling the heat grow at the back of my eyes.

Whoa... this feels so trippy.

Without thinking, I placed a hand on the metal railing at the right side of my bed — and the magic tore it apart in an alarming shower of sparks that caused the other toddlers to scream in fright.

Oh, crap...