Part 1

Life as a baby is pretty easy.

Sleep, eat, play, explore, sleep again, eat again, explore again, bathe, bedtime story, sleep and repeat.

I had no complaints.

It really felt like a vacation.

The only thing that was lacking was the conversation.

As a baby I was still not able to speak or understand anything that my parents said.

Sure in the past few months I had picked up some words other than my name like Arthur(my father's name), Elizabeth or Liz( my mother’s name) and the words food, rice, water and bed.

Still those couldn't even be called progress.

But mother and father were not too eager to teach me how to talk and without external help I couldn't learn a new language.

Actions had to be taken.

I decided to grab this matter into my own little hands.

For the next six months I spent all of my energies on the language matter.

Whenever my parents were talking I would make a mind note of how that word sounded and try to repeat it.

Whenever that word or a similar one came out during a conversation I would specifically act excited and try to repeat it again.

This was all to show my parents that this child was willing to learn to speak and that by seeing this they would put a little more effort in teaching.

It was probably because they were both young so they didn’t know much about kids that they were not too focused on teaching me, also I had never seen other relatives so I really don't know if they are still alive or if there is friction between them.

Either way my little plan worked better than expected.

I had never seen mother so happy.

Was she thinking I was some kinda genius?

[Sorry mom you are probably just a couple of years older than me so it shouldn't be such a great feat hahaha]

Since then I started spending more and more time with mother.

She prepared these pieces of paper with drawings and writings on them. Using those my understanding of the language rose at an incredible speed. In just a couple of months I was able to understand to a certain degree what my parents were saying and even recognize some words in the bedtime story books.

Other than that I was now able to speak a few words.

This was the second time I saw father drunk.

It was an afternoon right after my post-lunch nap.

I was sitting on my mother’s lap on the bench under the window “studying” the papers with her.

Until then I always tried to speak but what came out of my mouth were just random mumbling and weird sounds. As time passed the words started to sound at least somewhat similar but never clear or understandable.

Until that day.

As she was showing me the drawings of foods I turned my head towards her.

“What is it Raph?”

She asked, probably not even expecting a response.

But I tried to answer anyway and even to my surprise what came out this time was a completely understandable word.

“Mama”

Her eyes started sparkling.

She reached her cheeks with her hands.

She was speechless if not for a ‘kyaaa’ kind of sound.

“Arthur, Arthur come here!”

Her high pitched screams really were hurting my ears but nothing I could do about it, she was happy.

Father was in my bedroom, or you could call it his office.

As soon as he heard his name called twice he came running like a madman almost falling down the stairs while trying to jump the corner.

[This man spends four hours a day training and now almost trips down the stairs? Really Arthur, what kind of side are you showing to your son?]

“What happened? Is Raph ok?”

As I expected he panicked thinking that something happened to me.

“He said ‘mama’! Raph spoke his first words!”

And of course he got as much excited as mother and started making little jumps in his place.

“What about me, did he say ‘dad’?”

[Ahhh so this is what you were curious eh father!Hahaha]

I decided to have a little fun with him and bully him a little if he asked me to say his name.

He fell right into my trap.

“What about daddy Raph? Can you say ‘dad’?”

I looked at him and faked an interested glare.

Then I took out my tongue and showed it to him.

The look on his face changed from hopeful to depressed in an instant.

Both me and mother laughed a little.

She was trying to cover it but I could see clearly.

She had a really smug look on her face.

When father faced away from me I knew it was the time for the second phase of my plan.

“Dad”

He suddenly turned towards me.

Such a joyful face with a grin that extended throughout his whole face and sparkling eyes.

“Aahhh he said dad! Liz he said dad ! Ohh my boy Raph is such a good boy!”

While showering me with praises he grabbed me from my armpits and lifted me in the air making me spin around.

Mother let out a light laugh.

When father finally let me down he was still unable to contain his happiness.

“Did you hear that Liz? Our son finally spoke his first words!”

“Yes honey I did hear it, looks like the drawings had a good effect on him.”

“But why do you think he made that face when I asked him to say ‘dad’?”

“Ara- I think little Raph likes to bully you”

“Whaaat?!”

At that moment I couldn't contain my laugh anymore.

Mother also started laughing as she gained confirmation of her theory.

Father looked a bit let down but he soon snapped out of it and started caressing the top of my head.

That night father got black out drunk again.

Part 2

In the next four months my vocabulary increased drastically of both spoken words and understood ones.

Now I could ask for things in a pretty basic way like

“Mom, up”.

Or I could even say “please “ and “thank you”.

Thanks to the papers with pictures I was also able to recognize a lot more written words in the bedtime story books and I could even pronounce most of them.

Whenever I pronounced a new word I was showered with praises especially from my mother.

Seems like she had high expectations for me.

During those months I noticed that my strength also increased.

By the time I reached a year and three months I was fully able to walk around most of the house(I still had to crawl up the stairs tho) and have easy conversations.

Even the daughter of the neighbors was surprised by my absurd learning speed.

Little did she know that I had three times her age.

So with my newfound ability to have conversation another step into understanding this world was made. It was now time to gain information and since I still couldn't properly read the only way to do so was by asking.

By asking mother and father I found out some interesting things.

We were what one would call a medium class family.

Mother actually came from a noble family from a nearby land, her full name was Elizabeth Steeder but she left and ran away from her house one year before her pregnancy.

The red flag with a silver deer that was in my room was actually a memento of her family ties: her family’s banner. She has now lost contact with her family.

Father was not a noble but a knight.

His whole family had a tradition of being knights so he was forced to follow it too.

That's why he works as a knight even now.

His whole family died during an assault at the city where his father was serving as a royal knight. The city fell and the only ones who were able to escape were my father and his older sister Claire. Even father doesn't know where aunt Claire is right now but he said she is an adventurer so she probably is travelling around the world.

Father’s full name is Arthur II Bluscale which makes my name Raphael Bluscale.

We live in a city called West Migur, the twin city of East Migur.

A peaceful city near the sea where fishing and trading were the most common source of income. A big river called ‘white sky’, because of its colorful rocky riverbed and the extremely transparent water, passed through the city to end in a small harbour where all sorts of trades were held.

We lived in the residential area, an area that could be considered as medium, not poor but not even rich, the majority of the population of the city lived here.

The big houses that I described as ‘richer’ composed the so-called ‘wealthy’ area where big shots of the knights' families and wealthy merchants lived.

In the castle lived a noble who was proclaimed the lord of this city, but that did not interest me that much.

Mother worked as a healer. A healer is someone who uses magic and herbs to cure illnesses or injuries. So the times when she was going out and didn't come back with groceries were the times when she was working as a healer.

Father was working in the military of the city as a knight trainer. In case of war he would be called to actively participate but in those normal days he was just a trainer doing morning lessons with the cadets.

What really piqued my interest was my mother’s job.

The healer.

Specifically the whole magic part...it was a revelation!

Magic existed in this world!

I was so excited that whenever I could I would bring up the topic and ask for information about magic from mother and father.

Turns out that not everyone can use magic, only about 40% of the population can do it. It had something to do with the body and the ‘flow of mana’ but I didn't really understand it.

Father can’t use magic while mother can, but only the low level one.

Her specialty is healing magic and, since she was younger, she always liked to work with childs and sick people, that's why she chose to do this kind of job.

Through my ceaseless questions I discovered that magic is directly connected to mana.

Supposedly mana is something that flows inside everyone’s bodies and only the so-called 40% of people can get access to this flow and manipulate it.

By manipulating mana one can use magic.

Depending on the quantity of mana used and the difficulty of controlling the flow, magic is divided in various tiers, but I had no information on the matter.

I got a little worried when I heard all of this since I was not able to feel anything flowing through my body and mother noticed this. She reassured me that I was still too young to feel the flow and that only time would tell me if I was able to use magic, but the fact that she was able to do so increased the odds in my favour.

I guess genetics had something to do with mana too.

Part 3

“Mom, how can I learn to use magic?”

“Mmhh sweetie you are far too young to use magic but if you are really curious why don't you ask dad for some easy magic books? Im sure there must be something in his library!”

“Thanks mom”

[Why didn't I think of the library from the start?]

Magic really had me curious and impatient.

I wanted to learn it as soon as possible!

To think that there was even a small possibility that I could be able to use magic and cast enchants like in the mangas I used to read when I was younger.

I was really tingling with excitement.

Of course father helped me in my search for magic knowledge and gave me a couple of easy books to start with.

One was very old and full of dust.

The leather cover was a brownish color that was beginning to fade away due to old age. The book was thick, probably had at least 300 pages. It didn't look really beginner like but I trusted father’s judgement.

The other book looked a lot newer.

The cover was a deep blue color with white writings on it. It was smaller compared to the other one. Unlike the first book the title was readable and it was “Introduction to the ways of magic and its history”, the author was one called Sigur Thallad or something similar, I still wasn't really good with complicated words.

Due to the fact that reading was still very hard for me, and I couldn't understand a lot of words that were far too technical for an untrained brain like mine, I had to be helped by mother or father.

Even though father can't use magic his knowledge on the subject was on par with mother’s.

And so the slow assimilation of the information contained in the magic books began.

It was autumn and my mother’s trees in the garden were starting to lose their color when I first began to study those books.

Even the city itself started to change its colors.

I didn't notice it before, maybe because I was still too young or I was too busy with my thoughts, but the cold months were not as cold as the ones in my previous life, also I had yet to see snow. Probably it was because of the sea close to us or maybe it was just the type of weather of this land.

There were still too many things I didn't know about this world.

But first thing first I had to understand magic.

I was dead set on learning it.

I really enjoyed reading on the bench under the window and made a habit of it.

Whenever father or mother were looking for me the first place they went looking was the bench.

It was really nice and rewarding learning something completely new by myself but it took me a considerate amount of time to study just two books.

It took about four months and it was now winter so the time I was spending inside the house increased a lot since I didn't really enjoy the strong winds.

What I learned from those two books was pretty useful to get the gists of what magic really is.

The flow that mother told me about could be compared to blood, even though the magic flow called mana was not tangible like blood. The flow is something every creature has be it human or monster, even the world itself manifested mana in trees, rocks, rivers, basically everything has mana.

In order to manipulate mana the first step was to get in contact with it’s flow.

The books said that the age at which one is able to get in contact could be very variable due to the person’s body. For example mental strength was an important variable, a healthy body without illnesses was also a variable and the durability of the muscles could also be impactful. As soon as the first contact was made the body would start to change a little and open what were called the ‘mana channels’ which were basically the ‘tubes’ where mana flow. The wider, stronger and faster those tubes were the easier it was for one to manipulate mana.

Magic was divided in three categories:

attack magic, defence magic and utility magic.

Attack magic was the active type of magic used to injure the enemy, the strength of an attack depends on the quantity of mana that was being manipulated.

Only very capable individuals were able to willingly choose the output of the manipulated mana and decide the strength of the attack, normal mages used a set quantity of mana. Attack magic came in four different main types : fire magic, water magic, earth magic and wind magic. Strong mages were also able to mix those four main types to create a sub type of magic, like mud.

Defence magic is the type of magic that a mage uses to defend himself or others. It's divided into two categories: barrier magic and shield magic.

Barrier magic is a large scale magic that consumes a lot of mana. It's used to create a certain environment inside the barrier, an example from the book was the water type barrier, a barrier that drastically decreased the strength of the majority of fire type magics attacks while increasing the effect of the water type ones.

While barrier magic is mostly used in large scale scenarios shield magic is used to influence just a few individuals. Shield magic is used to create a certain type of shield that protects the caster from harm. An example was the Euros Lower Shield magic, a shield that protects from low strength physical attacks and consumes low quantities of mana with time.

The last type of magic was the utility one.

Mother was particularly skilled in this scope since she was a healer.

Utility magic is divided in two categories: healing and boost.

As the name says, healing magic is supposed to mend to one injury whether they be internal or external injuries. As the seriousness of the injury increases the tier and difficulty of the healing magic also increases.

In my books tiers were just mentioned here and there but I had no proper knowledge on the matter.

The other type of utility was the boost.

A boost is a type of magic whose concept is similar to healing but the effect differs. Boost magic is used to increase the status of someone, it could be both physical by increasing one’s resistance to injuries and magical by decreasing one’s waste of mana.

This was pretty much all I learned in four months.

Part 4

After the first two books I started reading some others but the magic knowledge contained in the new ones was not much helpful since it was mostly a repetition of the previous books I read.

Other than reading the few magic books in the library and asking my parents for information I could not do much if not waiting for the time I could finally be able to make contact with my mana flow.

But waiting was never my style.

I got impatient.

I began to obsessively re-read the books to find a clue on how to accelerate the process.

Nothing good came out of it unfortunately.

So I had to change my approach.

The first book I read said that in order to have a better mana flow a body needed to be strong and healthy, also mind strength was mentioned too.

The easy way to increase my chances of getting in contact with my flow would be to strengthen my body with training, but I'm still too young to do so.

[Aaaahhh damn this little body! If I only was older I could be doing exercises like father!]

The healthy body matter was not something I had control over so the only remaining way was to strengthen my mind.

The only thing that I could think of was meditation.

In my past life, before an important event, I used to meditate to calm myself and while doing so I could sometimes feel like I was in total control of my body, the feeling of my pulse and the tension of my muscle, those were things I could clearly sense while meditating.

I thought that maybe by ‘feeling ‘ my body like that I would gain some advantage, or at least some useful information on my mana flow. It was a hunch for sure but it was better than doing nothing at all.

From that day onward my daily schedule changed.

I would make an effort to wake up earlier in the morning and meditate in my room. Of course I didn't wake up as early as father, I had no intention of throwing my easy peaceful life just for a hunch.

After an hour or so of meditation I would go downstairs to have breakfast.

Since I had now finished growing my teeth, mother used to prepare me a different breakfast from the past. I was now eating what in my past life would be classified as cereals but rougher. Those cereals were basically small chunks of dried meat minced and sank in what I thought was some strange type of eggs.

Anyway, they were surprisingly good, easy to chew and very tasty.

The only downside was that they were really salty so I always had a cup full of orange juice.

After breakfast, if it was not too cold, I would go in the garden and read a little bit under one of mother’s trees.

Whenever I got tired of reading I liked to look at the people passing by near the house.

Since I lived away from the main road the people that passed by were not that much but this little activity of mine still gave me some insight of what the people were in the city.

The answer? Fishermans and merchants.

Those two types were the most common and I soon got tired of looking at them always doing the same things and talking about the same stuff.

Around noon mother would come call me to have lunch. Lunch was richer than breakfast and mother really liked to change the menu so that I would never be bored of it. Rice was always present though, not that I disliked it..I'm still a japanese in the soul!.

Other plates were bread and mixed cold cuts, dried meat, fruits, eggs or salads.

After lunch my blessed siesta.

As soon as I wake up from my sieta father comes home from work.

I would then get on with some studying or just being lazy in my wooden bench or in one of the armchairs in the library.

Other than magic I got also interested in the history of this world so I would sometimes read history books or fairy tales or legends.

Dinner was when the family would talk the most.

The topics varied from father’s work to my discoveries in the library to mother’s shopping or work related trips. It was really a warming and satisfactory moment of the day. Probably because of the trauma left by my family in my past life but every time I was talking with my parents like this I felt like I was getting closer to them. I could still feel that I did not blindly trust them but I was certainly seeing them as family.

Dinner’s menu was mainly composed of meat, whether it was fish meat or animal meat the way mother cooked it was delicious every time.

Thanks to mother’s cooking skills I got to experience a lot of new tastes that I would have never dreamt of in my past life.

After dinner I would wait for my father to finish his training to take a bath together.

It was a father-son moment that he really held dear.

He liked to brag about how his body was in top form and that when I would grow up he would train me hard in the sword to make me a fine swordsman, even stronger than him.

I liked that man.

Despite his rude and carefree look he was a very sensitive and caring person.

Once the bath was finished it was again time to meditate.

I would spend up to three hours meditating before falling asleep due to tiredness or boredness.

Since I grew up quite a bit my cradle was now replaced with a small wooden handmade bed.

[I wonder when I’ll have a normal looking bed]

I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong.

The bed itself was very comfy and I rarely woke up with back pain.

But still, a now 29 years old man sleeping in a bed just a little bigger than a cradle sounded like a joke.

Living like this, my daily routine didn't change much for the next year and a half.