Learning to walk sounded comically easy on paper, but it sure wasn’t when your head was taller than your chubby little legs.

Al had been going at it for a couple of days already, and the best he could manage was standing up while hugging the wall. He would really love a dexterity rank-up right about now, but he knew it wouldn’t be that easy. He really needed to man up.

Making full use of his Will, he managed to stand straight without assistance after trying for a week, surprising all the adults at the orphanage. He heard the word “genius” being thrown around a couple of times too.

Kan-wan, who was actually called Khan-wan (baby ears are a bother) came to play with Al much more often now, and every time, he bragged about the new tricks he had learned. At the beginning it was walking along the wall, then without touching it, and a few weeks later, he was practically running. He did still fall over often, but it was an improvement from being stuck in a blanket.

Al then spent several weeks listening to the adults talk, and he slowly grasped the meanings of the words. His Intelligence seemed to make remembering these kind of things easier, but he still forgot some words from time to time.

By the time he was 8 months old, he had more or less perfected the art of speech. There were a lot of words he didn't know the meaning of, and his mouth muscles sometimes betrayed him though, so he had never tried to speak in front of anyone because he wanted to surprise Khan-Wan with his fluency, and the time was ripe.

Al had realised some time ago that he saw Khan-Wan as some sort of motherly figure, which was weird since in reality she was barely a decade older than him, but Al had never really gotten a taste of motherly love, the closest being some sort of cooperation, so he welcomed it with open arms.

When Al walked into the kitchen, where all the adults ate, and said “Dwook, I can tawk now!” He was greeted by an assortment of faces that went from incredulous to nigh-horrified. This confused Al. “What’s wong?” He said.

Khan-Wan was the first to react. “Al, is that...you?”

“ ‘Course i's me! Cawn't you see me!?” Al tilted his head in confusion.

Khan-Wan didn’t seem convinced “You didn’t... get possessed by a demon did you?”

Al couldn’t make sense of what he was hearing. ‘Did I translate it wrong?’ “I dwon't get it”. He said.

When they saw his demeanour, the adults relaxed a little, and explained to him that they had heard tales from travelling merchants about demons who killed children and took over their bodies, but they were usually pretty cunning and wouldn’t just show up in front of people who knew the child they killed.

Al calmed them down and stumbled as he tried to explain how he had been practicing in secret, and that seemed to remind them that they were talking to a baby that wasn’t even 1 year old, which brought some mayhem to the room.

Al quietly excused himself and went back to his room to keep practicing [Mana Manipulation], which he had been doing everyday, on par with his speech training. After a few minutes he was positively surprised by a screen that appeared in front of him.

[Mana Manipulation] has reached Mid proficiency. You can now move mana outside of your body.

This was huge. It meant that he could not only cast spells now (if he knew any, that is) but also improve his mana regeneration by manually pulling mana from the atmosphere and into his body. It was very mentally taxing, but oversaturating his body with mana was by far the best method to train his Will and Intelligence.

The staff of the orphanage got over their shock after some days passed and insisted that Al should go play with the other children, and Al reluctantly complied so as not to upset the grown-ups. ‘Wait, did I just think of them as grown-ups? Is my mental age reverting or something!?’

While thinking of that, Al reached the garden where he saw most of the children play, and found that there were only three other kids around his (physical) age. The youngest was a peppy boy called Jiao, who was around two, then Yulia, an introverted girl who was three, and finally Koro, who was four and a bit on the aggressive side.

The youngest kid apart from them was already eight, so he already knew who would form his group for the years to come. Al walked up to them while trying not to stumble and greeted them by saying “Hi! I’m Al, can I pway with you?”

Jiao immediately ran up to him saying “Wow! You’re so cute! How old are you? I’m Jiao, by the way!”

Al dodged the question about his age for now with a “Nice to meet you, Jiao!” and turned towards the other two.

Julia started saying “Hi, I’m Yul-“ but was cut off by Koro, whose height was impressive for his age, scoffing at Al and saying

“What's a runt like you doing here? Beat it”

‘Wow, he has quite a mouth for someone his age’ Al thought.

Al kept his anger in, and replied "Hey! I just want to pway..." while putting on his best puppy face.

Koro just scoffed at him, unwilling to retract his statement.

But then Al got an idea. He looked at Koro in the eye and said: “Oh weally? Then I challenge you to a duel. You shouldn’t have a pwoblem beating a ‘runt’ like me wight?”

Koro seemed surprised by Al’s declaration. “Huh? a duel? with you?”

Al grinned mischievously “Yup, first to fall down loses, how about that?” Then he realised. He literally tripped while walking sometimes, there’s no way he could win in this crappy body. His stupidity had bit him in the butt again.

Koro pumped his fists “Ha! Well, here I go runt!”

Al’s instincts kicked into full gear as he sidestepped out of the way of Koro’s tackle. He almost lost balance due to the sudden movement, but he instead used the momentum to turn around and tackle Koro, who was currently trying to turn around.

He managed to catch him off guard and threw him to the ground, and fell along with him. “What!?” Koro said, stunned by the unexpected turn of events. Al then realised he was on top of Koro, so technically he hadn’t fallen at all. “I win” he said, then sat down on the ground.

Koro was fuming, and said “You just got lucky, you runt! You’ll see how I beat you next time!” And he stormed off.

Jiao ran up to Al, his eyes practically sparkling. “Wow! You’re so cool! How did you get so strong?”

Weirdly, Al felt a strong sense of accomplishment, even though he had been praised countless times before. ‘Huh, I’m really maturing backwards, aren’t I?’ He thought as he walked up to Yulia.

“Hey, sowy you couldn’t intwoduce yowself pwopewly before," he said.

“N-no, it’s okay. I’m Yulia,” ‘She really is shy’ Al thought as he looked up.

“It’s getting dark, we should weally get back inside,” Al said, while he thought to himself ‘Hmm, having friends is kinda nice after all’.