And it’s another beauuutiful day! Tonight I slept like a log and got a whole 6 hours of sleep! Eh? It’s too little? Unhealthy? Who cares! I usually do more important and exciting things at night, if you get what I mean….......Like meditation, soul recovery and stuff! Duh! I mean without my magic I feel as if I’m naked in the middle of a tundra, so it’s only natural that I would put daily effort into my recovery, so who needs sleep? Sleep is for the weak! Though I could get used to sleeping more than my normal hours. And I probably have some time till the maid comes. Hm, what to do, sleep a bit more or meditate? What a hard choice…

In the end, I let my consciousness wonder in the land of dreams. I don’t regret it.

And the maid came. Today it’s Pieri, she’s pretty much like Elvia but has a different name and her hair is Blue which is always a good point in my book. After she dealt with what she had to, she took me down to the dining hall where, as usual, a certain doting parent was lying in wait to pounce on her prey.

A very embarrassing hour later after we were done with breakfast I decided to resolve some of the questions that popped up during yesterday’s night, so I asked with sparkling eyes and the most excited and adorable tone I could muster:

“Mama, I want to see magic!”

Being a child has its own advantages as I can see from mother’s reaction with her face looking as if it’s about to melt.

“O-of course, dear! Mama will show you some awesome spells!”

Uum, no, please. If it’s too complicated it will be harder to analyze them with my spirit sense.

“I wanna see the spells from yesterday!”

“So cute! Here!”

With a wave of her hand, a small pebble materialized out of nowhere. My senses tell me that she uses normal mana though. What about a different element?

“Amazing! Mama, amazing! More!” I jump up and down while clapping my little hands to show my approval.

“Of course your mother is amazing! But wait, that’s not all!” She waves her hands and a bunch of small flickering flames begin to dance while drawing stars and circles and squares. My senses tell me she’s still using only her mana. I feel I’m missing something… Concentrate… Come on… Here! I detect a very tiny amount of qi from the flames! But this qi is a bit… how do I put it… ephemeral? It doesn’t feel like normal qi, it’s more like a mix of some kind of sprite and a vampire if they had qi. Or is it normal around here? I expand my soul’s aura and inspect the qi of Pieri, who happened to be nearby. It seems rather normal. The amount is a bit higher than average which probably means that she has a bit of talent in qi cultivation. Perhaps she would make it big in the military but being one of the maids of a ducal house could also be counted as a ‘success’. I think my maid is pretty awesome. Not that I care though.

Now, let’s see mother’s qi. It’s also high, abnormally so and it’s the weird kind. Maybe the nobility around here has its roots with the bloodsuckers? But then again, it’s also strange. Qi is life energy. Every living being has it and it’s unique to everybody, like a fingerprint. But here’s the catch: the more magic power a race has, the less qi they have as their bodies start to run on mana instead of qi. Pure magic races have no qi and have either mana or spirit energy instead. Among those races are all kinds of sprites and also vampires. That’s why I said that this qi ‘feels’ like what would be their mix IF those races had qi. So, my initial theory is incorrect.

While I was thinking about that, all the while pretending to be absolutely absorbed in the fire show, the said show came to a close. I would like to see some more elements, but mother said that she only has the affinities for fire and earth. Maybe she can use some others without affinities?

“Amazing! Mama is so cool!”

“Hahaha, want to see some more? I can also show you other elements.”

As if reading my mind she said. Or did she actually read it? That qi wasn’t something a human should have! Well, she’s still my mother regardless, but if she does read my mind I would prefer her to stop.

Disregarding my thoughts, she once again waved her hands and countless arcs of coloured water came into existence. They flew up and began to spin, creating different patterns with the colours.

Concentrate… Another kind of energy is present! This time it’s something my previous world called the holy aura. It’s a very downgraded version of the divine energy, but only those touched by divinity should be able to wield it! I’m fairly certain mother uses her qi to use earth magic and her high affinity tells me that she has high affinity with her –very- unique aura. It probably tells that a normal fire mage should be using a normal kind of qi. This also tells me that fire mages all should be pretty physically well but that’s of no importance. But what do I make out of this holy aura? I think that shouldn’t be that common around here as in the many years of my experience with dealing with the supernatural I have dealt with hundreds of gods and deities and so far I see no signs of their presence. Though I’ve never been out of the mansion so I may be too quick to judge. I just have to verify this later. So far this world has treated me well, too well even, so my sense of paranoia may be acting up.

But assuming that there isn’t too much intervention from the Divine, my mother is not human. Not by a long shot, which makes me not human too. Well, I don’t think I’ve ever been too human to begin with so it’s not that big of a deal. It also explains why I ended up in this body when I shouldn’t have been able to. I just want to find out what I and my mother are and how we are different from humans. I think slower aging process, higher magical and physical abilities are a result of our racial traits. What else? I think the processing brain power is a bit higher as I haven’t been feeling that uncomfortable with my thinking speed, even though I had to modify my previous body so I wouldn't inconvenience myself.

Now that I think about it, is my behavior normal then? Do my people develop faster? If so, then does it mean I have been playing an idiot? My mother doesn’t show it though. And if she has no strange ideas nor suspicions then it’s all that matters.

The water show came to an end and right after it comes the wind show! Well, she simply picks me up with wind magic and we fly all over the mansion. I giggle and yell out “Wee” and “Wow” to show my enjoyment and mother also seems to be having a ball. The wind spell uses some aether by the way. It means that technically the test didn’t lie about my affinities as I can pretty much control all arcane energies, with a very fine level of control when I use my soul. Without its assistance, I can’t do much as I only have the natural energy pathways called meridians in my body and my mind as well as some qi cultivation techniques I never really bothered to learn properly. But I think I will be able to handle an assassin without looking too suspicious. Before I only had the option of using my soul’s aura to forcefully destroy the souls of my assailants which would leave them as breathing husks and using arcane energy explosions channelled through my body to take care of soulless threats. The problem was that it would both hurt me as well as bring destruction upon everything around me. But now I learned a new way of utilizing my body’s potential for new ways of self-defence. Well, there was also a choice of going the path of qi manipulation as any body that is able to handle my soul’s influence has no measly amount of life-force, but admittedly a child with the strength to blow a tree apart with a punch is freaky and I myself am horrible at qi cultivation. I mean I’m a witch and a sorceress, not a martial artist.

After the magic show, the rest of the day went by like any other. Though I did try my best to feel the qi of as many servants as I could and came to 2 conclusions: 1)The humans of Almertia, or at least in this part of the planet, have the same kind of aura as the ones from my previous world, so mother is not human. And 2)I think that either Almertians are naturally-born martialists or, most plausible, one of the requirements for the servants of the house Mehliac is a high physical ability, as the average level of qi in them is pretty high. It’s more of an afterthought though, as I don’t really care. As long as I and my family are safe nothing else is that important.

This night I spent reproducing the spells I was shown as well as understanding the mechanisms behind them. I’m now able to use quite a few simple spells. Though I see nothing that would warrant the use of either a chant or imagination. Perhaps these spells are different from standard spells that need chants and images? How so then? Again, so many questions left unanswered.