"Ugh, it sucks that we have to work during summer break."

A young, yellow-skinned girl took a moment to wipe the sweat off her forehead with the hem of her shirt, still clutching the two white fruits that she had picked off the branch beneath her. "The other kids in our class are probably all having fun right now. The only one who's having fun here is Bell."

A little ways away from her, her twin brother groaned as he hefted a crate full of white fruit onto the back of a wagon.

"I know right? It's hardly fair. I bet the other kids are going to summer festivals and stuff while we have to work all day."

"Day, Leah. You two are Bell's older brother and sister. You should be proud that you're setting a good example for him," Rea said cheerily, smiling at them with her perfect set of white teeth. There was a glint of silver as a gigantic scythe sliced through some of the branches of the tree next to her, and the branches and their contents fell onto the grass beneath with a soft thud. Currently, Rea was trimming the overgrown Yaksha trees in her orchard whilst getting her two oldest children to pick the fruit off the fallen branches and collect them so that she could sell the fruit at the market later.

"But mom-"

"You know how I feel about buts," Rea interjected, taking a second from swinging her scythe to stretch her arms. Her shirt lifted slightly, revealing an inch of her toned, slender waist. "Think of this as physical training, not work."

"That doesn't make it any better," Leah grumbled as she returned to her task.

Bell - formerly named Adrian - briefly glanced up from playing with his toy to see his mother once again swinging her overly-large scythe like it was featherweight, leaving a trail of fallen branches, leaves, and fruit in her wake. Rea might've looked like the grim reaper, if the grim reaper was a gardener and was more of a cheerful reaper than a grim one. To his amusement, Day and Leah appeared to be having a hard time as they frantically struggled to keep up with their mother's pace.

Two years had passed since he had been reincarnated as a slime and adopted by Rea and Ella Moondrop. Rea was his new red-skinned mom who managed a large orchard near their village home, whereas Ella was his new blue-skinned mom who worked at the temple as a healer. His two currently-bitter twin siblings, Day and Leah, were eight years old this year, which meant that they had started to go to a boarding academy in the city. Apparently it was grueling both physically and mentally, and they asked to be put into the village's academy instead, but their parents insisted that studying in the city was "important for their future" and would allow them to "learn things that they couldn't learn here".

Bell was honestly grateful that they were sent to a boarding academy. Not that he disliked his brother and sister personally, but ever since they had reached level two and learned magic earlier this year, they kept trying to use him as their practice dummy. Whether it was levitating him and making him spin in circles or passing him back-and-forth in the air, it always left him both nauseous and exhausted. Now that they were back home for the summer, Bell frowned internally, having no doubts that those tiresome days would soon be upon him again.

Being level two also meant that the twins could now shapeshift at will, and they assumed a humanoid form just like the rest of the slimes. It turned out that there were many, many benefits to having a humanoid anatomy, which they called the 'sapient' form. Since most of the sentient species on the planet were sapient in appearance, common items such as clothes, tools, and furniture were all tailored as such. Bell was looking forward to reaching level two himself, but, according to Rea, the level-up process naturally took place between the ages of six and eight for most species, including slimes.

Bell didn't know why that was, or what levels even entailed, but he wanted to figure it out. This was one of the reasons why he was fiddling with the small, cuboid toy in his tiny pseudopods. He had been playing with it for several days ever since he had found it in a corner of the living room, where it sat gathering dust after he had seen his siblings use it last year under their parents' guidance. It was a puzzle box that was supposed to teach young children to sense mana, which was a prerequisite skill for levelling up and learning magic. If he learned to sense mana properly, perhaps he could level up soon and finally get his human body back! Or at least, a similar form. Slime bodies weren't malleable enough to make anything other than stubby pseudopods. He really missed having fingers.

More importantly, if he learned magic, he surely wouldn't ever be useless. He could repay the family who had cared for him these past two years and make sure that they wouldn't have to worry about him. He could properly bury the person he used to be and truly grab onto his second chance at life.

But… sensing mana was easier said than done. The puzzle box was an interlocking set of eight sliding panels contained within a cuboid frame that, when arranged correctly, would form an internal miniature mana system complete with a nucleus and a network of eight looping channels, causing the box to light up. If he could sense mana, he would be able to feel the mana flowing from the nucleus into the panel when it was positioned correctly, thus allowing him to move onto the next panel, and so on. That was the theory, anyway. Right now, he couldn't even sense the nucleus.

Bell was wondering if this was a hopeless venture to begin with when Rea smacked her hand on the edge of the wagon beside him, startling him out of his meditative trance.

"Let's pack up kids," she shouted while smiling widely. "Ella's gonna be home soon. If we're not back at the house when she arrives, she's gonna give us an earful."

"You mean she's going to give you an earful." Leah smirked.

"You've got me," Rea said, putting a solemn hand over her nucleus - where a human heart would be - and stumbling back a bit in sarcastic fashion. "Day, help your sister load up that last crate and I'll deal with the branches."

Rea set down her gigantic scythe temporarily and clapped her hands. When her hands parted a few inches apart, a glowing, spiraling ball of green-tinged mana formed in between them, and she dexterously manipulated her fingers to change the shape of the ball into a rake with hundreds of teeth arranged in a curved arc.

Then, she thrust her hands outwards, causing the translucent rake to lurch forwards over a wide area, and drew her hands back in slowly, causing the rake to withdraw, moving through the trees and dragging the branches and leaves caught in the rake's teeth towards her. By the time her hands reached her bosom, the branches and leaves had formed a pile in front of her.

Bell's eyes sparkled as he marveled at his mother's spellcasting prowess.

This sort of 'finger-casting' was also one of the main reasons why the sapient form was so popular. Unlike archaic modes of spellcasting that focused on long, complicated verbal phrases, finger-casting was much faster and harder to decipher by opposing parties. The only thing was, you needed fingers to do it.

Bell snorted steam out of his nose as he resolved to try harder to solve the magic puzzle box so that he could too, one day, accomplish such feats.

He felt the wagon bounce up and down as Day and Leah hefted the final crate of fruit onto it, and they hopped onto the wagon as well.

"Onwards, mom!" Day shouted, with one leg raised on the wooden crate he just loaded onto the wagon and one arm outstretched in the direction of their home.

"Aye, aye." Rea walked to the front of the wagon and grabbed the handle.

Leah, who was sitting on a different crate, looked at Bell and motioned for him to quickly jump onto her thighs. He did so without hesitation. Not because he was eager for his sister's thighs, but because he knew exactly what was coming. Leah hugged him tightly and he held onto her pants for dear life.

"Please keep your pseudopods and nuclei inside the vehicle at all times during the ride. Thank you for taking the Rea express," Rea pipped cheerily. With that, she charged forward like a bull, pulling the wagon and its passengers home with their face skin flapping behind them in the wind.

…

A huge pot of hot, bubbling pyroroot oil and a stack of empty dishes sat atop the dining table in the Moondrop household, around which the five satisfied family members sat back in their chairs with bloated stomachs. Pyroroot was a small, brown vegetable that grew underground near the mana spring of Bairan Village. After peeling off the outer skin layer, there was a corn-like stick of red seeds within it that were as spicy as the Sichuan peppers that Bell had eaten back on Earth. The oil extracted from the seeds was even spicier, and you could use it for hot pot, as the Moondrop family had just done. In fact, it was so good that Bairan Village was low-key famous in the Dungralthis Underworld for its pyroroot hot pot, and adventurers sometimes even sought the village out specifically to try it.

"Huuuu so good~ We used to have to travel for miles to get this stuff, remember El?" Rea asked, patting her stomach.

Ella giggled. "I remember. Your dad somehow managed to come with us whenever we did."

"Ugh… that geezer. I can't believe he squeezed himself into our luggage that one time. How shameless can he be?" Rea scowled.

"He probably just wanted to spend more time with his favorite daughter," Ella remarked, pinching Rea's cheek lightly.

"No way. The old man is a one-hundred percent genuine pyroroot hot pot addict. If we didn't send him some hot pot packets every month, I think he'd have moved to this village in the blink of an eye."

"Wait, isn't he still thinking of moving here? You know, since…" Ella's voice trailed off as she hesitated. "Oops, I didn't mean to bring it up again."

"It's fine, El. It's been what, six years since mom passed? I think he's still considering it, but he's probably just reluctant to let go of that home. They built it together after all. Anyway…"

Rea changed the subject and started to talk about village gossip, causing Bell to quickly lose interest. Not that the subject itself was uninteresting, but Bell didn't know any of the other villagers yet, having spent most of his baby life at home. Apparently Day and Leah didn't have any intention to listen either, because they excused themselves from the dinner table and dragged Bell with them to go play outside.

Rea called after them before they exited the house. "Kids, you'd better not be slacking off. Go to the mana spring and train some more before bedtime, okay? And bring Bell with you. Your mum and I are going to clean up the house a bit tonight."

Day and Leah groaned and murmured some words of discontent about how they were tired already, but reluctantly agreed. Bell, on the other hand, grew excited. He had always wanted to visit the famous mana spring of Bairan Village. He knew it was a place with high mana density, and since the puzzle box operated using ambient mana in the atmosphere, it might very well give off a stronger signal there. Maybe it would be strong enough for Bell to sense it!

"Leah, I wanna bring the box with me," Bell said, trying to squirm out of Leah's arms.

"Hold on, I'll get it," Day said, lightly jogging to the living room and returning with a bulge in his pockets. He rubbed Bell's head. "I'll take it out for you once we're at the spring, kay?"

Bell nodded, and the three of them set off down a dirt road along the edge of Bairan Lake. Several bright mana crystallites embedded in the cavern ceiling overhead illuminated the lake and their path. At this time of the day, the light was starting to fade into an orange glow, and each crystallite would gradually become no brighter than the stars of the night sky in an hour or so. Leah and Day were debating what kind of monsters their parents had to be to force their poor children to train even during summer break.

"Bell, I've been meaning to ask. Do you happen to know what the box is?" Leah suddenly asked the white ball of jelly in her arms as they walked.

"Yep, it's a puzzle, isn't it?"

Leah gasped. "Does that mean that you sense the mana inside of it already? I don't think even Kain was able to do that until he was six."

Kain, the village leader's son, was one of Day and Leah's classmates and was rumored to be the magical prodigy of their generation. They were pretty competitive with each other, or so Bell assumed by how many times his brother and sister compared themselves to Kain.

"Nope, not yet. I only know this because I saw you guys do it last year," Bell said, but Leah's eyebrows just rose even higher in surprise. She glanced at Day who was walking beside her.

"Last year… I think our little brother's a genius, Day," she said. "Did you hear him? He remembers stuff from when he was just one-year old."

"I already knew that," Day smirked. "Of course he's smart. Do you know of another two-year old who can speak as well as he does? I wouldn't be surprised if he was secretly some old dude pretending to be a kid."

Bell would've choked on his own spit if he could. Day was pretty on the mark about that.

His older brother also had a point. Bell had been studying the local language, High Haven, diligently for two years as much as he could, and supposed that he had reached a mastery of the language that was atypical for a two-year old.

"I'm just kidding bro." Day laughed, noticing his brother's flustered reaction. He took out the cube in his pocket and tossed it into the air a couple times. "I'll get you something better than this to play with though. You probably won't get anywhere with this thing for a few years."

"I still want to try it though," Bell said firmly. "I'm not going to give up just yet."

Day shrugged, repocketing the cube. "Suit yourself. We're almost there."

The dirt path along the edge of the lake branched into two paths, one leading to the village square, and the other one leading into the lake. From where the path met the water's edge, several stone platforms protruded out of the water all the way to the center of the lake where Bell could see a rocky island surrounded by pine-like trees.

Day and Leah, still carrying Bell, leaped from platform to platform to make their way to the island. As they drew closer, Bell could start to hear the sound of rushing water like a waterfall. Sure enough, through the thicket of trees surrounding the island, Bell could see a small waterfall crashing against the surface of a small pond. As the twins proceeded to climb the rocky trail to the right of the waterfall, Bell noticed another pathway that led to the other side of the island, but it was marked with a rickety wooden sign that said, 'DO NOT ENTER'. Along the path was a stream full of colorful fish that led to the waterfall pond.

"What's over there?" Bell inquired, pointing at the sign.

"Oh, that's where the village dungeon is. Though, it's been closed for a while now," Leah said, panting from the physical exertion of the hike. "Professional adventurers cleared it years ago."

"Dungeon? What's a dungeon?" Bell asked. The only dungeons he knew of were those old prisons found beneath medieval castles.

"They're maze thingies that are born from the world's magical energy," Day explained flimsily. "They spawn monsters and stuff, so the village hires pros to beat the dungeon, which causes it to sleep for a while."

"Ohh." So it was sort of like those dungeon crawler RPG games. "Even the village needs to hire outsiders to deal with this kind of problem, huh."

Leah nodded. "Yeah, it's a big deal. Some dungeons have huge monsters that even professional adventurers are afraid of."

"Rea used to tell us that if we didn't train hard enough, she'd throw us in the dungeon." Day grimaced.

"Don't remind me. I was afraid to sleep on days when I thought I didn't train enough."

Eventually, they arrived at a plateau that was hot, moist, and misty, and there were glowing pools of water of various sizes scattered about the surface. The mana spring!

The twins tiptoed around the edges of the pools to reach a small clearing, where Leah set Bell down and Day handed him the cube. The two of them then immediately stripped down and jumped into the largest pool near them, splashing droplets of warm water on Bell's face.

"Ahhh, this is the stuff!" Leah moaned while doing backstrokes in the water. "The temperature is perfect after a day's worth of hard work."

"You sound like an old man," Bell said, rolling his eyes. "Weren't you guys supposed to be training?"

"That's what we're doing." Day chuckled. "This is water resistance training. Water resistance training, I say!"

"Uh huh, I'm sure," Bell muttered, shifting his attention to the cube in front of him. It was time to test his hypothesis. He shifted the moving panels back to their original starting position and tried to sense the mana nucleus contained within the box. He closed his eyes while putting a pseudopod on the box and focused on trying to expand his senses.

Several minutes passed with nothing happening, and then several more went by with similar results. Bell was starting to feel like his efforts were in vain, but he quickly shook off this weak line of thinking in his head.

Perhaps he was just going about this the wrong way.

If sensing mana was a prerequisite for leveling up and using magic, what might be the prerequisite for sensing mana?

From his knowledge of biology (at least human biology), any sort of sensation was the result of sensor proteins responding to a particular stimulus and sending a signal to his brain through nerves. For example, taste buds had receptors that responded to different flavor stimuli and relayed the sensory information to the brain through the glossopharyngeal and vagus nerves. It was very likely that sensing mana required some sort of protein-based sensor.

So... maybe he wasn't able to express that protein yet? He knew that there was sufficient evidence in scientific literature that certain proteins would be expressed in your body once you reached a certain age. Perhaps he just wasn't in the appropriate stage of slime biological development to express a mana-sensing protein.

Another possibility was that he was capable of sensing mana but not able to perceive it, just like how one couldn't perceive a mosquito landing on one's skin all the time. This was, in fact, the hypothesis that he had wanted to test by coming to the mana spring. He wanted to increase the stimulus in the hopes that it would help him perceive it. The fact that the experiment had failed either meant that this second hypothesis was wrong, or the increase in stimuli was still insufficient to trigger his perception. He had no way of testing this, since he had no way of further increasing the mana density in the area or the cube.

That left the first hypothesis, or some other possibility that he couldn't think of. In that case, maybe the only thing that he could do was wait until he naturally developed the ability to sense mana or had a sudden epiphany.

Bell sighed inwardly. He didn't want to merely wait. This was his second chance at life, and a chance to prove to himself that he wasn't the useless person that he used to be.

'Though, it might not be a bad idea to wait a while,' he supposed.

It was then that a familiar voice emerged from the darkness in the back of Bell's mind.

'Yes, why don't you just give up? Just like before.'

Bell stiffened, as dread trickled into his body.

He recognized that voice all too well. It was the one that had tormented him in the past.

It was the voice in his head that had convinced him that had constantly told him that it was too late to change anything. It had made him feel helpless and completely lost for years.

And he never had the power to contradict it.

Why had it followed him all the way here?

'What do you mean 'followed', as if I was a separate entity? I'm you, and you're me,' the voice snickered. 'Of course I'm here. And I see that you've forgotten exactly how pathetic you are.'

'Shut up,' Bell bristled. 'I'm not pathetic. I'm different now.'

'Oh, are you?' The sinister voice in his head mused. 'What's so different about you, then?'

'Well, I've learned the local language. I'm trying my hardest to learn magic. I'm getting along with this family. I'm not playing games anymore. I'm…' Bell's thoughts trailed off as tried to come up with some more reasons.

'Oh stop it. If you could change so easily, why didn't you just change earlier? You had plenty of chances. Before you lost your scholarship. Before you were abandoned by your family. Before your girlfriend left you. You had so many, and you still failed to change.'

As the voice said this, various memories surfaced to his mind.

His father white with rage, shouting and throwing plates at him at the dinner table when he told his family about his scholarship…

His mother dropping a plate of fruit when she found him playing his games instead of looking for work…

His sisters glaring at him as they consoled his crying mother and told him to leave the house…

His girlfriend throwing his engagement ring out the window…

'It's because you told me that it was too late. Every. Single. Time!' Bell cried out, voice shaking.

'No, not me. You,' the voice whispered. 'You told yourself that it was too late. Because you know the truth. The truths that you can't change. Not then. Not now.'

The bandage Adrian had put over his heart for the last two years ripped off, and the memories and emotions that he had tried to bury flashed through his mind with painful clarity.

'You're just who you've always been. You just a selfish, weak, pitiful piece of garbage who doesn't deserve a second chance,' the voice continued as the memories kept flooding in.

Adrian felt something hot and wet trickle down his face. His body trembled uncontrollably as he felt an overwhelming sense of despair wash over him.

Then, he felt the familiar of feeling of wanting to look at a computer screen until he became tired enough to sleep. All of the strength in his body sapped away.

"Bell! Bell, what's wrong? What happened?"

Adrian stirred from his trance to find Leah shaking him with concern etched on her face. He just stared blankly into her eyes.

"What happened here?" Day was standing beside them with a frown. "Why is our lil bro crying?"

"Not sure," Leah said softly.

"Maybe it has something to do with that?" Day suggested, pointing to the cube.

"Ah! Bell, no one is expecting you to learn magic already. You're only two years old. You can take your time," Leah said in an effort to soothe her little brother.

Adrian didn't reply. Leah was wrong. His age didn't matter. Time didn't matter.

Because the voice was right.

It was too late already. He didn't deserve a second chance or anything. Someone… someone like him should just d-

"C'mon, let's go home," Leah lifted him up and started to make her way down the trail back towards home with Adrian in her arms. She looked back at Day, who picked up the puzzle box off the floor and followed, though he still looked confused and worried.

As they walked, Leah stroked Adrian’s head and spoke words of comfort, and Adrian allowed himself a single moment of respite to let his negative emotions melt away. It was just a moment, but Adrian, emotionally drained and exhausted, fell asleep anyways.