True to my new biological father’s words, I awoke from what only felt like a good night’s sleep and nothing more. It was only the much improved bodily control that showed some major changes have happened.

Before I could spend any more time to enjoy the transition from baby model to child model, I was reminded that I was, in fact, a main character of sort and, thus, had a kind main character halo that made certain coincidence more likely.

The main category for these would be just better loot in general, encounters with helpful side characters and/or extreme luck in dangerous situations. Though there is one sub-category of this that I am now certain that I have.

From waking up with a nipple in my mouth when I was a baby to now waking up to the VERY passionate sound of my parents trying to make me a younger sibling, I can assuredly say that I have a perverted halo.

How this will play out for me in this new life was not something that was on my mind at the time. I was more occupied with simply vacating my own room and finding refuge somewhere else with a lot more quiet.

The new increased in motor control was quickly put to use as I climbed out of bed and reached my room’s door, or my first obstacle to peace of mind.

I was a little too short for the door handle, only barely touching the handle while on my toes.

Bending my knee and jumping up to reach the said handle was not too difficult, but it did slow me down for just a few moments.

Just enough to hear a male moan in the background asking someone to do something to his ears.

Thoroughly creeped out by the sound, I barely focused enough to grab hold of the handle when I reached the climax of my jump. Hands firmly grasping the doorknob, I heard the soft click of the door opening before using one of my legs to kick the frame and pull the door backwards.

At least that was the plan.

The door did click, but my kick did nothing more than make a light thumping sound without actually opening the door as intended.

What it did though, was make both people on the other side suddenly stop with their procreation.

No physical escape was had, but the kick did technically do its job by stopping my exposure to excessive amounts of awkwardness.

Knowing the inevitable check up the parents will make, I carefully dropped myself off of the handle and headed back into bed.

The trip back was spent checking out my new room.

It was a room that you would typically associate with any young boy. The bed was on the wall on the right of the door and a small closet on the left.

Right in front of the door was a small study desk below a window letting the pale shine of the moon to illuminate the room.

And in the middle of it all was a typical mess of toys. Miniature figures of warriors, mages and monsters were strewn about haphazardly along with fake swords and staff for me, apparently, to join in whatever make-belief scene that was re-enacted by my body before my re-awakening.

Walking back to the bed through the little space between the two battle lines showed that kid me at least had some luck with playing or is smart enough to make a clear path of retreat before making a mess.

I was on the bed for a few seconds before the door opened. Out into the hall. And I reconsidered the kid me being smart and just assumed that I also had protagonist luck in certain situations.

My mother in bathrobes entered first, followed by my father in rumpled pyjamas. They both spent a little time looking around the corners and ceiling of my room before turning their eyes on me. And sag a little in relief after looking in my eyes.

My father was the first to break the silence with a flat remark.

“Oh. You’re back.”

With the ability to this time, I replied.

“Yeah. Sorry to you bother you while you were in the middle of something. I was just going to slip out.”

“Ah. Don’t worry. But,” he coughed and she fidgeted a little, “We may continue. So I am just going to put this here.”

A magic circle weaved in front of me again. But instead of a small one that fits in and came from his hand like before, this one stretched out from a sort of music box and covered my entire bed.

All at once, ambient sounds started to die down and a calming little tune replaced them all.

The novel sensation of the apparent mobile surround sound system was quickly broken when both parents stepped over the barrier to continue the conversation.

“This should be good right?”

I nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Good. This is a rather inconvenient time, so we’ll be in the other room if you need anything else.”

They both waved goodbye and walked back out.

Before they fully left the door, the woman suddenly remembered something and elbowed the elf. They rounded on each other and had a rather interesting back and forth with the woman seeming to loom over the taller man in every exchange.

The conversation ended with the woman facepalming, and they both turned around and walked back up to me. Up close again, I couldn’t help but notice how embarrassed the two looked as they started talking.

“Right. I think one big thing was forgotten in everything. I’m Ruvyn,” he gestured to himself, “And I’m Laura,” spoke Laura before Ruvyn can do it, “Again. We were a bit occupied with your whole arrival so we all kinda forgot. And can you introduce yourself too? If you still remember your name that is. If you don’t-”

Before she could go on, I held out a hand.

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m Brandon. Nice to meet you guys. Again.”

“Great. I think we should all get some rest and talk more tomorrow. Is that good?”

I nodded and they started their trip out again. Once the door was closed and I was alone with the calming melody that was around my bed, sleep should have come easily. Should. But my mind was already far too rested with the prior hibernation to simply sit still.

So it was with restless energy and a deeply ingrained instinct to clean up after myself that I got down from my bed to start putting the toys away.

Only to be reminded of what my biological parents were resuming when they left my room.

With haste, I made my way back into the calming circle around my bed and just, maybe, enjoy the nice music it provided.

The nice soft glow that the moonlight, now free to reign the sky without any ambient city light to compete with, was helping to make a very tranquil scene.

Many would have enjoyed this for hours and just emerge themselves in the ample calm. I didn’t.

Nature’s beauty could only hold my attention so much before I got bored of it.

It was expected really. After the general confusion that was my first few hours in a baby’s body, this was the first few moments when I had enough calm to immerse myself in the excitement of my having a new life, in a new world, one with magic to boot.

So my eyes left the soft shine of the moon in the room’s center to look for any interesting details I might have missed in my room and found some books and, interestingly enough, an object that looked a lot like a flashlight on the desk.

‘Awesome. I already had some books to learn from,’ I thought giddily and made a quick beeline to the desk for some books and the flashlight.

I once again forgot about the ambient sound that was outside of my bed, and grabbed only one book and the flashlight in my haste.

Back on my bed once again and books in hand, I fumbled around with the flashlight-like device a little bit, but eventually got it turned on.

Looking over the hastily picked up book, I was a little disappointed that it was not some sort of basic, and convenient, magic guide. It was just a children’s fairytale, a very generic one judging from the title of “A hero’s tale”.

Shrugging, I spread the book out on my lap, directed the light there and began reading.

The setting was the basics, a kingdom was in danger, a demon lord was rising again after his thousand year sleep and things were generally in turmoil. The kingdom, in its desperation, called forth the ancient ritual of hero summoning.

And so a hero was summoned in a dazzling gleam of mana in the throne room. The king and his advisers gave the standard speech on how he was called forth to vanquish evil and thanked him in advance for helping.

Being the goody-two-shoes that he was, mister hero accepted without too much of a fuss. From then, the story divulged into separate adventures of the hero and his party to get ready for the final showdown.

Each trip would have a little mini boss that would give the party some key item or technique to build the hero up into a really overpowered fighting machine.

There were developments in other areas too, especially one considering how many girls were there in the party, how each had a detailed paragraph dedicated to their beauty and how many times the hero was so very heroic in the girls’ presence.

So the story went, until they neared the final confrontation and things took a rather depressing turn.

They fought and won as expected, and the hero was doing his good guy speech near the end to the demon lord, something I think most people found annoying.

He talked about how they had to kill him for the betterment of mankind, how things would improve from then, how the demon lord has held people back and how they could make a difference to the world after ridding it of his influence.

The train south was in full steam when the hero turned around for a moment and the dying villain drove his essence to corrupt the hero and molded him into a new lord of demons. Fortunately or unfortunately, the tainting process took a lot out of the hero, and the girls, in their desperate and noble decision to save the world, managed to incapacitate and seal him with all of the artifacts they have collected so far.

There was a whole scene then of the hero gaining a little bit of sanity back at the end of the sealing and having a farewell talk with his party.

Evil now gone, the story goes on a little bit more on each surviving member’s life, how the people celebrated them in books, tales and songs yet they themselves never got over the failure and the eventual demise of everyone.

The somber ending threw me for quite a loop and, interestingly enough, reminded me of Tim. The guy would probably relate to the grim circumstances with his depressed frame of mind prior to our deaths.

We would probably be talking about the many fascinating factoids that I found after the read through.

The little bits on the types of magic presented in the story. There was the basis of elemental magic that almost anyone could use reasonably well. Then there came the more specialised magic schools like enchantment, illusion magic, conjuration and the ever-abused healing magic.

There was even an example of necromancy with one of the smaller villains.

Magic was also mentioned to be the distinction between the four main races.

The humans had their unique arcane magic that worked with raw mana. The elves were superb at controlling the ambient mana around them. Dwarves were really good at transforming mana into permanent effects or material. And beastmen had some really interesting usage in their speciality of internally channelled mana that just screamed transformation scene.

Another interesting tidbit, though, was a little side story on how the hero visited the dwarven lands. There, he devised a plan for something from his old world, a weapon called a “gun”. It was not the exact gun I knew with a clear explosion-based system to launch a projectile.

This was just shaped mostly like a handgun and had a really flexible enchantment within it. It would work by channeling a simple enough spell through the device and making the enchantment be molded into the channeled spell.

From there, the recorded spell can be recast with enhancement in speed and effect. Later on in the story were also mentions of other races coming into contact with the “gun” as well as other eccentric items the hero has made.

There was even a little arc with a competition between an upgraded magical longbow from a great elf archer and the “gun’ from the hero that ended surprisingly enough in a tie with each weapon winning in different contests. Whether guns were ever introduced here was definitely one of the questions on the queue for tomorrow morning after this.

I also went about answering some of the questions I had for the book by myself. Such as the mention of how elven children are capable of manipulating mana particles even without any proper training.

The test was rather simplistic. I just sat cross-legged and tried the good old feel “center your mind and feel the universe”.

After a few minutes of increasing feelings of silliness, I switched tactics and praying that Tim was not laughing his ass off right now as a disembodied spirit.

I went about trying to understand my body a little more before attempting to change the world around me.

I felt around my chest for the extra mana gland that my father told me about before my hibernation.

It could be said that I was mildly surprised to feel an extra beat when I lowered my hand from my chest to my solar plexus. From there I closed my eyes and tried to sense the gland within me.

Feeling much less silly this time with a new sensation in my ribcage, I tried to “flex” the newly acquired “muscle”.

With a mental imagery, I was able to, as I feel it, connect my gland to the outside mana. From there, I was able to feel the particles that surround me and tried to move them. But moving a new limb and moving a new limb how you want it to are very different processes.

I felt the movements I have made in the mana surrounding me, but they never moved in any direction that I gave them. I only knew that I made them was that the movements were in sync with my attempts to wield mana.

But I was not frustrated. I might not have control, but the novelty of mana was enough to keep me going even without any clear success.

Just wiggling mana around felt so freeing to me and all of the brand new sensations involved in the process was keeping my mind too occupied to be mad. It was not every day that you get a new arm and then start to taste purple with it after all.

I kept this up for about half an hour more.

Through the whole testing phase, I was able to get ever closer to controlling mana. It still moved randomly at all of my commands, but some parts of the orders were coming through.

The small improvement would have been enough to keep me going all night, had it not been for the sudden bone-deep tiredness I felt after half an hour. After tasting purple for half an hour, I got to taste blue as a conceptual “muscle’ was worn out and tired from extensive use.

I yawned loudly and got down from my bed for probably the last time tonight. Book and flashlight in hand, I was prepared to move as quickly as I can to and back from the desk.

Only to stop after the first few steps that were welcomed by silence and not erotic moans. I sighed and moved at a more sedated pace towards the desk.

When I turned from the desk with its book returned, the trained habit to clean up was back as I laid eyes again on the mess in the middle of the room and the chest that they were supposed to be in by now.

On my bed a few minutes later and just a tad more tired, I dropped my head onto the pillow with a soft oomp and drifted away with the soothing sound of the enchanted music box by my bed.