A lazy yawn escaped my mouth—no, I think at this point, it was just me being too lazy to contain it rather than anything else.

I was taking a much-needed break from my readings on the library's sofa. After all, too much information is bad for the brain, so I need to take my time processing it.

"Thank God, Maa is not there to see how much of a slacker I've grown into in less than a month." I spoke out loud.

These past few days have been very depressing.

I've spent the last few days reading everything I could get my hands on. None of the books in the hidden room contained anything that could remotely explain my unusually early "sentient awakening". And having not found anything about those whom I could call "brethren", the prosperous feeling I felt back when I stumbled upon the library's hidden room quickly faded away.

That was it, but it was not all. I'm going to be honest; while I did learn about magic, more precisely about the extent of its possible uses other than the ones I knew so far, I was, I must admit, excited about the idea of, having that which needed to use magic, only to find out that I couldn't use magic at all.

I mean, some books about the hidden room even came with instructions on how to use it. But no, I can't use magic, all of that because of the stupid ritual known as the baptismal.

Don't get me wrong. I do understand the concept behind this ritual and acknowledge its use. After all, I knew how dangerous it would be to put such power in the hands of a child, but given how "special" I was, didn't I deserve "special" treatment?

They should’ve spared me.

Besides, I didn't think a ten-year-old noble could possibly be more interpersonally aware than I am.

If I had had access to magic from an early age, I would've, just like I had with most things in my life so far, had a head start compared to anyone else.

"Aaaah, these books have shattered the sliver of hope I had of using magic." I sighed.

After a while, I gathered motivation and went to the secret room.

Luckily for me, the books stated that nobles are natural-born aina-users, and the ritual is only mentioned to prevent the noble from using magic, and should not, in any case, affect or dampen one's ability to use aina. "

Yes, those born into nobility are pretty much born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

In this world, being born a noble guarantees one of three things: wealth , the ability to use Aina, and the ability to access magic on their tenth birthdays.

The first two were currently within my grasp, and the last one is also most likely within my grasp, but it will require me to wait six years before I can access it.

From how it was described, the nature and the extent of the strength of the curse that is baptismal within the books, I knew only envoys of the church are capable of lifting the curse. As such, I pretty much made up my mind about having to wait before being able to use magic.

That leaves me little choice but to concentrate on the other supernatural power that is within my grasp, Aina.

Ironically enough, unlike magic, there was not much information about Aina in the secret room, in fact little to nothing, and it didn’t take me long to understand why. The vast majority of nobility do not make use of their aina-wielding abilities. That was due to two factors.

The first reason being quite a stupid and condescending one, the vast majority of nobles consider aina-usage to be unworthy of them. They refer to aina usage as "the commoner's art."

The second reason, on the other hand, was quite intriguing. Unlike magical beasts who can use both mana and aina simultaneously quite proficiently, most members of the nobility are unable to blend mana-usage and aina-wielding. Perhaps it is due to the intrinsic differences between the two powers, but it is nearly impossible for a noble to be proficient in both magic and the use of aina. There were a handful of nobles who excelled at both magic and using aina, but they were the exceptions that proved the rule. Thus, the nobles tend to prefer to focus on magic rather than wasting time trying to master an art that they may never use. After all, wouldn't it be better to invest one's time in a more powerful art? What is enhancing one's overall physical ability compared to having the power to fly and summon elemental power?

Right now, though, aina didn't sound as catchy and powerful as being magic was, and it was, right now, the only option available to me.

The only advantages I have over my peers, if they do exist and weren't different from me, and my baby nobles would be my "early sentience," which gave me quite a number of headache-inducing, but also quite a head start. Head start, which I had no intention of wasting.

I knew I still had six years until my coronation, and I'm not sure if I'll be called back to my family's side by then, but I knew it left me with roughly six years without magic. Instead of wasting it, I'd better put these years to good use by reading, learning as much as I could, and parallelly using that time to master the art of aina. Maybe that'll come to use later on.

That being said, I'm still at a loss as to where to begin.

For commoners, they usually discover their aptitude as aina-users rather randomly, with no clear time stamps, but in a general sense, they usually awaken their aptitude for aina around the age of ten.

For nobles, on the other hand, it was briefly mentioned in the books that "to use aina, all you have to do is focus your thoughts on the part of your body you want to enhance, and it just works." Okay,

maybe it wasn't as crude as that, but it was the overall vibes to me. When I read those lines, I knew I couldn't expect to learn anything useful about Aina from these books.

"I guess I'll have to figure out how Aina works by myself."

From the hidden room, I went back to the library and especially went to the most spacious spot in the library.

The lack of content regarding even aina-awakening for nobles made me believe that since they were born with the assurance of being capable of wielding aina if they wanted to, nobles never really bothered themselves with the awakening process phase for themselves, for they knew it would eventually manifest itself somehow someday. This, of course, was an assumption made from the book's casualness and lack of content when it comes to Aina.

From what I understood, Aina-wielding encompasses two things: enhancing one:'s physical capability and enhancing one's senses. Though I had no idea how it concretely worked, I knew for certain that that's how it operated, whether it was on the nobility or the commoner side.

Imagining what it would feel like to be enhanced on aina, I took what could be assumed to be a punching stance.

"Yah!" I shouted, thrusting my clenched fist forward at an illusory target.

Why did I do that?

I don’t know, I just felt like doing it. But still, this little punch led me to two conclusions.

One, that it was, as expected, extremely ridiculous and cringe-worthy.

Two, I am ninety-nine percent certain that, despite acquiring sentience so early in life, I did not develop anything resembling an innate talent for fighting or, at the very least, punching. Even by four-year-old standards, that punch was pretty pitiful.

"Let's get back to the issues at hand," I said, gently smacking my cheeks in an attempt to regain focus.

I took a fighting stance and did as the book instructed. I need to concentrate, I suppose. What should I concentrate on? I had absolutely no idea... Maybe I should concentrate on the thought of delivering a powerful blow through the small fist of mine?

So many questions, so few answers, just like my life. So, instead, I chose to remain there, motionless, for about five minutes.

When suddenly.

"This is it. I can feel it. This must be Aina."

"Yaaa!" I roared, delivering a punch in the air once again to realize, just like earlier, that nothing happened.

Staring at my fist, I realized that what I felt a few breaths ago wasn’t aina or some mysterious force, but rather just a fleeting sensation of early numbness passing by.

"Sigh, I knew it." There’s no way that stupid instruction of " it just work" was real." Brokenhearted by my previous failed attempt, I lethargically approached the desk and took a seat.

After realizing that my only lead turned out to be garbage, I knew that from now on, I had no choice but to try to find the correct method to use aina by myself at random.

"If only the book contained more useful information on Aina, that would have spared me- "

Wait a minute- the books from the secret room mentioned that magic was summoned through mana which a noble's body actively produces from inception to the great beyond. So perhaps aina does not come from within the body, but rather from outside. This could explain why nobles had difficulty using both aina and mana simultaneously, because they were opposing forces.

Excited by the prospect of a breakthrough, I rose from my seat and bolted to the previous location. Taking a fighting stance once more, I closed my eyes, and began to concentrate on my surroundings.

Just earlier, I stood there motionless for several minutes. My eyes still closed, I began to see—no, to feel— them, hundreds of small particles of energy surrounding me.

I took a deep breath and though I ignored how I was able to, the way water from a sink would, I suctioned up every particle around me, sending it to my arm before finally delivering my punch.

At that very instant, my arm flew, l felt it clearly. This time it definitely wasn’t just my hand being numb or one of my disillusions.

"YAAAAAAH!" I delivered my true, first, and mightiest punch.

Though the punch's form or deleverpy itself didn't appear to be particularly impressive, a gust of wind blew in its path, scattering all the books beneath the library's two aligned tables.

Taken aback by what had just unfolded in front of my very eyes, it took me a few seconds to realize what had just happened. "That was… Aina." I muttered.

A big smile spread across my face as I looked down at my still-clenched fist.

"I FREAKING DID IT," I rejoiced at the top of my lungs, unconcerned about being overheard, for I knew that this room was completely soundproofed.