MY LIFE NOW

REYNOLDS LEYWIN

My baby boy!

I was so happy we’d had a son. I was eager to start training him—I couldn’t remember when I had started training, but I knew I’d been very young. I couldn’t wait to teach my baby boy all about magic! I hoped he would turn out to be an augmenter, like his old pops. I knew the basics of conjuring, but couldn’t do anything practical with it, except use it as a form of mental exercise.

Alice, on the other hand, was one of the most talented people I’d ever seen.

Even as an emitter, she was exceptional. Back when we were just dating, she’d joined my party and we’d gone on missions together. Her restorative power was amazing in and of itself, but I could still remember how shocked I was the day she used an area of effect spell that healed all allies within a fiveyard radius. Talk about one of a kind!

And she chose me for her husband.

I'll never get tired of saying that.

In the good old days, before we settled down, we often went into the Beast Glades to hunt for mana beasts.

Mana beasts were unique animals—creatures born with the ability to absorb mana into their bodies and create their own mana cores, which we called beast cores.

Beast cores had unlimited uses, making them highly sought after. Of course, the higher the class of the beast core, the more valuable it was. Mana beast classifications ranged from the E-class, such as the domesticated fanged bull used for meat and leather, to the SS-class monsters. I didn’t know much about those—I’d never seen one, nor known anyone who had—but I believed they did exist.

As a rule of thumb, a mana beast was always assumed to be stronger than a human of the same class. This was simply because, even taking mana out of the picture, a beast’s physical body was much stronger than a human’s.

While the Beast Glades were dangerous, if you were cautious and didn’t get lost, it was pretty easy to keep yourself out of trouble. The stronger beasts tended to be down in dungeon-like caves underground or farther away. The first several miles of the Beast Glades were pretty well mapped, and as long as you were at least a C-class adventurer, you could handle the creatures there.

Once in a while, the Guild posted missions requiring multiple parties of adventurers, usually for clearing and mapping the harder dungeons that hadn’t yet been fully explored.

If a mana beast was strong enough to create its own lair and have other mana beasts serving it, then you could bet there would be treasures to be gained.

Questing was exhilarating—the danger added a thrill that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. If it weren’t for the... the incident with Alice and Lensa, I was sure we wouldn’t have settled down as quickly as we did.

I told Art about the adventuring life—all those stories and many more. Alice said I was brainwashing him, but I just wanted him to at least have some experience as an adventurer when he got older.

I didn’t know what I’d do if little Art never awakened as a mage. I didn’t care how long it took—if he could train to become any kind of mage, I knew I would be a proud and happy father.

It was easy to tell what type of mage someone would be when they awakened: While augmenters and conjurers both form a translucent barrier, the mana behaves differently around them during that time.

Augmenters, when they first awaken, form a sort of pushing force around the barrier, signifying that they have dominant mana channels in their body.

Conjurers, on the other hand, form a vacuum of mana around them, which means their mana veins are more dominant. Of course, the degree of the pushing and vacuuming forces depends on their talent in either category.

Not to brag, but when I first awakened—at the early age of twelve, by the way—I was sleeping, and the pushing force made me float for a good couple of minutes. Enough force to lift a human body—imagine that!

I was with Alice in the front yard after dinner, making plans to train Art after his awakening. If he ended up becoming a conjurer, I could get him a tutor from Ashber, since neither Alice nor I were adept enough to be teaching him.

I had barely finished the thought when—

*BOOM!*

What happened?

Three-quarters of the house was gone. Art… Little Art was still in the house...

"Arthur!"

The blood drained from Alice’s face and her eyes went wide with disbelief and worry. I pushed her down, covering her with a temporary shield that would last for a few minutes.

I rushed toward the explosion, shielding my body with a layer of mana over my skin. The debris from my house came flying toward me as I drew nearer to the source of the explosion. After fighting my way through the scraps of what was left of my house and yard, I saw it.

An all but invisible barrier flickered around my son. It was clear that the pushing force of his awakened powers had caused this explosion. He was floating in the center of a crater that had demolished most of our house, as well as our entire backyard.

My legs gave out. I fell to my knees as I gaped at the sight. My son was almost three years old, and he had awakened. Only three…

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Reynolds! Honey!” I glanced back at my wife, my mouth still hanging open from shock. The debris had stopped flying and she was slowly making her way toward me, taking half-steps and covering her face with her arms to shield herself from the strong pushing force still emanating from Art.

“Reynolds! What happened? What’s going on? Where’s Art?” Still unable to find the strength to speak, I simply pointed my finger in the direction of our son.

Confused, she followed the line of my finger. All she could manage to whisper was, “Oh my…”

ARTHUR

Wow. I feel great!

Feeling refreshed by my breakthrough, I closed my eyes to sense my newly formed mana core. My sweet little mana core!

“Art! Oh, my baby! Are you okay?” I jerked my head up to see my mother rushing toward me, while my father knelt on the ground.

What misdeed was Mother punishing him for this time?

My mother lifted me up and hugged me tightly enough that my underdeveloped ribs almost gave out. I managed to squeal, “Mom, no cry. What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer me, just continued sobbing while cradling me. My father came to stand next to her, patting her back and stroking my head, giving me a weak smile.

After a brief moment of confusion, I pulled myself away from my mother’s bosom and looked around to see that we were standing in the center of a giant crater. Most of our house was gone.

What the hell? Who did this? Who would have the audacity to destroy the home of a king? The perpetrators will rue this day! I will hunt them down day and night and not rest until— “Congratulations, Art, honey,” my mother said weakly, while my father exclaimed, “You awakened, Champ.” I was speechless and didn’t know what to think. We all looked at each other for a moment as I let it sink in.

I did this?

In my old world, a similar phenomenon occurred when a youth awakened; a clear barrier appeared around the awakened and a small pushing force would surround the barrier. After some thought, I came to the conclusion that the pushing force in this world was much stronger because of the mana in the atmosphere, something that wasn’t present back on Earth.

As I had once been a king who prided himself on his integrity, I decided to apologize for this situation.

“I’m sorry, Mom, Dad. Am I in trouble?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized I was so disoriented that I had forgotten to talk like a three-year-old. Fortunately they didn’t notice my slip due to their shock.

“No, Art, honey, you’re not in trouble. We were just worried about you. I’m glad you’re all right.” There were tears in my mother’s eyes, but she managed to let out a soft chuckle.

My idiot father, on the other hand, was a lot more excited. “My boy is a genius! Awakened before the age of three! This is unprecedented. I thought I was fast, but this is on another level!” That picture-perfect moment was broken when a neighbor rushed up,

shouting, “What in the world?” “We’d better clean this mess up,” my father said as he grinned, rubbing the back of his head.

We decided to keep my awakening a secret. Within a few weeks, my father had managed to contact members of his old adventuring party to help rebuild our decimated house while we stayed at the nearby inn. With conjurers razing the ground for the foundation and augmenters doing the grunt work, the house didn’t take too long to finish. The beauty of magic!

Surprisingly, none of my father’s former party members questioned why our house had blown up. That seemed to say a lot about my father.

Spring came to an end midway through the reconstruction of our house, and along with it came my birthday. My parents woke me that morning with a present, and my mother carried what seemed to be a loaf of bread in her hands. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a cake. I opened the present box to find a carefully carved wooden sword, and I hugged both my parents, thanking them for the present and the cake.

The cake and the gift surprised me; my parents hadn’t bothered to celebrate my past two birthdays, so I had assumed this world didn’t acknowledge them.

I later learned that birthdays are only celebrated beginning at the age of three.

It was a tradition from long ago, when babies frequently did not survive their first three years.

How medieval.

Birthday celebrations weren’t the only difference between this new world and the world I was from, where children my age would have been getting ready to start school. Seeing children as well as teens working on farms with their family and in forges as apprentice blacksmiths made me realize there was no mandatory, structured education system. Any sort of rudimentary education the children received—the basics, like reading and writing—was provided by their families.

As soon as I turned three, my mother began giving me regular lessons, teaching me how to read and write. Playing the role of a prodigy, I pretended to learn quickly, to her delight. This allowed me to read harder books in the library without drawing suspicion.

These weeks after my awakening passed by in a blast. My father taught me the basics of mana, and how to start training in it, as best as he could. He tried to simplify as much as possible so a toddler could understand it. If my cognitive abilities hadn't already been on the level of an adult, I don’t think I would’ve retained much, but I did manage to get the basics.

A mage’s strength could be easily gauged by looking at the color of his or her mana core. When a person first awakened, the mana core was black, due to the body’s blood and other impurities mixing with the mana particles as they come together to form the core.

As the mana inside the person’s body became purer and imperfections were filtered out, it changed to a dark red color. The color continued to lighten as mana was distilled, going from black to red,

then orange, yellow, silver, and then white. The red, orange, and yellow stages each had three sub-stages, classified as ‘dark,’ ‘solid,’ and ‘light.’ As a rule of thumb, the lighter the color of a person’s mana core, the purer it was and the more power they had access to.

While the lessons with my father proved useful, I was getting impatient with the pace we were moving at. Within a few days of him beginning to teach me, I asked my mother for books on magic.

My mother still had some connections in the Adventurers Guild, and she managed to acquire a wide collection of books on basic mana manipulation and on fighting with different weapons. Some of them were just picture books with only simple words and illustrations of the basics of mana condensation, but I ignored those.

The books I’d been reading were a bit more difficult, but it wasn’t until I caught my mother giving me a strange look that I’d realized just how advanced they were. She had brought in books that she expected wouldn’t be touched for at least a year and was perplexed by my lack of interest in the simpler texts.

Most of my time was spent taking reading and writing lessons from Mother, and augmenting training with my father.

After he covered the basic theory and application of augmenting, we started physical training. Since I was too small to start sparring, we opted for running and body workouts. Seeing my three-year-old body trying to do a pushup must have been the funniest thing, but my father did a good job of holding back his laughter.

When I wasn’t taking lessons from one of my parents, I usually stayed cooped up in the newly remodeled library, reading and meditating to further condense my mana core.

The year passed without much deviation from this routine. Then my father spoke up one night while we were having dinner.

“Honey, I think it’s time we get Art a proper mentor.”

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