So Cluma had a rank three trait, and it wasn't just something that all beastkin had in place of their lost mana? It must be something that boosted her physical stats or stamina, or maybe she got the sort of sleep-removing trait I wanted for myself. I couldn't speculate without more information, but asking about traits was considered rude.

Now that we'd killed a bit of time, others of the village that didn't need to be up at dawn for work were starting to set out and about their days. I spotted the twins, Holly and Joseph, heading towards us. They were a few years older than me, but just like everyone else in the village, they were friendly. I actually played a lot with the children of the village. At first, I didn't think I'd have anything to do with the other kids, given that I had the mind of an adult, but freed of adult responsibilities, I'd quickly realised how much of a child I still was at heart. Why was it socially awkward for adult men on Earth to play tag? It was great fun even if Cluma always won in the end, and all the kids enjoyed it. You'd think they would ban Cluma from joining in or something, but nope, they all got along well.

Right now I wanted to experiment with my magic rather than play, but Cluma had this weird vibe around her that made me want to make her smile. Refusing to play would definitely make her sad. I'd already lost this battle when I let her see me. But there was hope; perhaps I could continue to do both? "How about hide and seek next?"

That should be safe. Cluma would insist on being the seeker because she hated hiding, and since she relied on her excellent hearing, she would take ages to find me. Unlike a normal kid my age, I could sit still without fidgeting and giving away my position.

"I seek!"

I knew it. Phase one of my practise magic plan was a success. "Of course. Count to a hundred and we'll run and hide."

She might have been tempted to watch where we ran, but she'd have to ask Clana for help to count to a hundred. That would give me time to get away. I ran down the street and hid myself inside a cart. An adult walking down the street would be able to see me, but the children were too short to see over the side. Safely hidden, I relaxed into [Meditation] to recover my mana.

I was rudely pulled out of [Meditation] what felt like mere seconds later by Cluma jumping on my stomach. The shock made me jump into the air myself. How the heck did she sneak up on me? She couldn't take a single step without screaming! It was like her feet were directly wired to her vocal cords. I knew the skill description talked about closing off the world around you, but surely not to that extent?

Checking my status, I'd recovered half of my mana. Given how short the time had felt, I was starting to suspect I'd accidentally fallen asleep, but my status also showed that I'd levelled [Meditation], completely missing the ding. Obviously, I'd been a bit foolhardy with that skill. What if someone had started loading or moving the cart without seeing me? I could have woken up anywhere... I made a note to only use it in safe locations from now on. That was completely my fault, though; no point in taking it out on Cluma. "Well done. You found me."

With the round of hide and seek over, Joe brought out a ball, and we played ballgames in the street for a while. As much as I wanted to get on with magic, I was still limited by my mana, and I couldn't deny that I needed to increase my physical stats. As to what ballgame we played exactly, I had no idea. Complex rules were not something that children our age could normally grasp, so we were just kind of kicking it around.

I was firing off [Minor Strength] once in a while, and sure enough, my persistence was eventually rewarded.

ding

Skill [Minor Strength] advanced to level 2

It now gave me a whole extra point to my strength, so was no longer utterly useless. It was merely almost entirely useless instead; it only lasted for ten seconds. If it was linear and matched [Minor Speed], that was five seconds per level. At least the mana cost was lower than my time spell, and a ten percent boost per level would be more useful going forward. At level ten, I'd be able to double my strength at will. Of course, more research was needed to prove how it actually behaved.

Playtime was ended by my stamina running dry. As always, I was the first to drop out. I waved goodbye, the twins waved back and Cluma gave her usual bye-bye hug that very nearly resulted in suffocation. I stumbled back into my house, where Mum had long since started working.

"Welcome back. You're earlier than I expected. Did something happen?"

"I was caught by Cluma on my way out."

"Ah. Say no more. Go and have a lie down."

Such an understanding mother. Actually, this happened often enough that we'd established a sort of post-Cluma recovery procedure. I flopped over onto my hay mattress and sunk back into [Meditation], this time to recover stamina as much as mana.

Once I'd recovered a little, I returned to my efforts to learn [Mana Finesse], poking at the flowing incoming mana. I remembered the wisps of flame Kari had produced on her first day of teaching, giving mana an affinity and making it dance, and tried to envision the same thing. I had no idea how to give natural mana an affinity, nor did I have any way of properly seeing what I was doing, but I gave it my best, anyway.

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ding

Skill [Mana Control] advanced to level 2

This exercise had the advantage of not spending my own mana pool, so by lunchtime I was fully rested.

Skills available for purchase:

1 point: [Minor Dexterity] [Minor Endurance] [Minor Intelligence] [Minor Wisdom] [Minor Charisma] [Far Reach] [Minor Slow]

2 points: [Basic Cooking] [Basic Tailoring] [Foraging] [Basic Farming] [Enlarged Stamina Pool] [Mana Finesse]

Got it!

New skill acquired: [Mana Finesse]

[Mana Finesse] - Manipulate smaller quantities of mana and increase efficiency of its use. Higher levels increase efficiency further. (Rank 1)

I already knew the effects of this skill from Kari, so I was unsurprised when my status display started showing two decimal places on my current and maximum mana. The increased efficiency translated to a one percent decrease in the cost of spells per level, which wasn't huge, but cheaper spells made a good combo with a bigger and faster regenerating pool. I would get to the point where I could spam spells all day, however long it took me. There should also be an additional benefit in increasing the fidelity of [Mana Control], but given that I currently had no way of seeing what I was doing with that, I couldn't check the difference.

It was fortunate that my mana pool had gained precision, or the effect of the one percent decreased mana costs would be immediately lost again to rounding errors. [Enlarged Mana Pool] gave an extra point eight mana too, for the same reason. Actually, had it always been giving me the extra? I could use [Inspection] multiple times per point of mana, after all. Maybe it was just the display that had changed, and it had always been tracking fractional units of mana internally?

I headed back to the living room, where Mum was still working, but she looked up as I entered. "I need a restock of thread. Normally I ask Henry to order it in, but why don't we take the opportunity to visit Dawnhold? We can use the few coppers we save to pay Henry for a lift. He visits once a week, and I believe his next trip will be the day after tomorrow."

Henry was the owner of the village's general store. He had a horse and cart that he took to Dawnhold—the nearest town—to restock his store and fulfil any special orders. He let people ride with him on the way when the cart was empty, but not on the way back when it was full of stuff. That meant we'd have to walk home. Dawnhold was a couple of hours' walk away, so the journey home wouldn't be pleasant. I'd have to try to walk as far as I could, because letting Mum carry both me and her shopping all that way wouldn't be fair.

Actually, perhaps it was time for another isekai trope... Here in this village, I hadn't been able to come up with any way to monetise my modern Earth knowledge. The usual method in popular fiction was introducing new recipes, but I was always more of a microwave ready-meal guy and frankly the food here was in no way inferior to back on earth anyway. On top of that, someone with a high rank cooking skill could literally throw a lump of meat into a fire and end up with a result that would win Michelin stars if sold on Earth. Clana took the [Cook] job and had the rank two skill [Advanced Cooking], and everything she made was already amazing. Rank three must create little slices of pure heaven. It was blatantly cheating.

Aside from recipes, there was really nothing I could offer this small farming village. While our crops might be familiar, it wasn't as if I was an expert farmer in my previous life, and while I could remember such terms as crop rotation, I had no idea exactly what crops were supposed to be rotated. I recalled that farmers were supposed to leave fields fallow once every few years, but if I were to try to make suggestions with my half-baked knowledge, I'd never convince anyone. Besides, while sounding out the waters in a talk with Dad, it turned out that they already know full well that growing the same crop repeatedly in the same soil resulted in diminished yields. They work around it by getting an earth mage to cast [Fertilise] on it each year. Once again, Earth knowledge was rendered completely redundant by a single skill. For that matter, a sufficiently powerful [Wood Mage] could cast [Growth] and bring some amount of freshly planted crops to maturity overnight. Again, blatant cheating. Fortunately, such mages were rare, nor could they raise whole fields, otherwise farming as an occupation would become completely redundant. But even without mages, the farmers still had their non-magical farming skills, which somehow increased crop yields against all the rules of conventional biology.

Perhaps in a larger town, I'd be able to come up with some alternate ideas. Maybe some gimmicks that people with disposable income might buy, but didn't serve a functional purpose that could be circumvented with skills. Board games would be easy, or I could probably remember enough about how a hand cranked music box works for a proficient craftsman to create one. I'd have to see what was on sale already. I also knew how to build a simple generator, so perhaps I could do some electrical stuff. Not sure what, though. I could probably throw together a radio broadcaster and receiver? Not sure I could argue that it had no functional purpose, but I hadn't seen any skills that would render a radio redundant yet.

After eating lunch, I spent the rest of the day training my new magic skills: casting spells to drain my mana to almost empty, then meditating my way back to full while employing [Mana Control] and [Mana Finesse], thankfully learning to use [Meditation] without completely losing consciousness. I had learnt first-hand the effects of [Early Bloomer] over the last few years and the difference it made was huge, but it only lasted until level four. It also remained to be seen whether it would have the same effect on higher rank skills. The description didn't say anything about rank, but neither did it explicitly say the effect would always be identical. Either way, it should be enough to get all of my new magic skills to level four over the next few days. Today's training certainly caused a few dings, but I waited until the evening to review my messages.

Skill [Minor Speed] advanced to level 2

Skill [Minor Strength] advanced to level 3

Skill [Mana Finesse] advanced to level 2

I also confirmed that the duration of my speed and strength buffs did indeed increase linearly with level, now lasting ten and fifteen seconds, respectively.

We relayed our travel plans to Dad when he returned, and he expressed the same concern about the walk home as I had. Mum insisted she could cope, and I was already too emotionally invested in the trip to try to talk her out of it. It wasn't like it was the end of the world if she couldn't. The safe environment and warm summer temperature meant that we could literally sleep exposed on the side of the road if it came down to it. Dad relented, so it was confirmed that in two days' time we'd really be visiting Dawnhold. My first trip to a town! I was a little excited. I'd learned a fair amount about the world, but that wasn't taking away the anticipation of seeing things for myself.