The sound of a crying baby immediately hushed the rest of the room. However, only a second passed until it descended into noise once again. The excited chatter of the midwives and the rush off people entering the room, still couldn't overwhelm Joseph's tears.

Joseph looked at the waves of people entering the room, through blurry eyes. He could hardly take in any of it. Everything was so bright, so loud, so cold.

However, he felt a sudden warmth envelop him. Looking down at his body, he noticed that water had covered his body and he watched as it slid off him, pulling with it, any fluids that still stuck on his body. Having seen magic before, he wasn't shocked but the sensation still surprised him a little.

The blond midwife, after removing all the water on his body, drying him completely, handed him over to the woman from which he'd come. Her fair skin was red while her chocolate hair was a mess, just like the first time Joseph had seen her.

"Congratulations, Lady Manour. It's a boy." The midwife bowed.

Emelie Manour nodded, the motion short due to her fatigue. "Thank you, Maeva." She, then, looked down at the child in her arms who had started to quiet down.

"Would you like to breastfeed him or should I get one of the nannies?"

Looking down at her child who seemed to be looking back up at her, she felt the greatest sense of warmth flow up into her heart. "No, I'll feed him", she replied, shaking her head.

"Are you sure? You're still weak from labor. I know you-"

"Maeva, it's fine. I can feed him."

Maeva, the midwife, nodded before ushering nearly everyone out. The only people allowed to stay were her, and Emelie's fiancé, Sebastian.

While Emelie let her child breastfeed, she looked up at Sebastian, smiling. "What do you think we should call him?"

Sebastian rubbed the back of his head, thinking. "How about Henry?"

Emelie immediately frowned.

"Henry with an i?"

That too, only met a frown.

This charade continued for a while, Sebastian growing more exasperated. "Jean, Aubrey, Lucas, Sebastian II-"

Emelie's face brightened up. "That's it!"

"What, Sebastian II?" Sebastian also brightened. He hadn't legitimately thought she would accept 'Sebastian II' and had only thrown it out there because he was running out of names.

"No, of course not." Despite the rejection of his name being used, Sebastian's face remained smiling as he looked at the expression of pure love and happiness his soon-to-be wife had on her face.

"Lucas.."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Joseph/Lucas' days were immensely boring at first. Now that he had been born, he did a whole lot of nothing every day, mainly letting himself be played with. Ironically, it was in the womb that he got more stimulation, though that was only because he could fly out of it in his soul form.

There were two main issues with doing that as a newborn though. First, he couldn't. He literally couldn't leave his body. He'd feel an immense phantom pain as if he was tearing something deep within his body. Every time that happened, he'd start crying.

Second, even if he could leave his body, there was someone watching him at all times. It would be immensely risky to leave his body when there were so many variables. What if his soul got noticed while he was out? Unlike when he was still a fetus, he wouldn't have anywhere to hide. He also didn't know how his body would react to its soul leaving. Most important probably, is that he didn't really have anywhere to go. He couldn't touch anything physically so all of the reading he'd relied on Emelie to do, was impossible now.

All he could do was cry, eat, pee and poop, the four tenets of infancy. Unluckily, he had the mental age of someone in their 20s so he had to constantly fight his instincts to do those to preserve the little scraps of self dignity he felt he had left.

Still, it was difficult. When facing too much stimulation like he had when he was just born, he would start crying, regardless of whether he wanted to. And he would much rather cry than piss himself so he ended up crying often.

Fortunately, this sedentary lifestyle only went on for a couple of months. As for how he entertained himself, it was mainly through recalling his lives, thinking back to each battle, each war, each moment as if his lives were movies.

He didn't have a perfect memory. Otherwise, he probably would've gone insane from the sheer amount of information he'd accumulated from every single life. His memory was still above average yet even with that, he could barely remember his first 20 lives. Even his memories of his most recent life were faulty in some areas. His memories of Earth were what he really perfectly recalled.

Maybe it was because they, in a sense, motivated him. Maybe it was because they belonged to his first life or at least the first he could remember. He didn't focus on his first life much unless he felt he needed something to drive him through something painful.

It was either these moments of self reflection or the time he'd spend with other people. Most often, it was his mother Emelie who would come to check up on him, or talk and play with him. Unless his mother was with him, his father, Sebastian, would never come to check up on him.

After a couple months, he was let out of his crib more often and it didn't take long before he could finally start crawling. It only took a month more before he started talking and about 9 months in total for him to start talking.

While Emelie had, at first, been worried about her son, she grew happier, seeing his progress. Noticing that he'd been born a couple months early and his lack of normal responses, she'd been worried. Of course, Joseph/Lucas had been born early due to his own little tricks. As for his lack of normal responses, he just had no intention of pooping himself even if it was considered normal. He also didn't feel like giggling and smiling at everyone who baby-talked to him, or playing with toys.

He didn't want to seem too abnormal which was why he hid his understanding of their language which had progressed to an advanced level by now. Still, he was either bored out of his mind when people would do nothing but baby-talk, or he was just frustrated.

Of course, Emelie knew none of this. As time passed on, though, and she saw her child's progression in his walking and talking, her worries melted away.

She often took time out to read to him some baby books she had gotten and feed him. By now, she'd weaned him off breast milk which was strangely easy.

Also strangely, he seemed to respond better when she read something she'd normally read, especially books on magic, to him. His face would make the cutest little frown sometimes, while other times he would giggle.

Months went on like this, with Joseph gradually getting more used to this body and what people would expect of him. He also learned more about magic, and while he could never manifest a spell, he got more used with feeling mana.

Despite the boring start to his life, those were only a couple of months. To someone who'd lived for thousands of years, the years of his infancy passed in a flash.