It was four in the morning. While everybody in the mansion was fast asleep, save for a few guards here and there and a cat, I was sitting on my bed, not a thought of sleep on my mind. It’s been four years since I reincarnated in this new world, Almertia, is what they call it, apparently it means “Ground” in a certain dead language. My new name is Lavenna Lapress Mehliac, the daughter of the Duchess Heralfia Mehliac who also happens to be the court head magician. My father was the 8th prince of Terb, the kingdom that we live in, as you would guess, but he died 3 months before I was born because of some sort of disease. Maybe because of it my new mother became really overprotective of me and she spoils me far too much. Or maybe not and I’m just overthinking it. Not that I would mind being spoiled anyway. Now, as to why I am wide awake at such an hour is because today some court mages will come to our manor to test my magic aptitude, a test all noble children must past around my age, and, as the daughter of the head of the court magicians and a member of the royalty, I am expected to have a rather high aptitude. And here’s the catch: Until I reach around seven years old I will not be able to use magic on my own. Pretty bad, right? I mean I will not be disowned if they find out or anything, especially with my mother being the way she is but it would probably hurt her anyway. And with all the love she gave me so far I think she deserves me doing something for her if I can. So, right now I’m finishing dismantling a magic toy to get the magic core that’s powering it after which I will have to engrave some runes on a small mithril plate that I stole from the set of armor that was standing in the corner of the living room. I mean they wouldn’t need it anyway. And as hard as mithril is, it’s no excuse to use such a magnificent alchemic material for armors and weaponry, that’s just wasteful. So, after I finish with the runes all I will have left is to power it up with the core and I will get myself a simple inconspicuous mana-emission device and, what’s more important, it will start absorbing the mana from its surroundings to power itself after the core runs out!

  After about an hour or so I finally finished with it. Now I take a frilly bracelet and hide the small plate underneath aaaand I’m done! It’s a blessing that this world’s magical technology is so underdeveloped in comparison with my previous one’s as this trick wouldn’t work there, though they would not test children and people in general for their ability in magic. Though, in all honesty, I’m having a really hard time trying to make sense of this world’s magic in general. For example, they have this weird thing called a [chant] and I have no clue how it works. They say some embarrassing sounding lines that describe the desired effect for their magic in a veeery convoluted way and… it kinda happens? I don’t get how it works. When I tried asking mother about it, obviously in a way that makes me look like a child explain to me how by describing a magical phenomenon people make it happen as well as to why it needs to be spoken out loud, towards whom or what they speak when they describe it, and especially why it needs to sound so embarrassing, she said some bullcrap along the lines of “The chant was created by our ancestors to help use a magic without having to imagine it”. When I asked her why we need to imagine it she said that imagination seriously affects the magic we use and that a magician with a good enough imagination doesn’t need to use a chant. This is seriously so ridiculous. I have never heard of a magician needing to imagine the kind of magic they want to use to use it. Even illusion magic requires not imagination but cold and hard calculations to get things done not to mention any other kind of magic. Maybe it has something to do with the biology of our race? Even though we look like the humans from my previous world it doesn’t mean we’re the same, in fact, it would be very strange if we were. I will check it once I get my powers back. And when it comes to the chants I am out of ideas on how they are supposed to help people. They are certainly not there to help with the imagination thing-y as it took me a good minute of time to understand a chant for the spell called [light orb]. It went like this “Oh, evil-striking light, descend upon me, help me find my way in the darkness and bring your grace to the world, light orb!”. I mean how do you understand its effects? Suppose its shape is in the name, what about the brightness? The color? The size of the orb? Where is it? What does being ‘evil-striking’ do to the spell and what does it even mean, ‘evil-striking’? By what criteria do you define ‘evil’ and will it actually ‘strike’ it when it finds the so-called ‘evil’ and if It does then how? Burn it or something? Arg, so many questions and that is only what concerns the chants, sometimes I just want to reveal my secret to mother and ask her all these questions like a normal person instead of faking toddler behaviour. But it probably isn’t the brightest idea. She will probably accept the fact that I reincarnated but then she’ll probably start asking questions about my previous life and I really really don’t want her to know the things I’ve done even though I don’t think that what I did is wrong but she will likely not accept me if she finds out…

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  Oh, look, the Sun rose! How much time have I spent picking on this worlds magic, I wonder? No matter, the maid will probably come in in an hour or so, so I have some time to finish some of my business. Every morning for the past year I have been meditating in the morning to analyze the condition that my soul is in. Though everything should be fine but you can never be too cautious when it comes to these things.

  Hm… It feels that the parts responsible for both input and output of arcane energies are quite damaged… No matter, they will naturally heal by the time I’m ready to use magic. As for the other things it’s hard to tell. I can more or less guess they’re fine, on an acceptable level at least but I will probably need a more thorough analysis. Right now I don’t have the resources to do those things yet, but I have a few ideas on how to get them. Good thing I studied alchemy when I was a mortal .

  I should probably get a little sleep now as today will be a very long day and it will not do if I fall asleep in the middle of it, even though I’m four.