January 9th 1501 - one month since my rebirth. The month had been... uneventful, in a word. The only thing I truly looked forward to were Tuesdays, as they were the days that my uncle came over to visit. And whenever he came over, he always told me stories. These stories helped me grasp just how long it had been since Ato Aywrath's death. There was one story in particular that helped me discern the true amount of time it had been - my uncle called it the 'Tale of Three Gods'. This story detailed the adventures of my Infinite Party - albeit an extremely glorified version. By the end of the story, all three of us had supposedly reached the level of Gods, and after defeating the demonic forces, we all transcended and created a version of Limbo that we called the 'End Planes'. These End Planes contained a version of Heaven and Hell called North (Heaven) and South (Hell). So, according to the story, we now watched over the planet as the Three Gods - Caern Envyra, God of Mind, Lilith Pridefall, God of Sword, and Ato Aywrath, God of Magic.
Obviously, most of the story consisted of pure bullshit. Everything from the names of the battles to what happens after death - sorry to break it to you, but once someone dies, they don't face judgement, they just enter an eternal state of peace in a dark void. It's rather serene really. But that also helped me learn just how long it had been. It must've been at least a few centuries for our actions to reach the status of legend, and the pure amount of false information made me think it must've been at least 500 years. 500 years, huh? To be honest, that wasn't actually that bad compared to what I had suspected. There was one thing in the tale that stuck out to me - instead of the Infinite Party fighting and defeating the Seven Cardinal Kings of Sin, there was supposedly only one Demon King that commanded all of the demonic armies. It just seemed like a rather strange warp to have occurred naturally over time, but I disregarded it, as if I paid attention to everything that I thought was 'strange', I'd never get a second of peace.
Other than on Tuesdays, I rarely got a second of alone time, as my mother made me spend it snuggled in her arms - which was comfortable, but still annoying. Because of that, I hadn't progressed with reteaching myself how to speak and crawl as much as I would have liked to, but I made sure that whenever I was alone at night, the only one left awake, I would sneak out of my mother's arms and go practice by the window, while looking up at the stars. It was rather peaceful. At my current level, I had practically mastered the art of crawling, and I could even form short sentences. Although, I was the only one who knew this about myself, as I had once made the mistake of saying a single word to my mother around two weeks into my new life - it was a whole process that made her believe I was some kind of genius. Of course, I do intend to one day show myself to be a prodigy of an entirely different breed, but now was way too soon for that.
I had decided something. I knew I had progressed quite far in my crawling and speaking studies, so I thought it was okay to put those on hold for now, in order to focus on something else - magic. I would've preferred to focus on training in sword, since that was the one I was least confident in, but I didn't have any sword training tools readily available and even if I did, I doubt I had the strength to hold one. I was still a baby after all. But magic was different. You didn't need any tools or physical strength - everything that magic involves has to do with your mind.
Similar to speaking and crawling, I would definitely need to hide this practice from my mother and sister. But that wouldn't be too difficult.
Grey rays of moonlight dispersed through the single-roomed house, calling me over towards the window. I slowly mustered all the strength my infantile body could handle into lifting my mother's fragile arm. Once completed, I crawled over to the windowsill in the corner, and pulled myself onto the wooden crate that sat just below it, giving me a better view of the sky. After taking a few seconds to admire it's unparalleled beauty, I closed my eyes. It was time.
A mage can first begin to use magic after forming their first mana pool - something akin to an invisible organ inside of a person's heart that stores mana. A person can form a mana pool by nudging a single mana particle into their heart. However, it sounds a lot easier than it actually is. A person isn't capable of actually manipulating the ambient mana in the atmosphere. The only mana a person is actually capable of manipulating to their desire is the mana in their mana pool. If you don't have a mana pool, you can only give slight suggestions to the ambient mana, which is why forming a mana pool is so difficult - you have to make a suggestion to the mana, and have it actually accept your wish for it to go to your heart. To put it in simpler terms, you're not capable of moving mana, so you have to ask the mana to move on it's own - then it has to like you enough to accept your suggestion. This process takes a lot of attempts - each with more concentration than the last. It's so draining, in fact, that in my past life, I was only able to form one at a year old - still a prodigious age, but not quite a month.
But in this life, I was still Ato Aywrath - meaning I had the same focus and knowledge as the greatest mage to ever live. For me, this would be child's play.
I focused on letting go of all my senses. In order to make a suggestion that the mana will accept, a person has to trade their sense of self and trick their mind into thinking it is the mana. This will lead to them seeing, feeling and hearing everything that their chosen mana particle is seeing, feeling and hearing. I felt my senses begin warping. Good. The first step was now complete - a mana particle had decided to answer my request. Now all that was left to do was direct it towards my heart.
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
I poured all of my concentration into this. It wasn't as easy as I had hoped - with my body still being that of a baby, I kept getting the urge to simply stop concentrating. But I knew that I couldn't. If I truly wanted to form a mana pool, I had to keep my focus just a little longer.
Based off of the mana particle's current position, it would probably take around three more seconds for it to reach my heart. Three seconds. Easy.
Three.
...
Two.
...
One.
...
Pain - a searing pain bit through my entire body, originating from my eyes. What? What was happening? I didn't experience this when I formed my first mana pool in my previous life. I wanted- no, I needed to scream. Yet, I knew that I couldn't, as if I did, I would definitely wake up my mother and sister. Help. Please, someone- anyone, help me! I clutched my eyes with my hands, hoping to put an end to this torment, but if anything it felt like it just encouraged it further. Then, it spread to my crest. The mark began glowing an intense yellow, lighting anything around it, and mimicking the same pain from my eyes. It was only at that point that I noticed that my eyes were also glowing the same yellow.
Finally, after multiple minutes of squirming and muffled groans, the pain subsided, along with the glow. I managed to pull myself back to my senses, slowly opening my eyes. However, when I did so, I found something strange. Floating through the air were small glowing blue orbs. I knew what these were, but there was no way, right?
I quickly threw my small body off of the crate, and crawled over to the lightly shattered mirror sitting in far right corner of the room. As I approached, I saw my reflection; fair skin, a small mole underneath my right eye, a modest amount of red hair coating the top of my head - everything was the same, except for one detail. My eyes. My irises were still the familiar scarlet colour, but my pupils - they were no longer the natural black they should have been. Instead, they were a frightening glowing gold. I don't mean glowing in the way that they emitted some kind of powerful aura - no, they were literally glowing. It was only slight, so it wouldn't be noticeable in the morning sun, but they were definitely slightly glowing.
Haha, wow. I didn't think that I'd have this available to me in this life. This is Ato Aywrath's unique [Power], [Mana Master].
In this world, every person is born with their own unique [Power] that they unlock after forming their first mana pool. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about them, due to two main reasons; in my past life, I had reached such a high level of magic perfection that I could copy most people's [Powers] with my own mana, and I had also had my [Power] sealed away from me by a curse when I was rather young. My unique [Power] would've actually been extremely useful and powerful if I had been able to use it, being so strong that it was one of the few [Powers] I couldn't replicate with mana.
It was called [Mana Master], and it allowed it's user to do two things - the first was to see one in every one billion ambient mana particles in the air (those were the little blue orbs). While this may seem rather unhelpful at first, it could've actually been quite useful at helping me see mana traps and predict what spell my opponent was going to use before they summoned it by memorizing the mana patterns that gather from specific spells. The second use was where it became truly powerful, though. It allowed me to manipulate ambient mana in the same way that you manipulate mana in your mana pool, meaning that if I mastered [Mana Master] I could have a completely infinite mana pool and create entire universe levelling spells like it was no big deal. In my past life, I had created a technique that made my mana pool practically infinite by making the mana inside the mana pool contain their own mana pools, and then have the mana inside of those mana pools also have their own mana pools, and so on so forth. But even that did have a limit, but this was truly infinite. Plus, if I combined it with my old infinite mana pool technique, I'd become a being whose entire form could be considered something akin to a concept of mana, and what is a concept if not a deity?
This truly was a great day. But that wasn't all I discovered. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to be greedy - regaining [Mana Master] alone would've been more than enough. But it seems that the world truly just wanted to reward me. If I had to make a guess as to what happened, I'd say that my conscience brought with it the [Mana Master] [Power], but my new body still had it's own [Power].
This was [Crest Control]. The way [Powers] work is that the owner of the [Power] instantly knows what the [Power]'s called along with what it does and how to use it the second it develops - like an instinctual response. And so I instantly knew what this was. [Crest Control] was also a rather powerful [Power], albeit not on the same level as [Mana Master] (but no other [Power] really was). [Crest Control] allowed me to not only swap my crest between the Soldier, Mage and Sword-Spell crests, but also manipulate any other person's crest as well, being able to go so far as to completely delete their crests. In fact, with enough mastery, I may even be able to create entirely new crests.
Truly an amazing day. Not only had I become the youngest mage in history, outperforming my past self by an entire eleven months, but I had also become the world's very first dual [Power] wielder - both of them being extremely strong at that. With these two abilities, a mana pool at one month old and the Sword-Spell crest, there was no longer any doubt in my mind - I would definitely become the absolute strongest being to ever live. In fact, there was a high chance that I'd even outperform the deity version of myself from the Tale of Three Gods.
A smug smile crept onto my face. "Watch out world! Because I'm coming for ya!"
"Brother? Is that you?"
Crap.