Chapter 2 - Family

Morgan quietly observed the people in the room, there were a middle-aged man, three young boys, the woman who was holding him (he assumed she was his mother), a teenager girl who was fidgeting while looking at him, and a girl in a maid outfit. Morgan guessed these were the members of his new family, but he was puzzled by the expression in their faces, it wasn’t the joyful expression people usually have when looking at a newborn baby, it was the expression of someone attending a funeral. Not knowing what to do in that situation, Morgan reached his mother’s hair with his little hands and started playing with it. The instant he did so, the people in the room stopped showing a worried expression and started to talk among themselves.

Morgan expected to have to spend several years learning the language of this world, but he understood it from the beginning, he just considered it a side-effect of his fate aligning with the signature energy of this universe. From their conversation, Morgan started to understand what had happened a while ago. It seemed that the previous awkward atmosphere in the room was due to him not crying, but seeing him playing with his mother’s hair made them understand that he was just fine.

He also learned who the people in the room were, as well as their position in the family:

His father was Anthon Pendragon, he was 35 years old and, for his outstanding services to the Shephiran Kingdom, he had been given a knighthood several years ago. He was currently serving in the palace as an instructor for the crown Prince, but he liked to talk about how his ancestors had once been rulers of a kingdom before the Great Magic Era. He was blond with blue eyes, and he had two wives: Emelyn and Leyla.

His mother was Emelyn Pendragon, she was 27 years old, and she was a sixth rank fire-earth dual element magus. She had four sons with her husband Anthon. She was a very caring woman when it came to her family, but it was better not to make her mad. She was a redhead with blue eyes.

Leyla Pendragon, she was 17 years old and Emelyn’s little sister. She was a second rank wind magus and Anthon’s second wife, but she had yet to give him children. She was a redhead with green eyes.

His three siblings: Arnold (11), Josh (8), and Bly (4) were blond with brown eyes, just like their father. Morgan on the other hand, he was a redhead with blue eyes, like his mother.

Finally, the girl in the maid outfit was Jasmine, she was 19 years old and she had served in this house for the last five years.

Emelyn: "Anthon, how are we going to name him?"

Anthon: "Hmm, let me think… Got it, we’ll name him Merlin, Merlin Pendragon!"

Emelyn: "Merlin…"

Leyla: "Merlin? I don’t think I have ever heard that name before… What kingdom is it from?"

Anthon: "No wonder you have never heard that name before, Leyla. It’s a name from before the Great Magic Era. Merlin was the name of the founder of the Pendragon clan, as well as Avalon Kingdom’s first monarch."

Emelyn: "I like the name… but, why did you choose this one for him?"

Anthon: "To honor my ancestors and… because I hope our children may be able to restore the glory of our clan, at least to a certain extent."

Emelyn: "That doesn’t explain why you chose this name now and not before… If those are your only reasons, you could have chosen it for another of our kids, so why didn’t you?"

Anthon: "Call it superstition… but the original Merlin was a golden eyed redhead, so to honor that man, I had to wait until I had a redhead son…"

Leyla: "Well, I think it’s a good name."

Emelyn: "I don’t know about his future achievements, but he is my son, so I’ll be proud of him and support him unconditionally!"

After hearing his mother’s words, Merlin couldn’t stop his tears and started crying. His parents thought he was hungry, but how could they know those were tears of pure happiness? The words he had longed to hear from the mother in his previous world (even if she didn’t actually mean them), he had finally obtained them in this new world, where he had a mother who (unlike the previous one) cared very deeply about him.

Like that, Morgan’s / Merlin’s life in this new world began…

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Eighteen months later…

It had been roughly a year and a half since Merlin was born in this world, Klantea. He had learnt to walk and he was starting to talk, although he had many problems to correctly articulate the words since his body was still developing. He had shown interest in books, so while his mother wasn’t at home or was busy with other matters, his aunt Leyla would pick a book up and read it for him.

Whenever his aunt read for him, he would sit on her knees and try to follow the text. This way he started learning the alphabet of this world, which was similar to the ancient runes that had been used centuries ago in northern Europe, in his previous world. Strangely enough, although he was able to understand the language immediately after being reborn, that wasn’t the case with the alphabet, so this one he had to learn the hard way…

Leyla had always wanted to have a little brother, but since her parents had already passed away that was clearly impossible, so she started treating Merlin as one. There were several reasons for doing so: first, her longing for a brother who would never exist; second, she had wanted to treat her other nephews that way too, but she was too busy with her training as a magus and had very little time to spend with her family, so this was her first opportunity to have a sisterly behavior with one of her nephews; and lastly, she was married, she didn’t know when she might get pregnant, and after having her own children, she would have to act as a mother, which meant she wouldn’t be able to spend so much time with Merlin.

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From Merlin’s perspective Leyla’s actions were a good thing for him, because thanks to her reading those books to him, not only did he learn the alphabet in less than a month, he also learnt about the geography and current political situation of the continent.

Roughly put, in this new world the seas occupied a 75% of its total surface, just like on Earth, on the other hand, this world was three or four times bigger than Earth. In this world, there were four continents, three which hadn’t been fully explored: Kenton, Klasten and Kaltena, and the unexplored continent of Klatera, also known as “The continent of no return” because not a single person who went there was ever back. The relationship between the continents Kenton, Klasten y Kaltena was almost non-existent, because the distance between continents was so great that the fastest ship had to travel for three months before reaching another continent…

The little village where they lived was called Laklostia and it belonged to the ShephIran Kingdom, in the Klasten continent. Laklostia was a little town next to the border with the Klausna Kingdom, and because of that, there was a garrison two miles away from the border, to deal with the guerrilla tactics the soldiers of Klausna Kingdom liked to use, otherwise the soldiers of Klausna Kingdom would have raided the village, killed the men, had fun with the women and enslaved the survivors to sell them in their kingdom at a later date. The worst part of it was that the Klausna Kingdom denied any knowledge of their activities, so no actions were ever taken against those soldiers in their kingdom, despite having flagrantly violated the existent non-aggression pact between the two kingdoms.

Another interesting fact that Merlin learnt, thanks to the books Leyla read to him, was that in this world elves, dwarves, beast-men, asmodian and demons actually existed. And so did monsters and dungeons, there were also branches of the Adventurers Guild in almost every town across the continent, just like this world had been created based on an RPG game or a light novel. Of course, after learning about that, Merlin was delighted and made “becoming an adventurer” and “meeting people from each of the other races”  his new goals in life.

But those weren’t the only changes in the Pendragon household. His brother Bly had just become 6 years old, which meant that, like every other kid, he had to go through the magic awakening test which was usually held once a month in the plaza of every village (in towns and mayor cities it was held once a week at the branch of the Magic Institute).

After passing the test, Emelyn was told that he had a medium affinity with the earth element, which meant that if trained, Bly could become a third rank magus at most, with his affinity anything further than that would be impossible for him. But Emelyn wasn’t disappointed because, although he could never go beyond the third rank, Bly was the first of his children to have some elemental affinity. Besides, he had an earth element affinity, which meant that Emelyn, being a fire-earth dual element magus, could train him and make the most of his potential far better than any hired instructor.

Arnold and Josh usually trained all day long in the garden following the training regimen their father had left for them the previous month. They wanted to follow their father, so they decided to become swordsmen, just like him, but as their father only came home from the capital once a month, he always left them a parchment with the training regimen for the following month.

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And just like that, another two and a half years flew by…

Merlin, with Leyla’s help, had already gone through almost every book in the library and memorized each and every one of them. Most of the knowledge in those books was useless for a four year old boy, but he memorized the books regardless, because being useless now didn’t mean they would be useless for him in the future… the books he was most interested in were those related to compounding, survival and herbal medicine, geography and magic.

The books related to martial arts of this world didn’t pick his interest because they were mostly dedicated to fencing and archery, which a four year old can’t practice. Besides, he had a profound theoretical knowledge of karate, taekwondo and aikido (being an otaku, after reading about them in the manga, he became interested in them and studied all their moves, but in his past life he had never trained, not even once), so he started secretly training in those three martial arts. He had come to believe that in this world, martial arts other than fencing and archery were non-existent, so he didn’t want anyone to see him training in his martial arts, that way he could always have an ace up his sleeve…

One day, Merlin was finishing his running exercises next to the old dried well in the northern part of the garden, when he heard a buzzing sound coming from inside the well. His curiosity got the best of him, and despite having been explicitly forbidden from approaching the well, he thought it wouldn’t matter if it was just a quick peek. Before resuming his morning practice, he climbed the stone and looked inside, but all he could see was darkness… Disappointed, Merlin tried to go back to the garden to resume his morning exercises, but he lost his foothold and fell inside the well. After hitting against the ground below, his sight blurred, and his consciousness faded away in the darkness…

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