Yawn.
I woke up in a small baby’s bed, quite the nice bed, seemed pretty expensive, especially in this day and age.
Blink. Blink.
The blur from waking up slowly cleared, it was morning, the sun shined through the window sill and onto my body.
The room I am in looks fancy, with a chandelier hanging from the top, and gold everywhere.
How did I get here anyways, the last thing I remembered was seeing the aura around everyone. Hmmm… maybe I fell asleep after the excitement.
“Ava, are you sure you want to bring that child in? His eyes match the ones from the prophecy.”
“So Julian, are you just going to leave a helpless baby in the cold winter to die? Why are we believing a stupid prophecy anyways. I am set on bringing this child into the Hashino house and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
Seems like they are arguing about bringing me in, and something about a prophecy. And I guess the young woman and my future mother’s name is Ava, while my future father’s Julian. Sigh… even in this new world I still don’t get to know my real parents.
Soft footsteps slowly approach the door. Oh shit, I should pretend to sleep, I’m a baby still, they would get suspicious if I were to wake up so early in the morning and not cry.
The door slowly creaked open, Ava tip-toed softly till she was next to my bed.
“What should I name you now?”
“Hmmm… Andrew?”
Please no.
“Eren?”
Please no. Is that an Attack on Titan reference?
“Hmmmm, how about Jin… Jin Hashino I like it.” Ava’s eyes glowed with excitement.
Wait what, somehow I got the same name as in my previous life.
Suddenly I feel hands pick me up from under, wait what, am I not a baby fast asleep?
“From now on you are Jin Hashino.” Ava says, as she smiles at me happily.
That is definitely not the way to treat a sleeping child…
//
About two years have passed since I arrived in this world, I am now 2 years old. Recently I have acquired the skills to read, write, walk and talk, quite the crazy feat for any normal 2 year old I know. But I am not your average child, with my experience from my past life as an anime obsessed otaku… maybe it is a crazy feat for me… Sigh…
I tried training my body recently, it's not really like training, it's closer to adapting to this new body. I may still have the combat skills from my past life, but I don’t think my body can handle that sort of stuff quite yet…
In the meantime, I should just learn about the world while I’m still young. I head out of my bedroom on the second floor and enter the home library.
Oh yeah, did I mention I was actually adopted into a rich noble family? The Hashino house, one of the big four families in the Midgard Kingdom, they govern over Eastland the second most crowded state of the kingdom until the royal capital, My father *adopted* is the duke of Eastland.
I was quite certain that magic in this world is much harder to learn compared to the magic shown in the isekai mangas, I guess that for sure, the magic in isekai mangas are made up and written to fit the setting.
I asked the maid Lily to help me get the book on the top shelf. Lily is one of the young maids of this mansion, also quite the beauty, although incomparable to mother, she has a sort of carmine coloured hair and large green eyes. Lily reaches up for my book. From the wooden ladder she holds her hand up, visibly struggling, she tips the book. Oh yeah did I mention Lily is extremely clumsy sometimes. The book flipped backwards from the tip, as she grabbed a hold of the book, the ladder came tumbling down and Lily fell down along with it.
Crash. “Ow, ow, ow.” I smell a flowery aroma, I open my eyes…
What is this? It's plump and soft, is this Lily’s butt??? The soft object, which was in fact Lily’s butt and thighs, lifted up away from my face.
Well, that was quite the experience, somehow I am already getting the pervy main character moments at 2. I thought to myself.
“Sorry, Young master Jin.” She quickly bows down, holding the book out, “Beginner’s guide to magic”.
//
Click. Click. Click. Click.
I ran down the steps towards the garden, holding the large heavy book. I place the book down on the grassy plain, flipping it to the first page I see a whole bunch of words and a symbol that looks like the deathly hallows from Harry Potter. The symbol seemed to be a sort of magic circle or incantation, these were the first things that come to mind when I think about magic. Sigh… reading and watching so much anime and manga really has changed me huh?
“Basic Spell: Fireball. Focus your mana onto your palm and say the incantation ‘Spark of heat. Expand and fuel. Fireball’, this is one of the basic spells. It may take up to one week to master this spell.”
One week huh? Magic sure doesn’t come as easy as the mangas say. I hold up my palm, still looking down at the book’s instructions. A flow of energy builds up within me, slowly flowing to my hand then to the center of my palm. “FIREBALL!” I shout as the energy pushes against my palm.
A large orb of bright orange flame forms in front of me. Was that supposed to happen? I was surprised how easy it was. The huge ball of flame expands larger and larger.
Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!
“Huh?”
Boommm.
A gigantic explosion and the flames dispersed. I stare blankly.
“Eh?”
Is this magic? It was weird, more like surreal, but you get the point. The fact that I can use magic but was that supposed to happen? I thought magic was supposed to fly forward or something, I guess magic really is different from manga.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Footsteps quickly scurry down the stone stairs, a voice says “Are you okay?” It was mother. She picked me up, still panting. “Jin, are you hurt?” She checks me over for any injuries, looking at the surroundings, she spots the book, flipped to the first page.
Stare—-
She held me in front of her, face to face. Hmmm, how am I supposed to describe her expression, shocked maybe? It was dead silent.
//
About a month has passed since I first started the book, as expected the amount of new information was immense, but I think I have grasped most of it, let me summarise the information real quick:
1. Spells: Spells in this isekai world are basically separated into five main categories. Attacking magic, support magic, healing magic, manipulation magic, and utility magic. The categories of magic should be pretty easy to understand, by reading the name you would prolly know what each category does. In the case of the last two, utility and manipulation, I’ll expand a bit. Utility magic, as implied in the name is magic used for utility magic is something like teleportation, it's not much but I think you get the point. And now onto manipulation magic, examples like manipulating objects from liquids to solids, pulling or throwing objects with magic are all included within this category, although its little use in combat, manipulation magic is one of the hardest categories of magic to master. At least that's what the book says, I’ll explain my theory later.
1. Mana: Mana is the energy flowing within everyone's body, putting it in terms of reference its something like lifeforce or chi. Mana is separated into two groups, negative and positive, mainly negative mana is used, spells are casted from negative mana. Positive mana is rarer to see in a body, positive mana is like a constant healing spell replenishing the body. Only around 1 in 10000 has positive mana, while basically anyone without it has negative mana, having both is extremely rare.
1. Spells and mana are the basics in terms of magic, but activation is the most important part, magic without activation is just straight up useless. The main activations for magic are Incantations and magic circles, just like in any isekai story, incantations seems to be the trend, at least according to the book.
That is mostly all the basic information from the book explained, at least that's the information I took in.
From practice I understood the basic concept, by pushing extra mana out towards the spell you are able to make the spell go forward, if no extra mana is applied the spell would flop and just fall down due to gravity. So you can pretend your hand is something like a gun, the spell your bullet and the extra mana the gunpowder, hopefully that explains a bit better
Currently I’m up to page 355, each beginner spell takes up around on average 6-8 pages, while elementary takes up 12-13, I haven’t gotten to the spells above advanced so I wont know. Page 356 “Blood ritual: Using a drop of blood to create a sacrifice…”
Well… That became dark real quick.
To speak in summary, rituals are used to power up magic spells, largely increasing the output and the power of the spell; these rituals mostly come with a cost. The blood ritual is one where the user of the spell sacrifices a drop of blood to increase the proficiency of the spell.
What if I used the drop of blood along with the manipulation magic, compressing the blood into just a solid, would that take away the sacrifice and turn it into a stronger form of blood manipulation? Guess I’ll never know without trying it out.
I hold both my index fingers together, slide, a drop of blood falls from the left index finger. I clench my fist, the droplet of blood stops midair.
“Compress.”
The drop of blood turns hard as it continues to hover in the air.
It worked? I was surprised that my crazy theory worked out perfectly, my imagination went crazy, images flung themselves into my head, from figurines to weapons, I can make them, I can make them all.
The droplet of blood warps into the shape of a woman’s body. Oops… forget that.
Let me try one more object for today, “Compress… Etos.” The droplet of blood floating in the air warps, it became long and flat, a scarlet red sword. The sword was elegant, beautiful.
I grabbed hold of the sword, held it tightly. Clank. It was heavy, way too heavy for me currently.
It was then and there, I discovered the true potential of manipulation magic.
//
I’m four now, ever since I found the book, “Beginner’s guide to magic” I devoted all my time to it, shutting myself in to become the best magic user I can, it's been 2 years. For once I shut myself in for a good cause, not just to lay around and wank. I am now able to cast intermediate level spells with a flick of my hand, not that I need intermediate level spells at my age, but you know, the stronger the better.
My mana reserves has grown quite a bit also.
There are 5 levels in terms of spell casting, basic, elementary, intermediate, advanced, and calamity. Pretty simple to understand, the stronger the spell the higher the level and most likely the harder to cast.
There are 4 elements to magic: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind. In this world magic is basically what people call alchemy, the deconstruction and reconstruction of matter, as we know from science class matter cannot be created nor destroyed, this applies in this world also, spells simply use the available space and reconstruct it.
I said there were only 4 elements to magic, that was wrong to a point, by using something the book called spell stacking mages are able to combine multiple spells to create something known as a combination spell, examples to this are like hot water geysers and warm wind. It may seem hard to do but it’s actually quite simple, just say the incantation for two spells and focus on forcing the two into one.
Blood Art One: Bloody Inferno
A swirling scarlet flame burns a dent into the mountain.
Woah there let's slow down a bit. Let me explain, the blood arts are a variety of spells I developed after I learned the fact that I can use the sacrificial drop of blood to perform a stronger form of blood manipulation. Although the spells aren’t perfect due to my limited knowledge on mana and spell manipulation, it should still be enough to rank itself in the intermediate spells category. These spells I developed have a pre-set setting, where the spell can automatically do its job without me focusing on the incantation. Creating spells of the get go is extremely difficult, because of the many variables in the incantation a lot of newly created spells backfire. There are 13 forms of blood art in total:
Blood Art one: Bloody Inferno
Blood Art two: Crimson Creation
Blood Art three: Bloodshot
Blood Art four: Flowing Red Armor
Blood Art five: Binding
Blood Art six: Resonance
Blood Art seven: Scarlet Rain
Blood Art eight: Piercing Arrow
Blood Art nine: Explosion
Blood Art ten: Decay
Blood Art eleven: Crimson Puppet
Blood Art twelve: Enforcer
Blood Art thirteen: Order
Pre-setting, a basic skill for mages, a common practice, it’s efficient. pre-setting basically means setting up a spell which can be fired at a moment’s notice, sometimes even without the incantation, but because of this the spells overall power significantly drops due to the non improvisable nature.
“I really improved since then, huh?” (thinking back this was really dumb… why did I fire off an intermediate spell in a forest…)
“Jin! Where are you? Jin!” A loud female voice shouts from the foot of the mountain.
Shit. Mom saw the explosion. I quickly crouch down, trying to figure out how not to get exposed.
“Jin, thank god you are safe.” A voice came from behind as my body got lifted up.
“Jin, are you hurt?” Mom checks me over, “Hmmm, no sign of any injury even when you were so close to an explosion…”
Shit I’m about to get busted.
“Jin, by chance could it be you that casted that spell?” Mom stares at me.
Yep, I’m cooked, hopefully I can get away by confessing. I nod my head while acting to be sorry, I made sure to look innocent and bowed my head down sincerely as I apologised.
Ava’s eyes lit up, as she embraced me happily, “My son’s a magical genius.” She was crazy excited, jumping around the forest like a mad-woman. I guess I shouldn’t say that to my mother, although adopted.
That wasn’t the reaction I thought she was going to do.
I went home with mom after that.