She looked around with interest. No wariness or signs of being scared. Her eyes just shone with Magnus, saw only a handful of times in his two lives.
With him hiding his presence. The little girl had no idea that she wasn't alone in the room. She looked around the room step by step.
Stacks of paper laid all around the room and sometimes she could see a magical spell and a ball of dust appeared before it vanished.
At first, the magical reaction spooked her. But after she realised what the magic did, her eyes shone in wonder.
"Is anyone there?" She asked in a bubbly voice.
Magnus cancelled his passive skills and appeared before her. In a flash, he picked her up and stared into her eyes.
"Why are you here? What do you want?" He asked and released a tiny bit of his mana.
"Wow! Can you teach me, Mr. Spirit?" Her pitch went a notch higher and her eyes turned into crescent moons.
"Huh?"
...
Until now, he never expected that he would one day take care of a wimp when he didn't need her at all.
In the beginning, he had shown some resistance. Her determination, though. Even he felt a bit of admiration when he looked at her.
With his journey to develop a perfect dimensional magic. Dabbling in some prophetic magic had great benefits.
A great damage control tool. Yet, that little blob before him had no shackles of fate he could see around others.
He himself couldn't run from fate. But the kid before him did, and it seemed that she had escaped perfectly.
Total immunity to prophetic and divine magic. No backlash. The magic itself passed through her as if she didn't exist in the eyes of the magic that searched for beings with the tiniest amount of fate.
Intrigued. She soon turned into a small caretaker.
In exchange, he taught her everything she wanted to know when conducting experiments. Her aptitude was quite mysterious to him.
Like a sponge that could absorb everything, and at the same time, lose it all. First, he checked whether she had any problems with her mind, but the results came out negative.
Sometimes she acted in a way that would be impossible for the level she was at. And sometimes she acted like a noob.
She held her secrets. Albeit interesting, Magnus didn't care too much about those secrets. Maybe she would confess by herself one day and he just let it flow in the natural direction.
She never talked about the outside. He didn't ask either and just told her about various random stories from his past life in order to kill time when waiting for experiments to finish.
No matter what he did, though. Her bright eyes never dimmed, never wavered, and always held a certain amount of innocent charm in them.
Mind you, his experiments weren't all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes he experimented in more extreme ways and she always looked.
No pity, she kept her emotions positive.
"How?" He asked her one day.
"What do you mean, teacher?"
"Your positivity never wavers. Why is that?"
"Because once it does, the world will end and everything will die." She said with the purest smile.
No intent to hurt or thoughts that the world was unfair. He didn't dig much deeper and soon it turned to normal, experiments with breaks where he taught her according to his whims.
Years continued to pass.
She grew up extremely slowly and grew no more than 2 or so centimeters. Her baby teeth were still there, and her smile brightened up the room, as always.
In contrast to her. Magnus changed a bit and his scope of expressions grew. If before, he would go on for days without changing his expression.
Now he would change it once a few hours without his conscious input. Even his dense mind realised at one point.
She became the first person he would think of confining with. No other person had earned it when he used to be the prince of the glorious empire.
Same with her height, her magical capabilities stagnated and almost didn't change at all.
He attributed it to her demon race she apparently had.
'Time to look outside.' He thought to himself as he looked at her cleaning around.
Something she demanded to do because it could get boring.
"Let's go outside for a bit." He said as he turned to her.
Her eyes brightened even more before they dimmed for the slightest moment and returned to their state.
Were it not for Magnus enforcing his place to boost his stats in case of a mishap, he wouldn't have noticed the change at all.
He still didn't know. Was it an illusion or a mistake?
He would soon find out, anyway. With a bit of preparation, he patted her head as they vanished from the room.
The true royal library still stood where it had always been. To his surprise, the walls and everything didn't change at all.
A bit of disappointment welled up in his heart, before he told to himself to not be too hasty.
And soon enough, the real world unfolded itself. While not on the level of a sci-fi world. He could see the charm of magic and modernism.
He concluded that the castle became a tourist attraction and a relic of the past. Magnus' magic hid both of them as they walked around.
The language changed, but that didn't bother him too much. The lack of humans did, though. Dwarven men, elves, demons and even a goblin or orc from time to time.
With a small trick, he expanded his sense of hearing. Another quick cast later it filtered anything about humans.
"Did the humans attack the orphanages again? I don't understand why can't they leave those poor children alone..."
"You don't know? It is said that the fateful person that would unify us all had been born as an orphan child somewhere near the capital."
After a while, he heard two people talk about humans for the first time. Were humans so bad? He didn't know, but the fact that even demons and elves lived in harmony proved something.
Money held no significance to him. He just analysed the currency of the world before he created an identical copy.
The cuisine had evolved too. Some dishes were delicious, and some were a bit too modern...
The little girl he named Airis had energy for days. She walked around and led Magnus to see various things.
She knew some things around, but the changes in the years she had held no contact with the outside world had shown.
Shops she loved were closed. Some relocated and the rare ones turned into a global phenomenon. Powerful people were rare than in the ancient times.
Out of everyone in the city, 4 of them could rival an imperial knight of the old empire. He didn't know why, as training methods the young trained in were much more advanced.
After an hour of wandering, he felt an incredible and disturbing presence. A mass of souls with combined power very close to his old self before he secluded himself.
That kind of existence would be able to rule the world and the power discrapancy confused him to no end.
Such a being. Thing full of power would be able to wipe out the entire city. Sirens awakened the entire city and a blanket soon enveloped the city except for the slums.
Not long after, the mass of souls arrived.
"Ah! My Queen, please devour this weak subject and show the world the greatness of the mighty Lord Tiamat!" a human said as his body grew more and more distinct.
Sometimes a face would appear on his body before it screeched in pain and vanished. For the first time, Airis' heart beat grew not in excitement, but panic.
Just a small fragment of panic that humans live with every day. He just patted her head. With a few pulses of mana, he calmed her down just to be sure.
To destroy the world or forcing him to kill her would be unacceptable for him.
The now human with dark hair, eyes and old aristocratic clothes looked in the direction where Magnus stood and yelled.
"You dare touch her highness?!" He said as his voice shook the world around him. The barrier, which resembled the one he erected to save humanity, withstood the sound, and the world became peaceful once again.
He unleashed his mana in a stealthy manner. Sure enough, multiple powerful auras appeared and were heading in this direction.
Some shared the same kind of power the man before him held. And some close to fire, nature and other various elements.
The one before him didn't seem to use any kind of mana. A power more fraudulent than mana. Presumably something that stood behind the scenes, being comparable to a god.
Magnus didn't know how to feel. When he grew angry, his head just heated up for a bit.
When he used to be young. At that time, he felt through the changes in his body. If it heated up and he couldn't think straight, he was 'angry'.
But something complex as sadness, longing or other such things were out of his reach. They were a tickle like a need he needed to satisfy, but they never did.
Neither in the process nor at the end. And those 'feelings' grew dim with time as well. When he used to spend time as the prince, it turned into a luxury he would feel perhaps once every few months.
Once he secluded himself. Decades could pass before he felt something before it drifted away. Airis brought change with her arrival.
The almost forgotten feelings returned and grew more frequent with time, and before long, they were comparable to his childhood.
Now, when something threatened the existence of the one person that had this ability. It annoyed him.
Or rather, he felt uncomfortable all around his body and his eyes shone with a conviction.
Perhaps they weren't real emotions. However, something is better than nothing and he would not wait for it to be robbed for nothing...
His hand shone and soon the human containing those souls bursted into thousands of lights and the souls cheered at their sudden liberation.
He didn't warm up for a long time and this situation should help him stretch a bit. Airis' eyes shone with an unknown luster, and the auras stopped for a few moments before they resumed their march.
The world changed in a blink of an eye, and they were the eye of the storm.