In a large house located within the sparsely-populated farming village of Buena, a young couple was happily welcoming the long-anticipated birth of their firstborn.
It was not that long ago when the couple were still fighting side by side as part of the same adventuring party. The young woman had become pregnant following the two's romantic and intimate affair, and it was then that the couple made the decision to settle down in this isolated village.
The husband, a brown haired young man with handsome if slightly arrogant features, served the Count of Roa as a low-ranking knight in charge of Buena village's defenses. The wife, a beautiful young woman with a kind and gentle disposition, worked in the village as a healer. The couple waited with eager anticipation as their maidservant was cleaning the newborn babe. The infant, now swaddled in a smooth cotton blanket, was presented before his mother.
"Ru...deus, my son," said the exhausted young woman, cracking a gentle smile as she cradled her newborn infant. Though fatigued, she was grateful that she had been blessed with his birth, no doubt a precious new addition to the young couple's family.
"Oh, looks like he's opening his eyes. Rudeus, this is dad, say hello to daddy," the man excitedly waved his hand in front of his newborn son, beaming a sincere smile.
However, the couple soon realized that something was amiss. The boy had opened his eyes and was looking at them, but he was not crying. They had heard that a newborn baby that failed to cry was likely to have complications with his health.
Just as the couple was about to break into a panic, their maidservant, an experienced midwife, intervened.
"Master Paul, Mistress Zenith, may I?" asked the maidservant as she extended her hands.
The young mother, Zenith, quickly handed her son over to her maidservant, desperately hoping that the experienced midwife could help him. While the young mother was a healer herself, her ability only allowed her to return a patient to a previous state of health. That is, she may to some extent heal injuries that was inflicted or illnesses that afflicted an otherwise healthy person, but to change a person's natural state, whether that be to give intelligence to an imbecile or bring to life a stillborn child, was clearly beyond the scope of her powers.
"Please, help him, Lilia,"
The maidservant, Lilia, took Rudeus into her hands and undid the cloth wrapping around the infant. She then proceeded to pinch his hands and softly smacked his buttocks while calling for his response.
"Waaaa! Waaa!" It wasn't long before the babe responded with a tearful cry.
The young couple, Paul and Zenith, were filled with a sense of relief. Their hearts nearly fell the moment they thought that their newborn son might not be able to live for long or grow up healthy.
"Come, let me hold him," the nervous Paul asked of Lilia who was now re-wrapping the blanket around the infant Rudeus.
With his infant son in his hands, Paul excitedly lifted him up into the air while loudly proclaiming his joy. Only once his excitement finally died down was Rudeus handed back to his mother, Zenith, who took Rudeus into her hands and on Lilia's advise, proceeded to breastfeed him. And soon, the little infant fell to sleep.
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Rudeus was now snugly tucked in his cradle. After checking that the infant was comfortably asleep, Lilia and Paul had bid him good night. Once the two had left the baby's room, Rudeus opened his eyes once more.
Looking at the ceiling, he could only ponder in a daze as to the circumstances of what had just transpired.
"I can't believe this! I'm back?! Paul, Zenith and Lilia are all still alive!"
His thoughts trailed back to the moment he opened his eyes to the sight of Zenith's and Paul's smiles. He had wanted to rub his eyes at the time in order to check if he was actually hallucinating the whole thing but alas, his body was wrapped in a blanket. Even so, he couldn't help but cry once he realized he wasn't dreaming after all as Lilia began smacking his behind. The pain had awakened him to the reality that he was indeed alive.
Furthermore, the fact that he was experiencing exactly what he had experienced at the beginning of his Second Life made it impossible for him to hold back his tears. For Rudeus, the relief he felt when he came to the realization that he had indeed been given another chance was just so overwhelming that his emotions simply overflowed and burst forth into tears.
"I still can't believe it! To think that I actually cried like a little bab- oh wait, I am a little baby now. I suppose Paul, Zenith and Lilia will just have to excuse that. Still, to think that the Mysterious Being wasn't kidding when he made the offer..."
Rudeus realized just how much of a debt of gratitude he owed to the Mysterious Being. While he still questioned the motivation and nature of the Mysterious Being, he can't deny the fact that he had been given something he wished for more than anything else, a second chance.
The fact that he was given another chance to redo his life and enact vengeance on the Hitogami was enough to be grateful for, and thus Rudeus made a solemn promise then to repay the Mysterious Being's kindness.
"I suppose I'll have to think of a way to thank him for that. Though without knowing even his name, it's merely a pointless sentiment at this point."
Now that he had finally cleared away his excitement, Rudeus began to direct his thoughts towards the future.
His to do list, whether that be for his time in Buena village, Boreas' estate in Roa, or dealing with the Metastasis Event as well as his plan to contact the Dragon God Orsted, along with everything else, were still in a messy jumble at this point.
But one thing he thought he could start doing immediately would be building up his Mana capacity. And he could do so simply by expending Mana through the casting of Magic.
At least that was the plan.
Unfortunately, his entire body was swaddled in a cotton blanket. And without the freedom to move his hands, his ability to direct the formation of spells was limited. He could simply wait a few months until he was taken off his cloth wrappings, but procrastinating was something Rudeus was keen to avoid at all cost.
He no longer wanted to be caught off-guard because of his complacency. And certainly, more than anyone else, he understood the grim price of such a mistake.
"Perhaps I should try directing Mana through other parts of my body. With the body of a child, that option should still be open to me,"
Mana, after all, can not only be channeled through the Mana circuits running along the length of the arms, as conventional wisdom dictated. Although this was most common among magicians given that nearly all magicians learn from childhood to cast their spells through external conduits and amplifiers such as a magic staff, which would forcefully draw Mana, on cue of a spell's chant, through the hands that held the staff, thus forging and enlarging the Mana circuits running through those arms.
As most magicians learned to conjure spells this way, or failed to learn any other means of conjuring spells before reaching adulthood, they would not grow significant Mana circuits in other parts of their body, leaving them with only the often-used primary circuits running along their arms, or more specifically, the arm(s) which held the staff.
So it was only natural then for these magicians to assert that Mana circuits may exist, for the most part, only within a person's arms, running from the acromial region all the way to the tip of the fingers. Even the Magic Guilds sanctioned such view as official fact.
Unfortunately, as the procedure of establishing facts through observation and experimentation was never codified in this world, plenty of "facts" like those were taken for granted as true.
And as a matter of empirical fact, Mana circuits can grow along any region of the body with frequent use throughout a person's childhood.
After all, with Chantless Magic, a magician gained not only the ability to customize the size, power and Mana consumption of any particular spell, he also gained the ability to decide how and where to channel the Mana coursing through his body. So depending on how one learned to cast his spell, it was entirely possible to channel the Mana to exit as a spell from anywhere on the body, whether it be through the head, feet, torso or even the eyes. This provided extremely valuable advantages in combat, as enemies would have no way to tell where a spell was directed to or from where it would materialize.
Of course, Rudeus himself was never able to cast magic in such a manner throughout his Second Life, given that he was already too old by the time he recorded these findings.
He knew of it, however, from experimenting on the children he had taken under his wing as his disciples during the last decades of his life. As he was focused on honing his magical prowess and knowledge during his years of looking for a path to reach the Hitogami, he eventually sought to uncover the roots of Magic itself.
"This is really difficult. Learning magic for the first time was always a pain but to do it in such an unconventional way from the get go...Despite all that I know about Mana and Magic, squeezing one out for the first time never gets any easier,"
Rudeus' thoughts trailed back to the 68 years of his previous life when he had made surprising discoveries regarding the nature of Magic and Mana in this world. Most accepted facts on Magic written at the time of his birth could pretty much be thrown into the dustbin.
For example, even though it was widely believed that Magicians who could perform Chantless Magic were but flukes and rare aberrations, the fact was that any person could learn to cast Chantless Magic, provided that the person started learning to cast Magic without incantation early in his childhood.
Or the fact that a Magician's Mana capacity may not actually be dictated at birth, contrary to the conventional wisdom of this world. Rather that throughout one's childhood, likely until around the age of ten, a Magician's Mana capacity may grow commensurate to his use each day. The proofs backing this theory was something he had witnessed firsthand early in his previous life.
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When Rudeus started casting magic for the first time in his previous life, he was only able to perform the spell [Water Ball] three times before fainting from Mana exhaustion.
The day after, however, he was able to cast the same spell four times without trouble and was only tired after a fifth. Though grasping with magic for the first time, Rudeus at the time already had an inkling that his Mana capacity on the 2nd day of practice was worth 6 shots of [Water Ball], or twice the level that it was on the first day of practice. Though as he had no wish to faint again, he had refrained from continuing after his fifth casting. On the 3rd day of practice, true enough, his maximum had increased to 11 times. He cast [Water Ball] a comfortable 10 times that day before retiring and on the 4th day, he was certain that his capacity stood at 21 [Water Ball] worth of Mana.
To finally prove his hypothesis that Mana capacity grew by as much as what was spent the day before, Rudeus only cast [Water Ball] 5 times on the 4th day of practice. And the day after, Rudeus cast [Water Ball] a total of 26 times before fully exhausting himself, conclusively proving to himself then that his hypothesis was indeed true.
This theoretically meant that a Magician could double his Mana capacity each day provided that he diligently exhausted his entire supply by the end of the day. It implied that an exponential growth in Mana capacity was possible, potentially without a hard ceiling. The only cap he was able to observe was time, though this was never conclusive.
Rudeus first realized of this when he found that his Mana capacity no longer grew when he was around the age of 10. Of course, it could have just been that he had in fact reached the maximum, physical limit of Mana capacity possible for him at that time and not because he had reached an age when he could no longer grow his Mana capacity.
But his observations of his own disciples also showed that they were also no longer able to increase their respective Mana capacities at around the same ages, that was when they were between 9 and 11 years of age. The disciple who reached her limit at 9 years of age was also the youngest when he took her in, at 6 years old. Thus giving her only 3 years of Mana capacity expansion before reaching her limits.
This was in line with the rest of his disciples, as far as time spent at Mana capacity expansion was concerned.
Though from just this alone, he had no way to conclude that it was a time cap. But one thing was certain for all his disciples, and that was the fact that they all reached their level cap soon after the start of their puberty. This was one thing that allowed Rudeus to lean closer to the idea that Mana capacity expansion was limited by time rather than a physical limit.
This question would be akin to wondering whether a magician, as a vessel for Mana, exist similarly to a glass vessel. A vessel of which size – that is, its potential Mana capacity – would limit the volume of water it can physically hold – this volume being allegorical to current Mana capacity. Or whether the limit was with regards to the amount of time available to pour water into an otherwise bottomless vessel.
Given the lack of observation and monitoring tools, this was a question that would in no way be easy to answer. Perhaps both these limitations in fact existed. In which case, to maximize one's Mana capacity, a Magician must maximize the time time he spent in expanding that capacity before reaching the age at which he can no longer do that, thereby optimizing the time he has to fill a limited glass vessel.
Now, having been reincarnated once more, and to the same life no less, Rudeus found himself with the exciting prospect of getting a definite answer to this question once and for all.
One thing was certain, however, and that's the fact that childhood was, without doubt, the most important period for any aspiring magician. It would decide everything regarding the kind of magician one would become. Yet, such findings, while having very important practical purposes in developing a magician's power, paled in comparison to Rudeus' greatest find during his previous life, one that touched on the nature of Magicians and Mana itself.
It was common knowledge that everything in the world contained Mana, whether it be the animals, the plants or the soil. Even the air itself was thickly laced with Mana.
This was no doubt true, as his own observations and experimentation had contend.
Yet, the conventional wisdom dictated that Magicians – like all other creatures – are beings that generated Mana solely through the consumption of food and water, and this generated Mana was the sole source of their magic power. This assertion was something Rudeus had found implausible from the very beginning. After all, there was no way that such an assertion would be able to explain how a man who consumed roughly 4,000 kcal worth of food a day as he did, even Mana-laced as it was, could generate enough Mana from that to cast detonation Magic which could rival a city-killing thermonuclear explosion, five times a day. The law of conservation of matter and energy simply would not allow that.
Therefore, a Magician's Mana must have come, for the most part, from external sources other than food. And to this end, Rudeus had conducted years of observation and experimentation.
He eventually concluded that Magicians were unlike most other creatures in the world that simply lived on their own Mana, as the widely accepted notion goes.
Rather, Magicians were beings most similar to Magic beasts.
Conventional wisdom dictated that three things separate Magic beasts from all other animals, these were their ability come into existence in places of high Mana concentration, the fact that they carried Magic crystals within their bodies and finally their ability to unleash Magic spells. In all other ways, they were said to be similar to all other animals, such as the fact that they undergo life processes similar to other animals, with an instinctual focus on feeding and procreating.
But Rudeus realized from his experiments that there was one other thing which separated Magic beasts from normal animals. And that was the fact that Magic beasts were excellent Mana sponges, conduits and batteries.
A horse, among the stronger of normal animals, could certainly obtain Mana from feeding on grass, and that would provide it with enough energy to gallop for 10 hours without rest. That was the extent of power that Mana obtained from food could do. While it was certainly impressive when compared to the horses on Earth, that ability was worlds apart compared to what a Magic beast could display.
Indeed, by feeding Sokasu Grass to horses, it became clear that their strength and stamina would fall considerably. In fact, to a level not dissimilar to horses on Earth.
Yet the same diet given to a Magic beast would not weaken its Magic potential by any noticeable factor even over the course of months. Sokasu Grass has the ability to purge Mana from the digestive system by absorbing and passing it out as stool. The fact that Magic beasts were not noticeably affected by the loss of Mana in their digestive systems suggest that they were obtaining it largely from another source.
In one experiment that revealed just what this source might be, Rudeus had prepared 3 groups of Zapper Stags, a species of Magic beasts native to the Elven Forests with the unique ability of generating lightning from their horns. The first group of Zapper Stags were enclosed within a massive King-class Barrier Magic, which barred all magic spells – and thus Mana – from crossing through or even taking shape near its borders. That second aspect of the barrier was similar to Manatite stones which disrupted the formation of Mana into any form of Magic. Additionally, the barriers also blocked all incoming and outgoing solids and liquids. The large size of the barrier also served a purpose in ensuring that the Zapper Stags would still be able to conduct their lightning attacks during the experiment so long as they stayed close to the center of the barrier.
This first group of Stags were provided with their normal diet of grass and leaves but were also fed with Sokasu Grass. The second group were similarly enclosed in a Magic barrier but their diet did not consist of any Sokasu Grass. The third group was the control group and those Zapper Stags were neither enclosed in a Magic barrier nor fed any Sokasu Grass. All groups were prodded to unleash their lightning Magic attacks at regular intervals to approximate their Mana levels over the course of the experiment.
True to hypothesis, the first group of Zapper Stags weren't able to release any Magic beyond the first day. They also became increasingly sluggish and docile, though their stamina and activity remained comparable to animals of similar size and make on Earth. The second group also weren't able to utilize any lightning Magic beyond the first day but they remained as physically active and strong as before. The third group, unsurprisingly, maintained both its magical ability and hyperactivity throughout the experiment's period.
Rudeus eventually replicated the experiment utilizing his disciples as test subjects and yielding similar results, leading to him concluding that Magicians, like Magic beasts, were indeed absorbing Mana from an external source other than food. This external source of Mana was likely the air, or rather a gas-state Mana floating in the air. Of course, absent any monitoring tools, Rudeus had no way to be 100% sure, nor could he figure out just how the process actually worked, but the experiment nevertheless yielded a most important breakthrough.
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Plop!
A ball of water fell and splattered all over Rudeus, wetting both his cotton blanket and cradle. The surprise snapped Rudeus back from his thoughts.
"Oooh! Looks like I was able to do it, after all,"
He felt a rekindled sense of excitement rising from within himself. Although...
"Tch, this is embarrassing. Won't it look like I've wet the bed now?"
Still, Rudeus refocused his efforts and managed to squeeze out two more [Water Ball] in succession. However, he found himself in quite the pitiable situation at the end of it all. With 3 [Water Ball] having landed right on top of him, he now felt like he was swimming in water given how wet both his blanket and cradle was.
"Brrr, this sucks. I can't even properly turn my head or body sideways to redirect the [Water Ball]. How am I supposed to explain all this water to Lilia? This can't simply be dismissed as a baby wetting the bed. Wait, speaking of wetting the bed, I probably should leave an alibi now, or it might look or smell suspicious...Ahhh, there you go,"
Despite his current predicament, Rudeus was still glad to have been able to chantlessly unleash a spell on the day he was reborn. It might just be one small step for a baby but it was one giant leap for his plans and confidence.
Scarcely a few hours ago, all this would have been unthinkable for him. Crucially, he had retained his memory following his recent rebirth. That would no doubt prove invaluable to him in the times to come.
Unlike his first reincarnation, Rudeus no longer needed to grapple blindly with figuring out the world and what made it tick. While he wasn't arrogant enough to believe he knew everything, he was confident that he knew enough to give him a decisive head start. That said, Rudeus was sure that it won't all be smooth sailing. Nothing could ever be smooth sailing when you're facing off against a God with the seeming ability to see the future.
"Yawn*...I suppose...most of these will dry off...by the time...Lilia comes for me...I should..be fine...Much more...Sylphy...Roxy...Eris...Hitogami...kill..."
Rudeus' thoughts began to trail as the darkness enveloped his consciousness, though not before renewing his vow for vengeance one last time.
It had been a habit of his for decades to renew that vow before the end and at the start of each new day. Just like this, he had long ago resolved to forever nurture the fires of vengeance till either the Human God is dead or his body no longer held breath. Rudeus was soon soundly asleep. And for the first time in countless decades, he was able to experience the most peaceful and serene of slumbers.
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