Arcane Innovator

Darian lay in his crib, unmoving and deeply asleep. I crouched beside him as I tightly held his little hand.

'I hope it's just a cold and nothing serious…' I thought worriedly as I briefly touched his blazing forehead to check his fever.

'What just happened...?' A moment ago, he was perfectly fine playing in his crib as usual, but then he suddenly collapsed out of nowhere and developed a high fever...

I released a sigh, but then I couldn't help but smile as I observed him: 'He looks so peaceful when he sleeps…'

He's not at all like my other children, not in the slightest. He is a calm baby, almost too calm, and rarely cries. Plus, he has this weird, wise look in his eyes that doesn't fit a baby at all…

'I even asked the priest, when he came to bless Darian on his birthday, if he was possessed…' Fortunately, the priest said that he couldn't feel any malignant energy emanating from him, so I shouldn't worry too much since every child is different.

This somewhat calmed me, but as a mother, I was still somewhat worried about him. Although life wasn't always kind to us, I managed to find happiness in my family, especially in my children.

'Please, merciful mother, let him be well soon…' I whispered a short prayer as I changed the wet piece of cloth on his forehead before I went back to preparing dinner.

***

I woke up the next day with a severe headache, and I apparently also developed a fever. 'Well, that was intense,' I thought.

Going forward, I need to take things more slowly and carefully... Who am I kidding? Of course, I will do that again, but for now, I will first try to focus on improving my mana control.

I then spent the rest of the day recovering my strength, and luckily, in the evening, my fever went away. The next morning, I felt perfectly fine again, so I focused on that familiar feeling and tried to circulate it through my whole body once more.

It was hard at first, but it seems like I am getting better at it. It took me about two days before I was confident enough to try using magic again. But before that, I needed to embark on a journey.

I patiently waited for my mother to go to the well to get water and carefully crawled my way to the kitchen area of the house. When I got there, I instantly spotted my target: an ordinary-looking basket. Inside were vegetables for dinner that somewhat looked like peas back on Earth.

I quickly grabbed one pea and crawled back to my bed. As I went over my previous experiment, I realized that trying to lift my toy was probably too much for my little body, so now equipped with my pea, I can hopefully avoid passing out again and scaring my mother.

I focused my mind on the pea, closed my eyes, concentrated on my mana, and pushed it out of my hand. And it worked!

A wave of exhaustion washed over me again, but this time, I managed to withstand it. I heard my mother coming back, so I hastily hid my pea under my blanket and waited for dinner while grinning happily.

My mother noticed my happy expression and patted me on the head. "I'm so glad you're getting better, Darian. I was worried you were sick," she said.

I felt a twinge of guilt wash over me since that was entirely my fault, and if my mother knew, I would never hear the end of it. But oh well, I learned my lesson, and that was the price of progress.

Now that I know how to train my magic, my days have become routine. In the morning, after breakfast, I went to the living area and pretended to play with my toys, but I focused on training my mana control by circulating it in my body.

Next, I would cast the only spell that I knew and levitate my pea, then I would rest, and the same routine would repeat in the afternoon.

After a while of doing this, I made another interesting discovery. Now, I could levitate the pea for about a minute without any exhaustion at all.

So that means there are skill levels, and actively improving my magic means I can get better at it.

That was exactly what I did. When I get absorbed in something, I can get quite obsessed with it, and what happened in the past while I was grinding in games has now become an obsession with trying to unravel the mysteries of magic.

I still don't know much about this world, but what I do know is that I certainly don't want to become a blacksmith or do any other job the local villagers do here.

Judging by the fact that I never saw anyone other than the priest use magic, that must mean it is quite rare, so I have a shot at becoming someone powerful.

The seasons slowly started to change, and the days were getting longer. The cold spring days were changing into warm summer ones, and I was getting quite proficient in my magic.

I was slowly adding more peas to my routine, and now I could easily levitate three peas for over a minute.

Both my mana control and mana capacity were growing, and I was becoming more and more confident. My motto here was "slow and steady."

I have also started to fully understand the local language and made my first attempts at speaking. My family was kind of flabbergasted by how fast I was learning things, but it was not so surprising to me.

If I can apply stuff like logic and my prior knowledge of learning foreign languages, things like grammar become quite easy to learn.

I have also started to walk and have now fully explored our one-room house, which was kind of circular in design with a diameter of around seven meters.

The house itself was divided into four main parts: the kitchen area, where my mother prepared and cooked food; the living area, where we came together for meals and to hang out after dinner; and next to it, the sleeping area, where there was one big bed covered with animal hides where everyone except me slept together.

And lastly, the storage area where all the supplies and wood were kept. Right in the middle of the house was a hearth, which I liked the most, especially in winter since the winters here were really, really cold.

Speaking of winter, it came again, which means it's my second birthday in this world. My father carved me a wooden horse to play with, and we had some meat for dinner, which was super good.

What I would really have liked, though, were some books on magic since I wasn't making much progress without any new spells to try out. However, judging by the fact that there were no books in the house, that was just wishful thinking.

This didn't surprise me since books were really expensive even on Earth before the invention of the printing press, and only nobles and rich people could afford them. Hopefully, with my otherworldly knowledge, I can figure out how to make lots of money soon.

***

'Today is the day!' Today, I can finally leave the house for the first time on my own, and I was restless all morning in eager anticipation.

'Finally, I can learn more about this world!' Previously, my parents never allowed me to leave the house, apparently because sometimes animals or even monsters came out of the woods and attacked livestock or small children.

Not that I minded too much since I was engrossed in improving my control over magic, but now that the opportunity has come to explore, I'm going to grab it.

After breakfast, I finally went outside. Spring was in full swing, and everything was a beautiful green color with blooming flowers and trees all around. Right next to the house was my father's smithy. I could see my father there, along with Rolf, my oldest brother, who was learning to be a blacksmith as well.

The air inside the smithy was thick with smoke and the smell of hot metal, and the sounds of ringing hammers and hissing furnaces filled the space.

They made various tools for local farmers and took on other blacksmithing work for the villagers. As the only blacksmith in the area, my father was highly respected and valued by the locals.

Behind our house was a stream that my father had built the house close to, as the smithy required a lot of water.

This also meant that we were placed at the edge of the village, right by the woods where "lots of big, scary monsters live, and I must never go there," as my mother repeatedly warned me before she allowed me to leave the house.

I was only permitted to stay in our garden, which was adjacent to the house and opposite the smithy.

All around us were small fields, and people were working there while pastures surrounded the village. In the distance, I could see children playing, including Konrad and Helga, my other brother and sister.

They wanted me to join them to meet the other kids, but I declined since I wanted to conduct some experiments.

I went to the stream, and on its shore, I saw small pebbles. I picked up a few of them and attempted to levitate them, which was harder than using "ertiber," the name of the pea-like vegetable that was a staple food here because we eat it almost every day.

After training with pebbles for a while, I started to move them around, which proved to be much harder than simply levitating them. It required much more concentration, and beads of sweat began to form on my forehead.

When I could no longer endure it, I stopped the spell and sat down in exhaustion.

'Holy sh*t, this is hard!'

Fortunately, everyone was focused on their work and didn't pay me any attention. For now, I wanted to keep my magic a secret until I learned more about this world and its customs.

I thought, "What if only priests could use magic here, and they would send me to some temple if they found out?"

After recovering, I continued my training until it was time for dinner, and my mother called me home.

My goal was to determine if I could use my magic in battle. If I could make the pebbles move fast enough, it would be like a slingshot, and I could use it to hunt small animals in the forest.

This would also have the added benefit of keeping my magic a secret because I could pretend I hunted the animals using traps, and it wouldn't leave any marks like it would if I used something like fire magic, for example.

With these thoughts, I continued to train in the following weeks and was slowly getting better at it, although it was still nowhere near a slingshot. The faster the pebble went, the harder it was to control it.

I constructed a small target using twigs and tried to hit it. When I accelerated it too fast, it went completely over it, and when I managed to control the pebble and hit the target, it was so slow it wouldn't even leave a dent in it.

I was almost ready to give up when it dawned on me. 'I'm doing it wrong!'

It was too hard trying to control the pebble and accelerate it at the same time, so what if I didn't have to control it at all?

I quickly went to the stream as fast as my little legs would carry me and picked up a stem of a bamboo-like plant that grows there and had the amazing quality of being hollow inside.

I then sneaked to the smithy, waited until there was no one there, and then used a knife to smooth the edges a little.

When I was done, I went to test it out. I put a pebble inside and then focused solely on accelerating it as fast as I could while pointing my improvised gun at the target.

Wanting to see how strong I could make it, I pushed the stone through the barrel with everything I had. It flew out at tremendous speed with a sharp whistling sound, and within the blink of an eye, it hit the target.

*BOOM*

The powerful impact caused a small explosion that destroyed the target completely and sent wooden splinters flying everywhere.

'Oh, crap!' was the only thing I managed to think of before I had to quickly duck for cover from the wooden rain.