Since Vince couldn’t move, he spent most of his time paying attention to his surroundings, and when he could, he would try to pick up on the conversations that happened around him. It wasn’t long before he started to make out what people were talking about accurately.

And, when there was no one around, he would move as much as he could to try and stimulate muscle growth. His objective? The library! He had heard one of the maids complaining about how dirty the library was and how unlucky she was to be assigned to cleaning it. His objective was to understand what kind of world he found himself in and have a rough idea about what he needed to do.

After six months had passed, the toddler was finally able to move around swiftly. He became somewhat of a myth among the people working in the mansion because of how fast he learnt to move around.

Currently, the baby was reading a book that was almost half his size. He was in a three-storey high hexagonal room, filled with bookshelves from top to bottom. The library overall gave off a woody feeling, if not that of old. The wooden stairs squeaked when once stepped on them, and sometimes one could even hear the creaks of the floor. The bookshelves looked rather old, and most of the books here were pretty dusty. It was evident that nobody had touched any book in here for a long time.

Suddenly he heard the sound of footsteps, and he swiftly swapped the book he was reading with the one he was sitting on.

A man, who was dressed somewhat like a butler, entered the room. Once he saw that the kid was simply looking at an illustration in a book, he let him be and just left. After all, that “kid” was none other than the illegitimate child of the lord of the mansion. Nobody cared about him. They were happy that he lingered around the library at the time instead since even if he caused damage, nobody would care.

‘Phew. Had I reacted a second late, he would have noticed.’

Vince thought while watching the man leave. Once the man left, he picked up the previous book once again.

‘Let’s see... I had stopped here.’

‘Mana is the fundamental energy of this world. It’s the life essence that makes living beings, and the one that returns them to nothingness at the end of their lives. It’s the substance but also the law.

Any creature can interact with this mysterious energy, and, under the right conditions, make it his own. The slow accumulation over the years of this energy grants creatures the ability to become stronger, smarter and live longer lives. It is therefore of utmost importance to study the secrets within Mana, to be able to reach higher heights. The process of making one’s existence better by absorbing Mana is called cultivation.

This is due to the nature of the process, which, like a plant, slowly grows over extensive periods of time. If one were to make an even deeper comparison, the size of the plant would represent the cultivation base—the current level of the cultivator, the water which the plant needs would represent the mana, and the light—the energy source that makes the process possible, would be meditation. The way creatures can grow is through meditation, which allows one to let go of his five senses, in order to focus on mana instead.

Mana is energy in pure form, and can turn in pretty much anything the cultivator wants it to. As long as one has a deep enough understanding and enough mana accumulated, there’s nothing impossible.

For starters, once one will be able to exert control over mana, he will also be able to use techniques that can make attacks stronger or even cast spells with unimaginable power. Legends say that cultivators, who reached the apex, can move mountains with their bodies and vapourise seas with their magic.’

‘Seems like this is the energy I sense in my surroundings. I should start practising with it the earliest I can. Well, before I do, I need more information first. I believe that having a strong theory is the basis for any kind of practical activity.’

Shifting his attention back to the book, he resumed reading.
‘To start the journey of cultivation, the first step is to condense a mana core. Once someone has taken this step, he will have successfully become a cultivator and be classified as an Awakening Realm cultivator. Inside this Realm, the cultivator will meditate to achieve an always denser and larger mana core by condensing Mana. There are a total of ten stages inside a Realm. Only once one has successfully broken through all those stages will he be able to move to the successive Realm.

There are also ten colours a Mana core can acquire. In order, the colours are Black, Dark Red, Light Red, Orange, Yellow, Dark Green, Light Green, Dark Blue, Light Blue and Purple. The better the colour, the stronger the cultivator. But it’s not a given that to an increase in stage corresponds an increase in Mana Core colour. In order to move on to the next Realm one must have achieved at least an Orange Mana Core.

Please keep in mind that, on average, only thirty per cent of humans manage to condense a mana core within their lifetime. And of those who successfully do so, less than twenty per cent are going to go past the Awakening Realm.
As a rule of thumb, in every successive Realm, the difficulty in breaking through will only increase. But let’s leave it at that since teaching the way to cultivate is not this book’s objective.’

‘I’m kind of disappointed, it looks like there’s no book about the exact method of how to cultivate in this library. Well, I can imagine some old men treating the way to cultivate as a national secret though. A family’s strength is directly related to those secrets, after all. And nobody would teach his own enemy how to bite right? I have experienced plenty such cases in the past…’

‘Nevertheless, I still plan to read every book in this library. Those other guys are probably already piling up information just like me. I can’t afford to lag behind. Ultimately, knowledge is power. I have nothing better to do anyway since I’m a toddler.

Vince resumed reading the book, and once he was done with it, he moved onto the next one. Vince spent most of his time this way since he had also come to know that he will be taught how to use Mana later on in any case.

The best use of time he could make right now was to learn as much as possible, and so he did. By the time his first birthday was approaching, he had already read pretty much every book in the mansion library.

Without any doubt, it was a monumental achievement, since, without even knowing the language to start off, he managed within six months to both learn a new language without guidance and go through the thousands of books in his father’s library. The average adult could only dream of his reading speed, but there was no one to compliment him for all this time since he never showed this to anyone.

He had acquired a significant amount of knowledge about the world he was in, or at least about the area he was in. In fact, this world was massive, and knowledge wasn’t properly spread. Even with its thousands of volumes, the library failed to record any useful information about anything that wasn’t related to the country he was currently residing in, the Flossen Kingdom, and its immediate surroundings.

The Flossen Kingdom was a Kingdom that could boast hundreds of major cities, with its capital exceeding fifty million people. And yet, this kingdom was considered pretty much a backwater countryside.

Vince couldn’t even begin to imagine how vast this world was, but this thought only made him look forward to his future more.

Nonetheless, he didn’t think of such a lack of information as a terrible thing. He had many adversaries, and his future path was not easy to tread. Being in an isolated place only meant he would be able to do his thing without much interference and he would have more time to prepare for what was going to happen.

The knowledge about the rest of the world was mostly based on legends or tales, but he still read them all and earnestly memorised them. In fact, Vince was convinced that there must be some truth within every legend; thus, he learnt as many as possible. Most people would deem him crazy, but Vince was sure that all this knowledge would one day help him out. Maybe it could even save his life.