My plans to dig around the ground looking for rare minerals like in Minecr*ft was thwarted by a simple reason: it was too damned cold.

I was starting to think that it might be a bad idea being so shredded when I was just six years old...

No. I couldn't stop now. Remember how easily it was to gain fat when you got older? I had to make my body naturally burn fat when I was young to get it ingrained into its functions for the future.

...Actually, I was fairly sure that I was wrong on how that worked, but goddammit I was not going to have to spend three years straight of heavy training to get into shape in the future when my health slipped just because I didn't build a good enough foundation when I was young!

But anyway, after that embarrassing event with Sylphy, I spent about an hour digging for minerals before I called it quits because it was too cold.

I *did* find a few chunks of gold, silver, and iron though. And a few pretty looking chunks of rose quartz. Enough to experiment with some crafting.

By the time I cleaned up and went back inside with my findings, everyone had calmed down. Sylphy blushed a bit more, but because she was considerate, she didn't bring it up.

That was good. I didn't think that I could take being told to just be friends from her.

I mean, I didn't like her *that* way, so it wouldn't be too bad. But it would still rain on my parade.

But anyway, we had a happy and cozy dinner after that, and then Mister Laws showed up to pick Sylphy up.

After that, we all turned in for an early night's rest.

Mom was pregnant, so she was making sure to take extra good care of herself.

And because she was pregnant, my dad wasn't having loveydovey time with her since it could hurt the baby. So of course he had loveydovey time with Mama Lily instead.

...But also because Mama Lily was being considerate about potentially being pregnant at the same time as my mom and the huge mess that would be in terms of logistics, they weren't going at it like rabbits.

Instead...

Well. I tried really hard to ignore it and laid out my sound dampening barriers. But apparently the cold weather threw off my calculations in cancelling the sound waves, because I sure as hell could hear all the sucking and sloppy squicky sounds echoing from down the hall.

And my mom's usual moans.

I didn't hear any smacking or bed creaking, so they weren't doing *that*. But it seemed like they were doing *that* instead.

Ah, and I also learned one of the downsides of casting <Healing> everyday to incrementally improve my body for the past few years.

I had super sensitive hearing. Enough to where I could hear every drip in the house if I was paying attention to it.

And when I was in my room late at night and knew what was going on across the hall, it was goddamned near impossible to *not* pay attention to it-

Oh wait.

I'm dumb.

Didn't I make a barrier spell to shut off my vision? Then if I kept the same basic principles and shifted it to my ears instead of my eyes-

Silence.

Complete, perfect, absolute silence.

I let out a sigh of relief. Didn't hear it, which meant it worked.

Good. Then... time to get to work.

I rummaged in my pocket and pulled out my materials.

Iron, gold, silver. A couple chunks of rose quartz...

Now, if I followed the logic that Master Roxy used to tie all of those magic circles together in my wand to enhance casted spells, it *should* be possible to make a chain of holy magic that would automatically flare up in response to foreign mana.

My wand was specifically programmed... somehow, to react to just me using it. At least, it was now.

If someone else used it, I think that it might be possible to cast a few spells. But since my mana was as dense as it was, it passively rejected any foreign influences. Meaning that it'd be hard for anyone but me to use my wand unless they had as much or more mana than me.

...I didn't know if my mana was still increasing or not every day with my routine habit of dumping it and reclaiming it, but I did know that even if it wasn't, I had an amount that could flood the entire country with water if I let loose.

I think.

Better to not test that theory any time soon.

But I was getting sidetracked.

The point was that it was possible to program a magical item... specifically a sequence of magic circles to trigger only based on an initial start up pattern of mana.

For me, that would have to be manual. Since I didn't naturally radiate mana like other people and kept it contained within my blood for some strange reason, I would have to actually use things to make that connection with a magic item.

It seemed like other people could just pick them up and use them though. Sylphy, for example, managed to connect with the wand I made her after just grabbing it.

...Huh. That seemed like a useful tidbit of knowledge, actually. It might be possible for me to nullify the connection people had with magical items by coating it with my mana since it was so dense.

...And since my mana was so dense, it might also be possible to use it to suck away all the nearby mana like a black hole and make a mana vacuum-

Wait. Vacuum...?

I facepalmed.

A vacuum! I could use that for sound proofing! Goddammit!

Argh... Needed to make a note of that as well.

...Let's just get started on crafting...

-LIV-

Time passed. Winter went by with the end result being that Sylphy got super scary with ice magic and could make a literal castle out of snow before everything started melting.

Seriously. Was she or was she not a certain Disn*y ice princess's reincarnation...?

That aside, while things got awkward between me and Sylphy for a while due to my parents being overly intrusive, after a scolding by Mama Lily, they stopped being busybodies about me and Sylphy. And as a result, we managed to go back to the way things were.

Which was good. I didn't want my fun times with Sylphy to turn weird because of something like that.

Spring came by, with Mister Laws and my dad becoming real good friends. After that last incident though, it seemed like they stopped going to the pub together.

...I said 'seemed', because Sylphy confided in me that her dad kept talking about how happy he was that he finally had a friend to bond with over drinks and how happy her mom was about that.

Ah, and I also finally met Sylphy's mom. She was a pretty brown-haired woman who was super kind and sweet. And considering how much of a straight-laced and serious guy Mister Laws was, that explained where Sylphy picked up most of her personality.

Though, I still never got her name... Mister Laws called her Honey, and Sylphy called her Mama. To avoid making things awkward since I had been Sylphy's friend for a while, I ended up just calling her 'Sylphy's Mom.' But now that it got to this point, it was too awkward to ask...

But anyway.

Whitey seemed to stop showing his face. But knowing him, I *knew* he was going to pop up when my younger siblings were born.

I didn't know why he was doing what he was doing, but considering the fact that he tried real hard to make my dad break up with Mom and Mama Lily, he would definitely try hard to cause something to happen during Mom's delivery.

...I wasn't sure why he wasn't trying anything to upset her pregnancy, but I decided to spend my brain power working on ways to stop him rather than consider why he might be doing it.

The end result?

A pair of alloyed gold and silver bracelets with polished rose quartz beads.

After some experiments, I learned that gold was just as good of a mana conductor as it was for electricity, meaning that whatever spell I stuck on it stayed stuck if I made a loop.

Silver was too, apparently.

I won't go into the details, but after hammering my head against the wall for months while being nervous that Whitey would try something... and by subtly getting Sylphy to be on the watch for his mana and to shove it away with a torrent of wind mana if he showed up, I managed to come up with those bracelets.

A chain of tightly linked <Healing X> magic circles knitted out of healing mana that I converted from my own mana was embedded in the gold. And for the silver, there was a chain of tightly linked <Magic Barrier> magic circles. And finally, in the three rose quartz beads on each bracelet, I threw in a giant glob of holy mana as well as a ton of counter-attack Divine Attack spells programmed with my <Magic Arrays> to trigger the moment that either the barrier or healing spells fired.

...Plus a few basic elemental spells like <Water Ball>, <Fire Ball>, <Rock Bullet>, etc.

I made them both for Mom and Mama Lily to use as well as explained how to use them... but when I did, the two got a glazed look in their eyes.

Since that was the case, I just summed it up as a good luck charm for a gift. But I also insisted that they always wear it or else I'd be mad.

They did, of course. And... that was probably the best I could hope for.

I kept forgetting that not everyone knew as much about magic as Master Roxy did...

Ah, and for my dad I made a simple gold heart-shaped pendant that opened up with an etching of Mom on one side and Mama Lily on the other. I put some holy mana in there as well, but I wasn't too worried about him.

Mostly because if Whitey tried anything on my dad, I would just stop holding back with my magic and beat sense into him.

And by him, I meant Whitey and my dad.

I was very, very, *very* eager to see if creating a mana vacuum would allow me to pull whoever that person trying to break apart my family out from hiding.

And I also wanted to chuck some spells at my dad's face for once.

But that was that.

And before I knew it, spring had turned into summer.

It was a lazy morning. As usual, I got up, reclaimed my floating orb of mana that I drained before I went to sleep... which was now an eerily dark color of red, almost like clotted blood.

It was creepy, but I didn't feel anything wrong when reabsorbing it. Just the usual uplifting surge of energy and good mood wiping away my fatigue-

Hm.

Come to think of it, if my mana was like blood, then wasn't I self-performing dialysis on my mana every day like this? Or something like that?

I was basically filtering my mana out of my body and letting it replenish itself before reabsorbing my mana... which had been sitting out and collecting ambient mana...

Huh.

...Well, I hadn't suffered any symptoms or died yet, so it was probably fine.

Anyway, I got up, stretched, did a quick hundred push ups, sit ups, and jumping jacks, and then walked out of my room.

And then the door to my parents' room slammed open.

I blinked and looked over.

The moment I did, my dad ran out in a panic.

He noticed me and then charged at me with enough that the force closed the door behind him. "Rudy!"

I took a step back, panicking. "W-What?!"

"RUDY!" My dad shouted and then lunged towards me.

I started backpedaling and reached for my door to slam it in his face. But before I could, he scooped me up and started running back to his room.

"H-H-HEY!" I squirmed and turned to look at my dad. "What the heck is-?!" 

"Mom's going into labor and the baby's facing the wrong way! We need you to help with healing magic!"

I froze, processing that bit of information. And then my eyes widened. "WHAT?! Wait, hold on-!"

I rubbed my temple trying to sort things out. "So Mom's having a breech delivery, Mama Lily's helping, but right now-"

My dad kicked the door open and ran inside, tossing me on the ground. "I got Rudy!"

"Gah!" I rolled and then jumped to my feet. "Oh for fuc-"

"No cursing!"

"Whatever!"

A traumatic sight.

My mom sitting in bed, sweating with her lower half visible and a pair of tiny legs stick out of 'there' while screaming in pain.

Mama Lily holding her hand and reassuring her.

My dad running around the room in circles, tearing his hair out.

...If this world has a god, I am *absolutely* going to come after you in the future for making me deal with this BS first thing in the morning...