Chapter 3: changes to life and more magic experimentation
My mother stays with me nearly all the time as if to make up for the time we lost together due to the circumstances. My father usually comes home for entire days and is gone for entire days as well. I assumed he was some sort of hunter and because of that, had to go on hunting trips. Despite the watchful eye of my mother, I did get a bit more freedom now since the cradle was not all that I saw anymore. Because of this I managed to start crawling quite quickly which was huge progress because it allowed me to strengthen this body, even if it was just a little bit.
After about a month my mother started to leave every now and then to do her job within the village which appeared to be farming since I got to go with her once. What this newfound freedom meant was that I was finally able to try more things with magic and test out the idea that I had. The idea was that maybe if I used words, I could make my intent clearer and because of that, get to use proper magic without blowing myself up. I started by sneakily crawling out of the house and go to the back of it. Since our house was to the edge of the village, no one could see me like this and I could experiment in peace. The first thing I tried was use to draw the words ‘fire 1’ in the sand with the intent to create fire inlaid into the word ‘fire’ and to connect it with the 1 which signified a low amount of fire of about one cubical centimetre. The first time it did not work which is why I tried imbuing my finger that I used to write with Mana, this took a bit of effort but it wasn’t that hard since I didn’t try to expel it, simply to permeate my finger with it. This time it worked like a charm and as I poured my intent into the words, a small, roughly one cubical centimetre in size, fire softly wooshed into existence. Ecstatic with my success I celebrated it for a little to which this body responded with baby giggles. Quickly regaining control of the body I quickly stopped giggling just in case anyone could hear me. Fun fact I soon found out: they could and a villager picked me up and brought me back to my cradle before getting my mother. My mother came home slightly panicky but visibly calmed down when she saw that I was fine. Trying to use the fact that I was now a baby I started to giggle with a smile on my face. Seeing this my mother smiled weakly before picking me up and giving me a hug.
My rebirth was probably one of the greatest blessings I had gotten. Magic was fun and all but new life and also a new family was the greatest gift a person could have which I realised at the moment my mother picked me up. In my previous life I had a good relation with my parents but, as goes with all life, they died. By the time I myself had died I had mostly moved on from that but now that I got a family back I realised that nothing could fully fill that hole.
I squealed a bit as a way of showing my happiness to my mother and she smiled back.
After my little stunt people kept a closer eye on me and that not only included my mother and father when the latter one was home but also random people of the village. Because of this there was no way for me to escape my home once again. This did not stop my experimentation however because I thought of something interesting: if I can write my will on the ground, why not try it in the air? In theory there was no real reason why this should be impossible since the air is also matter and therefore should not be too different when compared to the ground when it comes to using magic especially since it is, you know, magic. I tried repeating the exact same thing that I had done with the ground, using the exact same words and as I had thought, a small flame came into being just in front of me. What I did notice that this method of spell casting was a lot more draining and just this small flame cost me quite a bit of the Mana reserves within this body. Curious but also alarming since I had no idea how to increase my Mana reserves. If it were to act like a muscle, using it would be enough but I very much doubt that would be the case since it would be illogical for my energy storage to act like a muscle. Maybe figuratively opening a hole in my Mana storage and letting it leak in from there, then slowly letting it stretch out would work? It was worth an attempt, even if it were risky, but how? For now I would simply lay low and see if I could find out anything more about this world although it would be difficult due to me still being a baby.
As the months went by not much changed although I had been looking into figuring out how to increase my mana capacity. From the initial event where I named Mana, Mana, I know that it can increase. My current idea was to find how the Mana enters the body when Mana is spent on, say, a spell. To find this I wanted to lower my Mana levels by using a spell that had a lower chance of burning down the house than summoning a flame. It was quickly decided which element I would use that could do the least amount of destruction: wind. Creating a small gust wind should still cost me a decent bit of Mana but also do very little. No sooner said than done I created a small gust of wind by writing ‘gust of wind 1’ in the air and watched the Mana in this body intently. What I saw was both surprising and interesting. All of the Mana from the spell came from one single spot in the body and from the outside Mana then flowed in to balance it out again.
Armed with this information I had a method in mind as to how to exploit this. I would move all of the Mana in the body away from a certain spot so that it would be empty and then hopefully it would fill itself back up by absorbing Mana from the outside. This wasn’t fully without danger however because I’d be forcefully increasing the amount of Mana I had in my body and figuratively speaking I’d be stretching out the water balloon that holds all of my Mana, not knowing how much the balloon could take. Testing out the theory I moved all of the Mana in my finger away from it and sort of kept it from entering my finger. After a short while I noticed Mana start to trickle in from the outside until it was at roughly the same level as the rest of my body. I now had more Mana in my body but I also felt a sensation of pain, like something was pulling on something in my mind. It was quite painful but very much bearable so I put up with it in the hope that it would go away soon. It did start to lessen a bit after a couple of hours and pleased with this big step, I fell asleep.
