I’m now two-and-a-half years old. Let me tell you, it feels great to be able to walk again. Sure, I could only move so much, and I was a weak little kid, but the freedom I have now is amazing. Over the past two years, my parents had another kid. I was now a big brother to my sister, Talia. Thanks to her birth, it was even easier for me to sneak away and hide before my parents noticed. Lately, they didn’t seem concerned when I disappeared, making things easier.

  It feels refreshing to have this energy. Having spent a lot of time as an old man, I had forgotten what it felt like to have this kind of energy. I took a deep breath, feeling the fresh air enter my lungs. Ah, this is the life.

  I taught myself to read over these past two years. That was going to be necessary, especially since one of the books was titled A Beginner’s Guide to Magic. I’m guessing my parents planned on teaching me magic and were going to use this book as a guide. Won’t they be surprised when they learned I’d taught myself!

  Teaching myself to read did take a long time. When I was being read a book, I had to focus on the words in the book and listen to what was being said by my parents. Now it was time to start the next part of my journey in this world.

  My parents talked about my future plenty of times. It seemed Damon was intent on me learning the sword, which, hey I’m down for that. Zena wanted me to learn magic as well. There was an argument about it before they said I would be able to choose once I’m older.

  Initially, I had wanted to learn the sword. Now that I knew magic existed, well, it sounded more fun to learn magic than swordsmanship. You can’t blame a guy after coming from a world where magic didn’t exist.

  Well enough about that, it’s time to learn some magic! My parents were busy with my sister, so I used that opportunity to sneak into the room where the books were. I looked at the five books. Four were stories with grand adventures that my parents read to me many times since I was born. I’m assuming they’re fiction, though I could be wrong. I assumed monsters must exist, but what kinds?

  I pulled out the book about magic and opened it. This wasn’t my first time reading this book, but it was going to be my first time trying to use magic. I’m not even sure I can use magic at this age. From what I’ve read so far, there are two ways to use magic. Incantations and silent casting. The main reason to use incantations was to learn how to cast a spell. Then, I should be able to mimic the spell based on how it felt to cast it the first time.

  Which leads to growing my mana pool. The book states that using magic would grow your mana. In a way, it was like growing muscles. If I worked on my magic until exhaustion, I should be able to increase my mana. If I did that enough, I would stagnate until I used magic in practical matters. For example, killing monsters would help me grow my mana pool. To be honest, I don’t understand why killing monsters would allow a user to grow their mana but practicing would not. Perhaps the book is misunderstanding something. Maybe the book was wrong. It wouldn’t surprise me anyway.

  There were five ranks of magic. novice, intermediate, mystic, divine, and master. According to the book, there were very few Divine and Master ranked mages in this world. Most magic users fell into Novice and Intermediate, with some of those being able to reach Mystic. I wondered how high I would be able to get.

  Anyway, it was time for me to cast my first spell. I thumbed past the first few pages and reached the page I was looking for. The instructions were simple. I needed to point my palm forward, think of a water ball and chant the incantation. It should be easy enough.

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  “I summon this ball of water.”

  An odd feeling rushed into my body. It was almost like an explosion of energy that tore through my body, streaming toward my right hand and then a ball of water formed not far from the palm of my hand. The water was floating. The next step was to envision the water ball flying forward. The moment I thought about launching the water ball, the water flew from my hand and hit the wall, leaving a nice wet spot where it landed.

  “Yes!” I almost shouted. The fact I could use magic at this age was amazing. This meant my training to become a mage could begin now. I looked away from the book. Now it was time to see if I could cast the water ball without saying the words.

  I closed my eyes and recalled the feeling of energy I felt a moment before and envisioned a water ball forming at the palm of my hand. The same feeling of energy rushing into my body happened and the water ball formed, then shot at the wall the moment it formed.

  I fist pumped. Magic wasn’t so hard to learn after all, as long as there were instructions. But wait, could I create my own spells? No, I needed to focus on the basics. Getting ahead of myself would only slow my progress. The first thing I needed to do was find out how flexible this magic was.

  This time I opened my eyes and envisioned the water ball. The same feeling of energy appeared, and the water ball formed. This time, I did not shoot the water at the wall. Instead, I pictured the ball of water changing into the form of a cup. The water did as I thought and looked like a cup. This was good, that meant I didn’t have to use the spell in one particular way.

  As I was thinking of what to do next, my vision blurred, and the water fell to the ground. I felt woozy and started stumbling as I tried to walk. I leaned against a wall and closed my eyes. Was this a side effect of using too much mana? It would make sense; I was barely walking and cast three water spells back-to-back. Yeah, that had to be it.

  After a minute, my vision returned to normal, and I could walk normally. All right, for now I could only do three basic water spells before using my mana. My body felt weak, almost like I’d run miles. I wondered how long it would take before I could do the spell four times. I guess I’d find out tomorrow as I planned on practicing magic as much as possible. I did not want to be a weakling.

  “Thorian! Thorian! Where are you?” Damon yelled.

  Crap, I shouldn’t have launched the water ball at the wall.

  I was so excited about using magic that I hadn’t thought about hiding what I’d done. In a panic, I looked around and found a barrel. Rushing over, I tried to move the barrel and forgot I was a weak little kid. There was no way I could move this barrel in front of the wall.

  “Thorian, come here, now!”

  I’ll have to hope my parents don’t see this.

  I left the room and headed over to where Damon was yelling. “I’m here, Father!”

  “About time. What were you doing, sleeping?”

  “No, I was just looking around.”

  “That sounds like you,” Damon patted my back. “It’s time for you to start your first steps into sword training.”

  Is he crazy? I’m only two in a half! Won’t this stunt my growth or something?

  “What’s with the face? I thought you’d be excited.”

  Hm, how was I going to voice my concerns without sounding weird. There was only one thing I could think of. A simple question was best. “Aren’t I too young?”

  “What makes you think that? I was training to use a sword at your age. You won’t be doing any sort of actual sword practice, we first got to build up your strength. This will require you to do daily exercises. It’ll probably be a few years before we have our first sparring match.”

  Damon looked excited. I, on the other hand, wasn’t super thrilled. For starters, my body still felt weak from the magic use. Hopefully, he would think my weakness was due to me being a kid and not suspect I was doing something else.

  I wanted to surprise my parents by using magic. If I showed them I was studying magic now, they might ask me questions I couldn’t answer, let alone restrict my training if Damon wanted me to focus on sword training. I didn’t know if the man got the final say in this world or not. In the medieval times in my world, the woman did whatever her husband said. Then again, I did hear them argue about my future, perhaps that case doesn’t apply in this one. There was so much I needed to learn.

  I turned to Damon and tried to look excited. “If you think I’m ready, then I’m ready to start!”

  “That’s my boy!” Damon said. He lifted me from the ground and put me on his shoulders. “I’ll take you to the training grounds, where you’ll learn how to become a warrior!”