The World of Swords and Magic

In the blink of an eye, eight months had passed. Though I was still a rookie baby, I had basically learned every skill a baby could have. Crawling was the first ability I maxed out, starting with rolling over. From my second month onward, I had worked hard to learn and try rolling over. Luckily, the bed at home was huge, and there were plenty of people watching me. Otherwise, I would definitely have rolled off the bed and hit the floor ages ago.

By the fifth month, I had learned to crawl. It seemed a little earlier than an ordinary baby, but this, too, was the fruit of my hard work.

This house was enormous. It felt like a castle. Although I could only move around in a few rooms, I could order the maid caring for me around.

I had her carry me, then used my chubby little hand to direct her as she took me strolling everywhere. Through the glass in the room, I could see an enormous wall outside, the same kind of wall as a medieval castle. The room I lived in seemed to be somewhere very high up, and beyond the wall I saw a very large city.

It spread out in a circle, with this castle I was in seeming to be at the very center of the great city.

This setup was truly perfect. I had no desire to become the son of some blacksmith in a tiny village, or the child of a hunter deep in the mountains.

I had gone and reincarnated, so why suffer when I could enjoy myself? A life without worries about food and clothing, with people waiting on me hand and foot—how satisfying was that?

There really were a lot of servants in this house. There were five people responsible for serving me alone: four maids and one manservant. Their daily job was to stay by my side and handle everything I ate, drank, pissed, and shat. I did not have to hold anything in. If I wanted to poop, I pooped. If I wanted to pee, I peed. If I was hungry, I just cried "aaah, aaah, aaah" three times, and delicious milk would be brought to me immediately.

Speaking of that pissed me off. This house seemed cursed. Every woman in the household was flat-chested. Not one of them had impressive assets. There were also lots of little girls in maid outfits walking around everywhere. My mother, Eris Boreas Greyrat, tried feeding me on the first day and, after no milk came out, seemed to give up on nursing me entirely. I guessed she had lost heart because even if she tried, no milk would come out.

Fine, then don't feed me. Honestly, I was not interested in fried eggs anyway. But this family was so rich, and they still did not hire even a single wet nurse. Every day, I could only drink secondhand milk. It was genuinely infuriating. As a baby, that meant my biggest hidden benefit was gone.

My vocal cords did not seem to have developed properly yet, and I could only make a few individual syllables like "ah," "hm," and "ha." Although I had already worked hard to learn the language here, if my vocal cords were not up to it, there was nothing I could do about not being able to speak.

I would direct the maid to tell me stories, pointing at the storybook while going "aaah, aaah," making the prettiest maid read to me. She probably thought I liked the illustrations. Even so, she tirelessly read the stories in the book to me. By comparing them with the pictures in the storybook, and by spending eight months constantly listening to the people around me speak, I had already mastered the language here. Understanding it was basically no problem. I had also recognized quite a few words, though literacy was not useful to me yet.

My parents were both very busy people. I could only see them when I woke up during the day and when they came home at night. It seemed they had endless balls to attend. Of course, none of that had anything to do with me.

Everything in this world was fresh to me. It was just that my body was still too small, and I had no way to come into contact with all these new things—until this day, when I was eight months old.

That day, the prettiest maid, Annie, carried me as usual and read me a storybook.

"The Demon God Laplace, who had lost his memories, launched the Laplace Campaign five hundred years ago and once drove humanity to the brink of extinction.

When the day of the decisive battle arrived, the Asura Kingdom, the last remaining nation on the Central Continent, threw everything it had into a battle against Laplace's army. At that moment, seven heroes led the Millis Holy Knights and the Beast-kin, who had formed an alliance once more, in a surprise attack on the Demon God Laplace's location.

After a fierce battle, four of the heroes died. The three who survived and would later be known as the Three Heroes who killed the Demon God—the Dragon God Urupen, the North God Kalman, and the Armored Dragon King Perugius—successfully sealed away the Demon God Laplace."

At first, I thought it was just another fairy-tale book, and I was still seriously memorizing the words when I suddenly froze. Perugius—wasn't that a character from the novel Mushoku Tensei? I also had some impression of the Dragon God Urupen and the North God Kalman. Had I transmigrated into the world of that novel?

From that day on, I especially loved looking out the window, wanting to figure out whether this really was the novel world I knew. If it was, that would be far too interesting. Swords and magic—this was a world I could only have seen in dreams before.

One day in mid-October, I finally confirmed it. Through the window, I saw a small black dot in the sky. After waiting for two hours, I did not even need to make the confirmation myself. Annie, who was holding me, shouted loudly, "Look, young master! It's the aerial fortress Chaos Breaker! How lucky. The last time I saw this floating castle was five years ago!"

The aerial fortress Chaos Breaker. I was shaken as well. This truly was a world of swords and magic.

Since I had confirmed that this world was the world of Mushoku Tensei, I could not keep lying on the maid's runway and wasting away every day. As a modern big boy, since I had come here, I could not miss out on experiencing the local specialties.

And I remembered that in this world, the total amount of magic each person had was built up by constantly using up their mana when they were young. Whether it was practicing chantless casting or increasing total mana capacity, both were related to whether one trained diligently in childhood.

I did not know whether I was on the timeline where Rudeus existed. But starting to work hard now definitely would not be wrong.

At ten months old, I could already walk. Holding the maid's hand, I toddled into the study. The study was packed with all kinds of books, at least two or three hundred of them. This world did not have printing, so books were extremely expensive. This could be considered one of the conveniences brought by my family background.

In the maid's arms, I chose for a long time and finally found a book called "Basic Magic Instruction." When Annie saw that what I had picked was not a storybook, she prepared to put it back and swap it for another. Fortunately, I was strong, and I clutched it tightly with both hands, determined to read this book. She could not win against me either, so she took me along and began reading this "Basic Magic Instruction."

In my impression, magic in this world involved using the magic power in one's body, driving it with imagination, and then releasing a spell.

For example: Water Ball. You imagined the process of water forming, then created a mass of water in your hand. After that, you fired it out. The idea was very simple, but actual operation was definitely another matter entirely.

No rush. I would start with Chant Magic first. Although my current speech was still somewhat stammering and unclear, as long as I understood the meaning correctly, it was fine. After Annie finished reading "Basic Magic Instruction" to me once, I stood in place and mumbled, "May the great blessing of water descend upon the place thou seekest. Let the cool shallow Flow manifest here—Water Ball."

The instant I finished saying the magic words, I felt the blood in my body rushing rapidly. From my feet to the top of my head. Because my body was still small, the flow was especially fast, and it kept intensifying until, in the end, I felt my blood gather some strange energy from throughout my body entirely into my palm. After my fingers spread open, a water ball about the size of a basketball appeared roughly five centimeters above my palm.

I felt my body continuously feeding that energy into the water ball. It swelled from the size of an egg at first to the size of a human head. Finally, only after I felt not a bit of that strange energy remained in my body did the water ball stop growing and fall to the ground with a splash.

Drowsiness swept over me. My eyes blurred, and I lost consciousness. At first, the maids around me had been watching me cast magic with smiles on their faces, thinking I was just a little child striking poses and playing at practice. Only when the water ball appeared did their mouths drop open one after another, disbelief written all over their faces.

The young master could actually cast magic at such a young age? Was the young master a blessed child? In the blink of an eye, the water ball from earlier splashed onto the ground, and I fainted as well. Luckily, Annie reacted the fastest and picked me up, preventing my face from having intimate contact with the floor.

Only after two hours did I slowly wake. Beside me were not only the maids, but also my parents, whom I usually only saw in the morning and at night.

My parents had not noticed that I had already woken up, and they were still discussing it there.

"Dear, do you think it's a good thing that Dolin can cast magic when he's this young? He fainted just from casting one Water Ball. That was caused by using up his mana, right? Will this affect the child's body?"

"My dear, don't worry. My former magic teacher, Anthony, once taught me that under normal circumstances, using up one's mana does not place too great a burden on the body. At most, it usually only causes fainting. In more serious cases, it can make the hair turn white, but of course, that can recover too. Look, our child still has a full head of beautiful red hair. That means there isn't any major problem."

"But dear, Dolin can cast magic when he's so young. Could he be a blessed child?"

"I'm not too sure about that either. I'm planning to inform Father about this. Only he can make the decision."

When I heard "Grandfather," in my eyes, Mother's expression visibly stiffened. She revealed an expression of fear and disdain.

Then I heard Father comfort Mother. "My dear, don't worry. Although Father's tastes are a little heavy, he still treats family very well. If you don't like him, then when it's time to meet him later, just pretend to be sick and don't see him."

"All right. I'm more worried about Dolin's body. I hope he can grow up healthy."

And so the matter passed. Although my parents discovered that I could use magic, this sort of thing was not actually all that serious to begin with. The result was that they guessed I was a blessed child.

Though in a certain sense, I could be considered a blessed child too. After all, I had read the plot of Mushoku Tensei, so I could also count as a blessed child who could foresee the future.

But I still had to confirm this matter. The novel I had read was the web-serialized version of Mushoku Tensei, not the official version, so perhaps the plot in the official version had changed. Also, I had to confirm whether this timeline was the one Rudeus had transmigrated into. If not, then my advantage as a prophet would be gone, and I would have no choice but to rely on myself and live earnestly.