The Perverted Noble's Fetish

Just like that, another half year passed. I was already a year and a half old.

During this time, I practiced magic every day until my body could not take it anymore and I passed out. I did not know if my parents had spoken to the maids about it, but the maids never disturbed my magic practice. They even carried me back to my room whenever I lost consciousness.

Were parents in this world all this demonic? They were not worried at all that their child might suffer negative effects from overusing magic. Still, that suited me just fine.

My practice with chantless casting was also very successful. Or rather, once I understood the principle behind it, it was extremely simple. Chantless water magic involved using mana in the palm of my hand to extract water molecules from the air. This extraction was not creating something from nothing; in humid weather, it became much easier.

Conversely, in arid places, such as deserts, extracting water molecules became more difficult. But that did not really matter. For a small spell like Water Ball, all I needed was about a cup of water.

The important part was gathering mana behind the water ball after extracting it, then flicking the water ball out. That operation still required some technique. It took me a long time experimenting before I mastered it.

But the firing principle was actually the same for all of them. Rock Cannon, Fire Ball, and Wind Blade could all be launched in the same way.

In other words, as long as one learned the technique of using mana to fire something, then basically all these elementary attack spells should be learned as well.

Of course, I also tried Rock Cannon. This spell really was the most offensive among elementary attack spells.

No wonder Rudeus liked using it so much. The rock made with the spell could be ground into a cone shape, then continuously compressed with magic to make the Rock Cannon sturdier. Before firing it, mana could be used to spin the Rock Cannon, just like a bullet. A bullet given spin by rifling was more stable and traveled farther than a bullet without rifling and without spin.

Naturally, this kind of rotation could be done with other types of attack spells too. But only earth-element spells could form a cone and rotate it. So in terms of pure physical attack power, Rock Cannon had the strongest offensive power.

However, earth-element spells also had their limitations compared with fire, water, and wind spells. There were very few earth molecules in the air, so smaller Rock Cannons could be extracted directly from the air. But if I used higher-level earth spells such as earth spears or earth forts, I would need to touch the ground with my hand, or gather mana through my feet to use the spell. That created a major problem.

For example, the feet did not control magic as precisely as the hands. Delicate operations such as rotation and compression could only be performed by hand. At most, I could create a large block of earth for defense. If I used that thing against an enemy, its attack power would be rather worrying.

These past few days, I had been researching wind-element spells. According to my theory, wind-element spells actually had the most potential, since the air was full of wind elements.

Wind elements could also be said to be oxygen and nitrogen. These gases were everywhere in the air, so the cost of using wind-element spells was also the lowest.

Low cost meant wind-element spells could accomplish many unexpected operations. For example, by creating a faster current of wind above my body, I could use Bernoulli's principle to make my body fly.

If I could fly, I would have faster movement, making it easier to dodge an opponent's attacks. Especially against those sword users. Things like the Sword God Style's Light Blade or the Water God Style's Sword Counter were completely useless as long as they could not hit me. In the future, I estimated that only the North God Style's thrown weapons would pose some threat to me. So wind magic was the spell type I valued most.

But I vaguely remembered that using too much wind magic would make someone bald. That could not be true, right? I was still young now. I hoped that after I grew up, I would not become stronger and also become bald.

Amid this dull routine of practicing magic every day, time passed day by day. As I slowly grew older, I was finally able to leave the house and play outside. The city I was in was Loman City in Donadi Territory.

The city was probably a little larger than Beijing's Third Ring Road. It was protected by walls on all sides, and in the center of the city was my home: a Gothic castle. The castle was as large as a big football field, and it also had a ring of walls around it, separating the entire castle from the surrounding commoner districts.

I had no idea what use that wall was. After all, if the enemy broke into the entire city, the castle's small wall probably would not be able to block much of anything.

I had only gone outside the castle once. I rode out in a carriage escorted by over a hundred knights. Of course, I was not alone. My mother, Eris Boreas Greyrat, took me out. I guessed she had been in a good mood that day and brought me along to attend another noble family's ball in the city.

This city was divided into inner and outer districts. The area near the castle was the inner district, while the area close to the city walls was the outer district. Although they were both within the same city, the inner and outer districts were still separated by a manually dug canal, with only one large bridge built in each of the four directions.

As a result, the inner and outer districts were basically two different worlds. Although I had not yet been to the outer district, looking out from the castle, I could see that the houses there were low, disorderly, and did not look very clean.

The houses in the inner district were basically villas one after another, each with its own walls and gardens. Of course, none of them were as large as my home. The Dantes house I visited last time had not only an extremely spacious three-story villa, but also a garden the size of a basketball court. Near the garden were what seemed to be guard rooms and servants' quarters.

It was truly extravagant. Those servants' quarters felt larger than the houses the commoners lived in outside the city. Of course, I had no particular objections.

Now, let me talk about the family I currently belonged to: the Prodia Greyrat Family. The entire Donadi Territory was my family's fief. My father, Xerxes Prodia Greyrat, should be considered the first in line to inherit the Prodia Greyrat Family. If Donadi Territory counted as a small kingdom, then my father would probably be considered the crown prince.

The castle in Loman City where we currently lived could also be considered our family's ancestral estate. Family members scattered across various places could all find their own rooms in this castle. But I suspected they would not come back to stay even once in several decades.

My father's three older brothers all had their own cities to manage. They were scattered throughout the other cities of Donadi Territory. Each had their own family as well, and I had never met any of them.

If you asked why my father was not the eldest but was still the first in line, then I could only tell you that my father's mother—my grandmother—seemed to have been my grandfather's official wife. As for my other two uncles, they were probably born from other grandmothers.

My father also had a younger sister. She seemed to have married out, but Father seemed to have a very good relationship with her. I often heard Father talk about them in front of Mother. For example, recently I heard Father say that his younger sister was pregnant again or something like that.

The place I was currently in should be the Asura Kingdom. The kingdom had four great noble families: Notos Greyrat, Boreas Greyrat, Prodia Greyrat, and Euros Greyrat. Of course, there were many other lesser nobles as well, but in terms of fiefs alone, those other lesser nobles had no way of comparing with these four great noble families.

These four Greyrat families had been enfeoffed with ninety percent of the Asura Kingdom's land. As for why the Asura Kingdom was not surnamed Greyrat, that had to do with these four great noble families.

Although their surnames all ended with Greyrat, in reality, they had split into separate branches several hundred years ago. They had long since ceased to belong to the same family. In the Asura Kingdom, Greyrat could be said to represent a kind of status. Nobles could be divided into those surnamed Greyrat and other nobles. That was the distinction.

Speaking of the Greyrat families, these four families were utterly abnormal to the extreme. Each family had its own sexual preference. The Notos Family liked huge breasts, which still counted as normal. Speaking of which, in the original work, Paul and Rudeus both came from that family.

The people of the Boreas Family liked beast ears. You could say they liked beastgirls. As long as something had a bit of a connection to animals, they loved it. It did not even have to be human. They liked all kinds of animals, such as horses, dogs, sheep, and the like. I did not even dare imagine it. I hoped they simply liked animals.

The people of the Euros Family were also extremely abnormal. They actually liked men, and specifically hairy-chested muscular men. I could not understand how the people of their family carried on the family line. I guessed they just casually married a woman, completed the family duty of producing descendants, and then hurried off to enjoy life.

So there were very few people from the Euros Family in the Asura Kingdom. Basically, Euros Family members could only be found in their own territory. I hoped I would never meet them in this life.

Now, let me talk about the Prodia Family. I believed everyone had already guessed it. Our family seemed to like flat chests. All the maids and male servants in the entire household had no developed chest muscles. You might say this preference was still okay and not abnormal? Then let me tell you about the abnormal part. Because they liked flat chests, certain people in the family liked undeveloped females. Can you believe that?

I was completely dumbfounded. Fortunately, this world also had a race called Dwarf-kin. Most of the maids and male servants at home who looked like children were Dwarf-kin. As a race closely related to elves and a long-lived people, their actual ages were even older than my grandfather's. Precisely because they were relatively old, they had learned more knowledge—or rather, knew more things.

Among the maids by my side was a Dwarf-kin girl named Eva. Her actual age was already over eighty, but according to her, that age was still considered young among her people and did not count as adulthood. How enviable. Just how many years could their race live in total? Her eighty years of age allowed Eva to know many languages, and I often asked her for guidance on Beast God Language and Demon God Language. As for Battle God Language, according to her: "Because the family is rather far from the Begaritt Continent, I still haven't learned it."

In fact, I had thought about this question before: why were there so many perverts among the nobility? In truth, it could only be said that nobles had the ability to be perverted. If you were a commoner and wanted to be perverted, the pressure of daily life would stop you from managing to be perverted even if you wanted to.

When someone was busy struggling to survive, the malice in their heart had no chance to be vented. Besides, normal people still made up the majority among the nobles. My current father, Xerxes Prodia Greyrat, did very much like slim figures like my mother's, but he merely liked them. He would not commit illegal or disorderly acts because of his own preferences. At least, I had not discovered such a situation.

I also needed to clarify something. As an upstanding young man whose soul had transmigrated here, I had no interest whatsoever in flat chests or little girls. My sexual orientation was the same as that of the broad mass of ordinary men. But as a member of the Prodia Family, I also could not appear completely out of place.

At the very least, I could not let anyone discover that the soul of a direct descendant of the Prodia Family had already been replaced by someone from another world, right? So, under circumstances that did not violate the law, I could only express friendly goodwill toward those women who looked pretty but were actually adults.