Before he had finished speaking, a layer of energy almost too faint for the naked eye to catch abruptly wound around the wooden sword.
Like a breeze, like fireflies, it held together without dispersing, almost tangible.
Whoosh-
The wooden sword swung down.
The tree in the yard, its trunk as thick as a bowl's mouth, snapped in half and crashed to the ground.
Nani?!!!
Paul rubbed his eyes, utterly dumbstruck.
T-Touki?!
If that wasn't Touki wrapped around the wooden sword, what else could it be?!
His three-year-old second son had figured out how to coat his sword in Touki on his own, in a single night.
It looked rough and immature, but there was no doubt: it was absolutely real.
Even Paul had been called a genius in his youth, but this child's performance now showed him what a true genius was.
Paul stood rooted to the spot for a long while.
His throat tightened involuntarily, and he swallowed.
The sight before him was simply too absurd.
Had he not witnessed it himself, he would have been certain he was dreaming.
Even if he went outside now and announced everywhere that his three-year-old son had mastered Touki, people would probably only laugh at him.
"L-Luo Ge, you really developed Touki?" Paul slowly approached, his voice trembling without his even realizing it.
Luo Ge let out a long, stale breath, looking as composed as if he had merely drunk a glass of water.
He turned back and smiled faintly at Paul. "It didn't seem that hard. Right, Dad?"
"???"
Paul's mouth twitched. He had once thought himself a genius, but only today did he truly understand that between one genius and another lay a gulf he could not measure even after spending half his life trying.
As towering waves surged through his heart, an almost feverish joy welled up as well.
He, Paul, actually had such an outstanding child. The Greyrat bloodline was really starting to show its power.
Amazing!
Absolutely amazing.
He, Paul, actually had a genius son like this-and two of them, at that...
"Aaaaaaah! Who did this?!"
A shriek suddenly erupted behind them.
Zenith charged out like a lioness protecting her cubs, making straight for the little tree snapped in half in the middle of the yard, trembling with fury.
Father and son began trembling too. Such was Zenith's absolute authority in this household.
Without so much as an extra blink, Luo Ge raised a hand to point at Paul, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather. "Paul did it."
He passed the buck without the slightest hesitation.
His little figure darted away, and he promptly slipped off.
"It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!" Paul's protests echoed through the yard, but Zenith had already grabbed a handy implement nearby.
Moments later, Paul's wailing pleas for mercy rang through the yard.
Meanwhile, Luo Ge had long since slipped back beneath the veranda, a sly smile rippling through his slightly narrowed eyes.
After a sleepless night, exhaustion finally washed over him.
He pushed open the bedroom door. Rudeus was still curled up beneath the covers, fast asleep, wearing a lecherous expression and drooling as though he were having an erotic dream.
Luo Ge unceremoniously shoved his older brother aside a little.
The two children had shared a bed growing up and were long accustomed to jostling and crowding each other like this.
He dropped his head onto the pillow and sank into sweet, deep sleep almost the instant his eyes closed.
Time passed quickly.
In the blink of an eye, another half month and more had gone by.
During those days, Luo Ge's schedule never varied: magic practice in the morning, and great stretches of the afternoon devoted to swordsmanship.
Under Paul's attentive guidance, his swordsmanship advanced by leaps and bounds. His swings grew increasingly sharp and clean, leaving even Paul secretly astonished.
After breakfast that day, Luo Ge set down his bowl and glanced at Rudeus, who was nestled in his chair. "Rudeus... want to go out for a stroll together?"
Rudeus immediately tucked in his neck and sank farther into the back of his chair, adopting a posture that said to leave him out of it.
Seeing this, Luo Ge could only shrug helplessly. "Keep being a shut-in, then! I'm off."
"Oh, right... remember to cover for me."
With that, he stepped out of the house alone.
Unlike Rudeus, a complete and utter shut-in, Luo Ge could never sit still. It was as though wind raced through his bones and muscles; he could not stay cooped up for a moment.
Going out alone for the first time, Luo Ge actually felt a little excited.
He had assumed that another world's scenery would be quite different from the world in his memories of his previous life, but once he actually stepped outside, he discovered that the world did not seem all that different.
There were mountains, water, and people...
According to Paul and the others, this was Buena Village, a small settlement on the border of the Asura Kingdom's Fittoa Territory.
Luo Ge walked slowly along the village road. Looking into the distance, he saw an unbroken range of snowy mountains stretching majestically across the far horizon.
A thought suddenly sprang into his mind: What lay beyond those mountains?
Curiosity scratched at his heart like a cat's claws, but ultimately, he only had the body of a three-year-old child. No matter how much he yearned to go, he could only suppress the thought.
Until he had truly grown, he had no intention of leaving this village.
After finishing a run to exercise his body.
Luo Ge slowed his pace and began wandering around the village.
The villagers he encountered were friendlier than he had imagined. Although this was their first meeting, they all seemed to recognize who Luo Ge was.
"So this is Sir Paul's boy. Impressive."
"Daring to venture out all alone at such a young age..."
"He'll surely be as outstanding as Paul when he grows up, won't he?"
Luo Ge mused to himself that his dad in this life seemed quite well-known in the village; otherwise, this would hardly have happened.
He had been recognized on his very first outing.
But on reflection, it was hardly surprising. After all, he bore some resemblance to Paul, with his eyes, brows, and facial contours looking seventy or eighty percent alike.
Moreover, the quality of the fabric he wore was worlds apart from the commoners' coarse clothes.
Such a plainly visible difference ought to make him easy to identify.
"Who knew I was a rich second-generation kid in another world... doesn't feel bad." Luo Ge curled his lips in self-mockery.
As he walked on.
Luo Ge wandered farther and farther away.
Before he knew it, he had arrived beside a small river.
The river was crystal clear, its waters burbling.
He was staring absently at the surface when he suddenly heard an odd sound, like some animal calling, or a fish thrashing in the water.
Following the sound for a closer look, he found several plump, round fish resting in a channel. They looked so fat and delicious that the sight whetted his appetite.
Luo Ge immediately decided to sample some wild food from another world.
He raised a hand and blasted a water ball down. The surface burst with a bang, spraying water everywhere and flinging several fat fish straight onto the bank.
Soon, wisps of smoke rose from the riverbank.
Luo Ge deftly cast a fireball to light a fire and roasted the fat fish on branches, turning them over.
The skin of the simply cleaned fish gradually turned golden brown. Fat dripped onto the coals with a sizzle, and the fragrance spread, its smell alone enough to whet the appetite.
After roasting two of them.
Mm, he could not wait to take a bite-the flesh was tender and juicy, exactly the outdoor cooking he had dreamed of.
It tasted even better than he had imagined...
After eating one, he wanted a second, a third, a fourth, and then he was hooked and could not stop.
Without realizing it, he wolfed down more than ten in one sitting.
Rubbing his round, bulging belly, so stuffed he nearly burst, he thought life would be complete if only he had a jug of ice-cold beer.
But just as he was about to head home.
Luo Ge felt a strange sensation sweep through his body.
First his hands and feet went numb, his fingertips prickling as though countless fine needles were stabbing them. Then his skin began to itch faintly, his head grew heavy, and nausea stirred in his chest.
Next, strength gradually drained from his limbs, and the riverbank beneath his feet felt as insubstantial as cotton.
He began staggering, his stomach churning with pain, and even his speech became slurred.
"Holy shit... don't tell me I've got food poisoning? Were those fish poisonous?"
Finally realizing how serious the problem was.
Luo Ge's face went deathly pale.
"Wait, these things... weren't another world's pufferfish, were they?"
By the time he realized it.
It was already too late.
His steps grew heavier and heavier, and the scenery before him began to spin and blur.
He barely managed a few steps toward the village before his knees suddenly buckled and he pitched headfirst onto the sand and gravel of the riverbank.
"I'm gonna die, damn it!"
Luo Ge curled up on the ground, foaming at the mouth.
He was a transmigrator, yet before he even had a chance to show his stuff in another world, he had been solo-killed by an otherworldly pufferfish right at the start?
Such an ending was far too ridiculous.
Luo Ge lay curled in a ball on the ground, his consciousness receding inch by inch like the tide, leaving his mind filled only with regret that made him want to laugh and cry.
Just as he thought his journey through another world would end in such a humiliating way.
In his blurred vision...
A small figure had crouched before him at some point.
A softly murmured chant reached his ears, like wind brushing the treetops, or a stream flowing through cracks between stones-
"Divine breath, source of nourishment... grant those ravaged by illness the strength to awaken once more..."
Luo Ge gradually lost consciousness.
He did not know how much time had passed before he opened his eyes again and found his head resting on something soft and warm.
Turning his head slightly, he saw a delicate, pretty face.
The girl's outfit did not match her age; overall, she looked like a child wearing an adult's clothes.
A loli?
No!
At first glance, she looked about fourteen.
"Um, thank you... did you save me?" Luo Ge propped himself up, his voice still a little weak.
Seriously... I almost died.
The blue-haired girl was somewhat cool. "Yes. As long as you're all right. Don't eat random things next time."
Luo Ge was overcome with gratitude at having survived. If the girl before him had not appeared in time, that pufferfish really would have finished him off.
"All right, since you're fine now, I'll be going."
"By the way, you shouldn't have any trouble getting home alone, should you?"
The girl picked up a heavy case beside her and turned to leave, seeming somewhat unapproachable.
But Luo Ge did not see it that way.
At least she had saved him, without asking for anything in return.
Luo Ge hurriedly scrambled up and chased after her for a couple of steps. "Wait-could you tell me your name?"
The girl turned her head and glanced at him. "Roxy Migurdia."
"Roxy..."
Luo Ge repeated it softly. The name felt inexplicably familiar, as though someone had kept repeating it in his ear somewhere in a corner of his memories from his previous life.
He had clearly heard it before... yet no matter how he tried, he could not remember exactly where.
"Hey! Human kid, aren't you afraid of me?"
Roxy tilted her head and asked with interest, "I'm a demon, you know."
Luo Ge raised his face, his expression frank. "Showing fear toward the person who saved your life is very rude."
Roxy paused slightly, then curved her lips and gave him another look. "How polite. From the look of you, you must be a child from a local noble family, right?"
"Why did you come somewhere like this alone, and eat pufferfish, too? Didn't you know they're poisonous?"
"What a little troublemaker. Don't go running around alone next time. You nearly died."
"Mm-hmm!"
As he listened to Roxy's muttering, the two walked along the country path for a while.
Only then did Luo Ge learn that Roxy was actually a mage who had accepted the Greyrat family's offer to serve as a private tutor.
Luo Ge grew a little more enthusiastic toward her.
After some conversation, Luo Ge took the opportunity to give his own name as well. "Nice to meet you, Miss Roxy. My name is Rog Greyrat."
Roxy blinked. "Huh? Miss? Why are you calling me your teacher?"
"Wait,"
"Don't tell me!"
"Greyrat?... Right, don't tell me your family put up that recruitment notice in town?"
"Congratulations, you got it right!"
"Teacher Roxy, next... let me personally show you the way. I know the way home really well." Luo Ge brushed the sand and dirt off himself and took the lead.
On the way back.
Roxy could not help asking, "Um, your family hired me as a tutor, but who am I teaching? Don't tell me-it's you?"
Luo Ge nodded. "Yes, me and my older brother."
Roxy looked him up and down, doubt plain in her eyes, and grumbled inwardly, A stupid little brat who nearly poisoned himself to death eating pufferfish. "How old are you this year?"
"Oh, I'm three!"
"Three? Can you really learn magic? I bet you haven't even figured out the concept of mana yet."
???
Luo Ge caught the lecturing look on her face, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
I... really seem to be getting treated like a child.
Might as well.
He went along with it, putting on a child's innocent air. "Don't underestimate me. I'm really amazing. Super amazing."
"I already know beginner magic, and several kinds at that."
Roxy waved a dismissive hand, her delicate face full of disdain. "Children these days really do love to brag. Hehe."
"If children tell lies, the green-haired Superd Tribe will snatch them up and eat them."
Roxy deliberately put on a man-eating expression, trying to scare Luo Ge.
But she did not know.
In Luo Ge's eyes, that look only made her a little cuter.
He simply led Roxy home, while Roxy occasionally glanced at Luo Ge walking ahead of her.
Looking at his back and sighing now and then, she felt that her prospects were bleak and her future full of darkness.
But there was nothing she could do.
As a demon, she was constantly discriminated against in the Asura Kingdom and could only find work out here in the countryside.
Just as Roxy began to accept her fate, feeling that her prospects were hopeless.
Luo Ge seemed to suddenly see through Roxy's thoughts. He leaned close to her ear and said, "Teacher, we're almost there."