"Is Rudeus hungry again? Honestly, what am I going to do with you?~"
Hungry, my ass! I was dying!
In this household, every day followed a schedule as regular as clockwork.
In the mornings, Zenith would always put on an apron and tend the flowers in the courtyard. Sometimes, when mealtime drew near, she would join Lilia in the kitchen.
In the afternoons, she would change into casual clothes and go to the village's humble little clinic, where she used healing magic to ease the pain of injured villagers.
Lilia, meanwhile, handled nearly all the household chores: cleaning, laundry, cooking, hanging clothes out to dry, and occasionally going into town for a major shopping trip under the scorching sun.
As for Rudeus's father, Paul, who had come with his new life, he was the knight stationed in the village.
Every morning, without fail, he had to patrol the edge of the forest and settle the villagers' petty disputes along the way.
When he had free time in the afternoon, he would practice swordsmanship in the yard.
Though most of the time, he was just showing off his well-muscled body to passing young farmwives whenever the mood struck him.
Crawling was a skill Rudeus had only recently "unlocked."
Although learning to crawl at six months old seemed normal to most people, he had still been extremely excited at the time.
Whenever the women let their guard down, he wanted to slip away and thoroughly explore this house, which was full of medieval fantasy charm.
After all, who could resist the curiosity to explore for themselves after transmigrating to another world?
He still remembered his first "jailbreak." After Zenith discovered Rudeus was missing, she searched for a full hour before collapsing to the floor and bursting into tears from worry.
Rudeus couldn't bear it, so he deliberately made some noise to draw Lilia over.
Even after he was brought back, Zenith showed no intention of blaming him. Instead, she kept blaming herself for not watching him properly as she held Rudeus tight against her warm chest.
In that moment, he truly felt the happiness of being loved by a mother.
The days flew by peacefully, and in the blink of an eye, two years had passed.
Rudeus silently called it up, and a dark-blue, illusory glow spread out before his eyes:
[Personal status panel] Name: Rudeus Greyrat HP: 20 / Strength: 10 Mana (MP): 1,000,000 Current emotion points: 722095 [Divine status blessings] [God-Caressed Cheeks]: Greatly enhances natural looks and greatly increases favor gained from the opposite sex. [God-Gushing Tear Glands]: Increases mana recovery rate by 10000%.
In this world, besides traditional swordsmen, archers, warriors, and mages, there were also rare professions such as summoners, formation masters, barrier masters, and magic swordsmen.
Recently, Rudeus had been pondering how to perfectly combine magic and swordsmanship-in other words, how to follow the path of a "magic swordsman."
In his spare time, out of boredom, he had also taught himself quite a few support spells.
In Rudeus's view, support magic was the ultimate skill for a swordsman to increase their combat strength.
Strength Boost, Defense Boost, Speed Boost...
If he could stack all those buffs and then try injecting compressed mana into a sword, he might one day be able to unleash sword qi that could split heaven and earth with a single swing.
However, with his current body, he couldn't even lift a real sword.
Even if he did manage to pick one up, wouldn't he be thought a demon, with a priest called in to exorcise him?
To be safe, he continued to focus his training on support magic.
In the second-floor study, sunlight streamed through the small windowpanes onto the wooden floor.
Rudeus stood steadily upright, took a deep breath, and began to draw on the terrifying ocean of mana within him.
"Strength Boost! Speed Boost! Defense Boost! Self-Healing Boost!"
Hum!
In an instant, four brilliant circular magic formations lit up beneath his feet in succession: red, blue, yellow, and green!
As the formations spun, corresponding streams of light wrapped around his body in layers like gauze, stirring up a fine pressure of wind.
The sensation of power, of clearly feeling every cell in his body growing stronger at a frenzied pace, sent his dopamine surging.
With the enhancement spells active, Rudeus fought to contain his excitement.
He carefully moved about on the spot to loosen his muscles and joints, feeling as light as a swallow, as though he could punch through a wall or stomp the ground to pieces.
But in the end, he put none of those thoughts into practice and reluctantly dispelled the magic.
There was no helping it. Under someone else's roof, he had to bow his head.
The moment the magical light went out, a tidal wave of exhaustion came crashing over him.
Tch... I still can't do it? Is this body's limit? It's still too... weak...
Rudeus yawned and fell straight onto the cushion in the study, his heavy eyelids closing.
Early the next morning, birds sang and flowers bloomed outside the window, while the morning light spilled freely over the edge of the bed.
Rudeus slowly opened his eyes and gazed at that golden light without getting up right away.
By his reckoning, it had been two years since he came to this world.
It was time to show a glimpse of his abilities as a "genius mage" and shatter the calm surface of this household.
He habitually glanced at the system interface: [Current emotion points: 723011].
With a little more effort, he would soon break the million-point mark!
Why not today? Time to go big. I've played dumb for so long; it's time to catch Paul off guard!
Rudeus hurried up to the second floor on unsteady legs and slipped into the storeroom.
He dragged over a heavy wooden stool, clambered onto it with considerable effort, and gripped the edge of the window.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, locked onto an open space in the distance, and began furiously channeling the mana within him.
As for the incantation... well, he could just go through the motions:
"O gentle spirit of water, I forgot the beginning and the end..."
"Whatever, Water Splash!!"
Boom!!
With a terrifying blast that nearly left his ears ringing, violent blue water elements erupted in an instant!
The storeroom's wooden window, along with half the stone-brick wall around it, was instantly ripped apart and blown away!
An enormous column of water, thick as a primeval python, surged into the sky and shot into the distance with a destructive force.
The spray cascading from high above refracted the morning sunlight into a dazzling seven-colored rainbow that stretched across the sky!
He stood with his hands on his hips as water rained down on his head.
Looking at the collapsed wall and the commotion in the distance, he exclaimed repeatedly in satisfaction:
"Wow, with that kind of power, I bet that attack could blast even a B-rank monster to pieces in an instant!"
Before he could savor the aftermath of the attack, however, the door behind him suddenly burst open with a loud bang, smashed aside by brute force!
A tall, muscular, bare-chested figure rushed in like a whirlwind.
Paul's face was deathly pale, his eyes full of terror and panic. Gripping the hilt of the sword at his waist, he scanned the room and roared at the top of his lungs:
"What happened?! What's going on?! Is it a monster attack?!"
When his gaze fell on Rudeus, unharmed amid the wreckage, he lunged over, grabbed him by the shoulders, and checked him from head to toe:
"Rudeus! Rudeus, are you all right?! Are you hurt anywhere?!"
Before he could finish, another series of hurried, chaotic footsteps sounded outside the door.
"Rudeus!! My child!!"
It was Zenith.
Although she had arrived a step behind Paul, her face was deathly pale.
She was panting heavily, her clothes somewhat disheveled from running.
Her nearly suffocating anxiety and fear were no less intense than Paul's.
However, Zenith was clearly more observant than the less perceptive Paul.
She rushed into the room and saw that I was unharmed. Then she caught sight of the beginner's magic book on the floor nearby, its pages fluttering in the wind, and the lingering mist of water filling the air outside the window.
In an instant, the terror vanished from her face. Her beautiful eyes widened bit by bit, and her expression turned to elation.
She hurried over and picked up the magic book from the floor with trembling hands, then looked at Rudeus, who stood with his hands on his hips, nodding proudly.
"Darling!!"
Zenith abruptly dropped the book, threw her arms tightly around Paul from behind, and screamed with excitement:
"Our son! Rudeus is a magical genius! A once-in-a-generation genius!!"
"Oh my, we have to hurry and find the best mage in the entire Asura Kingdom to train him properly!!"
Paul, still utterly bewildered, blinked and scratched his head, looking stunned and confused as he muttered:
"Wait... honey, didn't we agree before? If it was a boy, he had to learn swordsmanship from me..."
Zenith's brows shot up, and she grabbed Paul by the ear as she retorted:
"Are you blind?! Look at this destructive power!"
"Can't you see the magical talent he has, the kind that only appears once every few hundred years?!"
"But... but swordsmanship is a man's romance..."
Paul hunched his shoulders, still trying to make one last stand.
Just as the loving couple were about to launch into a debate right there in the ruins, Lilia, who had stood quietly by the door with a complicated expression the whole time, finally lowered her eyes.
She spoke softly, breaking the deadlock:
"Master, madam."
"Since the young master is so gifted, perhaps... he could study magic in the morning and train in swordsmanship with the master in the afternoon. What do you two think?"
The air fell silent for a second.
Zenith's beautiful eyes lit up, and she slapped her thigh in excitement.
"Good idea! Lilia, you're so clever!"
Paul, who had looked dejected just moments ago, heard that he could still teach his son swordsmanship in the afternoons and immediately nodded repeatedly in agreement.
Looking at his wife, whose cheeks were flushed with excitement as he held her, he grinned and couldn't resist leaning over to plant a hard, smacking kiss on Zenith's red lips.
Damn it... Are they really going to shove dog food down a two-year-old's throat first thing in the morning?!
Standing on the stool, Rudeus silently rolled his eyes in his heart.
As he felt his emotion points begin to soar with a frenzied "ding, ding, ding" in his mind thanks to Paul and Zenith's intense shock, the corners of Rudeus's mouth rose uncontrollably.
His career in magic and swordsmanship in another world was finally about to get properly underway.
He really did look forward to her... the tsundere girl with dreamy aqua-blue hair who would soon travel across countless mountains and rivers to get here.