The Beginning After The End (Early Years Book 1) (3 page)

Because of the uncanny similarities
between the ki center from my old world and the mana core in this world, I
found it hard to believe that you needed to be a young adolescent to manipulate
mana.  In my old world, children started meditating and sensing their own
ki scattered inside their body.  Once the ki migrates into a single place,
the ki center forms.

Testing my hypothesis, I began
meditating, trying to sense the mana in my 7 month old body when…

“There you are!  Art honey,
are you having trouble taking a poopy?”

Mother! I’m about to begin my
journey to become the greatest Mage in this world! Do not make me out to be a
constipated infant!

Picking me up and gently placing me
in her arms, I was forcibly taken away to have my diapers changed, which,
surprisingly, were full by the time I noticed.

ALICE LEYWIN’S POV:

Arthur has to be the most adorable
baby, and I’m not saying this as a doting mother.

No.

Him and his scruffy little patch of
glowing auburn hair and playful eyes that almost radiate a blue light, while
his gaze, at times, seem almost... intelligent.

No no, I told you, I’m not a doting
mother.  I plan to be a strict and just mother.  I can’t rely on my
husband to teach little Art any common sense.  For God’s sake, he tried to
teach my baby how to fight when he can now barely crawl.

I know this little rascal will turn
out just like his father if I leave him
be
.  As
soon as he started crawling, I was so proud I was on the verge of shedding
tears, but I didn’t know how much of a handful he’d be as soon as he became
mobile.

I swear
,
there’s not a single moment where I can take my eyes off of him before he
crawls into the study room.  How weird.  We made sure to buy him lots
of stuffed animals and wooden toys to play with but he always ends up going back
to study room. THAT, at least was directly opposite of his father, seeing how
Reynolds almost gravitates away from texts longer than the weekly newspaper.

Looking at how excited he gets when
we go out to town, I’ve decided to go shopping for food once every other day
instead of twice a week.

No no, I told you, I’m not a doting
mother.  This is for his education of the outside world and for fresh food
in the house.  
Yeah haha...that’s it.

My son seems to be interested in a
lot of things.  I can’t get enough of his head that seems so
disproportional to his little body turning left and right, trying to take in
everything around him.  He seems particularly intrigued by his father’s
practices.

Reynolds was a pretty competent
adventurer back in the days.  Being a B class at the age of 28 is actually
pretty fast.  Becoming even an E class, the lowest rank, required taking a
test so we don’t send eager but ignorant adolescents to their deaths.
 As for the higher ranks, I’ve only seen a couple of A class adventurers
in my years of working there and I’ve yet to see
a
S
class adventurer, assuming that they actually exist.

Working at the Adventurer Guild, or
what we just called Guild Hall, back then in Valden, I got to see too many
eager teens.  I swear
,
I was surprised they
didn’t float off from their ego inflating their heads.

At least they were ambitious.

One time, I was assigned to proctor
a basic practical exam where the examinee just had to demonstrate fundamental
competency in their mana manipulation, but before even the test began, the kid
crashed straight on his back because the sword he was carrying was too heavy
for him.

Talking about airheads, Reynolds
back then sure came off as one.  The moment he saw me in the Guild Hall,
his jaw literally dropped and he just stood there until the guy behind him in
line elbowed him to hurry up.  He wiped his drool and managed to mumble a
“... h
..
hi
… can I trade in
th...the stuff for the mission?” I just giggled as he turned beet red from
embarrassment.

He managed to gather up the courage
to ask me out for dinner and we just hit it off from there.  Even now, I
can’t help but smile when I see his droopy blue puppy eyes looking at me.

Art somehow wound up with both our
redeeming traits, making him that much more adorable.  You should see him
when I have to change his diapers.  I don’t know why, but he starts
turning red in his cheeks and he covers his face with his tiny little fingers.

Can babies his age even get
embarrassed?

The next landmark that made it to
my baby journal, which is purely for educational purposes by the way and not
because I am a doting mother, was when he first said mama.

HE SAID MAMA!

I told him to say “mama” again and
again just to make sure I didn’t hear wrong.  Reynolds sulked for the day
because Art said “mama” before “dada.”

Haha, I won!

The rest of the year went by
pleasantly with my son sticking by me wherever I went and oftentimes looking
out the window to see his father practice after dinner.  I’m glad Reynolds
gave up being an adventurer and took a post as a guard nearby for our town.
 Being an adventurer may bring more money but not knowing when or rather
if my husband comes home is not worth any amount of extra money.

To our relief, Little Art never got
sick, but oftentimes, I would find him sitting still on his butt while closing
his eyes.  At first, I thought he was having trouble relieving himself but
after checking the first couple of times, that didn’t seem to be the case.

How strange, I didn’t know how to
really make it out.  I thought babies his age were supposed to be
energetic but after his episodes of escaping to the study room, he seems spend
a lot of time sitting still, almost meditating.

I was worried at first but although
it happens a couple times a day, it only lasts for a couple of minutes and Art
seems strangely happy afterwards.  The way he holds his arms up and looks
up at me makes me just want to gobble him up.

*Ahem* Not a doting mother.

ARTHUR LEYWIN'S POV:

About two years has passed since I
made my difficult journey to the study room.

Since then, I’ve been constantly
trying to gather the little bits of mana spread out in my body and focus it to
try and form a mana core.  Let me tell you, it is a slow and arduous task.
 I would find myself having an easier time trying to learn how to walk on
my hands and eat with my feet in this damnable body than trying to will my mana
together.

I can see why the book says that
it’ll take until at least the adolescent age for a person to ‘awaken.’  If
I let the mana particles in my body move by themselves, it’ll take at least a
decade for them to gravitate towards each other to form anything remotely close
to a mana core.

Instead… A perk in having the
mental capacity of an adult means I have the cognitive ability to consciously
will my mana particles together.  This was something I did as a child in
my past life, where they teach you from youth in schools to learn how to
control ki.  Essentially, it’s being able to sense the ki, or mana now, in
your own body and force them together near the solar plexus.  If left
alone, the particles will eventually slowly float towards each other anyway,
but I’m just grabbing the feathers and shoving it down to the ground instead of
waiting for them to float down by themselves, figuratively speaking of course.

Daily rituals consisted of trying
to spend as much of my limited energy into gathering my mana while avoiding
suspicion from my mother and father.  My father seemed to think that
throwing a child into the air would be quite enjoyable.  While I
understand there is a kind of adrenaline effect that may excite some people,
when mana is used to reinforce his arms, and I am thrown into the air like a
high-speed projectile, the only feeling I get is nausea and a traumatic fear of
heights.

Fortunately, my mother has a pretty
firm handle on my father, but my mother scares me as well sometimes.  I
oftentimes catch her staring at me, half drooling, looking at me like I’m some
kind of premium meat.

I tried to adapt myself to my body
by only talking in very simple sentences.  After I first said “mama” to
let her know I wanted more food, she almost burst into tears of joy.  It’s
been a long time since I received this sort of motherly affection. Since then,
I limited myself to just trying to talk enough to get the point across, no
grammar necessary.

Besides that, the pace of my
training was strenuous and slow, but I was getting a pretty big head start from
everybody so I wasn’t complaining.

I was in the middle of gathering
the mana particles.  These past two years, have not gone to waste for I
finally gathered all of my mana into my solar plexus and was in the middle of
condensing it into a mana core when… BOOM!

REYNOLDS LEYWIN’S POV:

My baby boy!

I was so happy we had a son.
 When can babies start training?  When did I start training again?
Man, I can’t wait to teach my baby boy all about magic.  I hope he turns
out to be an Augmenter like his old pops.  I may know the basics of
Conjuring, but I can’t do anything practical with it except use it as a form of
mental exercise.

Alice, on the other hand, is one of
the most talented people I’ve ever seen.  Even as an Emitter, she’s
exceptional.  Back then, after she agreed to date me, she joined my party
and we went on missions together.  Her restorative powers were amazing in
it of itself, but what shocked me the most was when she used an area of effect
spell which healed allies inside.  Talk about one of a kind! And I’m her
husband!

Hehe… I still don’t get tired of
saying that.

Back in the good old days before
Alice wanted to settle down, we would go into Beast Glades and hunt for mana
beasts.  Mana beasts were various unique animals and creatures that were
born with the ability to absorb mana into their body and create their own mana
core, which we call beast cores.

Beast cores had an unlimited amount
of uses, making them very valuable and highly sought after.  Of course,
the higher the classes of beast cores were, the more valuable they are.
 Mana beasts are classified anywhere from E class (the domesticated fanged
bull used for meat and leather), to your SS class monster.  I can’t tell
you much about those simply because I’ve never seen nor heard of one, but
supposedly they do exist.

Rule of thumb, you should assume that
the mana beasts are stronger than humans of the same class.  This is
simply because, even if we take mana out of the picture, a beast’s physical
body is much stronger than the average human.

While the Beast Glades were
dangerous, as long as you were cautious and don’t get lost, it was pretty easy
to keep yourself out of trouble.  The stronger beasts tend to be further
down in dungeon-like caves underground or farther away.  The first few
tens of kilometers of the Beast Glades are pretty well mapped and as long as
you were at least a C class adventurer, you’d be fine.

Once in awhile, there are missions
posted up that requires a couple parties of adventurers.  Those are
usually for trying to clear and map the harder dungeons that aren’t fully
explored.  If a mana beast has the power to create its own lair and have
other mana beasts serving him, then you can bet there are treasures to be
gained.

I tell my son Art all about this
life, telling him this and much more so I can brainwa… I mean nudge him to at
least have some experience as an adventurer when he gets older.

I don’t know what I’ll do if little
Art never awakens.  Oh God, it doesn’t matter how long it takes, as long
as he can train to become any kind of mage, I’ll be a proud and happy father.

It’s pretty easy to tell what type
of mage someone will be when they awaken because, while Augmenters, Conjurers,
and deviants form a translucent barrier, the mana behaves differently around
them during this time.

Augmenters, when they first awaken,
form a sort of pushing force around the barrier, signifying that they have
dominant mana channels in their body.  Conjurers, on the other hand, form
a vacuum of mana around them, which means that their mana veins are much more
dominant
. Of course the degrees of the pushing force and
vacuuming force depends on their talent in either type.

I don’t mean to brag, but when I
first awakened, at the early age of twelve by the way, I was sleeping and the
pushing force made me float for a good couple of minutes!  Enough force to
lift a human body?

Sheesh, Alice should be grateful I
stopped being an adventurer and settled down, not making full use of my talent…
Okay
don’t
tell your mother this.

Anyways, as soon as he awakens, I’m
going to train him.  If he ends up becoming a conjurer, I think I can get
him a tutor from the main town since Alice and I aren’t adept enough to be
teaching him...

...Is what I said but…

BOOM!

Currently, 3/4th of the house is
gone…

What happened?

Luckily I was with Alice in the
front yard for a bit after dinner but... Art…
.Little
Art is still in the house...

"ARTHUR!!"

Alice’s face drains of all blood as
I see her go pale, eyes wide in disbelief and worry.  I nudge my wife down
while covering her with a temporary shield that will last for a couple minutes.

I rush into the direction of the
explosion, shielding my body with a layer of mana over my skin.  The
debris from what’s left of my house is constantly thrown towards me as I reach
deeper into the source of the explosion.  After fighting myself through
the scraps of what is left of my house and several pieces of rocks, I see it.

My son had the all but noticeable
translucent barrier around him.  Better yet, the pushing force of his
awakened powers is what caused this explosion.  He was floating in the
center of a crater that cleared 3/4th of our house as well as our entire
backyard.

Haha…

My legs gave out and I just landed
on my knees while I continued to gape at this sight.  My son is almost 3
years old and he awakened.  Only 3…

“I didn’t know whether to laugh or
cry” 

“Reynolds! Honey!”

I glanced back at my wife with my
mouth still hanging from shock.  She managed to slowly make her way
towards me, after there was no more debris to be thrown out.

She was making half-steps towards
me, covering her face with her arms to shield what she could from the strong
pushing force still emanating out of Art.

“Reynolds! What happened? What’s
going on? Where’s Art?”

I still couldn’t find my voice so I
just pointed my finger towards the direction of our son.

While confused, she looked at the
direction I was pointing at and all she could manage to whisper was, “Oh my…”

ARTHUR LEYWIN'S POV:

Wow I feel great!

Feeling refreshed at my
breakthrough, I closed my eyes to sense my newly formed mana core.  My
sweet little mana core!

“ART! OH MY BABY! Are you okay?”

I see my mother rushing towards me
while my father is on the ground kneeling.

What did he do this time that
caused him to get punished by mother?

My mother lifts me up and hugs me,
almost to the point where my underdeveloped ribs give out.

I managed to squeal out a “Mom, no
cry.  What’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer me and continued
sobbing while cradling me.  My father arrived next to her, patting her
back and patting my head as well, giving me a weak smile.

After a brief moment of confusion,
I peeled my head away from my mother’s bosom and I looked around to see that
we’re standing in the center of a giant crater, with most of our house gone.

...What the fuck?

Who caused this?  Who dares
have the audacity to destroy the home of a King
?!
The
perpetrators will rue this day! I will hunt them down day and night and not
rest until...

“Congrats Art honey.  You
awakened Champ.”

"…"

"..."

I did this?

In my old world on Earth, a similar
phenomenon happens when a youth awakens.  A clear barrier appears around
the awakened and a small pushing force surrounds the barrier.  I’m
guessing, though, that the pushing force in this world is lot stronger because
of the mana in the atmosphere, something that wasn’t there back on Earth.

As once a King of integrity, I
decided on apologizing for this… er
..
situation
.

“I’m sorry Mom, Dad.  Am I in
trouble?”

“Haha… No Art honey, you’re not in
trouble.  We were just worried about you.  I’m glad you’re alright.”
 My mother managed to chuckle through half teared eyes.

My idiot father, on the hand, was a
lot more excited.

“My boy is a genius! Awakened at
the age of less than three! This is unprecedented!  I thought I was fast
but jeez!”

So a couple of moments of a picture
perfect atmosphere was broken when a neighbor passing by screamed, “What in the
world
?!
”

“Haha, we better clean this mess
up” my father grins while rubbing the back of his head.

________________________________

A couple of weeks have passed since
my awakening.  We decided to keep my awakening a secret for now.  My
father managed to contact a couple of his past Adventurer party members to help
rebuild the lost part of our house while we stayed in the nearby inn.  With
conjurers raising the ground for the foundation of the house and augmenters
doing the grunt work, the house didn’t take too long to finish.  The
beauty of magic!  Surprisingly, none of my father’s ex party members
seemed to question why our house blew up.

That seems to say a lot about my
idiot father.

During the middle of reconstructing
our house, my birthday came around (May 29).  My parents woke me up that
morning with a present and what seemed to be a loaf of…
.bread
?
in
their hands.

Ahh! It was a cake
!...
would’ve been easier to tell if it wasn’t black.

Opening the present box to find a
carefully carved, wooden sword, I hugged both my parents, thanking them for the
present and cake.

This surprised me because my
parents didn’t bother to celebrate my past two birthdays so I assumed this
world didn’t really celebrate it.  I later found out that birthdays are
celebrated starting at the age of 3 because of a tradition from a long time ago
when babies were more susceptible to death before the age of three.

How medieval.

Another thing I took an interest in
noticing.

Seeing children as well as teens
working in farms with their family and forges as apprentice blacksmiths made me
realize there was no mandatory form of a structured education system.
 
Any sort of rudimentary
education was provided by their families
(just basics like reading and
writing).

As soon as I turned three, my
mother began giving me lessons for a set time, teaching me how to read and
write.  Playing the role of a genius son, I pretended to learn quickly, to
her delight, so I can read harder books in the library without drawing
suspicion.

These last couple of weeks passed
by in a blast.  After awakening, my father taught me the basics of mana
and how to start training in it as best as he could.  He tried to simplify
as much as possible so that a toddler can understand I guess, but if it wasn’t
for my adult comprehensive abilities, I don’t think I would’ve retained much.

The basics go as the following:

An easy way to know where you stand
in strength lies in the color of your mana core.  When you start off, the
mana core is black, due to the body’s blood and other impurities mixing with
the mana particles as they formed together to be a mana core.  As the mana
inside the person’s body becomes more pure and the impurities are filtered out,
it’ll turn to a dark red color.  From there, the lighter the mana core’s
color will become
;
from dark red, to a red, and then
to a lighter red.

The order goes as follows: black,
red, orange, yellow, silver, and then white.

From the red mana core ‘til the
yellow mana core, the colors split into three shades of that said color (Dark
Orange, Orange, Light Orange).  Rule of thumb, the lighter the mana core
color, the more pure one’s mana core is and the more power they have access to.

While the lessons with my father
proved useful, I was getting impatient at the pace. I asked mother a couple
days later, “Mom, can I get books on magic?”

Since my mother still had
connections in the Guild Hall (Adventurer Guild), She managed to acquire a
pretty good collection of books on basic mana manipulation as well as fighting
with different weapons.  Some of them were just picture books with only
simple words and mostly pictures of basics on how mana was condensed, but I ignored
those.  My mother gave me a strange look because the books that I’ve been
looking at were on a higher level.  She assumed I wouldn’t even be able to
understand most of the words in there and tried to cajole me into some of the
simpler books, saying that it’ll be easier to understand, but eventually she
relented.