Chapter 3 - Source of Power

Chapter 3 - Source of Power

T hey say children learn fast. Whoever "they" are, I would like to formally apologize for ever doubting them

A year had passed after I told my mom, 'thank you.' I spent most of my days buried in books. Sometimes Mom would join me in the study, but honestly, I preferred to read alone.

"Mom... I can read by myself now," I groaned, "I just want to study alone this time."

"Awww~!" Reyna pouted, her eyes narrowing in exaggerated disappointment. "But Kyro..."

"Mom..." I sighed. "Please. I just want some quiet time for myself, y'know?"

Reyna let out a heavy, playful sigh.

"Fine."

She reached over and thoroughly ruffled my white hair until it stood on end.

"Come downstairs when it's lunchtime. I'll be in the back garden harvesting vegetables."

She leaned down and planted a warm kiss on my forehead. I nodded, smoothing my hair back down.

"Thanks, Mom!"

Once she left, I trotted out to the corridor and opened the study room door. I still had to jump slightly to catch the iron latch with both hands, but I had definitely grown a few inches over the past year—a small victory for my infant frame.

During that year, I had also figured out how birthdays worked in this household: they only celebrated even-numbered years. When I turned four, we had a proper feast. When Lyra turned eight, we celebrated hers as well. Back when I turned two, nothing special happened at all. Birthdays must have started at age four. My four-year birthday gift was a hand-carved wooden horse from my father. It was a sweet gesture, even if I barely played with it.

Though, to be completely real for a moment, growing up in a pseudo-medieval setting came with severe everyday downsides. Especially the bathroom situation.

Taking a plumbing-free leak or movement in this era was a nightmare. We had a drafty outhouse positioned at the far edge of the backyard. Inside sat a massive wooden tub big enough to fit ten of me. The only saving grace was an iron deep-well pump nearby, which allowed us to fetch freezing ground water through the tedious manual labor. I missed modern toilets with burning passion. I missed hot water on demand, temperature dials, and electric heaters. Man, did I miss modern civilization.

Despite the living conditions, I made a habit of sneaking into the study room at every available opportunity.

Sometimes my parents still insisted on reading to me. Reyna could take a mind-numbing encyclopedia and somehow make it sound interesting. I didn't know how she always pulled it off, but her warm vibe always kept me engaged. My father, Thorskil, read children's books like he was briefing a battalion before a siege, like every pause dripping with dramatic tension.

Yet, if I was being completely honest with myself, I still struggled to see them as my real parents. To my mind, they felt more like incredibly kind older relatives. They were wonderful people, but they weren't the parents I remembered as Paul. I felt guilty for keeping them at arm's length, but the haunting memories of my life as a failure and the agonizing thought of the grieving mother I had left behind in Japan still lingered and refused to fade.

Because of that, the dusty study room became my refuge—my new world's version of the locked bedroom I used to hide in as a NEET.

Inside the family dynamic, I was slowly opening up. I could hold a comfortable conversation with Mom and Dad, especially with Lyra when it was just the four of us at the dinner table, although she would just mock me for how small I am or something. But the second the front door opened to the outside world?

I.. comepletely avoided it.

Whenever Lyra brought her village friends over to our yard, a wave of social anxiety would instantly pull down on my chest. I couldn't stand talking to those kids. They were noisy, messy, chaotic, and looked at me like I was some kind of strange, alien creature who lived in the corner of the house.

When I was two, I did not care about any of that, but now, as I am getting older in this new life, that feeling of social anxiety is slowly crawling back. I had zero interest in making small talk, playing make-believe with wooden sticks, or answering questions. Whenever I heard their loud laughter approaching the front gate, I would quietly slip out of sight before they entered, or even mid-escape, I would stop moving and just whistle, pretending I didn't see them.

My new family was safe in my eyes, but the outside world, and anyone in it, was a boundary I wasn't ready to cross.

Stepping over to the shelf, I reached up and plucked out the book I had been tackling for the past week.

"Hunter's Guide," I muttered, reading the title aloud as I ran a finger over the worn cover.

I dragged a wooden chair over to the room's single window, which offered a clear view of the front yard, and sat down. Natural light flooded the pages.

The volume featured hand-drawn illustrations of wild terrain and strange beasts.

"The artwork is actually pretty solid," I murmured, flipping through the pages.

With every line I read, a genuine spark of curiousity ignited my chest. This was infinitely better than trying to navigate awkward social interactions. I could control the flow of a book; the printed letters didn't judge my silence, nor did they pity my strange behavior. They simply waited on the page to be understood.

The guide wasn't a grand historical epic, but just highly practical stuff on wilderness survival. It detailed how to track migratory beasts, forge basic tools from flint, and distinguish edible wild herbs from lethal lookalikes. It covered long-distance navigation, campsite security, and how to pack a deep wound with tree bark and damp moss. As I said, practical stuff

Apparently, it was only Volume 1.

"Adventurer's Guild..." I read aloud, coming across a section near the back.

Back in my past life as Paul, adventurer guilds were merely a piece of history, preserved only in romanticized fantasy novels and musuems. Not like it matters now, but it was still interesting to take note of.

Flipping to the final page, I found a full-spread map. I sat cross-legged on the creaking wooden chair, bathed in morning light, and stared at the parchment in silence.

"Interesting."

The continents were alien to my eyes. There was a huge landmass that looked like a supercontinent. The northern territory resembled a jagged crescent moon covered in mountain ranges and snowfields labeled as the Kingdom of Varellos. In the central region lay the Imperial Capital and the Kingdom of Ganghum, while to the far west stretched the Kingdom of Template . Together, this massive landmass was labeled as the Light Continent.

"Light Continent..."

Scrolling down to the bottom right corner of the map, my gaze caught an orange landmass that was cut off because the parchment wasn't big enough: the Demon Continent.

"This... is definitely not Earth."

Or maybe...

Maybe this world came before. The book mentioned Beastfolk & Beastkin, and those two are completely different species. Beastkin are what people, at my time, typically referred to as Demi-humans, where most parts are humans and they showed minor signs of animal traits. While Beastfolk are those people who had their entire body look like an animal. An example of which are orcs, lycans, etc.

I do wonder if this world is the far past of my modern time.

It was a stupid thought, and I brushed it aside.

No tectonic shift could transform this map into the one I knew. Right?

I flipped to the next page, expecting a breakdown of the region, but found only blank endpapers.

"Guess they only mapped the Light Continent in this one."

I closed the book soon after. It had been an interesting read, for sure. But survival checklists weren't going to hold my interest forever. With no internet, no smartphones, and no TV on a quiet farmhouse, reading was the only thing keeping my mind sharp.

"Alright," I said, sliding off the chair.

"Ergh—" I grunted, dragging the chair back over to the main bookshelf. I climbed onto the seat and carefully slotted the Hunter's Guide back into its compartment alongside the rest of the collection. I hummed thoughtfully, scanning the titles.

"What's next..?"

A quick skim proved disappointing. Most of the remaining volumes were basic children's fables. Reading a story about a legendary knight conquering a dragon was fun the first time, but after three books, they all shared the exact same predictable plot with different character names.

I frowned and glanced out the window. From where I stood, I could still see just outside our rusty iron gate, Lyra was swinging a wooden sword around, laughing and shouting with three other village kids. They were playing some noisy game of Monster Hunter or something.

I leaned back from the open window, pulling out of sight. Even from up here, the thought of going down there and having Lyra drag me into a friend group made my stomach twist.

"Staying up here is safer.. I'll be fine."

Turning back to the shelves, I decided to check the upper compartments for anything I might have missed.

I stretched up on tiptoes on top of the chair, carefully pulling myself up to peek onto the highest ledge, making sure the heavy furniture didn't tip over on top of me. To my surprise, hidden flat against the wood on the very top surface, where nobody could see it from the floor, sat a thick, dust-covered book.

"Aha! Knew my hunch was right." I smiled, sliding the heavy tome off the ledge and jumping down onto the chair.

Cough!

I swiped a hand through the cloud of dust that exploded off the cover, revealing dark red leather embossed with silver lettering.

"Source of Power..." I read aloud, and soon after, my eyes widened. "Okay, now this looks promising."

Just below the main title, written in sharp, elegant ink, was the author's credit: Written by Kalaum Jade. It sounded exactly like the type of ancient wizard who walked around with glowing eyes, wearing robes woven from starlight or something.

I dragged the chair back to the window, turned it toward the sunlight, and settled into the seat with the heavy book resting on my knees.

"Source of Power, let's see what you've got." With a surge of anticipation, I opened the book and skimmed through the chapters.

My excitement died instantly.

"What a bummer ."

As I flipped through the pages, my scientific curiousity groaned. To summarize what I saw, it was a total disaster. Page after page, large sections of the text were entirely unreadable, ruined by water damage, dark molds, or literal pages that had been violently ripped from the binding.

I rolled my eyes and flipped back to the start, tackling Section 1. I focused only on the fragments that remained legible.

" Section 1: Mana Introduction... "

I turned to the subsections explaining how to actually cast spells, but the parchment was a jagged ruin. Luckily, the chapter covering Word Casting was in decent shape; some are still torn, but most of the contents are readable. Topics like grimoires and glyphs followed, but they were nothing more than torn fragments. The last subsection was Wordless Casting; it had been torn straight out of the spine.

So, I flipped back to page 3 for a proper read, the first chapter.

Skimming further, I found a legible diagram regarding Mana Nature Affinities. According to Kalaum Jade, an individual possesses only two natural affinities by default at birth. As a person's total mana capacity expands past a certain threshold over time, they can unlock additional elements. The four basic foundational affinities were listed as: Fire, Geo, Water, and Wind.

The book listed advanced evolutions of these elements. Fire branched into Lightning and Blaze. Geo branched into Metal and Nature. But right at the intersection of Fire and Geo sat Lava, a unique dual-affinity element that bridged both affinity. Water evolved into Cryo and Blood magic, while Wind unlocked terrifying concepts like Soul Manipulation and Seals.

If a mage attempted to cast a spell outside their natural affinity, they could still technically conjure it but at the cost of consuming double—or even triple—the required mana depending on the spell's complexity.

I nodded slowly, absorbing the mechanics.

The text continued: Young mages are restricted by these affinity limitations. However, once their vessel matures and their internal mana pool reaches a critical saturation point, or fifteen ticks, they will gradually unlock all remaining elemental affinities. Unlocking these nodes allows the spellcaster to weave higher-tier, compound spells smoothly with less struggle.

Take note, however: should an intermediate spellcaster attempt to conjure a high-tier spell prematurely, the casting will succeed, but the drain will consume their internal reservoir at twice the normal rate, risking severe mana exhaustion and losing consciousness. The author also noted that mana was an omnipresent force. Rocks, plants, river streams, soil, and even the surrounding atmosphere contained subtle traces of it. Everything in existence radiated a faint mana.

Further down, the book listed a handful of intermediate spells—a diagnostic baseline designed to help young mages determine their natural elemental affinities.

Spells drained mana in a fixed quantity when invoked via Word Casting. However, Wordless Casting operated very differently, though that page was gone, so I did not know why. Mana consumption only spiked if a caster forced an unlocked affinity or attempted a spell well beyond their current tier.

Section 2 was dedicated to the Aura of Humanity . It defined Aura as a faint barrier powered directly by human vitality—an additional perk granted exclusively to humanity by the God of Shield. Elves, dwarves, and beastkin were entirely excluded from this passive structural grace.

According to Kalaum Jade, every race possessed a distinct network of Mana Veins—specialized pathways that allowed an individual to channel mana into magical phenomena. But humans possessed a unique dual-pathway system: one primary set of standard Mana Veins for spellcasting and a secondary, independent network dedicated solely to generating and modulating physical Aura. It was tested that this vein's purpose is to solely power up aura; trying to use the mana within to create magic is not possible, as shown in the results of their testing.

While other races could cast defensive barriers using standard magic, they had to actively weave a spell to do so. Humans, on the other hand, could unconsciously project Aura to enhance their physical durability, reaction speed, and raw muscular output. Advanced techniques were even mentioned, such as an Aura Domain —releasing a localized pulse of pressure to temporarily stun or disrupt surrounding enemies.

"Aura..." I muttered. "A uniquely human trait. I'm guessing Kalaum Jade was human himself when he wrote this."

Section 3 , which covered Glyphs, had completely rotted into illegible black muck.

Section 4 touched upon Grimoires, differentiating standard reference books from legendary, sentient Live Grimoires —rare magical constructs that possessed their own consciousness and could actively assist a spellcaster in channeling complex mana currents.

"Mmm, I wonder if it's like a personal A.I or something."

Past that point, the remainder of the tome was an empty shell, completely gutted by age and dampness.

"Magic," I whispered, staring at the faded ink. "Magic exists here...!"

I flipped back to the legible basic spell chart. Mana was an omnipresent force, meaning anyone could technically access it. Control depended entirely on internal capacity and pathway efficiency.

This was the exact kind of dense world-building lore I used to obsess over during my long, lonely nights reading light novels on my computer screen back in Japan. The difference was, this wasn't pixels, but it was really real! An ambitious smile tugged at my lips. This world may lacked modern medicine, convenience stores, and high-speed internet, but it possessed magic, which is something I would love to explore more about! And as a former chemist who understood molecular structures and energy conservation, I was going to figure it out.

"Watch out, world," I grinned. "Pau—Kyro here will conquer the world of magic! Just you wait!"

[End]