CH 2.2

I got along well with Lily; Alisa and the duke’s servants screamed when they saw her dirtied dress; finished with their discussion, my pops and His Excellency the Duke laughed at that sight of her; and then Lily gave me a ‘bye bye!!’, a tomboy-like farewell that was a far cry from her initial graceful greeting, and His Excellency the Duke and the others left.

I went back to the mansion and went to the salon as my father told me to, where while sipping his tea, with a relieved expression, he told me, “the engagement is decided. Lily-chan is officially your fiancée from today.”

“Thank god~.”

I patted my chest upon hearing my dad’s words who was looking satisfied.

“What, you fell for her already?”

“No, well, she’s cute for sure, but I wouldn’t fall in love all of sudden like that. It’s just you know, the partner is His Excellency the Duke’s daughter. It’s good we got along well, but if the engagement got called off, it’ll look like it’s my responsibility, won’t it.”

“Oh, come on. You’re a child, it’s not something you should mind about.”

“I mind it so it can’t be helped, okay?”

By the way, I referred to myself as ‘Iore’ when alone with my thoughts and referred to myself as ‘Iboku’ when in front of my family. It happened yeah, the changing on how you referred to yourself depending on who you were talking to. And especially true in childhood, yeah?

“Well anyway, it means you can get married fine. That’s great, eh? You won’t have to worry about finding a wife in the future.”

“Guess so. I’d also be proud too with a girl that cute.”

“You can go ahead thank me for finding you a fiancée that cute, you know?”

Since my dad said it jokingly, I’d also say it with a smile. “Thanks. Well, it was my power that won that girl’s heart, though.”

“Not bad, as expected of the son of the popular me.”

“Hey, are you complimenting yourself on that, too?”

“Hahaha.”

Although my dad would joke around a lot like this, I knew for a fact that he was actually someone amazing. I had done all sorts of digging; asking Alisa and the other servants, mom, sometimes the person in question, and reading a lot of books in the study. Allegedly, he was the strongest among The Four Generals. Allegedly, he was the hero who’d felled a demon in his youth. Allegedly, he was once a division commander of the Imperials Knights Order, one of the three most powerful military divisions in the Empire. Allegedly, he was one of the only eight S-ranked warriors in the Empire.

These kinds of anecdotes were too many to count, but all of them seemed to be true. It sounded like a hero out of a story, but it was just weird because he was my real father; even though he usually didn’t strike me as being like that at all.

Well, I supposed that was why a top-ranking noble like Duke Bernstein would willingly propose an engagement. The people around him, including the important nobles, judged that it would be beneficial to have relations with a man named Karlheinz and the House of Margrave Fahrenheit.

And I would be the future heir to such a margrave house. I would have to become stronger, so at that time I wouldn’t be laughed at for riding on my parents’ fame, so I could protect a cute fiancée like Lily with my own strength.

Therefore.

“I’m going to train.”

“Now? It’s getting dark, you know.”

“No problem. I’ll be back by dinner.”

“As the eldest son of a margrave house, it’s absolutely admirable that you’re striving for self-improvement, but don’t get too carried away and destroy the garden, alright? It’s vast, but it’s still very much our ancestral land.”

“……Nn, well, I’ll be careful.”

“What’s with that flimsy reply… Oh well, go work hard. I’m also going to put you through practice one of these days.”

“Really? Then I’ll look forward to it.” Leaving those words behind, I headed for the back garden. Our home’s back garden was very vast. From the woods where my secret base was located, the small hill filled with orchards, to the slightly elevated mountain with dense forest; all of them were within the grounds of our House of Margrave Fahrenheit’s mansion.

And the place I was going to now was a small mountain I’d often go to when I would mainly do my training. This was the backdoor mountain, about which Alisa had scolded me with ‘don’t make a hole in the garden.’

This was my personal training ground, where I had been going to train for the past few years.

＊

A small mountain of no more than 100 meters above sea level, located a few hundred meters away from House Fahrenheit’s mansion in the direction of the back garden. It was like a mountain with no particular uniqueness that could be found just about anywhere in the mountainous region of rural Japan, but for me, it held a special place in my heart more than any other mountain.

I climbed it up, proceeding along the animal trail heading from the slightly thinly forested area at the foot of the mountain halfway up the mountain. Although I called it an animal trail, the one who’d created this path was none other than myself.

After proceeding along the animal trail and arriving at a position slightly above the halfway point of the mountain, I came to an open space about the size of an elementary school gymnasium. And the distinctive aspect was that there were countless holes in the grounds, trees, cliffs, rocks, and just about everywhere else. These holes, some of which must measure several dozen centimeters small and others several meters big, were the fruits of several years of my training and the proof of my strength.

“…Let’s first do a set today as well.”

Taking a deep breath. Regulating my breathing and calming my mind. And in the next moment, I leapt.

With a boom, the ground I’d been standing on was gouged out. I leapt a few meters ahead in one go, and without ever setting foot on the ground, I stepped on a tree branch along the way and lept again.

I climbed up the mountain in a dash, leaping between trees, gouging the ground, running up the cliffs, and jumping over big rocks. I was running up the steep slope, which was obviously not suitable for mountain climbing, like a ninja in less than a few seconds.

⸻Swoosh.

After a few minutes, I came back to the starting point again. I was sweating a little, and my breathing was not ragged.

“…About five minutes, huh. Well, I guess I became a lot faster than I was at first.”

This training had begun at about the start of my age 5, when I’d gotten allowed to go outside of the mansion freely, but only within the grounds. At that time, it would take me a whole day to make a full lap around the mountain until nightfall, so I too had grown up a lot.

By the way, the Physical Ability of the current ten-year-old me was 96. When compared to the absurd number of my 35,020 Mana, it was a very ordinary, trivial number. It should be considerably strong for a ten year old kid, but when compared to some other adult males around, not only was it not that much of a difference, but it was rather on the powerless side.

And so, why was I able to perform superhuman-like exercise like that one earlier? That was because the mankind in this world, everyone was superhuman-like… not. This was one of the results of my several years of training.

“…Hah!!”

⸻Bam Bam Bam Bam!!

I swung my fists. On a cliff more than ten meters away, several holes the size of dozens centimeters appeared.

“…Alright, now it’s getting less difficult to fire Shock in rapid succession. The accuracy is also spot on.”

Indeed, the true nature of the trick that would allow me to accelerate explosively, leap up highly, and make a holes in the distance was my Inherent Magic: Shock. In addition to the ordinary non-magic attribute magic found in ‘The Complete Book of Magic’ all the while being taught the know-how about magic by mom, I now was able to use this Inherent Magic: Shock to this extent.

The effect of Shock was very simple. It was to generate physical-magical shock from my body at any strength and timing. It didn’t require a magic circle, runes, or chanting like other magics to invoke it; but to just normally wish for it as I moved my arms and legs.

Although now I was able to Shock as naturally as I could move my arms and legs, it’d been hard at the time I had started using magic. It was like riding a bicycle with its steering to the left or right side reversed. Were I to lose focus just a little, the power would spontaneously burst out and I’d get hurt. And since I’d still been small, mom would be very worried and scold me repeatedly.

In the end, since I wouldn’t stop my training no matter how many times I’d been told to, mom would come along and supervise my training. Thanks to this, after taking more than a year, I had finally mastered the basics of manipulating mana and how to use magic.

Since then, I’d been coming to this backdoor mountain to train to increase my accuracy and power. I got so much mana that I couldn’t use it all, so I would train all the time when I didn’t have things to do. Unlike the time on Earth, I could actually feel that the more I put in effort, the more it would become my power, making daily training very fun. Although it would take some time for me to improve my ability since I didn’t have outstanding talent or anything in particular—in fact, considering that I couldn’t use attribute magic, I’d say I was lacking talent—it was very big to know that I would definitely improve.

But as expected, even a monotonous everyday was getting slightly boring. I supposed it was time for some change. I wasn’t allowed to go outside of the house’s ground so far, but I was ten years old now, so I’d directly ask dad if I could go outside already. I wanted to expand my world.