02 - Magic

Analyzing the memories of this body was easier than I imagined.

It seemed that the more time I spent in this body, the less painful it became to access Kael's old memories of this world.

It was as if these memories had always been mine, the pain of receiving such a huge influx of information was diminishing little by little, which only took me a little effort to concentrate on and receive these memories.

From what I remembered of Kael practicing magic, his memory wasn't very good, but apparently the crossing merged our two minds and amplified the quality of our memory, even though my previous memory was already very good. The more I explored Kael's memories, the more I realized that my memory was even better!

Even things from my past life that I had trouble remembering were now much clearer in my mind.

From what I understood from his memories, although his family was a family of six, only five lived in their house.

His mother, Lise, was a housewife who sewed clothes to earn extra income for the family in her spare time when she wasn't looking after the children.

His father, Alden, inherited the pawnshop his father had owned, something he found very easy to manage by using the family's magic eyes to evaluate the items people wanted to sell.

Although they were only just over 30, from my memories they didn't look as young as the people of the same age in my previous world.

The next member of the family was Hal, Kael's older brother.

Aged 16 and not awakening the family's magical eyes, Hal worked hard to learn magic and managed to apply to a magic school a few days' journey from here.

From Kael's memories, Hal seemed a very polite and elegant young man, something that made Kael a little proud and envious...

The youngest siblings are Finn and Milla, both 8 years old.

Unfortunately, they were both born with very weak bodies compared to other children, and to make matters worse, Finn also awoke the family's magical eyes at the age of 4, which became another burden for his already weak body to bear.

The little Mana his body produced was spent on keeping his eyes active so that he wouldn't go blind, and the limitation in total Mana for the safety of his eyes was draining Mana from other parts of his body that needed it to develop, making Finn even smaller and more stunted than Milla.

The health costs for Finn and Milla's treatment also began to weigh heavily on the family's savings, so Kael started working with his father from the age of 10, serving as an assistant in the family store and saving the salary that would have been spent paying someone from outside, while Hal focused solely on studying magic and trying to get a place at a great school.

Even with Kael's help, the family's savings were still stretched to the limit, not to mention the high cost of Hal's studies when he was admitted to the magic school.

As a result, Kael only studied magic in his spare time before going to sleep, so that even if he was exhausted, he could go straight to sleep and wake up better the next day.

I have to admit, even though I know these eyes are a great burden on my body, the vision they gave me was spectacular...

I could see everything in much greater detail. Small cracks in the wooden table in my room were so clear to me, even though I was several steps away from them.

Looking at the environment and seeing so many colors floating around was as if I were using a social media filter in real life, or as if I were on the craziest trip I've ever been on while using some indigenous drug...

Approaching the bedroom window on the second floor of the house, I could see people walking down the dirt street of our town.

Each person had a slightly different aura from what I noticed, some had a higher Mana density around them than others, but everyone was more or less in the same Mana density range, until suddenly an old woman walked slowly past.

When she appeared, it was as if all the Mana in the street responded to her and quickly tried to gather around her body.

The aura of Mana around that woman was much denser than that of everyone I've seen so far, at least several times greater than that of other people.

'Maybe she's a mage?' I asked myself mentally as I looked at her with interest.

To my surprise, she was walking while looking at my house.

That was enough for a specific memory to pop into my head, reminding me that this woman was the town healer, someone who came to our house every fortnight to check on the twins and give them some kind of treatment.

Thinking that this might be my first opportunity to see real magic in person, apart from the magic I'd done myself, I quickly started getting ready to go downstairs.

As I changed my clothes, I noticed again how frail and malnourished my current body was.

From Kael's memories, the consumption of Mana from those eyes made the need for nutrients increase even more, and with the financial problems the family was facing, Kael had been eating only the basics for a few years, causing the nutrition and development of this body to lag behind.

Accepting that there was nothing I could do immediately to deal with this problem, I changed out of my sleeping clothes and into a set of work clothes.

The worry I had about meeting Kael's family was less than my excitement at being able to see magic with my own eyes.

Even though my body was a bit weak from having done that water magic in the bedroom, I still went downstairs trying to keep it natural and act like the previous Kael did.

Fortunately, the boy was very quiet and gloomy, so as long as I kept quiet and didn't overdo my emotions, everything would be fine.

Before leaving the room, I went over how the old Kael acted a few times and making sure I knew how to act it out, I opened the bedroom door and went up to the second floor.

As I descended the stairs, creaking wooden noises sounded like bells, warning everyone that I was coming.

When I reached the kitchen of the house, the four people who lived with me were sitting at the table eating breakfast.

I have to admit, arriving in a room and seeing two pairs of glowing purple eyes staring at you was a little scary, but that feeling quickly changed to the familiarity that Kael's memories brought to me.

I still couldn't see them as my family, even though the memories tried to force me to, but at least I didn't see them as complete strangers either.

“Good morning, Kael.” My new father said in a deep voice.

“Good morning, my son...” My new mother said in a low, slightly tired voice.

“Good morning, Kael...” The twins said in unison, but even adding up their voices, it was still lower than my mother's tired voice.

Remembering how Kael answered, I nodded at them and said nothing.

Used to Kael's quiet manner, everyone accepted my lack of response and enthusiasm before they went back to eating quietly.

The atmosphere in this house was more depressing than I had imagined.

Looking at the table, the only thing available to eat was hard bread and water, a far cry from what meals were like before the twins were born.

And something even more disheartening became clear to me.

I was small.

Not small on the level of being a dwarf, but my height was below average for a 14-year-old boy, which looking at my father and his standard height of 1.80 m (5′ 11″) and my mother who was only slightly shorter than him, I knew that my height was another problem of malnutrition.

Before I could sit down to eat with them, a noise came from the door.

Knock Knock

Hearing this, Lise quickly perked up and got up from her chair and headed for the door while saying. “That must be Lady Greta.”

Greta really was the old healer I saw through the window.

Despite being an apparently grumpy old woman, after my father had taken Finn and laid him on his bed with Milla following close behind, the old woman began to examine them both.

At first she just asked questions and analyzed their bodies, especially Finn's eyes, but then she stretched her hand forward and caused the Mana around her to start responding.

"[Examen Vitalis].” She said in a low, husky voice.

As soon as she said these words, the mana began to react even more intensely.

Every hand movement she made induced the Mana around her and the Mana coming out of her body to group together and move in a specific way, causing a greenish glow to appear in her right hand, which she placed against Finn's chest.

With the touch of her hand on his chest, I could see how the magic in her hand was entering Finn's body, traveling throughout his body before returning to her hand.

'A magic name based on Latin... From the little I've studied Latin to come up with names for the skills in my game, I imagine this is a diagnostic skill? Something to examine his body and understand how he's doing. I thought as I looked at all this with great interest.

Knowing that this world was using Latin as its magical language was both strange and comforting to me.

“Nothing is very different from what I found at the last consultation...” She said in a hoarse voice, similar to the old smokers from my previous world.

“The burden these eyes are causing to his little body is very high, lucky for him is that now he's 8, his body is in a growth spurt, his Mana core will start producing more Mana, and with the eyes demanding so much Mana, it will stimulate his core to produce even more. The problem is that the increased Mana production will require even more nutrients for his body...”

Hearing that Finn's body would need even more nutrients, my parents were worried, after all, with the family finances in trouble, it was difficult to afford more nutritious food, even meat had been missing from our diet for months.

And from the old woman's expression, she realized this and sighed, not asking how the family would cope.

Looking at Finn again, she held out her hand and spoke another set of words.

"[Nutrire Vitae]...” She said quietly while moving her hands in a different direction this time.

Looking at how the Mana was reacting to the words she said and her hand movements, it was clear that this was a different spell.

But something I noticed was that despite being another spell, Mana in the Air didn't move in a very different way...

With her hand emitting a green light that flowed from her body to Finn's body, the movement of the Air Mana was a bit like the movement of the first spell she used, [Examen Vitalis]...

This intrigued me...

Apparently the spell she was using now was to convert some of her Mana and the Mana of the environment into nutrients for his body, something that would help Finn a lot over the next few days.

It was only when the old woman went to heal Milla's small wound using a third spell, [Spiritus Vitae], that I noticed something very interesting.

These three spells, despite shaping the Mana of the environment in different ways, had a very subtle pattern...

And one thing I learned while unraveling other games to improve my own is that nothing has patterns for no reason.

'Studying these patterns seems like a much more efficient way of studying magic than just blindly trying to imitate the movement of Mana...' I thought with interest as I observed these spells more carefully and realized that perhaps the old Kael's method of studying magic was inefficient.