Kapitel 3: Unrelenting Practice

In the following weeks, Lith's days consisted of a strict routine.

During the day, when he was all wrapped up, he would only focus on practicing the breathing technique and learning as much as he could about his family and their language.

At night, he would practice magic until exhaustion made him fall asleep. Then as soon as he woke up, he would start again until Elina would get up for the day.

More than once he tried taking a break, but it would never last for long. Living as a baby was not easy. On the contrary, it was very stressful.

He could not speak even the words he had already understood to avoid scaring his family. He could not move. He could do nothing but watch, sleep, eat, and relieve his bowels.

He was not used to being so helpless and dependant on someone else for every little thing. Too much free time would bring him to the verge of insanity.

So, he would practice and practice, trying to adjust to his new reality without overthinking about how absurd his situation was.

As Lith's powers increased, so did his control. After a few weeks, he felt confident enough to try earth magic and water magic.

He would always be careful, never conjuring more than a few droplets of water or manipulating a handful of dirt. He discovered that it was possible to make the elements float in mid-air, changing their shape and size by continuously spending mana.

After that, he shifted his night training on focus and control rather than power. His mana was very limited and he much preferred doing a few elaborate tricks perfectly rather than a lot of stuff at the risk of blowing his cover.

No matter how common magic was, Lith doubted that a baby practicing it would be anything less than shocking, if not even terrifying.

Lith was afraid of being abandoned by his family, or even worse killed.

He was once again scared of death since he now had too much to lose. What were the odds of finding another world where magic existed, to be born as a baby in a loving family?

Zero, none, nada, squat.

He had to play his cards well, and play them as close to the chest as possible. Before revealing even a hint of his talent, he needed to know what the standards of this world were.

How much talent was considered good? How much divided being considered a genius from being labeled a monster?

His mind was constantly filled with worries and only training would alleviate his anxiety.

After three months, he had become good enough at silent magic to try fire magic on the fireplace.

The fire was already lit, and when everyone was busy talking and eating during breakfast, he tried making the flames dance at will. It ended up in failure, since the flames were too strong and the distance too big for his mana to have any effect.

Yet he kept trying, since he could still sense the flow of magic going from himself to the fireplace, hence making it a good training to expand his mana sense and range.

The only downside of all that training was that Lith would get hungry faster. Luckily, he was not Elina's first glutton and she had no shortage of milk.

Another month passed, and Elina started weaning him.

This event was meaningful for two reasons. The first was Lith noticing that food wasn't abundant in his household, so even if he still had a limited vocabulary, he could still read his parents' worried expressions every time he needed to be fed.

Despite still being a cold-hearted, cynical misanthrope at his core, Lith could not help but feel guilty about it.

They loved him like a child, whereas he would consider them nothing more than hosts, like a parasite. The only exceptions were Elina and Rena, his big sister, the only one that aside from his mother would take care of him.

With their constant love, affection, and care, they had managed to crack his emotional defensive wall. The more time he spent with them, the more he would consider them part of his real family rather than just people who he was leading by the nose.

He started limiting his training to not exceed the amount of food they could afford.

Even that required quite a few tries to find the right amount, since too little would cause even more worry than too much.

The second reason was world changing discoveries.

Being forced to stop training magic as much as possible, Lith now had free time that he dedicated to practicing the breathing technique that he named "Accumulation".

That way, his inner energy, that he had long dubbed as "mana core", grew faster to the point of hitting a bottleneck.

Apparently, his body wasn't big, strong enough or both to hold an indefinite amount of mana. Lith had never noticed that before because his baby body was rapidly growing and he had only so much time to expand his mana core.

So, without him realizing it, his body and mana core had developed together.

But now the balance had been broken, and practicing Accumulation would make every fiber of his body ache, so he was forced to stop.

Luckily, he was still well-fed and developing fast, so despite not being able to perform any physical exercise, the bottlenecks would not last long.

The second discovery was the result of him being forced not to practice magic or use Accumulation.

While studying his bottleneck status, he found out that it was possible to modify the breathing technique by removing the breath holding step. That way, the world energy would just flow in and out of his body, energizing him like a good night's sleep.

Lith named this new technique "Invigoration."

After several tries, he discovered that the world's mana could allow him to stay awake for several days, but not indefinitely.

Each time he would use Invigoration, the energizing effect would last less, and only sleeping would reset its effectiveness.

But the most important discovery, as almost always happens, was made by chance.

After adjusting his food intake, Lith's greatest enemy had become hunger. Not the slight appetite that can be fixed by a candy bar or the hankering after a busy morning.

It was the kind of hunger that never goes away, always lurking, even right after a meal. Even though Lith was not starving, it was something that he had never experienced.

Among all the misfortunes of his first life, food had never been an issue. He had always been able to eat to his heart's content, even allowing himself to be picky about food.

But now he was so hungry that he ate every meal until the last bite, and if his body had allowed him to, he would not hesitate to lick the plate clean.

In the good days, when the portions were larger, it was like white noise, annoying but easily ignored. During the bad days, though, either because the rations were smaller or because he had lost himself in the practice of magic and consumed too much mana, it would become a thorn in his head.

He would be so hungry that he would experience headaches all day long, often feeling light-headed and incapable of focusing. Food would be the only thing he could think or dream about.

Of course, he was not the only hungry one in the family. Aside from Elina, only his siblings Orpal and Rena would be tasked to feed him.

And while Rena had a big heart and strived to be like her mother, Orpal was angrier and hungrier by the day. He would often daydream about the days when he and his twin sister were the only children in the house.

Now he not only had to fight each day for his parent's attention, but also for food and clothes.

Once he had a room all to himself, but now he had to share it with Trion. It was just a matter of time before Lith would come to take away what little personal space he still had left.

Orpal could not understand why a family as poor as his own would keep making kids.

It was winter, so there was not much work to do. Hence there weren't many occasions to restock their food supplies, and they had to last until spring.

It was the toughest time of the year for all the farmer's families, since the food was meant not only for men but also for the animals.

Orpal was sick of seeing Lith gobbling up all the food, to the point of dubbing him "Leech".

So, whenever it was his turn to feed the little vermin, he would take some spoonfuls for himself, but Lith was not easily bullied.

As soon as he noticed the spoon was not aimed toward him, he would start to cry madly, and Elina would run to his side, foiling Orpal's plan.

Lith never cried unless he needed to be fed or changed. It made their parents both really happy and paranoid about him. Since he would never cry wolf, they took every wail very seriously.

That day was a really bad day for Lith. He was starving because of his growth spurt and it was Orpal's turn to take care of him.

Both their parents were out. One of the cows seemed to be suffering from frostbite.

Orpal took the plate full of creamy soup for the baby and gulped down a full spoonful.

Lith immediately started to cry, but there was no one to hear him.

"Cry all you want, *Leech*." Lith was now able to understand most of the common words included Orpal's mockery. "Today is just you and me. No mom in shining armor to come to your rescue." After saying that he gulped down another one.

Lith felt like he was going crazy. Once again, he was helpless. His so-called magic was useless in his time of need. What could he possibly do, aside from blowing his cover?

Ventilate him? Wet him? Using fire was too dangerous. A single meal was not worth burning down a house.

Lith's hunger was eating him, making his rage go above and beyond what he would have ever thought possible.

'You fu**er!' He inwardly yelled. 'Feeling so tough robbing a child?'

Then he saw the third spoonful moving toward Orpal's smug face. A good half of his meal was as good as gone.

Lith's anger reached a new peak, his hatred burned like fire.

'You are not my brother!' He inwardly yelled. 'You are nothing but a filthy thief. Trash!'

And then, instead of clicking, he felt something breaking inside of him, like a dam that could not hold the raging waters anymore.

'I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON THAT SPOON, YOU SH*T!' Lith waved his arm against Orpal in a final struggle, and so it happened.

Lith felt the mana radiating out of his body, reaching the spoon already in Orpal's mouth, and pushing it down, hard.

Orpal started to choke, and after removing the spoon from his throat, he puked his guts out.

Lith was so astonished that he almost forgot about both his rage and hunger.

He had discovered something wonderful, a power that no one else in his family seemed to have.

Lith had discovered spirit magic!

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Kapitel 4: Understanding Spirit Magic

At that time, Elina and Raaz (father) were coming back to the house. Upon hearing Lith's desperate cries, they had run back to check on him.

When they found Orpal on the ground, puking, they understood what had happened. They already had suspicions since whenever Orpal fed Lith, he was always hungrier than usual.

Now they had proof. Inside the pool of vomit, the undigested creamy soup was as clear as the day.

Raaz became red with anger.

*"You little…!"* But had to stop, his other children had returned as well.

"I am very *disappointed* in you, Orpal." Said Elina, seeing that her husband was too angry to speak.

*"From now on, Elina will be the one feeding Lith. You can take all of her shifts in the stable. I don't think that even you could eat hay."*

"But mom…" Orpal said trying to defend himself. He hated cows and their smell.

*"No buts, young man!"* Raaz yelled. *"And that is not punishment enough! Elina, feel free to prepare one more bowl for Lith, and take the food from Orpal's share! He must learn that bad decisions have consequences!"*

They were speaking too fast for Lith and there were too many unknown words, But Orpal had just turned pale. So it had to be good news.

Orpal started crying and apologizing, but Lith made sure to cry louder. Raaz and Elina ignored Orpal's pleas and sent him to take care of the animals.

After being fed with a generous serving of soup and milk, Lith could finally focus on what had happened. After days of trial and error experiments, he had grasped the basics of his newfound ability and gained a much deeper understanding of magic.

Lith had discovered that when he cast an elemental spell, it actually consisted of a three-step process. First, he would emit the mana, then he had to mix it with the world energy that he was trying to manipulate. The last step was the hardest, controlling the spell and its effects.

Spirit magic skipped the second step. It used only his own power without borrowing elemental energy. That made it more difficult than any magic he had practiced so far and more mana consuming.

It also required much more focus compared to normal magic. Pure mana had no physical form, so he could not rely on his eyes to manipulating its effects.

All depended on his willpower and imagination. The clearer the mental image of the action he wanted the mana to perform, the better the result.

Spirit magic's range was also very limited, barely reaching a meter (3,28 feet) radius.

Despite all of its strict limitations, Lith started to practice only spirit magic. The ultimate discovery about it was that every improvement he did in spirit magic was also passed onto all other kinds of magic.

He didn't need to split practicing between them anymore, so he progressed in leaps and bounds compared to before.

From time to time, he would use a random elemental spell to check on his progress, reaching a new understanding of the true nature of that element.

The progress Lith made allowed him to also improve his breathing techniques.

Through Accumulation, he could now not only perceive how his mana core changed in size with practice, but also have a rough understanding of the amount of mana contained in his body.

By using Accumulation, he would feed the world energy to his mana core, allowing it to expand from the size of a pinhead to that of a glass marble.

Once the mana core grew to marble size, further progress could only be made when the physical body forcefully compressed the mana core back to a pinhead.

Lith had no idea how the phenomenon worked and had found no way around it. Mana core and body development had to go hand in hand, there was no shortcut.

Bottlenecks happened when Lith tried to use Accumulation while the mana core was still at its peak size. The world energy would be rejected by the mana core, going wild through his body and damaging it.

By continuously undergoing expansion and compression cycles, his mana capacity was already incomparable to when he was just a newborn.

After discovering and practicing spirit magic, Lith had a much finer control of his mana, inside and outside his body.

He managed to modify the Invigoration technique so that when he breathed in the world mana, he would combine it with his own temporarily exceeding his limits.

Then he would expand the resulting energy, moving it from the solar plexus outwards until even his body hair would be overflowing with mana.

Ever since he invented Invigoration, he had noticed qualitative changes to his body. Lith was now better at withstanding the cold and heat. He would hardly ever get sick.

When his whole family would catch a cold, he would either get over it before the symptoms manifested or recover in a few days.

'Unless it's all a crazy coincidence, improving Invigoration is the only means at my disposal to temper my body. If I am right, this means that I can use it as a crutch until I get big enough to do physical activity.' He thought.

'Hopefully, it should also help me overcome my bottleneck periods faster. It's a gamble, but it shouldn't do any harm. Also, between hunger and bottlenecks, there isn't much I can do as a seven month old baby.'

As for his family life, it also experienced some changes during the following months.

After the soup incident with Orpal, a divide opened between the brothers. Lith was vengeful by nature and so was his brother.

Sometimes, when Orpal was angry, he would call him Leech instead of Lith since he always called him like that in his head.

Every slip of the tongue would cost him a serious scolding and when he did it while harshly arguing with his parents, even a good spanking.

Orpal blamed Lith for all of his misfortunes. The little runt always giggled when he was having a hard time.

The relationship between Lith and his parents instead kept getting better and better.

He had already started saying babble words, making sure to say "Mama" when Elina embraced him and "Dada" whenever Raaz came near him.

'If this world is even a bit similar to Earth's middle age, it's better to stay in my old man's good book until I am self-sufficient.' This was Lith's reasoning.

He was still very afraid of father figures, and the two of them didn't have a great relationship anyway. Raaz would always be busy with something, letting his wife and eldest daughter spend the most time with the baby.

To his defense, he had just wrongly assumed that Lith was too little to notice and that they would have time to catch up later in the future like he did with his other sons.

Raaz really loved him and Lith never ceased to amaze him. He couldn't remember him crying for no reason, not even when teething.

If someone bumped into his cradle or raised their voice while Lith was asleep, or at least pretending to, he would not make a sound, just look around before going back to sleep.

Lith grew increasingly fond of Rena, she was more like a loving aunt than a sister to him. He could see himself in her, taking care of her little brother as he did with Carl.

He would have loved to express this affection, but all he could do was smile and laugh as soon as he saw her and call her "Lala". She was, in fact, the only one besides his parents to have a babble name.

It wasn't much, but it meant the world to her.

And so, time went by. After six months from his arrival, Lith was put on the ground for the first time and started to crawl under strict supervision. At the ninth month, he started to walk and graduated himself from babble words to real ones.

On the day of his birthday, after discovering they had birthdays in the new world too, he allowed himself to use simple phrases and started to make questions to complete his vocabulary.

Knowing nothing about babies, it was very stressful finding the right timing for every little thing. Luckily, Lith could always resort to cheating to find out the proper time for him to "learn" to do something. He was already capable of understanding most of what he could hear, so he would always be open to "suggestions".

If Elina was dying for him to finally say "Mommy" instead of "Mama", he would wait a couple of days before making it happen. If Raaz cheered for Lith running to him, he did.

The real problem was paying attention to everything Raaz, Rena and Elina said while seeming completely oblivious to their words.

Another problem was that once they let him roam free in the dining room, they also gave him small wooden toys expecting him to play and explore his surroundings.

Lith already knew the dining room like the back of his hand, and there was not much to see in the first place. Yet he had to pretend to be curious about it.

That was the hardest thing he had ever done since becoming a baby and it scared him to death. He had no clue how a child would explore such a bland environment and his paranoia about blowing his cover made him sweat bullets.

Seeing the expectation in their eyes, he started from the nearest thing, the fireplace. The fire was not lit, the logs were cold and covered in ashes.

When he got closer, Raaz stopped him.

"This is the fireplace. Now it's safe, but fire is bad. Fire hurts. No touching it, never."

Lith looked at him, seemingly confused, before trying to put his hand in the ashes. Raaz grabbed his hand, blocking him.

"Fire is bad. No touching it. Never." His father repeated.

Lith stared in his eyes like he was deeply in thought, before asking: "Fire bad?"

"Yes, very bad." Raaz replied while nodding.

"Okay." Lith moved away from the fireplace and got close to the table. When he tried climbing up a chair, almost falling down with it, Elina ran to his rescue.

"Good gods, this little one sure likes danger." Seeing their increasingly worried expressions, Lith believed to have found a way out of his torment.

He would keep putting himself in danger, trying to climb on the table or go into the kitchen rummaging through pots and knives.

They quickly decided that his adventure time was over. They made him sit on an old cloth spread over the wooden floor and gave him toys to play with while they recovered from the stress.

He had a little wooden horse, some kind of cart, and an odd-looking dog thingy. Playing was much easier for him. Lith did not need to create stories or explain what he was doing.

He could just use playtime to practice spirit magic. Lith would actually never use his hands to move the toys, making them float as close as possible to his fingers.

He really enjoyed those moments. Lith could finally openly rejoice, scream and laugh anytime he made a new discovery or a breakthrough and all his parents would see was a happy child lost in his fantasies.

"Who would have ever thought that such a quiet little fellow could have such a vivid imagination." Raaz said with a big, proud smile on his face.

"Look at him. All he has is just some old toys, yet it looks like he has the whole world in the palm of his hand."