Capítulo 2: Chapter 2. Mana pool training and my disgusting brother
After waking up, I quickly realized my situation as I noted my strange and unresponsive new body, and felt a warm and rather unpleasant sensation around my butt crack.
Right, I reincarnated!
And now something sticky and wet was glued to my butt…
'Ugh…'
Having realized that, I felt uncomfortable and a little disgusted.
What now? Should I cry out loud, so someone comes and cleans it up?
However, the surroundings were completely dark. At a glance, it was the middle of the night.
If I started crying loudly, I would definitely wake up my parents and make them feel annoyed.
But of course, crying was something that a normal baby would. It was only natural.
But on the other hand, there were no sleeping or soft snorting sounds coming out from my side anymore, so it seemed as if my sibling was not asleep either.
It was likely that this guy was in a similar situation, but was not crying.
What to do then?
It immediately felt like a competition, and the one who started crying first would be the loser.
Strangely, I did not want to let myself lose to this guy.
I would also bother my new parents and it made me feel worse.
After thinking about it for a while, I just ignored the matter for the time being as I instead excitedly focused on my special meditation practice once again.
As I woke up, I had an idea of what I should do.
I remembered it clearly.
Starting to practice with magic while you're still very young is the key to building up extraordinarily large mana capacity in Mushoku Tensei.
Coincidentally, I started re-reading the Mushoku Tensei web novel, so the early volumes were still rather fresh in my mind.
To my knowledge, it seemed that to grow my mana pool all that I needed to do was to simply exhaust my mana as often as possible during youth. Every time my mana recovers back to full, my mana capacity would increase.
In contrast, there was never an instance in the original show where someone would meditate in order to restore their Mana or Battle Aura, or meditate to improve these.
If I'm the same as a normal person, then meditating in the manner I did earlier would have no special effects.
What Rudeus did to increase his Mana reserves was simply daily using up his Mana on spells.
That was it.
No special magic training method or magical theory should be needed to grow a persons' mana pool, just the act of regularly using up Mana.
However, even though I knew all this, I still had no idea how to even get started with using up my mana or performing magic.
After all, I didn't even have even the most basic knowledge on magic and didn't know any spells or incantations.
As such, in the end my only option was trying to use my imagination again.
First, I simply tried to feel out my body and 'send out' my mana into the outside world.
Instead of absorbing energy into my body like earlier, I would try expelling it outwards.
I closed my eyes, concentrated my mind, tried to get attuned with my entire body and then focused on expelling my 'energy' out into the atmosphere.
Minute by minute passed as I kept practicing and experimenting with focus.
First I tried my meditation exercise while focusing on my breath again, focusing on exhalation, before I tried to rely on pure imagination, and then finally imagined 'energy' flowing through imaginary pathways running through my body like wires.
Soon enough, I felt something!
There was a change!
I had a faint feeling of something warm traveling along my veins, flowing from my toes, the top of my head and my entire body all the way to my right hand, akin to blood coursing through my blood vessels.
'Energy' gathered in my right hand, at the tip of my index finger.
And then my body started letting out something through my fingertip.
It wasn't really quite the same, but it was similar to letting out my breath through a new mysterious organ.
'Yes! I did it!'
I felt incredibly excited when I felt this mysterious and magical sensation.
'Keep at it. Maintain it.'
I kept up my concentration and continued sending out my special 'energy' through my fingertip.
However, after just a dozen seconds passed like this, I felt increasingly tired.
Soon enough, I was so exhausted I fell asleep before I knew it.
***
A month passed by.
Following my discovery that I'm able to expel my 'energy' by focusing on it, I continued doing it and exhausting my mana reserves whenever I was awake.
The fact that the 'energy' I manipulated felt warm and flowed along my veins threw me off at first, but then I recalled that Rudeus made a similar comparison.
As such, my assumption is that this 'energy' is simply 'mana'.
The pathways inside my body should be something like 'magic circuits', which coincidentally overlap with my blood vessels.
Meanwhile what I was doing was in essence 'raw mana manipulation'.
Fortunately, it was possible for me to manipulate pure mana and send it outwards, even though I had no knowledge of magic theory and didn't know any spells.
It reminded me of the time when Rudeus practically self-learned Disrupt Magic, which seemed to work at a similar principle - pure mana manipulation.
To my knowledge of this world, the fact that I was incredibly young and prone to learning new things should also play a factor in helping with my talent for magic.
During the first time I did the exercise, I completely ran out of 'mana' after only a dozen seconds and overdid it, but the time I needed to expel all of my mana and the mana's volume increased significantly and exponentially with every time I did that.
Fortunately, the amount of mana that I was able to consciously expel was also gradually increasing during my practice, so my practice method remained viable.
If at first my flow of mana was just like a tiny and feeble stream slowly dropping from a faucet, then after a month of practice it was similar to water gushing out from a water hose.
It made me feel extremely satisfied and excited.
It meant that both my mana reserves and my ability to control mana should be rapidly improving.
And most importantly, I began this kind of training just a few hours after I came out of the womb!
If I recall the novel correctly, Rudeus only began practicing magic and working on his mana reserves when he was 2 years old and managed to decipher the contents of a magic book after secretly learning the language from Paul reading him stories.
Beginning 2 years earlier would certainly give me an advantage.
Of course, whether I had the same talent for magic as Rudeus, as well as the Laplace factor that increases his mana potential, was unknown.
It's possible that I was able to grasp raw mana manipulation so quickly only thanks to the fact that I'm a newly-born child with a flexible mind and body.
And the younger you are in this world, the easier learning magic is.
But because my grade of talent is unknown, it only made me determined to keep training even harder and with more focus to make the most out of what I was given.
The first time I exhausted my mana, I fainted, but afterwards I didn't go as far.
And while I was out of mana and awake, I would always mindfully meditate to train my mind.
After all, even without any special effects meditation might still have a strong positive effect on my developing brain.
It was proven to even have benefits on adults, so what to say about a baby that was just born?
And especially so in a world of swords and magic?
As a baby I could do nothing else but to use my mind anyway.
Several times I attempted using my mana to do something substantial in the outside world, like forming a gust of wind, creating a blob of water or pushing away a toy with telekinesis.
Unfortunately, all my attempts were unsuccessful.
I was able to manipulate pure mana and expel it when I put my mind to it, but I couldn't make it affect reality.
However, since I was still able to exhaust my MP just through this method, I didn't waste much of my time on trying things that bore no results and that I didn't need yet.
My daily routine usually looked something like this - wake up, cry out to be cleaned up and be fed baby milk, expel my mana and then mindfully meditate until I naturally fall asleep.
Then I would wake up and repeat the cycle.
Again and again.
As I expelled my 'mana' outwards, it also didn't cause any phenomenon in the outside world. There were no shining lights or anything. Pure mana seemed to be colorless, formless and invisible.
Because of this I still remained undiscovered.
During this time I also discovered that I can release mana through both of my hands instead of just one.
Doing this increased my efficiency by almost half.
It was not a double increase, but it was still an improvement as I utilized both of my arms instead of just one.
I didn't need any training to do that, so I think it's a natural ability of any magician.
I imagined a magician holding a staff with both hands for that.
As I continued experimenting, I also discovered I'm able to release mana through my feet, mouth, other body parts, and even from my entire body simultaneously.
However, using any other body part apart from my hands is significantly less efficient.
Even if I try to send mana out through the pores in my entire body, it is not as good as focusing on pouring it out through my hands.
This led me to believe that the 'magic circuits' in a human body were probably designed in this way - for the magic to be mainly released through one's hands.
It's like a one-directional highway leading to a destination, the destination being a person's hands.
The rest of the body, like feet, could be used to channel mana through them as well, but it is not the best method.
Putting aside my training, during the last month I became slightly more familiar with the world around me.
The couple that I saw when I first opened my eyes were obviously my parents, both in their early twenties and both with great looks.
We had a single maid in the house. I remember from the novel - her name was confirmed to be Lilia.
The building itself that I was in was a room of a wooden medieval-style building.
There were no signs of modern technology anywhere. The woman in maid's clothing cleaned with a cloth, whereas the utensils, bowls and furniture were clearly made from wood. The light was not produced by light bulbs, but came from candles and lamps.
My parents' clothes seemed to be those of a medieval village or a fantasy world.
Apparently, my name was Seraph.
Once I was able to look into a mirror and saw my appearance - disregarding the chubby face of a baby, short spare blonde hair and blue eyes were my characteristic features.
It seems that look-swise I took more after Zenith than Paul.
On that note.
When it came to my sibling who took more after Paul, these days I was able to experience more of his disgusting behavior.
I have seen a few Mushoku Tensei fanfics in which the OC protagonist reincarnated as Rudeus's brother.
In all of those I read, the Original Character was always very excited to be brothers with Rudeus, about growing up in this fantasy world while supporting each other and growing stronger together. They had a great relationship from the beginning, filled with sunshine and rainbows.
But when I was personally faced with this kind of situation, what I wanted to do was puke.
It's true that I was always quite disgusted by Rudeus as a character.
But I'm not a narrow-minded person, so I can also notice the good things about him in the novel.
Yet, as I watched my new brother's continuously disturbing and revolting behavior, I couldn't help but develop increasing disgust toward him that I could not repress.
Whenever Rudeus interacted with the maid or our mother, he would always make a disgustingly lecherous face and giggle in a creepy manner. He would grope both of them and roll their faces in their chests while panting.
Most importantly, he was not doing it in a funny or playful way. It was straight out disgusting.
Watching my 'mother' being straight-out molested like this was just too difficult to take in.
In general, the anime had sugar coated it a lot and cut out many scenes that showed Rudeus in a bad light. To my memory, it even aimed to show Rudeus look cooler, for example in most fight scenes.
But just like in the novel, the person I was dealing with was unbelievably revolting.
I suppose, since it's a visual medium and Rudeus has a cute voice and the face of a pretty little boy, most people would also tend to ignore his faults.
For example, a scene where Rudeus is molesting Eris and groping her breasts with an unrestrained perverted grin while she sleeps in a haystack at 9 years old, and then even tries to take off her panties.
That was soon after he first met her.
If we want to justify it, it might seem like a scene of a lustful and playful little boy teasing an older girl he likes without much thought.
But the truth is that Rudeus is not a little boy at all. He's a 34+7 year old man!
My issue is not even the 'mental' age difference between Rudeus and Eris.
I think it's rather clear what's the problem here.
Apart from this, Rudeus is quite disgusting and pathetic throughout the entirety of Mushoku Tensei.
I was aware of Rudeus's powerful trauma from his previous life and tried to be patient, but his disgusting way of acting made it difficult for me to feel any heartfelt sympathy.
Whenever I saw him ogling and molesting our mother, picturing the disgusting and lecherous grin on his fat and ugly face on the inside, I felt anger burning in my chest.
Seeing something like this, anyone would want to burn this kind of brother on a stake.
In truth, I felt bad for Zenith's family.
Despite having similar experiences, I did not sympathize with Rudeus or pitied him.
Instead, I was disgusted, and I wished he simply did not exist.
It would be cleaner this way.
No experiences are an excuse for being so nasty.
For example, I did not turn out this way even though I have experienced my share of hardships, bullying and humiliation.
Sure, I was not bound to the school's gate naked with my baby Johnson displayed to the world, but I don't think any rapist was ever discharged from a trial in court with the reason that 'he had a difficult childhood'.
While Rudeus hadn't reached the point of raping someone yet, he was not far off.
And it was not only Rudeus's actions that were disgusting, but it seemed as if his thought processes and the way of being themselves were repulsive, as he felt no shame about what he was doing and never truly changed on the inside.
Nevertheless, as around a week or two passed, Rudeus's behavior suddenly changed.
And I realized it - it seemed that my 'brother' had noticed that I am also a reincarnated person.
I never made it obvious in any way, and I usually ignored him as I was either sleeping or focused on my training or meditation with closed eyes, but it seemed that unlike our parents, Rudeus was still rather perceptive.
I then recalled that at one point during his first life Rudeus had been taking care of his little brother and he had experience handling newborn children, so he should be aware of what a normal baby is like.
I did cry more than Rudeus, as I would always cry out when my diaper is full. I also acted more child-like. But I still did not and could not act exactly like a normal child would.
After all, it was basically impossible, it would be a waste of my training time and, based on the novel and what my sibling was doing, was not necessary either.
During the early days we were often stranded inside a cradle together most of the time and this gave him a lot of time to observe me.
And he finally figured it out…
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