The discovery about brain enhancement brought with it another curious observation, one that Oryth stumbled upon during his continued experimentation. While testing different volumes of mana in various body parts, he decided to see if flooding his brain with more energy would produce even greater effects than the baseline enhancement he'd experienced.
It didn't.
No matter how much mana he channeled to his brain—whether a small trickle or a massive flood—the effect remained identical. His senses sharpened to the same degree, his perception accelerated to the same speed, his processing capabilities increased to the same level. Unlike his muscles, which grew stronger with more mana, his brain seemed to operate on a binary state: enhanced or not enhanced. The volume made no difference to the outcome.
The realization puzzled him. Why would the brain respond differently than other body parts? Perhaps the enhancement wasn't about raw power the way muscular enhancement was. Perhaps it was simply activating certain capabilities, flipping a switch rather than turning a dial. Or maybe—and this was pure speculation—the additional mana was doing something he couldn't perceive. Perhaps it was reinforcing his brain against damage, making the delicate organ more resilient, more durable. But that was impossible to test without deliberately injuring himself, which seemed like an astoundingly bad idea for an infant with no access to healing magic.
He filed the observation away and continued his training. Without new breakthroughs in understanding external manifestation, his days settled into a pattern of refinement rather than discovery. He worked on his control, on the smoothness of his mana flow, on his ability to maintain multiple enhancements simultaneously. Progress was measured in small increments—slightly longer duration, slightly better efficiency, slightly faster transitions between different enhancement states.
It was during these months of routine training that Oryth began paying more attention to his surroundings, to the life happening around him rather than just the magic happening within him. He'd been so focused on his internal development that he'd barely registered the details of his new existence beyond the walls of his nursery.
He was, as far as he could tell, an only child. In all his months of life in this world, he'd never seen another child who seemed to belong to the household. No siblings shared his nursery, no older brothers or sisters visited to dote on their baby brother. It was just him, Elara, and Marcus.
His parents were, by all accounts, good people. Marcus was stern but fair, a man who carried himself with the bearing of nobility but without the cruelty or arrogance Oryth had half-expected from a medieval aristocrat. Elara was gentle and attentive, spending hours with him each day, her green eyes always warm with genuine affection. They loved him completely, without reservation, in a way that made something in his chest ache whenever he thought about it too much.
And they treated their staff well. The servants who moved through the residence—the maids who cleaned, the cooks who prepared meals, the various attendants who maintained the household—were spoken to with respect. Not as equals, perhaps, but as valued members of the household rather than disposable labor. He never heard raised voices or witnessed mistreatment. It was a small thing, perhaps, but it told him something important about the people who'd become his parents in this life.
Time passed in ways that were difficult to track precisely, but Oryth could measure it in his body's development. His muscles strengthened naturally, his coordination improved, his infant form slowly maturing into that of a toddler. The day came when he could finally walk unaided, when his legs were strong enough to support him without magical enhancement.
He'd been careful about that milestone. He could have walked much earlier using mana to strengthen his legs, but that would have raised questions, drawn attention, marked him as unusual. So he'd waited, pretending to struggle with balance and coordination, letting his physical development catch up to what his enhanced capabilities had achieved months ago. Only when it seemed age-appropriate did he take his first "real" steps, much to Elara's delight.
The pretense extended to his speech as well. He understood every word spoken around him—English, thankfully, which removed at least one barrier to learning about this world. But he couldn't simply start speaking in complete sentences. Infants didn't do that. So he forced himself to start with single words, simple expressions of need and want. Food. Water. Mother. Father. Basic things that a child his apparent age might reasonably say.
It was exhausting, maintaining that facade. Every instinct screamed at him to communicate properly, to ask the thousands of questions burning in his mind, to engage with the world at his actual intellectual level. But he couldn't. Not without revealing himself as something abnormal, something that might frighten his parents or draw dangerous attention.
So he spoke in fragments and pretended not to understand things he grasped perfectly. He gradually expanded his vocabulary over time, adding new words at what he hoped was a believable pace, occasionally stringing two or three together as if it were a great achievement. The act of playing dumb was perhaps more draining than his daily mana training.
The reward for his patience came when Elara and Marcus began reading to him. They'd started with simple stories, tales clearly meant for young children, but as he demonstrated interest and apparent comprehension, they moved to more substantial material. Books about heroes and their great deeds. Stories of mages who defended the kingdom with their magic. Accounts of ancient wars and the noble sacrifices that secured peace.
Much of it was propaganda, he realized quickly. The King was portrayed as endlessly wise and generous, his rule a blessing upon the land, his decisions always just and righteous. It was the kind of sanitized history that every regime wrote for its children, presenting a version of reality scrubbed clean of nuance or contradiction. He mentally filed away the bias and focused on the useful information hidden within the narratives.
The books never mentioned magical implements—no wands, no staffs, no enchanted swords or mystical artifacts. Magic seemed to be purely internal, manifested directly by mages without tools or focusing objects. That aligned with what he'd witnessed from Theron and supported his own experiences with mana manipulation.
He pretended to be fascinated by the stories, which wasn't entirely an act. They contained information about the world he desperately needed. But more importantly, his apparent interest in books gave him an excuse to engage with written language. He began pointing at words as Elara read them, making simple sounds as if trying to mimic what he heard. She was delighted by his efforts, praising him lavishly whenever he "successfully" repeated a word.
In reality, he could read perfectly well. The text was in English, clear and comprehensible, requiring no learning curve whatsoever. But he couldn't reveal that, so he played the role of a precocious child slowly learning his letters, gradually "figuring out" the connection between the written words and their spoken counterparts. It was tedious, but necessary.
One detail from the books caught his attention more than anything else: the mention of another race. The stories called them the Skarreth, described them as humanoid creatures with reptilian features—scaled skin, powerful tails, builds that were larger and stronger than humans. They were portrayed as formidable opponents, physically superior to human soldiers in almost every way.
But humans had magic. The narratives emphasized this advantage—humans wielding external magic, creating effects at a distance, using power that didn't rely on physical strength alone. According to the stories, it was this capability that had allowed humanity to defend itself against the larger, stronger Skarreth.
The accounts never explicitly stated that the Skarreth couldn't use magic, though. The implication was there, woven into the triumphant tales of human victory, but it remained frustratingly vague. Perhaps the Skarreth simply weren't as intellectually advanced as humans? Perhaps their physical superiority came at the cost of magical capability? Or maybe they did have magic, but less of it, or used it differently?
The questions multiplied in Oryth's mind. Did the Skarreth have mana cores like he did? Could anyone with a mana core potentially wield external magic, or was there something specific to human physiology that enabled it? Was external manifestation truly unique to humanity, or just more common, more developed, better understood?
He had no answers. The children's books weren't going to provide that level of detail, weren't concerned with the theoretical underpinnings of magic or comparative biology between races. They were propaganda pieces, meant to instill pride and confidence, not to educate about the fundamental nature of magical ability.
But the questions lodged themselves in his mind, adding to the growing list of things he desperately needed to understand about this world.
His family's residence included a library. He'd glimpsed it during the rare occasions when he was carried through that part of the building, had seen the shelves lined with volumes, the promise of accumulated knowledge waiting to be accessed. If there were answers to be found about how magic worked in this world, they might be hidden in those pages.
But gaining access to the library proved frustratingly difficult. He was too young, his parents believed. The books were expensive, valuable, not toys for a toddler to damage. He needed to be older, more careful, more capable of appreciating what he was handling.
So he waited. And while he waited, he maintained his facade and endured the social obligations that came with being the child of a noble family.
Visitors came periodically—other noble families, friends of his parents, political associates whose purposes Oryth could only guess at. It was during one of these visits, when he overheard adults greeting each other formally, that he learned his family name: Morvhal. The visitors sometimes brought their own children, expecting the young ones to play together while the adults conducted their business.
Those encounters were torture.
The children were actual children, with the interests and attention spans and modes of interaction appropriate to their ages. They wanted to play games he found pointless, wanted to talk about things he couldn't care less about, wanted to engage in the simple, innocent socialization that defined early childhood.
And he had to pretend to be one of them.
He had to act interested in their toys. Had to participate in their games. Had to laugh at things that weren't funny and pretend enthusiasm for activities that bored him senseless. All while monitoring his behavior carefully to ensure he didn't accidentally reveal the adult consciousness trapped in his child's body.
It was easier to engage with adults, ironically. With them, he could be quiet, could simply observe, could play the role of a shy or serious child and be considered charming rather than strange. But children expected participation. They wanted interaction, wanted responses that matched their energy and interests. Failing to provide that would mark him as odd, potentially raising concerns about his development.
So he played. He stacked blocks and knocked them down. He ran around in circles for no apparent reason. He made the simple observations and asked the basic questions that children his apparent age would ask. And inside, he counted down the minutes until the visitors would leave and he could return to his training, to the one aspect of his existence that actually mattered.
The months crawled by, then stretched into years. His body continued developing normally—or as normally as possible for someone who spent hours each day channeling magical energy through their pathways. His speech improved at the carefully calibrated pace he'd established. His reading ability was "discovered" by his parents, who marveled at how quickly their son was learning his letters.
By the time he reached five years old, he could communicate more or less normally, though he still deliberately held back the full extent of his vocabulary and comprehension. He could hold conversations, ask questions that seemed appropriate for his age, express himself in ways that didn't raise suspicion.
Through it all, he never neglected his training. Every single night, without exception, he depleted his core completely before sleep. The discipline was absolute, unbreakable, as fundamental to his existence as breathing. His capacity continued expanding, his control continued refining, his understanding of his own capabilities continued deepening.
But without access to proper knowledge about magic, without instruction or theory or even basic explanations of how external manifestation worked, he'd hit a wall in his development. He could make himself stronger, faster, more perceptive. He could enhance his body in ways that would probably seem impressive to anyone who knew what he was doing. But he couldn't do the one thing that the books suggested was crucial to human magic: manifest mana externally.
The frustration built steadily, a constant pressure at the back of his mind. He needed those books. Needed access to the library. Needed to learn what this world knew about magic so he could finally move past this barrier that had stymied him for years now.
Years of training, of discipline, of hiding what he could do. Years of pretending to be a normal child while conducting magical experiments in secret. Years of waiting for the chance to learn what he desperately needed to know.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity of careful behavior and demonstrated responsibility, after reaching an age where he could properly articulate his request, the moment came. One afternoon, he found Marcus working in his office, reviewing what looked like ledgers or correspondence. Oryth knocked on the doorframe, perhaps a bit harder than necessary in his nervous excitement.
Marcus looked up, and his stern features softened immediately into a warm smile.
"Oryth! Come in, come in. What's on your mind, son?"
Oryth stepped inside, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt in a way he hoped looked appropriately childlike.
"Father, I... I wanted to ask you something."
"Of course. What is it?"
"Can I go to the library? By myself?" The words tumbled out faster now, his carefully practiced composure slipping into genuine eagerness. "I want to read all the stories! The ones with mages and knights and their big adventures! Mother reads them to me, but I want to see all of them. There must be so many books there, and I promise I'll be really, really careful!"
Marcus leaned back in his chair, studying his son with those striking red eyes. For a moment, Oryth worried he'd overplayed it, been too enthusiastic. But then his father's face broke into a broad grin.
"Well, well. Looks like we have a little adventurer growing up right here in our home." He stood, walking around his desk to ruffle Oryth's white hair affectionately. "Yes, you may use the library. But you must be careful with the books—some of them are very old and valuable. And stay away from the top shelves unless you ask for help. Understood?"
"Yes! Yes, I understand! Thank you, Father!"
Oryth couldn't contain himself. He threw his arms around Marcus in a tight hug, feeling his father's surprised laugh rumble through his chest. Then he was already pulling away, already turning toward the door, his feet practically bouncing with the need to run.
"Thank you! Thank you!" he called back over his shoulder, breaking into a sprint down the corridor.
"Oryth!" Marcus's voice boomed after him, filled with amused exasperation. "Watch where you're going! Don't run into anyone!"
But Oryth was already gone, his small feet carrying him as fast as they could toward the library. A wide smile stretched across his face—genuine, unforced, the expression of a child about to get exactly what they wanted mixed with the fierce satisfaction of a man finally gaining access to knowledge he'd craved for five long years.
The library awaited, and he ran toward it with his heart pounding and his mind already racing ahead to what he might find within those countless volumes.
He burst through the doorway he'd yearned to enter for years, and the library opened before him. Oryth felt his breath catch—genuinely, not as part of his act.
The room was larger than he'd imagined from his brief glimpses, lined floor to ceiling with shelves. Hundreds of books, perhaps thousands, their spines creating a mosaic of colors and sizes and ages. Some looked new, their leather bindings still supple and bright. Others were clearly ancient, their covers worn and faded, their pages probably yellowed with time.
Natural light streamed through tall windows, illuminating reading chairs positioned near them. A large desk dominated one corner, its surface clear except for an inkwell and what looked like a journal. The smell hit him next—that distinctive scent of old paper and leather and accumulated knowledge, a smell he remembered from libraries in his previous life, a smell that meant possibility and discovery and answers.
His heart hammered in his small chest. Somewhere in this room, somewhere among these volumes, there might be information about external magic manifestation. Theory about how mana worked. Explanations of techniques that actual mages used, not the half-remembered fantasy from novels written by people who'd never touched real magic. Answers to the questions that had been multiplying in his mind—about the Skarreth, about mana cores, about what made human magic work the way it apparently did.
This was it. This was the breakthrough he'd been waiting for, the next step in his journey toward mastering this world's magic. All those years of training, of building his foundation, of strengthening his core and perfecting his internal control—all of it had been preparation for this moment.
The excitement that flooded through him was pure and genuine, untainted by his usual need to pretend or perform. The wide smile on his face was real—a five-year-old's joy at being granted access to something wonderful, and a reincarnated man's fierce satisfaction at finally reaching a goal he'd pursued for years.
He stood in the doorway for just a moment longer, taking it all in, his small hands clenched into excited fists at his sides.
Then he stepped forward into the library, ready to begin searching for the answers he desperately needed.