Pain and Magic

As time passes, books became my only companion. From the books, I get to know of many things. Reading is really the best way to gather information especially since this is a different world. Their language and customs differed greatly from Japan.

Now what book am I reading today?

Some of the story book I had read mimic the story back on Earth.

Like the story of a princess with the dragon, where the dragon abducted the princess for her country transgression against the dragons but then they will fall in love with each other. Finally the dragon transform into a handsome man and they live happily ever after which greatly resembled beauty and the beast.

Or the story of the mermaid who fall in love with a prince but unlike the original tale of the little mermaid in which the mermaid turned into a bubble and fade away. The mermaid in this world began a war with the prince's country after being rejected. It finally ended when a hero came and stop their feud by agreeing to take the place of the prince.

There also a travel log that described their journey through the beast country which confirmed my suspicion that one of my maid is beast people. According to the travel log, the beast people are similar to human but they differed as they inherited some of their animal counterpart characteristic. Such was the case with my maid, Edna.

These day, I have been getting along with the maids. They started to have little conversation while taking care of me. Great. This way I will be able to use the words I learned. It's useless if I can't use them just because I don't know their pronunciation.

By the way, Edna is the name of snake maid-san. I knew this from the way the other maids called out to her as they passes by each other. There were altogether three maids that were in charge of taking care of me but they did not seem to get along with each other. Lately, Edna will always come when the other two wasn't present. She is also the only one that pay the most attention to me.

I'll better be careful or my act as a baby will be exposed.

There are times when I was almost been found out.

The time when I thought Edna came while I was reading was nerve wrecking.

I was reading when I saw a flash of silver in my periphery vision. I quickly tried to act asleep in front of the book shelves. Wait, it's weird for the baby to be asleep there. When I hear there is no sound except for my breathing. I cautiously opened my eyes and saw the reflection of a mirror.

Mirror? Isn't this the mirror the brought in when they change my crib to bed the other day? Why the heck am I afraid of a mirror?

I look at the mirror again and I was astonished at my appearance. I didn't noticed at first but I look like my previous life's face. Pale skin with silver hair. Large eyes with pupils tinged with blue.

Magic in this world can be identified through hair color since it reflected a person affinity to magic. Red hair for fire magic, blue hair for water magic, brown hair for earth magic and green color for air/wind magic. The deeper the color the stronger magic they have. But my hair is so pale that I may or may not able to wield magic.

Then one day suddenly, pain ripped through my body.

What is this?!

Am I dying again?!

No!!!

This pain is dangerous. It just like what I felt in my previous worlds threading between the boundary of life and death.

Someone help me! Anyone please help me!!

Something felt like exploding from within my heart and pain continued travelling through my bone, tissue and blood vessel.

In my haste to get rid of the pain, I accidentally knocked over a flower vase.

A beautiful arc of ice formed.

At that moment, my chest felt lightened somehow. The pain slowly leaving my body. My rough breathing become calmer. Thankfully, the maids were not alerted by my painful groaning.

First let's assess the situation.

What is that pain? And what is this crystal ice?

I tried to stand the vase upright again but it has been frozen to the table.

I look at the crystal and thought maybe…

I tried to conjure ice but nothing happen.

Why? I imagine my finger to be frozen completely though... As I thought that, cracking sounded and my finger was encased in ice completely. I tried to bend my finger at the joint but to no avail. I applied greater force and managed to break it afterwards.

So just saying [Freeze] is no good. I have to have a good image, maintain the image and saying [Freeze] for magic to work.

I tried several time after that and got carried away. Ice crystals littered on my bed. I feel sluggish after playing... Umm, experiment with magic. I also tried to defrost the vase. It will look bad if my maids found the vase frozen like that. I imagine the vase free of ice before chanting [Defrost]. It was a success.

I also noticed that I use less energy when using water as intermediary compared to freezing thing by itself. However, I can't manipulate water, just water that had turned into ice. How curious.

My energy is depleted and I felt so sleepy. Let's continue magic training tomorrow.