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Chapter 16: End of the Infancy Period

 

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Five years have passed.

I have now reached 6 years of age, my appraisal skill has reached the MAX level of 9, and my MP has grown to 5284. I also started my sword training last year. In terms of my magical energy, it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am at a super human level.

The four great elements have all reached a level of 5 and my void magic has reached a level of 6. Sharl’s fire magic and water magic, including her void magic were at level 5, so I have already exceeded her level.

I was concealing my abilities from Sharl, so in her knowledge, I was actually still a little bit inferior to her. Even so, I am considered a prodigal existence.

My current level was still at level 2. There is a reason why it has only gone up by 1.

When my appraisal skill reached level 8, I could see all my experience that I have accumulated, including the required numerical values to level up. Why was I able to know that level 9 was the MAX level achievable? This is because the moment I hit level 9, it did not display that I was level 9 instead it showed the words MAX.

The experience value I needed in order to reach level 2 was 2500 EXP points.

By the way, if I worked extremely hard on my sword training, until the palm of my hands were covered in blisters, I would accumulate approximately 2 experience points in a single day. If I trained normally whilst avoiding blisters from forming on my hands, then I would only gain about 1 EXP point.

Therefore, I spent as much as 5 years in order to finally climb to level 2.

I thought that once I levelled up, everything about my ability would increase drastically, however, what occurred was that my MP went up by 5 and my strength went up by 1. In all honestly, rather than increasing my MP value by 5, I would have much preferred that my other abilities increased in value.

I was so convinced that my stats would go up evenly, and I was so excited about nearing my level up but now that this occurred, I just felt like an idiot. Although I was approaching a mental age of 50 years old, it couldn’t be helped that I was still extremely excited about my level up.

At that particular day, I was training diligently in the way of the sword, and the moment I felt that the sword was easier to swing, I had a premonition that I had levelled up, I quickly used appraisal on myself to determine that I had indeed increased to level 2, but after seeing that my strength values and my endurance values barely increased I was heavily disappointed.

On the evening of that night, I was practicing my magic continuously, and I used appraisal on my Level up sub-window, it was at that time that I finally understood the meaning behind the sub-window.

The sub window stated: When you level up, the ability you used the most before levelling will be used as a basis and placed on a position of 1st to 6th in order to determine which 6 abilities will rise in value.

If I only trained in my MP and my Strength, then other abilities would not be able to rise in value. Up until now, I have never experienced my HP dropping, not only that I have never been in a real fight before, so I have never needed to use my Agility to evade any blows either. Naturally, I have never needed to switch targets or dexterously move around whilst I was merely doing my practice swings.

Right now, I was contemplating as to how I would tackle this problem in the future.

Well apart from this, because I levelled up, my Minor Magic: Cantrip also increased in the amount of times I could use it and I have been able to use this to my advantage and consistently wake up at 12 AM, so this was really helpful.

Although it took roughly 1 year before I was able to perfect this, right now, I have no problems in waking up in the middle of the night.

And it was a really simple matter of using void magic to instantly expend all my mana and faint back to sleep.

Repeating this behaviour every single day, the amount of MP I had at my disposal had increased by a tremendous amount.

Furthermore, Farne’s MP rose to a value of 329 all according to my schedule, and Mill’s MP rose to 855 points as well. Although Sharl seems to be surprised by the time their MP reached a value of 10, she managed to keep whatever she was thinking to herself and continued on with the magical training to expend their MP.

At that night, Sharl was truly excited at the fact that her children’s MP values were increasing so steadily and she reported her findings to Hegard and created her own hypothesis in the matter.

Hegard became silent after hearing about the progress his children was making, but he did comment on the fact that Grandpa Samato was not that bright in terms of magical usage. In any case, because the increase in MP can only mean a good thing for the children, he wanted us to continue our training.

At that time, I was still a baby, so I was sleeping in my parent’s room and I could overhear their conversation.

Although I was getting terribly nervous as they continued their conversation, they didn’t even refer to me, and I could remember feeling a sense of relief in my memory.

From that day onwards, we started to practice in the place where nobody could see us, it was one of the offices in the main building (I thought that it was some kind of attic but apparently it was an office) Well my parents probably wanted to keep this matter a secret from others.

At least for me, this was a convenient thing. It’s just that because we were in a closed room, there is not many chances for us to practice fire magic. In the end, Farne didn’t even bother to learn to make use of fire magic, and Mill was only up to ignition type fire magic.

Because Farne had already reached 13 years of age, he pretty much stopped his training for increasing his MP values and he was more concentrated on increasing the level of his elemental magic, he mainly practiced the use of earth, water and void magic.

Even though he limited himself to these branches of magic, he was still proficient in attacking magic and he could even do slight healing magic. Also, he was able to increase the level of these elements and his earth and water magic level’s reached level 3 whilst his void magic reached level 4.

Although I felt that it wasn’t really a drastic increase, considering the fact that we had zero actual combat experience and was just training in seclusion, it was more than good enough for the average standard. Well one of the main factors for his improvement is likely because of his abundant amount of MP and he could practice for longer than normal.

Hegard was more than satisfied with Farne’s progress, he was proficient in healing magic and he could use the sword at an average level of skill, and in the future, Farne would be able to easily defend the village. Even if he had to go to war, with his current capabilities it would be really hard for him to die in battle, and this was ideal for him if he were to become Hegard’s successor as a lord.

By next year, he would be really close to becoming an adult, and he would get enrolled to Webdosu’s order of the knights as a lesser warrior for a period of two years, and after this period he would formally be recognised as the boss of our region and he would be granted a suitable wife so that he could be prepared to take succeed the family.

On the other hand, after Mill reached the age of 10, she had become obsessed with the path of magic. After morning magical practice, she would without fail expend all of her MP.

She had already passed the age of 10 and even though she was training diligently she could only raise her MP by about 3, considering the fact that she already had a huge amount of MP of more than 800, this kind of training was to be frank, insignificant for Mill, however, she herself had wanted to devote herself to this type of training, so I didn’t really need to go out of my way to stop her.

However, Sharl did give Mill a warning that out in the real world, she should at least keep half of her MP ready at all times because you never knew what you would encounter in times of need, and since hearing this advice, I could see that Mill had become hesitant in completely expending her MP.

Mill’s current level in regards to her magic’s was: level 4 for earth magic, level 4 for water magic, level 1 for fire magic and level 5 for void magic. She showed a bigger potential for magic than Farne, but I suppose this can be accredited to the fact that she had 3 times the amount of MP that Farne possessed and she was able to train in magic for at least 3 times longer.

Mill was apparently yearning to become a magician just like Sharl, although she was very diligent in magical training and she always listened to her mother whom she idolized, she also did not neglect her sword training.

Because I was able to acquire the four great elements at such an early juncture, I was able to combine all the elements of magic including void magic to learn a magic called “Anti-Magic Field”.

The reason I wanted to learn this first was because it could erase magic generated from most types of magic. Furthermore, this “Anti-Magic Field” is something that expended a huge amount of MP, the reason for this is because you needed to be able to use all types of magic and invoke them at the same time. The interesting thing about this magic is that if you continuously used it, you could use up to more than 5000 MP in a span of less than 10 minutes, and whilst you didn’t gain a significant amount of experience, because you used all types of magic, you would accordingly level up in all types of magic simultaneously.

Additionally, Farne had already started to hold a real sword, however Hegard still stays that he has a long way to go, Mill had been improving steadily in the way of the sword and she was now sparring with wooden swords in a mock combat type training.

Because only 1 year had passed since I started my sword training, I was limited to doing my practice swings and creating blisters in my hand every day. In all honesty, considering my previous life training, I was more specialised in using the modern martial art of the bayonet so I would have preferred to train using a short spear or something.

Right now, Hegard and Sharl had completely understood the mechanics of increasing one’s MP and how they needed to still be in their childhood.

It’s just a shame that Sharl who was a magician, only had a limited MP of 44 which was mainly gained through aging, and so she decided to keep this method a secret within our family.

Although one could not accurately determine their own MP values just by using Status Open, Sharl seems to be able to make an educated guess, just from the amount of magic consumption each spell took thereby determining a pretty accurate estimate of her MP values.

However, in terms of my abilities, she could not grasp the full extent of my MP.

Well considering that she had to guess an aggregate amount of MP at least 100 times more than her own, it was probably really difficult to do so.

In any case, this particular discovery about magic was treated with a high amount of secrecy and Sharl was telling Farne, Milly and I to never disclose the amount of MP we had to outsiders and unless we were practicing Minor Magic: Cantrip we needed to be careful so that others won’t get suspicious.

In terms of my family situation, this pretty much sums up the situation, so let’s move on to the society changes.

Bakkudo village had a population of approximately 430 people, and if you included the Greed household which was reigning supreme in this area, there was a total of 62 houses.

Under the supervision of the lord, there was eight households that were considered as samurai families and was part of the military personnel.

Other than this, there was also the free folk under Shiemi-obaasan and the wolf clan that Kelly was in.

The rest of the houses were basically agricultural workers. The village didn’t really have any shops or inns or liquor stores etc…

In this area, the free people gathered nearby, where Shiemi-obaasan was running her medical centre.

When someone wanted to come to the village in order to stay over, they would be sent to one of the lesser samurai families for lodgement or if they were more important guests they might be sent into the Greed household.

Other than properties of land, the agricultural workers were able to have other types of properties. Although I’m not sure if it was a regular thing, it seems that they were also given a salary.

Also, not to mention things like marriage, the lords and samurai families didn’t really interfere with them creating their own homes, clothes or agricultural machinery, and anything they needed for their everyday life was able to be kept as their own property without any problems.

Also, there is no problem with allowing their children to inherit the property that they have built up.

However, when there is a marriage between the agricultural worker classes, there is still a lot of uncertain points as to which child would receive the rights of succession.

Slaves also existed in this world and although the word slave may seem like a gloomy way of life, in actual fact there was no unjust amount of manual labour imposed upon them. You were able to purchase slaves at a relatively low price, even so for those agricultural workers who were not yet able to afford a slave, it would take several years before they were able to purchase one.

After saving up for so many years and finally acquiring a slave, it is unlikely for any of them to mistreat their slaves as it would cause an unreasonable amount of loss for them.

To give you a picture of the current slave system, you can just imagine a peasant at the present age of Japan.

It wasn’t really a miserable circumstance whereby the majority of them were being exploited by their owners, it is more like they were an employee who works at an agricultural company.

Well in a sense, they did do some heavy labour if you were to compare it to modern times, they were kind of like black label workers, however considering that in this earth, once the outside sky darkens, they cannot do anymore work, and they were able to retire for the night, it wasn’t actually so bad.

Even within the Greed Household, we owned several slaves, right now only two households in the village hadn’t acquired any slaves.

In a word, this literally means that more than 80 percent of the inhabitants in the village of Bakkudo owned slaves, and to be honest I was really shocked at this fact, and once again, I felt really lucky that I wasn’t transmigrated into this world as part of the servant class.

The thing is, if you were born a slave, you would actually need to work for a very long period in your life in order to get rid of your status, before you were allowed to migrate and travel out of your plot of land.

If you were a slave, you didn’t have to pay any taxes. The obligation to pay taxes were the duty of the free folk. Although the price is at 1 gold coin per free folk, because I didn’t really understand the value of money, I can’t really say whether this is expensive or cheap.

For commoners who owned a plot of land, they would be imposed a levy on the size per square meter of land they had. Wheat is basically grown in most of the fields and as much as 60 percent is claimed as tax.

As for the production, last year’s production value is used as the standard value. If you claimed a new plot of land, you would be exempted from tax for a period of 5 years. Also, there is also a poll tax for those who owned slaves, but I am not sure about the amount of money required.

After the lord collects all the taxes from the people, the lord himself has to pay a 60 percent tax to the superior feudal lord.

The remaining amount could be used for daily life and infrastructure maintenance or improvement of your own territory, after allotting the money to breeding of horses for war, and then training the men as soldiers for battle, I dare say that not a lot is left over from the tax money.

After fighting the Debasu Kindgom for such a long period of time, it could be said that the amount of expenses for war accumulated for several years is no small amount.

This was pretty much all the information I collected thus far.

Although gathering information is always an essential part to life, at this early point in time, I concluded that training my body will become the most important investment I could make for the future, for five whole years, I had concentrated on strengthening my magic and my body.

Even so I could not stand idly as I watched the very young slaves and the elderly slaves were working so hard and yet they were doing it so inefficiently, so I showed them the proper way to thresh the crops.

The method of threshing that I taught them was originally invented in the Edo period of Japan, and because the efficiency of threshing had improved rapidly, I was heavily praised by Hegard.

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I have been observing for any suspicious actions made by Myun every single day, but she wasn’t making any suspicious movements, and I could not get any leads in this matter at all.

Because it’s not that good of an idea to be in constant worry and digging for trouble, I decided to proceed more slowly, and just obtain as much information as I could without her realizing about it.

I managed to obtain some information in regards to how Myun came about into serving our family, but there has been no concrete evidence of her planning anything suspicious yet.

Eight years ago, or another way to put it is 2 years before I was born, there was a skirmish in the border of the Debasu Kingdom happening, and Dangle who was Tobasu’s master at the time had seemingly picked up a war orphan.

Dangle Tobasu was approaching his fifties at the time (and now he was 57 years of age), in a previous battle, he had already lost his succeeding son and it was obvious that if things continued to go any further, he would be left without a successor.

His parents had already died, and his wife had also passed away due to the epidemic that my grandfather took home, and perhaps because he became really lonesome he took home a war orphan.

Surveying the results of the battlefield after the skirmish had ended, he discovered an absentminded girl standing in the midst of the battle field right beside a soldier’s corpse, I heard that it was at this time, that he discovered Myun and took her home.

In this world known as Orth, it was actually quite a common thing to adopt a son in order to take over the estate or even give succession rights to a son-in-law.

Well Dangle probably was thinking along these lines. Anyhow, Myun was taken in as his adopted daughter.

Hegard probably felt sympathy for the fact that she was a war orphan and permitted her to serve him as a housemaid, and I think that he even had thoughts of marrying her off to someone’s second son.

If my guess is correct, he had plans to marry Myun off to Dice who was the second son of the Dubois family.

However, because Dice was planned to be married to another daughter as of four years later, Myun was still her own person.

Because her status window displayed that she was 22 years of age, she was still in a marriageable age.

She is still working very solemnly as a housemaid, and although she seems to be working with heartfelt sincerity, she still hasn’t disclosed the matter about her camouflage.

Moreover, when I occasionally observe her with my appraisal ability, I could tell that her experience was going up in tens or even hundreds of EXP points.

It makes me truly wonder, how she is accumulating that amount of EXP points.

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