Baby Arc IV : Cutely Growing Older

Astraea had made a lot of progress and gained a lot of new information, as well as experience new things for the weeks that came.

She had made minor progress in attempting to control the flow of her mana and was now able to redirect a small amount in a certain direction, she planned to continue to train her internal control before even attempting to have it exit her body.

She had experienced actual magic for the first time too as her parents had started using their magic around her with small tricks and spells, hearing from their talks that it was to boost her affinity for Neutral Magic.

Though they didn't talk about it in detail, she had gathered that of the few confirmed ways to increase a toddler's affinity for Neutral Magic was to frequently use magic around them.

Her dad had used Ice Magic to create little sculptures of animals and sometimes put on a small performance, showcasing the beauty of ice by casting flurries of snow and ice, making pretty patterns in the air and having the ice and snow dance around.

She was properly wowed and amazed as it was the first time she had ever seen such a fantastical display, her behavioral cuteness power working its own magic and making her react in cute giggles and excited noises, coupled with cute expressions that made Aereons heart melt.

She guessed from the skillful and beautiful display that he had a high affinity with Ice Magic and was highly talented with magic in general.

Her mom had also performed some small spells with earth, fire, and light magic as she seemed to have some affinity with them. It was obvious that she wasn't very skilled with them in comparison with her dad and could only guess her main magic was hard or impossible to materialize. She still appreciated the effort and make her cute smiles and giggles as well.

Another method to increase her affinity was to use a technique that allowed one person to pass their mana through another person and having their mana be flushed and replaced by the mana that they had received. Researchers had found out that mana that was kept inside of a body for long period of time was able to become 'stale' and have a reduced concentration, this meant that despite being maxed out on mana, if it was used to cast magic, it would either take much more mana than usual or the effect would be reduced.

Using this technique would allow anyone to regain 'fresh' mana without having to use up any of their own and waiting for it to refill. Though there few people who actually used the technique as it was quite inefficient. It was a perfect technique for mothers with toddlers as those of the same family had similar mana signatures and thus there was less loss of mana during the transfer.

It was also due to toddlers having a minuscule capacity for mana making it possible for mothers to perform the technique multiple times in a day and not have to worry about being inconvenienced due to the lack of mana.

Not only was it proven to increase toddler's affinity with Neutral Magic, but it was also confirmed to increase affinity with multiple other attributes by a small amount and even made them physically healthier.

Paela had been diligently performing the technique on Astraea every day three times a day for the past few weeks, and each time she did so, Astraea would start to focus on the feeling of mana moving in her body and attempting to follow the flow to increase her proficiency and control. She would also focus on the feeling of mana leaving her body so she becomes familiar with the feeling when she attempts to move her mana out of her body in the future.

---

The next few months passed and not much had happened in that time except for two significant achievements.

She had successfully become proficient enough to control a large amount of mana in her body and was able to move it to any part of her body with only some effort, but more impressive than that, she had been able to move her mana out of her body without any accidents.

At first, it had been difficult trying to move the mana out of her body despite having a clear memory of the feeling from when her mom uses the mana refreshing technique on her every day.

But it did help as she was able to sense the changes of what she felt and slowly adjusted her technique in order to get closer to the feeling she felt when her mana was being refreshed.

Eventually, she had been successful and the effects were quite minor, Astraea had sent out a small amount of mana out of her palm towards a small stuffed toy inches away and it had made it move a negligible distance.

She likened it to a telekinetic push as that was one of the types of magic she would imagine doing as a Neutral Mage, she didn't have any doubts about if she was actually using Neutral Magic as the being had already explained that Neutral magic was literally just utilizing raw mana.

She only practiced her control over magic externally when she was alone as she didn't want her parents to find out just yet. She also didn't want them to become worried for her safety and watch her 24/7 as she wouldn't be able to practice her magic freely.

Aside from her advancements in magic, she had also successfully learned to crawl when she was four months old, greatly surprising her parents as babies usually took six to ten months to start to crawl.

It took her four months as her limbs were not strong enough to support the weight of her body at first, but when they finally became strong enough to do so, she was very happy to have regained two-dimension movement.

another two months passed with her crawling every opportunity she had to do so, so as to train her body and she was finally able to support her own weight and start walking. Aereon and Paela were once again shocked at her speed of growth but were mostly happy at having such a talented daughter.

She had even decided to go for broke and call them 'mama' and 'dada' like how they had been trying to teach her for the past few months, doing both at the same time so as to not exclude either parent.

The reaction was more than she expected, they had both shouted in glee, causing Astraea to flinch at the volume, and had picked her up and hugged her while being squeezed in the middle.

From then on she noticed a substantial change in her cute charm ability in that it was more effective every time she said 'mama' or 'dada' before pointing at something she wanted or a place she wanted to go when they were carrying her.

Once again, she was unsure if it was their doting nature as parents or her power that was at work, she could only assume that the two were working in tandem.

Despite regaining the ability to walk, she had been unable to access any kind of reading material as they were all behind the seemingly huge doors that she considered the 'forbidden rooms' as her parents had never brought her inside.

There weren't even any bookshelves in the living room with an assortment of books, but now that she thought back on the past six months, she had not seen a sign of any written material.

If that was truly the case and everything had been digitized, then it would be much harder to access reading materials as she'd have to figure out how to work the futuristic electronics.

She would just have to wait until they started teaching her what a 'computer' was or any other word related to documented information.

---

Five months later and at eleven months old, Astraea had started using more words to better converse with her parents as she was getting impatient at not being able to relay what she wanted from them.

She only spoke one to three words at a time as any more would seem too abnormal for a child her age, and she also wanted her parents to feel her growth instead of seeing their genius child grow up too fast and miss out on important milestones and the joy of raising and teaching their child.

She had become much cuter over the last five months as the desires she had stated for her body were doing wonders for her, her eyes had become nice and large but had stopped becoming bigger some time ago and she assumed it was the other effect at work which adjusted her body to the definition of cuteness.

She was thankful it had done this as giant bug eyes were definitely not cute, same with her hair, it had grown long enough to reach slightly below her neck which she thought was perfect for cute hairstyles.

The desire to absorb more nutrients from her food still made her produce lesser and lesser excrement and she could feel that she did not need as much food than she did before. She still ate the same amount as she didn't want to worry her parents, and the home-cooked baby food her mom had been making since four months ago tasted quite good compared to what she thought it would taste like, it was probably her baby taste buds that made it taste good anyways.

She had added two more desires, the first was that her skin would have no flaws and imperfections, and the second that her voice would become cuter and sound more charismatic to the listener. The first was due to knowing that skin-care was very important as it covered every part of her body and having flawless skin would attract more attention towards herself in the future.

The second was her plan to use her charismatic and cute voice in tandem with her charm ability in order to make them more receptive to suggestions and words she would speak in the future.

Why didn't she just state a load of useful and more complicated desires? She knew her power would have some sort of limit and that increasing the number or complexity of the desires would only make it have a weaker effect. She would only add more desires once she thinks that one desire had been fulfilled and would replace the old desire with the new one, also taking into account complexity as well.

She had already taken out her hair growth and eye expansion desires as she deemed them as fulfilled, and she could always just add them back on again whenever she wanted.

Her progress in Neutral Magic had increased as well as she was now able to use more mana for her telekinetic push and was even attempting to use telekinesis on small objects with small success. Her goal was to be able to twist the doorknobs of the 'forbidden rooms' in order to access them and finally attempt to use this world's internet.

She was glad that the doors weren't some fancy sci-fi door in ships that had identification scanners. Thinking about it, those would ruin the style that the condominium had and guessed that as the reason it had fancy wooden doors with doorknobs in the first place.

Her first birthday was coming in a few days as she had heard her parents discussing about it excitedly, they seemed to be planning to invite their friends and family and she was looking forward to it. She was looking forward to gaining more information about this world than meeting new people though, but she was sure that her cuteness will charm them in an instant!