Preschool Arc I : Cutely Reminiscing the past Year

For the past year, Astraea's life had increased activity-wise due to the new relationships she's gained, the new knowledge she learned, and the new cool stuff she could experiment and play with!

After her first birthday, she started to frequently play with Kyris and Tirana, most of the time playing in each other's homes and sometimes playing in the parks and playgrounds outside. Their homes were no less impressive than her own, as they were all upper-middle-class children, but each home had a different feel and design that made it unique from hers despite the obvious quality and high-cost that all the homes exuded.

The playgrounds were not your normal kiddy playgrounds with sandboxes, plastic slides, and swing sets, It was like a miniature futuristic amusement park that had towering slides, flying animal rides, ziplines, super-bouncy trampolines, and many more amazing things. She hadn't seen one before despite her occasional trips to the park with her mother as the playground seemed to have its own designated area as it was very big.

They played a lot at that playground, but as kids are kids, they easily got tired of it and went to do other things. They did normal things kids with do with each other such as play make-believe, show off and share their toys, fighting for them occasionally and talking nonsense with each other about the things they learn or see.

Though Astraea had regressed mentally to some extent, allowing her to become more childlike in terms of curiosity, energy, and positivity, she couldn't help but become physically and mentally tired out from playing with Kyris and Tirana.

It made sense as she was physically a year younger than them and despite the new wondrous things this world has to offer that Astraea had yet to learn about, literally everything about this world is wonderous to Tirana and Kyris who only have been living for a few years.

Despite that, she didn't let that interfere with her playtime with them as she genuinely had fun playing and getting to know them. Their bond with each other slowly strengthened, even between Tirana and Kyris, who had not played together much before they met Astraea. The two started treating Astraea like an older sibling, as despite being younger than them, she always maintained a level of maturity that allowed her to break up their fights, scold them when they do something bad, and teach them new and amazing things.

She had to reluctantly accept the two as her new 'younger siblings' which made the total count three. Yes, three, as there was one more younger sibling she had, Valkyrie.

Valkyrie had been learning more and more things under the tutelage of Astraea and early on, she had been taught to move without someone using their body as a controller. She first did this by assigning certain hand signals with certain actions, like finger-walking in the air represented walking, and moving her hand up and down represented jumping.

She quickly changed it out with the actual words of those actions after her success at having Valkyrie react to words.

She had found out from her grandma Vaena that there was a holographic settings menu that she could access that allowed her to tinker with Valkyrie's settings, or her body's settings more specifically.

She hadn't told her about this as she had assumed that Valkyrie couldn't read and that the default settings were sufficient for the time being. When asked about how she was going to use the settings, she told Vaena that she would ask for assistance from her parents.

That was a lie though, and she had started to tinker with the settings without her parent's knowledge.

There were all sorts of setting from changing her appearance with illusion magic, adjusting power output to her limbs, connection to the internet and all sorts of options and settings for functions she couldn't even imagine Valkyrie having.

After sifting through all the settings, she found the one she was looking for, Audio settings. The setting included Audio-Input as well, making it more convenient for her. She had first assumed that Valkyrie's audio input was currently inactive, effectively making her deaf, but she denied that possibility as it shouldn't be something so simple.

It was as she thought, as all the settings seemed normal and Valkyrie's hearing should be working. As she had gone straight to the Audio-Input settings, she hadn't properly checked the normal Audio settings and thus she went back to see if the problem lay there.

There she found an option that solved all her problems, Artificial Voice Settings. She had originally assumed that Valkyrie was able to speak looking at the default Audio Settings but looking at the Artificial Voice Settings, she knew that this wasn't the case.

Artificial voice settings had things like language options, different voice samples,

and something that literally said 'On/Off' with 'Off' currently lit up.

Astraea blinked twice when she saw that option and groaned in annoyance that it was due to something so simple.

Without further ado, she switched the option on and tinkered with a few of the voice settings before closing the holographic menu as she wanted to test the results straight away.

"Valkyrie!" With the first word out of her mouth, she didn't expect to get any immediate results but that was exactly what she received, as a clear and slightly artificial voice repeated after her.

"Valkyrie!" The voice was that of a high pitched little girl as that was the voice Astraea had selected in the settings.

From that moment, Valkyrie's growth increased faster than it did previously, as the more words she knew of the better communication she had with Astraea, which allowed her to learn more and more.

During the year, Valkyrie had also been taught by Astraea's Parents, though she still learned more from Astraea. Though it wasn't that her Parent's were incompetent in teaching Valkyrie, but that they didn't have a lot of time to do so and only focused on things they thought Astraea couldn't teach, such as vocabulary, common knowledge about the world, and what was right and wrong.

Astraea was actually able to teach all those things except for knowledge about the world but decided to lessen how much she taught those subjects to focus on teaching Valkyrie other things.

On the matters of magic, there had been a lot of input as she had gained multiple sources of knowledge and ideas, namely her magic wand and her holowatch.

She had studied tried to study the flow of mana when using her magic wand and it had some decent returns. She was able to sense how the mana was shaped and changed for each function that her wand performed and it gave her some ideas.

She didn't think she would be able to make use of the spell formulas in the first place as she wouldn't know how to make sense out of it, and in the first place, she wouldn't be able to perform the spell due only having an affinity for Neutral Magic.

From the earth illusion where a chunk of dirt could be launched, she was able to learn how to condense her mana effectively and launch it as well, though it was only an illusion, the mana was not formless and followed a set path that Astraea was able to copy.

From the wind fan function, she was able to learn how to send out her mana in an expanded wave, similar to her telekinetic push but with a greater area of effect, but also weakening it. The unique thing about it was that she was able to constantly release her mana which created a 'blowing' effect similar to the fan function, though it greatly drained her mana.

She had also learned how to condense her mana by studying the mini wind blade function and it allowed her to create a more pinpointed and faster version of her telekinetic push, almost like a bullet, though the speed was far from it.

From the three functions that fire had, she was able to create a sort of bubble of mana that surrounds her, though she didn't know it does anything yet. She was able to create a more concentrated version of the 'blowing' effect from studying the flamethrower function and was able to create a string of mana that followed her hand and that she was able to control minimally by studying the fire-trail function.

From the sole bubble function for water, she had learned how to create concentrated pockets of mana that was able to stay in place, moving a certain distance away would make them pop like bubbles, and slightly disturbed the area around it like a mini-explosion. She had learned how to remotely detonate the mana pockets by sending out a small bullet of mana which popped them on impact.

She was sure there were more sophisticated ways of doing it but she couldn't figure it out and had to resort to that.

Her holowatch did have a lot of information like her grandpa Dagen said but a lot of it was just apps and information useful to teach kids and toddlers, she had no access to the internet whatsoever which frustrated her a little.

They were way more informational than apps on earth despite only using pictures and audio but were still only for kids and toddler so she was able to easily absorb all the information within a few days, her enhanced memory helped too as she only had to go through things once to remember.

Though a lot of the information was quite useless, some of it was exactly what she needed as it taught her the basics and common sense of the world like different countries, flora and fauna native to this world and more importantly, magic.

Though the apps didn't teach her how to use magic, it explained all there was to know about the basics of magic, from explaining the concept of magic, explanations of attributes and affinity, the history, and the applications of magic.

In the past, imagination was used to cast magic, and those with great instinct or had a greater imagination which in turn made them great mages. One's affinity with an attribute also affected your imagination with it as the higher the affinity the closer you are to the attribute which allowed you to have a greater imagination towards it.

With the age of industry, technology and science, came the age of formulaic and logical magic, where scientific laws and mathematical formulas were integrated into the imaginative process of magic, making spells stronger, more complicated and more precise than ever before.

It also introduced countless new attributes and forms of magic that the world had never heard of before, which greatly diversified magic into countless areas, and those once seen as talentless in magic or had a low affinity suddenly became magic prodigies due to having an amazing affinity with those newly discovered attributes.

Though even in this day and age, those with amazing instinct and imagination could still easily trump others who were talentless and using formulaic magic, that was how people usually determined talent in magic other than affinity.

It was one of the main reasons children start learning magic as early as possible, which was age four when their affinities are stabilized, to separate the good seeds from the bad ones.

All in all, besides all the new 'spells' she had learned from her magic wand, and a few others she had taught herself, she had increased her proficiency with her magic and was able to control the mana in her body subconsciously with little effort.

The two desires to make her voice cuter and make her skin flawless worked as expected, though a child's skin was nearly flawless in the first place. While she didn't notice her voice changing as she spoke everyday, as she consulted her memories, she could confirm that her voice had changed in some aspects, and did sound cuter than before.

She removed the desire for a cuter voice as she was satisfied with how it was now, and made the desire for flawless skin a little weaker as she still wanted to keep it and add other desires.

She added two new desires, one that would lessen her mental fatigue, and one that increased her metabolism, more than a child already has. Both desires were to increase her efficiency in going through her life as she didn't want to spend a single moment idle in the early stage of her life.

Her second birthday had passed and it wasn't too different from her first birthday, expect for being able to have more intelligent conversations with the adults and her close relationship with Tirana and Kyris.

She had received new presents as well but they couldn't trump the presents from last year seeing as how she got Valkyrie and her holowatch.

Dagen was very impressed with her growth when he had checked her holowatch, as all the teaching apps recorded her progress and all of them were at 100% completion.

Though she spent the majority of the year with Kyris and Tirana, she did meet up with her grandparents from time to time and aunt Kaelie came to her house quite frequently too.

Grandpa Dagen was the person she saw the least as he seemed to have his schedule packed and every time he was able to see her, he wouldn't ask about her growth or progress, so she didn't mention it either.

As a reward for exceeding his expectations, he unlocked more features and functions on her holowatch than he originally planned to, or at least that's what he said, and she was pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of the new functions and features.

The birthday party seemed more lively as her relations with her relatives and friends had increased and she could say that it surpassed her first birthday in terms of interactions. Just the day after, she immediately went to ask her parents if she could attend preschool.

Though she wasn't idle for the past two years as she had been constantly improving herself and learning about her new world, as well as enjoying her childhood, she had become impatient just a couple months ago and wanted a change of pace, one that would advance her learning and growth.

Preschool was the best choice as it was the earliest form of schooling she could take, attending preschool when she was just a year and a few months old did seem absurd and suspicious to her so she decided to go for the next best thing, attending when she just turned two.

Though two still seemed too young, she knew that preschool was all based on the child's development and she could just pass off as a highly intelligent child, which she was. Though her parents were originally reluctant as they wanted to enroll her much later, at least three years old, her constant begging and puppy eyes eventually made them relent.

She couldn't help but think that her Cute Charm ability was finally able to be put to use against her parents, who were already spoiling her a lot and answering to her every whim.

Two weeks later, Astraea was now standing infront of her new school, and she couldn't wait for all the new things she'll get to learn.

"Astraea, honey? You've been staring at your new school for quite some time now, everything alright?" Paela asked, wondering if Astraea had become nervous.

Astraea snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that she had been dazing off thinking about the past year, she gave a bright smile to her mom and answered.

"Nothing wrong, just excited!"

With that, she ran ahead of her two parents as she looked forward to the things to come.