Growing up

In her first year in this new world, Lucia did not relax at all, learning a language from nothing was pretty difficult. Even worse, a baby's body wasn't very convenient; it was very difficult to control and each time she tried to crawl, let's not even mention walking, it left her exhausted and panting.

She even had to learn how to speak, it took her a long time to be able to make pronounce syllables correctly. It was truly hard to be a baby…

Despite those difficulties, she was what could be considered a genius child. After all, she had an adult's mind with an infant's learning capabilities.

At two months old, she said her first word, "magic" and, much to her mother's dismay, as soon as Lucia learned to talk, she immediately questioned her mother to no end about magic, but her mother refused to tell her too much. She only learned that not everyone had aptitude for magic and that it was very dangerous to be a magician, the mortality rate was disturbingly high.

At four months old, after weeks of painstaking efforts, she finally managed to take her first steps. It was a small step for Lucia, but a big step for…

"I hope I won't worry Mom too much with my fast development, but this is a world with magic so I guess anything is possible," Lucia frequently thought.

She was not completely wrong, but, of course, Lilia, Lucia's mother was a bit worried about the fast development of her child. In this world, baby grew up faster than on Lucia's old world, but this was still way too fast. They would usually start walking at 7 to 9 months old and start talking at 5 or 6 months old.

What truly worried her, though, was the endless curiosity about magic of Lucia. Magic was very dangerous, and Lilia did not want to see her precious child die in a gruesome way, so she tried to scare her by telling her magic was very dangerous. It was true, almost 60% of people who learned magic died before being able to be called a mage. Regrettably, her plan failed spectacularly, it made Lucia even more eager to learn magic; she did not care at all about the high mortality rate.

Although Lucia did not learn a lot about magic, her mother was more than happy to tell her about other subjects if it could distract her from magic, so the suborned mercenary learned about plenty about other subjects from her mom. She mainly asked about the world, interested in the place she reincarnated into.

She learned that she was in the Gondolua Empire, a huge empire that covered most of the Gondolua continent. The continent was 20 000 000 km2 (approximately the size of North America) and the Empire occupied three quarter of the continent, the rest belonging to the Atrax Republic, a strange country filled with half-humans and dangerous magical beasts. It was located in the North of the continent. There were also other continents known to mankind, but Lucia's mother did not know a lot about them.

The current emperor of the Gondolua Empire was Rhy Gondolua, a kind monarch that cared about the people and that everyone liked. Life in the Empire was peaceful, with the army protecting the borders and the people, nothing of interest happened in the last fifty years or so.

The capital of the Empire, Uthras, was a gargantuan city on the South-West of the Empire and had a massive 15 000 000 inhabitants. Its gigantic population made it that there was a huge ethnic diversity, so you could find anything that you could find in the whole world inside the city.

The pride of the Uthras was the Academy, the biggest and greatest magical academy. You could learn everything that was known to the humanity about magic inside the Academy. Sadly, Lilia refused to tell more about it to Lucia in hope of discouraging her of learning magic.

One of the main power in the Empire was the Church of the Seven Gods. They were mainly present in the Holy Capital Doross, the second most populated city in the Empire, with more than 10 000 000 denizens. Lucia's mother did not know a lot more about the Church, she was not a religious person and did not care about them at all.

Lucia also discovered that she was in a city in the North-West of the Empire named Shratz. Shratz was a medium-size city (in Gondolua's standard), only 500 000 residents. It mainly prospered due to commerce with the Atrax Republic and due to its proximity with said republic, it had a high ethnic diversity, half-humans being fairly common.

"Oh God… This empire is huge… I wonder how many inhabitants there are in total. It must be a pretty big number since Mother doesn't know. Still, 15 000 000 only in the capital, it's more than in entire countries in my previous world."

Her mom also told her that her dad worked very hard to ensure the security of Shratz, he was a guard captain of a garrison in Shratz, one of the youngest of his generation, being only 27. Lilia was very proud of him and, to quote her: "Your papa is a very strong man, he will always protect us, don't worry". He got to work every day at dawn, but was always back for supper, beaming when he saw his daughter's cute little face. His work made that he was not very present in Lucia's life, but whenever he had time, he would spend it with his daughter.

Lilia, Lucia's mom was a teacher before she gave birth to Lucia and planned to restart teaching when Lucia was one year old, but seeing the intellect of her child, she instead chose to teach her herself instead.

"I hope she would just teach me about magic instead of trying to protect me. Well, I guess I am pretty young so it's only natural but… I really want to learn magic… I'm still very thankful of her teaching me instead of working, she truly is a good mother."

Soon after she celebrated her first anniversary, Lucia decided that it was time for her to learn how to read. She had more or less mastered Gondolua's language and really wanted to read books. It was something that she rarely had the opportunity to do in her mercenary life, but she had enjoyed it.

Although her main motivation to learn how to read was that she thought that if her mother wouldn't tell her about magic, she could maybe instead learn by herself with books.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten what the letters on the wooden door of the abandoned castle looked like, but she was convinced she would learn more about them in the future.

Needless to say, Lilia was exalted that her genius daughter wanted to learn to read, she loved teaching, reading and was a scholar. She was also a bit worried by the abnormal learning speed of her baby. It wasn't rare to see babies learning to read at 3 or even 2 years old in this world but one year old was unparalleled. Alas for Lucia, her mother wasn't stupid, she knew that her daughter was so eager to start reading to learn more about magic through books.

Lilia may look like a possessive or controlling mother but magic was truly dangerous and she wouldn't recover if Lucia died or got injured while practising magic; she would think that she caused her precious daughter's death and would never forgive herself.

As much as she wanted to protect Lucia, seeing her daughter's sad face after she had refused one more time to teach her about magic, she felt her heart break and thought that she maybe was a little too protective, it wouldn't hurt anyone if she taught her a little and finally agreed to give her a bit of information about magic.

First, she started by explaining the basis of magic. Magic was a blessing placed on certain individuals where they could use the power inside their own body, mana, to call upon a certain element and use it to their will, spells. It was uncommon, only approximately ten percent of people could use magic.

There were five common elements: Fire, Earth, Air, Water and Lightning and a handful of rarer elements, but Lilia did not mention them in hope that Lucia would not think about them and desire a rarer element. Lucia was bound to be disappointed if she expected to get a rare element, about 90% of mages had a common element.

Lilia then continued by explicating that elements would awaken once the child reached five years old. To discover if they had an element and which one it was if they had one, children only needed to go to the local mage association to get tested, it was a very simple process.

After finishing with her explanations, her mother declared that she would continue explaining magic after Lucia got tested, no matter if she had an element or not. She was not sure if a one-year-old baby, even if he was an unmatched prodigy, could understand what she had just explained. Satisfied, Lucia did not inquire more about magic but instead focused on processing what she had just learned.

"So this is how magic works… I wonder what element I'll get, I think fire would suit me well. It would be so lame not having any element, imagine reincarnating into a world filled with magic only not to be able to use it… I don't think I would recover from this blow."

During the days following the explanation about magic, Lucia made plans for her future. If she awakened an element, she would try to get into the Academy to learn more about magic and become a powerful mage, but if she did not have any elemental affinity…

"If I don't have any talent toward magic, I guess I will become a soldier again… I could also turn into a teacher or trader but… Let's just hope I get an element."

Lucia was incredibly anxious to know if she could become a magician. Four more years to wait seemed far too long, she was a very active person and spending this much time cloistered in her house was akin waste of time for her… She also wondered if it was possible to mix magic and the swordplay that she learned in her previous life to create her own unique fighting style.

" It probably is possible, why would it be impossible? There are surely some people who had this idea before me and succeeded.

Just like that, in the blink of an eye, four more years passed without anything too out of the ordinary happening, though Lucia did not stay idle during those years tough, she learned plentiful of new information about this world and explored the city a bit, although she unsurprisingly did not manage to make friends with children her age.

On the other hand, what really surprised her was the speed of growth of children in this world. Except for her, normal five years old were as intelligent as 8 or 9 years old in her previous world and they also grew up faster.

She was now 116 cm tall (3ft9) and had inherited her mother's looks. She had flowing dark chestnut hair and piercing emerald green eyes. Her pale and perfect skin, thin build gave her a doll-like look that her unusually intelligent eyes contrasted with. All of this gave her a cute and innocent look that she obviously planned to use at her advantage in the future. She was not stupid, she knew that she would probably attract the attention of some rich kids if she went to the Academy, and just using her looks, she could manipulate them a lot to have whatever she wanted.

Additionally, when she was four and a half years old, she started doing the military training that she had undergone in her previous life, she knew the important of a good constitution and it was more effective at younger age, but she thought that maybe it was a bit overkill.

Her training consisted of push-ups, set-ups and running every day, it wasn't anything fancy but it was at least effective. Worried about the consequences if she overtrained, she tried to limit herself to prevent any damage to her body, she was still very young.

At last, after many years, the long-awaited day arrived. At last, she was five years old.