Chapter 26: Chapter 25: Wielding water

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”

Loren Eisley

My Nighttime Ninja Baby Wizard routine has continued. Next up on my list was water.

“I will command all four elements before I’m one.” I thought to myself. I know it seems like a long stretch for me but shoot for the stars and I might just land on the moon. Besides I already had Ignite for fire I thought maybe I could get boil for water.

Although if I was going to go full Avatar I really should have started with Air, then water, earth, and fire.

Same steps as always wait in my mind fortress practicing skills while waiting for my family to fall asleep. I have started drawing to pass the time gaining the skill Draw (Lv 1) I was never very good at art. So going to practice with pencils for a while before I attempt any other mediums for what you might generously describe as avant-garde attempts at drawing. But I am getting better at my circles.

Then quietly sneaking out of my box activating stealth to slip into the main room. Tempted to troll them by spinning Aleera’s thread or attempting to weave something but silence is key to my secret practice. So no pranks yet.

I’ve added a little to my physical routine with press-ups and sit-ups now possible and able to move beyond a simple plank. My body is beginning to fall in line a little more with the ideal practiced in my mind. But I am still often defeated by the practicalities of a baby's body. Or maybe it is just my baby body that is chubby and fat. Still, I keep practicing.

Sense practice is nothing new, straining my sight, heightening my hearing, strengthening my sense of touch in the depths of the night. Scent and taste still level better from the blindfolded bets in the market. The fact that I have no control somehow aids my progress there.

Then comes the magic practice expel, absorb and drain. Before expel, manipulate and ignite. My progress with the higher tier skills stopped completely for a while. Which was a little alarming as I worried I had reached a cap. However, more by accident than design my mediation skill went up a level and my Mana skills promptly caught up. Highlighting that the skills are for the most part reliant on the levels of skills lower in the same tree. For example, it will be hard to level up stealth past level 20 if I never get sneak past level 20.

Anyway, taking the progress I had made with the stick and exciting the mana within it. I tried the same experiment with a cup of water. I was not trying to get it to ignite as I doubted that dihydrogen monoxide would ever burn even with the application of magic. Still, I thought I might be able to get the skill boil or evaporate.

In practice though, this seems to be nigh impossible at the moment. The very small cup of water that I had prepared for the experiment and hidden behind the log pile in preparation seemed to have an unlimited thirst for my mana. It was able to soak up far more than the small sticks could and furthermore no matter how much my Mana manipulation might have increased I was unable to get it to move enough to heat it up at all, let alone boil.

In fact, it was far easier for me in terms of my magic ability to heat the water up by setting a stick on fire and holding it underneath the pewter cup. It took less mana, less manipulation, and was far less draining.

Watching it all happen through Mana sense did remind me though of something I had long forgotten.

When watching the heat transfer, along with the fire mana to the pewter and being able to watch the fire mana transfer its heat to the water I was able to watch something alarming. Something I doubt anyone here has seen or they wouldn’t be drinking out of pewter cups.

When I looked closely I was able to watch a very small trace of silver mana leave the pewter and join the water. It looked beautiful as it spiraled up through the water with the heat until it turned black settling to the bottom of the mug and I remembered that Pewter was an alloy made with lead. That pewter readily leaches lead.

That lead is poisonous.

****!

My first self-appointed crusade is going to be to steal all the pewter we have and hide it. How on earth am I going to do that? I can’t even get out of the house yet! None of my family seems to be showing any signs of lead poisoning so maybe the Vitality stat counteracts the poison. But that is the last time I’m using my spoon. Back to fingers, it will be!

How will I get rid of it all? One spoon or utensil at a time for now. The bigger problem is how do I get them not to replace it with more pewter? Looks like we have something else to find at the market.

. . .

My nightly practice with my Mana has actually been fairly exhausting. So much so that my pretend daytime naps are now a lot more real. Much to my disgruntlement when being woken up to sing. I don’t want to sing for my supper I’d rather sleep. Thank you very much! That combined with me continuing to stick everything in my mouth to taste test, closing my eyes, and crawling half the time might just be undoing some of my parents and grandparent’s great expectations.

Although that doesn’t seem to be the case with a certain grandfather who still won’t let me sleep even if I am actually napping. I think before he knew I was pretending and I believe that now even though I’m 100% sure he knows I am now actually asleep he still delights in waking me up when he visits.

He has even offered to look after me for my mother for a day or two each week. Mother raised her eyebrow at that either surprised or concerned.

I was concerned! I ran straight to my mother to hold on and expressed in no uncertain terms that I did not wish to be left at the mercy of my maternal grandfather mainly through the expedient method of wailing my eyes out at the idea.

It hasn’t happened yet but it is only a matter of time before it happens so I better eat up well now because I will likely be starving by the end of any weekend stay with him.

. . .

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Swimming lessons have stayed the same, and although I feel a little guilty about doing it they also provide the best opportunity for losing a Pewter utensil or too in the water.

He throws me in. I dive down dispose of a utensil and return to the surface with no one the wiser. He is no longer panicking when I stay under and doesn’t watch too carefully to see what I am doing down here. Although the water is a beautiful blue, and salty. A little scuffle on the bottom of the lake disturbs enough dirt to make it hard to see me burying our utensils one piece at a time.

. . .

At home, I am now refusing to eat off any pewter plate, use any pewter utensil or drink out of any pewter cup or tankard. Mother is less than pleased at the regression but as I am still suckling she seems to see it as simply a step back in the weaning process. She also seems rather confused at the disappearing pewter as we did not have a lot to start off with.

When we were finally sent off to replace the utensils from the market I was able to convince Aleera through tact, charm, and a fair amount of whining. That a wooden one would be better. Ultimately, I don’t think it was my convincing that did the trick they were simply cheaper than the other options among our admittedly limited selection.

Still, although I am now being frisked on every exit out of the house and they are incredibly suspicious that it has something to do with me, failing to fall for my insistence that it was Fairies, they have yet to catch me in the act.

The problem now is that the plates and tankards are far too big to hide in my clothing! But that will have to be a challenge for another week.

. . .

Admittedly distracted by my discovery for a moment it didn’t stop me from practicing my mana manipulation with water and if I couldn’t get it to heat up then I was going to try and move it the other way. I practiced absorbing mana from the water and draining the mana from the water. I could never quite get it all but once I was nearly there or as close as I could get I would try to use my mana manipulation to hold whatever mana remained in the water still. Calculating that if making it move faster was similar or equivalent to adding energy heat to the system then holding it still would be similar to removing the energy and taking the heat out of it.

Eventually, I was successful although the manner of success left something to be desired. The best way I had found to drain mana or absorb it was through touching the item in question. So as my finger was still in the pewter cup when I finally managed to remove enough mana and hold it still through my manipulation it flash froze on my finger.

Ding! Freeze (Lv 1)

Great now I had my finger caught in the cookie jar so to speak. Worse I had pretty much run out of mana with my practice not even enough to cast absorb or drain which always required a certain amount of mana left to jumpstart them before I could draw the mana back in. Frustrated, I had to go back to my box with my cup in hand or stuck on my finger before passing out from exhaustion.

Boy was that embarrassing the next morning when I was awoken. Mother didn’t seem to notice the extra cup or comment on it but they certainly noticed the rather large puddle in my box.

True Status

Level: 10 Name: Kai
Experience: 41,100/ 204,800
Age: 12 months, 3 weeks, 6 days, 2 hours
Health: 1080/1080 Stamina: 493/493 Mana: 670/670Psi: 1050

Trait: Long lived, Fast Learner,

Vitality: 109
Endurance: 21
Strength: 21
Dexterity: 21
Senses: 99
Mind: 106
Clarity: 37
Magic: 92

Free Points: 20

Skills:

Tier 1: Time sense (LV 21) Listening (LV 20) Meditation (LV 30) Swimming (LV 23)
Humming (Lv 20) Sneak (Lv 20) Whistling (Lv 20) Singing (Lv 20) and Drumming (Lv 20)
Running (Lv 10), Acting (15), English (Lv 15), Spanish (Lv 15), Japanese (Lv 15),
German (Lv 10), French (Lv 7) Dodge (Lv 1) Breath Control (Lv 1) Sight (Lv 6)
Scent (Lv 6) Detect (Lv 6) Taste (Lv 6) Bulosa (Lv 1) Draw (Lv 1)

Tier 2: Sense Mana (LV 27) Eavesdrop (LV 20) Memorisation (LV 20) Composition (Lv 20)
Recall (Lv20) Pain tolerance (Lv 5) Piano (Lv 20) Violin (Lv 20), Trombone (Lv 20),
Saxophone (Lv 20) Linguistics (Lv 15) Translation (Lv 15) Stealth (Lv 8)

Tier 3: Echolocation (LV 20) Expel Mana (Lv 27 Absorb Mana (Lv 27)
Mana Manipulation (Lv 11) Ignite (Lv 10) Freeze (Lv 1)

Tier 4: Mana Drain (Lv 15) Multiple Minds (Lv 10)

Tier 5: Mind fortress (Lv 15)

Skill experience: 16500
Origin experience: 0
Combat experience: 0
Crafting experience: 0

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