Chapter 2: Chapter 1: A world of magic

The House of Ravendall was a noble family that lived in a mid-sized mansion relatively close to the capital of Ouronia Kingdom. The current head of the family, Edgar de Ravendall, was a Baron just a year ago, but became a Count thanks to the King Arlington de Ouronia. 

A long time ago, the Baron pledged his loyalty to the royal family and advised the King since then. Edgar’s talent in politics helped the Ouronia Kingdom to maintain diplomacy in a tense situation with another neighboring kingdom. The latter had been pressuring Ouronia into giving up its lands in the south in order to gain access to the sea. This case was the main reason for this title gift from the King of Ouronia to the House of Ravendall.

As far as Arlington was concerned, he would have gladly given the title of marquis to the one he considered his friend. However, he had to settle on count for two main reasons.

The first was simply because the sudden increase in power of the House of Ravendall would just create enemies through fear and jealousy. Even with just the title of count having been given six months prior, the Ravendalls were already being targeted and mocked by other barons and counts. 

The second and main reason was that the Ravendall family simply lacked the magical power called mana to deserve the titles of marquis or duke. Even amongst other count families, they was on the lower-end.

In this world, indeed, the political power of noble houses was often proportional to their magical talent, inherited by blood. Edgar Ravendall was actually quite powerful in magic for a simple baron, but he was mocked as a count since he couldn’t compete with his peers anymore.

Needless to say, the royals were considered the most magically talented thanks to their vast pool of mana, the fuel of magic.

***

After one month since the end of her strange dreams, Alice had had the time to think about her situation. Since she remembered every small detail from these dreams more than what she ate the day before, she really suspected that she had been reincarnated.

(I know everything this other woman learned in her twenty-two years of life, and yet I don’t feel especially mature.)

With her current age, she should have had thirty-two years of experience in life. Yet, she had been asking the butler all day long to let her play in the snow outside like any kid her age… She still had her doubts about the reincarnation theory.

The little girl had a lot of knowledge that seemed consistent within her dreams but, frankly, she had no way of testing it in this Renaissance-like era. For instance, she had the knowledge of how an engine should work but clearly lacked the skills to actually build one and test it. It went like this for the majority of this so-called knowledge. 

 

Alice was slowly walking in the direction of her room, following the butler while soaking wet because of the melted snow. She had sneaked out of the manor to play by herself after all, and she had rapidly been found out and yelled at.

[“Please walk faster, Lady Alice! What would I tell your parents if you were to catch a cold?]

[I wouldn’t catch a cold from that. I guess I probably risked hypothermia, though.]

[What nonsense is that?”]

She did not think it was nonsense. If her knowledge from another world was correct, then being wet or cold outside shouldn’t increase the chances of catching a cold. 

Scientists even tested this by having different groups of test subjects in various temperature conditions, and people being exposed to the cold air did not develop more diseases than others. 

(The idea of having dozens of scientists working for hundreds of hours just to test such trivial things is strange.)

Alice stopped her walk, and smiled.

[“This is it!]

[Don’t just stop! And what are you smirking for?”]

(I don’t need a complex thing like an engine to prove the accuracy of this weird knowledge. I can use lots and lots of trivial things that are easy to verify and see if all of it is consistent.)

***

To be certain of this past life theory, Alice spent a whole month conducting little experiments that she could not possibly imagine as a simple kid. Needless to say, she asked a lot of things to the cooking staff, whose employees were hired for their magic. 

It was natural in almost every kingdom to take cooks with magic that could make their job easier. This was the reason why pretty much any noble house had multiple ice, fire and water mages in the kitchens. As such, the most Alice asked for were ingredients and freezing or boiling water.

One day, she asked a fire mage to cook her a hard-boiled egg. She later tried to distinguish the cooked egg among the uncooked ones by using a trick from her dreams: the cooked one should spin a lot easier than the uncooked eggs. And it worked.

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Another day, she performed a basic density experiment by using water and oil. Before these dreams, she had never even heard the word “density” so, surely, she shouldn’t have known that less dense layers would move up to above the denser ones in a liquid. Everything checked out. 

Some other days, she would just cook basic recipes she knew from this potential other world, especially cake ones. Even though using the mages to cook the cakes necessitated some trial and error, the resulting desserts were pretty much the same as she remembered from her dreams.

After dozens of such experiments, she had to accept the truth: she somehow got the memories of another person living in a completely different world. Chances were that this other person was actually herself in a past life, even though their personalities did not exactly match. The most logical reason to why she got these memories was that they shared the same soul and that it somehow transmigrated to another world upon her first death thanks to a god, or some other force. With her two lives combined, that would make her technically almost the same age as her parents.

(But why would I remember these memories, and why now?)

Alice was still weirded out at times because she caught herself being excited to carry out some experiments. These were her former self’s interests, though. Before those dreams, she wasn’t even interested in scientific stuff. So, why was she excited? Even though her former self loved those, Alice never really experienced them first hand. It might have just been curiosity, or it could be that some part of Alice’s mind was overwritten by her former self and she was partly taken over. Just thinking about this scared the young girl.

(At least, it won't get worse now that the dreams have ended. Anyway, I should soon have tutors starting to teach me technical things that resemble physics, so it doesn’t matter whether I like this or not.)

 

Indeed, in every kingdom, children were taught a lot of things in a lot of different subjects. If some families chose to start these lessons before the age of 10, all of them tended to stop when their child was around 14 or 15. This was due to the magic system of this world.

All living beings had mana, the fuel of magic. However, starting to use magic too soon could be very dangerous and there were some cases of children dying at a  young age because of that.

To be safe, the mana veins, which made mana circulate through the body, should be given the time to grow along the latter. This was the reason why children tended to awaken their magic between the age of 14 and 15, just before being recognized as an adult. This awakening was usually voluntarily triggered by magic artifacts during a child’s coming of age ceremony. 

In some cases, though, it would occur naturally before then. It was considered relatively safe to awaken after the age of 10, but it was said to be too dangerous prior to that.

Although the artifacts used for the artificial awakening were very specific and hard to get, there were records of noble families getting one to awaken the magic of their children as early as possible, killing them on the spot. 

Because of that, fearing assassination attempts using the excuse of a failed awakening, it was forbidden by the rulers of every kingdom to get this type of artifact. Only the temples were allowed to have one and they could only be used in supervised situations, like a coming of age ceremony.

Possessing one of them outside a temple could be considered treason, so people obediently waited for their children to be adults. 

Still, awakening naturally months before coming of age was not extremely rare, so the children wouldn’t necessarily be suspected of treason just for awakening outside of a temple. Out of one hundred children, about two of them would awaken before being adults.

 

Another reason as to why the magic awakening was performed as late as possible was to let children learn as many concepts as possible before then. This had to do with how magic worked in this world. While the quantity of mana in a mage’s body was a big indicator of their talent, there was another factor. The most important part was probably the type of magic, also called element. 

It depended on many things but, in most cases, it depended directly on what a child was interested in.

Since magic was the ability to bend physical phenomenons at will, it was best to know exactly how these phenomenons worked before the awakening. Learning about them later after awakening their magic would actually be too late. The broader the knowledge about a physical phenomenon, the stronger the control would be. Or rather, the more versatile the magic would be.

For example, a child liking lightning during storms but understanding only its effects on things hit by them might at best be able to reproduce the lightning falling from the sky upon their awakening. However, another child knowing a lot of things about electricity and how electric currents flowed in materials would have a huge advantage. Even though the former would still technically manipulate electrons unconsciously in order to make lightning fall, they would only be capable of doing this precise thing. Even if this child later learned how electricity worked, they could not use this for purposes other than making lightning fall. As long as the magic type was fixed, it was too late.

On the other hand, the other child who had a much broader knowledge of the working of electricity before awakening might be able to create electric arcs, produce electric shocks and even make lightning fall too.

This was why knowledge was power. The more specific and unrefined the element, the more restricted the magic got. This was the main reason as to why children had their magic awakened as late as possible.

Put this way, children being lucky enough to awaken naturally before coming of age had actually a great disadvantage since they couldn’t finish their studies before the awakening.

Incidentally, parents tended not to limit their child to one subject, since their element would be connected to what they were the most interested in. So, even if a royal child suddenly became very interested in the bugs crawling in the castle, their tutors would be forced to adapt their lessons to incorporate as much knowledge about insects as possible, just in case. After all, if they ignored this and the child were to awaken their magic with an element connected to bugs without having been taught anything about them, the tutors would just be executed.

During her month of experiments, Alice had talked a lot with all the mages working in the mansion, even the gardeners who were actually earth mages capable of working without breaking a sweat. As a result, she had learned many things about this magic system from them, and she learned that she would soon start a harsh tutoring about many different subjects.

(Now that I think about it, I am in a very good position, am I not? I mean, my former self loved science so much she was about to major in physics at college. Since she’s basically me and I remember everything she remembers and understand everything she understands, I should be good with any element for my magic.)

Still, understanding many concepts was not the only thing to get a proper magic type. She also needed to have her own favorite subjects. Then, she thought that she shouldn’t be moping around and wondering if the one liking this or that was her or her former self . For her own good, she decided to just embrace what she was curious about during these next five years of study.

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