Ten days had already passed since I’d reincarnated. The sky was clear, and I was in the manor’s courtyard, holding out the hem of my shirt to gather falling leaves. By all appearances, I was a three-year-old boy. Yet as I gathered leaves, my head was filled with entirely different thoughts.
I had come to a conclusion: this was a different world. The night of the ritual, after emerging from the basement into a luxurious manor, I had looked up at the sky to check the constellations—only to see two moons overhead.
According to ancient Greek scholars, the Earth was a rotating sphere. That being the case, if I were on the other side of the sphere from Japan, I should have seen different constellations in the sky. It was supposedly possible to see the moon from anywhere, but there was no reason for there to be two of them.
I had listened to my family’s conversations for several days, and not once had I heard the name of any place or country I was familiar with. I could only assume that I was in another world. The sole condition for my reincarnation was a body capable of recreating the structure of my soul. I’d had no idea where I would be born, but I certainly hadn’t expected it to be another world altogether.
The spell had likely been unable to find a suitable reincarnation vessel in my world, so it had expanded the scope of its search to others. That wasn’t something I had foreseen, but there was nothing to be done about it now. Collecting my thoughts, I went back over what I knew.
In this life, my name was Seika Lamprogue. The head of the Lamprogue family was a count, making us nobility. Although I was the third son, that was still a fortunate position to be in. Had I been born as a commoner like in my past life, a simple plague could have been the end of me.
It was a land of abundance and progress. Much more so than Japan, at the very least. It was likely on the same technological level as the Song dynasty or Eastern Roman Empire, if not greater. There was still much I didn’t know. I needed to gather more information.
I carried the leaves I had gathered to the shade of a tree. Letting go of my shirt, I watched the leaves slowly fall to the ground. That should be enough for now.
I recited a short Sanskrit mantra, and the leaves floated back up into the air, exposing their veins to me. Gathering them together, I wrote characters on them with my cursed energy. “There.” I gave an order, then checked the quality of the leaves flying in all directions. It was decent. They were simplistic, but I had successfully created shikigami—pawns that served as my eyes and ears.
I would have liked to make them out of hitogata—paper cut into human shapes—but paper was valuable in this world as well, and I couldn’t ask for such a luxury. I would have to prepare them little by little.
I turned a third into the shape of crows and released them into the sky, then turned another third into rats and released them on the ground. I had the rest turn invisible and remain nearby. Shikigami were used as mediums for spells in place of talismans, which made them handy to have around.
“Hey, Seika! What are you doing out here?”
Startled by a loud voice, I turned around. Standing behind me was a child with ill intentions clearly written on his face—my older brother by three years, Gly.
“I saw you playing with those leaves, weirdo. What are you collecting them for? Wait, where did they go?”
Watching Gly look around in confusion, I let out a sigh of relief. He hadn’t seen me make the shikigami. I had to keep my past life a secret, no matter what.
“Say something, failure!”
Seemingly annoyed that I had remained quiet, Gly kicked dust at me. I wiped myself off without a word. He was just a snot-nosed brat. My disciples in my past life had all been good kids, which made the disparity between them all the more stark.
Our daily lives were generally tended to by maids. Our father didn’t look after his children very much, while our mother spoiled Gly. Maybe that was why he was so incredibly selfish. Yet despite that, our eldest brother was respectable and well-behaved.
“Knock it off, Gly.” The moment I spoke, Gly’s lips twisted into a smile.
“Don’t you mean, ‘please stop’? Watch your tongue. You don’t think you’re in the same position as Luft and I, do you?”
“I’m not?”
“Obviously! You’re not even part of our family!” I tilted my head in confusion. What did he mean by that? “I heard the maids talking about it! They said you’re the son of a mistress! That’s why you don’t have any magic, failure!”
That explains it. Finally, it all came together. For a while now, I had felt like my mother had been ignoring me. So that was why. It was no wonder the maids treated me like a nuisance. That must also have been why my father and eldest brother were so cold to me. Thank you, Gly. That was very useful information. Though given I’m being raised in this house, I think that does make me part of your family.
“That means you have to do what Luft and I say! Got it? Actually, I was just practicing martial arts. You’re gonna be my training dummy.” A smirk on his face, Gly backed up to make room for a running start. “You better not move!”
Immediately after shouting, Gly started running at me. Was he planning on drop-kicking me? It wasn’t something I had ever seen someone do in a real fight, and I wasn’t interested in letting this be the first time.
I slipped one of my invisible shikigami under his foot, causing him to trip and fall flat on his face. Ouch. That looked like it hurt.
“Bleh! H-How dare you!” He still seemed intent on coming at me, so I called back two of the crow shikigami I had sent out. The crows cawed and swooped at him, their large beaks pecking at his head. “Wah! Wh-What are these things?!” Gly flailed his arms and tried to fight them off, but before long he was covering his head and crouching on the ground in tears.
I felt bad for him. I had taken it too far—he was still just a child. Just as I was about to call off the crows, I heard another child’s voice.
“Gly!” My eldest brother Luft came running over, swinging a stick. “Get away from him!” Brandishing his stick, he chased the crows off. Though in reality, I just made them fly away. “Are you all right, Gly? Are you hurt?” Luft consoled his crying younger brother. Compared to Gly, he was a much more upstanding child. He had the maturity I would expect of a brother five years my elder. That said, he was still only eight. “What was with those crows? Are you okay, Seika?”
“I’m fine,” I answered with a smile.
But Luft just looked at me with an uneasy expression on his face. I didn’t blame him. It certainly was strange that I was the only one who hadn’t been attacked. Luft took the still-sobbing Gly back to the manor to treat his injuries, and I was left alone.
Despite the minor setback, I had managed to deploy my shikigami. That would make gathering information significantly easier. There was a lot I needed to do. I was limited by the fact that my body was only three years old, but I could spend the next few years steadily preparing. My new life had a long road ahead of it.