When I talk about other worlds, I’m not referring to other planets in a solar system or anything dinky like that. I’m talking about worlds governed by different natural laws and principles. I’m sure just about everyone would respond with “Aren’t those just fiction?” if they heard what I just said. But I believe in other worlds. Actually, it’d be better to say “I know of them.” After all, I, Tafelina Lowell Lera Duval, was reborn in another world.
Previously, I was an ordinary woman in a land called Japan on the planet Earth. I’m not sure how old I was when I died, but I recall being an adult when it happened. Next thing I knew, I had been reborn in the magical Kingdom of Ozeria, where I was kicked out of my home at age three. Awful, isn’t it?
Well, they did it because I had rampant mana that caused a “pigment shift,” which dramatically altered my hair and eye color while massively buffing my mana capacity. So goes their justification, for whatever that’s worth. Even so, just because they didn’t know what to do with a child, would any parent really ditch their kid like that?
Yeah, I guess some would.
So I got shipped off to the Peylon Earldom, a northern domain in a country already pretty far north. Peylon’s east was occupied by part of the monster-spawning Mystic Forest, turning this land into a meathead mecca where everyone was a fighter.
Peylon was the sort of place where even the women could swing a pan and beat down the average drunkard. The men were stronger still, killing forest monsters like it was nothing. Being raised in a place like that meant I, too, had some very fine muscles for brains. It’s only natural, really.
I wasn’t that good at physical attacks, so I favored magic entirely, thus becoming a full-fledged mage. Somewhere in the distance, I hear someone calling me a liar, but we can just ignore them. Even if someone’s mana pool was, say, tens of times, or even hundreds of times larger than usual, they would still be a novice if they didn’t know how to use it! While my excessive mana was the reason I got kicked out of my old house, it served me well in all sorts of ways. That of course included the Mystic Forest, but also in the royal capital.
I never would have thought magic would be so useful there. First off, it helped with life at the academy. Students at the royal capital’s noble academy lived in dorms, but what I got assigned to was an attic room. Since it used to be a storage space, it lacked running water and other amenities, the ceiling was rotting and prone to leaks, and there wasn’t even a lock on the door.
So I renovated it with magic. It’s quite a mystery really, but somehow, my room ended up far more livable than any of the others. I was very indebted to the mean old former dorm manager who had assigned me that room. Too bad she had since been fired.
Even at the academy festival, magic served me very well! Naturally, it helped during the general magic presentation, but it was also thanks to magic that we solved a kidnapping incident that took place during the festival.
There also was an incident of theft at the recent hunting festival held in Peylon, but that was also successfully resolved with magic. Granted, maybe that was more thanks to the black knight’s nose...
The black knight—sorry, uh, Sir Yuin, heir to House Fezgahn, had a special trait allowing him to distinguish mana via scent. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge, so he told me not to tell anyone. Thanks to him, we learned that the culprits were festival participants who wanted to make me look bad. Those people were full-grown adults. What did they think they were doing?
They said they did it because House Duval was on the decline, if you can believe that. Perhaps I had the continued failures of my birth father and grandfather to thank for that. But I hadn’t done anything to the thieves, so why had they tried to slander me?
Once the hunting festival was over, I returned to the royal capital. The new school year was starting, as sad as that made me.
Last year had been a bit bumpy, but maybe this one would be smooth sailing.