My mastery of the local language has been increasing, and I have finally learned my parents' names: Sama, my father, and Zeni, my mother.
My mother manages both our household and our family business, which revolves around the trade of hunted monsters and coordinating with armed men at military outposts. Every day, I find her buried in stacks of papers and ledgers whenever she isn't tending to me. The sight is a stark reminder of my past life. Understanding the weight of her situation, I try to be as helpful as possible while carefully maintaining the appearance of a normal eight-month-old baby.
Recently, I expressed my dissatisfaction with my simplistic storybooks. In response, my mother produced a truly ancient volume—"archaic" would be the better word. Its script differs slightly from the modern writing used today.
I spent a week analyzing the book's content, making my mother read it to me every day. I also utilized my ability to learn while sleeping—a skill that, if used for short durations, carries no negative consequences.
The book chronicles the history of timekeeping, stating that the original calendar was the work of the "First Intelligent Species."
This system was later refined by the True Dragons. They kept the ancestral month names but standardized the duration of each to exactly forty days. (This leaves me wondering about the planet's actual orbital revolution.) The months follow a rigid sequence: Nas, Vis, Oc, Tro, Tri, Abd, Fa, Ves, Glo, Vag, and finally, Ace. I was born at the first dawn of Ace, a month the locals somberly refer to as the Month of the Dead. It is a fitting coincidence, given that I am a soul from another world inhabiting a new vessel.
The only positive thing for me is that a day is divided into 24 parts, similar to the twenty-four hours on Earth. One part is divided into units similar to minutes, which are again divided into seconds. Due to the importance of the circle in magic, as magic circles are a significant, monumental, and substantial (lots of words are used) part of it, also in the fields of astronomy and geometry. Because 60 is a factor of 360, it fits perfectly into calculations; thus, the hour was subdivided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.
This triggered a flash of memory from a livestream in my past life. I recalled a subscriber explaining gravitational time dilation—how the length of a second fluctuates between planets based on mass and gravity. If I were still a scientist on Earth, I would worry about the discrepancy. But here, the math holds: 24 hours, 60 minutes, and 60 seconds. It seems some laws of physics are universal.
Practical limitations eventually forced this world to move beyond the Rule of Sixty for physical measures, leading to the decimal-based Nag System. While other races such as humans, elves, dwarves, and so on bicker over its origin, this text credits the True Nagas. Interestingly, the author claims that dragons and nagas share a common ancestor, diverging with time much like the tiger and the lion. Both share a profound attitude toward understanding the world:
One conquering the heavens, the other mastering the underground.
The smallest units of the Nag system (mmr, cr, mr, kr) translate perfectly to Earth's millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. The same applies to weight (mg, g, kg) and volume. The reason for this hypothesis is evolution.
Because I was born naturally into this world's specific gravity and mana density rather than being summoned, I am not an alien entity struggling against a foreign atmosphere. I am a biological native. My bone density, muscle fiber recruitment, and proprioception are perfectly calibrated to this environment from the cellular level up.
Just as organisms on Earth evolved for Earth's specific gravity, pressure, and temperature, this body was forged for this world's unique conditions. I am running Earth's scientific "software" on hardware purpose-built for this world's unique mana-enriched atmosphere, gravity, and pressure. If I travel 10 kr, it is exactly 10 km to my internal compass. If I lift my toy, my muscles exert the exact force to lift in this world. I possess the ultimate home-field advantage. I am not an observer in a foreign land.
I am a high-fidelity, Earth-trained consciousness running on native, optimized hardware.
Zeni P.O.V.
Watching Zae actively listen as I read from my grandmother's precious book—the only one she bequeathed to me—brings back a flood of memories. It is one of the few heirlooms I brought from my childhood home when I married Sama.
He is growing remarkably fast; sometimes, I fear it is too fast. He mastered crawling ahead of schedule, and I am certain his linguistic comprehension is developing at an accelerated rate. I cannot consult the Chief Healer, Pubicoro Kal, as it would only inflame his obsession with examining my son. Even now, my blood boils remembering the incident at Zae's birth—how Kal tried to take samples and run tests on a newborn. Fortunately, his wife intervened, forcing him to control his excitement and remember his professional ethics. As his former junior, I understand his passion for discovery, but as a mother, I cannot allow it.
When my mana channels were burned, I lost all hope of ever becoming a mother. Treating mana burn requires a fortune in resources, and even then, the failure rate is twenty to thirty percent. Conceiving after such an injury, even with timely treatment, usually requires a minimum of two or three attempts; the chances for natural fertilization are less than eight percent. Maintaining the pregnancy was another financial struggle, though less daunting than the cost of conception itself.
Normally, the mana protective sac—a barrier distinct from the amniotic sac that forms upon fertilization—shields the fetus from external mana interference. However, burned mana channels significantly increase the risk of miscarriage or congenital defects.
Yet, when we visited Senior Kal for our first appointment in the city, the impossible had occurred: I was already pregnant. The child was only a few days old. It reminded me of our "little night activities" before the appointment—a rare moment where Sama and I cast aside our tensions, losing ourselves in dances, theaters, and good food. That night of quality time resulted in a miracle.
Even Healer Kal was stunned; it was his first recorded case of natural fertilization in a mana-burn patient; all his other cases were of alchemical fertilization. This boon saved us a staggering amount of money, and the cost of maintaining the pregnancy proved twenty percent less than estimated. That saved gold is now a fund for Zae's future. He is here, healthy and clearly intelligent—a miracle I must protect at all costs.
....
Sama P.O.V.
I returned late, the scent of pine resin and dried monster blood still clinging to my cloak. It had been a successful day in the wilderness. Zeni was still up, bathed in the soft glow of the lamps. We ate together, our conversation a familiar dance of trade ledgers and logistics. But I noticed a contented, almost mischievous smile on her face that had nothing to do with our profit margins. When I pressed her, her answer left me reeling.
"He walked today, Sama," she said, her eyes bright. "Ten months old. I snatched that archaic book away to get him to sleep, and he was so incensed—so genuinely offended—that he simply stood up and marched toward me to get it back."
A ten-month-old walking out of spite. It was as impressive as it was unsettling. A pang of guilt hit me then, a bitter taste that always surfaced when I thought of his birth. I had been in the deep woods, drilling green soldiers for the local nobles while my wife fought through a mana-fevered labor alone. I hadn't been there for his first breath.
"He needs to start," I said, my excitement rising. "If his legs can carry his weight, his core needs to be tempered. "Zeni laughed, though there was a warning in it. "You have my permission to train him, Sama. But listen well: keep the intensity low. He is a miracle, not a war dog.
Do not treat him the way your father treated you. "The memory of my own training flashed through my mind—the cracked ribs, the exhaustion, the cold mud of the practice fields. My father didn't believe in "father-son time"; he believed in forging steel.
"I wasn't going to," I replied.
Zeni's words softened. "And hire proper tutors, Sama. We have the gold now. No more suspicious mercenaries or dim-witted guards."
It reminded me of the days when I was just a young guard-in-training at her family's mansion. I used to watch her through the library windows, surrounded by tutors and ancient scrolls, while I sweated in the dirt below, learning how to die for people like her. Now, our son would have the best of both worlds: her brilliance and my grit. My subordinates at the outpost would be happy to have me home more often, and I would be happy to trade the stench of the barracks for time with my son and wife.
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