Serum

After Dirk got over his shock, he took another look at the book his mother gave him. It looked like a little journal, and he assumed from her words that this would simply be used for logging his workouts. And while he couldn't yet read, she went through each word and made sure he knew the workout associated with that word. Dirk made sure to memorize this information so he didn't need to ask her what the words meant in the future.

And since he had his workout, he went and did it. He already logged the page with his AI, so he shut the book, set it down, and got to work. Today was lighter since he had already done each of the different exercises.

Cecilia nodded as she watched her son drop to the floor and do the first drill on the list. She had also written down how much rest he should be taking, so from beginning to end, each workout should only take a certain amount of time. And sure enough, regardless of how tired he was, Dirk followed everything to the second. She was very impressed. Not only by his ability to push through the pain, but also his ability to follow directions. He didn't even look at the book a second time after setting it down. 

Cecilia watched her son do every workout. The only time she turned away was to grab some water for him, bringing him a leather bota bag. 

This went on for around half an hour, after which Dirk sat himself against the wall of the house while breathing roughly. Because this workout wasn't nearly as intense as yesterday though, he didn't go so far as to feel like vomiting. It was just enough to make his muscles burn.

"Very good. That'll be all for today. Tomorrow won't be so easy. We're going to gradually build you up through the years. When you enter the academy, you'll have an edge over your peers, both magician and warrior alike. Hmm, that reminds me, we still need to figure out what technique you should be using."

"Technique?"

Dirk forced out his question in between breaths. Cecilia was silent for a few seconds before explaining.

"There are techniques or manuals that we use to develop our magical and physical abilities. While techniques aren't absolutely necessary, they can greatly affect your development. Viola has one, as does Ethan. Rita is about to receive hers, and once you become 10 years old, you will also choose yours. At that time we will take you to the Duke. The only problem is that there are quite a few options. You will also be choosing two manuals since you are capable of body refining and magic. Of course, that is unless you absolutely don't wish to go down one of those paths."

"...I understand"

Dirk went into thought, though not about whether he was going to travel down both paths. He never even considered dropping one. There was no need to. What he thought about were these manuals, or techniques. How good were they?

"...Why can't I receive a manual now?"

Dirk asked this question after pondering a bit. He didn't understand why he could only get the technique at 10 years old. Was there some age restriction? Was it not good to start developing himself early on?

"The reason none of you children receive any training until your enter the academy at 12 years old, is because it can be very dangerous. Just like your body, your mind and soul need to develop before they can be properly used. If you force a child to train magic or body refinement, it can result in stunted growth, injury, disability, or even death. 12 years old is about the standard age for beginning your development."

"So... Should Rita and I not train our magic during lunch?"

Dirk asked worriedly after hearing his mother. If training magic could hurt you, then was what they were doing bad for them? Dirk hadn't felt anything bad, but he didn't know anything about magic or the soul. 

Cecilia shook her head.

"If it's just playing around with mana, then no, that's fine. That might actually be good for you guys and can enhance your concentration. But you shouldn't push it too far. I'm not going to tell you what you shouldn't do, but just know, if you feel any sharp pains after doing things with mana, then you need to stop immediately. Never force anything with magic. Understood?"

"Yes, mother."

Dirk acknowledged strictly. He was glad to learn what to avoid. He was very capable of managing his pain and mitigating injury with his body, but beyond that, he knew nothing. He would just take his mother's advice. She had no reason to mislead him. 

"Good. Now, go clean up and head to the dining room. Since you're training now, you should eat meals more. It'll help with recovery. You can have a meal before dinner, okay?"

"Understood."

"Then go on."

Cecilia waved Dirk off as he stood up. He went straight to his room to bathe before coming back out to an already cooked meal. He sat and scraped everything off his plate quickly.

"Now, eat and listen since I told your father I would teach you this."

Cecilia appeared and sat down across from him as he ate, setting a book down on the table as she did so. He nodded with a mouthful of meat while some of the maids continued to prepare more food.

"Chore magic is something nearly everybody knows besides the absolutely ordinary. Like your father said, anyone with a modicum of mana can learn these four basic spells. Sweep, Gust, Water Ball, and Spark. Each is of the four elements, and if you don't have the affinity for a particular element, you'll need to know the spell. You have attributes for earth and fire, so you really only need to know the spells for water and air. For now though, I'll teach you all four. Now, let me explain what spells are."

Cecilia opened the book she had put on the table. The page she opened to had two complicated diagrams and descriptions under them.

"Spells are magical constructions magicians use to direct and codify their magic. These constructions have been created and improved upon for millennia. They were initially discovered through analyzing the workings of the nature of mana and its interactions with our minds and souls. After countless trials and error, we have the spells we now use today. 

Each spell has two parts: The circuits that direct the mana, and the runes that give the mana directions. The circuits direct the mana along a pathway, the mana is given directions on what to do and how to do it by the runes, and then it is ejected with the intended effects. Naturally this is an extremely simple explanation, and not all spells work like this, but this is enough for chore magic. Now, watch me and see how I form this spell."

Cecilia brought up her hand, and Dirk stopped eating for a moment. He watched as mana was controlled around her hand, forming a single circle in the air with a single line of runes around it. After that, a ball of fire was created above the circle.

"This is a spell. Maintain the circle, and you maintain the effect. Mana is consumed in the process of both forming the circle and fueling the flame. Cut off your mana, and it all goes away."

The fire went out as she spoke, and the circle faded into nothing. Dirk was frozen still, but he had seen and even recorded everything with his AI. He still couldn't get over how amazing that magic was. 

"...Mother, why don't I see that circle though when you or the maids usually use magic?"

Dirk asked as he remembered all the times he had seen that exact flame around the house. Everyone always used magic, but he never saw the circle that just appeared above her hand. Had they just hidden it?

"That's because we don't need to form the circle. For people who have either practiced enough or are powerful enough, they can simply perform the magic directly, skipping the process of making a circle. While this is more difficult, it's faster, less obvious, and can actually consume less mana."

"Understood."

"Now, this will take some time, but I want you to try and form a circle. We will teach you the runes after you know how to do at least that. To make things easy, I want you to direct the fire mana around you and create the circle using it. The fire mana should revolve through the circle. Try it."

Dirk nodded as his mother brought up her hand again, forming only the circle as a demonstration. He could detect the fire mana traveling around and around the circle continuously. 

Seeing that, he attempted it. He brought up his own hand and pulled some fire mana out of the air. He then directed that mana with his mind, controlling it to form the circle. The fire mana listened to his instructions and fell into place, but as he tried to solidify the circle, it got harder and harder to control. Eventually, before he was able to form an actual solid circle, the whole thing dissipated. 

"Good job! You've got the concept right. Don't worry about it falling apart. You'll need to work on your concentration over time so you can force everything together. This is your first time, and that's actually more than what I expected."

"Understood."

Dirk nodded plainly. She was right in that he needed to work on his concentration. While trying to form the circle, he had a hard time drawing upon his mental energy. On Earth, there was no such thing as drawing upon mental energy and actually receiving tangible results like this. He still wasn't used to how his mind interacted with this new magical energy, so he would definitely need to work on it. 

"Go ahead and try again. Just focus on drawing in the energy around you. Forming the circle can come later."

Dirk was silent as he listened, bringing up his hand and trying again. This time, the mana flowed to his hand smoothly, but forcing it into the shape of a circle was difficult. He felt like his mind was shaky as he forced the energy into a particular shape. And just like last time, everything eventually dispersed. Cecilia was happy with that though. 

"Good. The only thing that you can do is keep practicing, and it'll become easier. When you can comfortably create that circle, I'll then teach you the runes. Those are the hardest part."

"Understood."

"Mm. Go ahead and finish eating. I'm gonna go check on your father."

Cecilia stood as she said that, leaving Dirk to eat the serving of food that had been recently cooked. He didn't dig in right away though and continued to practice making the circle until he was drained. Only then did he eat. As it turns out, the food his parents have been feeding them was filled with mana as well. It had even more than the stuff at the cafeteria. And now that he thought about it, it tasted better too. Was it because of the mana? Who knew?

..............

From that day forward, Dirk's routine consisted of waking up, going to school, practicing magic at lunch, coming home, working out, and then practicing magic again. 

The workouts his mother gave him weren't too difficult. At most, they had him working out for around half an hour, maybe an hour if she wanted a difficult day. Because of this, Dirk went on and did his own additional workouts. His lasted two hours, and by the end of each one he was heaving for breath. 

Because of the training from his life on Earth, he knew what a six year old could handle without getting injured. And that was without any cybernetic enhancements. In this new life, he had his enhancements right off the bat, so he could handle much more. It only took a week for his normal workouts to start becoming tolerable, and he had to start upping the intensity gradually. 

As time went on, he also got much better at wielding mana. The lack of familiarity with utilizing his mental energy went away, and he was able to succeed in replicating Rita's dark wisp trick. However, that in itself took nearly three weeks. In that time, Rita had moved on to harder things, leaving him behind once more. 

Fortunately, the wisp trick wasn't his only success. A week after he did that, he was able to successfully form a magic circle. This opened him up for learning the runes his mother told him about. Unfortunately, since she apparently didn't expect him to succeed so fast, she gave him another goal, which was to learn how to read and write fluently before moving. 

This goal didn't seem like it had anything do with learning magic, but she assured him that it did. She had originally shown Dirk a book with magical writings, but he wasn't able to read it at all. This was a problem that needed to be solved So while it bummed Dirk out to wait more, he agreed that he needed to learn these language skills quickly. Luckily, after only a month more, he was became more fluent in the written language. Anything he learned, such as the alphabet or words and definitions, was logged into his AI, and a comprehensive language format was created. 

That was another thing Dirk greatly enjoyed. The school frequently had tests to make sure students were keeping up with their learning. For Dirk, there were tests on spelling and definitions, and Dirk would ace every one. This was natural as he had his AI. He couldn't possibly get things incorrect if he had already seen it before. The only thing he didn't enjoy was how slow class moved.

Because of that, it took a whole three months from the start of school in order for him to become completely proficient. He now had several hundred words in his vocabulary, and his grammar was impeccable. While there was still slang, that would take time to pick up on through experience. There was also a lot of unique vocabulary that he was unfamiliar with, but all he had to do was ask what it meant from either his teacher or parents. 

Now, he could read and write. And when he was finally confident in his reading abilities, Dirk remembered one thing he had been waiting to do for a while now. He went to his sister and requested to read her books. 

.............

"Rita."

"Dirk!"

After knocking on a bedroom door, Dirk could hear Rita's voice. It was nighttime and a short time before they needed to go to sleep, but Dirk was outside Rita's bedroom. 

Rita jumped out of bed and opened the door. Dirk had never come to her bedroom of his own accord. It was very surprising, but she was more than happy to see him. 

"Come in!"

Rita didn't even ask why he was there and pulled him in, shutting the door behind him. She then pranced back to her bed.

"I have something to ask you."

"What's up?"

"I wanted to see your school books."

"My books?"

Hearing that, Rita turned to him with a questioning face. Kids like her hated studying and anything related to school. Why would Dirk actively go out and request to see her books?

"I wanted to see the stuff inside them. It seemed interesting."

"Uhh, I guess? It's nothing that interesting, just a bunch of boring history and stuff."

"Where's your bag?"

"Over there."

Rita pointed to a desk against one of the walls. Dirk also had a desk, and it's where they did school work. 

Dirk walked over and saw her bag on top of the desk. He grabbed the book that was hanging out of it and looked at its cover.

'World Studies...'

Seeing the title, he smiled. It was exactly this kind of information that he wanted to see. He didn't open it quite yet though and looked at the others. After pulling two more books out, he saw one which was history and the other which was science. 

'Very nice.'

Now, the grin was obvious. When Rita hopped off her bed and walked over though, he wiped the smile off his face and sat down in the chair next to the desk. He opened the world studies book.

"That book talks about the world and stuff. Apparently there are other empires besides ours. One of the empires is full of hybrids like Tess and your friend Ava, and there's another one with a bunch of dwarves."

Rita spoke as Dirk opened the first pages of the book. He first looked at the table of contents.

Basic geography, nations of the world, dungeons of the world...

Dirk looked through, and all the while his AI was scanning the page, documenting it. 

He was immediately confused though. Dungeons? What were those? He looked at the page number and flipped to it, coming upon a section.

'Introduction to Dungeons. Dungeons are systems of draconic lairs that are present throughout the lands. There are 6 major dungeons of the world, each associated with each of the 6 elements. There are also their lesser dungeons, and they are home to myriads of hostile creatures...'

Dirk scanned through the introduction, and he became increasingly puzzled. Draconic lairs? Associated with each of the 6 elements? He kept reading, and as he did, he became increasingly baffled.

Apparently, throughout the world, there were thousands of dungeons. These dungeons were restricted areas that were filled to the brim with various hostile creatures called monsters. The monsters could vary wildly depending on the dungeon, but the most popular monster was a dragon. The dragons seemed to be the overlords of these dungeons, or at least, they were the symbol that represented the dungeons. 

Dirk could see pictures of the dragons on some of the other pages, along with pictures of other wild creatures. The dragons looked surprisingly varied. Of the four pictures he saw, one had red scales, another had feathers and wings almost like a bird, the third had skin that seemed to be made of rocks and stone, and the last had the scales of a fish, as well as fins and two long whiskers like a catfish. Dirk immediately understood that each of these dragons was associated with each of the four elements besides light and dark. 

He became even more intrigued, and all the pictures were documented by his AI. He went on to look at the other pictures too. There were deadly werewolves, giant troll-like creatures, menacing snakes, and savage rodents. None of these pictures seemed to be from the imagination of an artist. The pictures captured the monsters' threatening image well, and the details about them were specific. 

Dirk didn't mind any of this. While he thought they did look a bit scary, he wasn't so easily shaken. However, he wondered why something like this would be put in a children's schoolbook. Wasn't this a bit much? Were they trying to terrify these kids?

Moreover, did they really need to know about these dungeons as children? Just how in depth did these books go? While Dirk was unfamiliar with a normal school's curriculum, he was pretty sure young kids didn't learn this kind of stuff. Then again, Earth also didn't have dungeons. 

Dirk shook his head. While he was pondering, Rita was also gazing at the pictures. She didn't seem to care about their threatening image. She seemed to enjoy the looks of the dragons more anyway. They were more majestic and eye catching.

"Dragons are so cool. One of the kids in my class has a pet dragon. It's really small."

"A pet dragon?"

"Yea. Apparently you can find them in the wild. They're really expensive though to buy as pets. You need to use something called a contract to control them."

"What's a contract?"

"Hmm, I don't know."

Rita rubbed her chin in thought. Dirk also pondered. This contract probably wasn't what he knew it to be. It was likely magical. Otherwise, was someone supposed to get a wild animal to sign a paper and listen to them? This contract sounded something like a leash, though he had no idea how it would possibly work.