Morgan quietly observed
the people in the room, there were a middle-aged man, three young boys, the
woman who was holding him (he assumed she was his mother), a teenager girl who
was fidgeting while looking at him, and a young woman in a maid outfit. Morgan
guessed these were the members of his new family, but he was puzzled by the
expression in their faces, it wasn’t the joyful expression people usually have
when looking at a newborn baby, it was the expression of someone attending a
funeral. Not knowing what to do in that situation, Morgan reached his mother’s
hair with his little hands and started playing with it. The instant he did so,
the people in the room stopped showing a worried expression and began to talk
among themselves.
Morgan expected to have
to spend several years learning the language of this world, but he understood
it from the beginning, which he considered a side-effect of his fate aligning
with the signature energy of this universe. From their conversation, Morgan
started to understand what had gone on a while ago. It seemed that the previous
awkward atmosphere in the room was due to him not crying, but seeing him
playing with his mother’s hair made them understand that he was just fine.
He also learned who the
people in the room were, as well as their position in the family:
His father was Anthon
Pendragon, he was 35 years old and, for his outstanding services to the
Shephiran Kingdom, he had been granted a knighthood several years ago. He was
currently serving in the palace as an instructor for the crown Prince, but he
liked to talk about how his ancestors had once been rulers of a kingdom before
the Great Magic Era. He was blond with blue eyes, and he had two wives: Emelyn
and Leyla.
His mother was Emelyn
Pendragon, she was 27 years old, and she was a sixth rank fire-earth dual
element magus. She had four sons with her husband Anthon. She was a very caring
woman when it came to her family, but it was better not to make her mad. She
was a redhead with blue eyes.
Leyla Pendragon, she was
17 years old and Emelyn’s little sister. She was a second rank wind magus and
Anthon’s second wife, but she had yet to give him children. She was a redhead
with green eyes.
His three siblings:
Arnold (11), Josh (8), and Bly (4) were blond with brown eyes, just like their
father. Morgan on the other hand, he was a redhead with blue eyes, like his
mother.
Finally, the young woman
in the maid outfit was Jasmine, she was 19 years old and she had served in this
house for the last five years.
Emelyn: "Anthon, how
are we going to name him?"
Anthon: "Hmm, let me
think… Got it, we’ll name him Merlin, Merlin Pendragon!"
Emelyn:
"Merlin…"
Leyla: "Merlin? I
don’t think I have ever heard that name before… What kingdom is it from?"
Anthon: "No wonder
you have never heard that name before, Leyla. It’s a name from before the Great
Magic Era. Merlin was the name of the founder of the Pendragon clan, as well as
Avalon Kingdom’s first monarch."
Emelyn: "I like the
name… but, why did you choose this one for him?"
Anthon: "To honor my
ancestors and… because I hope our children may be able to restore the glory of
our clan, at least to a certain extent."
Emelyn: "That
doesn’t explain why you chose this name now and not before… If those are your
only reasons, you could have chosen it for another of our kids, so why didn’t
you?"
Anthon: "Call it
superstition… but the original Merlin was a golden eyed redhead, so to honor
that man, I had to wait until I had a redhead son…"
Leyla: "Well, I
think it’s a good name."
Emelyn: "I don’t
know about his future achievements, but he is my son, therefore, I’ll be proud
of him and support him unconditionally!"
After hearing his
mother’s words, Merlin couldn’t stop his tears and started crying. His parents
thought he was hungry, but how could they know those were tears of pure
happiness? The words he had longed to hear from the mother in his previous
world (even if she didn’t actually mean them), he had finally obtained them in
this new world, where he had a mother who (unlike the previous one) cared very
deeply about him.
Like that, Morgan’s /
Merlin’s life in this new world began…
************************************************************************************************************************
Eighteen months later…
It had been roughly a
year and a half since Merlin was born in this world, Klantea. He had learnt to
walk and he was starting to talk, although he had many problems to correctly
articulate the words since his body was still developing. He had shown interest
in books, so while his mother wasn’t at home or was busy with other matters,
his aunt Leyla would pick a book up and read it for him.
Whenever his aunt read
for him, he would sit on her knees and try to follow the text. This way he
started learning the alphabet of this world, which was similar to the ancient
runes that had been used centuries ago in northern Europe, in his previous
world. Strangely enough, although he was able to understand the language
immediately after being reborn, that wasn’t the case with the alphabet, so this
one he had to learn the hard way…
Leyla had always wanted
to have a little brother, but since her parents had already passed away that
was clearly impossible, so she started treating Merlin as one. There were
several reasons for doing so: first, her longing for a brother who would never
exist; second, she had wanted to treat her other nephews that way too, but she
was too busy with her training as a magus and had very little time to spend
with her family, so this was her first opportunity to have a sisterly behavior with
one of her nephews; and lastly, she was married, she didn’t know when she might
get pregnant, and after having her own children, she would have to act as a
mother, which meant she wouldn’t be able to spend so much time with Merlin.
From Merlin’s perspective
Leyla’s actions were a good thing for him, because thanks to her reading those
books to him, not only did he learn the alphabet in less than a month, he also
learnt about the geography and current political situation of the continent.
Roughly put, in this new
world the seas occupied a 75% of its total surface, just like on Earth, on the
other hand, this world was three or four times bigger than Earth. In this
world, there were four continents, three which hadn’t been fully explored:
Kenton, Klasten and Kaltena, and the unexplored continent of Klatera, also
known as “The continent of no return” because not a single person who went
there was ever back. The relationship between the continents Kenton, Klasten y
Kaltena was almost non-existent, because the distance between continents was so
great that the fastest ship had to travel for three months before reaching
another continent…
The little village where
they lived was called Laklostia and it belonged to the Shephiran Kingdom, in
the Klasten continent. Laklostia was a little village next to the border with
the Klausna Kingdom, and because of that, there was a garrison two miles off
from the border, to deal with the guerrilla tactics the soldiers of Klausna
Kingdom liked to use, otherwise the soldiers of Klausna Kingdom would have
raided the village, killed the men, had fun with the women and enslaved the
survivors to sell them in their kingdom at a later date. The worst part of it
was that the Klausna Kingdom denied any knowledge of their activities, so no actions
were ever taken against those soldiers in their kingdom, despite having
flagrantly violated the existent non-aggression pact between the two kingdoms.
Another interesting fact
that Merlin learnt, thanks to the books Leyla read to him, was that in this
world elves, dwarves, beast-men, asmodian and demons actually existed. And so
did monsters and dungeons, there were also branches of the Adventurers Guild in
almost every town across the continent, just like this world had been created
based on an RPG game or a light novel. Of course, after learning about that,
Merlin was delighted and made “becoming an adventurer” and “meeting people from
each of the other races” his new goals in life.
But those weren’t the
only changes in the Pendragon household. His brother Bly had just become 6
years old, which meant that, like every other kid, he had to go through the
magic awakening test which was usually held once a month in the plaza of every
village (in towns and mayor cities it was held once a week at the branch of the
Magic Institute).
After passing the test,
Emelyn was told that he had a medium affinity with the earth element, which
meant that if trained, Bly could become a third rank magus at most, anything
further than that would be impossible for him with his affinity. But Emelyn
wasn’t disappointed because, although he could never go beyond the third rank,
Bly was the first of his children to have some elemental affinity. Besides, he
had an earth element affinity, which meant that Emelyn, being a fire-earth dual
element magus, could train him and make the most of his potential far better
than any hired instructor.
Arnold and Josh usually
trained all day long in the garden following the training regimen their father
had left for them the previous month. They wanted to follow their father, so
they decided to become swordsmen, just like him, but as their father only came
home from the capital once a month, he always left them a parchment with the
training regimen for the following month.
************************************************************************************************************************
And just like that,
another two and a half years flew by…
Merlin, with Leyla’s
help, had already gone through almost every book in the library and memorized
each and every one of them. Most of the knowledge in those books was useless
for a four year old boy, but he memorized the books regardless, because being
useless now didn’t mean they would be useless for him in the future… the books
he was most interested in were those related to compounding, survival and
herbal medicine, geography and magic.
The books related to
martial arts of this world didn’t pick his interest because they were mostly
dedicated to fencing and archery, which a four year old can’t practice.
Besides, he had a profound theoretical knowledge of karate, taekwondo and
aikido (being an Otaku, after reading about them in the manga, he became
interested in them and studied all their moves, but in his past life he had
never trained, not even once), so he started secretly training in those three
martial arts. He had come to believe that in this world, martial arts other
than fencing and archery were non-existent, so he didn’t want anyone to see him
training in his martial arts, that way he could always have an ace up his
sleeve…
One day, Merlin was
finishing his running exercises next to the old dried well in the northern part
of the garden, when he heard a buzzing sound coming from inside the well. His
curiosity got the best of him, and despite having been explicitly forbidden
from approaching the well, he thought it wouldn’t matter if it was just a quick
peek. Before resuming his morning practice, he climbed the stone and looked
inside, but all he could see was darkness… Disappointed, Merlin tried to go
back to the garden to resume his morning exercises, but he lost his foothold
and fell inside the well. After hitting against the ground below, his sight
blurred, and his consciousness faded away in the darkness…
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