My mastery of the local language had been increasing steadily, and I finally learned my parents' names: Sama, my father, and Zeni, my mother.
My mother managed both our household and our family business, which revolved around the trade of hunted monsters and coordinating with armed men at military outposts based on my observation. Every day, I found her buried in stacks of papers and ledgers whenever she wasn't tending to me. The sight was a stark reminder of my father from my past life. Understanding the weight of her situation, I tried 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 book—"archaic" would be the better word. The cover and pages were in readable condition. Its script differed slightly from the modern writing used today.
I spent a week analyzing the book's content by 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, carried no negative consequences.
The book chronicled 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. Dragons kept the ancestral month names but standardized the duration of each month to exactly forty days. (This left me wondering about the planet's actual orbital revolution.) The months similar to Earth followed 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 also referred to as the Month of the Dead. It was a fitting coincidence, given that I was a soul originally from another world inhabiting a new vessel.
Knowing the information further calmed my anxiety. Since the day I realized I was not in pre-19th century Earth, my adult consciousness couldn't simply wait and accept ignorance the way a normal child would because there is no greater fear than that of the unknown. This reincarnation business felt less like a gift and more like the plot of a reality show where you were thrown into an unknown place, stripped of everything familiar, and told to survive.
The only positive and familiar thing for me was that they divided a single day into 24 parts, similar to the twenty-four hours on Earth. One part was divided into units similar to minutes, which were again divided into units similar to seconds. The reason for such a coincidence was the importance of the circle in magic, as magic circles played a significant role, and also in the fields of astronomy and geometry. Because 60 is a factor of 360, it fitted 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 named "nerd101" who spent quite a lot on superchats for 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 seemed some laws of physics are universal.
The book claimed that practical limitations eventually forced the 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 bickered over its origin, this book credited the True Nagas. Reading the explanation of the decimal system brought back memories of the science fiction forums I frequently visited, where bickering on such topics was common.
Interestingly, the author claimed that dragons and nagas shared a common ancestor, diverging with time. Much like the tiger and the lion on earth. Both shared 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) translated perfectly to Earth's millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. The same applied to weight (mg, g, kg) and volume. I breathed a sigh of relief. The reason for this hypothesis of mine was evolution.
Because I was born naturally into this world's specific gravity and mana density rather than being summoned, I was not an alien entity struggling against a foreign atmosphere. I was a biological native. My bone density, muscle fiber recruitment, and proprioception were 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 was running Earth's scientific "software" on the hardware which was built for this world's unique mana-enriched atmosphere, gravity, and pressure. If I covered 10 kr, it was exactly 10 km to my internal compass. If I lifted my toy, my muscles exerted the exact force to lift in this world. I possessed the ultimate home-field advantage. I was not just an observer in a foreign land.
I was a high-fidelity Earth-trained consciousness running on native, optimized hardware.
For me the archaic book became my second sanctuary in this world.
Zeni P.O.V.
Watching Zae actively listen as I read from my grandmother's precious book—the only one she bequeathed to me—brought back a flood of memories. It was one of the few heirlooms I brought from my childhood home when I married Sama.
He was growing remarkably fast; sometimes, I feared it was too fast. He mastered crawling ahead of schedule, and I was certain his linguistic comprehension was also developing at an accelerated rate. I couldn't consult the Chief Healer, Pubicoro Kal, as it would only inflame his obsession with the examination of my son. Even now, my blood boiled 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 understood his passion for discovery, but as a mother, I couldn't allow it.
When my mana channels were burned, I lost all hope of ever becoming a mother. My dream for a happy family with Sama was shattered into many pieces. Treating mana burn required a fortune in resources, and even then, the failure rate was twenty to fifty percent. Conceiving after such an injury, even with timely treatment, usually required a minimum of two or three attempts; the chances for natural fertilization were 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 formed upon fertilization—shielded the fetus from external mana interference. However, burned mana channels significantly increased 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 like a new couple. 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 thirty percent less than estimated. That saved gold was now a fund for Zae's future. He was here, healthy and clearly intelligent—a miracle I had to protect at all costs.
....
Sama P.O.V.
I returned late, the scent of 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 whenever I thought about 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 and battlefields. My father didn't believe in "father-son time"; he believed only in hard work.
"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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