Roxy Migurdia. That was the name of the tutor that had arrived to teach Rudeus.
Allegra had to admit that when she first saw the short, young-looking, blue haired girl arrive at their doorstep dressed in a robe and holding a staff, she thought they were getting pranked. Thankfully, Roxy turned out to be quite competent in regard to magic, evident by the fact she shot down one of Zenith's trees on her first lesson.
Allegra sat at the windowsill as she watched Roxy teach Rudy magic. While she did feel a sense of jealously that she was not learning magic as well, she understood that she had not yet even learned the basics of magic, let alone the intermediate ranks spells they were doing.
Allegra glanced back at her mother and Lilia as they worked. Her mother was preparing lunch and Lilia was busy cleaning. Paul was probably out practicing his swordsmanship again. Allegra's mood couldn't help but sour further as she thought about her parents, her past parents that is.
'I miss you two...'
Taking a deep breath, she sighed as she shook her head trying to rid herself of the gloomy thoughts. Glancing forward, she spoke softly,
"Momma...."
Zenith's head snapped towards the sound of her voice and a brilliant smile spread across her face as she made her way over. Allegra didn't like talking much, it felt weird referring to these people as mom or dad or brother or well...calling Lilia by her name wasn't that bad. So, because of her lack of talking, her parents had the habit of being tremendously happy when she did. In fact, they seemed to be willing to hear her say anything so long as she was using her voice.
"What is it, Allie~?
"Up."
Tilting her head curiously, Zenith picked her daughter up and held her against her chest.
"Now what, baby~?"
"Up."
Allegra pointed up at the ceiling calmly.
"You want Momma to bring you to the second floor?"
Allegra nodded softly.
"Alright..."
Zenith was confused by her daughter's demand. Usually, if she wanted to go upstairs, she would just climb her way up the stairs. She had never asked to be carried up before. Nevertheless, Zenith let her curiosity compel her as she complied and carried Allegra up the steps.
Allegra pointed her tiny finger at the door near the entrance of the upper level.
"In thewe..."
Curious, Zenith brought her daughter into Paul's office as she had asked.
"What do you want from Daddy's office, Allie?"
Allegra pointed at the few books on the shelf and responded softly,
"Read..."
"Y-you want to learn to read? I-...well...I suppose Rudy learned at about your age too...though he did that by himself..."
Allegra tugged at her mother's clothes.
"Read."
Giggling softly, Zenith happily took out one of the books from the shelf, Perugius' Legend. Sitting down, she began to read to her daughter. Taking great joy in being able to have the childcaring experience she had imagined when she first got pregnant that she had missed out on with Rudeus.
Allegra listened intensely and slowly began connected different written words with their corresponding spoken words and then translated those words to English in her mind. Unfortunately, the written letters didn't seem to have a direct way to translate them to English letters as the writing seemed to work entirely differently than what she was used to. Allegra could only sigh deeply as she tried to figure out what she was working with in this new language.
---
People learn things quicker when they are younger because of higher brain plasticity. Basically, a child's growing brain could reorganize itself and form new neural connections faster than adults can. This proved to be the case in this other world too.
Allegra could tell because it took her a far shorter time to learn this language than it took her to learn Spanish when she had been studying it in high school. One month. That's all it took. During this time, she had also been secretly trying to train her body. The reason? She wanted to be better than Rudeus at something. With his head start in magic, it would take her years to beat him, but in terms of physicality, Rudeus only moved as much as he needed to, so with some basic training, surely, she could overcome the natural physical imbalance between them.
'Thank you, mom, for making me take those martial arts classes!'
In her past life, Allegra had been forced into taking a few different martial art classes when she was younger by her mother to help get rid of her excess energy. As she had grown up, while she had dropped out of most of them, she had continued to do a couple. So, Allegra began to train however she could using basic stretching and exercises. Her biggest problem in this endeavor, was her age. At only 11 months old, she was way too young and too weak to achieve what she wanted. Nevertheless, she kept up her training, slowly making it more and more advanced as her body showed it could handle more.