As I swear my pledge and tell my name, I can hear a slight chuckle at the side of the room, almost as if they are ridiculing me. These little plebeians… is what I thought towards the laughter until

Zzz

My hate slowly dissolved like sand.

“Arthur, a good name befitting of a hero” (King Uther)

The King raises his hand to motion his approval and immediately turns his head to the court magician.

“We prepared an artifact to gauge your strength.” (King Uther)

The court magician, bows her head to the king and approaches me. She places a rectangular stone in front of me. The stone is fairly thick around 3 cm thick, and has a dimension of 10cm x 10cm. After placing the stone, she goes back to her original position.

“Place your hand on the stone, Hero” (Court Magician)

Following her instructions, I place my hand on the rough stone. The stone feels unexpectedly smooth, and after a few seconds, the rough stone started beaming with light. Slowly, but gradually, the stone shrinks in size and floats in the air. The shining stops and a card about the size of my palm forms in the air. I grab the card and quickly look at the card.

Name: Arthur Pendragon

EBP (Estimated Battle Power): - invalid because of missing variable -

LF (Life Force): 100/100

MP (Magical power): 150/150

STR (Strength): 45

DEF (Defense): 30

SPD (Speed): 35

STA (Stamina): 40

INT (Intellect): Invalid

Oh, I am once again dazzled by the technology in this society. The stone has just absorbed some of my magical power and my skin in order to gather information about this bodies capabilities.

I looked at my statistics, even though I am not too familiar with this machines way of estimating one’s strength, I can tell that this mortal body is quite the disappointment. I never cared about these limitations when I was the demon lord, but if I used my magic with this measly magical power, I would have exploded like a bloated frog whom tried to fly higher to appease their lover. That would be a fairly foolish death.

As for the reason why my intellect is –invalid- is because this artifact cannot calculate the power of my soul. They are unable to delve into my endless wisdom and intellect. Usually, wisdom lies dormant and inactive, only to slowly activate when one experiences. Even after 1500 years, I am still unable to delve into the full power of my soul. It is truly a mysterious thing. Intellect, on the other hand, can be gained through attaining knowledge and it is associated with your body’s ability to refine the magical power into “spells”, and “incantations”, but it looks like this little tablet has a limit to that as well.

Although it is an interesting artifact, it looks like there are still lots of improvement that could be made.

Whilst gathering my thoughts, the card in my hand starts to slip away from me and float towards Merlin. Looks like she has used the skill [float], although it seems like a basic skill, it is actually rather high-level skill. The caster has to have talent in order to unlock this hidden power. The control is very delicate and she did it chant-less - it looks like Merlin is a magician that I have to keep an eye on.

Merlin catches the card and presents it to the King. The King takes the card and reads it. He closes his eyes and looks at me an icy glare.

“It is rare to see an “invalid” in this artifact, it looks like you do show some promise” (King Uther)

After King Uther says that, the knights in the courtroom starts to make a commotion, it looks like the Invalid is not a mistake from the artifact, but something that exists in this world. To think that they knew about the faulty machine but are still unable to fix it… maybe I have over-estimated this country by a fair amount.

“However, it appears to me that you need training.” (King Uther)

How very, very arrogant.

While saying that, the King passes the card to Merlin and Merlin reads the content.

“Merlin, I leave his training to you” (King Uther)

“Yes, your majesty” (Merlin)

“You may rest for tonight, Merlin shall come to your chamber to explain the plans for tomorrow” (King Uther)

“Yes, your majesty” (Arthur)

A few maids that were hidden behind the soldiers appear and guide me out the throne room. As I follow their lead, the entire army in the throne room eyes me as I leave. The glasses guy especially looks at me, trying to understand my true attentions. It feels like the time I tried to hold a peace conference with the human empire. As I walked out of the courtroom, I tripped and fell flat onto my face. This body’s center of balance is very peculiar, and I just realized that the maid looks inhumanly large…

As I tried to stand back up, the maid tried to offer me a hand. That’s what I thought until she easily straightened me up. The soldier from before chuckled a bit again and I glared at him. That was the moment he was looking at me with affectionate eyes, almost like he’s observing a wild rabbit.

This was the point where I realized that…

I was a kid.

Chapter 2 end