"It's a lovely day, isn't it?" I commented as I drew the curtain open.

From my room’s window, I saw beyond the Rosetta Manor domain, way beyond the domain’s fence, the verdant forest that seems to spread endlessly across the horizon.

" It is, indeed," Syrus responded zealously, so much so that with his sarcastic personality, it was hard to guess whether he really meant it or not.

"Where is Maa?"

"Mathilda is below discussing with the merchant and his wife what they should bring over for the next delivery."

Maa had returned from her errand to the family castle. The reason for her summoning back then remains a mystery, but she was back. Of course, she was already back; after all, three years had passed since she was summoned by my family.

A lot has changed in these three years.

Maa, as she had promised, returned in the third month, bringing with her as souvenirs dozens of new books from the castle.

Maa's return went relatively smoothly, until on the third day, she learned of my accident, which resulted in both Syrius and I receiving the scolding of the century, which I had expected to last at least a week, but which she strangely let go after only a few days of daily scolding.

This might sound very masochistic for me to say, but I admit that somewhere a part of me was disappointed at how fast that misadventure of mine was forgotten by her. "Was the weaning process on this small journey supposed to be too effective for her?" I, for a moment, feared the worst, but nah, Maa was still Maa.

Other than that, there was something else that happened during these three years. In fact, by my standards, it was still very recent news. A few months ago, a new housemaid and a guard arrived at the manor, not to expand the manor’s staff, but rather to replace some of them. It seems that one of the maids was impregnated by one of the guards.

That was bound to happen given how remote this location was from the people and the overall situation these young men and women were in; in fact, one might even praise it for not happening sooner.

Their departure was a very emotional one— it even brought tears to my eyes, even though I wasn't particularly attached to them. That sight of four maids hugging and bidding each other farewell was… It was really moving stuff. Yet, anticlimactically, while the maids were still mourning their gone but not-really-dead sisters, a carriage arrived under Maa’s order, to deliver to the manor a new guard and a new maid.

"As expected from Maa, as ruthlessly professional as ever."

It seems that from the moment she heard about the pregnancy, Maa had already made preparations to have her and the guard replaced. The whole replacement thing went so smoothly that I felt pity for the maids.

Speaking of carriage, the merchant and his wife were still very much working for us. In fact, they were now working with the help of a little girl, their daughter, who should be, in a few months, five years old.

Speaking of parents, mine, I still haven't heard from them, which wasn't surprising, but it's still pretty lonely to think about when you have to witness that not everyone in this world leaves their child to a butler and governess to raise.

Anyway, the little girl was given the name Shania, and has since been able to bear the journey, regularly brought over by her parents to the manor for their weekly deliveries. She was literally the first child I've ever been around, and thanks to a certain person’s intervention, I've become quite acquainted with her.

I think that should be all that summarizes what has happened these past 3 years. That was not a lot, but that was it, and besides, one had to not expect a lot to happen in this calm and peaceful corner of the world.

I grew taller; nothing exceptional, but noticeable enough when it came to reaching books on the library’s shelves. Not allowed to cut my hair, not that I wanted to cut it since it reminded me of that woman from that day, my mother. I came to keep my long-enough-to-reach-shoulder hair in a little ponytail, which I believe suited me quite well.

Over the last three years, I've spent the majority of my free time holed up inside the library, whether training myself with Aina or reading books in the hope of finding some insight regarding my very unique circumstances.

I was investing, for a time, actively investing in the reason that could’ve led me to be born the way I was, but after three years straight of failing to find anything that could consequently help, coupled with the fact that I’d read every particularly interesting book in the library, it came as a natural cycle that I was gradually losing interest in the library.

Recently, my attention has been drawn to something entirely new, well, not really new because it has always been there, the Iharana forest, and that not for no reason but for my Aina training;

How should I explain it?

Other than reading books, I, within the library, had spent the first two years solely focusing on perceiving and controlling the aina, and I can say that my efforts had paid off.

Three considered changes could be noted during these years of training:

I felt better than ever at perceiving Aina. At this point, it wasn’t even something that required me to remain still or try to enter some deep meditative state. To me, controlling Aina was akin to the "it just works" theory the book described.

The second difference was in how I perceived Aina. Initially, Aina appeared to me as a floating light particle, but recently, instead of floating light, I perceived it as a dense star-like cluster of light, which flows could either bend or be bent by the laws of this world, physics or not.

The third and most significant change was in Aina enhancement, which I initially thought to be just about physical enhancement, but as more of my experience went on, I realized that though Aina's main focus was mainly on enhancing one’s physicality, it wasn’t just about that. It was far deeper and more layered than that. But even in Aina-enhancement, I had made quite a decent breakthrough, and it was mostly because of this breakthrough that I grew more and more interested in the Iharana Great Forest.

As my training and experiments in Aina went on over the years, it became increasingly difficult to carry out those things which I was prompted to try within the closed room that is the library. The library was spacious, I concede, but there were a lot of things that couldn’t be done inside a room where, aina-enhanced, running across either side would only take a couple of breaths.

As much as it hurt my heart, as long as my activities were confined within the library, I was bound to hold myself back with my experiments. I once tried to conduct one of the experiments discreetly outside the manor, but the mere sight of me outside was such a rare occurrence for most, that the moment I tried, every eye in the manor was cast on me.

All these factors altogether are why, recently, I’ve come to consider the forest as the best place to pursue my aina experiments.

I know it sounded like a crazy, dangerous, and bad idea, but it was mentioned in the books that monsters disliked being close to the barrier, which is theorized to be due to the enclosed aura the barrier passively exudes, so I should be fine as long as I stay within the first five kilometers beyond the barrier.

I’ve been thinking about doing it for some time now, but there have been two reasons why I haven’t ventured into the forest just yet .

The first being that I haven't yet discovered a way to sneak outside the domain without being discovered. To be exact, I did discover a way to. In fact, I found quite a lot of them. It was just that I hadn’t settled on one yet.

Right now, there were eleven people living in the manor, and with how large and clear the yard was, if I were to run to the fence, someone from the manor was bound to notice me. For a moment, I considered sneaking out at night, which I concede was a genuinely bad idea.

The second reason why I hadn’t ventured into the forest yet was the barrier itself. Shaped like a dome, the barrier force field encircled the entire continent, keeping monsters from the monster continent from trespassing into the human territories. But that wasn’t all. The barrier was also mentioned to be keeping humans from venturing beyond it, to the monster continent.

I wonder why they designed it that way. It is not as if someone was stupid enough to willingly venture out to the monster continent.

I unintentionally guffawed.

During a crusade, like the one Syrus participated in, the legionnaires were able to pass through the barrier without being obstructed thanks to a special belt they were wearing. Those belts were provided by the clergy to the legion and were to be returned when resigning being a legionnaire.

When I asked whether or not a noble needed a similar item to pass through the barrier, Syrius replied that he had no idea since he wasn’t a paladin nor was particularly close to one.

So, even if I were to manage to sneak out of the manor’s domain unnoticed, there was still a fifty-fifty probability that my journey would end at the barrier’s outskirts.

But for that to be a problem, I had to first manage to get out of the manor. Worrying about that now was utterly pointless, I’ll see that when the time comes. The main issue at hand was to get out of the manor.

If only Aina could turn people invisible, this task would’ve been a piece of cake.

"Turning invisible, huh?"

I was pretty sure magic could do that, even though it was never mentioned in any book.

If only baptismal hadn't stripped me away from my ability to use magic, I might have figured out some interesting ways to use magic, even if it wasn’t invisibility magic. "

Damn you, clergyman!" "

"Pardon?" Syrus said, surprised by my sudden words.

Oops, it came out loud.

"Oh, nothing, Syrius, don’t mind it."

He silently nodded.

"Say, you said Maa was speaking with the merchant, right. Is their daughter also there? "

"Yes, do I brin-summon her over?"

The sounding of his question may have sounded quite suspicious, but it was far from being the case. The thing was that ever since the merchant and his wife were able to bring their daughter to the mansion for their weekly delivery. Maa would frequently snatch the baby away from her parents to show the little human to me.

I think the purpose of Maa’s act was to give me a semblance of interaction with a fellow human, or maybe it was to show me what a "normal" baby should be like.

Now that I think of it, by observing the little girl, I came to notice a slight growth difference between she and I. As a child, I spent a lot of time watching my growth rate, curious about what was wrong or special with me, so I didn't miss noticing that the girl's growth rate, even when other factors were taken into account, was very late, very late compared to my younger self, which prompted me to ask Maa about it. I was explained that generally, nobles and aina-users tend to grow at a faster speed than the average commoner, but it had to be noted that the difference in growth rate here was nothing drastic or particularly monstrous. In fact, if one weren’t particularly watchful of the growth, the difference between the two would go completely unnoticed. In my case, however, Maa had told me that out of all the nobles she was given to witness, I was one of a kind when it came to growth speed.

In any case, me interacting with the little girl named Shania has become such a common occurrence that it has become something normal.

"There's no need; I'll go there myself, and I have a special command for the merchant."

"A special command?"

"Yeah, Syrus, a very special one."