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A place he did not belong to, a different world.

A low thud reverberated within the building crafted of stone masonry.

This place had a wide stone floor, surrounded by stone walls and seats. This oval shaped training ground was situated in a corner of the academy.

In the centre of the ground were two knights facing off with their swords. They were both heavily armoured, one with a sword and shield, the other wielding a 2-handed sword. The training ground was used for mock battles. The two knights were going through all sorts of drills, and the swords they were using were blunt to avoid injuries.

The two knights took the exercises seriously, even though it was only practice. They pointed their swords at each other, carefully gauging the distance of their opponent. A gust of wind blew sand into the air. The powerful stare down ended, and both of them launched their attacks simultaneously, closing the gap between them in an instant. They moved into combat range so nimbly that it was unbelievable to think that they were in full battle armour.

But there was something off about this scene, the ground was shaking with each of the fighter's step, emitting a low and heavy thud into the air. Normal humans shouldn't make such heavy sounds with their footsteps, even if they are fully armoured.

The answer lies with their surroundings.

There were people in the audience seats watching the knights' duel, but their figures were much smaller than the knights. No, the opposite was true; it was the knights that were too big. If the size of the knights and the size of the audience were compared side by side, the knights would be at least 6 times larger. It was only natural for them to be heavy, and it was not an exaggeration to call them giants.

These giant knights were not human. They were actually Silhouette Knights, around 10 metres in height with metallic frames known as 'Inner Skeletons' and 'crystal tissues' acting as its muscles. Fuelled by mana, it was a hybrid robot spawned by magic and machinery, a giant knight. They were weapons made to fight against the magic beasts, the strongest fighting unit known to mankind.

A short distance away from the battling Silhouette Knights, several figures were watching the fight, one of them had an exceptionally sharp gaze.

He was one of the battle instructors. In other words, his duty was to instruct the pilots battling with the Silhouette Knights in order to train them to protect citizens from the demon beasts. He took in every single movement of the trainees, giving off a serious air.

"It's... Robots..."  


 

  A cute voice came behind him. The man turned and saw a beautiful lady walking towards him with a child in her arms. The lady had smooth, flowing silver hair with a hint of purple that reached her waist. Her hair swayed in the wind as she walked, leaving a bright silver trail behind her. She had gentle blue eyes, pale white skin, and looked very young, between the ages of 15 to 20. Despite her young appearance, she was already married and had a child.  

Reincarnation describes the phenomenon that occurs when the spirits of those who have died are reborn into the world over and over again. It is mentioned in Buddhism, and all Japanese would have heard about this theory, whether they believed it or not. Kurata was no exception, but he didn't believe it at that time and never expected to experience it himself. He had even retained the experiences from his previous life, a successful reincarnation.

But including himself, no one truly knew what happened. The only thing he was sure of was, that he was Ernesti in this world and Kurata Tsubasa in his previous world. That's why, compared to children around his age, he had an 'experienced' mind, and a calm and matured analytical ability.

Because of his mother's whim, he visited his father's workplace. The impact of this visit inspired him to devote his second chance at life to this.

When the sun started to set in the west, a lady and a child walked along the streets of Laihiala academy.

The boy kept asking about the gigantic knights that he had seen, and his mother answered him gently and patiently. Looking at her excited son, his mother cheerfully replied:

"You really like Silhouette Knights, don't you? Does Eru want to be a knight in the future?"

"Knight... Okay! I want to be a knight!"

"Ara, such a dependable child. Let's ask daddy to teach you when you get a little older alright?"

"Okay!"

No one knew what would happen because of this dimension travel. But he was certain that his second life as Ernesti Echevalier was developing beyond his control.

It was almost noon, Celestina and Eru were in Mathias's study room.

The study was filled with simple, but practical wooden furniture that was kept clean and tidy. Mathias was primarily a sword instructor, but he was involved in other fields as well. The shelves in the study room were filled with all sorts of literature, including picture books for children.

Tina sat on the couch in the room, resting the tiny Eru on her lap, reading the picture book slowly to him. She spoke clearly and calmly. Eru, who was enjoying this yesterday, listened for some time before he started to fidget. He called out to his mother:

"Mum, mum."

"What is it, Eru? You don't like this book?"

Tina tilted her head, but Eru's next words dispelled her confusion.

"I like books... But, I want to know more about Silhouette Knights!"

Tina set the book aside and studied Eru's expression. Looking at his bright eyes filled with curiosity and joy, she couldn't turn him down.

"Ara ara, I see. Although it is still early for you, Eru, if you want to pilot the Silhouette Knights, you have to first become a knight."

"Knight... how do I become a knight?"

Eru had a fixed goal in mind, but he was still a 3 year old toddler body-wise. Even with the intellect of a grown man, his actions were still restricted, including the most crucial part, information gathering. How does a toddler, with limited access to resources, obtain information? He has to rely on his parents.

"Let's see, you need to read many books and practice swordsmanship. Right, let your daddy teach you about swords. Your father teaches swordsmanship at the academy anyway. How about reading your favourite book, where Silhouette Knights make an appearance okay?"

"Okay!"

Eru finally focused back on the book. Tina rubbed his head, took out a book related to Silhouette Knights, and read it to him slowly. Eru listened to the story that was simple enough for a child to understand excitedly.

Eru imagined himself piloting the gigantic knight, standing before humongous demon beasts in order to protect those in danger. He reforged his mind once again. He wanted to pilot a Silhouette Knight no matter what, and the sooner the better. To achieve this, he needed to use his mature mindset to his advantage and achieve all he could with his power. He prepared a schedule for the future in his mind, but for now, he listened quietly to the story.

".. That's what happened mum, so please teach me magic!"

After making the promise with Mathias, Eru immediately went to Tina and asked her. Why was he asking his mother? Because Tina's father, who was Eru's grandfather, was the current dean of Laihiala Pilot Academy ― Lauri Echevarria. Tina accepted gladly, gathering the necessary teaching materials within her means.

― Magic.

It goes without saying that in Eru's previous life ― back on earth, magic did not exist. It only appeared in stories and fairy tales. Most people only heard about magic when playing role playing games, like dungeons and dragons. But this powerful force existed in this world, and knights used magic often as support when fighting.

Under the guidance of his mother, who was doubling as a teacher, Eru read textbooks related to magic.

From the moment Eru decided to pilot a Silhouette Knight, Eru had started taking action. What he had been doing was the very basics, simply learning to read. Learning to read at the age of 3 was a very early start. Even the privileged class of this country ― the aristocrats ― didn't start so early. Because of this, Eru could handle materials that were quite advanced.

It was natural for kids to detest studying, but Eru was not a normal child. All of his effort was for the goal of becoming a knight. When he thought about piloting a Silhouette Knight, studying was no hassle in comparison to the reward. He could even read through textbooks from cover to cover. Because the contents were so stiff, it was better to treat it like a game, and enjoy it instead of thinking of it as studying. With the fast learning pace unique only to children, Eru learned the contents at an incredible pace.


 

 

Tina was not a teacher by profession, but she was managing it smoothly. She was the daughter of a school dean and the wife of an instructor after all. She satisfied the wishes of Eru, teaching him magic patiently.

― In simple terms, magic in this world refers to the skill of manipulating mana to perform physical phenomenon.

All living things in this world has the ability to convert the 'ether' in the air into mana, and store a certain amount of it within their body.

"Mana is something like fuel, magic will be used in accordance to the content of the magic script, to do things in the physical world through a catalyst."

Tina explained to Eru who was sitting down obediently.

"There are two types of living beings in this world; they are divided into those who can use magic independently, and those who can't. The difference lies in the existence of a catalyst within their body. For beings that can use magic, they have a crystal within their body that acts as a catalyst. For example, the strongest creatures known as dragons possess a catalyst, and their dragon breath is created using this catalyst."

"Humans don't have a catalyst inside us, so we are a race that can't use magic."

Since humans didn't have a crystal catalyst, they couldn't use magic. Based on the laws of this world, this was a natural and undeniable fact. But people had learned of a way to use magic. This was the result of using their weapon called wisdom. As living beings of this world, humans could make use of mana and external catalysts to develop scripts gradually to use magic, successfully overcoming their weakness.

With this breakthrough, humans, who were always the weakest in this world, developed gigantic magic-powered weapons after years of research - the Silhouette Knights. This made the humans one of the most powerful races.

"Mum, since the Silhouette Knights are so powerful, and we have such a huge army of knights, we can build a bigger country right?"

"Maybe it can be done, but it is difficult."

Silhouette Knights may be powerful weapons, but they were tactical weapons that required large amounts of resources to build and maintain. It was practically impossible to prepare a force capable of dominating the land. Humanity used the Aubigne mountain range as the border to maintain peace on the western side of the continent. Fremmevira remained behind it as a barrier to protect their foothold in the east. The stalemate had been going on for centuries.

"I will leave the details for history class. You will learn about it in more detail when you start school."

Tina was talking about practical applications of magic. As mentioned before, magic had to be conjured through scripts, and the construction and usage of scripts was performed by a virtual organ in the brain known as Magius circuit. In this world, all beings that are self-aware has the potential to use it.

"And Eru, scripts are sigils that perform specific phenomenon. First, are the 'Architect' sigils that perform basic phenomena, followed by the 'Control' sigils that coordinate and use Architect sigils."

By combining Architect sigils and Control sigils, the picture created was something similar to magic summoning circles on earth.

For beginners in magic, the part they will have trouble with is the construction of the script. Most people can manipulate Architect sigils immediately, but using powerful spells by using more complex scripts requires a great amount of practice. As humans can't use magic naturally, creating high level magic requires the accumulation of experience. Apart from perseverance, it also requires natural talent.

Architect sigils that determine the phenomenon and the control sigils that maximise its effects. Combining both of them by using a set of fixed laws... Right, I have seen this before, this is just like...

Eru's occupation in his past life ― programmer, helped him understand this part. In simple terms, the sigils and their interactions in the form of a script followed similar logic in programming code. The operation of the script by the magius circuit was similar to a virtual computer. Since the magius circuit was built within the brain, activating it didn't take time, performing better than computers in his previous life.

After Eru grasped the logic behind it, he 'extracted' the architect sigil and control sigil from the textbook and started using his magius circuit ― which was within the human brain ― to start coding. With such a large amount of codes, even a veteran programmer wouldn't be able to organise it within their head; they would need the help of software editors. To counter this, Eru used the magius circuit domain as a software editor to plan and compile the scripts.

Because he was a beginner, he had no idea how much magic the people in this world could use. He didn't consider his ability to easily build and control the complicated programming language to be special.

Eru held a tiny wooden wand and focused with his eyes closed.

A small crystal was fixed onto the tip of the wand. That was the crystal catalyst, a miraculous item which allowed humans to use magic. For humans using magic, they prefer to wield wands with the crystal catalyst affixed onto the tip. The wand in Eru's hand made a gentle 'Pashu' sound, and a line of fire shot out, leaving a scorched mark in the middle of the target board. He just activated the fire architect sigil with beginner magic ― 'Fire torch'.

"Wow Eru, that's great. Although it is just the architect sigil, I never imagined that you would be able to use magic so quickly."

"But mum, the textbook says that this is the basics of the basics, anyone can use it immediately."

"It is true that anyone can activate it, but to hit the target so accurately requires practice. Eru has talent for magic."

No matter how good Eru was in programming, it was useless if he only studied the theory without putting it into practice. A simple target board in the backyard and Tina accompanied Eru for practical training. They practiced all types of architect sigils one by one, allowing Eru to get used to the feeling of using magic. After casting spells repeatedly, Eru started to feel weird... it felt like energy was gradually draining from his body. It was like the fatigue you feel after exercising, but different at the same time. This unique experience confused him, but this was the natural result of expending mana. He panted heavily and breathed in the ether from the air around him, attempting to replenish his mana.

... I didn't know it was this tiring. If I used advanced spells, I would have probably fainted because of the shortness of breath.

Tina who had been supervising him, walked over with a gentle smile and rubbed his head.

"This is how it feels when you expend mana. If you don't experience it now, it will be troublesome in the future."

"... I can't catch my breath, it feels painful. My mana is empty after using just a little magic, so depressing."

"Don't be discouraged. You are still young, lacking mana is normal."

"Will I have more mana when I grow up?"

"Hmm ― Let me think. It's a bit different, but just think of it as something like stamina. The growth of mana is not solely dependent on your physical growth. It will also get stronger as you train your psyche."

"I understand. Mum, since that's the case, I will be doing special training to increase my mana pool!"

Tina gave a bitter smile, rubbing the head of the spirited Eru.

"Ara, what a hardworking child. Don't be too impatient, going too fast might be bad too."

Eru reflected upon this and felt that he was being too rash. Tina was right, rushing wouldn't be good for him, and he didn't want his mother, who was accompanying him to worry.

"Yes, mum. I will take it slow and steady."

Eru promised his mother with a straight face. Tina nodded and hugged him tightly.

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