A few months pass. I've been living with the old man and his wife, whose names I've learned are Mark and Clara. After earning the relative acceptance of the village, I've been spending my time learning all through the whole growing season, and now even the harvest is over. By this point, I can definitely understand what people are saying. I can almost speak fluently, too. Language is hard; mostly learning one in a few months is ridiculous. I can only assume my mental processing power is probably overpowered as well. (AN: Modern names because it's a massive task to make up a new naming system.)
Incidentally, I've learned some things about the area. The current system of government is indeed a form of feudalism. This village is named Striped Rock Village after an oddly colored boulder in the stream near where the first field was set up. The local lord is an earl; Striped Rock is on the edge of his fief. The reason for there not being young men to work the fields is that they were indeed conscripted for an on and off war being fought in the western part of the kingdom. Clara and Mark had three sons, but only the second one returned from the previous war; so far nobody from the village has returned from this one. That makes this one a bit odd, because although the previous wars had a horrendous death toll, they've never interrupted harvesting and planting seasons.
This morning an unknown convoy arrived. That's something which has not occurred before. The leader's wearing relatively nice clothes and is riding a horse at the head. Clara quietly identifies these people as local tax collectors. A small part in the back of my mind also suspects that these people are ready to snatch up any able bodied men who dodged the conscription for the war in the west. Thankfully, I still look the part of a child. Regardless, I'll keep a low profile. For the past while, the tax collectors have been going around the village, taking stock of supplies, and loading some of them to take away.
I've noticed something odd. These guys are taking more than just cereal crops; some of the food is strongly perishable and yet is being collected in large quantities anyway. Under what conditions would the local lord requisition fresh food? It's not like he's going to sell it in the nearest town. That place is a week away at the speed of this convoy and it's not even the city the lord lives in, which would be the only market he can directly oversee. This food is meant for consumption, not sale, probably in a place closer than the nearest town. It's enough to feed a fair number of mouths, too. Maybe there's another more regional conflict brewing in the area. In any case, the amount of food Clara prepares that night is very slightly lower than before; from this, it's probably a safe guess that the tax collectors have taken more food than they usually do. I'm not sure if this means all of the other villages besides Striped Rock have had lower output this year from lack of manpower or if the lord really needs more food to support another army. Since I don't actually need to eat, I pass it back. Clara and Mark are giving me really weird looks, but I don't intend to take the food if it's already being rationed.
A few weeks after the tax collector incident, word reaches the village that indeed the marquis in charge of a bordering fief has made movements to annex the territory of the local earl, prompting a regional conflict. It's unsettling, but not yet the village's problem. Soon winter comes. I'm pretty much done learning the language now. I've been outside almost all the time during my stay here, aside from sleeping, strong rain, and some meals, but now I'm starting to stay in. This gives me the chance to confirm something I've suspected for quite a while now. Namely, the way Clara starts a fire in the mornings is definitely through a method that I can only describe as magic. There are no tools involved, just kindling. I recall that God had said something about giving life its own type of energy; this is probably it.
"Hey Ms Clara, can you teach me how you light a fire?"
"You don't know how to light a fire?"
"We didn't do it this way in my homeland."
Clara chuckles a bit.
"I'll never understand your people. Come here."
And that's all I have to explain about my situation. Clara's long since realized that any story about my homeland will absolutely sound like the raving of a nut job. You know how you can sometimes tell which people telling "life stories" on the internet are selling BS based on how improbable every event is? Like, how everyone in their stories is either a cartoonish straw man opponent or a white knight ally, or how low probability events continuously occur? Take that mentality and tell me how well someone from the medieval period is going to interpret the idea of a world with air conditioning and lights and modern politics. Anyway.
Clara begins explaining that she can start fires by channeling the "spirit of fire." According to her explanation, the spirit of fire is everywhere and is focused in all real fires. Hence, the spirit of fire is the source from which fire gains its properties. The first step, then, is to feel the spirit of fire, and for that I needed to stick my hand near or into the fire. Okay, sure.
I don't feel anything different, though. The fire is just like any other fire. It gives off heat but no other mystic component or anything. Nothing...else. Clara isn't referring to heat with this business about the spirit of fire, is she? Heat is everywhere, and fire gives off a lot of heat. If so, Clara starts fires by channeling heat? You just imagine heat or something and it happens? I pick up a pinch of kindling and imagine that it's hot. I also conceptualize pumping thermal energy into the particles making up the kindling.
I feel that something flows through my hand for a second as the kindling bursts into flames. Almost immediately, the kindling is consumed and the flow stops. So...magic, huh. I imagined adding energy into a system and it happened? That was easy. Too easy. Why do people not use it for everything?
"Ms Clara, if starting a fire is this easy, why do people still fight with swords?"
"Stop and feel. Aren't you exhausted after making such a blaze on your first go?"
No? I understand the implication, though. Evidently magic is draining on the user and producing small magical phenomena is already around human limit. If that short blaze I made is supposed to be a lot, then it follows that normal human strength is better for most cases, except for obviously useful things that can't be done directly, such as starting fires. Still…
"How come children don't accidentally channel the spirit of fire and burn down their own homes before they know better?"
"Children younger than you can't channel the spirit of fire, even if they're taught."
Oh? That's interesting. Children can't use magic until they reach a certain age? I wonder if magic use relies on some kind of special organ or something. That would explain why magic use causes exhaustion. I wish I'd learned about anatomy back on Earth. It'd be easy to check that hypothesis if only I had some prior knowledge, but sadly I'd never be able to identify an extra internal organ with what I know.
I thank Clara for her lesson and step outside for a bit. It's pretty cold, and as a result nobody is outside. That's convenient. I walk to the pile of firewood and pick up a stick. If imagining heat is enough to start a fire, then can I perform telekinesis by imagining applying a force?
Yes, I can. That flow from before goes through my hand and the stick floats up. Unlike the fire, though, telekinesis requires constant input and so there's no reason for the flow to stop like it had when I consumed all the kindling. This time I get a chance to study it. This flowing sensation really is kind of mystical. I can't place exactly how it should be described, but there is definitely a flow and the energy is definitely sourced, at least initially, from outside my body. I sit down and focus on continuously lifting the stick, while studying the source of the magic. After a while, I become quite certain that the magic flow into my body isn't uniform from all directions. There's a little bit less in the direction of the house and a little bit more in the directions with open air. I think that means that I can use magic flow to detect physical objects, but the amount of precision with which I can do so is unknown. The knowledge I get from this technique is sort of instinctual, like sensory information it just rolls in now that I'm aware that it's possible. Even when I'm taking a break from actively trying to see the limits of the ability, I can still feel it going without significant loss of precision. I'm going to call this "passive detection."
Night falls. I've been improving passive detection for a while now. So far I'm able to detect fairly large objects (such as Mark and Clara, who are still inside the house) through walls. As I continue to focus, my awareness of the objects' shapes becomes progressively more detailed. I've yet to hit a precision bottleneck. This great precision also raises the question of how far outwards this method of detection can reach. As I switch from focusing on improving precision to improving distance, the detection range also gets larger and larger. First a general awareness of the village. Eventually even the forest. With this degree of focus, I can feel some shapes in the forest even from this range. That's a bird, that's a tree. Wait.
That's a convoy. Why would there be a convoy here?
**
AN: "Why is magic so weak?"
Because if magic was strong it would have major ramifications on social structure and living and combat and frankly I don't want to think all that through.
"Why is there magic at all?"
Because MC needs to be able to snap his fingers and obliterate a castle or I've failed as an isekai author.