At first, Mark (Levi) was quite confused with the entire reincarnation thing.
'how the hell did I reincarnate!'. Such were his thoughts at the time. The entire thing was a shock to him, but he quickly resigned himself to the reality of it all.
'well, what's happened has happened, there's no turning back time. More importantly, I need to find out more about this phenomenon called reincarnation'.
Levi was a very practical person, he knew there was nothing he could do about the entire situation and had already embraced it. Infact, he wanted to perform a few experiments to test out the entire reincarnation thing, how it works and all it's possible consequences. But the only person he could use as a guinea pig, was himself and he wasn't the least bit ready to give up on his new life.
Mark had been reincarnated as the second son of a noble man known as Count Raymond Swordhearth. He was the count of the south and his estate was built in the city Estia, it was a considerably large town in the country of Elentia. But it only amounted to just another dot on the map in the entire continent of Illustria.
Levi was a considerably handsome boy, he had black hair just like his father and light blue eyes like his mother. He had three siblings. The first son and the oldest child was named Alexander Swordhearth, he was older than Levi by three years. The first daughter and the second child of the family was named Aina Swordhearth, she came just a year after the first and was older than Levi by two years.
The last sibling was Levi's twin, Isabelle. She had black hair and brown eyes, just like their father.
'damn it, I can't abandon this life no matter what. After suffering for all those years on earth, I was finally given the life I deserve. If I kill myself in the name of experiments, there is a chance that I won't get reincarnated again. And even if I do, what are the odds of reincarnating as a rich and handsome noble kid with a loving family? Even though I'm not the heir, I know damn sure that my parents have already planned out my life for me so I can just take it easy and be....happy'.
The temptations of his new life had almost completely quenched Leone's desire to find out the truth. It was expected after all, he now had every thing he wanted out of life so what was the point of reincarnating again.
Levi led a soft and pampered life. The language they used was not much different from English, so he naturally got it down. He got everything he ever wanted and his life was going great, that is until he reached seven years of age, everything turned upside down.
In the new world, there existed an elusive power source known as mana. Mana was the fuel for magic and ever since it's discovery, magic had been what made the world turn. With magic came infinite possibilities, humans could use magic to do things that were previously considered inconceivable.
Magicians, more commonly known as mages, were the people who learnt how to use this magic on a higher level than any other in the world. In truth, many people learnt how to use harness mana to perform smaller versions of magic, but the former could use said mana to perform much greater feat than the latter in their chosen field of study. To the mages, the skills of the normal people were nothing more than cheap parlour tricks.
For the nobles, becoming a mage and learning the arts of magic soon became a necessity. And when children reach the age of seven, parents would reach out to a diviner to determine the mana pool and magical affinity of their child's mana core in what was soon dubbed as the potential test.
A mana core was a structure that individuals used to harness mana to fuel magic. It was far too difficult to harness ambient mana to perform magic, hence the existence of the mana core. It allowed one to easily draw mana from within themselves to use magic. It was a structure which naturally formed in every human being and it reached maturation at the age of seven.
Not everyone was born with equal talents in magic, some people were born with larger mana cores allowing them to harness more mana than others. It was measured with the use of alphabets for rankings, the rankings went from rank E to S. It was important to note though that everyone started out with D-rank core's and could only progress to reach their potential by training hard.
E rank was the lowest, the useless ones who had less mana than even the normal humans. Ten percent of the population had this level of man pool.
D rank was the norm for every human being, thirty five percent of the population had this level of mana pool. It was the standard for every normal human being.
C rank was the base level for any person who aspired to become a mage, if one didn't have at least this level of mana pool, then it was utterly impossible for them to become a mage. Twenty five percent of human population had this level of mana pool.
B rank was the above average level, it was categorized as higher level and anyone with this mana pool had the potential to become an above average mage and if they got a good affinity, then with a lot of hard work they could become a high ranked mage. Twenty percent of the population possessed this level of mana pool.
A rank was an extremely high and rare level, only possessed by roughly about ten percent of the population. Individuals with this level of mana pool were all but guaranteed of becoming high ranking mages.
Then there was S rank. This level was reserved for the geniuses and prodigies, the real freaks of nature. Less than one percent of the population had this level of mana pool. There weren't up to a thousand people in the entire ten thousand years of human history with this level of mana pool.
The amount of mana a single person could harness was termed mana pool. It couldn't be increased or decreased, your mana pool was decided from birth.
Magical affinities were what determined the type of magic one could perform in their life time. There were three types of affinities: true magic, deviant magic, arcane magic.
True magic consisted of the four basic elements; fire, water, wind, earth. Deviant magic consisted of any form of magic outside that such as; metal magic, wood magic, lightening magic, ice and so on.
Arcane magic consisted only of light and dark magic. Both of which were entirely different from each other. Light magic had the highest healing ability amongst many others, and darkness magic was only possessed by demons and their servants.
When they reached of age, Isabelle and Levi got their mana pool and magic affinity checked together by a famed diviner known as miss Enwise.
Isabelle had an A ranked mana pool as well as an affinity in one true and one deviant magic, namely; fire and ice. Her parents were ecstatic when they heard of her results. It was expected since with results like her's, she could grow to become an S-rank mage, if not higher.....
Levi's results on the other hand, completely contrasted his sister's. He had an E-ranked mana pool and no matter how the diviner tried, he couldn't determine Levi's magical affinity.
At first, his parents still had hope. There were special people in the world who didn't have a magic affinity as they could manipulate ambient mana just as easily and they usually had poor mana pools since they wouldn't need their own mana. These category of people were called 'Affinity deviants' and they were extremely rare, their base potential was also S-rank.
But try as he might, Levi thoroughly failed all the tests to determine if he was an affinity deviant. And that was when it started to dawn on his parents, that their child belonged to the category of people who were as rare, of not rarer than the affinity deviants. The special category of useless bottom feeders and glorified failures who would never be able to use any form of magic till the day that they died.
'sigh....looks like my bad luck followed me to this life as well..sighs'
Levi, was one of the 'magicless'.
That declaration marked the beginning of Levi's tribulations in the new world.