-1 month later-
I can finally walk! With the help of magic of course. You didn't think I could by myself did you? I am just 2 months old. Normal babies are still supposed to be keeping their parents up at night. Granted, I'm not a normal baby.
I have also progressed to the (Bright-Orange) state, but I will need 3 more days to get to (Pristine-Orange) and 10 more additional days to get to (Dark-Sienna). My parents were amazed at seeing me walk, and when they examined me with mana eyes they didn't see anything out of the ordinary and chalked it up to me being born with an extremely rare constitution.
I managed to fool them by retracting all my mana inside my core and blending in my core to the rest of my body. I found out I could make my core completely invisible by making all of the mana stay incredibly still.
There were things called constitutions in this world that people could be born with. People could be born with extreme innate strength like I had fooled my parents into believing, or with a body that could store more mana. There were a variety of constitutions that appeared across the world.
This past month I have been focusing on reading, trying to walk, and cultivating. Cultivating was mostly just regaining my mana manually every time I used it so my core could focus on advancing.
I spent most of my awake time reading, and whenever I got bored I practiced trying to walk. I began by standing up with support, without support, and then taking a step. The first step was easy, but I had more trouble without support. Although I could increase my strength with magic, I couldn't help my sense of balance or reflexes and motor control.
It took me almost a day to be able to stand without falling on my butt, and when I did finally stand for more than 5 seconds I was overjoyed. The following day I showed off to my parents and tried to walk. I mostly wanted them there in case fell face-first and got an injury or something along those lines.
I remembered reading some novels where the protagonist was a baby and broke something while trying to walk. I could feel myself shivering just at the thought of breaking a bone. I had never done so in my previous life, and I wasn't going to start now.
I had been able to walk a step and a half on my first try before falling, and my parents caught me. I had slowly improved after many attempts and could walk from one side of the room to another by the end of the day.
By now I was an expert in walking as a baby. I had also read many books during this time. Almost a whole row of the bookshelf, which was around 20 books. They mostly just talked about stories, history, religion, and magic, with a few martial arts and sword training books mixed in there.
I had learned many things from the books I couldn't wait to try out. I also experimented with small-scale magic to better my control. I practiced all my spells and even learned some new ones.
I got Heal(T. 1) from light magic. It would wash away my fatigue and any bruises I had, but it did cost a lot of mana. It took 10,000 for one spell. There was also Shadow Cover(T. 1) from dark magic that covered anything in shadow, and mana depended on size and light. The final spell I got was Air Ball(T. 1), which was pretty self-explanatory.
I mainly used inscribing to make these magics as I couldn't speak yet, and to speak I would need to use magic to strengthen my vocal cords which was inconvenient. I would continue to read the books on the shelf and practice my magic.
-2 weeks later-
I had broken through to perfect and was now going to break through to Sienna. Avery told me of another change that was in Sienna and I wondered if it was as drastic as Orange.
During these past two weeks, I have been experimenting with healing magic. I was trying to figure out how exactly the healing magic worked, or how magic worked in general. Healing magic was just the easiest to figure out.
I didn't know whether healing magic just increased my body's rate of healing, or used some third party to heal myself. In ordinary healing without magic, the body just brought cells over to the infected place to cover it up and rebuild it. Healing magic could be just the acceleration of this process, the rewinding of time, or making matter appear.
Through the process of elimination, I brought it down to that healing just accelerated the body. Both rewinding time and making matter appear were a bit ridiculous. Rewinding time would take a lot of mana if it was possible, and I wouldn't have mana capacity for it and it was the same for making matter appear.
I knew none of my other spells made matter out of mana as they just manipulated matter instead of creating it. I wasn't even sure if influencing time was a possibility with magic. That just left acceleration of the natural process.
As I thought about the implications of this, my mind crossed the obvious ones like using healing magic to work out and if it could regrow limbs or make somebody grow. While thinking, I also stumbled across a bit of a mystery.
If healing accelerated the division of your cells, wouldn't that make you age faster? Yet, my grandmother was looking 60 while being 120, so this couldn't be the case. After pondering the problem for a while I came up with a theory.
What if mana strengthened your DNA or cells? That would explain both the slow aging and exceptional constitutions people could have. You age over time because your cells can't divide as well as before, but if mana strengthened the DNA that allowed your cells to replicate, you could live longer than normal humans.
And if you were born especially susceptible to mana, that would make your body and mana channels stronger leading to the constitutions that my parents talked about.
This was certainly an interesting theory and I would have to test some stuff out after advancing. It was the middle of the night and everyone was asleep, so I decided to advance. I compressed my core down for what seemed like an eternity before I finally broke through. Avery's familiar voice rang out again.
'Congratulations Alex, you have advanced to the Sienna stage! Here are the changes that come with the stage:
1. Your rate of absorbing mana is now capped at 1 gaseous mana per second and it will take 2 seconds to get 1 liquid mana.
2. Now your core size will increase by 1.5 for every level.
3. Your mana has a thicker viscosity than before and is on its journey of becoming solid.
Those are all the changes. You will now need 25 days at best to get to (Dull-Sienna) and 37 additional days to get to (Bright-Sienna). You will need 116 days total or 4 months at best to get to (Pristine-Sienna).'
Looks like my days of shooting through cultivation were lost, but it gave me a time period to look forward to. After 4 more months, I would be 6 months old and may be able to go out on my own. I would cultivate and practice magic during this time to prepare for the day I could go outside. I decided to also use healing magic on myself every day to see if it would accelerate my growth.