Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 13 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

Paternal Dignity

BEFORE I KNEW IT, three more months had slipped past.

It was summer now. The snow had melted completely, and we’d landed in the middle of a hot, dry stretch. So far, I’d spent most of this year mooning over Lucie. Whenever I had a little spare time, I’d use it looking at her. She was my first and only child, after all. It was only natural for me to adore her.

On this day, like many other days, I was hanging around in her bedroom, watching her quietly. Whenever I gazed down on that angelic, chubby-cheeked little face, it put a big goofy grin on mine.

However, I was technically the head of this household now. I didn’t exactly exude authority, but I did want to act in a relatively dignified fashion around my wives and sisters. If I spent too much time cooing over my baby like an idiot, their opinion of me would surely be affected.

For this reason, I intended to be a stern father. You know—tough but fair. That sort of thing.

If I knew Paul, he’d probably had similar thoughts looking down on me as a baby. A father should inspire awe in his children. He should be an example to them, and a goal for them to reach. 

At one point, I’d thought of Paul as pitiful, or even pathetic. But by now, I knew better. He’d been a magnificent father. He had his flaws, and plenty of them, but he was wonderful nonetheless.

To be sure, he wasn’t the most faithful husband out there, but I didn’t have much right to criticize him on that point. It was better to focus on the positives.

At this point, I could say with confidence that I wanted to follow in my father’s—

“Aaah, aaah!”

Uh-oh, she’s fussing again. 

I didn’t have Sylphie to rely on today, so I had to step up to the plate myself.

“Heeere we go, Lucie! It’s your daddy! Abluhbluhbluh!”

“Aahaah! Hyaa ha ha!”

Oh lord, she is so cute. Is there anything in the world as adorable as this baby’s smile?

My wife somehow gave birth to a literal angel by mistake. There’s no other explanation for this!

Hmm, I got a little sidetracked there for a moment. Let’s get back to the “stern and dignified” thing.

The way I saw it, the ideal father was close enough to his children to be caring, but distant enough to guide them forward. Normally, he should be kind and gentle with his kids. When necessary, however, he shouldn’t hesitate to give them a firm scolding. And when they really needed his support, he should always step up to the plate for them. That was the ideal father, as I saw it.

It sort of sounded like I was just describing my impressions of Paul. Was he my idea of a perfect dad, then?

Hmm. I didn’t want my children thinking of me as “pathetic,” to be honest. But then again, it was partially Paul’s weaknesses that endeared me to him. There were lots of lessons I could learn from his example. Also, though he might have looked pitiful to me sometimes, he had always been a wonderful dad to Norn. That much was obvious, considered how much she’d adored him.

In that case, maybe love and compassion was the most imp—

“Aaah. Aaabaa, baaa!”

Oh no, she’s getting worked up again…

“Hewwo, Lucie! Daddy’s back! I’m gonna pick you up, okay? Here we gooo!”

“Hyaa ha! Hyahahaha!”

As soon I picked Lucie up out of her cradle and began to rock her back and forth, she started cackling loudly. Judging from the cherubic smile on her face, she liked being cradled in my big, strong arms. My heart couldn’t take much more of this cuteness.

“Uh, Rudeus…”

“Yes, Suzanne?”

As I comforted Lucie, her wet nurse Suzanne had spoken up from across the room. Suzanne was a retired adventurer, and an old friend of mine.

“I don’t mind soothing the little lady when she fusses, you know? It’s part of the job.”

“Appreciate the offer, but I’d like to keep these blissful moments to myself, thank you very much.”

The two of us had gotten to know each other back when I was just starting off as a solo adventurer. We’d fallen out of contact for about four years, but then she’d seen my posting for the wet nurse job. It had been a real shock seeing her again.

“Huh. Well, if you really want to do it yourself, feel free.”

“Is there any man in the world who doesn’t want to soothe their newborn daughter?”

“Can’t say my husband’s too eager to deal with it.”

“How shameful. It sounds like he needs an education in the joys of fatherhood.”

I remembered the time I spent with Suzanne very clearly.

I’d been only twelve years old, newly dumped by Eris, and making my way to the Northern Territories alone, feeling extremely sorry for myself. Words cannot describe how miserable it made me to have to dissolve our old party, “Dead End,” at the guild in Basherant. As a way of distracting myself from my feelings, I immediately tried to take on an extremely difficult and dangerous task all by myself.

That was when Suzanne and her party had stepped in.

Their group had two warriors, one archer, one healer, and one mage. They were a B-rank party, but all of them were experienced veterans. Suzanne was one of the front-line warriors. To be honest, she wasn’t that impressive a swordswoman or anything. In terms of combat skill, she was closer to the bottom of Rank B than the top.

However, she had a reputation for kindness, and she knew how to keep a party running smoothly. When she noticed me trying to take a suicide mission, she’d walked right over and said something like “How about we do that job together?”

I protested that I was trying to make a name for myself as a solo adventurer, but she argued that I needed to work with people to build a reputation. In the end, I let her talk me into working together.

At the time, Suzanne was alarmed by just how rough I looked. My eyes were dull and lifeless, and she could tell I wasn’t sleeping much at all. When I spoke to her in a carefully polite tone, she’d found it creepy rather than reassuring.

Nonetheless, she took me in and helped me out. Until the day I left that first city behind, her party took me along on all sorts of quests. They even invited me to join them on a permanent basis.

I ended up rejecting that offer, but they were always friendly to me when we bumped into each other. Sometimes they’d even pull me into a tavern for a meal.

Looking back on it now, it was obvious they were looking out for me in all sorts of ways. I was grateful to all of them.

After we went our separate ways, Suzanne had married Timothy, the mage and leader of their party. They’d moved back here together, since Sharia happened to be Timothy’s hometown.

They had two kids together. Unfortunately, their third had been born prematurely and died soon after.

Suzanne’s body was still producing milk, despite the death of her child, so she’d decided to sell her services as a wet nurse. She’d been looking through the job postings when she happened to see my name.

Incidentally, I’d stopped by to say hello to Timothy just a few days earlier. The man hadn’t changed a bit.

“…Gotta say, though, you sure have changed.”

“Hmm. Have I?”

“Uh, yeah. Back in the old days, you never would have insulted a woman’s husband in front of her.”

This was true. When I first met Suzanne, I was terrified of upsetting people.

I still didn’t want to offend anyone if I could possibly avoid it, but I guess I wasn’t walking on eggshells these days. A lot of things had happened since then.

“Sorry, Suzanne. Did I upset you?”

“Nah. A little teasing never hurt anyone, you know? As long as you’re sayin’ it to my face, it’s all good. Makes me more comfortable, if anything.”

It probably had something to do with the friends I’d made at the University. I had more people I could talk to casually these days.

Zanoba and Cliff both preferred it that way, and it was easier for me as well.

“Hell, you could stand to be a little more casual around me in general,” Suzanne continued. “You’re technically my employer, you know?”

“I suppose so, but that’s no reason to treat you impolitely.”

Suzanne rolled her eyes at that. “Whatever you say, kid.” 

I owed Suzanne a lot. At the end of the day, she was the one who’d taught me the ropes of adventuring in the Northern Territories. I couldn’t bring myself to be too casual with her.

“Well, I guess it’s all good with me as long as I get my paycheck.”

“Of course. I’ll tip handsomely, I assure you.”

The woman talked like it was all about the money, but she’d been wonderful so far.

I’d been a little nervous at first, since I remembered some horror stories about sadistic babysitters from my previous life. But Suzanne was so tender with Lucie that you’d never have known she wasn’t her mother.

Of course, we did have Lilia and Aisha hanging around the house to keep an eye on things. And I knew from the start she wasn’t the kind of person who’d mistreat a child.

“How are your sons doing, by the way?”

“Ah, the boys are a real handful, as always. They’re running Grandma and Grandpa ragged.”

Suzanne and Timothy were living with Timothy’s parents at the moment. It was the only reason she was able to work full-time as a wet nurse with two toddlers running around the house.

She regularly complained to Lilia about how tough it was to be living under the same roof as her mother-in-law. Lilia was probably more inclined to identify with the mother-in-law, but I guess she was about Suzanne’s age. It seemed like they got along; I saw them drinking tea together every once in a while.

“…I’ve been wondering. Did you want a boy first, too?”

“Not really. Why would I?”

“Well, y’know…everybody wants an heir, right?”

“Ah. Sure.”

I’d had a few discussions like this after my daughter was born. Zanoba and Ariel had both brought it up as well. It was obviously an important issue to royal families and noble houses—back in Asura, I’d even heard stories of newborn boys being whisked away from distant relatives for adoption by the main Boreas family.

“The thing is, though, I’m not really a noble or a wealthy businessman. It doesn’t really bother me either way. I just want to see my kid grow up happy.”

If anything, I was pleased to have received the cuter option. I was seriously outnumbered in this house, true…but I can’t say I minded being surrounded by adorable girls and charming women. It wasn’t like they were bullying me, either. They were almost too nice.

“Hey, that’s the spirit. Wish my husband would take a page out of your book. The moment I got pregnant, he was talkin’ about all the stuff he wanted to do if it turned out to be a boy. Didn’t spare a minute’s thought for the alternative!”

“Well, you got your boys in the end, so I guess it turned out all right.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve got some mixed feelings about it, though. The third one was a girl, you know?”

“Ah, right…sorry. That was a dumb thing to say…”

For an instant, I found myself wondering how I would have felt if Lucie had been stillborn. Just the thought of it was horrible enough.

“It’s fine! We’ll just try again.”

Suzanne seemed almost nonchalant about it, though. Was losing a baby really something you could shrug off like that? At the very least, I knew I would have taken it hard. It wasn’t easy for Sylphie to get pregnant, so there was no telling how long it would take for us to get another shot.

And more importantly, Sylphie would have been devastated. It was easy to picture her crying her eyes out and apologizing to me for losing our child.

Gah. Just thinking about this was making my stomach hurt.

There wasn’t any point in dwelling on it, right? Lucie had come out fine, and Sylphie was okay too. Enough time had passed that I felt relatively confident it wasn’t just a dream. 

Rather than thinking about how things could have gone wrong, I should be enjoying my good fortune.

“So anyway…I’m assuming you guys dissolved your party at some point, right?”

“Yeah, not long after you left town. When you’re as mediocre as we were, it gets pretty tough when you lose a core party member, you know? Patrice said he was goin’ back to Asura to become a soldier, and we sorta fell apart on the spot.”

“…Do you know what happened to Sara?”

“You curious?”

“Yeah, a little.”

Sara was the name of an archer who’d belonged to Suzanne’s party. It was rare for an adventurer to rely on a bow and arrows, but she had a real talent for landing timely, accurate shots in battle, which made her quite effective at her role. We were relatively close in age, and she’d been openly hostile to me at first…but over time, we’d gotten increasingly friendly.

In the end, our budding relationship imploded thanks to my “performance” issues, but I was still a bit interested in how she was doing now.

“Well, she’s still out there making a living as an adventurer. You don’t see many archers around, since it’s a lot easier to learn how to fling a fireball, but she’s got the skills and experience now. She’ll be just fine anywhere she goes.”

“Ah. Okay.”

“If there’s anything you left unsaid, you should probably go find her sooner rather than later. Never know when an adventurer might get themselves killed.”

“I don’t think that’s really necessary.”

Our little fling was in the past now. Finding her to talk about it wasn’t going to do me any good.

It was hard to imagine that Sara would enjoy remembering that whole mess, either.

“Well, if you say so… Hmm?”

Suddenly, Suzanne’s eyes flicked away from me and toward the door.

When I turned around, I saw Zenith standing there quietly. Lilia was lurking just behind her.

“Mom?”

Zenith made no reply, of course, but Lilia nodded. “Pardon the intrusion, Master Rudeus.”

Her eyes a bit unfocused, Zenith slowly stepped forward, then sat down next to me—positioning herself so she could get a good look at Lucie’s face.

“Don’t worry, Mom. Lucie’s doing just fine today.”

This got no reaction whatsoever. Zenith just stared at the baby so intently she seemed to have forgotten anyone else was even in the room.

After her arrival at my house, I felt like she’d become noticeably more active. When Norn was around, she tried to feed her at the dinner table; when she spotted Aisha, they’d go out to the garden and pull weeds together. And when I was watching Lucie, she’d stop by like this to check in on us. There were subtle differences in how she reacted to Roxy and Sylphie, too.

Her facial expression never seemed to change, and she still hadn’t spoken a word. But she was moving. She was changing. Maybe she was inching her way back to something like a recovery.

“…”

“Kyaa hah! Gaa!”

Zenith had reached out her hands. Smiling from ear to ear, Lucie grabbed at them playfully.

“Aw, little Lucie sure does love her grandma, doesn’t she?”

At first, I’d been nervous about this. Zenith’s symptoms were comparable to something like dementia; I’d worried she might harm Lucie for no reason at all, without even meaning to. By this point, though, it was obvious that we had nothing to worry about. All she ever did was watch Lucie quietly. I’d never gotten a hint of a negative emotion from her. If anything, she seemed like a normal woman gazing peacefully down at her grandchild.

I felt a bit guilty for having doubted her in the first place. It wasn’t like she’d ever gotten violent with anyone before.

“Ahaha! Gyaaaha!”

On some level, it seemed like Lucie understood that she meant well, too. The kid was all smiles whenever Zenith visited. It was honestly pretty heartwarming. 

But of course, there was a lot we didn’t know about Zenith’s condition and how it might develop. It was hard to imagine anything bad coming of these visits, but given how much was still uncertain, it was probably best for them to stay supervised.

After all, accidents can happen, even when your intentions are good.

“…”

Suddenly, Zenith looked up at me. It almost looked like she was trying to send me a message with her eyes…not that I had any idea what it might me.

“Waaah! Waaaaah!”

Seconds later, Lucie started fussing loudly.

“Pardon me, Miss Zenith…”

Lilia reached down and gently took Lucie away from me and Zenith. Suzanne came over and received the baby. She started soothing her while simultaneously checking her diaper and looking for rashes.

After a moment, though, she nodded. “Looks like somebody’s hungry.”

Was it that time already? Sylphie had breastfed her before leaving, but somehow a couple hours must have slipped by since then. Huh.

“Well then, I guess I’ll step out of the room.”

“I don’t mind if you want to watch, you know.”

It was kind of Suzanne to offer, but I declined politely. We were old friends and all, but that didn’t make it okay for me to see the breasts of a married woman. She was just as well-endowed as Zenith or Lilia, too. They actually seemed a little bigger than before. Maybe it was all the milk in there?

If I got a glimpse of those things, the Wise Old Hermit inside me might be roused from his slumber. That in itself might not be such a big deal. But what if Lilia, say, were to mention it to the others? Sylphie and Roxy might be disheartened. It was an undeniable fact that they were more on the flat-chested side of the spectrum, but I didn’t choose women based on their bodies. I didn’t want them feeling self-conscious about it.

In any case…was it just me, or had Zenith noticed that Lucie was ready to be fed? Maybe you pick up a sixth sense for that kind of thing after raising three children of your own.

***

I walked out into the hallway and glanced through the nearest window. Unfortunately, it was a grey and rainy day. It was hard to guess exactly what the time might be, but since Lucie had gotten hungry, it was probably close to noon.

Somehow, I’d managed to spend my entire morning hanging out with the baby. But it was time well spent, in my opinion. Nothing was more important than spending time with your kid.

For the moment, though, I headed to my study—a small room on the first floor that I’d reserved for my research.

The desk inside was covered in handwritten reports and a few magic stones.

I hadn’t spent the last six months playing with my daughter and my sisters to the exclusion of anything else. I’d also been studying the prizes I brought back from the Begaritt Continent.

It was these stones that had lent the hydra its ability to shrug off my spells, forcing us into dangerous close-range combat. They absorbed any magic that came in contact with them. At a glance, they looked like ordinary light-green scales. If not for their transparency, they wouldn’t even have been identifiable as stones. 

I’d managed to learn a few basic facts about these from the library at the University of Magic. 

First of all, they were usually referred to as “stones of absorption.” Manatite Hydras produced them naturally within their bodies. Since that species of monster had gone extinct thousands of years ago during the continental sundering, they were now incredibly rare and valuable.

Many dragons produced magical stones or crystals inside their bodies. This was just one particularly unusual case in point. The stone in my staff, for example, had been retrieved from a draconic species of sea serpent.

The effects of these stones varied widely, but many of them had direct magical applications of some sort. Some could increase your magical capacity, or reduce the amount of mana it took to cast spells; others made your spells twice as powerful without increasing their mana cost. It wasn’t that surprising that there was one capable of absorbing magic entirely.

The tricky part was figuring out how exactly these stones were doing that.

When you just left them sitting on a desk like this, the stones of absorption didn’t actively suck the mana out of everything around them. Clearly, something had to happen first. After a bit of experimentation, I soon realized that the stones had a “front” and a “back.” It was very hard to tell one side from the other, but they definitely existed.

When I placed my hand on the back of a stone and fed it some mana, the front side would begin absorbing magic while emitting a high-pitched whine. 

In other words, these things didn’t work automatically. You had to turn them on and off yourself. It was a little bit like the suction pads on the tentacles of an octopus.

It seemed that the hydra we fought had been activating its magic-absorbing “armor” as it saw the spells fly, rendering my attacks useless at the last second. 

I had a hard time imagining many people could react as quickly, but wild animals can often have much better dynamic vision and reflexes than any human being.

Experimenting further, I also realized that the stone didn’t exactly “absorb” magic in the way I’d been expecting. When I held it in my right hand and cast a spell at it with the other, the spell would disappear, but I didn’t regain the mana that I’d spent. In fact, I was pretty sure it was costing me some mana—the same amount I’d used to cast the original spell.

It would take more focused experiments to be sure what this meant, but I did have a working hypothesis. Basically, I suspected that the stone was converting the mana I fed it into waves that could instantly disintegrate anything else made of mana. The results were similar to the spell Disturb Magic, but I felt like these stones were even more thorough at obliterating the spells they interacted with.

There were still many things this theory alone couldn’t explain, of course. For example, figurines I’d created with magic were completely unaffected by the stones, even at point-blank range.

Earthen figurines were immune to the waves, but the projectile from my Stone Cannon wasn’t. I had no idea why that would be the case. Maybe the mana in the figurines had stabilized over time, making them immune to disruption? Hmm.

There wasn’t much point going down these rabbit holes, though. I didn’t even have a good grasp of what “mana” really was. Rather than groping around for a comprehensive explanation, I wanted to focus on how I could use these things. And how I could counteract them in the future.

With that thought in mind, I’d carried out another experiment.

I had the feeling that I could use these stones to destroy some things Disturb Magic couldn’t. Magic circles, for example.

Cliff had helped me out with this experiment. As I’d hoped, I managed to destroy both a Barrier spell and the magic circle he’d used to cast it. The design on his original scroll was unaffected, but as long as the spell was in active use, the stones of absorption could erase the circle itself.

However, they weren’t able to affect a magic circle on the inside of a magical implement. Maybe it was because that circle was carved into the implement itself, rather than drawn on its surface.

That would make sense. Thinking back on our battle with the hydra, I realized that it never deactivated the magic circle in its lair despite thrashing around all over the place.

In any case, the most important takeaway was that these scales couldn’t destroy everything of a magical nature.

That said, they were probably more than effective enough to deal with most threats I might encounter. With one of these in my back pocket, I could break myself out the next time I blundered into a trap and landed on the inside of a Barrier spell. Ideally I would avoid blundering into traps in the first place, but it never hurt to have an insurance policy.

At the moment, I was thinking about incorporating one of the stones into my prosthetic hand somewhere. Maybe in the palm.

It might be tricky to use that hand for both activating the stone and casting magic, but hopefully I’d get the hang of it with some practice.

“Hello, brother dear. You have a guest.”

I’d been tinkering around in my study for some time when Aisha popped her head in to announce that we had visitors. Her face was calm and composed; she’d snapped into professional maid mode.

“Who is it?”

“Prince Zanoba. He’s waiting for you in the living room.”

Hmm. Wonder if he needs something? 

Not that I’d mind if he just came over on a whim, of course… Maybe he just wanted some company.

“Got it. Thanks, Aisha.”

I pushed myself up off my seat casually.

Zanoba had been making progress on his own research into the automaton recently. My Zaliff Prosthesis had been a product of those efforts. And as it turned out, the automaton’s legs and feet worked similarly to the hands and arms. I’d helped make the prototype this time. Zanoba drew up the plans, I created the model section by section with my magic, and Cliff inscribed it with the necessary magic circles.

It was a slow, delicate process. We’d spent nearly a month making a single leg. Someday, we’d hopefully be selling them alongside our artificial hands, but we were a long way from mass-producing these things.

Anyway. Now that we’d gotten a good grasp of the limbs, Zanoba was finally starting to investigate the automaton’s body. This involved locating the fine seams between its sections, and then carefully cutting them apart to study the “innards.”

Right at the center of its chest, he’d found a magic stone. It was a pretty red crystalline thing of unusual size. After studying it, however, he realized that it wasn’t actually just a single stone. It was a combination of numerous smaller ones, each covered in tiny magic circles.

This was clearly the automaton’s “core.” If we managed to decipher all the patterns etched onto it, we would theoretically be capable of making the same thing ourselves.

And then, once we took our research to even greater heights, the Robo-Maid dream would finally become a reality!

Unfortunately, Zanoba was struggling in the face of this new challenge.

The circles on the core were unbelievably strange and complex. What’s more, the patterns were full of snatches of ancient writing—notes, warnings, passages from obscure books—and preliminary, scratched-out designs. Basically, it was clear that the creator of the automaton had still been perfecting the design for the core even as they built it.

It seemed that the masterpiece we’d found was in fact a failure or prototype. There was no telling what its creator had actually been going for.

Making sense of all this was going to be much harder than any challenge we’d faced so far. But Zanoba was undaunted. He seemed, if anything, even more determined than before to carry out his “life’s mission.”

For whatever it was worth, he had my moral support.

“Hey, Zanoba. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

When I walked into the living room, Zanoba jumped up from the sofa where he’d been sipping tea a moment earlier. “Ah, Master Rudeus! My apologies for intruding on you like this!”

Julie and Ginger, who were standing in the corner of the room, followed his example and lowered their heads silently.

“So, what can I do for you today?”

“I was simply in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by and say hello.”

Huh. So it really was just a social call.

“Got it. Well, make yourself at home.”

This was unusual behavior for Zanoba, but I wasn’t going to turn him away or anything.

As I settled down onto a chair, Julie trotted over to my side. “Look, Grandmaster Rudeus. I finished another one.”

She held out a figurine for my examination. It was her latest attempt at a Ruijerd figure that I had her reproducing as an assignment.

“Nice work,” I said, studying it from multiple angles. “You’re improving quickly. Keep churning them out for me, all right?”

“Okay!” Julie said with a cheerful bow.

While I was off journeying across the Begaritt Continent, Julie had finished her original Ruijerd figurine. I’d been genuinely surprised by how good it looked. It was clear she’d used my own version as a model, but in all honesty, hers was just better.

For one thing, the stance was perfect. Even a total amateur was going to realize they were looking at a total badass.

When I showed it to Norn, she couldn’t help murmuring “I want one” under her breath, so I gave the original to her as a present. She had it on a shelf in her dorm room at the moment.

Recognizing Julie’s success for what it was, I tasked her with producing as many copies of the figurine as she could. It still took her quite a while to make a single one, but that wasn’t really a big deal. The job was a good way to work on stretching her mana capacity, and hopefully we’d have a nice pile of them ready to go by the time we were ready to sell Norn’s book.

“Yesterday, I saw Miss Norn at school.”

“Oh yeah? You bumped into each other? Did she say anything?”

“She thanked me. So I thanked her too.”

“Aw, that’s nice. Good for you, Julie.”

I reached out and patted Julie on the head affectionately. She stiffened up a little at my touch, but didn’t flinch away.

As it happened, Norn had recently finished her book about Ruijerd. Even after she started learning the sword from me, she’d kept up with her writing. The book was short, and the prose was a bit clumsy and awkward. It only covered one part of Ruijerd’s life, too: the story of those cursed spears, beginning with Ruijerd’s loyal service to his lord and ending with his revenge. 

But despite all its flaws, she’d managed to capture Ruijerd’s personality perfectly. His pride, his grief, and his boldness came across with startling clarity. With a bit of careful editing, I was confident we could sell it as a children’s book.

In order to test that theory, I’d read the draft to Julie, who absolutely loved it. She’d made me read it three times in a row, and probably would have kept going if Ginger hadn’t intervened.

From the sound of things, nobody had ever read Julie stories like that when she was little. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. The dwarves apparently had traditional fairy tales of some kind, but maybe they didn’t write books for children. Or maybe her parents were just too busy to spend much time entertaining her. Not that it really mattered either way.

Anyway, since Julie had enjoyed the book so much, I’d been planning to introduce her to Norn one of these days, but it seemed they’d beat me to the punch. Norn had probably been a little embarrassed to learn she had a fan already. It was nice to hear they’d gotten off on the right foot, though. Recognizing each other’s talents is a good first step toward building a good working relationship.

All of this meant we were making excellent progress on the preparations for our Superd PR campaign. I was keeping up with my research and my training, too. Overall, I felt good about how I was using my time. If I pushed myself to take on anything more than I was already handling, I’d probably be overloading myself.

Maybe it would have been optimal to focus on a single specific area in which to specialize, but my feeling was that I’d never be the best at anything I tried. That was true in my first try at life, and it was probably true in this one too.

There’s always going to be someone better than you out there. Maybe I was the best mage at the University right now, but the world was full of unbelievably powerful people.

There’s such a thing as genuine talent—the kind of talent you can’t compete with, no matter how hard you try.

I didn’t feel any need to push myself to be the very best at any one thing, though. My goal was to be flexible enough to compete on multiple fronts. If I couldn’t beat someone in a one-on-one fight, I’d just find a way to slip around them.

It sounded good in theory. But of course, sometimes you might find yourself staring down a Manatite Hydra. I wanted to become powerful enough to defend my family, if nothing else. Fighting wasn’t really my specialty, but I’d have to find ways to get stronger.

“Oh, right. You want to take a look at Lucie, Zanoba?”

“Ooh! You’re willing to show me your daughter?! Are you sure?!”

“I mean…yeah. Is there some reason why I wouldn’t?”

“I suppose not! However, I believe there are certain countries where it’s traditional to wait until a child turns five before letting anyone outside the family see them.”

“Really? Huh. I’d rather show her off to everyone I can, personally…”

In any case, there was no reason to think too hard about all this right now. I just had to keep moving slowly, steadily forward.

I was keeping up with my daily training and magic exercises, chipping away at my research projects, and making lots of interesting friends. Compared to my last try at life, I’d been putting in a lot more effort, and getting a lot more out of every day. It was fair to say I was doing a good job so far—by my standards, at least.

In other words, there was no need to rush things. If I pushed myself too hard, I’d eventually break down physically or mentally. My haste might make me careless, too. I didn’t want to blunder into another disaster, like I had with that hydra.

So for now, I was going to keep moving at my own pace. One step at a time.

I wanted to make my efforts at self-improvement a part of my daily routine. Hopefully, that effort would pay off the next time I found myself facing a real challenge. 

Hmm. What was the next step I should take at this point, though?

I’d replaced my hand with a prosthetic. My research was coming along nicely. My relationships with my wives were excellent, my sisters and daughter were doing well, and our family had a solid financial safety net.

Maybe it was about time I had Roxy teach me some King-tier water magic.

 Legends of the University #5: The Boss has a soft spot for little kids.