These were the words that raced through Andrew's mind when he witnessed his mother using water to heal his injured leg. He couldn't grasp how his mother could even control water through the air in the first place. He simply didn't know what was going on. He tried to touch the water, trying to find out if it was some sort of special water or something similar, but it was simply rainwater that his mother stored, yet it was somewhat different. It seemed... purer. Despite it being rainwater, he couldn't see a speck of impurity in it.

Cate, seeing that Andrew was clearly interested in whatever trick she had just performed for him, laughed and snapped her fingers as the water slowly flew up into the air and formed into a small dragon before exploding in Andrew's face. While Andrew was annoyed, he knew it was a gesture of love from his mother, and instead of reacting badly to it, he simply babbled for a bit.

"You like it, little Andrew?" Cate smiled, "Well when you grow up like me, you can do magic like that too."

... Magic? What is magic?

Andrew, while clearly impressed by Cate, was more interested in the dynamics of the thing she called 'magic', whatever that was. Was magic something similar to the light he saw before he was born into the world? Or was it more similar to the darkness that almost consumed him? Whatever it was, he somehow instinctively had a connection with that word, like a magnet attracted to iron.

Andrew could complain about a lot of things in his life, but what he couldn't complain about was his new parents. He knew that they were the best: Cate was a caring person who told him stories about the world and was also the one who taught him almost everything he knew, yet she could also be strict when needed, namely whenever her husband went a bit overboard with playing with their son. Marvin's personality, on the other hand, was almost completely different from what Andrew thought about him. He wasn't serious and strict - in fact, he was anything but serious and strict, and he was definitely the reckless type of person. But Andrew wasn't completely wrong either. Marvin, despite being as reckless and somewhat dumb as he was, cared for Andrew deeply. Whenever Marvin held Andrew in his arms, Andrew knew that this man was someone who would be with him and who he could rely on for the rest of his life - before Marvin started messing around with Andrew by handmaking stone axes and throwing him into the air, that was.

Marvin was an adventurer - a quite famous one, in fact. Whenever a dungeon appeared, he and his team, the Black Tigers, were the first ones to be notified, and they would always clear it and emerge victorious within a month. While Andrew was proud of his father for his strength and all of his feats, Cate, on the other hand, was always against Marvin going on campaigns like that. Clearing dungeons were extremely dangerous, even for high-class, experienced adventurers, because one could never actually know what was inside a dungeon. Despite the high pay working as an adventurer, one could die any moment, and even though their family would be compensated richly, Cate was simply unwilling for Marvin to keep going on such dangerous campaigns.

On the contrary to Marvin, Cate was a much more cautious person, despite her adept magical abilities. She was a typical stay-at-home mom, with the main difference being she could do most of the housework and the fieldwork by herself, mainly thanks to her magic. With her abilities, Cate could finish her housework much earlier than other people, so whenever she had the time, Cate often took Andrew out to go around town.

Whenever Cate took Andrew to town, she would strap him onto what looked to be a cradle of some kind, which she could then wear on her back similar to a backpack, and she would always tell him not to leave her side even though he wasn't even able to walk yet, and then they would finally get to Southshore, the southern province of Waldenbach. Despite people calling Southshore a town, it was more of a large outpost. There weren't any stone roads, only dirt paths infested with all types of weeds. There weren't any actual houses there either: its residents usually built their homes in the wilderness, away from the so-called town, since Southshore was ultimately only the place for adventurers to crash after weeks of exploring dungeons and clearing domains or small merchants trying to have a business outside of Waldenbach. Most of the buildings in Southshore were shops of all sizes, taverns, blacksmiths, inns and the Adventurer's Guild's building. Still, Southshore was still much bigger than what Andrew had at home. There were longswords, clubs, polearms and weapons of all kinds. There were also dozens of types of ores as well as at least thirty types of elixirs and gemstones. However, what caught Andrew's attention the most was the only magic shop in Southshore, where people would buy premade runes as well as all kinds of magic wands and staves. While Andrew was still unsure what was magic, he somehow knew that he had a connection with it. Was it because magic was somehow linked to the voice he heard?

The world Andrew lived in contained something known as 'mana', which was the name for the energy that existed all around them. Some gifted people could absorb this energy and use it in any way they wanted, and those ways were known as magic. Despite mana and magic being two concepts well-known to people, only approximately less than 0.01% of the world population were able to use magic. Among this 0.01%, there were hundreds of thousands of ways to use magic, but there were two main types of magic users: the casters and the augmenters.

The casters generally had a larger mana pool and preferred to use their spells from a distance. They were also able to create larger, more complex spells compared to the augmenters'. On the other hand, the augmenters, while having a smaller mana pool than the casters, were quicker and more versatile, being able to use their magic in multiple circumstances fitting the needs of battle, and they generally preferred to fight at close range, where they could make the most use of their quickly implemented magic.

Both Marvin and Cate were able to use magic, so it was almost certain that Andrew was able to use magic. Marvin, being extremely proud of their son, even bet with Cate that Andrew would be able to use magic at the age of ten. However, Cate turned it down, since children were only able to use magic around the age of thirteen, and despite loving her son, Cate was a realistic person.

But what they didn't expect was that every time they started talking about Andrew's magic, Andrew wished that he was able to speak to chime in on the wager. While Marvin and Cate both cared about their son deeply, what they didn't expect from him was that every day, when Marvin was out clearing domains and exploring dungeons and Cate was doing the housework, Andrew sat quietly in his crib and focused on building up his mana.

People could only start to use magic when they have a mana pool they could use. Usually, mana pools could only appear when children start to go through puberty, but Andrew had a different approach. At first, he wasn't sure what to do to have a mana pool earlier than others, but then he thought back to when he was being consumed by the darkness: he tried to hold onto every little fragment of light there was. The light helping him didn't beat the darkness in one battle: it slowly built its way up in every small battle until it was powerful enough to fight the darkness away, and that was exactly what Andrew did. He closed his eyes, taking him back to the darkness. But there, he tried to find fragments of light. At first, there weren't any. But as he kept on looking - or not looking - he started gathering these fragments together. And slowly but surely, the fragments started building up until one day, Andrew felt like the light became a large sphere of light, glowing inside his body. But whenever Andrew came back to that sphere of light, it started dimming, making him have to focus and gather enough light to make up for it again. But whatever Andrew tried to do, he couldn't make the light focus in one place long enough before it dimmed.

Until one day, a week from his third birthday, he suddenly felt the light staying in a large sphere. It didn't dim anymore, but he also felt something else inside him. Rising darkness, taking over his body. But somehow, Andrew didn't feel like he was consumed by it. Somehow... he felt comfortable as if it was a part of him all along. But this darkness was... strange. Instead of being pitch black, he felt a purplish tint in it. The darkness started merging with the light until suddenly, he felt it.

It had finally fully become a part of him.

Andrew looked outside the window to find his parents to tell them the good news. He had finally created his mana pool.

But before he could see where they were, he heard a bang.

And the next thing he knew, he woke up in the rubble.