I was a king. In my former life I could have had my country’s army assembled and kneeling at my feet with the snap of a finger. I’d outdueled competitors from other countries as well as my own people to settle disputes and maintain my position. In terms of swordsmanship and controlling ki, I was second to none, for in my previous world, personal strength was essential to being a ruler. Yet I couldn’t think of a moment in my two lives when I’d been prouder than I was now.

I can crawl!

Until now, although I was thirsty for knowledge about this new world, I’d had to make do with the stories Mother would tell me while trying to make me fall asleep, and I often grumbled in complaint when she stopped too early. My father would sometimes sit me on his lap while idly talking to me about his past exploits, which gave me some hints as to what kind of world this was and what it was filled with.

From what I had learned so far, this world seemed to be a fairly straightforward one filled with magic and warriors, where power and wealth decided one’s rank in society. In that sense, it wasn’t too different from my old world, except for the lack of technology and the slight difference between this world’s magic and the ki, or life force, of my previous world.

My father, Reynolds Leywin, was a former adventurer—which was apparently a viable occupation in this world—and had quite a lot of experience in his field. He had taken part in several expeditions to search for treasure and fulfill missions he and his team acquired from the Adventurers Guild. He’d eventually settled down when he met my mother at the kingdom’s border in a city called Valden. He proudly told me how my mother, Alice, had fallen head over heels for him at first sight when he had visited the town’s Adventurers Guild Hall, where she had been working, but I suspected it was the exact opposite considering how my mother slapped him across the back of the head and told him to stop telling me lies.

I’d learned my full name by now: Arthur Leywin—Arthur after my great-grandfather, from the days when the Leywin house was far more powerful. My parents called me Art for short; as a former king I thought that sounded a little too cute, but after getting a glimpse of myself one day in the metal sheet they used as a mirror, I had to admit my physical features would make anyone think of me as ‘cute.’ I had my mother’s glowing auburn hair, while my eyes were a bright azure color, inherited from my father. I couldn’t know how my facial features would turn out as I grew older, but as long as I kept myself in good fighting shape, it should be okay.

I’d spent weeks attempting to crawl but had achieved only an uncoordinated scuffle in place. When I finally succeeded, I managed to sneak into the family’s library while my mother was hanging the laundry out to dry. Once she noticed I was gone, it took her only a few minutes to find me. It wouldn’t have mattered even if I’d had hours inside the room, though, because once I opened up a book I realized that, while I understood the spoken language, I couldn’t read.

I felt as frustrated as my out-of-breath mother sounded when she scolded me with a sigh, saying, “I swear, you’re going to be as much of a handful as your father.”

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By the end of the week, I had picked up enough words from my mother’s nightly story-reading to do some studying of my own in the library. Within a few weeks, Mother had grown used to finding me holed up in the corner of the library with books around me. Whether she was suspicious, I didn’t know, but she did let me stay there as long as she was close by and the door was open.

I’d spent the afternoon finishing up the fifth volume of an encyclopedia of Dicathen, my new world. I closed the encyclopedia and situated myself more comfortably on the ground. Basically I just lay on my belly, because crawling and sitting upright were so damn tiring.

Pondering over what I had just read, I realized this world was rather underdeveloped. From what I could infer, there wasn’t much in the way of technological advancement. The only sources of transportation appeared to be horse-driven carriages, which varied in size for local and overland use, and ships with sails, for navigating rivers.

Weapons were freely allowed, and not regulated unless you were visiting the royal family or some other high-ranking authority. It continued to baffle me to see people carrying weapons while shopping for groceries, like they were luxury designer bags. In town with my mother, I had witnessed a man carrying a gigantic war axe so tall its handle dragged on the ground behind him as he walked.

In my previous life, on Earth, there were soldiers and guards who carried weapons openly; however, they weren’t for the purpose of killing, but rather to deter people from committing crimes. Here, though, I had recently witnessed a thief stealing a few items from the armory store, then being slashed in the back by a large, bald mercenary carrying a polearm. Moreover, the bystanders even went as far as to applaud the oversized skinhead while the thief lay there dying.

One similarity between this world and my previous world was the system of monarchy. The continent of Dicathen had several kingdoms, each ruled by a king and his royal family. Unlike Earth of my time, though, the kings here were chosen based on lineage; the title passed down from the king to his son and so on.

Crowns had once been inherited on Earth, too, but centuries ago the hierarchical systems had adopted a new approach to leadership. Earth rulers were still kings; however, they weren’t born or elected, but trained. Wars had become an almost obsolete form of settling disputes between countries. Of course, there were still smaller-scale battles, and armies were still needed for the safety of the citizens, but disputes concerning the wellbeing of a country were based on either a duel between the rulers of the countries—limited to making use of ki and close-combat weapons—or, for smaller disputes, a mock battle between platoons, where limited firearms were allowed. Therefore, a king on Earth was no longer the stereotypical fat man sitting on the throne ignorantly commanding others; to protect his country’s safety and honor, he had to be an unparalleled fighter.

Scanning through the encyclopedia, there didn’t seem to be much information on continents other than the one we were currently on. I found this a bit odd, since there were ships that carried goods and passengers across the continent by river, but I assumed that the maritime technology wasn’t yet developed enough to sail across oceans.

One thing that was hard to get used to was the existence of magic in this world. If we were talking about superhuman powers, sure, the countries on Earth relied on such people, but the capabilities of magic in this world seemed to be on another level.

On Earth, practitioners learned how to condense and utilize the ki that existed innately in their bodies. Like building muscle through exercise, repeatedly breaking the ki center down through the depletion of the ki inside, followed by rest, would cause the ki center to grow stronger, allowing access to a bigger pool of ki, which could then be channeled throughout the body via special veins known as meridians, and utilized to strengthen the body.

Instead of ki, this world’s life force was called mana; the more surprising thing was that it existed in the atmosphere. Practitioners, also known as mages, would draw the surrounding mana into their bodies to use, ultimately condensing it in their mana core. In my old world, ki only existed and formed inside the body. Whether ki had never existed in Earth’s atmosphere in the first place, or had ceased to exist for some reason, I would never know.

On Earth, practice was incredibly important, but the innate size of a user’s ki center was even more important, because the limited amount of ki you had in your body was all you could work with. This made me wonder if the size of a person’s mana core wouldn’t matter as much here because of the available mana in the atmosphere. The ‘cup’ might not hold as much, but it could be constantly replenished.

In my old world, even though my ki center wasn’t large, I had been considered a prodigy at channeling and utilizing my ki effectively to make up for my shortcomings. By utilizing every bit of my ki, I had become the strongest of the elite division of duelists, earning the right to become king.

If I could apply a ki practitioner’s techniques to the mana that was present both inside the mana core and in the surrounding atmosphere, couldn’t I essentially double or even triple the strength I’d had before?

I managed to pull another book from the bottom shelf—The Beginner’s Guide for the Privileged Mage—which answered a couple of questions for me.