It has been two weeks since that traveling priest ruined my life. I have spent most of that time cycling through the various stages of grief.
I started with denial. I was convinced the priest's crystal ball was broken. I thought maybe I had so much mana that it actually confused the machine.
Then came anger. I wanted to bite the priest's leg, but I do not have enough strong teeth yet.
After that, I fell into a deep depression. I just stared at the ceiling and wondered if it was too late to ask for a refund on this reincarnation.
Now, I have finally reached the stage of bargaining. This is where the real work begins.
I have convinced myself that having a low mana pool is actually a good thing. It is a classic underdog trope.
In every game I ever played, the character with the most raw power was always the most boring. The fun characters were the ones with weird stats and specialized builds. I am just a specialized build. I am not weak. I am just focused.
This is definitely not copium. I am a rational adult. I know how to look at a situation and find the silver lining. If I have a small pool of energy, it just means I have to be smarter than everyone else.
I have to be more efficient. I have to be more ruthless. I am going to find every loophole in the magic system of this world and exploit it until I am essentially a god. It is a solid plan. It is a foolproof plan.
The weight of my situation hit me again late one night. I was lying in my crib, pretending to be asleep. The house was quiet, but I could hear my parents talking in the kitchen. Their voices were low, but the walls are thin.
"I am just worried, Gareth," Elara said. I could hear the clink of a ceramic mug.
"The priest said he would never amount to much. I wanted him to go to a good academy. I wanted him to have a life where he didn't have to break his back in a field."
"He is a healthy boy, Elara," Gareth replied. His voice was deep and steady. "That is what matters. Not everyone needs to be a mage. He can be a farmer like me. Or maybe we can find him an apprenticeship with a craftsman in town. He has good hands. He is already very observant."
"I know," Elara sighed. "I just wanted more for him. This world is hard on people without magic."
I felt a twinge of guilt. It was touching to hear them care so much about my future. They were good people. They were much better parents than I probably deserved. But their vision for my life was completely unacceptable.
I am not going to be a farmer. I am not going to spend my days digging up potatoes or making chairs. I have an adult mind and a lifetime of gaming experience. I was born for better things than manual labor.
I became more determined than ever to prove that mana pool size is not everything. I lay there and remembered every underdog story I had ever consumed.
I thought about the heroes who started with nothing and worked their way to the top. I conveniently ignored the fact that most of them had secret legendary powers or demon swords.
I did not have any of those things. I just had a very stubborn attitude.
I began to conduct careful magical experiments during my nap times. My parents thought I was resting, but I was actually working.
I would lie on my back and pull that warm current of energy from my chest. Now that I knew the pool was small, I was very careful with it. I treated every unit of mana like it was a gold coin.
I discovered something interesting. While I could not produce a lot of mana, I seemed to have unusual control over what little I had. In the stories I read, mages usually just threw their power around. It was like spraying a hose.
I decided to try something different. I tried to shape the mana.
I focused on a tiny amount of energy. I pushed it into the palm of my hand. Instead of letting it burst outward, I tried to fold it. I visualized it turning into a solid shape.
I worked on it for hours. It was exhausting. It felt like trying to thread a needle while wearing oven mitts.
During one experiment, something clicked. I managed to create a tiny, perfect sphere of condensed mana. It was the size of a marble. It was not bright, but it was incredibly dense. I could feel the weight of it in my palm. It held its shape for three full seconds before it dissolved back into my skin.
I stared at my hand in shock. Three seconds. That might not sound like much, but it was a huge breakthrough.
I remembered the priest's demonstration back at the ceremony. He had created a similar sphere of light to show off his power. He had done it easily, but he was supposedly an Adept ranked mage.
He had thousands of units to play with. I had done it with almost nothing.
I had a revelation. What if my advantage was not power, but efficiency? What if the reason everyone thought I was weak was because they were all incredibly wasteful? They were like people driving gas guzzling trucks, while I was building a high tech electric car. I did not need a giant tank of fuel if my engine was perfect.
If I could do more with less, I could still be a legendary mage. I could cast spells that usually required a hundred units by using only ten.
I could outlast people with ten times my power just by not wasting a single drop. This realization excited me so much that I lost my concentration.
The mana sphere did not just dissolve this time. It became unstable. There was a tiny, sharp snap of energy. A small bolt of static electricity jumped from my palm and hit me right in the forehead.
"Ow!" I barked. Well, it sounded more like a loud "Ba!"
The zap sent a jolt through my entire body. It was not enough to hurt me seriously, but it was enough to make my hair stand straight up. I felt a weird tingling sensation in my scalp. I looked like I had stuck my finger in an electrical socket.
A second later, Elara was in the room. She had heard me make the noise. She saw me sitting up with my hair pointing in every direction. She immediately turned pale.
"Gareth! Come quickly!" she screamed.
She scooped me up and pressed her hand to my forehead. I tried to look normal, but it is hard to look normal when your hair is defying the laws of gravity.
"He is burning up!" Elara cried. "Look at his hair. It is the fever. It is a magic fever!"
I did not have a fever. I just had a very embarrassing magical mishap. But I could not explain that to her. I had to sit there and endure the attention. Gareth came running in and looked at me with wide eyes. Within an hour, they had consulted with the village herbalist. I was forced to drink a bitter, lukewarm tea that supposedly helped "settle the humors."
I lay there for the rest of the day, smelling like wet grass and feeling like a complete moron.
Elara stayed by my side the whole time, fussing over me and wiping my face with a damp cloth.
I felt bad for making her worry, but I was also busy plotting my path forward.
Fine, I thought. I am not going to be the most powerful mage. That is fine. Being a powerhouse sounds like a lot of work anyway.
You have to carry big staves and wear heavy robes. I am going to be the most efficient mage in history.
Quality over quantity. Work smarter, not harder. This is actually perfect for my lazy ass. I can achieve the same results as those big shot mages while putting in half the effort.
It was a beautiful dream. A lazy, comfortable dream.
Three years later.
The time has passed quickly. I am no longer a helpless baby. Now I am a five year old baby.
I can walk, I can talk, and most importantly, I can go to the bathroom by myself. I have spent the last three years maintaining a very careful facade. To my parents and the rest of the village, I am just Cid Arnett. I am a quiet boy with a small mana pool who likes to play in the dirt.
I make sure to act like a normal child. I run around, I scrap my knees, and I ask silly questions. But every afternoon, I tell my mother I am going to play in the woods near our farm.
She thinks I am looking for bugs or pretend sword fighting with sticks.
In reality, I am training.
I have a secret spot behind a large, mossy rock. It is hidden from the path. This is my laboratory. This is where I practice what I call "Lazy Casting." I have spent years refining my control. I can now move my mana with incredible precision. I have learned how to strip away all the unnecessary parts of a spell.
Most mages in this world seem to use a lot of flashy gestures and long incantations. They waste energy on light and sound that does not do anything. I do the opposite. I keep everything contained. I focus on the result.
Today, I am working on a simple fire spell. I hold my hand out. I do not chant. I do not wave my arms. I just visualize a single point of heat. I feed a tiny, microscopic amount of mana into that point. I feel the resonance building. I am not pushing the energy. I am letting it vibrate.
A small, intense flame appears above my finger. It is not bigger than a candle flame, but it is blue and incredibly hot. It is perfect. I hold it there for a minute, barely using any energy at all.
I am getting better. Every small success is building toward something greater. I am still the boy with small mana pool. But I am also the person who knows exactly how to use every single drop of it.
I heard my mother calling my name. It was time for dinner. I quickly snapped my fingers, extinguishing the flame. I picked up a stick and started hitting a tree, making loud "whoosh" sounds.
"I'm coming, Mama!" I yelled.