The Beginning After The End Chapter 3: Head Start

ALICE LEYWIN’S POV:

Arthur is undoubtedly the most charming infant ever born, and I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother.

Really, I’m not.

There is something about his messy shock of glowing auburn hair and those playful eyes that seem to shimmer with a blue light. At times, his gaze feels remarkably... intelligent.

No, listen to me, I am not some doting mother. My goal is to be a firm and fair parent. I certainly can't count on my husband to provide little Art with any common sense. For heaven's sake, Reynolds actually attempted to teach the boy how to fight before he could even crawl properly.

I am certain this little troublemaker would grow up exactly like his father if I didn't intervene. I was so proud when he finally started crawling that I nearly cried, but I didn't realize how much of a handful he would become once he gained mobility.

Honestly, I can't look away for even a second before he is scurrying off toward the study. It’s quite peculiar. We bought him plenty of stuffed animals and wooden toys, yet he always gravitates toward the books. That, at least, is the polar opposite of his father, considering Reynolds avoids any text longer than the weekly news like the plague.

Seeing how much he enjoyed our trips into town, I decided to start shopping for groceries every other day instead of just twice a week.

Again, I’m not a doting mother. I’m simply prioritizing his exposure to the world and ensuring the household has fresh ingredients. Yes... that’s exactly why.

My son appears to be fascinated by everything. I never tire of watching his head—which looks a bit too large for his tiny frame—darting back and forth as he tries to process his surroundings. He seems especially captivated when his father is practicing.

In his younger days, Reynolds was a highly skilled adventurer. Reaching B-class by twenty-eight is actually quite an impressive feat. Everyone starts at E-class, the lowest rank, which requires a test to ensure we aren't sending reckless teenagers to their deaths. Regarding the higher tiers, I only encountered a few A-class adventurers during my years at the hall, and I’ve never actually seen an S-class, if they even exist.

Back when I worked at the Adventurer Guild—or the Guild Hall, as we called it in Valden—I saw far too many arrogant teens. Honestly, I’m surprised their massive egos didn't make them float away.

At the very least, they possessed ambition.

I recall proctoring a basic practical exam once where the candidate had to show simple mana manipulation. Before the test even started, the boy fell flat on his back because his sword was too heavy for him to carry.

Speaking of being a bit slow, Reynolds certainly made that impression when we first met. When he spotted me at the Guild Hall, his jaw dropped, and he stood frozen until the person behind him in line had to elbow him to move. He quickly wiped his chin and managed to stammer, "... h.. hi... can I turn in th... the items for the quest?" I couldn't help but giggle as his face turned bright red with shame.

Eventually, he found the nerve to ask me to dinner, and we clicked instantly. Even now, I can’t help but smile when those drooping, blue puppy-dog eyes look my way.

Art miraculously inherited the best traits from both of us, which makes him even more precious. You should see his reaction during diaper changes. I have no idea why, but his cheeks turn crimson and he hides his face behind his tiny fingers.

Is it even possible for an infant his age to feel embarrassed?

The next major milestone recorded in my baby journal—which exists solely for educational documentation, not because I’m a doting mother—was his first word.

He said Mama!

I made him repeat it over and over just to be certain I wasn't imagining things. Reynolds spent the rest of the day sulking because Art said "mama" before "dada."

Haha, I won that round!

The remainder of the year passed peacefully. My son followed me everywhere and spent his evenings watching his father train through the window after dinner. I’m relieved Reynolds retired from adventuring to take a local guard position. While adventuring paid better, the constant worry of whether my husband would return home wasn't worth the gold. Especially after that one incident...

To our great relief, Little Art never fell ill. However, I frequently found him sitting perfectly still on his bottom with his eyes shut tight. Initially, I worried he was struggling with a bowel movement, but after checking several times, that wasn't the issue.

It was so strange; I didn't know what to think. I expected babies to be loud and restless, but after his phase of sneaking into the study, he began spending long periods sitting still, almost as if he were meditating.

It worried me at first, but even though it happened several times a day, it only lasted a few minutes, and Art always seemed unusually happy afterward. The way he reaches his arms up for me makes me want to squeeze him to pieces.

*Ahem* Definitely not a doting mother.

ARTHUR LEYWIN’S POV:

Roughly two years have slipped by since I first made that grueling trek to the study.

Since that day, I have been tirelessly working to gather the faint traces of mana scattered throughout my body, attempting to condense them into a mana core. I must admit, the process was agonizingly slow. In this clumsy body, I think I would have had an easier time learning to walk on my hands and eat with my toes than forcing my mana core to form.

Now I understand why the texts claimed that "awakening" usually doesn't happen until adolescence. If I had simply allowed the mana particles to move naturally, it would have taken a decade for them to cluster into anything resembling a core.

However... having the mind of an adult gave me a distinct advantage: the cognitive focus to manually guide those mana particles. This was a skill I practiced as a child in my previous life, where ki control was part of the standard curriculum. Essentially, it involves sensing the ki—or mana, in this world—within your body and forcing it to congregate near the solar plexus. The particles would eventually drift together on their own, but I am effectively grabbing the feathers and stuffing them into the sack rather than waiting for them to settle, to use a metaphor.

My daily routine involved spending as much of my meager energy as possible on mana cultivation while trying not to look suspicious to my parents. My father seemed to believe that tossing an infant into the air was great fun. While I recognize the adrenaline rush might please some, when he used mana to reinforce his arms and launched me like a high-velocity missile, all I felt was nausea and a growing fear of heights.

Thankfully, my mother kept a tight leash on him, though she frightened me in her own way. I often caught her looking at me with a dazed expression, almost drooling as if I were a piece of high-grade steak.

I did my best to blend in by speaking only in basic fragments. When I first uttered "mama" to signal I was hungry, she nearly collapsed in tears of happiness. It had been a lifetime since I experienced that kind of maternal warmth. From then on, I kept my speech strictly functional—no complex grammar required.

Aside from that, my training progress was grueling and incremental, but since I was starting years ahead of everyone else, I couldn't complain.

These last two years were not in vain. I had finally successfully gathered all my mana into my solar plexus and was in the final stages of condensing the mana core when...

*BOOM*