'If you are in the world with a magic system based on imagination which is working like muscle that just keeps on endlessly improving and after several years you are not a god level being then you are either inept, unimaginative or uncreative. Though you can also be an obedient person who waits until someone will guide you, whether due to inexperience, caution or your type of character.
Me? I'm perfect, or at least a perfect candidate to be isekaied in such a world.'
The owner of these conceited thoughts was none other than a blond little baby suspended in the air hovering hundreds of meters above the village. His name was Rudeus Greyrat, or one could call it this world's name, as he is a reincarnator in the Mushoku Tensei, previously to him a world of fiction.
"Well, let's go review my basic abilities" Rudeus shrugged, before shooting like a superman to his house's window and getting inside, opening and closing it via magic.
However, it was noteworthy that no air pressure or sounds were created by his speed or opening and closing of the window, as if he was just a ghost moving through the material realm.
Well, it was one of the techniques he developed or more accurately elementary, in his opinion, application of magic. In truth, at this point in time he could fly in tens of different ways, by manipulating earth, water, air, telekinesis, pure magic power, you name it. It was thanks to his basic abilities training which he has been doing at the beginning of his reincarnation to this world.
He wasn't doing those exercises nowadays, going into more sophisticated and harder ones, but it is good to once in a while revisit bare basics for some further insight, who knows what may appear apparent when reviewed with a more experienced eye.
Initially, when he was reincarnated, his first order of business was to unlock magic power through meditation. It has proven unsuccessful after several boring days, so he started doing the mental steps of trying to create a water ball and wind blast.
It follows a classic troupe of training montages of worlds like Naruto, HxH, or even Fate. In other words, when something is too hard for you, just create sub steps necessary to create what you want.
Imagine you are channeling energy through your hand, pour it out and gather it in front of it to create molecules of water, specify structure, shape, volume and other observable characteristics. Then add some flare like rotation, control of speed and its movement through space and other bullshit. Literally bare basics, without things like adding concepts, metaphysical weight, importance, optimizing flow, dissecting variations of steps of creation, etc.
Before you know it, you are water bender, air bender or whatever else bender. At least not gender bender… yet, as metamorphosis is a perfectly viable school of magic. Just joking. Anyway, when he learned basic chantless invocation, then came basic exercises.
Truthfully, all too many, dense idiot protagonists do some rudimentary unimaginative training for months or years, not implementing steady progression overload and creativity or doing things in such a roundabout, inefficient way. Well, he wasn't like them, he didn't need some old loli baba to show him some meta training methods.
For example, have you ever played a competitive computer game? Those games have rankings, a peculiar thing isn't it? It tells you how good you are compared to others. Now, there is also such a thing as an amount of hours played in a game.
Did you realize, that while some players spend thousands of hours in some average ranks like gold, seeing marginal improvements, there are some new ones that in barely two-three hundred of hours get the best rank possible?
Of course, some people are more talented than others, but the truth is that even if you were less talented you would get the best rank in let's say hundred or two hours more, if you have done it the proper way, just like them.
You may be swimming your whole life, yet suck at it. Playing football games, running, lifting, doing math exercises for years, yet you quickly realize it is not enough. There is a hard truth to swallow for some hidden there.
Mainly, different training methods yield different results. And it is not only in games, the same applies to sport, academics, working life, sex life, anything. Just playing, even competitively, isn't the best and even sometimes is insufficient to progress at some point. Therefore, you need to use creative challenges and training packs, often learning them by following the current meta and thinking how to best learn certain important things.
There are several ways you can create a training program that would propel you to greater heights. One of the ways is mastering one simple mechanic, then another similar to it, then, suddenly, your brain, as if by magic, starts to assimilate similar movements\skills and combine them.
If you have formed a simple base for your muscle memory, then you can start expanding on this further, introducing variations, mixing harder stuff, just hard enough to make you feel uncomfortable, but not too hard, that doing them is simply luck. Therefore, you build a base, then try to expand it, preferably in a control safe environment, starting with as little inputs as you can and gradually increasing scope.
This is of course, the first basic thing to do, when it comes to more advanced things, you start to care about beating prs, pulling off certain things, combinations, or even relearning basics. There also comes a point that you understand that there is a base that has more potential, and you have to do what everyone dreads the most, relearn stuff, from the beginning. It is a painful process and takes hundreds of hours, sometimes never getting as good as you were before.
Discussing such flaws, for example assigning buttons in such a way that will create a problem later on with more complex mechanics, as you physically will have to smash two buttons with one finger or something will collide, forcing you to change it later if you want to squeeze more from the game. Or in fighting, gaining some tells and bad habits through self learning and constant sparring without reflections or knowledge about how it properly should look at. You need to constantly observe and analyze yourself and others like pros, if what you are learning, and how you are learning it isn't stupid.
Anyway, that is a discussion for another time.
In the present, as Rudeus returned to his room, he sat on his bed, and as in the bare beginnings of him learning magic two years ago, he started to retrace training steps that he used to be doing in the crib. First, trying to conjure a water ball in a record time, several times trying to make it appear faster then vanish before splashing it on the ground. Then as a progression, he conjured balls with different starting volumes and in different places around the room, they too swiftly vanished.
Then he conjured a water ball, hovering it in the air before him for around a minute. Before alternating into creating gigantic ones or multiple smaller ones suspended in the air for a while, before vanishing them. He got to a point where he could hold them indefinitely.
Then making several of them appear at once and hover. Portions of them vanishing and new ones appearing at different intervals, some getting enlarged, some getting split into two. Then for the natural progression forward, one could branch into different paths, spinning, movements, different shapes, etc.
He went for movement this time, making simple straight lines movements at first in horizontal plane, then moving in circles at the same height and then different spirals. Gradually increasing acceleration and deceleration. He was also using a supplementary technique of moving wind to cancel the disturbance and noise created by those balls' displacement of air, so as to not alert others in the house.
He conjured more balls moving them in the same path, before branching them to their own paths. He has spent several hundred hours grinding it, but he could maintain at most 3 different paths of many different balls, and take total control of only 5 balls.
'Probably the limit of stupid monkey brains' grimaced Rudeus before just shrugging.
As he could not improve in the number of totally controlled balls, he increased the difficulty in their movements, making them swish around.
Next basic exercise would be to rinse and repeat everything in three dimensions in different planes and surfaces. So he had done that. He couldn't yet extrapolate it to move them to some void, 4th dimension or back or forward in time, but well, baby steps.
He yet again conjured the ball, now making it spin at different angles as fast as he can, which made it naturally deform into disk shape, before retrying the same while maintaining the shape of the ball. Spinning balls was relatively easy, compared to more sophisticated shapes, so he included those spinning balls in previous movement techniques.
Then came the shapes, creating floating numbers from water in the air, equations, models of objects, swords, tools, etc., before trying to move them and spin them.
Those were the most elementary of basics, he repeated them easily with conjured fire, earth and highly condensed wind, and even electricity, light, shadows… blood, bones, trees… twisting summoned spirits into weapons and armor, and then came combined elements, like ice, steam, magma, mud … plastic, or using pure magical manipulation to create barriers and form sharp weapons with them? Metal swords!? Whatever.
Anyway, normally, he doesn't do it anymore, but once in a while it is not bad to… flex. Huh. Some easy exercises always improve the mood. In recent studies, he is trying more complex stuff, like teleporting a small lizard he has found through wormholes, and also making the lizard store his magic as a container. Space manipulation in general (gravity too), time prediction and future sight, rapid healing, agining, deaging and brain augmentations with brain control, recreating nuclear level explosions, trying to lift island worth of earth and condense it into fist size rock, conceptual weapon creation, reaching plasma level temperatures and trying to control fusion, or trying to reach mach 2 speeds with wind without making disturbance.
'Fun little projects.' smiled Rudeus innocently.
Coming back to the basic exercises, he will now hurl offensive magic against barriers, neutralize and disrupt those magics. All in his room, without making any noise and reducing the wastes from the atmosphere. So the barrage began, barriers appearing, disappearing, counterspells, explosions, all the while thin film of void is created by removing wind and keeping it from rushing in with barrier magic, which stops all the noise and vibrations traveling to the foundations of the room itself.
He is also actively sensing, through a multitude of mediums around his home and living inhabitants. Good, little, silent as if an astral show of comets slamming into barriers made for a good finisher to end the fun.
So as the little show of flexing has ended, he would waste 9/10 of his impressive magic reserves on one grand spell. All to capitalize today's mana capacity gains. Though such a primal, crude, method is long since due to be replaced with something more sophisticated. Seemingly infinite magic or instant regeneration is a goal, after all.
Nevertheless, holding his hand and focusing on visualization in his mind, five kilometers below his house, he concentrated all of that magic in a searing ball of plasma, growing into the temperature above that of a sun's surface, before using magnetic force to shoot it as if from a railgun straight below. It seared through and melted the rock around and below it into magma quickly splashing on it and losing momentum before quickly digesting through tens of meters of it and creating a straight circular tunnel down.
Then, he reformed the eaten rocks and filled the hole, before using a hand to wipe off the sweat from his forehead.
A little brain fry, you see. Nothing a little healing can't fix.
'There is no workout without sweat.' he huffed at the internal joke. But it got him to think, not about the workout, as sweat is just a response to temperature, but at the future augmentations to his body.
Come to think of it, it has been quite some time since he has gotten used to using all forms of magic to control his body into flying, walking, running and… ultra high speed ninja movements.
But, his physical body is not handling the sudden accelerations all too well to be honest, so there may be room of improvement. Initially, he felt rather content to just manipulate the tendrils of magical energy that were forming in him during spell casting, sometimes creating multiple paths to his hands through which he pulled energy out of his body, or other body parts to master all outputs.
All outputs.
However, with his recent experiments, as his small finger on his left hand suggests, or rather its covered surface and internal body with golden lines and… remembering the number of times it exploded, slowly adding magical power over time, can fortify his body permanently by creating sort of supporting structure, like metal beams in a building construction holding it all together, or in case of humans secondary skeletal system, which can overlap with physical body, creating sort of paper layered internal samurai armor.
Therefore, without hesitation he displayed his hand against the conjured sharp sword copy of his father's, which promptly shot at it like a projectile, which in result created sparks upon contact with his little finger and deflected the weapon to the side just to be buried in the barrier. When he inspected his finger, there was just a little indent, which he swiftly regenerated with a huge dose of healing magic. To be honest, his wrist did hurt more than his actually affected finger.
The only downside, was that it used way more magic to actually heal it, as the multiple layers of golden thread there, which were also damaged, seemed to require additional significant mana to regenerate. On the plus side, it seemed to raise his vitality there and regenerate on its own using energy stored in further threads. In fact it was considered part of his body by healing magic. Anyway, the stronger the threads the higher the chance they will just dent not rupture, which makes recovery trivial.
If the density can be increased endlessly, and special types of layering may be implemented. It could literally give him an unbreakable defense, while still giving ability to cast magic.
Therefore, his next order of action would be to meticulously layer those permanent threads on himself. Though he will have to do more tests on his friendly pet lizard number thirty six, beforehand. Not wanting to mess with the brain or organs with something that can't be quickly restored or healed by healing magic.
As one may suspect, previous lizards were a bit too affected by his healing and teleportation experiments…
Maybe creating special magic to just delete those threads? Then conceptually reinforcing them to not be easily affected by it. Kind of a loop-arming race with oneself to be honest. But a good training loop regimen and maybe applicable against Dragon God Orsted.
Not like Rudeus would want to hurt the guy, though as a show of power? Why not?
Nevertheless, another night not slept through and simply recovered with ultra healing, he went out of his bedroom, to announce to his parents that he had woken up. Therefore he came out of his room, then immediately wall dashed on the stairs, going through the corner and twisting himself to look at the Lilia already working on preparing the breakfast, before jumping from the sturdy bearing wall right next to her.
He wasn't muting his feet, and using only little gluing to the surfaces during the run, obviously supporting himself with aerial aerobics ( aka flying ) which he had grinded for hundreds of hours earlier.
She would have to be deaf to not hear him, so as he was running next to the stairs, she was already looking at him with side eye, before turning and sighing while taking her hand to the forehead.
"Master Rudeus, we have told you to be careful with your running at home." she whined exasperated.
Indeed, it is well known in this family that Rudeus is plainly rowdy troublemaker, 'gifted' physically in running and jumping around the house like some sort of… hyperactive beastchild.
Thinking about it, it is quite disturbing that there exists an apt description of his behavior in reference to other sapient races.
Rudy nodded sagely, ignoring the maid's comment and asked. "Is dad already hunting?"
"Yes, Master Paul has risen before dawn and already left."
"Shucks." he playfully kicked the imaginary dirt. He already knew that, in fact it was all Rudeus'es fault, because he was pestering his father so much to let him tag along in his hunting that once before Paul had agreed.
Which led to Rudy waiting until his father wasn't paying him attention before running to the monster and caving its chest with a single kick.
Obviously, as he was before three at that time, even his reckless father scolded him and refused to take him anymore. Which resulted in him waking up earlier to nag him about it or trying to follow him. Which made the domino effect of Paul getting up even earlier and running away before Rudeus could catch him.
Rudeus liked little joys in life, and little trolling of others, just a tiny little bit, was his go to as a pass time, that is, when he was not grinding mechanics.
Lilia scolded her expression and asked dutifully. "Is there anything more?" wanting to end the conversation.
Giving a show of smiling cheekily, he shouted. "Nah, I'm going out!" as he ran to the door jumping to open the latch.
"Don't go away from the garden!" she shouted back to him, her eyes filled with worry.
"Sure." he answered, almost stepping out, but stopped as his mother was already jogging down the stairs and halted him.
"Rudeus!"
In response, his voice quivered a little, "Hey mom!" as he waited for her to catch up.
And catch up she did, clutching his head in vice grip, before bending and while still smiling wickedly she threatened, "As Lilia said…." while she punctuated by tapping his forehead, "Don't. Leave. The. Garden." she accentuated.
Rudeus did his best to make an impression of an innocent smile, before chirping. "Sure!"
She didn't let go.
She nodded, smiling, but still asked. "Really?"
He also smiled and while nodding replied. "Really."
She opened her eyes fully and tilted her head, asking. "Are you really sure, you won't?"
He, still with squinted eyes, also titled his head a little and replied nodding. "I'm really sure I won't."
She got closer to him, such that he could feel her breath, and looking at him trying to see his eyes, she asked. "You promise? You wouldn't hurt your mother by going out, would you?"
He didn't even wait or stutter for a second before cheerfully replying. "I promise. I wouldn't hurt my mom by going out… would I?"
She took a second to comb through his hair and brush it, trying to make it more orderly before giving him a peck, standing up and turning him around. She gave him a strong pat in the ass and shouted. "Go! Breakfast in an hour!"
"Sure mom!" Rudeus said before running off and waving to her. Before focusing on the road and running straight to the gate before jumping through it, going to the village.
Lilia came and patted Zenith on the back, who started rubbing her forehead with two fingers.
They stayed like that, looking at the rising sun, before Lilia said. "Let Madam not worry, boys will be boys." They had a little moment there looking at each other, one seeking support and second offering it.
Finally Zenith broke the silence looking to the side. "Ugh, I'm getting a girl next time."
So where did Rudeus run too? To the huge tree in the village, he needed to regenerate his mana, and try to learn some sage mode with meditation, or like is otherwise known, to take a nap. Who knows maybe natural energies were a thing here?
It was peaceful honestly, he was doing a special mana breathing technique right now, which made him accumulate magic faster than normal. He has been trying many different variants of faster recovery but nothing truly seemed to work instantly, only proportional.
'Insufficient' he sighed. It means his approach is wrong, he will have to create some bullshit substeps to convince the world he is like an endless black hole and all mana in the world should gather towards him all the time falling into an inevitable hole. Though it shouldn't be that hard, replicating it as an active technique should be possible with direct vortex and world bending rules aka imagination training manipulation, but with inscriptions he could create a passive effect.
Creating continuous spells that he can cast once? Though preferably, without Hawking radiation in its conceptual sphere, though it is so slow, that it may be even a boon compared to some otherwise possible unmeasured loss over time.
Another approach would steer towards biological manipulations of his Dna, and extreme modifications of his soul, magic and everything in between. Though, where would he gather necessary bodies for experimentation?
Food for thought, first he will have to prepare himself for alternate and future timelines assassins going for him. Oh, and learn instant teleportation, maybe visit some random planets he sees in the linesight. It would be funny to travel faster than light and see oneself on the planet jumping through a wormhole.
Anyway, after a short 'nap' he returned quite late for the breakfast, for this he was scolded for, weirdly not for leaving the garden in the first place. The food was bland like always, thoguh he was yet to create food conjured by magic or to make his organism function on mana by itself.
Doing it on lizards could be a start point, but what he needed were… ding dong! Yet again, bodies, for the more gruesome experiments. Maybe some immortal races would be a great contribution to his science?
Anyway, before his food could become even worse due to bloody ( but necessary! ) thoughts, he ate the stupid porridge.
Afterwards his mom went with teaching him some letters and reading. Which, in fact, he was kind of interested in, as he wanted to scourge some bookstores and libraries in Ranoa, of course covertly, all this ninja training must get some use, isn't it?
Maybe next week?
He was trying to develop an invisibility spell, but all his experiments so far turn… weird. Light manipulation in such a way wasn't easy, and his imagination wasn't helping, as even explaining to himself how that would physically work isn't the easiest thing.
The easiest theoretical model would be to capture photons moving in a certain direction and teleport or recreate them further going in the same direction. Also to block all the light going from him.
It is in fact a viable approach, as different light rays don't interact with each other, or so he understands physics. His other idea would be to become like a ghost, so all the rays go through him, somehow, or in other words become a medium through which due to 'magic' light could push through.
To be honest, if that didn't work, maybe some esoteric approach of hiding in void dimension, shadow dimension, or some shadow manipulation would be possible. In the end the answer is probably the simplest bending space around himself. Much of the light will be lost making a bit of a hazy effect, but most of it will be seen through.
In any case it shouldn't be impossible, but devising training takes its time and shonen protagonists training substeps do not always work as intended.
Anyway, his mother went with lessons, before going to help one villager who came in with a small wound caused by something from labor's no safety protocols or distraction origin, asking for help.
So, always wanting to show off, he casually went to the wounded and healed them without incantation.
His mother's eyes bulged with shock and he just shrugged and proceeded to walk away.
The vice grip, yet again today, caught him, while she asked in his ear sweetly. "Ruudy, where are you going?" She really took her time in accentuating his name there.
'Jumpscare and ASMR 10/10 Zenith!' Rudeus visibly shuddered before turning.
In fact he blushed and becoming flustered a little he replied absentmindedly. "Um, read a magic book." He didn't have yet to show off his magic, but then, why not?
Zenith then turned into a zombie mode and with saliva coming out of her mouth she mumbled. "To read some magic book…"
Before she wiped herself and focused on him, "Wait! My son is not a muscle-brained idiot!?" she pointed at him with an accusatory finger.
"What?" Rudes asked in disbelief, thinking. 'Hey, I'm three years old, and you are teaching me to read… which is normal by modern day standards, but still!'
Zenith's face was covered by blush on her face when she realized what she had said, before getting enthusiastic and jumping in joy catching the Villager A by hands and jumping "My Rudy knows magic!"
"He knows magic?" asked confused Villager A.
"Yes!" She started jumping before nodding, "And he is not a total idiot… like his father." she took her finger to her lips suddenly in thought.
Rudeus visibly recoiled due to her words. He mused, 'I mean, I did those questionable rowdy movements since getting up from the crib, but… stupid?' suddenly feeling a bit vindicative.
"Hey, why am I an idiot?" Here came Paul from the patrol, covered in his hunter garb, clearly irritated at being called an idiot.
Zenith jumped and scurried to him and told excitedly "Huby, Rudy used healing magic! He is gonna be a mage! Believe it!"
Paul frowned and looked at Rudy before saying "Baby, he is still becoming a warrior, we have agreed on that, right? A boy, a knight, a girl, a mage."
Zenith didn't have any of it "He used it without incantation and it healed instantly!"
Paul, still frowning, took out the cloth he had on his back and unwrapped the wooden sword inside, before throwing it to Rudy. "Catch."
Rudy caught the sword by a handle, and augmented himself with telekinesis to wield it as light as a feather.
Paul pointed out "Look, three years old, and not straining with a heavy oak sword, he has a gifted body!"
Zenith glared at him, waiting for him to back down first, Paul glared at her.
It would be a good moment to intervene for Rudy, or for Lilia to help, but he found it amusing to see how they would play it out on their own. So while they were doing the staring contest, he inspected the sword.
With his magic skill of course. Judging the value of creation, tracing the structure, analyzing history, sympathizing with it, grasping the concept of the sword, before he started to focus on his other hand, recreating the steps and adding substeps of concept and structure recreation.
When he materialized the sword in his other hand it was a perfect copy, he learned how to utterly destroy it too, with just a thought, in fact the two weapons were identical, same as with creation magic, he could easily create and vanish water, earth etc. In fact if he understood how to make everything, he could vanish everything from the world. Which is a scary thought.
He will have to make special protections to not be erased in such a way and be able to survive such world destruction. Also jumping to alternative timelines and worlds would be a useful safeguard.
Anyway, his parents didn't realize he has two swords now, so he mentally reviewed what they were talking about in the last seconds.
Some guilt tripping, some logical arguments, but suddenly…
"Rudeus, which one would you like… huh?" Paul asked him, before his brows frowned when he looked at his other hand and was about to ask about it, but Rudeus replied.
"Hmm, I already am a god level magician, so maybe some sword training would do."
"What is that other sword in…?" but then he blinked dumbly realizing what Rudeus said. "Wait, god? Don't joke Rudy." he scolded him while shaking his head.
Rudeus raised his eyebrow, and started to spawn hundreds of wooden swords in the whole house, swiftly creating a wave of them.
"What is happening? Zenith asked, her eyes flickering between Rudy's face and the swords. Paul wanted to grab Rudeus to take him to safety, but before he could, Rudeus blocked him with a barrier, and with a wave of his hand vanished all swords besides the two.
"I wasn't joking, I'm at a god's level." before he created an eastern dragon from lighting fitting through the whole house and resting his head on his shoulder.
He tossed the second blade into flabbergasted Paul, who due to being stupefied barely caught it awkwardly.
Predictably, Villager A fainted at this point. Zenith was soon to be next judging by her quivering mouth.
Rudy looked at his father and asked, "So, are we starting now?" his eyes filled with challenge.