It was hard to grasp at first, so he spent an entire month reading and rereading the entire book every day.
His new parents and Lilia would occasionally read him a bedtime story, and show him the accompanying illustrations, so he took the chance to piece together the spoken words and written words.
Basically, he had no trouble reading the words of the 'Guide to Magic' book, but the concepts weren't meshing well in his mind at all.
Something was very wrong, or at least this world didn't abide by the same basic principles his old world had, and it was pretty baffling.
A simple incantation or array was all that was needed to cast magic. Of course Mana was still needed to fuel it, but aside from those components, any person could cast a simple spell.
Mana Capacity was determined at birth and inherited from parents, the literature made no reference to Magic Circuits or Magic Crests.
Magic was divided into four categories: Attack, Healing, Summoning, and Extra. There was no mention of different schools or types.
There weren't even mentions of Elemental Affinities, Sorcery Attributes, or even Origins. In fact, the Root itself wasn't mentioned in the slightest.
He might have chalked it up to the fact that the book was only teaching the basics, but those were the fundamentals for every bit of Magecraft back home.
And this book spoke only of magic, but not Magic. As in it didn't speak of Miracles. There was no difference in the class of magic, aside from how it was ranked.
It was honestly mind boggling to him.
He had read the chant off a page, and manifested a ball of water.
He had just read a few words and did magic.
For around ten years of his previous life, he had spent countless hours scouring tome after tome, desperately searching for a way to use Magecraft.
He had even planned on traveling to London when he was an adult and searching for a Magus willing to transplant even one Magic Circuit in him. He could very well die from a rejection if it didn't take, but he was desperate.
As a child, he dreamt of waving a wand and controlling nature to his whims. That dream died long ago, because he learnt of his reality.
A simple chant, and water manifested.
There was no need to study or decipher anything, no need to carefully manipulate Magical Energy into a specific format.
A simple chant, and water manifested.
He didn't hypnotize himself, or sacrifice anything. It hadn't been something special he inherited, he just voiced a few words, and magic did the rest.
And to further demonstrate the ease at which magic could be done, he only needed to memorize the feeling of his Mana activating the spell, and then he no longer required the chant.
He stared at his hand, above the tip of each finger was a small manifestation of an element.
Fire. Wind. Earth. Water. Ice.
And a simple application of magical manipulation when conjuring the elements could change their nature.
Plasma. Gasses. Metals. Liquids.
All this power at the tip of his fingers. And all he did was recite a chant written down in a book.
He wanted to vomit.
It was a sick perversion of everything he knew. All his turmoil in his previous life was caused by his inability to cast spells.
He had wondered, fantasized, about what his life would have been like if he had working Magical Circuits from birth.
The question of his succession wouldn't have been born, he wouldn't have a little sister, and he would've spent his days reading and rereading the tomes in his family library.
His father probably wouldn't have been drinking all the time and would've taught him.
He would've probably married Tohsaka, their child would've been magnificent. It would have had his smarts and her natural talent.
His grandfather probably would've actually looked at him instead of dismissing his presence.
He dismissed the magic and covered his mouth. A sense of disgust was building in his gut.
Shirou Emiya, that boy was different; he was truly honest to his core. Emiya was a nice person, an idiotically nice person, but the effortless way he could fire an arrow into the bullseye was sickening.
In his past life, Shinji Matou studied and trained to be excellent, although some would call it talent, he found that insulting. Unfortunately, he wasn't born special, so he tried to become special.
Dedication and hardwork, those were how he developed his talents. Unlike his peers, he didn't slack off or mess around, and that was how he crafted his social and academic position to be near the top.
A Magus needed to be excellent in everything they did. And as a child, he thought the inverse might become true, if he worked hard enough, if he was excellent in everything, then maybe he could become a Magus.
Effort, it was something he understood, it was something he was practically submerged in.
So, when Emiya joined the Archery Club, picked up a bow for the first time, and shot a perfect bullseye, Shinji Matou started to despise him.
It had felt like his own existence, effort and everything, had just been undermined.
After that event he had spent countless attempts to hit a perfect bullseye, and he hadn't managed it before his fingers became slick with blood.
For weeks he trained and trained, and although his efforts paid off, he could hit the bullseye eight out of ten times, Emiya hadn't missed once.
It reached a point where just seeing the boy he once considered a friend would fill his entire being with rage. Of course, it hadn't been long since he learned the truth of Sakura Matou's purpose, so his mood was already in tatters.
Shinji had eventually nitpicked a visible mark on Emiya's shoulder as unsightly and forced him to quit the club, but that did nothing to erase the tension between them.
All in all, effort had been his way of life. And never once had he dreamt of achieving power without it.
With the ease at which people could use magic, it made sense why his parents weren't important. This world probably didn't even have proper magical lineages.
'This false power is meaningless. Anyone with Mana could become a mage, but I'll show this world what it means to be Magus, and I'll show them true power.'
He didn't want to be lumped together in the same category as a simple Mage, he wouldn't be satisfied with that.
And so he decided that the magic of this world was no different from Mana, it was just a tool to further the development of his own Magecraft.
'Rejoice, Zenith and Paul; your child will carve his name deep into this world.'
…
…
…
It has been three years since Shinji Matou was reborn as Rudeus Greyrat.
And for the past year, he had been doing his best to analyze the Mysteries behind this world's magical logic.
Attempts to uncover the meaning behind the spell-chants had bore no fruits, and extensive testing of words and phrases and yet to yield an original chant.
Although he had not given up entirely, for now he decided that the incantations were similar to a command, and he had yet to find the necessary system to add a new one.
And so he moved on to discovering the limits of this world's magic.
So far, it seemed to only be limited to what he could feasibly imagine. If he was personally familiar with it, or if he had a vivid memory of its atomic or chemical makeup, then he could manifest it.
Aside from the initial transaction of Magical Energy to create the matter, there was no other price or cost. And he also had to repay that cost when disassembling that matter.
Another limit he uncovered was that foreign magical matter could not exist here.
The Matou study had also been home to magical experiments and test tubes holding various specimens.
He had observed them often enough as a possible means of obtaining Magecraft, that didn't pan out, regardless he memorized the compositions.
And those magical existences couldn't be formed in this world. For now he was hypothesizing that he couldn't create matter that didn't already exist in some form in this world.
Furthermore, he had tried to delve into the realm of imagination to conjure, however he couldn't manifest anything special, except for Crystallized Mana.
It wasn't as big of a discovery as he first assumed, primarily because his body was already in the process of solidifying Mana.
Perhaps it was due to his nature as Magus, but his body was slowly but surely containing Mana. His body in its entirety was accumulating Mana.
From the tips of his toenails to the ends of his hair, Mana was being stored inside his body. He had drawn a simple magic array and when a drop of his blood fell upon it, it activated.
Therefore, his body was basically solid Mana already, there was no need for Crystallized Mana.
Regardless he didn't dismiss further testing with it, as it was less inconspicuous than using bits of his body. He didn't want to risk being hauled off and treated as a living battery farm.
So far, the only unique use he found was transforming it into a powdered form and casting a wide area spell without travel time.
On a more technical aspect of manifesting elements, he had practiced controlling light to form illusions.
Also, he had learned that he could activate his spells with pure Mana, however the cost was almost triple of his Magical Energy's cost.
And whenever he attempted to manipulate his Mana and Magical Energy in its pure form, without using a spell, he learned that it couldn't exist outside his person.
As in, once it exited the confines of his flesh it dissipated extremely fast. Unless, it was fired out as a projectile.
He tested nearly everything he could think of, but he was simply incapable of maintaining control of raw magic power when it was outside his skin.
However, he did observe the unnatural fluctuations of it as it failed to remain stable, and he determined that there was an unobservable factor at play.
He had managed to replicate the fluctuations against a spell in activation, and reached similar results of destabilizing the magic.
If he had to describe it, he would say it was sort of an anti-wave that collided with the formula and disturbed the construction of a spell.
This observation produced a huge leap forward in his understanding of the spell formulas in general.
It was remarkably easy to manifest elements, however controlling them afterwards took some work, that was until he began dismantling the construction of spells.
By sending opposing components of the spell against itself, he was able to reverse-engineer the entire construction of the spell itself.
Then he was able to pinpoint exactly how spells operated.
Although manifesting elements was easy, to properly use it he had to precisely alter it in his desired way. And every alteration was another step, another line.
Use (set amount) of Magical Energy, conjure (enter composition), and (enter parameters).
The last step was repeated many times over to achieve the exact intended outcome.
But once he had what was basically a diagram of the spells blueprints, he just needed to etch an imaginary ten-by-ten grid with ternary squares for the parameters onto his Magic Circuits, and he could instantly achieve any outcome he had memorized.
After he was done etching down the conjuration parameters, he then began testing out different aiming trajectory parameters along with firing parameters.
Before he could create an automatic version, he needed to work out the kinks of the manual one. He had the basic scope down, however he needed to work on developing it on a proper scale.
His current version was working with a three dimensional trajectory axis, and reactive firing calculator.
There were no issues with using it with Water or Earth spells, however, only an instant after he conjured a Wind spell, he realized his mistake.
The reactive firing calculator wasn't calibrated to handle Wind yet.
It calculated the current mass to a near zero, and a wind resistance coefficient of a near hundred, what's more it failed to estimate a proper velocity or acceleration, therefore it inverted most variables which collapsed the intended spell.
The inversion jumbled the spell's construction, so even an immediate reflexive dismantling was ineffective.
The collapsed Wind spell imploded with a deafening loud sonic shatter as large wisps of dark purple exploded towards him.
Although he feared being sliced, the purple wave exerted a repulsive force against his arm and then his body.
The world blacked out for a moment, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring up at the sun in the open sky.
His nerves informed him that his wrist, shoulder and a few of his ribs were broken. And his eyes informed that his new father was currently cradling him.
"Kid! Are you okay!? What happened!?"
Paul's eyes anxiously shifted around, to the second story where the wall was blown out and to his son who had just been thrown out the room.
He needed a second for his brain to realize what had happened, he had been blown back by the failed spell and caught by his new father.
"M-messed up with magic." He mumbled with tears in his eyes.
He had yet to heal himself, his father was a skilled fighter, so he probably noticed his son's injuries. Nevertheless, after allowing the pain a few circulations, he applied a pain numbing spell to his wounds.
"Rudy!? Paul!?" Zenith shouted from the hole in the second story, then she leapt down, she only stumbled slightly before she ran up to them. "What happened!?" She echoed.
"Uh, he says he messed up some magic, but forget that right now, I think his arm is broken."
"Seriously!? Rudy, hang on okay, baby?" Zenith reached out and gently grabbed her son's broken arm, then she closed her eyes and began chanting.
With the connection of skin, and the application of a Healing spell, he was able to feel his new mother's Mana at play. The construction of her spell was pretty solid, however it was also mediocre at best.
Zenith's spell could probably be best described as a bandage, the blueprint was geared towards closing and sealing wounds, anything else was just a side effect.
Since he was the recipient, and his bone was definitely broken, he could tell that her spell wouldn't be enough. He didn't have long, she would finish her chant so he had to act fast.
He shot out subtle pulses of a slightly different outline against her spell, it was designed to shave off the excess and reinforce the intent.
Pain momentarily overwhelmed his numbing spell as his bones snapped back into place. "Mhfgh!" He bit his tongue to muffle a scream, however he continued into a whimper.
He could've erased all his pain or healed himself up, however, he was currently a child so he had to act as one.
In his previous life, he had found various reports of Dead Apostles and their failures in obtaining immortality in his library.
He had read multiple accounts of people attempting to reincarnate, however, the process would cripple certain aspects of their personality or abilities.
Regardless, most were discovered and executed as weakened children.
Therefore, ever since he accepted his life here, he's been playing the role of a child in almost every way.
AN: I apologize if anyone is currently unhappy with the magic in this story.
The next chapter should focus on the family and expand on Shinji's current personality. Right now, it's deliberately detached, so please be patient.
Anyway, I had fun writing, so hopefully y'all had fun reading. I wanted to write more for this chapter, so expect the next chapter out soon.
Some parts of Canon are necessary and unavoidable, but I don't think all of it is, so certain things will definitely be changed later on.
