Reincarnated as a Genius Prodigy of a Prestigious Family - Chapter 12

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Reincarnated as a Legendary Talent Genius of a Noble Family Episode 12

 

 

 

4. The Talent Genius of Sogress County (4)

 

 

The second day’s banquet seemed to pass without incident.

I met even more nobles than yesterday and greeted them accordingly, and ate until my stomach was about to burst.

I wasn’t trying to listen, but I could hear whispers about Count Tiren.

“Count Tiren got kicked out of the castle?”

“Just how big of a mistake did he make…?”

“Since he couldn’t achieve any military merit in the last war, he became a nobody after the war ended and was running around busily here and there, but this incident pretty much finished him off.”

“I heard Count Tiren’s eldest son caused some kind of trouble.”

“So that rumor was true? Count Tiren’s eldest son, that Summoner he bragged about so much, got beaten up?”

“Shh. Keep it down. Anyway, to come all this way and get kicked out for failing to control his son, how absurd is that?”

I heard talk about me too.

“Did you hear the rumor? About Young Master Dane, they say he’s already an incredible Summoner.”

“Oh my, so Sogress County has become a renowned summoning family now?”

“That’s not all, apparently. They say he uses magic too!”

“Good heavens, does that even make sense?”

Rumors spread fast indeed.

Though not entirely accurate.

Anyway, Count Tiren probably wouldn’t have been kicked out so disgracefully if he had apologized and bowed his head from the beginning.

I don’t know if he was trying to gain something using this as leverage, but his late apology after arguing so stubbornly was completely useless.

Thanks to this, I learned one fact.

Apology over excuses.

Apology should be immediate.

I felt this a lot in my previous life too, but there’s no better way to resolve conflicts than a quick apology.

Of course, there are times when you shouldn’t apologize.

Meanwhile, when Mother heard the news, she grabbed me and asked.

“Dane, you’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Phew, thank goodness.”

That’s Mother for you.

More gentle than Father…

“Did you happen to use Stealth Arts?”

“…”

“I heard you used Summoning Arts and even shot Mana Bullets, so I was wondering.”

Father must have told her in great detail.

“Yes, of course. I hid in the grass field in the garden. They didn’t notice me at all.”

Mother was very pleased.

“You did very well. If you used it right away in your first real battle, that’s praiseworthy. I should teach you Tracking Arts next time.”

It’s fortunate my sisters weren’t here.

If they were, they would have asked the same questions.

Is it fortunate that I didn’t use Spear Arts?

Anyway, the only direct physical contact I made was headbutting his nose, so it didn’t seem like I did much wrong.

In any case, I ended up using three of my talents in real combat in an unexpected situation, excluding Spear Arts.

Strictly speaking, the magic wasn’t really magic but Mana Bullets… but so what?

It was a method I used inspired by the flower’s mana that Big Sister taught me, so it counts as magic.

By the way, many people are showing interest in my talents.

“Oh, so you’re the famous Young Master Dane I’ve heard so much about! I’m Baron Opent. Have you heard of the Opent family from the eastern territory?”

“Yes, Baron. I know it as a territory very famous for grilled trout and sapphires.”

“Haha, what a smart child! That’s right. Our Opent produces the continent’s finest trout and sapphires! By the way, I heard you have considerable talent in various fields!”

While it was partly due to Father’s reputation, most were subtly testing me.

“It’s nothing much, but I’d like my daughter to become close friends with you. Say hello. Haha.”

Like this.

Duke Termion was truly a gentleman.

Since it would be awkward to approach Count Sogress directly, he was testing me, a child.

“Hello, I’m called Silvia.”

“Yeah. I’m Dane.”

“You’re going to inherit the Sogress Family later, right?”

Why are kids these days so aggressive?

“I’m not sure.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know. It’s true, isn’t it? They say you’re overflowing with talent.”

“That doesn’t seem like something for me to think about.”

I was pondering how to send away Baron Opent’s precocious young lady when I found an unexpected solution.

More precisely, the solution came to me.

“Dane, there you are?”

It was Leila.

Silvia jumped up in surprise.

“L-Lady Leila.”

“Who’s this?”

Leila narrowed her eyes as if they were needles and glared at Silvia. Silvia seemed flustered but soon introduced herself quite nonchalantly.

“Hello, Lady Leila. I’m Silvia Opent, the eldest daughter of Baron Opent’s family.”

“Oh, really? I’m Leila Termion. Nice to meet you.”

Women are scary.

Because even in that short time, they scrutinize every corner of each other.

In the cutthroat noble society, sizing up opponents is natural, but still…

“Sorry, but I’m going to borrow Dane. We have a ‘promise’ to keep. Right, Dane?”

At those words, Silvia looked at me.

Cold sweat trickled down.

You could say the moment of choice had arrived.

Having often witnessed the fierce wars between Big Sister and Little Sister, I knew very well.

That in this case, I had to make the best choice.

Sorry, Silvia.

I pretended to give in and stood up from my seat.

“Sorry, let’s talk next time.”

“Oh, okay…”

The duke’s daughter who boasted power second only to the emperor even in the capital.

And the baron’s daughter from the eastern territory.

It was no contest.

Anyway, I left the main castle with Leila and headed to the garden, partly to settle my full stomach.

“What were you talking about with her? Was it perhaps something…”

“Perhaps what?”

“…engagement talk?”

I burst out laughing.

“Curious?”

“It’s not that I’m particularly curious…”

You are curious.

“If you’re curious, I’ll tell you later.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Geez, are you teasing me right now?”

The fun of teasing her is quite satisfying.

“But did you really have that kind of conversation?”

“No. I didn’t.”

Why does she look relieved?

Anyway, Leila and I arrived at the garden.

To be precise, it was a secret place that only those living in this Count’s Castle would know about.

“Here, no one would really see us at all.”

Leila looked around here and there as if fascinated, then turned to me with sparkling eyes.

“Now, it’s time to grant my wish. What should we start with?”

“First, let me ask you a few things.”

“Anything! By the way, my birthday is exactly 4 months away now!”

I simply moved on to the main point.

“Yeah, okay. Have you ever felt mana?”

“…A little?”

“How much is ‘a little’?”

“Well… not enough to form a mana core or anything, but enough to accept it through breathing?”

“So you’re not at the release stage yet.”

At those words, Leila looked dejected and asked.

“Then is it hard to learn?”

“No. You can learn from now on.”

“Really?”

I naturally learned to breathe with mana while rolling around on the battlefield.

The battlefield is a desolate space full of corpses, but paradoxically, it’s a place where you can breathe mana better because of that.

When people who can handle mana like knights, mages, or summoners die, the mana they held in their bodies slowly leaks out.

With such corpses scattered around, it was naturally a space that had to be more abundant with mana than other places.

I intend to teach her the method I naturally learned that way.

By the way, doesn’t the Duke’s House teach these things?

While individual differences in mana affinity are significant, a Duke’s House should at least teach something like this.

Is Duke Termion stricter than he appears?

“First, feeling the mana you’ve accepted within your body is the priority.”

“Feel it within my body?”

“Yeah. To release mana outside your body, you need to know how to handle the mana inside. The key is ‘imagination’.”

“Imagination, you mean…”

“Imagine that mana is swirling around in your body. Close your eyes and picture your body. Then imagine mana flowing through every corner of your body’s blood vessels like blood.”

Imagination.

To put it more simply, image visualization.

This is the fundamental act for everything you can do with mana, beyond just handling mana.

“It’s not working well…”

And it’s difficult at first.

It’s bound to be hard when you’re trying to imagine something you’ve never seen.

“Do it slowly and calmly.”

If simply accepting mana is a matter of affinity, then releasing what you’ve accepted and properly mixing it to create cores or circles can be said to be a matter of imagination.

The reason mages are always talking to themselves and frequently lost in thought is also because of circles, which are much harder to form than cores.

If you can’t accomplish this, you ultimately can’t create cores or circles.

And mana, if not compressed and fixed in the form of cores or circles, will inevitably scatter beyond a certain amount.

“Ugh…”

“It won’t work just by forcing it.”

After trying for a long time, Leila eventually looked tearful.

“It’s not working well.”

“Then let’s try it this way.”

I injected mana into the ring Big Sister gave me. Then subspace appeared in front of my hand. Leila was startled.

“Wow! Is this subspace?”

“Yeah.”

I took out a mirror I had prepared beforehand from the revealed subspace. It was a large mirror big enough to capture Leila’s entire body.

“There are subspace pouches like this too…?”

“Yeah. Big Sister made this herself and gave it to me as a gift this time.”

“My goodness… I’m really jealous… My brothers entered the Academy and are so busy with training they don’t even pay attention to me…”

Leila examined my ring from various angles, then soon clenched her fist as if she had made up her mind.

“I’m definitely going to become stronger than my brothers.”

Other people’s family affairs aren’t my business, but still, it’s a bit much for brothers to not care about their only little sister.

“Alright, then stand in front of this mirror. So your whole body is visible.”

“Like this?”

“Good. Like that. Now, instead of closing your eyes and imagining, look at your body in the mirror while conjuring up images in your mind. It’ll probably be much easier.”

Imagination is difficult.

Even more so if it’s your own body.

But with a mirror, it’s much easier.

You imagine while directly seeing your own body with your own eyes.

For reference, I didn’t have a mirror, so whenever it rained, I would quickly run to puddles to train.

“Alright. I’ll try.”

Perhaps instinctively sensing that it would be much easier, Leila began staring at herself in the mirror with burning determination.

How much time passed like that?

“Oh.”

I let out a very quiet exclamation as I watched the shimmer rising from Leila’s entire body.

It was a mana flow that would only be visible to someone with excellent mana affinity like me or to Leila herself.

In other words, Leila was currently releasing mana through her entire body.

She has talent too.

Not as much as me, though.

“Huff.”

Leila was really straining with all her might.

Her face turned bright red, her fingertips went white, and her wide-open eyes trembled.

Then, at the moment she finally realized she was releasing mana.

“Phew!”

She exhaled roughly and collapsed with a thud.

Her breathing sounded like she was exhausted to the point of near collapse.

But her expression looked incredibly joyful.

“It worked, it worked. It worked! That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It worked.”

Since she was already doing mana-accepting breathing, it seems to have worked this quickly.

But this is just the beginning.

“This is just the start though.”

“Th, this is just the start?”

Leila asked back in a daze.

“Yeah. This is just the start. Now that you’ve gotten the feel for release, you need to take this feeling as is and concentrate that release in one place.”

“Ca, can’t we rest a little first?”

“What did you just hear? I said you need to go with this feeling as is.”

Leila got up with a tearful expression.

She seems to be making the most pitiful expression possible, but not a chance.

“Ugh….”

Leila eventually managed to get up and stood in front of the mirror again.

I smiled with satisfaction and nodded my head.

Then I deliberately ignored the gaze I felt from behind.

How long is Father planning to secretly peek?

Did he learn stealth arts from Mother?

 

 

“Oho.”

Count Sogress looked at the two little ones and laughed as if finding it interesting.

The stealth is perfect. Since he’s hidden in the grass field.

It seemed like it was good that he had watched the stealth arts that his wife Lily often deployed to smack his back.

‘Our son is already teaching others everything. He’s all grown up.’

It was when Count Sogress was making a pleased expression.

“What are you doing there?”

“Oh my! Ah, no. Duke.”

“What are you doing hiding in the grass field? Is there some nighttime couple here or something?”

“How did you know?”

When his stealth, which he thought was perfect, was immediately discovered, Count Sogress seemed quite shocked.

“Well, it’s all visible. How can such sloppy stealth be called stealth? Tsk tsk. Your wife is a legendary assassin, but the husband learned nothing from watching.”

“….”

“But what are you doing? If the castle owner gets caught hiding in grass fields and peeping at people like this, others will curse you.”

“I followed my son.”

“Huh? You too? I followed our daughter here.”

Here were two doting nobles.

“Let me see too.”

Duke Termion slipped his head into the garden grass field and grinned as if he knew this would happen.

“Your son seems to have caught her fancy.”

“Does it look that way?”

“Of course. It’s not common for Leila to open her heart like that.”

“Did something happen? She seemed like a bright child.”

“She’s bright on the outside. She’s the Duke’s daughter after all. But inside, she’s not like a child. Leila grew distant from her brothers when they left for the Academy.”

“Such circumstances….”

“Her mother is also sick so she can’t spend as much time as before, so the child became lonely.”

Duke Termion sighed.

While sticking his head into the grass field.

“So I was thinking of enrolling her in the Academy quickly to let her mingle with children her age, but you know too, right? They’re only children in name, but it’s a miniature version of noble society.”

“I know well. That’s why I quit in the middle too.”

“So I brought her to this banquet. Hoping she might meet other children here. But… it seems she’s found a good friend.”

Duke Termion smiled pleasantly as if relieved.

While sticking his head in the grass field.

“Hmm, is Dane teaching Leila how to control mana? Looking at the mirror, it seems like it.”

“It seems right. Did Dane offer to teach her first?”

“Leila might have asked first. She’s been training alone lately without saying anything, insisting she needs to create a mana core, so she must have found a breakthrough like this.”

Duke Sogress tilted his head and frowned.

The branches had been scratching his face while sticking his head in the grass field.

“Ow. But why don’t you treat your daughter more affectionately?”

“…Did you notice?”

“You didn’t seem to cherish her terribly.”

“I’m doing it on purpose. I treated my sons that way and they grew up willful. Even more so during training.”

“Don’t be too harsh. She’ll get hurt later. Same with the mana core. How desperate must she have been to ask Dane?”

“…This reminds me of when you used to scold me.”

Duke Termion nodded as if he felt something, then realized his mistake.

The branches had scratched his face in the same way.

“Are you planning to send your son to the capital later? If you do, why don’t you have him stay at the Duke’s castle?”

“I’ll do whatever Dane wants to do. Just like Arabella and Claire did. If he says he wants to go to the capital, I’ll definitely do that.”

“It would be good if you came up together too.”

“To go there and spar all day long?”

“Your intuition just keeps getting sharper. Ugh.”

Even while bickering, the two didn’t take their eyes off the playful yet serious mana lesson between Dane and Leila, their son and daughter.

And there was one woman watching these two men’s bottoms.

‘What are these men doing so shamelessly in the garden?’

It was Lily Sogress, who had come looking for her missing husband and son.

Lily sighed watching the two bottoms wiggling as they tried to hide even more, then made a decision.

‘Let’s pretend I don’t know.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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