Aito quickly grew accustomed to life in Magnolia.
The town was fairly prosperous, and public safety was better than he’d expected.
It even had surprising things like Magic Trains.
Combined with all kinds of strange magical products, the average person’s quality of life was far above the stereotypical medieval “sword and magic” world Aito had imagined.
It felt much closer to the Victorian era.
Perhaps because of magic, however, civilization in this world was also extremely uneven.
Fiore was vast and sparsely populated, with only a handful of major cities.
Outside towns and settlements lay untamed wilderness, with tribal people and powerful magical beasts scattered throughout forests and wildlands.
Ordinary villagers in remote areas might never leave their hometowns in their entire lives.
That was why Aito felt that Gildarts bringing him out of the village and taking him to Fairy Tail was a favor almost as great as saving his life.
Fairy Tail was certainly noisy, but everyone in the guild was talented, entertaining, and surprisingly pleasant to talk to.
Aito quite liked the place.
With his innocent and adorable appearance, harmless act, unusually high emotional intelligence for his age, and a little assistance from Telepathy Magic…
Aito successfully earned the goodwill of almost everyone in the guild.
At the very least, nobody would refuse if he politely asked them for some guidance with magic.
Aito wanted to start studying magic immediately, but there was something he had to learn first.
Reading and writing.
This world had many writing systems.
Aito had even seen Chinese characters in a few books, though they were known here as Eastern script.
He had never systematically studied the Common Script used throughout the country, so he still needed to learn it from scratch.
Cana eagerly volunteered to become Aito’s language teacher.
At the same time, Aito obtained his first job in this new world—a server at Fairy Tail.
The pay was 1,000 Jewels a day, roughly 7 USD, with food and lodging included.
Pure child labor exploitation.
Unfortunately, this was another world, and there were no child protection laws here.
And so, Aito worked and studied at the guild during the day, studied late into the night after work, and even dreamed about studying.
His days were incredibly productive.
Once Gildarts saw that Aito had settled into guild life, he accepted a job and left Magnolia.
Not long after Makarov returned, the newspapers reported that the Magic Council had destroyed several black-magic cults.
The Angle Cult hadn’t even managed to survive long enough for Aito to gain the strength needed for revenge.
Watching Aito effortlessly read the newspaper, rookie teacher Cana proudly bragged to Gray.
“Gray, I think I might be a genius teacher!” “Have you considered that maybe Aito is the genius?” “Hmph!
Of course my little brother is a genius too!” Standing behind Aito, Cana happily squished and stretched his cheeks.
“Little Aito, there’s basically nothing left for me to teach you.
If you want to learn another writing system, though, I can introduce you to a friend.” It had taken Aito only a few days to master the Common Script.
After all, he’d already possessed the ability to read in his previous life, and his new brain worked remarkably well.
Memorizing a new set of characters wasn’t particularly difficult.
“I think I know enough writing for now, but I wouldn’t mind making a new friend.” “Hehe.
She’s a girl from town who really loves reading.
She said she’ll join our guild once she learns magic.
I’ll introduce you next time~” Cana had become much more cheerful lately.
She hadn’t even seemed particularly bothered when her father left again.
After gaining such an entertaining little brother, she’d discovered that apparently not every boy was as annoying as Gray.
“Tch.
Aito, stop hanging around these annoying girls!
How about I keep teaching you some real man’s magic?
I’m sure you’ll learn it soon!” Gray came over and slapped Aito on the shoulder.
He was also quite fond of this surprisingly agreeable new little brother.
“Gray!
Don’t corrupt my Aito, you perverted exhibitionist!” “Huh?!
When did that happen?!” “Sorry, Big Brother Gray.
I want to learn some simpler magic first.
Your magic is too amazing, so I can’t keep wasting your training time asking you to teach me.” “But…” Aito smiled and shifted his gaze toward the “System Panel” nobody else could see.
His greatest achievement over the past few days wasn’t learning to read.
It was finally understanding how to use his cheat ability.
His current panel looked completely different from before— [Vitality: 21/21] [Stamina: 18/18] [Magic Power: 365/366] [Telepathy Magic LV4, 4550/10000000] [Meditation LV1, 555/10000] [Crush Magic LV0, 24/1000] [Smoke Magic LV0, 404/1000] [Fire Magic LV0, 200/1000] [Ice Magic LV0, 211/1000] [Molding Magic LV0, 333/1000] [Card Magic LV0, 110/1000] [Requip Magic LV0, 666/1000] [Inspiration Points: 533] (※) His Stamina had risen slightly, while his Magic Power had increased by more than ten points after learning Meditation.
More importantly, he’d accumulated a whole collection of LV0 magic.
These were all forms of magic Aito had learned from Fairy Tail’s Mages over the past few days.
He had spent only one day studying each of them.
Yet despite spending roughly the same amount of time on every type of magic, the experience points he gained were completely different.
That meant different forms of magic had different learning difficulties, and their experience gain rates weren’t the same either.
Based on his progress, Aito learned Requip Magic the fastest.
Crush Magic was naturally the hardest.
Its progress had barely moved at all.
After spending a day learning Ice-Make Magic from Gray, two separate entries appeared on his panel: [Ice Magic] and [Molding Magic].
Even those two had different learning difficulties.
Apparently, the system divided combined forms of magic into their individual components and calculated them separately.
But the important discovery involved Meditation.
Based on his normal learning speed, its experience shouldn’t have increased nearly that quickly.
His cheat ability had finally shown its true value.
Inspiration Points!
A small ※ had appeared beside Inspiration Points on his panel.
It meant he could spend them.
When the symbol first appeared, Meditation had a little over three hundred experience points, while Aito possessed more than seven hundred Inspiration Points.
Aito instinctively selected it.
[Meditation] instantly jumped from LV0 to LV1.
His cheat could consume Inspiration Points to fill the missing portion of a skill’s experience bar.
In other words, if Aito wanted to, he could spend 334 Inspiration Points right now and instantly learn Requip Magic.
That discovery left him incredibly excited.
The value of his seemingly simple cheat ability had suddenly skyrocketed.
Still, Aito had no intention of spending his Inspiration Points right now.
Requip Magic wasn’t particularly difficult to learn.
Even without using his cheat, he estimated that another day or two of practice would be enough.
There was no point wasting precious Inspiration Points on something he could easily learn himself.
Airo had taught him Requip Magic.
According to her, it was extremely popular among female Mages because it allowed them to change outfits whenever they wanted.
The basic principle involved placing a mannequin shaped roughly like the user in another room or space, then using a Magic Circle to exchange what the mannequin and Mage were wearing.
It was essentially an application of Spatial Magic.
The beginner version wasn’t difficult.
All Aito needed to do was memorize the Magic Circle, though its Requip range was limited.
However, Airo had also told him that it took her more than a month to learn.
That left Aito unsure whether he was simply extraordinarily talented or had misunderstood something about his experience bars.
So before doing anything else, he wanted to learn at least one type of magic entirely through his own efforts.
As for Inspiration Points, he planned to save them.
No amount seemed like it would ever be enough.
Going from LV4 to LV5 required ten million experience points.
If the next level required a hundred million, his future Inspiration Point needs would become absurd.
The problem was that Aito still had almost no idea how to obtain large amounts of Inspiration Points.
They seemed to increase naturally even if he did nothing, but the rate was painfully slow.
He gained only around one hundred points per day on average.
That wasn’t remotely enough.
As for how to actively increase Inspiration Points…
Aito currently had one theory.
He wasn’t sure whether it was correct.
Today, he intended to test it.