Ch.226226. Variable (3)

And so, after suddenly finding myself with pleasure without pleasure… well, there is pleasure, but it comes with a different kind of responsibility.

“Daddy! Daddy!”

“Yes, I’m coming!”

If what my future self conveyed in the letter was true, the twins who were supposed to stay at our house for the next two days had naturally settled in.

I was actually worried that the twins, who might not even exist as cells yet, let alone be born, would feel very awkward. But contrary to my expectations, the two children integrated into Tarasque with remarkable ease.

The children, who still retained the pure friendliness unique to young ones, simply treated others as they normally would, but that alone was enough to soften and melt the adults who had grown cold and hardened by reality.

Of course, being young doesn’t mean they’re complete fools without any judgment, so at first, the twins were a bit withdrawn, sensing the slightly unfamiliar situation and atmosphere.

But perhaps they soon realized that we were indeed the same people they had seen in the future.

At some point, the twins shed all their remaining reluctance and began approaching the forest dwellers, clinging to them affectionately.

Especially since children possess the innocence and hope that we adults have lost, there was also the significant reason that we couldn’t bring ourselves to do anything rash to such pure and adorable children.

And then….

“Talin. Talin’s magic aptitude is average! But her mana is high!”

“Wow, that’s correct! Here, have some ice cream!”

“Daddy’s the best!”

I, being a very wicked and evil adult, tried to extract information about the future from the children by tempting them with snacks.

My future self seems to be controlling the amount of snacks given to the kids for health reasons, but as a very bad and evil adult, I can shower the children with abundant treats as much as I want.

Additionally, Sophia didn’t stop me because she didn’t understand the concept that ‘sugar is bad for the body,’ and instead considered sugar to be something good.

Unlike modern people who avoid sugar as if it were some demonic product sent to harm health, according to the ‘common sense’ of this era, sugar is closer to a kind of medicine or nutritional supplement.

Unlike modern society where material abundance coexists with spiritual poverty, in this world where both body and mind are starving, there are truly many people dying of hunger. Really, many.

Despite various mystical powers and supernatural abilities reducing deaths from diseases or bacterial infections, the population has also increased significantly, to the point where hunger kills more people than disease.

The Frankish Kingdom, which has a good relationship with druids in many ways and has the most fertile land in the western continent, may not suffer from hunger, but the Empire and other countries with barren land unsuitable for wheat farming suffer from chronic famine.

In a world where people dying of hunger are everywhere you go, how could sugar, which can be considered an exceptional luxury among luxuries, be treated as something bad?

This substance, containing high calories and high-energy conversion carbohydrates, would help a weak person (usually due to malnutrition) recover their health by providing some calories.

Anyway, apart from this social perception, I was able to obtain various information from the two children under the pretext of a quiz show, using sugar that my future self had strictly forbidden.

Especially since people of any age have the desire to explain information they know, stimulating this desire and offering rewards yielded tremendous results.

And among these tremendous results (information), what I discovered most and best was about the children’s druid magic talents.

To be completely honest, I hadn’t expected the children to have talent in druid magic like Sophia or myself.

This is because in this world, there are talents that are hereditary and those that are not.

For example, ‘druid talent’ – the ability to sense and recognize the mysteries of nature, and furthermore, to become one with it and cast magic based on these mysteries – is highly likely to be inherited.

…The problem is that while the talent itself may be inherited, how exceptional that talent is becomes a separate issue.

Especially the talent for handling each druid magic is typically not inherited. To put it bluntly, the vast majority of those with druid talent-aptitude remain at the lower level.

When roughly judging talent on a five-level scale from A (specialized) to E with C being average, most people with aptitude for druid magic have talents around C to D at best.

If one doesn’t have an A in at least one of the three druid magic aptitudes, becoming a formal (intermediate) druid is practically impossible, meaning that only a handful among numerous apprentices ever become formal druids.

However, despite this, the reason I had the children train in druid magic was probably due to the merits that druid magic possesses.

For example, extending lifespan. Training in druid magic naturally increases one’s natural lifespan, and once one reaches the intermediate level, lifespan no longer diminishes.

A druid who has reached the intermediate level essentially becomes immortal, at least in terms of natural death.

Of course, judging from the circumstances, it doesn’t seem like I educated them after seeing some outstanding talent, but our children appeared to be naturally gifted.

First, Lupin Aleinos was what you might call a classically talented druid type.

The vast majority of druids show specialization in one of the magics that constitute druid magic, and druids specialized in each magic gain unique advantages.

Nature magic grants the ability to command and control spirits, celestial magic allows constant application of foresight abilities, and wild magic increases the effective range of animal friend contracts.

And Lupin, surprisingly, was a rare case specialized in all three of these magics.

Among all the druids I’ve met so far, I’ve only encountered one druid specialized in two types at the Imperial Ranch, making specialization in multiple magics extremely rare.

But… to be specialized in all three? This goes beyond rare – it might be one-of-a-kind in this world.

Of course, it’s not like each specialized magic is extraordinary in itself, so if my wild magic aptitude is AAA+, Lupin’s aptitude in all magics might feel like an A.

Usually, being versatile paradoxically gives the impression of being mediocre in everything rather than specialized in one thing, but when it crosses a certain threshold, we call it a balance-breaking character.

To be frank, druids as magic users already have strong hybrid characteristics, but with aptitude that’s close to all-around excellence, Lupin’s talent was truly innate.

…If this talent had been specialized in just one area, he could have overwhelmed even me in terms of raw talent alone.

While Lupin has this orthodox talent, Talisa… feels like a special case in many ways.

In fact, my daughter’s talent for each of the magics is quite subtle.

Even with the most generous assessment, from a cold perspective, it’s just slightly above average (C+). She might become a passable apprentice druid, but it would be insufficient to reach the intermediate level….

Instead, Talisa was born with a special ability related to mana, a kind of mutation.

‘…Mana absorption?’

The power to absorb neutral mana existing around her and use it as her own – essentially, an ability equivalent to ‘infinite mana.’

Usually, neutral mana in nature is vastly more abundant than what exists in the human body, and moreover, due to its property of trying to maintain a constant concentration in the same space, it quickly replenishes when consumed from the surroundings.

But attempts to absorb natural mana are surprisingly rare, because such natural mana is almost useless by itself.

If natural mana is crude oil, internal mana is refined gasoline or diesel.

Therefore, normal humans tame natural mana through breathing (refining), but the problem is that this taming process is only possible through breathing.

So while natural mana is generally seen as something useless, Talisa can absorb this mana without filtering and use it for magic.

It’s nothing short of a miracle, like turning garbage into wood, and at the same time, an ability with tremendous practicality.

Because insufficient talent can be compensated for with overwhelming mana quantity.

In this world, there exists a universal technique for amplifying magic power called overcasting, and one such technique is consuming more mana than necessary to further enhance magical power.

Of course, beyond a certain level, the increase in power becomes disproportionately smaller compared to the mana expended, but this is meaningless to Talisa, who has virtually infinite mana.

…They were truly children who made me wonder if my talent might have been inherited after all.