As an infant, there really wasn’t much for me to do except to drink milk, sleep, and of course cast more [Shadow Fingers].

  Now that I had plenty of mana, well relatively, I wanted to explore more of what this spell could do. Admittedly, it was also true that there wasn’t anything else to do.

  My body still barely listens to me and I already decided that I won’t dwell on the past.

  A fly landed atop a small porcelain plate. Its wings buzzed as it crawled about.

  SMACK!

  A dark hand shot out of the teakettle’s shadow and slapped down upon the plate, sending it wobbling. The fly however kept buzzing as it circled overhead and flew away.

  I was getting pretty good, but still not enough to catch fast moving targets.

  My many hours of practice with it had paid off in unexpected ways. Last week, when I managed to finally turn the page of Meridol’s closed book with my [Shadow Fingers], I felt an odd sensation stirring inside me. I opened the status and saw that my base agility had gone up a point along with the corresponding decrease in [Sync Penalty].

  It seemed that in this game world, my attributes will increase passively with practice.

  I don’t need to wait for the voice to tell me to train or for levels.

  Perhaps because I was a growing baby, my attributes also seemed to increase on their own. Just a day ago, all my base attributes went up by one overnight. My stats though, haven’t changed much except for my [Mental] and [Grace]. I wasn’t even sure what they even do.

  My status screen still looked pretty pathetic, but what could one expect for a two week old infant.

  Practicing [Shadow Fingers] had another unexpected benefit: I was getting better at controlling the shadows themselves.

  Maybe it was due to my Sorcerer class being ‘attuned to magic,’ but whenever I cast the spell I saw the waves of energy again. I began to think of them as the flow of magic.

  It poured out of me when I started casting, and converged to form the dark tendrils that rose out of the shadow. If it came out of me, a part of me had to be directing that flow. Even if it was on a subconscious level, I should be able to exert my will over it.

  It was my mind after all.

  I started by trying to make small changes but the more I cast, the more sensitive I became to the flow of magic, and the more my will became in sync with that subconscious control. Over time, it became another limb that I could feel and move. And through this limb I began to manipulate the spell’s shadows.

  It was fun to experiment. Sometimes, I molded my shadow fingers into sharp points to dig into crevices in the walls. Other times, I flattened them so that they could act as a fan, or netting to catch the bees by the vase. I even changed their texture, turning the shadowy hand into mist, or hard like metal.

  Once, I drove a sharpened and hardened shadow finger into the table and it punctured the wooden surface like a steel nail, leaving a hole behind. Beatrice got really suspicious when she found it, but she just wagged a finger at me and didn’t mention anything to Meridol.

  —

  Other than my two attendants, no one else visited me. No family members. No servants. Winthrop hadn’t shown his face again.

  Actually, a boy did enter my room a while back. It’s hard to be sure exactly when.

  Days tend to blur together when you're a helpless infant.

  His furious stomps had announced him long before I saw him. I had to quickly cut off the spell I was casting and the dark fingers dissipated into the air. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the super solid ones that I was experimenting with since those take forever to fade.

  His head first appeared, a mountain of light, ash-brown hair popping over the edge of the crib. Then the rest of him showed, hard blue eyes set in a youthful, toddler face. He couldn’t be any older than five.

  I assumed this was Ben, though the blue of his eyes was nothing like mother’s.

  One of his hands was raised into a clenched fist, and his face burned with anger to match. But he froze just a few steps from my crib when his gaze met mine. Then his fist dropped and he stood there casting his shadow over me.

  Well I can’t speak or move, so it’s all up to you.

  I stared back at him expectantly. I had three big brothers as Joan, and butt heads plenty of times with Allison as well. Usually, the best course of action was to face things head on.

  But nothing happened, and the seconds dragged on.

  Are you going to yell at me? Or hit me? Or… cry?

  He opened his mouth and then shut it. Nothing again. I was starting to tire, and was closing my eyes when his fist pounded the top of the crib, shaking it around me.

  One of my arms was jarred loose from my blanket and I managed to raise it toward him.

  It wasn’t quite a conscious thing since I still didn’t have full control of my body, but when I looked at him my chest was filled by pity and guilt.

  His eyes widened.

  “My Lord, what are you doing?!” Beatrice’s sharp cry cut in from behind.

  Her worried face slammed into view overhead. She clutched her chest, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw me laying there unharmed.

  “Please, I know the funeral has been hard on you. But she’s innocent.” she pleaded as she wedged herself between the boy and the crib. “Let me get you something warm and sweet to drink, okay?”

  He didn’t say anything in response and numbly let her guide him away.

  That was how I found out, my new mother’s funeral had come and gone.

  No one else came to see me after that. Perhaps it was some kind of mourning period, but I was certain my father wouldn't ever come to see me, most especially after that look.

  Everyone probably blames me for her death—well, everyone except for Beatrice. Based on what Meridol said before, and the wary glances she often sent my way, I was sure she thought something similar as well.

  Does she tell anyone else that I am strange and inhuman, or worse…

  After a long rest my mana nearly back up to full again. I resumed my [Shadow Fingers] practice, since there was nothing else better to do.

  A newborn’s life was full of monotony. I guess that’s why they sleep so much.

  All the constant casting and manipulating hadn't just given me control over the shape and texture of the fingers. I was also starting to get more than a sense of touch through them. It came to my mind in splotches of black and white, like an oil painting of just black and white paint being smeared on as I moved those fingers about.

  My [Shadow Fingers] were becoming sensitive to light and I was starting to see through them.

  Mostly this involved bright light or dark shapes, but the fascinating thing was that I could see the prints on books. When I ran my fingers over the pages, I could see the blocky letters, and lines and paint of drawings. Not that it helped me much since I can’t read the language here.

  [Demonic Insight] for all its usefulness only seemed to help with spoken languages. The speaker needed to be there. In fact, I was fairly sure I was gleaning the meaning off of their minds rather than understanding the sounds themselves. The words on lifeless paper didn’t hold any meaning for me.

  The book that Meridol was reading, however, had both letters and lines that looked like diagrams through my fingers. I became curious as to what those diagrams were depicting so I focused my practice sessions on that.

  Right now, I was trying to stretch out a long shadowy arm out from a shadow on the side wall to grab the book and then swing it over to my crib. Making the arm stretch more was rather easy, I just had to direct more of the magic flow toward it—which did consume more mana, but it was a bearable amount now that I had the Beginner’s bracelet.

  Gripping the book, I swung my dark limb and hand toward the crib. My arm was too short on the first attempt and the book shot overhead before swinging back the other way. The next swing was too long. The book slammed into the side of the crib, jarring the whole bed.

  I shortened the arm, timed the next swing, and stretched it back out just as the book passed overhead. The book moved over the lip of the crib and dropped right on top of me.

  Ouch!

  The impact shocked my body. Stiff pages scraped my arm and the scent of dried paper filled my nostrils. I lost control of my spell, and the shadowy limb and hand dissolved. But the shock was nothing compared to the pain itself. This was my first time feeling it in this body. Tears welled in my eyes, but I caught the wail that was threatening to burst out of my chest.

  The book was heavy and its corner hurt like hell.

  Hopefully, it’s just a bruise.

  I checked my status and saw that I lost two HP! That was the amount I had before putting on the bracelet. I would’ve died if I didn’t have it on!

  Back in the old world, I had a pretty good sense of the amount of damage that constituted a wound in the game sense. Even though I couldn’t see the status screen back then, I’d both played through and experienced first hand enough battles to have an innate feel for how the underlying mechanics worked.

  Here, I had no idea how much damage was one HP. Still, I should’ve known that a book that heavy could kill a baby no matter the system.

  So much for the common sense of a newborn.

  After a few attempts, I managed to push the book off of me and flip it open with my actual hands. As expected, the words and letters were incomprehensible. Although they do look a little like stylized English.

  The one letter repeated so often on a few sections really does look like a gothic ‘A’...

  Turning the page, one of those ‘diagrams’ that I had seen with my shadow fingers appeared. It had drawings of human figures, along with lines connected to circles with labels pointing to them. It looked like the scientific drawings that one would find in textbooks.

  Hmm… this one looks like a sine wave graph, though my memories of those were rather hazy. Joan didn’t do much math.

  “What are you doing?” Meridol’s voice rang from above me. She caught me red-handed. My tiny body was sprawled over the spread pages of her book. Drool from my lips pooled on its surely precious paper and print.

  I hadn’t noticed that.

  She lifted me off the pages, and wiped down the pages of the leather bound book before setting it aside.

  “How did you even get this in here?” She huffed, frowning as she looked back and forth between the table where she had left the book and my crib.

  It didn’t take her long to give up on searching for an explanation. She cradled me in her arms, unbuttoned her top and proceeded to feed me. Her lips held a sardonic smile when she looked down at me. “Really, my little demon, you shouldn’t look so disturbed. Human babies are usually happy when they are on the breast.”

  I blinked up at her. She usually called me demon, monster, or devil when it was just us, but never with a ‘my’.

  Did something happen?

  “Oh, you noticed. That uncanny awareness again…” She ran a finger over my cheek as I fed. Our eyes locked. “Your father, The Duke asked if I could stay on as your governess. What do you think of that?”

  It’s not like I have a say in the matter.

  But I was at least used to her, and she hadn’t sold me out yet, it seemed.

  “That’s right. None of us really have any choice in this. The Duke hadn’t the time to find anyone else. And I have nowhere to go back to anymore. You? Yes, no choice for you either…” she teased me as she switched me over to the other side.

  I remembered her mentioning escaping troubles at home.

  My tiny hand somehow found its way to her chest, where her heart was.

  The touch seemed to startle her. “I’m fine, little one,” she murmured, her smile softening. “That look. It’s one thing you share with your mother.”

  She kissed the top of my head.

  When I was done feeding, Meridol picked up that book again. “I suppose you’re tired of the usual children’s tales from Beatrice? But I have to warn you this is rather dry.”

  “Let’s see… you were on.” She flipped through the pages, stopping when a dry chuckle escaped her lips. “A dissertation on spell hybridization.”

  She didn’t get more than a few sentences in when her eyes caught sight of something on my arm. In an instant she snatched it and pulled it up, her eyes darting progressively more frenzied when she examined the rest of my arm. She peeled off my onesie in a hurry, looking me over.

  “Idiot demon! You’re supposed to cry when you’re hurt!” she cried out as she hauled me up into the air and ran down the hallway. “Healer!”