The Four Kingdoms: Gemini City

The next day, Emilia woke up bright and early to start her soon-to-be-daily exercise. In her last life she had dedicated all her time to studying how to take over her family empire and to master the field it was built on; technology. In this haste she had neglected any physical education, only maintaining the b.a.r.e minimum to be healthy. She was born a very pretty child but her body had started to deteriorate in the last few years of her life.

This was very similar to game-Emilia since she was a scholar as well. Aside from that, her grandfather had always advised her to take up self defence but she never felt the need to learn martial arts and instead only learnt to use a gun. Maybe if she knew martial arts she wouldn't have died like that... well what's done is done. This life she'd heed his advice and learn to defend herself, not only to stay safe but also to stay healthy.

She put on her pair of riding clothing that she had had made, which was the closest thing to a pants for women she could find, and headed for the field. She lived in a large estate where the mansion was only part of the land and so there was a lot of empty land around the house, a bit of which was turned into a garden and a training field. Instead of going to the training field she decided to run around the garden, the view was much better.

'Niklaus Wolff huh...' Niklaus Wolff was the second son of Duke Wolff who would become her instructor for magic. The weird part is that he was only 6 years older than her, meaning he was only 12 this year.

Despite his young age, turns out he's a genius. Or, at least, he's considered one. He was one of only 5 people to have ever entered the Kleure Academy early and his stats in the game matched up with his reputation in her reality. In the game, Niklaus was the magic prodigy who had graduated early and continued to work in the Academy to learn more. Despite being a scholar-type his character wasn't one dimensional; he was extremely good at fencing as well, therefore he ended up teaching it in the academy and he only taught magic privately to a limited number of students. Guess his inclination to teaching started at a very early age. Emilia was both cautious and expectant about this new encounter.

She doubted that he would be a suitable teacher at this age. Despite being a prodigious genius, he was still only 12. This may sound hypocritical from her but she wasn't actually 5 years old, she was almost 30 now, if you include her past life. She literally had a whole lifetime to learn all the skills and knowledge she has but that is probably not the case for Niklaus. One more thing for concern is that Niklaus was actually one of the worst characters for game-Emilia to cross paths with. He was a quiet character in the game which is why none of the players expected him to be as ruthless as he was with game-Emilia.

Then again her crime was on equal grounds with her punishment on his route so it made sense but the view of that character had changed after people reached the end of his route.

She put her thoughts aside and focused on running for as long as she could, which was barely 10 minutes, and then went back to her room almost completely exhausted and slightly demotivated.

'So weak!'

She sat on her bed, mourning her non-existent stamina. She almost thought about giving up physical training at her pathetic state but then she remembered that she's still barely 5 years of age physically. Of course it would be hard. Also she had a feeling that her father would prefer it if she didn't do anything physical and she didn't want to end up like her last life so she pushed herself to run everyday.

After her run, she asked the servants to draw a warm bath and soaked in rose water for a while before getting around to cleaning up. This world didn't really have good soap yet, only very rudimentary versions and some oils but she made do. She thought about getting around to make better soap, though she knew nothing about that, making a better version of something that already exists in this type of world shouldn't be too hard.

If nothing else she'll just scent the soap. Shampoo, however, didn't exist at all, people generally only washed their hair with water and sometimes mixed soap with the water. Instead of using soap water, she rubbed some oil into her hair and then rinsed it.

After her bath and breakfast with her mother, she sat in her room to read a book while waiting for her first instructor for the day to arrive. The book she was reading was titled "Comprehensive Guide to Magic" and was one of the first books she had read. It was about the basics of magic and she thought it would be a good idea to brush up on her knowledge while waiting for her new magic tutor.

Soon a maid knocked on her door.

"Enter." She said, to allow the maid inside. The maid quietly entered the room, pondering whether it was weird for a child to be so m.a.t.u.r.e. Eventually she chalked it up to Emilia being a genius child.

"Young Miss, your new magic tutor is here. Please follow me to the front hall." She notified. Emilia stood up with her book and made her way down from her room to the hall.

Upon reaching she found a boy who looked to be a bit older than her and her father sitting opposite each other on the lounge set.

When they noticed her arrival both of them stood up as she walked to them and her father introduced the two.

"Emilia, this is your new magic tutor, Lord Niklaus Wolff." At this Niklaus bowed slightly and Emilia reciprocated his action by doing a small curtsy.

"It's a p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e to meet you Lady Emilia."

At this distance she could clearly see the features of his face. High nose, plump lips, straight brows. This kid was going to grow to be really handsome. He also had fluffy black hair and beautiful green eyes that were currently narrowed at her. Seeing such a stern expression on such a delicately beautiful face was quite a contrast.

"The p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e is mine Lord Niklaus." She responded, getting a little annoyed by all the roundabout things that 'polite society' dictated was to be done. She didn't want to waste so much time on introductions and wanted to jump straight into the tutoring but that's just not how things work in the world of nobles.

She much preferred her modern world where the nobles were much less uptight. She should know, she had interacted with a lot of them over the years.

Eventually her father left her to her class, of course she wasn't completely alone with him. There were a few maids on standby. It was not considered right for an unmarried girl, no matter her age, to be left alone with a man. Or boy in this case. Anyway as soon as he left Niklaus spoke up.

"Lady Emilia should we begin with the theory of magic?" He tested her. He had observed that she was holding a basic magic guide and figured that she was just getting started on her studies. He was also sceptical about the fact that she was a genius, Duke Von Jaeger had notified him that she was much smarter than average but after all she was only 5. However, he volunteered to tutor her anyway, it was a good opportunity to gauge what the level of a 'genius' was in this world.

"Lord Niklaus if you don't mind please dispense with such formalities. Just call me Emilia. And yes, that is a good place to start." She replied. Seeing how she didn't ask for anything harder or more complex he chose to wait a little more before making his decision about her.

"That's fine, please call me Niklaus as well. So let's begin." He started. "Magic is the practice of learning to control the ether substance in your body known as Dimensia. An ether substance refers to anything that has very little physical presence; meaning you can not touch, feel, smell or hear it, however, you can manipulate it. All ether substances are made of Dimensia but the form they take may be different. The Dimensia in the human body is what you control to perform magic."

Emilia listened intently, having heard this quite a few times before but waited patiently to see if he would say anything that she hadn't heard before.

"A magic user may only use the Dimensia in their physical body, once used it will regenerate over time. Most humans have the same capacity as it depends on the physical size of a person, however, the speed of regeneration can differ vastly from one person to another. So the people who have the highest aptitude for magic are those with fast Dimensia regeneration rates." At this point Emilia raises her hand to ask a question. Raising your hand wasn't required but it was a natural thing for her to do when in an educational setting so she did it without thinking about it too much.

"Yes?" Niklaus indicated for her to ask her question.

"You said a magic user can only use the Dimensia in their physical body, is that fact or a rule? And either way, why?" She questioned. Most of her previous tutors had glossed over the proper explanation for this, maybe because they didn't know the answer.

"Good question, this is both a rule and a partial fact. The full fact would be that a magic user can only use the Dimensia in their physical body without harming or being harmed. This is also the reason that it is a rule. When a magic user uses Dimensia from anywhere but their own bodies, the object that they drain Dimensia from loses vitality and, in most cases, dies. Before the rule was enforced by law there was a severe drop in animal and plant growth rates due to overuse of magic which had a great impact on society. The law was put in place to prevent such a thing from happening again."

"What about non-living objects?"

"There is a type of magic in this world known as enchanting which allows the user to embed magic in an object to give it special properties however this is not the same as embedding Dimensia in an inanimate object in a way that it can later be used. The latter is called transference and is extremely hard to do and causes harm to the transferrer, the degree of harm depends on the amount of Dimensia stored. Because of this there are not many objects that can be used and so it's rare to see magic users use Dimensia from anywhere but their bodies."

"I see..." Emilia said, praising him for not hesitating to provide information. Niklaus had almost forgotten how old the she was and was conversing with her as if she were the same age or older. At this realisation, he concluded that she was definitely much more m.a.t.u.r.e and intelligent than other children, maybe even some a.d.u.l.ts.

"Now that we have established that Dimensia is the medium of magic, let us discuss magic itself. Magic is the manipulation of the physical world around you through the use of Dimensia and depends on understanding and imagination. If you understand a phenomenon and are imaginative enough to manipulate it you would be on the path to learning it. Applying magic only requires thought, just like moving your arms and legs." He said.

At hearing this Emilia brought one of her hands up from her l.a.p, palm up and imagined the water vapour in the air condensing by cooling it down by slowing the movement of the molecules and soon a little water filled her palm.

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination." She quoted Einstein. Niklaus looked at her, eyes wide, clearly surprised. But her quick grasp of magic wasn't what he was surprised about.

"By Albert Einstein..." He trailed off as he looked at her in slight shock.