After becoming able to activate his ability, Kurato had started escaping from his bed every day while avoiding the servants’ eyes.

Today as well, Kurato stared at the cage in front of him, deep in thought.

Yesterday, he had managed to get his hands on a newspaper, but nothing particularly important was written in it. It didn’t seem like any emergencies were occurring and both domestic and international news was thin. The only real takeaway was reconfirming that he could read. When he watched television, the audio and subtitles matched, so he had assumed that was the case anyway.

In any event, Kurato decided to approach things from a different angle today.

Kurato thrust his hands forward, his already red face turning even redder as he fixed his gaze on a single point. A thin membrane formed there and gradually thickened.

Before long, something like an acrylic plate floated in midair. Each side was about five centimeters long, but for a baby’s body, it should be enough to serve as a foothold.

Using it as a step, Kurato climbed over the railing. Beyond it, he placed two more acrylic plates and finished climbing down from the bed.

With that, Kurato’s magical power was completely drained.

However, even after running out of magical power, this body didn’t seem to suffer any drawbacks.

Of course, he could no longer activate his ability, but unlike other worlds, he didn’t experience headaches, dizziness, or loss of consciousness.

There hadn’t been much verification, so it was unclear whether this applied to everyone, but perhaps because magical power wasn’t directly involved in human life functions, the effects were minimal.

Moreover, even after his magical power was depleted, it recovered almost immediately. By sensation, it took about a minute. Compared to other worlds, the recovery speed was astonishingly fast.

In many places, recovery required sleep, or a cooldown of twenty-four hours was necessary. That had been commonplace.

Thinking about such things, Kurato crawled along the hallway. To a baby, the hallway felt long and he kept moving forward steadily.

Occasionally, he heard footsteps that sounded like servants, so he hid behind nearby objects and held his breath.

During the day, there were only two or three servants in the house, so it wasn’t particularly difficult.

After proceeding like that for a while, a door leading to his mother’s room appeared before him.

Having rested a bit, Kurato could use his ability again. He generated a single acrylic plate and grabbed the doorknob.

Alright. It’s not locked.

Inside was a study.

Shelves taller than an adult lined the room, decorated with books, photographs and trophies.

These books were his objective this time.

Fortunately, most of the books were arranged on the lower shelves, so Kurato first examined the spines.

There were many books about history and abilities. This was truly fortunate.

Normally, he would start with history, but this time he reached for the books on abilities instead. He needed to strengthen himself first—he never knew when he might get dragged into something serious.

What was written in them was mostly the same as the information he had gathered over the past six months, or what the archangel had explained. There were also many discussions of theories that didn’t seem particularly important, supported by numerous citations.

Some papers were extremely niche. For example, whether there was a difference between ability-generated fire and artificial fire when igniting something by farting while breathing flames. Kurato decided to skip that one.

Judging it to be aimed at enthusiasts, he picked up another book.

Most of the literature wasn’t very engaging, but some of it was interesting.

For example, a paper titled “On Abilities and Physical Growth” stated that the source of abilities, commonly called magical power, grew with age, but that growth dropped sharply at an early stage, specified in the paper as the early teens.

In other words, magical power wasn’t something fixed at birth that followed a person for life; depending on effort, it could grow.

In particular, up to age ten, the growth rate was far higher than afterward and theoretically, ages zero to five showed the greatest growth.

Furthermore, it suggested that the lower the rank, the larger the potential growth range.

Unfortunately, there were few empirical studies and educational methods hadn’t been established, so it was unclear whether growth occurred simply because one was young, or because the training happened to suit that individual.

There was also another book titled “The Relationship Between Proficiency and Efficiency.”

Put simply, it claimed that the better one became at handling an ability, the lower the magical power consumption would be.

This had been tested extensively and even included graphs showing approximate magical power consumption.

Although the way proficiency was defined was rather vague, it stated that compared to an untrained C-rank spell, a skilled user could reduce magical power consumption by up to eighty percent.

It even claimed that, in extreme cases, reductions approaching ninety-nine percent were possible.

For Kurato, who had very little magical power, these two papers were extremely compelling.

However, they had been published fairly recently and appeared near the back of the compilation. Being placed at the end suggested they hadn’t attracted much attention. The authors also seemed to be relatively young scholars.

Which meant there was a chance they were unreliable.

Still, there was no harm in trying.

Kurato decided to test them himself.

But—

“Y-young master?!”

Just as Kurato reached out, thinking he would begin testing immediately, the female servant noticed him.

Regrettably, that was it for today.

* * *

After that, his days continued with sneaking opportunities to devour the books in the study. There weren’t many truly decisive works, but a few were intriguing.

One book titled “The Fortune and Misfortune Brought by Abilities” contained many papers that medically analyzed the effects of using abilities on the body.

Among them, the most frightening was a disease called Ability Fever. This occurred when abilities were forcibly overused in early childhood, causing magical power to spiral out of control and induce a high fever, potentially leading to death in the worst cases.

It could happen to anyone, but was especially likely in those with high magical power or immature magical control.

There were many similar works and older books described comparable phenomena, so it was likely close to common knowledge.

Because of this disease, many countries prohibited ability development during early childhood.

In other words, one of the papers he had read the previous day likely hadn’t accounted for Ability Fever.

That was probably why it hadn’t gained attention.

Recently, Kurato had been repeatedly generating acrylic plates to raise his magical power, so he decided that from now on, he would incorporate more training focused on improving control, as well as devote sufficient time to magical circulation.

Magical circulation was a training method that involved continuously cycling magical power through the body. It was a basic exercise that Kuroto himself had often been made to do when he first began practicing magic in other worlds.

He also touched on some history books.

Abilities seemed to have emerged from a certain period. While accounts varied slightly by author, many ability users had begun appearing on the public stage by the middle of World War I at the latest. This coincided with the time when mass-destruction weapons like cannons and machine guns were first turned on civilians.

The opening of World War I itself closely matched real history.

The assassination of the Austrian archduke, commonly known as the Sarajevo Incident, served as the trigger and Germany declared war on various European nations, including Russia and France.

In real history, France was helplessly overrun by Germany, but beyond the border, history changed drastically.

Lined-up civilians who sought to block the advance inflicted a crushing defeat on the German army.

A crushing defeat.

Tanks were bombarded by flame projectiles and bullets were all repelled by thick earthen walls.

Elite assault units were crushed by massive boulders hurled by teenage girls before they could even pull their triggers.

Seeing this as an opportunity, the French army attempted the same at Germany’s border, but suffered the same backlash. Neither the French nor German armies possessed powerful ability users and advances into other countries failed.

This was only natural. At the time, all armies were composed solely of men.

Men with weak abilities, no matter how heavily armed with powerful weapons, were like infants before women.

Of course, militaries tried to incorporate ability users. However, most powerful abilities belonged to women and many opposed prolonged war.

As female soldiers increased, the momentum of hawkish, pro-war factions declined and conservative, anti-war views became dominant.

At the same time, civic revolutions broke out in various regions and the military, along with its ideology of territorial expansion, was crushed.

Thus, World War I ended earlier and with fewer casualties than in conventional history.

Similar events occurred in Japan.

The army that invaded China was thoroughly repelled by local farmers. Enraged, the Japanese military built massive numbers of warships and deployed them.

However, nearly all were sunk by Chinese ability users who could control water.

Having lost many elite naval soldiers and incurred enormous debt, the Imperial Japanese Navy collapsed. Warship construction required vast sums and civilians bore the brunt of the impact.

Coups erupted across the country and with powerful female ability users joining in, the exhausted military stood no chance and lost its grip on politics.

As a result, tragedies like Japan’s military rampage and Western conspiracies associated with World War II never occurred and in Japan and other nations alike, powerful ability users—namely women—became the center of society.

Another book described the formation of the modern era.

Although World War II never happened, anti-government demonstrations were frequent domestically.

In particular, protests by low-rank men against women with powerful abilities were numerous and troublesome.

The ringleaders were often male bureaucrats who had held high positions in the military.

In other words, people dissatisfied with their own standing stirred things up. Centered around them, those who felt comfortable with male-supremacy ideology joined in, escalating into violent demonstrations.

But they stood no chance against women who even the military couldn’t defeat. All were arrested and the ringleaders were held responsible for the demonstrations and the world war and sentenced to death.

Of course, not all senior officials were imprisoned.

Some reasonable individuals who didn’t join the demonstrations retained positions regardless of ability rank and continued contributing afterward. Their names weren’t listed, but they were likely generals who had suffered from the military’s excesses even in real history.

They had supported postwar Japan in real history as well.

With postwar processing largely settled, there was still the possibility of new demonstrations.

The gap in abilities was unavoidable and too large to ignore.

It was like some people being born with knives and others with automatic rifles. Would you get shot? Would you strike first out of fear? Neither side could feel at ease.

Therefore, Japan—and other countries as well—implemented segregation.

Those with powerful abilities were required to live in “Specially Managed Areas,” commonly called Special Zones.

By doing so, conflicts arising from differences in ability rank were said to have disappeared.

But Kurato tilted his head.

Was that really the case?

Separating living areas would only make the differences more glaring.

Wouldn’t it be better to issue an ability-use prohibition?

If they enacted a law like Japan’s Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law from real history, surely the Japanese—who had already done so during the Meiji Restoration—would comply.

At the time, Kurato couldn’t accept it.

However, by the time he was discovered by a servant and returned to his bed, his thinking had changed.

Namely, deterrence against other nations.

War had ended thanks to abilities possessing power exceeding modern weapons. In that sense, abilities served as a deterrent.

If abilities were prohibited, their decline would be inevitable, which would invite attacks from other nations.

Perhaps abilities weren’t banned in order to promote national strength.

Another possibility was preparedness not against other nations, but against other phenomena.

Things not yet visible in recorded history—the ones the archangel had mentioned.

“Bug-induced abnormal phenomena countermeasures.”

‘I should practice speaking.’

Kurato slumped his shoulders, lamenting his own inadequacy.

* * *

Memo

Does magical power increase if trained during early childhood? ← insufficient verification.

As proficiency with an ability increases the amount of magic power consumed is reduced.

Training abilities during early childhood causes fevers.

Female-led seizures of political power occurred in various countries.

Regions where only high-rank individuals can live called [Special Zones] were established and Special Zones appear to be scattered not only in Tokyo but also in regional cities such as Osaka and Hakata.