《Cutest in the Omniverse [OLD]》


 Prologue I : Make Me the Cutest!

    In a small apartment with only two rooms, one being the bathroom was an assortment of anime and video game paraphernalia, from posters of cute anime girls doing certain poses to a large glass display cabinet showcasing mechanical looking humanoids with various weaponry, otherwise called mechas, or Gundams by otakus.


    Aside from that cabinet were multiple other display cabinets with other various other items such as skimpily clad anime girl figurines to even some figurines of popular hero movie characters like iron-man and spider-man.


    The bed as well had a cute pattern of chibi anime characters along with the pillow, Just across from the bed that was situated at the corner of the room was a gaming set-up with a large wooden desk, three high-quality monitors and gamingPC just underneath.


    Unlike usual gaming setups, the wires were not messy and were actually zip-tied together, atop the desk along with the monitors were several miscellaneous items like figurines, drinks and snacks, and a thick notebook that seemed to be nearly full with several other notebooks that had been completely written in nearby.


    Sitting on a gaming swivel chair with a pair of gaming headphones on was a middle-aged man that looked like he was in his late forties with short brown hair and deep brown eyes. Though he would not be considered handsome by the general populace, his face was above average mainly due to the good hygiene he practices daily.


    If people were to see him walking the streets they would not consider him fat, but would not consider him fit either, though he does have a bit of a gut from eating fast-food quite frequently. Despite that, he had taught himself to cook some simple dishes such as mac and cheese, gravy, fried chicken and various other unhealthy yet delicious dishes.


    Currently, he was playing a relatively new MMORPG that came out a couple of months ago called ''God Descendents'' where players are the descendants of the gods in the game, It was extremely popular due to the endless combinations of skills and abilities players can choose from and the fact that there were no specific classes and thus no class restrictions.


    He was currently level 57, which could be considered one of the highest levels a player could have in the game, with the majority still at level 30 to 40, with professionals still at level 40 to 50. Though he didn''t have the highest level in the game, the honor going to someone with level 63, it still showcased his skill and expertise which made anyone who saw his level flock to his character with party and guild invites.


    His character was currently at a secluded corner of the map where he had discovered a good farming spot for his current level with no one else around, though he knew some players had followed him to discover any good farming spots such as this one. Luckily they were all normal players with an average of level 30 to 35 and he had purposely led them to certain areas with mobs that could easily kill and distract them while his character slid away to go to his farming spot.


    He had been farming in that particular spot for the past hour and a half while listening to a playlist consisting of his favorite songs from anime and popular artists. His character on-screen had suddenly stopped moving along with the mobs he had been farming, the in-game music that had been playing had stopped as well.


    Thinking it was a lag spike he waited patiently for it to stop, after a few seconds a small frown appeared on his face followed by an annoyed groan tens of seconds after. The computer seemed to have hanged as he was unable to move his mouse or exit the game.


    It was quite unusual as he had personally built thisPC with the latest parts and had experienced little to no lag or problems when using it even to play games with insane graphics settings. He reached down to manually turn off his PC to reboot it but was confused when the screen still showed the frozen game.


    Thinking his computer had somehow broken, he laid down onto his bed wanting to watch some new anime episodes he had stockpiled on his phone as he was too lazy currently to find out what was wrong with his computer.


    And just like his computer, his phone refused to light up as well. He knew that it wasn''t simply uncharged as it would still display a battery icon that was empty which would indicate that it needed charging, but it had not appeared.


    He finally noticed something was wrongas he strained his ears and discovered that he could no longer hear the sounds of cars and the general sounds he usually heard outside his apartment. He hurriedly ran to his glass balcony door and pulled the closed curtains aside, revealing a world of white.


    Not believing what he saw, he opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony, confirming that no matter which angle he looked from, all he saw was a never-ending white background. He withheld any sort of speculation surrounding his current predicament and attempted to open his front door.


    His door didn''t even budge, nor was he able to even turn the doorknob, this whole situation didn''t match any of the scenarios he had read in novels before besides the ones where you were a soul floating in an endless expanse of nothingness.


    Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.Though he wasn''t a soul and it was his apartment that was floating amongst nothingness. He was expecting some otherworldly entity to come and explain the situation to him as he hoped that it didn''t just leave him stranded in the middle of nothingness as a joke or because they were bored.


    Deciding to wait until something changes he sat back down on his gaming chair and looked through his notebooks filled to the brim with ideas and plans of adventures in other worlds or if the world experienced an apocalypse, he had properly researched all sorts of survival guides and had even purchased loads of survival equipment online just in case.


    He had even bought a cool multi-tool shovel that looked like it came from a sci-fi movie just leaning against the wall as he enjoyed looking at it from time to time.


    After an hour or so of reading through his notebooks and fiddling with his shovel, swinging it around like it was a weapon, the speakers on his desk started playing static sounds before an androgynous voice started speaking.


    ''Testing testing, can you hear me? I Apologise for the delay as my schedule has been quite tight lately'' The voice spoke out in an apologetic tone.


    He wasn''t upset in the slightest and was actually extremely relieved that someone finally came, or came at all as in a small corner of his mind, he had imagined himself dying of starvation and thirst in his apartment in the middle of the great expanse of nothingness.


    "I-It''s fine!! It''s totally fine, I occupied myself with my notebooks so It didn''t feel like a long time." He answered politely, and it was also true that was engrossed in his notebooks as he was already imagining scenarios of what was to come as his situation was within the realms of fiction.


    ''I am glad that is the case, I will delay no longer and explain the circumstances you find yourself in, feel free to interrupt at any moment for questions you have but I would recommend waiting when I am finished as most of them should be answered with my explanation.''


    He nodded in understanding as he sat down on his gaming chair to listen to the otherworldly being''s explanation, taking out a fresh notebook and getting ready to take down notes.


    The being chuckled lightly as they somehow saw him ready to take down notes and spoke out.


    ''That will be unnecessary dear candidate, Our conversation will be logged here on your monitor along with visual aid when I deem it is needed''


    The middle monitor had changed from his frozen game to a blank background filled with text of what they previously had spoken.


    The otherworldly being was referred to as ''???'' while he was referred to as ''candidate''.


    ''Now I shall begin. You, dear candidate, have been chosen to transmigrate to another world''


    ''But of course, with situations like this, you would be receiving powers and abilities to be able to thrive and survive in the other world''


    ''When a candidate is selected, they are assigned arandom number of points within a predetermined range along with additional points based on the life they had lived up to that point, due to certain rules I am unable to inform you of how your life is scored in relation to points but can tell you that you have 37% more points gained from your life compared to60% of all candidates''


    A graph appeared on the monitor that displayed the differences between him and other candidates, showing that he was in the upper percentile, but compared to the candidates at the end of the graph, he could not even be compared to them.


    ''The random number of points you have obtained is in the top 15th percentile, having 108% more points than 80% of all candidates, I would like to congratulate you on your immense luck.''


    Another graph appeared similar to the previous one, and it was visible that he was at the far end of the spectrum along with other fortuitous candidates, but still nowhere close to the ones near the top.


    ''With these points, you are able to purchase anything you desire within your imagination and more, the reason I mentioned powers and abilities earlier is due to them being the most useful and what the majority of candidates focus on.''


    ''You can mix and match anything you desire such as having an immense number of skills and abilities that are weak but greatly complement each other or focus fully into one power, as it is within your imagination you can even imagine how much points it would cost and we would provide it, though its quality would be restricted by how much points you had allocated.''


    ''Asking forenhanced strength with a higher point cost will obviously make it stronger, and the opposite weaker, so that candidates are able to properly synergize their skills and powers to their heart''s content.''


    ''Also, anything deemed to be temporary or consumable is strictly disallowed to be purchased and we try to accommodate by suggesting the next cheapest permanent alternative''


    ''An example would be if a candidate wishes to have a burger when he arrives at the other world, we would reject his request and suggest an ability to create a single burgerafter acertain period of time, which would be deemed as infinite consumable regardless of the period it takes to create another one.''


    ''Another example is if someone wishes to have a weapon when they enter the other world and we usually suggest making it soul-bound which would allow it to be summoned if lost or stolen, along with the ability to regenerate itself if broken or destroyed but at a certain cost. We also suggest adding a growth factor or evolution factor that allows the weapons to evolve and grow stronger along with the candidate so as to still be useful at the later stages of their strength and life''


    The more and more he listened to the being talk, the more excited he started to get as he shook in excitement at all the possibilities, though he more or less already knew what he was going to buy.


    ''Now that I have explained the basics, are there any questions that you have for me? I shall answer to the best of my ability and what is allowed''


    Without hesitation, he shouted out his question as if he was holding it in since the beginning.


    "Can you make me the cutest?! The cutest in the Omniverse!"

 Prologue II : Cutely Selecting His Beginnings

    ''The cutest in the Omniverse?'' The being asked without any change in their tone of voice, making it seem like it wasn''t an absurd question.


    Though that was mainly due to its experience and multiple encounters of the absurd he had previously experienced from other candidates, there were things much more absurd that other candidates had asked or requested before.


    ''You can certainly become the cutest in the Omniverse, but unfortunately, the points required is higher than what you have and is actually even higher than what any other candidate had ever received.''


    His enthusiasm did not decrease despite being told so as he only wanted to confirm the possibility as he wasn''t stupid as to think that becoming the cutest was so simple.


    "I''m alright with that, but before anything else can you elaborate on things like what world I would be going to, or would I also be able to choose it? Also, I''d like to ask how we would be sent into the world, will we be sent as a newborn or an adult? Can we choose what race we can become, also can we..." question after question was asked not about the abilities and powers he would be able to purchase but about the details on the world he would be going to and the procedures before going.


    He knew that abilities, powers, and skills were the most important when going to another world since the majority of protagonists in these types of stories are unfamiliar with hardships and would have immense difficulty adjusting to such a different environment where death is extremely common, though he was imagining typical fantasy worlds with medieval level of technology and human rights, but he knew that the second most important thing was the beginning, where everything starts.


    Of the novels he''s read, part of them would have the protagonist start in a favorable situation or location such as in the middle of a field with a road leading to a nearby city, or starting off as the child of noble, or even just having overpowered abilities at the start. The other part would be the novels he actually enjoys such as evolution novels where the protagonists start off as the weakest and useless of monsters and have to fight their way through life-threatening monsters to reach the top to survive.


    With his experience in reading all those novels, he had asked all those questions and started formulating a plan on how to take advantage of the start of his new life. Midway through his question, the being had interrupted him with an answer he should have expected if he had remembered what they had said near the start.


    ''Candidate should be pleased to know that all that you have asked is possible due to being included as what you are able to purchase, we understand the importance to the start of your new life and also the reluctance to spend your points on a seemingly temporary thing such as your beginnings.


    ''We have thus decided to gift a budget of points to all candidates to be spent on the world you desire, how you would be transferred such as becoming a newborn as keeping your current body, the state of your physical being such as being young or old, and the location you would be transferred at, you may also choose the general circumstances of your birth, such as being born into a wealthy or poor family.


    ''Things such as becoming other races will also be supported by the budget as we do not wish to limit our candidates, and of course, you may use your own points outside of the budget if needed''


    His mind was racing as he was thinking of a million things confirming that there were little to no limitations on what he could choose, so he went for the classics.


    "Okay then... can you find me a world where it is multiple times the size of the earth and has technology and magic mixed in to create magitech? So kinda like a sci-fi slash fantasy world with monsters and space exploration..."


    ''Multiple worlds of the description have been found and before you can ask, I am not allowed to reveal the number of worlds of that description due to the rules, at this point you are able to randomize the selection and the world chosen will be locked in. You are also able to add on more points if you were to randomize you would be using 13% of your allocated budget''


    13% was still an acceptable amount so he decided to add more details.


    "Uhm... Alien civilizations are common?"


    ''22%, possible worlds have been reduced by 64%''


    It was a little surprising that just adding that would increase the cost by 9% and decrease the number of possible worlds by two thirds, but he didn''t plan to adjust it as he didn''t want to be limited to one world, that was also the reason why he had wanted his starting world to be bigger than the earth.


    "Speaking of which, what''s the size of the smallest world in amongst all of them if you can tell me?"


    ''It is 2.032 times bigger than the earth as I assumed on your behalf when you said multiple times bigger''


    "Still too small for my liking... Increase it to a minimum of... 3.5 times?" He asked unsurely, though he wanted to go to other planets, he wanted to train himself on his home planet first by experiencing every inch of it.


    ''Cost increased to 24.5%, possible worlds reduced by an additional 7%''


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    Luckily it seems like size doesn''t matter too much when it comes to selecting a world. Not wanting to spend any more of his free budget of points, he decided to stop there and randomize the world.


    "You can go ahead and randomize now...please lady luck...don''t screw me over..." While praying to the mischievous god of luck, he hoped that the world he was going too didn''t have any unexpected variables, like if the only sapient creatures on his home planet were goblins, he didn''t want to conform to goblins definition of cute!


    He had slightly regretted not adding the detail that humans are one of the main sapient creatures as he had stupidly assumed that every world would have one, but it was too late now as a big ''Randomizing World...'' was seen on his middle monitor.


    After a tense couple of seconds which felt like forever, A big blue and green planet that looked totally different from earth appeared on his monitor, it had many more continents than the earth with most of them being even larger than the ones on earth, along with a countless number of islands that covered the planets like pimples.


    The two other screens on the monitor lit up as it showed the statistics of the world such as being called Vanterio being 5.49 times bigger than the earth, the major countries in the world, the basic history of the world that even a child would understand and other tidbits of useful information.


    It also showed the sapient races in the world which included humans and... humans and...?


    On the list that stated ''Sapient Races'' there was only one line which said humans, though he was extremely relieved that he didn''t get an unexpected race, as even becoming an elf or dwarf would have been fine, he still wanted a diverse number of sapient races since he had asked for a fantasy mixed with sci-fi world.


    As if reading his thoughts, the otherworldly being spoke up. ''Sadly, since you did not specify on other races being included, or any race for that matter, I had included worlds that had one main race. The candidate should know that despite the fantasy genre including other races as the norm, fantasy is a much more broad term than that and thus did not affect the search results too much.


    He flinched upon hearing so, thinking back on it he has read tons and tons of fantasy books where humans were the only race, such as a novel set in the modern-day where people suddenly get magic powers. He sighed from his blunder and could only plan to be more careful in his wording next time.


    ''While all I have said is unchangeable, It does not mean that there are no other sapient races in your world, as the information you see is only the basic complementary information we are obliged to provide, and you are able to gain more by spending more of your budget.''


    "Wait, so you''re saying that other races may exist but they''re hidden? Like living in closed-off communities or obscure places?" His eyes turned wide as a bit of hope returned to him as the words reached him.


    ''Emphasis on ''may exist'' as there is still a possibility that they do not, would you be willing to spend some points to find out?''


    Though he really wanted to know if other races existed, he didn''t want to waste his precious free points and also thought it could be fun if he discovered them on his own rather than cheating.


    "No thanks, now let''s move on to the next thing, I want to become a newborn in Alcavia, with my parents decently rich and influential, with my gender being female, like as female as possible!!" He increased his volume when asking to be born female to emphasize the importance of that criterion.


    Alcavia was an isolated continent and country with a decent distance from other continents and is also renowned for being the most diverse and magitechnologically advanced country in the world due to the greatest minds in the world gathering there.


    ''From your description, I have set a criterion for your family member to be in the upper-middle-class in relation to Alcavia as a working-class Alcavian citizen could easily become an upper-middle-class citizen in the majority of the world.''


    "I knew it was a great country from the basic information but wow... that puts things in perspective, the cost should be a lot then, how much would it be inclusive of what I already used?"


    ''A total of 117.13% of the budget would be used which would exceed the allocated budget, you are able to supplement the exceededamount with 1.93% ''of your normal points''


    "No thanks, I wouldn''t even use 0.1% of my normal points no matter the situation, lets compromise and have you decrease the criterion so the range is from the lowest point of the spectrum of the upper-middle-class and above until the budget used reaches 90%"


    ''You are of the majority that refuses to use your normal points for your beginnings so I can understand, for your new criterion, I have adjusted it accordingly and there are much fewer results from before''


    "Lowest point of the spectrum or not, it''s still upper-middle-class, now for the last 10% of my budget... I''d like loving, kind and unrestrictive parents, as much as 10% allows."


    He added that criterion as he wanted to be unrestricted in his actions in his new like and wanted a loving family that properly appreciated a cute little girl, as that was his destiny, nothing will change it.


    ''Criterion has been added, would you like to randomize now?''


    "Do it!"

 Prologue III : Cutely Choosing Powers

    ''Your family has been selected, I am unable to relay any information about them to you unless you use your points, but I can confirm that you will be satisfied''


    He didn''t mind not knowing anything about his future family right away as he''ll get to know them anyways. With everything related to his beginnings finished, he moved on to the next step, his powers and abilities.


    "Okay, let''s start off with the local powers like magic... I read the basic history and know that people are born with varying affinities with all attributes, could you build upon that?" Magic affinity was something he was highly familiar with as it was a common trope for the protagonist to have an extremely high affinity with a certain attribute or even all attributes in certain cliche novels.


    ''As you can guess, magic affinity has multiple factors to take into account when any living thing is born as all living organisms also vary in their affinity, affinities, in general, are random but become more random the more complicated the organism. This would mean that humans are the most erratic in terms of magical affinity with all affinities being compatible with humans.''


    ''There are still some fixed factors such as lineage and place of birth, an example would be a family where both parents have high affinity with water and fire, their child, in turn, will have a higher chance of having those two attributes be increased, thus leading to famous mage families who specialize in a single attribute or similar attributes.''


    ''Another example would be if someone was born near a volcano, they would have a great chance of gaining a decent affinity with fire or similar attributes. Prominent mage families would use this method to give birth to a child with an immense affinity related to their family.''


    ''Though I had stated all of these fixed factors, due to being the most erratic race in the world in terms of magical affinity, anything is possible, A famous ice magician could possibly be born into a famous fire mage family that had spent resources and money to give birth as close to a volcano as possible''


    "I don''t really like to leave my magic affinity to fate...I can use my points to change my affinity right?"


    ''As your magic affinity will only be known once you are born, you are only able to increase your affinity by a fixed amount rather than a percentage and it will be added on to the affinity you are given.


    He nodded his head in understanding as increasing it in percentage could either be a curse or a blessing depending on the affinity he would receive. Deciding to think about it later, he asked if he could see the magic attributes available in the world.


    Due to the excuse of only being allowed basic information, there was only a fraction of attributes displayed on the monitor, thankfully there was still a dozen or so which included the typical four elements and a mix of popular attributes in the world.


    Looking through the list, there wasn''t really anything that caught the eye as anything unique, and he didn''t want to use his points to see the rest, reading through the list again, his eyes stopped at Neutral Magic, something he didn''t deem as interesting as it usually wasn''t in most novels he''d read.


    Thinking of it again, he remembered neutral magic being one of the simplest and basic of magic, and was also the type of magic most protagonist would learn if it existed in their world as it was also used as an introduction to magic.


    "Can you build upon Neutral Magic, if i''m not wrong it should be the magic that everyone is taught as a tutorial to magic right?" Though he didn''t think he was too far off, it still could be different in another world in comparison to the novels he had read.


    ''You are correct, Neutral Magic is the basis of all magic, as Neutral Magic is the most basic of magic that involves shaping and forming raw mana, mana that has not been changed into any other attribute. For that reason, it is seen as the easiest magic to learn but the hardest to master as it is inefficient in terms of mana usage and control due to the primitive nature of Neutral Magic.''


    ''It is also the attribute that has the lowest number of users and skilled mages as most people in the world have a minuscule amount of affinity towards it, even those that have a decent amount of affinity compared to the rest are still lower in affinity compared to other common attributes like the four elements.''


    ''Even the Grand Mage of Neutral Magic in the current era has an affinity similar to a user of the four elements with their own affinity for their main attribute being somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Though that is the case, as a Grand Mage, they are able to rival other Grand Mages in terms of power despite the disparaging difference in affinity as their command on Neutral Magic which is said to be the hardest to master speaks of greatly of their skill.''


    ''That is not mentioning the great raw power Neutral Magic holds as it can rival the raw power that Fire Magic can exert''


    If all those details pertaining to Neutral Magic did not convince him to min-max on it, then he should be cast into the fiery pits of Tartarus, but luckily it had.


    Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.


    "It''s decided!! I''d like you to increase my affinity with Neutral Magi...wait... I know a better way to do this! Is it possible for you to transfer all my affinity for every other attribute into Neutral Magic?" He stopped himself halfway after thinking of a brilliant way to save even more of his points.


    Though he knew that is still wouldn''t be free, at least it would be way cheaper, he had no qualms not being able to use other attributes as he loved min-maxing and took every opportunity to min-max in games when it was viable, his motto for min-maxing was ''to cover up all weaknesses with your overwhelming strength!


    ''It is very much possible and only uses 0.89% of your points, upon being born into the world, your affinities will be compressed into Neutral Magic.''


    "That''s cheap! Do it then and lock it in before I change my mind" Satisfied with the cost, he asked for the purchase to be locked in so as to not worry about it anymore.


    ''Purchase locked in Candidate still has 99.11% of his points left.''


    "Okay... what else... let''s go with enhanced memory for... 5.11%, since magic in this world is based mostly on complicated formulas...and don''t lock it in yet." Enhanced Memory was all in all an extremely useful power to have in a world of magic and technology.


    ''Enhanced Memory has been temporarily added, 94% of points left''


    "And before I forget, can I bring my shovel along? I really want to have something to remember my previous life, that and it''s really cool" Reaching out to grab his multi-tool shovel and presenting it to the monitor, lovingly caressing its head and handle.


    Though he had originally bought the shovel due to its aesthetics and the novelty of it being a multitool, being a man, he still wanted to try it out in the wild and had heavily prepared himself for his first solo camping trip only a week or so after purchasing the shovel, he had bought all sorts of cool camping gear and had even researching online diligently without slacking as he was a bit of survivalist enthusiast anyways since he loved preparing for hypothetical apocalypses.


    He greatly enjoyed the experience despite the pain he had to endure due to the fun he had using his shovel in the majority of his tasks, he had loved setting fire to dry kindling he had scavenged using the magnesium rod and knife attachment as the sparks were very cool looking.


    From then on he had consistently gone on a camping trip every other week, sometimes even more, when he was in the mood. He had been doing it for nearly ten months now and he was an experienced camper that other professional campers would approve of due to his nature as an apocalypse enthusiast.


    For those ten months, a bond had been created between him and his shovel which he had left unnamed, it was one of the only items he''d ever developed a bond, as he doesn''t create a bond with his computer or smartphone as he changes them from time to time.


    ''There is a way to bring your shovel into the other world and also link it to yourself due to the requirement of only allowing permanent purchases, you need not worry about things such as hiding this ability from the world due to it unorthodox nature as there is something that perfectly fits in this world that is not shown in the basic information.''


    "So you''re saying that me having a shovel linked to me can fit in normally due to something that already exists? I''m really glad about that since I didn''t want to just leave my shovel to collect dust from needing to hide it..."


    ''Due to already having a system in place in the other world, fulfilling your request will only cost 2.58%, would you like to increase the growth factor of your shovel? The system in place in the other world has its own growth factor and thus your weapon will not become obsolete even without using more of your points.''


    "Don''t worry buddy, I won''t be neglecting you." He saidto while petting the shovelhead. Though his ultimate goal was to reach the epitome of cuteness, there was no reason he couldn''t bring his shovel along for the ride.


    "I''ll have 91.42% of my points left after that request right? since that''s the case can you use the points until I have 75% left to increase the growth factor and to give it an extremely girly and cute paint job while still making it look cool and badass?" If he was going to have his shovel for the rest of his adventures, he might as well make it fit the part as the weapon of the future cuteness goddess.


    ''0.76% has been used for an exquisitely cute, girly and badass paint job that will evolve and change as your shovel does, and 15.66% has been used to increase the growth factor of your shovel and will be added on top of the growth factor from the system set in place. You have 75% of your points remaining as requested.''


    Wanting to see his shovel transform in front of him, he looked at his shovel in anticipation while holding it an arm''s length away to get a good view, sadly, the being informed him that all purchases will only be applied upon arriving at the other world.


    "Now on to the main course...Cuteness, here I come!!"

 Prologue IV : Three Aspects of Cuteness

    "So I can''t just have pure physical power as everyone will surely have their own criteria for cuteness...but I can make everyone perceive me as cute anyways...hmm...but cuteness stems from physicality from the first place..." He mumbled to himself while thinking of how to use the remaining three-quarters of his points, already deciding to use it for only cuteness and nothing else.


    He knew the three most important aspects of cuteness and took that into account, physicality, behavior and the perception of others. The most important one was the perception of others as it affected the two other aspects heavily, so his points would be mostly going into fixing that as he didn''t only want a select group of people to think him as cute as he''s aiming to be the cutest in the Omniverse after all.


    The physicality aspect of cuteness will not be neglected as the first impression always starts with your appearance, so a good portion of points will go into it as well. For behavior, he didn''t want to affect it too much as behavioral cuteness came from the soul.


    behavioral cuteness refers to cuteness in the actions and behaviors displayed when living your normal life, a few examples would include hair twirling, head tilting, cute natural accent, how you sneeze, and a million other types of small actions and reactions in normal life.


    There was also something called fake cuteness which is stemmed from behavioral cuteness by purposely doing actions that are perceived as cute by others to gain attention, most of the actions done are overly flamboyant and exaggerated and can easily be spotted as fake due to the actual behavioral cuteness being subtle and thus hard to copy and show off with.


    It was for this reason that he didn''t want to mess too much with his behavioral cuteness as he wanted a natural type of cuteness. He had always played as a girl on any game that allows it and every single online handle he had was extremely girly and cute, he even frequently roleplays as a girl online and learned a lot of tips and tricks from pros, so though he may not have actual real-life experience acting cute, his online experience should be good enough to pull him through.


    After taking all of these into account and scribbling a few ideas into a fresh notebook, he had finally decided what to choose.


    "Okay, for 25% of my points, I would like an ability that allows me to subtly change my body over a long period of time, based on my desires and ''cuteness''. I would also be able to divert the path my body takes at any time."


    Though it seemed pretty basic from how he described it, it is actually quite versatile as giving no specific details will only make the power encompasses everything that it has to work with, from how it defines cuteness to the extent of how he would be able to change his body.


    Even the time frame is to be determined as he was not specific and only indicated that he wanted it to be ''long'', that was due to another reason which was the drastic changes in his body in a short period of time from the perspective of those around him.


    If his power took a long time to take effect, it would only be seen as changing as he grew older, though people may suspect something is up if they were to investigate deeply as such drastic changes are unnatural despite the time taken. That would be solved by his next power though.


    "Next, for 45% of my points, I would like the passive ability to charm others with my cuteness, the cuter I am to them the better I am able to charm them. Regardless of their perception of cuteness, they will think of me as ''cute'' when interacting with or seeing me."


    With this ability, he would be able to affect all the beings in the omniverse, from eldritch tentacle monsters, to sapient humanoid robots, there were no exceptions! Well, that was what he hoped at least, with it being as vague as his other power, he wouldn''t actually know how it''ll turn it.


    The power would not actually force anything to think of him as a certain level of cute, but will only give them the ability to find him cute if they didn''t already. An example was if his level of cuteness in their perspective was in the negatives, thus not finding him cute, the ability would set her cuteness in relation to their perspective to zero and would never fall into the negatives and can only go up.


    How he knew that was how his power would work despite not voicing it out is due to a question he had asked previously relating to concepts and ideas he wouldn''t be able to properly put into words, the being had explained that they would be able to sense his ideas and concepts through the words he speaks as long as he associates those ideas and concepts with those words, and thus while thinking of all the intricate details of the power, he had spoken a general description to still have the vagueness present.


    As for how cuteness is measured in terms of how others see him, even he doesn''t know, and he didn''t like the idea of a power that just increases his cuteness without any effort like ''cuteness increases over time!!''. Though it was a big risk as he might not be able to increase his cuteness over a certain point and thus making his powers obsolete, he would rather pursue true cuteness over fake cuteness any day.


    "Finally for my last 5%, I would like my behavioral cuteness to be increased, and please lock it all in." The most direct and subtle way to increase his behavioral cuteness was to do exactly that, and he was sure the type of behavioral cuteness he wanted would be applied due to ''the ideas and concepts he associated the words with.


    This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    ''Congratulations candidate, you have used up all of your points and are ready to be transferred to the other world, before doing so, I would like to inform you that you are still able to back out of this chance and return to your normal life in your current world.''


    He was a bit surprised that he even had a choice to reject this opportunity as it never crossed his mind, though he understood that some people were content with the life they lived and wouldn''t judge them for backing out, he was still curious why the being had only informed him at the end rather than at the start. He shrugged as it didn''t matter much to him.


    "No way am I going back to my old boring life, despite all the fun I had, I''m sure that my new life will be a million times more filled with joy and fun compared to the last" He grinned in excitement thinking of all the things he would do when he reached the other world.


    ''Since that is the case, you will be transferred to the other world upon your approval, as most candidates would still have a multitude of questions to ask even after using up all their points.''


    "I''m all good! Take me away!!"


    And with those words, his world faded to black as the being started his transferrence.


    ---


    12:32 PM


    That was the time that had been displayed when a young man in his early twenties had glanced at the corner of his holo-watch projection. He had left his post upon receiving an urgent call from his wife''s manager, telling him that she was currently in the hospital and in labor.


    He had immediately dropped everything he had been doing and rushed to the exit, telling a colleague of his to inform his superior that his wife was giving birth and that he would formally report to them sometime later. He knew that what he was doing was against protocol and he would be dished out punishments when he returned, but he couldn''t be bothered to care at the moment.


    "Staring at the time wouldn''t do you any good kid, you''ll just get yourself all worked up" The driver of the hover taxi had spoken from the front, speaking in a tone of experience and remembrance.


    "You have children, sir?" The only kind of experience someone would have while giving advice like that was one with a family, and he could use any sort of advice right now.


    "Just the one, but the amount of trouble he gave me would be comparable to taking care of multiple children, that''s for sure" He chuckled as he recalled the past.


    "I remember when I was around your age, I rushed to the hospital without giving myself any time to cool down, making the nurse in charge of my wife forcefully lead me out of her room, saying that my panicked and excitable mood would only negatively affect my wife and the birth." He smiled bitterly as he remembered the face he had made when he had been made to wait outside of the room while his wife gave birth.


    "So take my small bit of advice and cool down with some tunes, you''ll be there much earlier than I ever was, any requests?" He pointed to the radio, serious about wanting him to calm down.


    "That''s alright, I like what''s playing anyways." He smiled politely as he decided to take the drivers advice, leaning back into the seat, crossing his arms and closing his eyes.


    After half an hour or so, he had woken up from his short nap and was re-energized, just in time for the hover taxi to arrive at the hospital his wife was residing at. He quickly paid the driver with his holo-watch and thanked him for the advice, briskly walking into the hospital.


    Though he was still rushing, he was much calmer and relaxed after getting his thoughts sorted with the nap he had taken, after checking in at the counter he made haste to his wife''s room and decided to cast a calming spell on the way, not wanting to take the risk of kicked out of the room from being too frantic.


    Approaching the room, he saw his wife''s manager sitting outside with a blank expression on her face as she usually had, only nodding to him in acknowledgment. Knowing that no words needed to be spoken he just nodded back before facing the door.


    With three heavy knocks to the door, it was shortly answered by a female nurse and the agonizing screams that only sounded a bit like the love of his life. He flinched upon hearing the harrowing wails mostly due to them suddenly streaming out of the soundproof room.


    "Mr. Lanixer I presume? Please come in, and make sure to keep calm and collected as the birth takes place, she''s only two hours into labor so expect the next few hours to be the most tiring ones in your life" The nurse quickly said before she turned back to continue her duties.


    He quickly entered the room less someone closed it on him and came to his wife''s side, softly calling out her name as she continued to wail due to the pain, placing a hand on her head and the other holding her hand.


    "Paela? I''m here, i''m here now honey..." He called out to her gently, moving his mouth closer to her ear so he wouldn''t have to shout through her screams.


    "Ae-Aereon? Y-you''re here...thank the heav-Hnggg AAHHHH!!!" Paela weakly responded upon hearing her loved ones voice, giving a small strained smile as she attempted to hold back her screams.


    "I''m here now so there''s nothing to worry about, don''t force yourself to talk with me and just scream as much as you like, I''m not going anywhere" He reassured her with a calm yet kind tone, making the nervous woman relax a little before she returned to screaming at full volume.


    The next few hours, as the nurse had said, truly were the most exhausting hours he had experienced in his life.

 Baby Arc I : Cutest Baby Ever!!

    Though the world around him turned dark after the being had sent him off, he didn''t really feel any change other than knowing that he was no longer in his room.


    He knew this as he couldn''t feel a single thing, it was as if every part of his physical being had been removed and all that was left was his consciousness and thought.


    He had been expecting to fall into some sort of sleep and wake up as a newborn in a hospital, still unsure whether or not he had arrived in the other world due to any sort of senses whatsoever.


    As unnerving as it was to experience, it also was relaxing in a way as he was able to fully indulge in his thoughts and plans for the future without being distracted by the physical world.


    It had only been a few minutes since he had been supposedly transferred and he was still holding up quite well due to everything he was thinking about, about his powers, about his new life and world, and his goals for the future too.


    Before he could even start to think of how long this would last before he went insane, a sudden surge of information forth, overwhelming his thoughts.


    The information was purely his senses returning to him and them going to work on gathering information from the outside world.


    From the feeling of rubber on his small back and head, to the cold air brushing against his sensitive skin, the senses he felt confirmed to him that he had successfully entered the other world called Vanterio.


    While his senses assaulted him, he had attempted to move any part of his body and found that he was able to move his limbs, though it was more of a twitch than actual movement.


    He was glad that he had been able to do so despite being in a newborn''s body, the experience he had gone through was still heavily unnerving despite his excited thoughts and he was glad to be in control again no matter how small the control.


    After confirming his minuscule control over his body, he started to focus on the two most important senses he had, his vision and hearing, in order to gain information about his surroundings.


    As someone who usually rushes through tutorials of newly released games, in favor of starting the actual adventure, he wanted to get as much of a headstart as possible in his new life, wanting to take every opportunity to do so.


    Opening his fresh pair of eyelids was a bit of an ordeal as it felt as if weights were weighing them down, though he did manage eventually.


    With his eyes exposed to the world, the first thing he saw was his current location. He was in a pure white room that was filled with an assortment of equipment that he couldn''t recognize. Though he wouldn''t be able to recognize normal medical equipment anyhow.


    Aside from the equipment, there was also an assortment of other items like potted plants, fanciful tables, and other tasteful decoration all along the walls of the room, with a large window off to the side overseeing a marvelous city that just screamed ''science fiction''.


    He turned his attention to the occupants, seeing two female nurses in typical looking nurse uniforms not far from him, both of them looking over at him with a small smile.


    The one holding him was also a female nurse that looked much older than the first two, with a glint of experience visible in her eyes. She also looked at him with a satisfied smile.


    She was blocking his view of the bed which annoyed him a little as he wanted to see the face of his newest family. His wish was granted when a young man appeared at the corner of his eye, who had came from the side of the bed.


    The young man looked in his early twenties with messy short lime hair and pale blue eyes, he was quite tall, being even taller than he was in his previous life. He was obviously well built despite the thick clothing that looked like some sort of military uniform.


    His features were slightly grizzled but melded in with a sort of bishounen look. Though the aura he gave off was one of a man instead of someone who made teenage girls scream in excitement.


    He slowly approached the nurse holding his newborn child as if afraid that he might spook them.


    The nurse chuckled lightly seeing this and slowly turned towards the man and mother of the child on the bed.


    "Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Lanixer, you are now parents to a healthy baby girl" The nurse happily to the two anticipating parents.


    Both parents became relieved and joyful upon hearing so, both becoming eager to see hold their child.


    The brand new father stepped up to nurse, with his arms slowly starting to rise as he started to speak.


    "Can I hold her?" He asked with a bit a nervousness present in his tone, and an equal amount of excitement and happiness.


    The nurse simply nodded, and carefully passed the newborn over to her new father.


    The amount of love the transmigrated newborn could feel radiating off of her new father was beyond anything she had felt in her previous life.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work.


    She had never personally gotten to know her own parents in her previous life as they had been involved in an accident when she was only a baby and had lived with her grandparents until she was eighteen.


    Though she knew her grandparents loved her very much, it couldn''t be compared to the love a parent would exude upon holding their newborn child.


    She decided then and there that she would do her utmost to protect and care for her parents, as well as make them proud of her growth and future achievements.


    Her father slowly walked over to the bedside, gently placing her on the bed between him and her new mother.


    Her mother had long caramel hair and hazel eyes, with soft features that made her look younger than she actually was, looking like she was only in her late teens.


    Her looks could easily surpass most top models on earth, and despite the loose-fitting hospital gown she wore, her physical features could surpass them as well, especially in certain areas of interest.


    She was very satisfied that both of her parents were highly attractive, being the child of two attractive people would only boost her own potential for beauty and physical cuteness.


    Though she hoped that this world wasn''t purely made of attractive people as it would be a challenge to stand out amongst everyone, even the three nurses in the room could easily become popular models on earth.


    "What should we name her? You decided that we''ll hold off on any names until we see her with our own eyes after all." Her father asked, already thinking up of names that would suit the baby in between them.


    "I made up my mind the moment I saw her" Her mother smiled gently as she looked upon her, also feeling the same if not stronger amount of love radiating off of her.


    "Well, what is it?"


    "Astraea"


    Upon hearing her name, Astraea gave a toothless smile and giggled in happiness, surprising both parents who were a little worried on why she had not made a single sound since being born.


    That smile and the sound of her giggles not only alleviated their worries but also caused them to join in the laughter.


    Astraea herself was actually a little surprised as she had not done that consciously but in reaction to the name, she was given, wondering if her powers were already in effect.


    ''Astraea huh? Named after the Greek goddess of innocence and purity, if a name like that won''t guarantee my potential cuteness, then nothing will!'' The omniverse seemed to be supporting her in her endeavor of becoming the cutest.


    With the high amount of points she received at the start, a world that couldn''t be more ideal, her attractive parents and her new name, she couldn''t help but think of how lucky she''s been.


    Thinking back at all the gacha games she had played where she always won the rarest items easily, along with how little she had to farm in comparison to others due to getting the drops she needed, she guessed that she had always been lucky.


    ---


    As there were still multiple tests that needed to be done before she could go home with her new parents, they had all stayed at the hospital for a couple more hours.


    In that time, Astraea had been able to gain a lot of good information from conversations.


    She was thankful that the official language in Alcavia was English due to the diversity of the country, else she would have spent the majority of the time trying to learn a new language, negating her headstart.


    She was able to learn her parent''s names, being Aereon Lanixer for her father and Paela Lanixer for her mother, making her Astraea Lanixer.


    She had also learned that some of the tests were magical in nature due to the terms they used that would only be used in fiction.


    One of the tests was called ''Post-birth Magic Affinity'' and it was exactly as it was named, testing the magic affinity of the newborn shortly after birth.


    The reason they did this was due to children''s magic affinity being unstable when they are younger, making it easily subject to constant change until the age of four.


    What affected their affinity in this period was the environment they lived in, their interaction with certain things related to certain attributes and even their mentality that was shaped by those around them and how they were educated or treated.


    If a child below four were to be constantly in contact with water such as living near a beach and going out to swim every day, it would increase their affinity with water, even just being near the sea would increase their affinity with water naturally as well as nature magic.


    It was also possible for affinities to decrease, but researches still have not created a solid theory for affinities decreasing.


    The family of three had been led into a different room for the test, inside was a relatively sparse room with no window, containing a huge piece of equipment similar to diagnostic imaging equipment, though the entrance was baby-sized.


    Her parents didn''t seem to react negatively to the slightly imposing piece of equipment, making her think that they fully trusted this hospital and had no doubts regarding their methods.


    "Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Lanixer, let''s not waste any time as the sooner all the tests are complete, the sooner you can go home with your baby. Lay her on the seat here if you would please." A middle-aged doctor with a doctor''s gown went to greet them, not bothering to look at them as he continued to tweak and set up the machine with a computer built into the side.


    Aereon nodded in reply as he went over to the protruding seat, and gently placed Astraea on the seat.


    Astraea looked curiously at the machine in front of her, with no signs of crying from leaving her father. The doctor looked over curiously, as he had been ready to activate the built-in sleep spell the moment he heard a peep out of the newborn.


    It wasn''t too unusual as he had encountered newborns like that before and he continued as normal, deciding to keep Astraea awake during the test.


    After a few minutes, he had activated the machine and the seat slowly moved toward the opening, the backrest declining backward as well.


    With Astraea fully in the machine, the doctor started activated the main function which was to test the magic affinities of newborns. The machine did its work with a quiet hum while the two parents waited patiently behind the doctor.


    They were both slightly nervous not due to the safety of their child, but of the results the test would show, worried that she would have a below-average overall affinity which would result in some confidence issues down the road, not to mention being less likely to work in a magic related job in the future.


    The first results of the test started to come out, starting from the popular four elements, the doctor had purposely arranged the affinities to be tested from the most popular attributes to the least popular.


    ''I''m kinda bummed that I wouldn''t be able to see my parent''s reactions when they see my affinities. I hope they don''t get a heart attack, hehe~'' Astraea thought to herself as she calmly waited for the test to be over.

 Baby Arc II : Future Cutest Grand Mage

    "The first few results have come in, would you like to wait until all of them have been tested or would you like me to read them as they come?" The doctor asked the pair of parents, eyes still focused on the data that was being collected on the screen.


    "Read them as they come if you could doctor" Paela answered, not wanting to wait for a second to know the potential future of her daughter.


    Aereon nodded in agreement, and the doctor hummed in reply, before reading out the data displayed in front of him.


    "Fire Magic, zero affinity, now don''t panic when I say zero affinity as it is still possible and most probable that it would increase from now until the age of four, and it is perfectly normal for children to have multiple attributes at zero affinity" The doctor explained, he relayed the information that he had deemed as important before the parents behind him started bombarding him with questions in a stressed tone, having experienced it multiple times.


    "Water Magic... zero affinity, now remember what I said and calm yourselves"


    Despite having said that, Aereon had visibly twitched and was trying his hardest to hold in his emotions, he had always dreamed of passing his high affinity for Water Magic, or more specifically, Ice Magic, to his children and guide them with the methods he had learned over the years as well as tips and tricks.


    Ice Magic was one of the few sub-attributes of Water Magic and Aereons affinity for Ice Magic could be put in the top 15% of the world, with his affinity for Water Magic being quite high as well as the main-attribute.


    Scientists and mages had found a way to test the affinity one had for the sub-attributes of main-attributes as there had been solid proof that even in ranks of people with a similar affinity with a main-attribute like water, they had obvious talents in certain categories of that magic.


    An example would be two people with similar affinity for Fire Magic, one person could be highly talented in explosive attacks related to fire, making them have a high affinity towards Explosion Magic, a sub-attribute of Fire Magic.


    The other could be highly talented in increasing the temperature, making them have a high affinity for Heat Magic, another sub-attribute of Fire Magic.


    Of course, your affinity towards any type of sub-attribute is directly linked to your affinity with the main-attribute, and thus having zero-affinity for Water Magic meant that Astraea also had zero-affinity for Ice Magic.


    Though he was saddened, he looked forward to whatever attribute she would have talent in and lead her in the path of magic as best as he can.


    "Air Magic, zero affinity, Earth Magic... also zero affinity." The doctor continued as his tone had started to change from reading four zero affinities in a row, especially for the four elements.


    Both parents now became visibly shocked and concerned upon knowing that their daughter did not have a sliver of affinity for any of the four elements, as most people usually have at least oneelement with a decent affinity after the age of four.


    The doctor was also internally worried for the child''s future, while he had seen such results a few times before, it didn''t detract from the fact that they were not good results, he and the parents behind him could only hope that she had good affinities with the rest of the attributes.


    "Light Magic, zero affinity. DarkMagic, zero affinity, NatureMagic, zero affinity..."


    Aereon''s and Paela''s pupils started shrinking as the doctor read the data displayed, starting to sweat himself.


    "MetalMagic, zero affinity, BodyMagic, zero affinity..."


    Paela''s shoulders slumped on hearing Astraea''s affinity for Body Magic, as it was Magic she had the highest affinity for.


    "WeatherMagic, zero affinity, Space Magic, zero affinity..."


    "...zero affinity...zero affinity"


    "zero, zero, zero, zero..."


    Both parents were frozen from the sounds that were assaulting their ears, wanting to block it all but knowing that they had to listen to the end, no words could even be spoken as they couldn''t believe the possibility of the situation.


    The doctor had eventually stopped stating the attributes'' names and had just scrolling through the data and murmuring zero over and over, his only goal now was to find anything that differed from zero.


    Just as the new parents started to lose hope and began planning how to support their daughter in the future, the doctor suddenly shouted out in joy, snapping the two out of their thoughts.


    "Aha!! Found one!!! Neutral Magic, affinity threshold exceeded..." The doctor''s tone of joy and relief turned into shock, having never seen any newborn ever exceed the threshold in relation to Neutral Magic.


    Being part of a hospital that catered to the upper-middle-class society usually meant receiving families with prestigious magical backgrounds and thus he had seen his fair share of newborns that had exceeded the affinity threshold, so it wouldn''t surprise him much.


    The piece of equipment he was using was only able to measure affinity at a certain point, and any newborn that exceeded it would be considered to be a prodigy, though it wasn''t always the case as certain attributes were more difficult to get a high affinity on.


    While for the four elements, any newborn that exceeds the threshold would be considered a prodigy, for rarer attributes like light and dark magic, they would not need to exceed the threshold to be considered a prodigy.


    For Neutral Magic that is proven to the attribute with the least number of talented users, even gettingtwo-fifths of the threshold wouldmake them a Neutral Magic prodigy.


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    Astraea''s parents knew this as well and their original negative thoughts turned into and joy and relief. Relief over the fact that Astraea''s future in magic was not bleak or non-existent, and joy over the fact that she was a prodigy among prodigies in respect to Neutral Magic.


    "How is her affinity in comparison to the current Grand Mage of Neutral Magic?" Aereon eagerly asked, wanting to know how her potential by comparing her to the greatest Neutral Mage in the world currently.


    "The current Grand Mage of Neutral Magic is said to have an affinity similar to upper-middle ranked mages, which would be the equivalent of 80% of the current threshold of this machine, so you could say that your child is at least 25% more talented than the current Grand Mage."


    "More talented than the Grand Mage... did you hear that Paela, our little girl has the potential to surpass a Grand Mage!!" Aereon told her in excitement, Paela on the verge of crying in joy.


    The doctor smiled happily as well, proud and honored of having witnessed this event and was looking forward to being called the doctor that tested the affinity of a future Grand Mage.


    "Before you think more about your child''s bright future, let us talk about the present, specifically on how to handle the results of the affinity test in order to protect your child."


    Both parents immediately turned confused, before turning into worry as they started to think of the repercussions of releasing the results of the test. Their daughter will be under immense scrutiny not only from the public but also from the government and influential people, it was also possible that other countries would be interested in their daughter.


    "Is...is there a way to hide or change the results?" Paela asked with a bit of hope, unwilling to put her daughter in danger by releasing the results.


    "As it is required by the law for the affinity of a citizen to be documented, I am unable to hide the results, though there is nothing in the law that states that I am unable to alter the results as I have a license that allows me to document the results however I wish to"


    "That being the case, I will be able to decrease the affinity your child has on paper to avoid scrutiny, but only up to a certain extent as there is no way to easily hide her immense talent. I will only be willing to decrease it up to 50% of the threshold."


    The pair of parents were relieved once again upon hearing the doctors offer, and started discussing how much of her talent they wanted to expose.


    After a short discussion, they both decided to decrease the results to 55%, taking into account the attention Astraea would attract, and her fixed affinity when she turns four as they had a hunch that no other attribute except Neutral Magic would increase in the next four years.


    "I''ll input the results as something close to 55% then. For the growth of her affinity in the next four years, I will recommend a believable amount when I see you next time as I''m quite unfamiliar with Neutral Magic and will need to do some research." The doctor finished as he inputted some commands and stopped the test.


    The seat started retracting out of the hole, revealing Asteraea who had been in there longer than the usual amount of time, Aereon and Paela went over to check on her as they were still a bit worried, thankfully Astraea seemed to be fine as she was even giving them a cute smile with her big eyes wide open.


    Astraea had once again unconsciously acted cute as she was anticipating the results of the test, and wanted to know what it was right away.


    Sadly, she didn''t get to find out as they made no attempt to discuss it or even talk in a baby voice to her, though the big smiles on their faces seemed to be a good sign, she didn''t know if that was in reaction to her cuteness or the results of the test though.


    ---


    After a few more hours of other tests that Astraea had no interest in, the family was finally allowed to go home with their new baby late at night.


    The moment the family exited the hospital, it was as Astraea had entered a portal into another world, despite knowing she was in another in the first place. The hospital interior did not really give off the ''another world'' kind of vibe despite the high-tech equipment.


    The city that was displayed in front of her was like a beautiful piece of art, with building reaching higher than any building she had seen before, hundreds of uniquely shaped vehicles flying through the open sky and dozen of unique architecture that seemed to be floating in the air with no support whatsoever. It almost seemed as if it was still day as the amount of lighting in the city was nearly blinding and was a great contrast with the pitch-black sky


    On the streets, there were still thousands of people going about their day with fashion not too dissimilar to the fashion on earth, but of course, there were a couple of unique ones as it was still another world. They all seemed to have some sort of gadget on their wrist that was able to project out what looked to be 3D holograms into open space.


    When Astraea saw this, she internally screamed out ''holograms!!'' and externally made excited baby noises while sporting a huge smile.


    Aereon booked a hover taxi with his own holowatch while Astraea watched with glittering eyes and making cute noises while being held by Paela.


    The ride home was even more amazing as the taxi flew above the rest of the vehicles and through the bustling city, allowing Astraea to enjoy the moving scenery by the window as her parents lovingly watched her become so excited from all the new experiences.


    Though she may be amazed at the beauty of the new world she was in, the world will surely be amazed at the things she would do in the future.

 Baby Arc III : Cute Power Evaluations

    It didn''t take too long for the taxi to arrive at their location, landing on a protruding platform on the side of a huge building. there was a huge blue glass wall at the entrance that didn''t look like it was able to be opened.


    Behind the glass wall was a small room with a raised platform with an intricate circle design carved into it, with the lines permanently shining white light. The moment Astraea saw the circle she couldn''t help but think out ''Magic Circle'' like in all the fantasy novels she had read where they were used as a catalyst for spells and magic.


    Her parents walked towards the glass wall without any intent to stop and it had suddenly phased through the wall without any resistance, giving her a bit of a fright.


    Looking back at the blue glass wall as her parents walked up the platform, another fantasy term popped into her head, ''Magic Barrier'', though she strongly felt the science fiction aspect of the world, these few things made her remember that it was a magitech world like she had requested, knowing that none of it would have been possible without magic.


    They reached the top of the platform and stood in the middle of the glowing circle, and after a few seconds, the surroundings changed in an instant.


    Astraea guessed that the circle had teleported them, but such teleportation was smoother than any description of it she had ever read, most novels that she had read described teleportation as nauseating and having a bit of a delay in the transfer, but she had experienced none of that, though she assumed that this world had already perfected teleportation to some extent.


    They had arrived in a smaller magic circle of a slightly different design inside of a luxurious condominium with modern decorations and large glass window taking up an entire wall, showcasing the beautiful city outside.


    It was also very spacious but not to the point that it felt sparse, it was like the perfect balance between the two.


    Aereon slumped into a nearby couch, breathing out a tired sounding sigh as he massaged his forehead with his fingers.


    "Tired?" Paela asked with a small smile, she was feeling quite tired herself after such an eventful day.


    "I have no right to call myself tired in comparison to you, how are you holding up?" Aereon sat up on the couch as he returned the smile, still a bit concerned for his wife that had gone through childbirth not too long ago.


    She rolled her eyes at his question. "I would go through the same pain I just went through if it was for the benefit of little Astraea here. So don''t look at me like I went through some kind of trauma."


    "I know, I know... can''t a man be worried for his wife?" Aereon said with a bit of sarcasm, getting a playful ''hmph'' from his love.


    Astraea giggled as she watched and listened to the interaction between her parents, glad that they seemed to have a healthy relationship just from how they treated each other. It didn''t feel like lovey-dovey couples that you see amongst teens, but more of best friends that have known each other for a long time.


    She was willing to bet that both of them were childhood friends and they had developed their relationship over a long period of time.


    "Ooh yes~ That''s funny, isn''t it? That your daddy thinks women are fragile, at least not this woman, and definitely not you. I''m gonna teach you how to become a strong independent woman, little Astraea~" Paela baby talked to her when she heard her giggle, playfully booping her tiny nose with her slender finger, eliciting more giggles from the cutie.


    Astraea had close to no control over her reactions so it was a little frustrating, but at least she knew that her behavioral cuteness was working, she guessed that she had close to no control over herself regarding her reactions as babies usual acted very instinctually which was similar to how people acted cute unconsciously.


    She reckoned that it was better this way as she would have either had to forcefully make herself act like a baby or just act like an unresponsive and boring baby, both of which she did not want.


    "I never said that! Ugh... I hate it when you tease me like this." He complained.


    "So what''s actually bothering you? Since I already know that it''s not the fatigue." She asked curiously.


    "I didn''t go through the proper channels to leave my post because I rushed out without thinking, I''m gonna get my ass handed to me tomorrow...speaking of which, you are taking a maternity leave starting tomorrow onwards? Has Joana taken care of that since I know you had a lot of engagements that you told me about."


    "While I would say that it was your fault for rushing, I''m thankful that you did so to support me during the birth, and Joana has canceled all future engagements until further notice." She answered happily, she was getting a bit tired of having to attend all of those engagements while heavily pregnant, and she was glad that she''ll be getting away from it for a while.


    She wouldn''t consider it a break as childcare was far from relaxing, but she was sure that it would be enjoyable and satisfying, especially watching Astraea grow.


    ---


    The next few weeks were quite uneventful as Astraea was in her crib for the majority of the time, sometimes in the living room when her mom wanted to feed her or wanted her to look out at the city. Sometimesshe sang some lullabies to get her to fall asleep, and it was quite effective despite the maturity of the person residing in the small body.


    How she handled breastfeeding and the awkwardness of it was quite easy to be honest, just allow her baby instincts to take over and relax, she had no problems behavinglike a normal baby as she only had to let her body take over instead of overthinking it.


    Her dad, Aereon, had mentioned something about pulling his weight and deciding to work longer, only being able to return home every few days. He made the effort to bond with her every time he came home and she was more than willing to bond with her new dad, making more effort to act cute while letting her instincts do most of the work.


    She had figured out her parent''s occupations from the conversations they had and their personal belongings, she found out that her mom Paela was actually an actor and model as she had heard her talking with someone on her holowatch about things related to showbiz and modeling.


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    Her dad Aereon seemed to be working in the military but she couldn''t figure out what specifically and only figured out as he had used military terms when conversing with her mom about his job.


    It wasn''t just purely being a cute baby, and bonding with her parents though, she had properly used the time in order to check out the powers she had gained and test them out, at least as much as she can test them.


    The first power she had tested was her enhanced memory, it was very easy to test the effects as she tried recalling the life she had lived and it was quite disorienting at first. She had been able to recall every moment of her life in great detail and it felt as if she had lived through it twice, from every word she spoke, every thought she had, every face she had seen, all in extreme detail.


    The greatest part about her memory though was that she was able to relive every game she had played, every novel and manga she had read and all the anime and movies she had watched, as those were honestly the happiest moments in her life.


    Her memory was so good now that things like mental math became extremely easy as all she had to do was recall the answers or formulas related to the question, she even felt that her speed of thought had been increased as her mind felt as sharp as when she was in the zone, the zone being her state of absolute focus as she played a game for an extended period of time.


    She was very satisfied with the effect when it only cost 5.11% of her points, as it would help her a great deal when she started learning magic, as magic in this world had been developed to use complicated scientific and mathematical formulas, making all the great mages of the world great scientists and mathematicians as well.


    Speaking of her points, she recalled all the things she had spent the rest of her points on so she would be able to go through them one by one.


    0.89% had been used to compress all of her affinities into Neutral Magic. She had never been able to glean any information from the test she had done back at the hospital and could only assume that her affinity was high. Her effort at trying to use neutral magic by attempting every method she had read from fantasy protagonists had been rewarded with a small success.


    She had finally been able to get something to happen when she had gone into a meditative state by using her enhanced memory to recall all the times she had gone into the zone and repeated the feeling over and over in her mind while banishing all other thoughts.


    When she had noticed that she had succeeded in reaching a meditative state, she started to focus on the entirety of her body and trying to imagine a type of energy flowing throughout it. She then had started to feel the flow of what she could only assume to be mana in her body and she focused on imprinting the feeling, which was quite easy due to her enhanced memory.


    She had attempted to have the mana in her body exit by redirecting the flow, but trying to control the flow of mana in her body was much harder than trying to sense it and she was still attempting it until now.


    2.58% had been used to integrate her shovel into a system in place in this world of Vanterio so she would be able to bring it with her on all her future adventures, with 0.76% spent on aesthetics and 15.66% spent on making it evolve and grow at a greater speed.


    She had not once heard anything that could even be closely related to the system the being had been talking about and could only wait until she could get more information.


    5% of her points had been used to increase her behavioral cuteness and it was actually the most active of her powers currently, working very well as babies don''t consciously think when they do things, making any action that a baby does behaviorally cute.


    25% of her points had been used to be able to decide how her body grows and how it changes and she had tested it the day they had gone home by desiring her baby body to have bigger eyes, grow hair faster and something more complicated which was that her body was able to absorb more nutrients.


    She did this by rememberingher appearance on the mirror that was thankfully added to the room, and comparing it every week to see any change. There were definitely some changes as she noticed that her eyeswere gradually increasing in size when she compared the perfect memory of herprevious appearance, though it was very minuscule.


    She also noticed that her hair had grown a little thicker as well, and that her bodily messes were less...messy.


    She was quite surprised at the relatively fast effect of her power as she wanted it to be slow in order to save points and gather less suspicion from others. She could only guess that due to being a baby, her body was undergoing a lot of growth and physical changes and it affected her power.


    It wasn''t much of a problem as she couldreduce the speed by stating it in her desires for her body. The other effect of the power which was to slowly change her body based on the concept of ''cuteness'' and it was working as intended, as she felt that she was cuter than a few weeks ago as it as subtly adjusted the shape of her face and body to become more ideal for cuteness.


    Finally, the most important power that she had allocated 45% of her points for, the ability to charm others with her cuteness. She had tested this by leading her parents around the house by looking at a general direction and making sounds of curiosity and interest, and they had easily figured out that she wanted to go to where she was looking.


    While they always seemed to go where she wanted them to go regardless of the location, she wasn''t sure if it was actually her power at work or just parents wanting to dote on and do anything for their child. She would have to test it in greater detail when she was older or attempt another method. It was no trouble that she was unable to properly test it now.


    She decided to focus on trying to control the flow of mana in her body as it was the only thing she could train and practice on.


    There was no way she will idly waste these precious days, swearing to ''grind'' for magic experience as much as she could.

 Baby Arc IV : Cutely Growing Older

    Astraea had made a lot of progress and gained a lot of new information, as well as experience new things for the weeks that came.


    She had made minor progress in attempting to control the flow of her mana and was now able to redirect a small amount in a certain direction, she planned to continue to train her internal control before even attempting to have it exit her body.


    She had experienced actual magic for the first time too as her parents had started using their magic around her with small tricks and spells, hearing from their talks that it was to boost her affinity for Neutral Magic.


    Though they didn''t talk about it in detail, she had gathered that of the few confirmed ways to increase a toddler''s affinity for Neutral Magic was to frequently use magic around them.


    Her dad had used Ice Magic to create little sculptures of animals and sometimes put on a small performance, showcasing the beauty of ice by casting flurries of snow and ice, making pretty patterns in the air and having the ice and snow dance around.


    She was properly wowed and amazed as it was the first time she had ever seen such a fantastical display, her behavioral cuteness power working its own magic and making her react in cute giggles and excited noises, coupled with cute expressions that made Aereons heart melt.


    She guessed from the skillful and beautiful display that he had a high affinity with Ice Magic and was highly talented with magic in general.


    Her mom had also performed some small spells with earth, fire, and light magic as she seemed to have some affinity with them. It was obvious that she wasn''t very skilled with them in comparison with her dad and could only guess her main magic was hard or impossible to materialize. She still appreciated the effort and make her cute smiles and giggles as well.


    Another method to increase her affinity was to use a technique that allowed one person to pass their mana through another person and having their mana be flushed and replaced by the mana that they had received. Researchers had found out that mana that was kept inside of a body for long period of time was able to become ''stale'' and have a reduced concentration, this meant that despite being maxed out on mana, if it was used to cast magic, it would either take much more mana than usual or the effect would be reduced.


    Using this technique would allow anyone to regain ''fresh'' mana without having to use up any of their own and waiting for it to refill. Though there few people who actually used the technique as it was quite inefficient. It was a perfect technique for mothers with toddlers as those of the same family had similar mana signatures and thus there was less loss of mana during the transfer.


    It was also due to toddlers having a minuscule capacity for mana making it possible for mothers to perform the technique multiple times in a day and not have to worry about being inconvenienced due to the lack of mana.


    Not only was it proven to increase toddler''s affinity with Neutral Magic, but it was also confirmed to increase affinity with multiple other attributes by a small amount and even made them physically healthier.


    Paela had been diligently performing the technique on Astraea every day three times a day for the past few weeks, and each time she did so, Astraea would start to focus on the feeling of mana moving in her body and attempting to follow the flow to increase her proficiency and control. She would also focus on the feeling of mana leaving her body so she becomes familiar with the feeling when she attempts to move her mana out of her body in the future.


    ---


    The next few months passed and not much had happened in that time except for two significant achievements.


    She had successfully become proficient enough to control a large amount of mana in her body and was able to move it to any part of her body with only some effort, but more impressive than that, she had been able to move her mana out of her body without any accidents.


    At first, it had been difficult trying to move the mana out of her body despite having a clear memory of the feeling from when her mom uses the mana refreshing technique on her every day.


    But it did help as she was able to sense the changes of what she felt and slowly adjusted her technique in order to get closer to the feeling she felt when her mana was being refreshed.


    Eventually, she had been successful and the effects were quite minor, Astraea had sent out a small amount of mana out of her palm towards a small stuffed toy inches away and it had made it move a negligible distance.


    She likened it to a telekinetic push as that was one of the types of magic she would imagine doing as a Neutral Mage, she didn''t have any doubts about if she was actually using Neutral Magic as the being had already explained that Neutral magic was literally just utilizing raw mana.


    She only practiced her control over magic externally when she was alone as she didn''t want her parents to find out just yet. She also didn''t want them to become worried for her safety and watch her 24/7 as she wouldn''t be able to practice her magic freely.


    Aside from her advancements in magic, she had also successfully learned to crawl when she was four months old, greatly surprising her parents as babies usually took six to ten months to start to crawl.


    It took her four months as herlimbs werenot strong enough to support the weight of her body at first, but when they finally became strong enough to do so, she was very happy to have regained two-dimension movement.


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    another two months passed with her crawling every opportunity she had to do so, so as to train her body and she was finally able to support her own weight and start walking. Aereon and Paela were once again shocked at her speed of growth but were mostly happy at having such a talented daughter.


    She had even decided to go for broke and call them ''mama'' and ''dada'' like how they had been trying to teach her for the past few months, doing both at the same time so as to not exclude either parent.


    The reaction was more than she expected, they had both shouted in glee, causing Astraea to flinch at the volume, and had picked her up and hugged her while being squeezed in the middle.


    From then on she noticed a substantial change in her cute charm ability in that it was more effective every time she said ''mama'' or ''dada'' before pointing at something she wanted or a place she wanted to go when they were carrying her.


    Once again, she was unsure if it was their doting nature as parents or her power that was at work, she could only assume that the two were working in tandem.


    Despite regaining the ability to walk, she had been unable to access any kind of reading material as they were all behind the seemingly huge doors that she considered the ''forbidden rooms'' as her parents had neverbrought her inside.


    There weren''t even any bookshelves in the living room with an assortment of books, but now that she thought back on the past six months, she had not seen a sign of any written material.


    If that was truly the case and everything had been digitized, then it would be much harder to access reading materials as she''d have to figure out how to work the futuristic electronics.


    She would just have to wait until they started teaching her what a ''computer'' was or any other word related to documented information.


    ---


    Five months later and at eleven months old, Astraea had started using more words to better converse with her parents as she was getting impatient at not being able to relay what she wanted from them.


    She only spoke one to three words at a time as any more would seem too abnormal for a child her age, and she also wanted her parents to feel her growth instead of seeing their genius child grow up too fast and miss out on important milestones and the joy of raising and teaching their child.


    She had become much cuter over the last five months as the desires she had stated for her body were doing wonders for her, her eyes had become nice and large but had stopped becoming bigger some time ago and she assumed it was the other effect at work which adjusted her body to the definition of cuteness.


    She was thankful it had done this as giant bug eyes were definitely not cute, same with her hair, it had grown long enough to reach slightly below her neck which she thought was perfect for cute hairstyles.


    The desire to absorb more nutrients from her food still made her produce lesser and lesser excrement and she could feel that she did not need as much food than she did before. She still ate the same amount as she didn''t want to worry her parents, and the home-cooked baby food her mom had beenmaking since four months ago tasted quite good compared to what she thought it would taste like, it was probably her baby taste buds that made it taste good anyways.


    She had added two more desires, the first was that her skin would have no flaws and imperfections, and the second that her voice would become cuter andsound more charismatic to the listener. The first was due to knowing that skin-care was very important as it covered every part of her body and having flawless skin would attract more attention towards herself in the future.


    The second was her plan to use her charismatic and cute voice in tandem with her charm ability in order to make them more receptive to suggestions and words she would speak in the future.


    Why didn''t she just state a load of usefuland more complicated desires? She knew her power would have some sort of limit and that increasing the number or complexity of the desires would only make it have a weaker effect. She would only add more desires once she thinks that one desire had been fulfilled and would replace the old desire with the new one, also taking into account complexity as well.


    She had already taken out her hair growth and eye expansion desires as she deemed them as fulfilled, and she could always just add them back on again whenever she wanted.


    Her progress in Neutral Magic had increased as well as she was now able to use more mana for her telekinetic push and was even attempting to use telekinesis on small objects with small success. Her goal was to be able to twist the doorknobs of the ''forbidden rooms'' in order to access them and finally attempt to use this world''s internet.


    She was glad that the doors weren''t some fancy sci-fi door in ships that had identification scanners. Thinking about it, those would ruin the style that the condominium had and guessed that as the reason it had fancy wooden doors with doorknobs in the first place.


    Her first birthday was coming in a few days as she had heard her parents discussing about it excitedly, they seemed to be planning to invite their friends and family and she was looking forward to it. She was looking forward to gaining more information about this world than meeting new people though, but she was sure that her cuteness will charm them in an instant!

 Birthday Arc I : Cutely Introducing Herself

    The Lanixer family had woken up quite early on Astraea''s birthday as they wanted to finish the preparations they had for the party. They had decided that they didn''t need or want to have childish decorations, balloons, or party hats as their house was much fancier than cheap decorations, it was also going to be a small party with people they were close to.


    They had decided that they would arrange activities that would showcase the growth of Astraea, allowing the other kids to participate along with her while the adults cheered on and took pictures for their family albums. Paela was also going to cook up a feast consisting of her famed dishes along with some kid-friendly dishes that the kids would love as she was a brilliant cook.


    She hadn''t forgotten the most important part of the party and had ordered a customized birthday cake a few weeks ago and it had been delivered just the day before as she had requested.


    They had invited a small number of people includingtwo of their close friends, who both had a spouse and kids. Paela also invited her parents while Aereon had invited his mom and his sister as hid dad had passed away when he was much younger.


    While Paela was starting to cook with the ingredients she had prepared the day before, Aereon and Astraea were currently in her room dressing up and making her pretty for the party, not to mention cuter than she already was.


    Her room no longer had a crib and baby toys but instead was filled with an assortment of stuffed toys of varying sizes, along with a cute pink toddler bed.


    During the outings Paela had taken her out on which included the local park and shopping mall, she had not once failed to point at a stuffed toy, shout out with a tone of desire and want when in toystoresor when she saw them on storefronts.


    She had done this as she had wanted to further test her cute charm power by slowly increasing the size and price of the stuffed toy she would want to test the reaction of her mom, she had even attempted to buy a load of stuffed toys at once to see if there was a difference in her reactions.


    For the entire experiment, there had been little to no hesitation or change in expression regardless of the size or the number of stuffed toys she had wanted, with the biggest stuffed toy she now owned being bigger than her dad, making her doubt if her mom was actually human.


    Despite the seemingly great effectiveness of her power,she had learned was that she could no longer attempt to test her power by using her parents as the test subjects.


    While the results she had gained could prove that her power was highly effective,she still wouldn''t be able to tell if it was actually due to her power, or if it was the status of her parents who were upper-middle-class citizens with a decent amount of wealth that hundreds of stuffed toys wouldn''t make them flinch.


    She also had doubts if it was also due to their nature as extremely loving and caring parents like she had requested that allowed them to easily dote and pamper her without a hint of hesitation.


    Despite the time wasted from the experiment, she had to admit that her room was less lonely than before and had increased greatly in cuteness, making it properly complement her own cuteness. The number of stuffed toys she owned was so great that she had taken multiple naps in them just from their comfort and fluffiness.


    Astraea was currently seated in small stool in front of the full-body mirror she had while her dad Aereon combed her medium length hair. Looking into the mirror, she focused on her image, looking at every part of her year-old body.


    She had bright silver hair that reached just below herneck, huge golden eyes that held more intelligence that a year-old should and pink rosy cheeks that puffed up cutely with baby fat. She had a small slender body in comparison to the normally chubby bodies of toddlers and skin that felt and looked like peach-colored silk with no visible flaws.


    she was slightly shorter than toddlers her age as she currently had a desire that purposely delayed her growth as she wanted to maintain her status as a ''loli'' even as she grew older. If she wanted to grow taller, she could always just add a desire to do so.


    she was currently dressed in a cute pink dress with hot pink frills, and pink heart patterned socks. Aereon had finished combing her hair and had started styling it into a cute ponytail that hung from the side of her head.


    "Astraea sweetie, you excited for your party and to meet your grandparents?" her dad asked as he was styling her hair.


    "Yep!" She replied cutely, swinging her legs while humming a playful tune. From the past year of not being able to control her bodies reactions due to her enhanced behavioral cuteness, she had learned how to let her body do its thing and act how it wanted without it greatly affecting her, making her easily act like a normal child, albeit cuter than normal.


    Over the past two months, she had slowly revealed that she was able to understand the simple sentences her parents were teaching her, making them praise and adore her once again at her talent.


    "You excited for the presents you''ll get? I bet you''ll get a bunch of new stu-" Aereon paused his sentence halfway as he glanced around the room.


    "Maybe something other than stuffed toys..." He finished with a chuckle, eliciting cute giggles from Astraea as she internally agreed.


    "And... done! Now you look... a million times cuter than usual!" Hestated with a satisfied nod, thinking to himself that his daughter was cutest in the world. If Astraea had heard his thoughts, she would have shaken her head disappointedly at the small scale she had put her cuteness in, at least make her cutest in the galaxy!


    Exiting her room, the two decided to go to the kitchen to try and help out, as the guests would be arriving in the afternoon and they still had a lot of time.


    Though Paela had not rejected their desire to help, they were only allowed to do the more menial tasks like chopping up the ingredients which was done by Aereon and passing things she needed which was done by Astraea.


    They had finished cooking all the dishes half an hour before the start of the party and had beautifullyset them on the table like it was the last supper, with Astraea helping by carrying some utensils.


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    Just as they had finished setting the table, a notification appeared on Aereons holowatch indicating thatmultiple people were at the entrance and were requesting entrance into their condominium. Granting his permission, a few seconds passed and the magic circle on their entrance platform glowed brighter and four figures suddenly appeared on the platform.


    Before Astraea could take a good look at the guests, one of them had pounced onto her and brought her into their arms and hugging tightly.


    "Oh-Em-Gee!! She''s so cute!!! A million times cuter in real life than in those pictures you sent bro!" A feminine voice said as she swung Astraea''s body from side to side while hugging her.


    "Careful now!! You might hurt her!" Aereon worriedly said as he approached the person who had assaulted her. Though Astraea wasn''t hurt, she was nauseatingly dizzy and would have vomited all over the guest if she had eaten prior to this.


    "Sounding more and more like a dad everyday aren''t you bro?" The guest, who Astraea was able to identify asa girl after the shaking had stopped, said teasingly but with a hint of pride in her tone.


    The girl looked around eighteen years old and had long dark green hair, with baby blue eyes and a face that screamed ''playful''. She had a slender yet strong body as Astraea could feel that she didn''t have the typical soft body of a woman and was instead quite muscular. She was wearing long pants and a plain black shirt, with her hair in a ponytail.


    Though the shaking had stopped, the girl, who was obviously her dad''s sister from the way she addressed him, had decided to keep carrying her like a stuffed toy against her ample chest instead of putting her down.


    While a normal child would attempt to struggle from being held by an unfamiliar person, she decided to let her behavioral cuteness takeover, making her giggle cutely and swing her limbs around playfully, earning a squee from her dad''s sister and smiles from the other guests and her parents.


    "She is a cutie indeed Kaelie, way cuter than your sister-in-law ever was." A guest added on while chuckling, receiving a pout and a glare from Paela.


    The guest was an elderly man with faded brown hair, kind yet confident brown eyes and looked as fit as an athlete, he had no hunch and walked with confidence. He was wearing a black suit that made him look very dashing despite his age.


    "Don''t tease her too much dear, or she might not let you hold your newest granddaughter." Another guest said as they came up beside the elderly man.


    They were an elderly woman with long faded blonde hair and blue eyes. She had a figure that could rival mature models in their forties and had little to no wrinkles on her face or exposed skin.


    "Don''t worry dear friend, I''ll make sure to give little Astraea a lot more hugs and kisses on your behalf." The last guest said as they approached Astraea who was still in being held by her aunt.


    They were another elderly woman with short black hair and black eyes, being shorter than the previous guest and having a similar figure.


    Everyone besides the elderly man laughed at the joke the elderly woman had made, causing him to roll his eyes and shake his head while sporting a small smile.


    "Alright everyone, since you came a bit early, let''s move to the couches and we''ll introduce Astraea to each one of you before our friends come," Paela told them all.


    They moved to the nearby couches at her request with Astraea still being held by her aunt as they both sat down.


    "Come on now Kaelie, put her down, I think you''ve had enough time with Astraea." Aereon teasingly said to his sister.


    "Aww... do I have to?" Kaelie asked with a small pout, eliciting crossed arms and a raised eyebrow from Aereon.


    "Fine..." She said, reluctantly putting Astraea down in the middle of the seated people.


    "Astraea dear, how about you introduce yourself to the guests? Starting from your paternal grandmother over there." Aereon asked while pointing at the black-haired elderly woman.


    The group of guests looked at Aereon in confusion, not knowing why he would ask something that Astraea wouldn''t understand, and furthermore, asking to introduce herself as well?


    While the two parents had sent multiple pictures of Astraea to their family members over the past year. They had not revealed the level of intelligence that little Astraea had, wanting to surprise them today and to see all of their reactions at once.


    Astraea nodded cutely as she walked over to her paternal grandmother before starting to speak.


    "My name Astraea! What your name?" She said as did a cute bow.


    The reactions the guests had were priceless, ranging from surprise to amazement as they listened to Astraea introduce herself.


    Despite being a little speechless from the amazement of her grandaughter''s intelligence, the black-haired elderly woman promptly answered Astraea''s question.


    "My name is Vaena dear, and I''m your grandmother. Does she know that? Grandmother?" Vaena looked towards the two parents as she asked her question.


    Before they could answer, Astraea had already beaten them to it.


    "I know, I know! Dada''s mama!" She proudly said, further increasing the amazement the guests had for her intelligence.


    "Wait, did you actually teach her what paternal and maternal means?" Vaena questioned the two parents, the two of them smiling cheekily in reply.


    Astraea went up to three guests one by one, repeating her introduction to each of them while asking for their own.


    She had found out that her maternal grandmother and grandfather''s names were Elle and Dagen respectively, and had confirmed that her aunt''s name was Kaelie like she had heard her dad call her.


    As Astraea finished introducing herself, she climbed onto the couch Kaelie was sat on and sat down on her lap, having a cute smile the entire time.


    Seeing this, everyone, including Astraea''s parents all thought the same thing.


    ''How cute!''


    Today was surely going to be filled with cuteness and fun.

 Birthday Arc II : Cutely Asking for Curry

    As the other guests of the party had not yet arrived, the current guests conversed and caught up with their family, Aereon and Paela, asking each other general things about how their current life was going and sharing interesting things that had happened.


    Though for the two parents, the most interesting that had happened to them, in their opinion, was raising Astraea. It was more than interesting, it was life-changing. They had talked all about the experience they had gained and memories they had made in the past year as parents, including the ups and downs, though there were only a minuscule number of downs due to Astraea herself.


    Asides from her amazing intelligence, she was also very well behaved and they had admitted that she had never cried before. Every time that she was hungry or had soiled her diapers, she would always make loud noises similar to if someone was calling out to them on a street instead of becoming similar to an emergency alarm that was blaring into their ears.


    She also smiled and giggled every time they spent time together, which always made them feel warm and fuzzy inside. It always helped heal Aereon''s heart and mind from the stress that accumulates from working for multiple days straight.


    Astraea playfully hummed as she pretended to not be paying attention to their conversations and internally praised her parents at doing a good job of telling them about her cuteness, as well as her good behavior.


    A notification sounded on Aereon''s holowatch, telling him that the other guests had arrived. He granted them permission to enter without delay and the new guests appeared on the platform not long after.


    Four new guests had arrived, with two of them being much smaller in size but still bigger than Astraea.


    One of the guests was a handsome man that looked to be a similar age to Aereon with messy black hair and dark red eyes, his stature was bigger than that of the compact and strong body of Aereon, having more clearly defined muscles lines in the casual clothing he was wearing. He had a rugged face that would be popular amongst mature woman in the west compared to Aereon''s face that would be popular amongst teenage girls in the east.


    Standing behind him and peaking around was a boy that looked around four years old with blood-red hair and ruby-colored eyes, a nervous expression visible on his slightly chubby face.


    Just beside the two males guests were another two female guests. The first female guest was a young woman that looked in her early twenties with short blue hair and black eyes, she had a more voluptuous figure than Paela did, though Paela did look like she was still in her late teens and was much shorter than the young woman.


    She wore a simple yet fashionable pair of blouse and skirt, behind her was a little girl that looked around two years old with cyan hair and the same black eyes as the young women.


    The two adults had gone up to Astraea''s parents and started conversing with great familiarity, obvious that the four were close friends.


    "Is that your one-year-old demon spawn over there sitting on Kaelie? Ain''t she a cute thing!" The male guest pointed over to Astraea, having noticed her in the middle of their conversation.


    "That''s her alright, and she far from a demon spawn compared to your own kid." Aereon proudly stated.


    "Hey, Kyris buddy, why don''t you go introduce yourself to a new friend huh?"


    "But they''re a baby! They won''t understand me!" The boy named Kyris whined in reply, as he looked over at Astraea with an expression of distaste.


    Kyris'' dad knocked a fist on his head lightly, eliciting a cry of surprise and slight pain.


    "Baby or not, first impressions are always important! Now go over to them and introduce yourself!" His dad commanded, making him grumble as he reluctantly walked forward.


    "Do you always have to treat him like that Dennix? You might affect his growth if you keep knocking on his head like that, he''s still a four-year-old after all..." The young woman asked as she looked at Kyris'' back with a pitying expression.


    "Aneya''sright, he might lose whatever little brain cells he has left that he had inherited from you," Paela added on with a concerned voice despite the small jab she had inserted into her sentence.


    Dennix rolled his eyes at the jab and looked at his sons back as he let out a sigh.


    "He inherited my thick-headedness in more ways than one, so he''ll be fine. Despite not being too bright like I was, he''s got good instincts and talent, he''s made more progress than a kid his age should have in our recent magic practice."


    "He''s instincts transferred over to his magic talent like I did when I was younger so he doesn''t even have to try too much to improve, made him cockier and a little more spoiled."


    "I''ve been getting more complaints from his preschool teachers that he''s starting to misbehave so I decided to beat the disobedience and cockiness out of him before it gets worst and he becomes like me when I was younger." Dennix finished as he let out a tired sigh.


    "You were a jerk back then, good thing that was only externally huh? I''m sure he''ll grow up to be a good guy so why don''t you lessen the discipline or he might build up some resentment for you." Aereon placed his hand on Dennix''s shoulder as he gave out the suggestion.


    As Kyris approached Astraea, he was a little angry and annoyed at why he had to waste his breath on a baby, thinking that she would only answer inindistinguishable babbles and drooling asshe did so.


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    Deciding to get it over as soon as possible, he stopped a small distance away from the couch Kaelie and Astraea were sat on and starting to introduce himself, not noticing the anticipating expression of everyone seated as they all looked at Astraea.


    "Hi...my name is Kyris and I''m four years old... What''s your name?..." He asked unenthusiastically, expecting big sis Kaelie to tell him the baby''s name when they failed to answer.


    "My name is Astraea! Astraea Lanixer." Astraea stated loudly, shocking Kyris who had not expected a distinguishable answer. Astraea had already been a little annoyed at Kyris calling her ''just a baby'' when he had replied to his father, becoming more and more annoyed as he dragged his feet when walking to her and the uninterested tone he had used when introducing himself.


    She decided to increase her vocabulary a little such as including ''is'' in her introduction, as well as adding on her last name which made her introduction more mature sounding.


    It worked wonders as she saw the expression on his face as well as the impressed expression from the seated guests that did not expect her to know her family name, and how to differentiate it from her given name.


    "Astraea... can talk?! How is your year-old-daughter already talking so clearly! What kind of things did you teach her!" Dennix questioned Astraea''s parents loudly, his volume was mostly due to his jealousy towards them for having such a smart child.


    Kyris himself had only started talking that clearly while understanding what he was saying when he wasthreeyears old, and it might have been much later if he and his wife had not decided to teach him vocabulary everyday.


    "It''s purely her intelligence, while we taught her more than regular parents would, I''m sure she would have been able to talk that clearly only a few months later just from us talking to her or listening to our conversations," Paela explained, proud to once again pronounce her child''s immense intelligence.


    "I think it''s more than just intelligence too, little Tirana here can speak just as well as Astraea, but she''s much shyer and usually only talks to me and my husband," Aneya added on, a little envious at how confidentlittle Astraea was in comparison to Tirana. The little girl in question was currently hugging her mother''s leg quite tightly as she looked down on the floor.


    "That''s our cute daughter for you, she''s never seemed to be afraid of the things around her and is usually very curious about them, She''s never cried before or anything either, not even when she was hungry or in need of a changing," Aereon added on.


    With two loud claps, the chatter in the room subsided as Paela turned to address everyone in the room.


    "Alright, everyone! Since all the guests are present, Let''s start off this party with a feast we cooked, and afterwards, we''ll be doing some activities we planned."


    With that, the group of guests along with the three residents went up to the large circular table with the food Paela had cooked for the past few hours.


    There were foods such as pasta, fried rice, curry and whole loads of other foods that Paela had cooked, and despite the quantity of the food, all of them were of high quality and had good presentation.


    There were a total of eleven people and all of them were seated at the table according to their ages, with the elders, adults, and children sat together.


    Astrea was seated on a high chair that didn''t restrict her movement and allowed her to be at the same height as the two children sat beside her, who were both using slightly boosted chairs.


    Everyone at the table started picking dishes from the spread, with the adults helping the children get theirs.


    Kyris excitedly shouted that he wanted the spaghetti, making Dennix scold him for raising his voice and told him to wait.


    Tirana didn''t make a sound but looked at the spaghetti in desire, making Aneya roll her eyes at her child, before helping to give her a small portion.


    Everyone looked towards Astraea, anticipating how she would ask for the food and if she would pick spaghetti, they all had built a sort of expectation that Astraea''s actions would differ greatly from a normal child due to her intelligence.


    It was a little unnerving for little Astraea as she felt as if she had to reveal more of her intelligence just to meet the expectations of everyone, and it would have been very obvious if not for her enhanced behavioral cuteness.


    Despite using the least amount of points out of her three cuteness powers, it had been the most helpful out of all of them for the past year.


    Trying not to mind their stares too much, she kept maintaining her cute smile and started to speak.


    "Curry with rice pwease!" Astraea asked politely, purposely mispronouncing ''please'' to increase her cuteness factor.


    Everyone at the table gave a sound of approval and praise, no matter how many times they see it, they couldn''t help but be impressed at Astraea''s level of intelligence.


    Kyris looked on at the approving faces that were looking towards Astraea and made a bitter and jealous face.


    He thought to himself that they were only praising the baby as she was a bit smarter than normal, but even he could do the same if he really wanted to! He could even pronounce ''please'' without saying it wrong either!


    While Kyris poked at his food with a scrunched up face, Tirana happily ate hers without a care in the world about her surroundings, with the first smile she has had since she had arrived.


    The only thing she was thinking to herself was ''yummy!''

 Birthday Arc III : Cutely Playing Charades!

    "It is okay for her to eat this? I tasted it and it''s a little spicy." Elle asked in concern, though the curry wasn''t that spicy, it could very well be the spiciest thing little Astraea would have tasted.


    "Don''t worry, that''s her favorite to have nowadays, and we''ve properly built up the spice from when we first introduced it to her and she just became happier and happier as we did," Paela explained.


    They easily accepted the explanation as it as already been established in their minds that Astraea was a unique child in terms of mentality.


    Taking Astraea''s plate, Paela helped to scoop some white rice along and a ladle of chicken curry, with soft bits of potato and chicken that could be easily chewed by a one-year-old.


    Astraea waited patiently while watching her mom fill her plate with anticipating expression, the full plate placed in front of her not long after. Instead of digging in messily like Kyris had, she instead turned to her mom and gave her a big ''thank you'' before picking up her plastic spoon and fork.


    She carefully scooped up a spoonful of curry and rice, bringing it to her mouth and cutely blowing on it to cool it down. After blowing on it a few times, she opened her mouth wide audible ''Aahh'' and put the spoon in her mouth.


    She slid the spoon out of her closed mouth and slowly started to chew with soft sounds of pleasure. This whole time everyone had been eating their own meals but were also watching the innately cute actions of Astraea, not wanting to miss a moment of it.


    Astraea didn''t care at all about their stares as she chowed down on her most favorite dish since she had come into this world. In her previous world, she had always loved chicken curry and would eat it at least once every week, having spurlged to go to expensive restaurants just to eat their high-quality chicken curry and some other of his favorite food.


    When she first was introduced to chicken curry in this world, she was very happy and knew it would be delicious as she already knew the level of cooking her mom had. She was blown away from the flavor that small plate of curry had that surpassed most of the chicken curry he had eaten before, though it didn''t beat the best one he had eaten.


    Though she was a little disappointed with the level of heat present as it would have improved the dish several times over. She had amended that by asking Paela to make her curry ''hotter'', not using ''spicy'' as they hadn''t officially taught her that word yet.


    She had asked time and time again to make it ''hotter'' every time she had curry and had reached the point where she thought the level of heat was perfect for her the current heat tolerance of her body.


    Everyone had gotten their fill of the delicious dishes after a little under an hour and the plates and pots were nearly picked clean.


    Everyone participated in a bit of cleaning up by helping move some dishes to the sink and helping to transfer any leftovers into smaller containers. Astraea helped by carrying her personal plastic tableware and bringing it into the kitchen.


    Kyris had seen this and didn''t want to be outdone by a baby and had quickly picked up his own plastic tableware and grabbing Tirana''s from the table. He rushed past Astraea and held out his arms to pass it to Paela, who was arranging the dirty dishes to be washed later.


    He looked over his shoulder at Astraea with a smug expression, turning to look at his father and proudly exclaim his actions.


    "Look, daddy! I helped move the dishes, and I helped Tirana with hers too!" He looked on in anticipation at his father''s face, expecting an approving expression followed by his praise.


    Dennix had a bittersweet expression as he looked between his son and his friend''s year-old daughter, already knowing that Kyris had done what he did so as to not be outdone by Astraea who was three years younger than him.


    Despite the motive for his actions, it was a huge improvement from his previous acts of rebellion, as nowadays he only does as he''s told when using a stern tone or threatening him with punishment.


    He didn''t want to waste this opportunity and decided to exaggerate in his praise so that Kyris would continue with his good behavior.


    "Good job buddy! You''re one heck of a gentleman that not only clear your own dishes but someone else too! Gimme a high five!" Kyris beamed at the praise and strongly slapped his small hand against the strong hand of his father, making a satisfying clap.


    Astraea had already passed her dishes to her mom when the two had completed their high five and internally rolled his eyes as she recalled what Kyris did. She didn''t really care that a four-year-old was trying to compete with her not only because she was a mentally mature adult, but also because the impact of a four-year-old doing those actions compared to a cute one-year-old was like the distance between the earth and the moon.


    Paela once again addressed the guests and asked them to be seated in the living area so that they could start the party games and activities. The first activity was a game that would further test the intelligence and vocabulary, charades.


    Paela and Aereon had come up with dozen of words that weren''t too difficult to enact such as animals, simple actions, anda few simple phrases that didn''t require any signals so that the children would be able to participate as they were the main focus of the games.


    They decided to takes turns in enacting a word by going clockwise starting with Astraea''s maternal grandfather, Dagen.


    Dagen could only sigh at being the first to go and stood up from his seat to stand in the middle of the living area, picking a card from a stack of cards on a nearby coffee table.


    Reading what was written on the card, his face made no change and he put the card back down on the table having already thought of how to enact what he was given.


    He put his right shoulder against his nose while extending his right arm out in front of him, waving it like a snake as he made a noise similar to a trumpet, there wasn''t a hint of embarrassment present in him mostly due having lived a long time and being surrounded by people he was highly familiar with.


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    Everyone had known straight away what the word was but the adults refrained from speaking in order to allow one of the kids to answer.


    Kyris had onlyspoken the first letter of the wordbefore Astraea shouted out the word Dagen had acted out.


    "Elephant!" The moment she finished the word, a round of praise and applause was directed at her while Kyris humped angrily from being outdone by the ''baby''.


    The next fewturns had the adults enacting the content on the cards as the kids were all seated together on a small couch and were the last to go. While Astraea could have easily guessed all the words that were enacted, she decided to only guess a few while allowing Kyris and Tirana to guess as she didn''t want to resentment to build up within Kyris.


    Tirana had slowly shed her shyness as she was greatly enjoying the funny faces and poses the adults were making and had started softly saying the words and phrases when she had recognized them.


    It was finally the kid''s turn to enact the words and phrases and Astraea was the first to go. She went up to the coffee table to get a card, picking one up and passing it to the nearest person, which was Aneya, Tirana''s mother.


    Aneya was a little confused about what Astraea wanted her to do with the card, before realizing that she wanted her to tell her what was written on the card.


    "...I almost forgot for a second that she is still a toddler and that she wouldn''t be able to read, I was fully expecting her to read the card when she picked it up too." She admitted with a bit of embarrassment.


    Astraea''s parent laughed heartily at Aneya''s admittance, Kaelie and Dennixwere blushing softly as they had also expected Astraea to read the card, not wanting to speak up and admit as well.


    Aneya read what was written on Astraea''s card and whispered into her ear, with a slightly worried face as what she had read was not too easy to do.


    Astraea started off by holding up three fingers, then rubbing her belly with one hand and pointing into her open mouth with other.


    While Kyris and Tirana had no clue what Astraea was enacting, the other guests were a little surprised at the actions she just did as they had recognized them from playing charades before.


    Two fingers meant that there were two words they had to guess and the action after meant that the category was food.


    "You even taught her Charade signals? You might overload her brain if you keep teaching her new things this fast." Dagen asked rhetorically, he couldn''t help but think that Astraea''s two parents had nothing better to do other than teaching her new things as the intelligence Astraea displayed was a little hard to believe even if he was experiencing it.


    Paela and Aereon didn''t answer and continued to watch Astraea with pride.


    Astraea continued on with her next set of action once she saw that the adult had understood her signals, putting up one finger to indicate that she was going to enact the first word.


    She then cupped her right hand and held it in front of her as if holding something, and made a fist with her left, moving her left hand down onto her right in a stabbing motion. She then puckered her lips into an ''o'' shape while looking down at her hands.


    "Soda, Drink? No no, Drinking!" Dennix tried to guess.


    Astraea shook her head, pointing to her puckered lips then pointing at her cupped hand.


    "Oh! Is it a straw? You''re drinking with a straw!" Kaelie called out, sure that she had gotten it.


    Astraea nodded her head, and started to do something else.


    "There''s more? Straw isn''t the word?" Elle asked, who was also trying to guess the first word.


    Astraea shook her head and started standing on her toes, reaching out one hand above her and pretending to grab something from up high.


    She then brought her cupped hand to her mouth and pretended to bite something, and even pretended chewing.


    "That''s easy, you bit an apple didn''t you?" Dagen guessed, confident in his answer.


    Astraea gave a thumbs up as he had guessed right, she then held up a finger with each hand and moved them closer together.


    "Put the two together? Strawapple?" Vaena asked with a bit of confusion.


    "No no, apples are fruits, and there''s only one straw related fruit, strawberries!" Dennix shouted out, and received two thumbs up from Astraea and big smile.


    She moved on to the next word by holding up two fingers. She moved her hand above her head with her palm facing down and slowly moved it towards her head.


    "Short! Wow, she''s really good at this isn''t she?" Kaelie was to first to guess but all of them had easily gotten it, even the two kids who were kind of lost.


    Astraea then did the same action indicating there was more to the word and started thinking of she would enact it, putting her finger to her cheek and tilting her head to the side.


    Her face then lit up and she pointed straight towards the kitchen.


    "The kitchen? The last part has somethimg to do with the kitchen?" asked Vaena.


    "She''s... pointing at the fridge I think, it''s were we kept her cake!" Paela had guessed the word long before as she had written them, but decided to help the guests as they wouldn''t know the contents of the fridge.


    "Strawberry Shortcake! Brilliant! That''s the word isn''t it?" Dagen put together all the words and was highly impressed that Astraea was able to enact it.


    "Yes! Strawberry Shortcake, Yay!" Astraea cheered, no longer needing to keep silent as the word had been guessed.


    Everyone gave a big round of applause for Astraea for successfully enacting the due to its difficulty and she gave a small bow like she was an actor after the end of play.

 Birthday Arc IV : Cute Robotic Doll

    After her turn, it had been Kyris'' and Tirana''s turn to enact a word and they had thankfully gotten cards that were not too difficult to enact. Kyris had gotten the word ''giraffe'' and had reached his arm high above him to imitate its neck and turned his hand into its head. Tirana had gotten ''worm'' and had gone down onto the ground and wriggled her body.


    Though their attempts were not as impressive as Astraea''s, they had not lessened the amount of praise they gave as they didn''t want them to feel neglected, making them both gleam in happiness.


    For the next few hours, they had played an assortment of games and activities ranging from simple board games, popular party games for children, and had even watched the latest animated movie while eating nachos and popcorn.


    After the movie had ended, they had all moved to the dining table they had eaten lunch at and were all seated, waiting for Paela to return from the kitchen as she was currently bringing something out.


    They didn''t wait long as Paela had exited the kitchen together with a disc-shaped hovering platform that was electronic in appearance and had strange glowing symbols covering it. On the platform was a large pink double-layered birthday cake.


    It had hot-pink frosting decorating both layers of the cake, with little pink hearts covering every inch of the sides. On top of the cake was a message that said ''Happy 1st birthday Astraea!'' written in cursive with white frosting. Just above the message was a large pink candle in the shape of the number one and was currently lit.


    As Paela walked towards the table with the platform following her, Aestreon used his holowatch to slowly dim the lights in the condominium, the lights going fully off when Paela had reached the table. It was not pitch black as the light from the city illuminated the room.


    The small flame on the candle was the brightest thing in the room and slowly moved towards the center of the table as the platform started floating to the middle on its own, gently landing and not making a sound.


    Everyone including the two young guests turned to look at the most important person in this party, Astraea who had stood up in her seat just to be able to look at the top of the cake, eyes twinkling as she looked at the cake.


    Ever since she had started eating sweet food, she had noticed that she had more of an appetite for them and found them more delectable compared to eating sweets in his previous world. She had even found that the sweeter they were, the better they tasted. She didn''t know if it something to do with her new body liking sweet food or if the sweet food here was different compared to the ones on earth.


    Just thought of eating such a sweet-looking cake such as the one in front of her would not have been appetizing previously, but now she was struggling from drooling just from imagining the taste and texture of the cake made in a futuristic world.


    Without any prompt, Paela had started singing ''happy birthday'' to Astraea and everyone excluding Astraea had started singing along. Hearing the people around her start to sing, she started to get a little embarrassed as she hasn''t had anyone sing ''happy birthday'' to her in decades.


    She didn''t let it show on her face and continued to smile brightly and look at her cake in anticipation. The song soon finished and the table fell into silence once again.


    "Close your eyes and silently make a wish, then blow out the candle. If you do that, your wish is sure to come true." Aereon quietly spoke towards Astraea. Astraea nodded her head, bringing her hands together infront of her and closing her eyes to make her wish.


    She seriously thought about what she wanted to wish for instead of pretending to wish for something, as one year was a significant amount of time to have spent in a totally different world, but in that one year, she had experienced a lot of fun and joy that was almost incomparable to her previous life, only expecting it to get better from here on out.


    She recalled the year she had spent with her parents and the amount of care and love they showered her in, and while she didn''t want to belittle the love and care her previous grandparents had given her, she had felt that her new parents love and care towards her easily exceeded theirs.


    She recalled the past few hours of fun and games she''s experienced with her extended family and her parent''s close friends. she decided to use her first birthday wish in this world to wish that her family''s future will always be bright, and even if it wasn''t that she would able to brightening it up herself regardless of the difficulty.


    She slowly opened her eyes and blew out the candle, making sure that her wish would truly be granted. The people surrounding her started clapping softly to congratulate her on making her wish and for turning one. They had started wishing her a happy birthday for the first time since they had arrived and Astraea did feel their wishes felt more genuine than people who said it as part ofsocial etiquette.


    After the applause died down, Aereon had switched the lights back on and Paela had started slicing the cake into pieces, making sure to cut a few large pieces for the kids. Astraea had gotten the first piece of the cake and had wasted no time to taste it.


    The taste subverted all her expectations as it tasted beyond anything she had ever tasted before, and the texture greatly complemented the taste as it felt as soft as a ball of cotton, melting the moment it entered her mouth.


    She couldn''t get enough of it and had finished her slice even before anyone else with, immediately asking for another slice.


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    Though she wanted to eat more, her small body had only been able to handle eating two slices or she would have risked vomiting all over the place, and even if she did, she would have thought that it was worth it.


    After everyone had their fill of cake, they all returned to the living area for the activity Astraea had almost forgotten about, Receiving her presents. She had forgotten that receiving presents on your birthday was one of the main things children always looked forward to and she had forgotten about it as she hasn''t received a present from anyone in years.


    Another reason she had forgotten was due to the guests not having any presents on them when they arrived and even now they just patiently sat in their seats as if their presents will appear out of nowhere.


    "Okay, everyone! We''ll all take turns to give Astraea her present, just stand up if you want to do so." Paela informed everyone. The first person to stand was Kaelie who excitedly stood up from her seat and approached the birthday girl.


    She then started using her holowatch in front of everyone, but no one spoke a word as they just continued to patiently watch her, Astraea was a little confused on what she was doing and was still wondering where everyone''s presents were.


    Out of nowhere, a blue beam of light exited Kaelie''s holowatch and landed on the floor just in front of Astraea and something big started materializing out of existence. It was a large yellow present tied up with a red bow and had ''Happy First Birthday Astraea!'' written on a card that came with it.


    Astraea was quite surprised from seeing the present appear out of thin air and was more disappointed in herself for not guessing that spatial storage existed in this world.


    Though she didn''t expect much from presents given to a one-year-old she didn''t let it show on her face and put on an excited expression, trying her best to imagine that someone might have gotten her something that was unique to this world and focused on that to make her expressions more genuine.


    "What are you waiting for? Go on, tear it open!" Kaelie encouraged as Astraea had not moved an inch since the present had materialized.


    "Okay!" She responded and stood up from her couch. The present was quite small, being smaller than her head.


    She started ripping into the wrapping paper, hoping that it was some sort of electronic or magical device, but kept her expectations low so as not to get dissapointed.


    Instead of the packaging of a product or a plain box, underneath the wrapping was a pink and white metallic cube that had a big button on one of the sides.


    Astraea became more excited upon seeing this and internally cheered as the present was already beyond her expectations despite not knowing what it actually was


    Without being prompted, she excitedly pressed the button watched as the cube started to open with the soft whirring of mechanical parts.


    Her face fell the moment her eyes laid upon the contents of the cube.


    Inside was a simple looking cloth doll, it wore a simple white dress along with white socks. It had brown pigtails that were held up by two pink bows and had big black buttons sewn on for eyes. It also had a small smile that was also sewn on.


    Though it looked superior in quality and craftmanship compared to cloth dolls she''d seen on earth, it was still just a cloth doll and had made her vey disappointed seeing as how it was stored in a cool metallic cube.


    She quickly masked her dissapointment but there had been a split second where her expression had dropped that someone could have seen, she could only hope no one had seen it.


    Unfortunately, Kaelie had caught that drop in expression as she had beem focused on Astraea''s expression from the moment she started tearing the wrappong.


    "Hey now, you don''t have to hide how you actually feel Astraea. I saw your face of dissapointment." Kaelie said with a teasing tone.


    Astraea blushed at having been caught and fidgetted in place, not knowing what else to do.


    "And even if I didn''t see your face, don''t think that I don''t know the contents of your room little lady~" Kaelie chuckled as she continued, making Astraea''s parents smile wryly as they knew exactly what Kaelie meant.


    The two had been regularly sending pictures of Astraea to their family members and Aereon had nearly forgotten that he had sent a picture of Astraea in her room filled with stuffed toys.


    Astraea''s blush deepened and she couldn''t speak a word, unable to to think of anything to say.


    "That being said, it''s a good thing this isn''t a normal doll, now, isn''t it?" Kaelie said while smiling cheekily.


    Astraea looked at her in confusion and a little bit of hope, wishing greatly that the cloth doll wasn''t all that it seems.


    "I was originally supposed to do this for you, but i''m convinced that you''re able to do it, so let you have the honor of doing it. Now say this phrase loud and clear..." Kaelie went down on one knee and whispered into Astraea''s ear.


    Astraea''s embarrassed face lit up with excitement and repeated the phrase only she had heard loud and clear.


    "Epsilon-Six-Seven-Zero-Zero-Kappa-Mu-Five-Eight, Activate ''Cloth Doll'' Version 1.0!"


    The moment Astraea had finished speaking, the cloth doll that was sat down suddenly stood up and looked straight at Astraea.


    Astraea squealed in excitement as she looked at her amazing present. Oh how much fun she''ll have!

 Birthday Arc V : Cute Baby Sister

    "You got her a mechanical doll?" Aereon asked his sister, not knowing how to feel about it. Though he knew that his sister was a bit eccentric, he would never have guessed that she would have gotten a one-year-old something so complicated. Taking into account that she had not known about Astrea''s advanced intelligence yet.


    "Well... What I actually got her was the ''Atric IL A.I. Version 1.0''!" Kaelie stated proudly.


    "Wait, ''IL A.I.'' as in ''Infinite Learning'' Artificial Intelligence?! Didn''t Atric announce that it would only be released in two years at the earliest?! How were you able to get it, let alone pay for it!" Aereon widened his eyes in surprise as every adult in the room except for Vaena had looks of surprise upon hearing what Kaelie had gotten.


    No one doubted her words as they all had a high level of trust with each other and Kaelie had a very straightforward personality and would be very bad at lying if she ever tried. While they didn''t doubt her, they all doubted the authenticity of the product as Atric was a world-renowned company that was famous for its innovations in magitech products.


    They couldn''t believe Kaelie would have been able to get a product before its release, and more so a product the entire world was anticipating!


    Atric had been famous for all sorts of magitech products including artificial intelligence which were created by the top programmers, machine learningscientists and high ranking research mages. The A.I.''s were used to increase the efficiency and convenience of using technology.


    It was able to act as a personal assistant, helping in everyday tasks, it was able to help manage a business''s network and software, and even able to teach children! There were manytypes of A.I.''sbased on the customer''s needs and


    The ''Infinite Learning'' artificial intelligence was a new unreleased product that Atric had been advertising for the past couple of months. They had advertised that it would be capable of ''true self-learning'' for a single reason, they had created an ''artificial soul'' using magic and science.


    This world had discovered and proven the existence of souls long ago due to the existence of magic that seemingly broke all conventional laws of science. From the moment it had been discovered that humans were not justmade of a flesh body and consciousness, they had studied souls extensively, trying to find out as much as they can about it.


    Some had ideas of using the information to acquire immortality by transferring souls into different bodies, some wanted to study about the afterlife and the plane beyond by finding out where souls went after death. Alas, souls were extremely difficult to study and little progress has been made in the field of souls.


    Though that is only on the surface, countless breakthroughs in the field of souls were made by different organizations and people around the world in thousands of years, all their discoveries being different from each other, none of them revealing anything to the world as they deemed the information too dangerous or wanted it all to themselves.


    That was the reason Atric revealing something such as having made an ''artificial soul'' created countless ripples throughout the world, it was more surprising to some organizations that Atric was bold enough to reveal it to the world and even bolder to sell it.


    Their newest A.I. was created not only from all the experience they had gained from creating previous A.I''s but also was the host to an artificial soul, Atric had claimed that this allowed the A.I. to gain intelligence similar to a human.


    They had claimed that their learning speed was a thousand times better than a human''s due to their nature as A.I.''s that are able to handle large amounts of information in a short span of time, in addition to their human-like intelligence.


    There had multiple concern such as the A.I.s going rogue due to their newfound sapience and they had assured that it would not be a problem as they had limited certain aspects of the soul, such as reducing its capacity for emotions and the desire to learn anything beyond what was assigned to them.


    They had also modified the souls to have absolute loyalty towards their owner to further decrease the likelihood of rogue A.I.s.


    "Hey! Don''t doubt my connections! It just so happened that one of my close friends is therelative of one of the scientists involved in creating the new A.I. Theyhooked me up to get it, though it isn''t the exact product Atric advertised..." She explained without going into much detail, she had promised her friend that she wouldn''t reveal any of the details regarding the A.I. and how she had gotten it. Though telling her family and close family friends should be perfectly fine as they were all upright people.


    "Not the exact product? So what did you actually get?" Paela asked in curiosity, it was more believable now as Kaelie had revealed that the product she had received was different in some wat from what Atric had advertised.


    "The actual A.I. that would be released to the public would already be ''nurtured'' and trained by providing them with the necessary information and data that would suit the customer''s needs."


    "My friend told me that when the A.I. is first created with the artificial soul, it is more or less like a baby and has to learn about the world just the same, though it does learn at an extremely fast rate due to its nature as a highly advanced A.I."


    "A.I.s they''ve fully ''nurtured'' would be the equivalent of adults and act that way as well due to their teaching methods, and while you might think teaching them is just dumping loads of data into them like conventional A.I.s, it''s actually similar to how humans are taught."


    "All the A.I.s go series of ''lessons'' depending on what the A.I. will specialize in. While I don''t know what these ''lessons'' pertain or how they are actually carried out, my friend told me that all the lessons were specially created by the top professionals in their field, hired by Atric just to create those ''lessons''."


    "The reason Atric had informed the world that the A.I.s will only be available in two years'' time at the earliest was due to the nurturing time of the A.I.s. which took months before one could be considered as ''adults'' and could be sold as the finished product. Though they are able to nurture many of them at once, it seems like it''s still too slow to be able to keep up with the expected demand."


    "My friend told me that they had completed the A.I. for quite some time before they had started advertising and that they had been nurturing the A.I. for some time before then as well and calculated they needed a few years to reach their set quota, which is currently two years from now."


    Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    "Hiring countless number of professionals from countless number of fields wasn''t cheap even for Atric, so that was included for the cost of the A.I.s along with their long nurturing time that further boosted their cost."


    "And that''s where I tell all of you that I didn''t need to pay for any of that! Anyone wanna guess how?" Kaelie took in a deep breathafter explained almost everything her friend had told her, finally getting close to getting her point across.


    All the adults in the room were bewildered at the information Kaelie had about Atric''s new A.I. and were all wondering how she had managed to get all that information out of her friend, though they quickly came to the conclusion that she kept bugging them over and over to tell her more about it and had succumbed.


    "You... managed to buy an unnurtured A.I..." Dagen, who had experienced many things in his life and had an extremely sharp mind quickly came to a conclusion from the information Kaelie had told them, speaking out the moment he had the answer.


    "That''s right! I was only able to buy the unnurtured A.I. as my friend''s relative had been assigned a few to be studied in their unnurtured state! All of the A.I.s under them were made sure to go through as little input from their surroundings as possible to prevent them from learning and growing too much but it couldn''t be helped if they were exposed to some input from their experiments and studies."


    "It seemed like they were unable to learn much from the unnurtured A.I. as they were the equivalent to a blank slate and they had ended their studies early, It seems like they tried to send the A.I.s back but the higher-upsrejected them as they didn''t want ''used goods'' to be put through the lessons as the experiments may have affected them in some way and were told to delete them instead."


    "My friend managed to get one off her relative''s hands just before they deleted the rest, allowing me to buy it off them. They''re still annoyed even now on how much I bugged them about it." Kaelie giggled as she recalled the groans and annoyed expressions her friend made each time she would ask them anything related to the A.I.


    "What does that mean then? Is the A.I. better or worst?" Dennix asked as he still couldn''t wrap his head around what Kaelie had been saying and had gotten lost on some parts.


    "Haven''t you been listening? It means that the A.I. I got is the equivalent of a baby! Not only that, but the artificial soul is also unmodified. No mental restrictions have been placed on them like limiting their capacity to feel emotions or limiting its desire to learn, which in turn increases their potential!" Kaelie explained excitedly.


    "Aren''t those limitations supposed to reduce the risk of the A.I.s going rogue? Doesn''t that also mean it has no loyalty towards its owners?" Aereon asked with concern, the thought of anything becoming a potential harm to Astraea had set off his parental senses.


    "The reason Atric put in those restrictions in the first place was due to their plans of making the A.I.s tools for us humans, and since they could be considered sapient beings, they would build up resentment from being used as tools for a species that had the same intelligence than them if no restrictions were placed."


    "But what if we didn''t treat them as tools, but as an intelligent being? How someone grows up and develops their personality and morals is greatly affected by the environment they grew up in and the people who surrounded them and taught them."


    "If we brought up the baby A.I. like one of our own and taught it morals and values, it won''t have to slightest possibility to turn rogue as it''ll become part of the family!"


    "What I still don''t get is how you came up with the idea that a baby A.I. that Astraea would be able to teach and grow up with ould be the perfect present for her," Aereon asked, still very confused on why Kaelie had decided to give her niece something so complicated and elaborate and put so much effort into doing so.


    "I can explain that, originally your sister had been interested in the IL A.I. for quite some time now, long before Astraea''s birthday and had wanted to do exactly as she had said, raise the A.I. as her own." Vaena cut into the conversation and started explaining in place of her daughter as she was also involved in this birthday present to some extent.


    "She had acquired the A.I. from her friend two months ago, and while she states that the price was decreased by a large amount, it was still expensive enough to dig out a large chunk of her personal savings." Vaena looked at her daughter annoyedly when she had said that, making Kaelie blush and turn away.


    "When she had finally had the A.I. in her ownership, she finally noticed that her current lifestyle wouldn''t be a good environment to raise the A.I. as she wouldn''t be able to be with it and teach it 24/7 due to her classes and studies, the dorms she currently stayed in wouldn''t be a good place for it to live as she''d have to restrict it freedom to only her room as she didn''t want to risk it being discovered, and finally, she has zero experience in actually raising anyone, or even teaching anyone." Vaena finished while looking straight at her daughter with an expressionless face, making Kaelie fidget in place.


    "I found this all out just a few days after she had purchased it when I noticed the drop in her savings, All that I said came out of her mouth by the way, except for the last part, I added that on my own."


    "Yeah... all that mom said, including the last part. Since that was the case, I began to look for solutions for the problem and came to the conclusion that giving it to Astraea was the best one." Kaelie said with a softer voice, still embarrassed that she had not properly planned prior to getting the A.I.


    "I first wanted to give it to someone in the family, extended family or close family friends as I can''t give it to my normal friends or sell it off as it would be breaking my promise to my friend, but I knew that you wouldn''t be able to properly raise the A.I. as I want you too as you would think of it like a tool or just data instead of a child that was to be raised and taught."


    "Then I found out the perfect candidate would be a child! A child had no prejudice due to their lack of experience and having the A.I. grow and learn with them will not only help each other learn new things, but it would also form an unbreakable bond between them!"


    "With Astraea''s birthday only being less than two months away and that she was currently very young, I had decided that she would be the one to teach and grow together with the A.I."


    "That was a long way to say that you gave Astraea a-" Before Paela could complete her sentence, Astraea had completed it for her.


    "-baby sister!! Astraea''s baby sister!!"

 Birthday Arc VI : Cute Magical Wand!

    Everyone turned towards Astraea with looks of surprise, not expecting to able to garner any information from the current conversation even with her advanced vocabulary and intelligence. They quickly brushed it off in favor of what she actually said.


    "Little sister, huh?" Aereon said with a sigh as he looked between the cloth doll and Astraea who were both currently staring at each other, one with its black button eyes and the other with eyes that sparkled in excitement.


    Astraea was genuinely excited about her new sibling as she had been paying very close attention to each and every word that came out of Kaelie''s mouth, and at the end was filled with countless thoughts and emotions.


    She couldn''t believe just one year into the world and she would have received a companion and friend that would be able to grow alongside her and the fact that it was a highly advanced sapient A.I.!


    She couldn''t wait to be able to teach it and form an unbreakable bond with it, and most importantly, teach it all about the ways of cuteness!


    "A little sister, that''s exactly right Astraea, and you''ll be the older sister. You remember what an older sister does right? You have to teach and guide your younger sister everything you''ve learned, and teach it things that are right and wrong, and most importantly, you have to protect your little sister and be kind to her because she''s a baby and babies need a lot of love and care." Paela came up beside Astraea to tell her all of her future responsibilities, already more accepting than Aereon was, who still had an unsure expression on his face.


    "Mhm! Astraea will love little sister very much!" Astraea said, she had already considered the small doll to be part of the family and that would, in turn, make it be affected by the wish she had made earlier.


    "Well... looks like there''s no way to give it back now is there? Is there anything else you wanted to add?" Aereon asked with a tired expression, all that information that he was given made him a little mentally tired that he couldn''t find any words to say.


    "There is one thing, Kaelie didn''t receive the A.I. in this mechanical doll you see here but was actually in an external hard drive. And it was a military-grade drive that had enormous storage space and was extremely secure, I''m sure a percentage of the price also came from this drive as well." Vaena gave the stink eye towards her daughter who looked away once again with a slight blush and continued speaking.


    "After deciding to gift the A.I. to Astraea, she knew she had to acquire a body for the A.I. to reside in or it wouldn''t be able to grow and learn as she intended, but she didn''t have any connections regarding that field and lacking time to research, she was also reluctant to spend more money after the huge amount she had spent just to get the A.I."


    "Fortunately, her kind and generous mother stepped in and helped to commission a body for the A.I. to reside in, using her own funds to get the highest quality body created in less than two months." Vaena finished with a hmph in Kaelie''s direction.


    "Thanks, mom..." Kaelie said, though she had sent her thanks to her mother for helping her with the body countless times, she reminded her constantly.


    "Thanks, grandma!" Astraea said cutely at her grandmother, causing her face to switch to a kinder and more gentle expression.


    "You''re welcome, dear. The doll is made of the highest quality materials that ensure its longevity and endurance while keeping its weight the same as any old doll, it has an inbuilt mana siphon to store and collect magic and is able tocast various types of magic and spells. It was partially made with the hard drive the A.I. came in to reduce the cost and the fact that there was no situation that Kaelie would have any use for its advanced specifications. Its inner workings are at military-grade as well, moving seamlessly without a sound."


    "Only the best for my granddaughter." Vaena advertised all the main specifications of the doll making Astraea let out a smallvoice filled with amazement, soft enough that no one had heard her.


    "I think we''ve spent enough time on Kaelie''s and Vaena''s combined present, why don''t we move on to the others?" Paela asked as she didn''t want everyone to be focused on this for the rest of the party.


    The next to give their presents were Dennix and Aneya who had sent out their children to give the present to Astraea.


    Kyris had given handed her her present uncaringly and going straight back to his seat, causing Dennix to sigh.


    Tearing open the present, inside was a pink wand with abig pink heart at the end with four different colored buttons on the handle.


    Each button was the color of one of the four elements, red for fire, blue for water, green for air, and brown for earth.


    Astraea immediately pressed one of the buttons, specifically, the blue one, and bubbles suddenly started to appear around the head of the wand in different sizes. Astraea stared at the bubbles in awe and started twirling the wand around while giggling.


    "Pretty cool huh? It may not be as great as your new ''little sister'', but I can guarantee that you''ll have lots of fun with it!" Dennix proudly said. He hadn''t been worried in the slightest that Astraea wouldn''t like his present despite the previous one she had received as he was confident in himself and his choice.


    "An actual magic wand huh? with four different spells themed after the four elements, finally anormalpresent." Aereon said while emphasizing the word ''normal'' but only looking in Astraea''s direction.


    Kaelie crossed her arms and gave a small ''hmph'' in Aereon''s direction, knowing that he was talking about her and her present.


    Astraea stopped pressing the blue button and pressing the red button next. The wand''s head started to catch fire and quickly spread to the handle, almost making Astraea drop it in shock.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Though she quickly stopped herself when she noticed that the fire only felt a little warm and the wand still looked in perfect condition and wasn''t melting. She let the fire spread all over the wand and reach her hand. As she had expected, it didn''t hurt in the slightest and her hand looked kinda cool being covered in fire.


    "Since fire is too dangerous, what you''re seeing is just an illusion that is able to replicate the physics of fire, there are also two more functions, try waving it around," Dennix explained to Astraea, though he didn''t know whether she had understood it or not due to her intelligence that had not been properly measured, in the beginning, he had thought she was just a really bright child, but the more he saw her show off her intelligence, the more confused he got about her actual level of intelligence.


    Astraea started to slowly wave the flaming wand through the air and itmade a beautiful fiery trail that followed the head of the wand from behind. Astraea''s mouth fell upon as she became mesmerized by the beautiful trail of fire that was dancing gently in the air.


    Kyris and Tirana didn''t look too impressed with the sight as they both had received similar presents before and had used them plenty of times until the novelty of it wore off.


    "That''s not all kid, now try strongly flicking the wand in one direction."


    Astraea nodded her head and did exactly that, aiming at the open air in front of her. A stream of flames burst out from the wands head, reaching quite far before stopping completely. Astraea only had one thing on her mind the moment she saw the flames burst out of the wand, magical flamethrower!


    Her amazement at the function displayed by the red button didn''t prevent her from immediately pressing the green button next, as she wanted to know what other functions her wand had.


    The wand started to produce a strong gust of air from its head, making Astraea instantly point it at her head, blowing her hair back and strongly tickling her face, she giggled in joy at amusement at having a portable fan that was a thousand times stronger than those on earth.


    "This button only has one more extra function, but before I tell you what it is, I''ll go get something."


    Dennix rushed into the kitchen while everyone watched in confusion, which was further increased as Dennix exited the kitchen while chugging down a can of soda, and finishing it the moment he reached his previous spot.


    "Aah...that hit the spot, now try swinging you wand while aiming at this empty can." Dennix set down the now empty can on the coffee table not too far from Astraea, with Aereon looked at him in slight annoyance for drinking a can of soda just to make a target.


    Astraea held her wand with her right hand, swinging down in the direction of the can and a whistle of air was heard, and the can was suddenly toppled by an invisible force.


    "Mini wind blade, strong enough to knock over light objects, it''s the most functional of the buttons by far," Dennix explained with a smile as he watched Astraea get excited once again.


    The brown button was the last one to be pressed and it created a small clump of dirt that floated atop the wands head and followed it when it moved.


    "Like the fire button, the earth button is also just an illusion that creates a clump of dirt that is able to be launched and alsosimulates the laws of physics. Like the wind blade, you can also swing while aiming it and it will send the fake clump of dirt flying."


    Hearing that the clump of dirt didn''t actually exist, she decided to aim her wand at her dad and catch him by surprise by aiming at something else and switching at the last moment.


    Astraea aiming at an open space and started to wind up her spin, swinging it down and turning to face her dad while she did so. The clump of dirt hit him in the face dead on, breaking off into bits and disappearing as they dropped to the floor.


    Though Aereon was experienced and talented in the matters of battle and would not easily be caught off guard. He had totally not expected his angel of a daughter that had not misbehaved once since she was born would even think to target him! It had even made him flinch and take a step back the instant it hit his face, though there was no actual force when it had hit him.


    Astraea started giggling non-stop when she saw the shocked expression on her dad''s face, which made the other guest join along in the laughter, including the two children. As Aereon recovered from his shock, he didn''t turn angry but instead started to join in the laughter, already guessing that Astraea had played a prank on him as she saw it as harmless.


    "Okay...okay...you got me good, I didn''t know my little angel was starting to grow horns, I don''t remember teaching you how to play pranks on people." Aereon teasingly said as he approached his still giggling daughter, and started tickling her all over.


    Astraea''s giggles turned into uncontrollable laughter as she squirmed while in her dad''s grasp, but not actively resisting his tickles.


    Astraea had never been tickled when she was a child in her previous world and was very surprised to find that she enjoyed it greatly. She had never laughed very much in her previous life and had not experienced a lot of physical bonding with her previous grandparents as they were very advanced in age, so she wanted to experience all of that while she was still a child in this world.


    Though most of the time she would be thinking with her advanced mental age, she would frequently allow her mental age to regress simply by letting her enhanced behavioral cuteness takeover along with the natural instinct of joy and fun that a child had, makingthe mature parts of his soul to healfromliving a previously lonely life by experiencing fun and joy and not a moment of loneliness in this life.

 Birthday Arc VII : I Wont Enter This Disgustingly Cute Room!

    After everyone had settled down from their laughter and Astraea had recovered from the tickle onslaught, she had turned to Dennix with want in her hand and gave a big thank you along with her signature smile, making Dennix''s heart skip a beat from her cuteness.


    She was actually very happy with her present even if it couldn''t match the previous one. She had actually been wanting to learn more about magic besides from training on her own, and the small spells her parents used around her every day to boost her Neutral Magic affinity.


    The magical wand was exactly what she had wanted as she would be able to study how it cast those spells. even if she couldn''t cast them herself due to her affinity, she would be able to learn how it controls the flow of mana, and study how it absorbed mana as she had already noticed that it was using mana from the surroundings to power its spells.


    Even if she couldn''t study it, the functionality and visual effects it had surpassed most kid''s toys in her previous world to the point that even she who had the mentality of an adult had fun using it.


    Tirana walked forward while holding the present Aneya had gotten for her, as Paela had indicated that she could go ahead and give it to Astraea.


    Tirana shyly passed it to Astraea while looking away, fidgetting in place before running back to Aneya.


    Inside the present was an assortment of female clothing that were all in different shades of pink, all with different designs. Paela looked at the present happily before turning to Aneya with a grateful expression.


    "Size-adjusting clothes? You shouldn''t have." Paela said to Aneya with a happy tone, she had been wanting to buy Astraea more clothes with different designs as it was getting old seeing her wear the same things, making her very thankful towards to Aneya who had seemingly read her mind.


    "I Just thought as a mother would, little Tirana here had been wearing the same clothes we got her when she was born so we decided to update her wardrobe, and I guessed that Astraea would also need some new clothes," Aneya explained to Paela.


    Astraea looked through each of the clothes and was happy regarding their designs as they were all very cute and stylish, they would complement her cuteness greatlyif she wore them. She gave thanked Aneya happily while hugging her new clothes and though it was the least flashy present so far, it was very practical and could be used daily.


    The nextto give their presents were Astraea''s maternal grandparents, Elle and Dagen. They had gotten her a combined present like Kaelie and Vaena had which was her own holowatch.


    They had commissioned it to have the best magitechnology that surpassed the current versions on the market and included a whole load more of functions that even the best holowatches today didn''t have.


    Astraea almost fainted out of shock that she had received the very thing she had wanted the moment she saw it for the first time in this world.


    She excitedly tried to put it on but didn''t know how to, the holowatch she had received was a bit different from the others as the ones her parents had actually looked like a watch as it had a small round projector attached to the strap that projects the holographic image.


    Astraea''s holowatch had no projector whatsoever and looked like a pink rubber bracelet, she had tried stretching it like a rubber bracelet to fit around her hand and it had not worked as it was not actually made of rubber. She had no other ideas as her hand wouldn''t fit through the hole in the first place and she was getting a little impatient at wanting to try it.


    "Hahaha, let me help you there,"Dagen bent down on one knee and touched the holowatch with one finger, a moment later the holowatch expanded in size and Dagen slid it onto Astraea''s hand. It had started to contract until it fit perfectly on her hand.


    Astraea couldn''t even feel the holowatch on her hand, as if she was wearing nothing at all, not even feeling the slight weight it had before it was on her hand, it was as if it had become part of her body. Astraea had sensed the small amount of mana Dennix had inserted into the holowatch and had guessed that that was to way to take it on and off, shedecided to try it on her own later on when no one was watching her.


    This time, Aereon didn''t make any comments about the gift as he and Paela had been previously informed by Dagen and Elle that they would be getting her a personalized holowatch. Traditionally, it was the parents who were supposed to gift their child their first holowatch on their fourth birthday as they would be intelligent enough to make good use of it.


    It wasalso the time their affinities would settle and no longer increase, which meant that they could start learning about their affinities and attributes which would determine their future paths.


    Aereon and Paela were not saddened by being unable to gift their first child her first holowatch as it was still just a material item and didn''t matter as much compared to the memories and experiences they made together, they were also happy that they didn''t have to go through the trouble to choose what holowatch to buy as there were thousands available on the market.


    They wouldn''t have been able to commission one either, especially one that is leagues ahead of the latest versions that were publicly available as it would put a big hole in their pockets, despite being upper-middle-class.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    Aereon''s and Paela families were unlike other upper-middle-class families where they endlessly spoiled their children, while it was fine to spoil them when they are younger to some extent, it is detrimental to spoil them when they grow older as it would breed laziness and dependence to their parents.


    They had been taught to be independent and to be value money despite their rich lifestyles which had made them into successful adults despite their young age, rising to the upper-middle-class in terms of wealth with their own abilities and not through the relation they had to their parents.


    "Originally, most of the functions of the holowatch would have been unactivated as a one-year-old would not be able to properly use them, but upon seeing Astraea''s level of intelligence today, I have decided that I will activate some of the functions with some restrictions in order for Astraea to be able to make use of it," Dagen announced to the people in the room, but more specifically, to Astraea and her parents.


    "Of course, if you two would like to change any of the settings regarding the functions she can use and the restrictions to apply, I won''t stop you but I''ll tell you that this is my recommendation of functions Astraea should access to maximize her growth of intelligence and knowledge. I will also update it frequently in accordance to her growth so she can improve as fast as possible, I see great potential in Astraea''s future just from her intelligence alone."


    Aereon thanked his father-in-law with a grateful tone, moved that he was thinking of Astraea''s potential in the future. Paela simply gave a big smile to her father, expressing her happiness. They also turned to thank Elle as they knew that she wasn''t at all the minor contributor, as she was definitely the one who had thought of the design, functionality, and aesthetics of the watch as she had an eye for detail.


    With all the gifts being given and with it already being very late, the party had officially ended, though that didn''t mean that anyone was going to go home. It had been a long time since everyone had seen each other and they wanted to make use of the time they had, all of them agreeing prior to the birthday party that they would all have a late-night adult party involving alcohol, stories, and laughter.


    They all agreed that they would party into the wee hours while allowing the children to play together in Astraea''s room, before sending them off to sleep some hours into their party.


    Kyris was annoyed after being told that he had to play with Tirana and Astraea in Astraea''s room and have a sleepover after, as he had wanted to go home right after the party. While he had no problem with Tirana as he had played with her ever since she was born, he didn''t want to play with the baby that took all the attention throughout the day with her intelligence.


    He didn''t even consider the fact that it was Astraea''s birthday and the center of attention would always be her regardless of her intelligence.


    Tirana, on the other hand, was a little nervous having to play with someone new and was subconsciously put off by the fact that someone younger than herseemedway older than even she was, or even her big brother Kyris as in terms of intelligence and demeanor.


    Astraea both led them along to her room when Paela had told her to go play with them and had brought along all her presents.


    When they reached her room''s door, she pressed the small button on the side that mechanically opened the door that her parents had installed so she would be able to open it by herself, still having a traditional doorknob out of reach that her parents used.


    When the door opened, Kyris''s and Tirana''s mouths fell wide open, but both had different expressions on their faces. Kyris looked like he had seen a terrible monster as he shivered uncontrollably and took a step back while shaking his head, while Tirana''s eyes sparkled in amazement and wonder at the paradise she had laid her eyes upon, the biggest smile she had made so far appearing on her face.


    They had both seen the sea of stuffed toys along with the beautifully designed pink room with girly frills and hearts all over.


    "No, no!! I''m not going in! I won''t be a boy anymore the moment I step into that room!" Kyris shouted loudlyas he stated his extreme unwillingness to enter the room.


    Astraea and Tirana looked at each other with a mischievous smile before turning to Kyris with the same smile. They lunged forward and caught Kyris''s arms as he was backing away and started pulling him into the room with the same smile still on their faces.


    Despite being older than the combined ages of the two girls, and being the physically superior gender, Kyris was unable to resist their combined strength and was slowly dragged into the room.


    "Stop pulling me!! Stop before I tell on you both!! No, no, noooooooooo!!!!!!!" Kyris''s screams were left unheard as he was dragged into the room of his nightmares and the door shut closed behind him, sealing his fate.


    He would certainly not be the same person he was from before when he exits the room.


    That is, if he ever exits at all...

 Birthday Arc VIII : Cute Little Valkyrie

    "Let me out!! Let me outta here!!" Kyris screamed at the top of his lungs, banging on the now shut and locked door of Astraea''s room with two closed fists, though no sounds were made and his fists were instead sinking into the door each time he hit it, like punching a pillow.


    Astraea''s room had an enchantment called ''babyproof'' that made every part of the room behave like a soft pillow when a certain amount of force is applied to it, this applied to everything in the room from the walls to the floor and the bed frame and even the ceiling, making it so that no child would be able to hurt themselves on accident or on purpose in the room.


    Her room was also soundproof which is a common trait that even the most common of homes possess due to cheap soundproofing enchantments that were sold commonly in this world.


    Enchantments that were commonly used in homes usually were sold as easy to use stickers were one had to paste the enchantment anywhere inside of the room for it to take effect, though for more high standard homes common enchantments like soundproofing or babyproofing already came with the home itself as part of its features.


    Though Kyris understood this having his own soundproof and babyproof room, it didn''t stop him from attempting to call for help as he had no other ideas.


    Tirana had already started to play and cuddle with the stuffed toys in the room, not staying long in one location or cuddling one stuffed toy, moving on to the next one in the next moment.


    Astraea looked between the two physically older toddlers in the room and shook her head at how they were such polar opposites, though she knew it was greatly attributed to their genders.


    Though she did understand, in her previous life, though she was not averse to stuffed toys even as a male kid, she would have definitely felt uncomfortable being in a pink girl''s room filled with stuffed toys, even more so as a grown adult male.


    That all changed when she had become a cute little girl as the stuffed toys instead greatly complemented her and one might even mistake her as a cute stuffed toy if she sat amongst her stuffed toys.


    After tiring himself out, Kyris had stopped his pleas for help and sat with his back against the door, head down and eyes closed, refusing to even look at the interior of the room.


    Astraea decided to leave the two toddlers to do their own thing as she wanted to organize the presents she had received, specifically her customized holowatch and her new baby sister.


    Astraea had already decided to treat the artificial A.I. residing in the robotic doll as asapient living being as she had always lovedstories about of A.I.s gaining sapience and people becoming friends with them. She loved it because she could watch as the once cold unfeeling A.I. learned about emotions, memories, and relationships, and become a real person from what it learns, and that was exactly what she wanted to do with her new baby sister.


    She went to the side of the room where there was a part of the wall not covered with stuffed toys and pressed her hand in a random place in the wall.A part of the wall slowly started to come out to reveal a hidden drawer with an assortment of cute underwear, this wasn''t the only drawer she had as there were multiple other drawers along the wall that had other types of clothes she owned.


    She organized all the new clothes she had received from Aneya into their respective drawers and went back to her other presents. She set aside her magical wand on her bed as she decided to experiment and study it later.


    She still had her holowatch on her hand but didn''t think to start playingwith it,as she wantedto start teaching her new baby sister. Though her holowatch was very cool, it was basically an extremely advanced smartphone and it didn''t even have all its functions activated as Dagen had explained.


    Her baby sister who was still currently unnamed had stayed unmoving the entire time since she had been activated and had only moved its head to look at Astraea.


    It was a bit unnerving having a standing cloth doll slowly move its head to face you, if the lights were off and the room was instead an old bedroom, it would have easily been one of the scariest parts of a horror movie.


    She didn''t let that deter her and she sat down crossed legged in front of the doll that was looking straight at her. Though she had never taught anyone before, she knew the way babies learned and the most straight forward way anyone can learn; memorization.


    She knew that learning through understanding was only possible when the one learning had a point of reference such as other things they had learned, but how is it possible to learn by understanding if they didn''t understand anything in the first place?


    That is why the way babies learn is through memorization as babies have an extremely good memory. Due to just being born, their brains are like a dry sponge that will soak up any information and not leak a drop, and as they get older, the heavier the sponge becomes and the memories will start to drip out from the sponge.


    Though they wouldn''t be able to use the information they gained, their brains will slowly start to organize and piece the information into patterns they have learned and use that as a basis to start ''understanding'' their surroundings and the information they had gained.


    This was exactly the way she wanted to teach her baby sister, and as an A.I. she would have a memorization ability thousands of times stronger than that of a human baby which made it highly likely that she would only need to be taught once to memorize it.


    The first thing she wanted her to memorize was her name and the relationship they shared, she decided that she would still repeat what she says so as to emphasize her words.


    "Astraea, As-tra-ea" She started to say her name while pointing at herself, then repeating it at a slower speed.


    Her baby sister stared blankly at her, not reacting to her name in the slightest.


    She didn''t let that affect her and continued repeating her name for a whole minute.


    With no choice but to assume that her name was properly ingrained in her baby sister''s memory, she moved on to naming her baby sister.


    She had the perfect name to give her baby sister that would greatly complement her own name that was taken after a goddess.


    She pointed at her baby sister and clearly pronounced her new name.


    "Valkyrie"


    Valkyries in Norse mythology were beautiful winged women who served the god Odin as messengers, bodyguards, and warriors.


    As someone who avidly played multitudes of MMORPGs in her previous life, she had encountered many versions of valkyries and one thing they had in common was that they were seen as battle-born female angels due to their angel-like wings and their servitude to a god.


    Though she wasn''t Odin nor was going to treat little Valkyrie as a servant, it was the closest thing she could think of to describe her.


    As a sapient A.I. that would have access to extremely advanced technology acting as her body, there was no doubt that she would become a deadly killing machine with proper guidance and some upgrades to her hardware.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    She was also the younger sister of someone who was named after a goddess so the hierarchy had already been established with her being lower on the ladder.


    As for the gender? Though nothing has been formed as of yet, Astraea was sure to integrate all things female into the very soul of little Valkyrie, to the point that she would be female in all of her future lives.


    She did the same thing like with her name and repeated Valkyrie''s name for a whole minute.


    At this point, Kyris had lifted his head with one eye open, curious about what Astraea was doing.


    As a four-year-old, he was highly curious and doing the same thing for a prolonged period of time easily made him bored and allowed any new stimuli to grab his attention.


    In this case, he had grown bored of doing nothing but sit down with his eyes closed, and the sounds of repeated words had grabbed his attention.


    He looked up to see that Astraea was saying her own name to the robot doll over and over and it confused him greatly.


    He became even more confused when she started repeating a word he had never heard of before while repeatedly jabbing her finger at the robot doll.


    Though he didn''t understand much about the conversation the adults had when they were talking about the robot doll, he had gathered that it was very expensive.


    He had learned from experience that the more expensive something was, the better it was!


    He had also learned that you could teach it whatever you wanted! Though he had his own toy robot at home, it was only able to do a measly 57 unique actions and couldn''t be compared to the more expensive brands and models that had a hundred unique actions at minimum.


    But with a robot that was able to learn, he could teach it to do more than 57 unique actions! heck, he could even teach it to do a thousand unique actions!


    He wasn''t even worried that it wouldn''t be able to learn well as it was very expensive, which would mean its learning ability would be proportional high too!


    Thinking of all the possible things he could teach it, he couldn''t help but become bitter when he remembered that he didn''t own it, and was instead owned by an immature one-year-old.


    Why did Aunt Kaelie have to give it to her! She was too young to even understand how to use it. Even if she was a little older, girls didn''t even like robots, to begin with, and he knew as Tirana didn''t hold even the tiniest of interest in his robot every time they played together.


    He had decided to suppress his jealousy and suffer watching Astraea do strange things to the robot, such as moving it limbs manually, pointing at parts of her body and saying its name a million times.


    He couldn''t help but cringe every second he watched her, still thinking that she was doing those things because she didn''t know how to play with a robot and that she was still a baby that did random things.


    If Astraea were to listen to his thoughts, instead of getting mad, she would shake her head in pity at his ignorance that was the result of his young age.


    Though it had only been a few minutes since Astraea had been teaching Valkyrie, Kyris couldn''t take it anymore. He stood up and ran over to Valkyrie and snatching her from the floor.


    "That''s not how you play with it!" Kyris yelled out while holding Valkyrie high up in the air to prevent her from being taken from him.


    Astraea was more than a little annoyed when Kyris had not only interrupted her but had also roughly grabbed Valkyrie and refer to her like she was only a toy.


    Before she could say anything Kyris had put Valkyrie down on the floor a distance away from Astraea, to prevent her from easily reaching it, making her irritation rise further.


    "This is how you play with it!" Stated Kyris as he started to walk back and forth in Valkyrie''s line of sight.


    "This is how to walk, see? Now you try!" Kyris had decided to teach it the most basic action that all robots knew how to do in order to quickly show Astraea how to ''properly'' play with the robot.


    There was no movement from Valkyrie after a few seconds, causing Kyris to get irritated.


    Though his own toy robot was only able to perform 57 unique actions, it was actually able to follow simple commands by singling out keywords and related to its 57 actions and had a database of words that it was able to follow in relation to its 57 actions.


    For example, one could ask it to do action sixteen three times, wait for ten seconds, then do action eight at half the speed, and it would do exactly as stated.


    That was the reason Kyris had become annoyed as a robot that couldn''t even learn how to walk after being shown a few times and not even responding to his command seemed like a piece of junk compared to his own robot.


    "I thought that you can learn stuff! So why can''t you learn to walk!" Kyris asked angrily as he reached his hand out to grab the robot.


    Before he had even touched the robot, Astraea had spoken up, making him freeze in place at her words.


    "If you touch her without my permission again, I''ll tell on you to your dad." Though it was said with an angelic and cute voice, there was an underlying threatening tone that Kyris could sense, similar to when his dad threatens him with punishments if he repeats something bad he had done.


    Astraea nodded in satisfaction as Kyris slowly moved away from Valkyrie, as he knew better than to risk being told on to his strict dad.


    Astraea walked up to Valkyrie, gently picking her up and placing her on a nearby play table.


    She stood next to the table facing in the same direction that Valkyrie''s body was facing and gently held her left leg up.


    She lifted her own left up and started moving her leg and Valkyries leg in sync with each other, she did this a few times before switching to the right leg and repeating.


    Kyris groaned in annoyance that she was back to doing the same strange things she was previously doing.


    After a few minutes of leg lifting, Astraea let go of Valkyrie''s leg and put her own down, as a smile appeared on her face.


    This entire time Valkyrie had been staring at her face with no intention to look anywhere else but had suddenly looked down in the middle of their leg exercises, straight at Astraea''s legs.


    Astraea knew she had finally made some progress and wanted to confirm it with her next action.


    With Valkyrie''s gaze still on her legs, Astraea slowly lifted up her left leg, while also looking at Valkyries legs.


    Though for the first few seconds Valkyrie had made no movement, Astraea was lifting her leg as slow as possible and it was still a short distance from the floor.


    It didn''t take much longer as Valkyrie''s own leg started moving, and Astraea didn''t stop raising her leg despite seeing the obvious movement.


    She lifted her leg as high as it could go and held it there with a bit of difficulty, silently moving her hand to the table in order to keep her balance.


    Valkyrie''s own leg was still slowly rising and took a whole ten seconds before it reached its limit.


    Astraea then slowly brought down her leg and Valkyrie''s followed soon after.


    Both legs reached their respective surfaces at the same time, but Astraea did not start celebrating from her success but instead started to lift her right leg and going through the same motions, with Valkyrie reacting faster than before.


    Kyris'' mouth opened with a bit of shock as he watched the robot he had tried to teach follow Astraea''s movements without her even saying a word, he became bitter in the next second when he realized that she had beaten him once again, his shoulders drooping down.


    The entire time, there had not been a peep out of Tirana as she seemed to have disappeared from the room like a ghost.


    In a corner of the room, if one were to strain their ears next to the small hill of stuffed toys, they would be able to hear to soft snores of a little girl.

 Birthday Arc IX : Cutely Walking!

    After a few minutes of moving her legs up and down, she made a small adjustment which was to put her leg down slightly infront of her, which would be defined as a step in order to start teaching Valkyrie to walk.


    She didn''t get it on her first try, still putting her leg down in the same position, but Astraea helped by manually moving her leg like before but instead putting it down slightly infront of her and repeating it.


    Kyris, on the other hand, was silently watching Astraea patiently teach Valkyrie how to walk and had finally realized that she had been attempting to teach her this entire time, making him slightly embarrassed that he thought otherwise.


    He quickly figured it out as it was similar to the way his dad taught him magic, which was by telling him to do something repetitively until he had mastered it.


    It didn''t take long until Valkyrie had taken her first step, and Astraea had repeated it a few times to ensure that it would stick.


    From taking her first step with her left foot to taking her second with her right foot, she quickly started walking on her own and had almost fallen off the table if it wasn''t for Astraea stopping her at the last second.


    She carried her down onto the floor seeing as how she no longer needed to assist her too much, she started walking alongside with Valkyrie but quickly noticed that her short stepseasily outpaced the minuscule steps that Valkyrie had due to her short legs.


    She quickly found a solution by using her index and middle finger to act as legs to walk on the ground alongside Valkyrie.


    She already knew that locomotion was the main thing that she would be teaching Valkyrie in the near future as she obviously won''t be able to speak or even make a sound anytime soon.


    She looked over at Kyris who had been watching the entire time while completely silent and she breathed out a soft sigh. Though she was annoyed at what he had done earlier, she knew that he was still a kid who hadn''t learned proper social etiquette yet and that keeping grudges is totally uncute, especially towards someone way younger than she was, even if it was only in mentality.


    She turned Valkyrie to face Kyris as she hadn''t learned how to turn yet and led her on with her walking fingers towards Kyris, who straightened up when he saw what Astraea was doing.


    He didn''t move from his spot though and only looked towards Astraea with a confused expression, not knowing why she was leading the robot to her.


    Astraea stopped her fingers just before Kyris, making Valkyrie stop in her tracks as well. She stood up from the ground as she had been crawling on the ground while fingering walking and slowly reached out her hand to grab Kyris''hand so as not to surprise him.


    He didn''t react much when he saw her hand approaching him and watched in curiosity at what she wanted to do, at this point, he had already decided to lay off on treating and thinking of Astraea like a baby as he had been proven multiple previously that she was far from it, further away than even Tirana was despite being one year older.


    He had only decided it now as she had surpassed him in something he was interested in, which was robots! Just from the fact that she had been able to teach the expensive robot to walk with her patient and repetitive method was enough to convince him that she had a great interest in robots seeing as how even he, who loved robots, was unable to teach to walk.


    Astraea had grabbed Kyris'' hand and led it right beside Valkyrie, manually extending his index and middle fingers to act as legs.


    She then stood up and nodded towards him as he looked at her with a questioning and hopeful expression, silently asking for permission to do what he had guessed she had wanted him to do.


    He looked towards the robot doll and saw it was looking towards his fingers just like it had done with Astraea, and slowly lifted up his index finger, and watched as the robot''s left leg rose upwards at the same speed. Step by step, he slowly experimented on how accurately the robot could follow his actions and was amazed at how in sync it was with his fingers.


    Though his own robot had 57 unique actions, it was actions that were set in stone that were unable to be changed or improved on, other than changing the speed at which it was done or a few actions that had some semblance of freedom.


    It was certainly not able to do something like follow the movements of his fingers and imitate it to an extremely high degree and knew that even the robots that had over a hundred unique actions wouldn''t be able to do the same.


    It was already plenty of fun having the ability to make the robot do whatever he wanted, even if it was only limited to the legs at the moment, and his eyes shone at the possibilities of what it could be taught.


    He had been playing with the robot for around ten minutes now trying various things, he had even stopped for a short while to get a small doll the same size as the robot and had it stand right infront of it, and proceeded to make the robot kick the stuffing out of it!


    He had only expected the doll to fall over where he would then kick it some more but it had unexpectedly launched the doll through the air and into a small hill of stuffed toys where a certain toddler was napping, and it had gone into the pile, hitting Tirana straight on the head.


    Astraea had been watching Kyris play the entire time and was satisfied at the happy expression he had while playing, he was also slightly surprised when the doll flew across the room and remembered that underneath the cute exterior, Valkyrie''s body was a highly advanced piece of technology!


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    That kick it exhibited was probably at max power as she hadn''t learned how to control her power and thus had launched her poor doll like a missile.


    That missile had hit its unintended target, who made a noise of surprise, sitting up and revealing herself from the pile of stuffed toys.


    Tirana rubbed her eyes sleepily as she had been abruptly awoken from her dream, she had been dreaming about laying on a fluffy cloud surrounded by cute animals, and they had all gone up to lick her face and nap while nestled against her body.


    "Are we going home?..." She asked sleepily, assuming she had been awoken as it was already the next day.


    "No Tirana, you just took a short nap, you wanna play with the robot Astraea got? It''s really fun!! It''s totally different from my robot." Though it was plenty of fun making Valkyrie do whatever he wanted leg wise, it was still severely limited in what she could do so he was quickly becoming bored.


    He had tried making her bend her legs by bending her fingers, but Valkyrie had just walked blankly as she didn''t know how to do it, she had also kept going in a straight line when Kyris had attempted to turn as she hadn''t learned how to pivot her body yet.


    Tirana looked over curiously at Valkyrie after hearing what Kyris told her. When she had first laid her eyes on Valkyrie the first time she was revealed, she already thought that she was very cute and had wanted to hug her. She then became a little frightened when she had suddenly stood up on her own after Astraea had said a bunch of strange words.


    Though what Kyris had assumed about her interest in robots wasn''t false, it wasn''t entirely true either. Rather than having no interest in robots, she was actually terrified of them! She was scared about how unfeeling they were despite their ability to move and the feeling of lifelessness they gave off despite their movement.


    There were different from cute animals that had warmth and could feel and breathe and different from the unmoving stuffed toys that are unable to move an inch.


    She hadn''t immediately labeled Valkyrie as a robot due to her doll-like exterior and how she didn''t seem to sense the feeling of lifelessness in her that she felt in robots. She wouldn''t have guessed that it was due to the artificial soul that Valkyrie had that would label her as ''living''.


    Watching Kyris lead Valkyrie on with his fingers while a smile on his face, she could sense a similar feeling in Valkyrie that she usually felt around cute animals, or more specifically, her little kitten at home named Ponella.


    Seeing as how Valkyrie seemed totally different from other robots, she decided to try playing with Valkyrie like Kyris had suggested.


    "Umh, I wanna play... It''s okay?" She asked nervously while fidgetting in place, her request was directed towards Astraea rather than Kyris as she knew that Kyris didn''t own the robot.


    Astraea nodded with a bright smile as she replied to Tirana, "You can play with her~ Her name is Valky!"


    "Valky? What kind of name is that?" Kyris asked with a slightly mocking tone, thinking it was a weird name. He had named his own robot Zoron and he knew that was a cool name!


    "It''s the name of my name new baby sister! So stop calling her a robot! She''s a baby!" Astraea replied with a strong tone, she wanted the two of them not to treat Valkyrie as a mere toy but as a living person, emphasis on person as she didn''t want them to treat her like a pet either.


    "What do you mean it''s a baby? It''s a robot! Not a gross baby." Though he wasn''t the brightest, Kyris knew the difference between a baby and a robot, and what he was currently playing with was definitely not a baby!


    Astraea put on a stern face and crossed her arms while looking in his direction, silently staring at him while exuding a threatening aura.


    Kyris flinched in surprise at the aura he felt that he had felt multiple times before from his dad and could only sigh in slight annoyance, knowing that it was a bad idea to try to go against someone when they had that aura.


    "Fine...It''s a baby, little baby Valky..." Kyris said with a displeased tone, obviously not liking not only the name but also how the cool robot had been degraded into a dumb baby, though it was kinda dumb like a baby anyways, only knowing how to walk.


    Astraea retracted the threatening aura and put on a big smile, happy that Kyris had relented. She went over to pick up Valkyrie and put her on the ground near to Tirana and started to teach Tirana how to ''play'' with Valkyrie.


    "You put yourfingers like this and walk like this! And Valky follows what you do! You try~"


    With a nervous nod, Tirana went down on all fours and did as Astraea had done and started finger-walking, making Valkyrie follow.


    Like Kyris, she played for a while, trying various things to see if Valkyrie could do them and had a lot of fun while doing so, evident from her beaming smile.


    Astraea watched her play with a small smile, glad that she was finally able to bond with her first few friends since she had arrived in this world.


    Watching Tirana do more thingsthatValkyrie couldn''t do yet left her with one thought.


    ''I have to teach her more stuff to do!''

 Birthday X : Cutely Ending the Day

    After Tirana had played with Valkyrie for a while, Astraea had gone back to teaching her to do more things. Though she could have taught Valkyrie later, she didn''t know what else to do with her two toddler friends, only having stuffed toys in her room.


    While she and Tirana could have played make-believe where they made stuffed toys play and interact with each other, Kyris would have been left out as she assumed he would have no interest in it.


    The only other option was to teach Valkyrie more things and lets the two of them ''play'' with her by making her do those things. It was a win-win situation as not only would Kyris and Tirana be entertained, they would be allowing Valkyrie to slowly get used to the new things she had been taught and gain some familiarity in them, without Astraea having to move a finger.


    Since kids were quite impatient, she would only teach one set of actions and immediately let the two toddlers play with Valkyrie, as making them wait any longer might make them die out of boredom.


    She had taught Valkyrie multiple things such as how to turn in place, how to bend her legs, and even how to jump! She had even taught her some unorthodox things in order to test her learning ability and to pad out the number of things Valkyrie was able to do.


    She was able to spin in place with one leg, do jumping jacks, and even how to do a cute dance. Of course, Astraea had to demonstrate each and every action including the cute dance, but it was worth it seeing how much cuter Valkyrie become while doing them!


    There was one problem though and that Valkyrie would only do what she had learned if someone else was doing it, Astraea hadn''t created an alternate trigger such associating a word with a certain action not because it wasn''t possible, but that she was too lazy to do it at the moment. She also assumed that it would take a way longer time to do so as Valkyrie seemed to be very unreactive to sounds as if she was deaf.


    They had played for a few hours and Valkyrie was now able to do a whole range of movements and was almost like a miniature mecha that they were able to control with their body movements. At some point, Valkyrie had started to increase her pace when someone was walking around and leading her in order to keep up with them and no longer followed their steps exactly which would make her lag behind.


    This proved to Astraea that Valkyrie was able to already able to learnon her own and didn''t need a constant input of information to improve. It was all smiles, giggles, and fun inside of Astraea''s room, with all three children having bonded over the past couple of hours while playing with Valkyrie.


    Tirana''s and Kyris'' impression of Astraea changed greatly in those few hours, and the one thing they gathered in the time they had bonded was that Astraea was extremely mature and intelligent, while they had some idea of her intelligence from her actions during the party, it was only a small snippet of her actual intelligence.


    They had watched how she taught Valkyrie different actions with methods they would have never even thought of doing, and how each time they would argue about who should play with the robot she would cut in and lightly reprimand them like one of their parents.


    She had this aura about her that was similar to their parents which made them unconsciously treat her like she was an adult each time she acted mature or beyond her age. This made them admire her as they found it really cool how someone so young was like an adult.


    Kyris'' had fully changed his attitude in those few hours and no longer saw Astraea as a baby and instead as someone really cool, and Tirana had started treating her like an older sister, despite being one year younger.


    When Astraea realized how they treated her had changed, shemental fist-pumped at having gained some new ''followers'' besides from her extremely loving parents.


    Though she didn''t gain them with the method which she would use to gain followers in the future, which was her cuteness, they were followers nonetheless and as they grew older they would slowly begin to appreciate her cuteness.


    Astraea was currently teaching Valkyrie something as the door of her room swung open, with her mom Paela entering the room.


    Kyris and Tirana didn''t notice as their attention was fully on the amazing little robot they had played with for the past few hours.


    While Astraea had noticed her, she decided not to stop what she was doing and instead continued teaching Valkyrie, only when her mom calls for her would she respond.


    Paela had a gentle smile on her face as she watched the children playing with Valkyrie, and had originally been very surprised when she saw the robot moving.


    During the late-night party, Kaelie had explained in more detail about the A.I. she had gifted Astraea, telling her everything she would need to know about it from the extensive research she had done about A.I. and plans for raising it.


    Most of the information was related to the differences between an A.I. and a human being, one difference being that while both would have a minuscule amount of knowledge at the start of their life, human babies actually had it better off.


    Human babies still had things such as instinct and a brain with some information that was needed for their body to function, allowing them to do things such as making noises, the ability to move their limbs at birth and the ability to recognize their kin.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ''Baby'' A.I.s like Valkyrie did not have such an advantage due to their originally non-physical nature which was a bunch of code.


    Though most people in the world were curious about how Atric had been able to create artificial souls, they were equally curious on how they had integrated them into A.I.s.


    When A.I.s are first created, they have no instinct, no necessary information on how to operate a living body, and no physical body that was able to absorb information from its surrounds.


    They had nothing at all, if human babies were akin to a rough sketch, then ''baby'' A.I.s were akin to a blank sheet, totally spotless.


    There were advantages and disadvantages to this too, with a rough sketch one did not need to lay their foundations and only had to build upon it, but they would still have to follow the sketch to some extent and would be unable to change it, only add to it.


    A blank sheet needed extensive work to lay the foundations but you would not be limited by a set foundation and could do whatever you wanted.


    If someone didn''t know any better and treated Atric''s new sapient A.I.s as normal A.I. then they would become nothing more than a normal emotionless A.I. that does general tasks any other A.I. can do just withgreater efficiency. The same way if someone were to treat them like a living human and raised them like one, it was very likely that they would be just like a normal human as well.


    Though it seemed like A.I. were disadvantaged in that respect, they made up for it with their immense learning ability and memory, but their learning curve was like therollingof a snowball down asnow-covered hillside, making it very slow in the beginning.


    It was for that reason that Paela was a little disbelieving that Valkyrie had already been able to move around with great proficiency in just a few hours of being activated. She beamed in pride as she looked towards the one behind it who was currently teaching Valkyrie a new action.


    "Hey kids, you guys having fun?" She spoke into the room, gaining the attention of Kyris and Tirana and making Astraea pause her teaching.


    "Yeah!"


    "Mhm.."


    "Yes, mommy!"


    The three of them responded together with beaming smiles, all three genuine as even Astraea had greatly enjoyed teaching Valkyrie along with watching her two young friends joyfully test out the actions she had taught.


    "I''m glad you''re having fun, but it''s really late now so sadly you all have to go to bed," Paela told to them.


    """Aww...""" All three of them said in disappointment, but Astraea was just playing along as she was happy and satisfied with what she had gained and done today. It was truly an amazing birthday and she had received gifts she had never imagined a one-year-old to receive, though it waspartly attributed to being in an upper-middle-class family, part of it was also due to the amazing technology this world had and the loving family she had.


    Though both Kyris and Tirana had wanted to stay up longer to play, they didn''t resist too much to sleeping as they were quite tired from playing with Valkyrie as it was all physical play and they moved their bodies a lot to get Valkyrie to move.


    Though there was only one small toddler bed that belonged to Astraea, it wasn''t a problem as the bed she had was not a regular one, and was able to increase in size to accommodate her growth, it was also able to easily change its physical design and even the design of the pillows and covers.


    It was a very expensive and popular bed that regular people wouldn''t dare to buy and was targetted towards wealthy families with growing children.


    The bed grew in width as Paela tinkered with some settings using a holographic screen that was projected from the bed and it had pushed aside all the stuffed toys on either side, creating a mini avalanche of stuffed toys that spilled onto the now bigger bed.


    Kyris pushed all the stuffed toys that had fallen onto his side with a scrunched up face, while Tirana pulled even more onto her side, with a face of content and happiness.


    Astraea was in the middle of both of them, looking between both sides with a wry smile with Valkyrie snug in her arms.


    One by one the adults came in to wish the children good night, Dennix and Aneya were both happy that Kyris and Tirana had been able to become friends with Astraea, but Dennix was the happier of the two, as he didn''t expect Kyris to do so after previously seeing how he treated her.


    Astraea''s grandparents wished all three of them a good night, despite not being the other two''s actual grandparents, they had known their parents since they were children which made them easily treat their children like their actual grandkids, which made the two kids very happy and loved.


    Kaelie wished all three of them a good night as well, telling Astraea a happy birthday.


    They all exited the room after bidding the three good night, with Aereon being the last to leave, before he closed the door, he looked back at Astraea and gave her a gentle smile.


    "Sweet dreams my cute princess, and happy birthday" With that he closed the door, leaving the room in total darkness.


    The room then light up in a gentle blue light, as the wall the bed was against suddenly turned into a window that allowed the moonlight to stream in, it was a feature added to her room that Astraea had requested that whenever it was bedtime, the wall would change to allow the moonlight to act as a nightlight.


    Both Tirana and Kyris breathed out a sigh of relief as they both didn''t like the pitch darkness the room was previously in.


    Astraea giggled at their sighs, getting snug on the bed with Valkyrie hugged to her chest.


    "Goodnight Tirana, goodnight Kyris," She said to both of them.


    ""Goodnight Astraea"" they replied back, and the room delved into silence as the three children swiftly went to sleep, tired from the day''s events but all happy and satisfied.

 Birthday XI : Cutely Saying Goodbye!

    The next day, Astraea had woken up in the early morning but still had gotten sufficient sleep that a growing little angel needed, as she wanted to make most of the time she had in her childhood.


    Both Kyris and Tirana were sleeping soundly with Kyris splayed out weirdly on his side of the bed, and Tirana''s head being the only thing visible amongst the sea of stuffed toys on her side. Astraea giggled at the sight, shaking her head at the ridiculous sight.


    She thought back on the previous day and a bright smile came onto her face, It was truly an amazing birthday despite its simplicity, though that simplicity made it feel warm and comforting like being in your own home.


    She was glad she had enhanced memory that allowed her to relive that day in the future with near-perfect clarity and had officially pinned it as one of the first best memories she''s had in this world, knowing that there was more to come.


    She got off her bed with Valkyrie still in her arms and set her down on the ground, deciding that she would make use of the time by continuing where she left off from yesterday, teaching Valkyrie.


    Valkyrie had made good progress yesterday and already had the full range of movements that normal humans could do, though she knew that Valkyrie was able to go beyond that range, she was only able to teach her what her body was capable of as she didn''t understand words yet.


    Astraea had taught Valkyrie for about less than two hours and had achieved a lot in that time as she didn''t have to let Kyris and Tirana play with Valkyrie, which took up a lot of the time yesterday. At this point, Kyris and Tirana were stirring awake as Astraea could hear sleepy groans coming from the both of them.


    Astraea stopped what she was doing in order to help wake the two up, as they had already gone back to sleep, not wanting to get out of bed. After a bit of prodding and tickling, the two toddlers finally woke up with sleepy expressions.


    "Why did you wake us up..." Kyris asked grumpily as he had wanted to sleep for a few more hours.


    "It''s already tomorrow! You can go home!" Astraea replied with a smile.


    At the mention of going home, they suddenly became wide awake, none of the previous tiredness present on their faces. Though the only reason they were like that was that they couldn''t wait to go back to sleep in their own familiar beds.


    Astraea led the two out of the room as she wanted to know if the adults were already awake, or were still sleeping. When they left the room, sounds of chatter and sizzling came from the kitchen and living area, and the smell of food entered their noses and the three rushed to the kitchen, eager to have breakfast.


    "Oh! The kids are up, looks like they smelled the food." Dennix said as he spotted the kids rushing forward, he had been chatting with Aereon outside of the kitchen.


    Just before the three could enter the kitchen, Aereon stepped into their path, blocking their way.


    "Hey now, don''t go rushing into the kitchen when the ladies are cooking, you might disturb them."


    "Mommy is cooking?!" Tirana asked happily, she loved her mom''s cooking and didn''t expect to have it at someone else''s house.


    "Yes, including your aunt Paela, and your grandmas," Aereon answered.


    "What about aunt Kaelie?" Kyris asked, noticing that Aereon didn''t mention her.


    "Your aunt is still sleeping on the couch, she drank a little too much last night and she only started drinking alcohol not too long ago." He explained though he knew the explanation would be lost on them, it was better than making something up or dumbing it down for them, he had done this with Astraea as he believed she would be able to learn better when introduced to complicated words and sentences.


    Though Astraea hadn''t learned anything as she was already a grown adult mentally, she appreciated what Aereon did as it made them very transparent with her without filtering things so that a child would understand, though that was only when it was related to something that was complicated in the first place, like the concept of alcohol and getting drunk.


    Though Kyris and Tirana didn''t understand much, they gathered that alcohol was something that made you sleepy.


    Not being allowed into the kitchen, Aereon had told them to go sit at the table with their grandpa Dagen who was currently checking some things on his holowatch.


    They waited patiently for their meal and not long after, four women exited the room with the food in tow, floating beside them like Astraea''s cake from yesterday.


    They had hearty breakfast with all the classic breakfast foods from fried eggs to pancakes, and sausages to hashbrowns.


    Not long into breakfast, Kaelie had roused from her sleep with a massive headache, currently sporting a hangover. She was less bubbly than usual and quietly ate her food, thanking Paela when she handed her a specially made hangover drink.


    After breakfast, all the guests prepared to leave, but not before helping out to clean the mess from yesterday.


    After everyone was done, they all gathered at the entrance platform to say their goodbyes.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    "We''ll be going now, Aereon, Paela. You continue to be a good girl for your parents now Astraea." Elle said to the three of them.


    "Yes, Grandma! Bye-bye!" Astraea cutely replied.


    "I look forward to your growth in the future Astraea, make good use of your new holowatch alright? Even with the restrictions in place, I can guarantee you won''t be bored," said Dagen.


    "I will! Bye-bye grandpa!"


    "Go on now, say bye to Astraea Kyris," Dagen told his son, seeing how he seemed a little reluctant, though he knew it wasn''t out of dislike, but the unwillingness to leave.


    "B-bye bye Astraea, can we play together with Valky next time?" Kyris asked with a tone softer than his usual.


    "Mhm! Let''s play a lot again! I''ll teach Valky a lot of stuff!"


    Kyris smiled happily hearing her reply, before telling her one last thing.


    "Yeah! Make her become the best little sister!"


    Tirana was also unwilling to leave, fidgetting in place as she didn''t want to say goodbye.


    Seeing her daughter act like this, Aneya gave her a small nudge, gaining her attention. When Tirana saw the gentle expression on her mother''s face which told her that it''s alright, she gathered herself and spoke towards Astraea.


    "B-bye bye...let''s play again..." she said softly.


    "Yeah! We can play together again! Wait there, gonna get something!" Astraea ran to her room, making everyone curious about what she was going to get.


    She came back holding a black stuffed bunny the size of Valkyrie, with Valkyrie, in particular, being held by Astraea since she had awoken.


    She passed to bunny to Tirana, who accepted with confusion and a bit of joy.


    Astraea had actually seen Tirana hugging that black bunny to sleep the previous night and guessed that she must have really liked it. Wanting to increase her favorability and relationship with Tirana.


    "I know you like it a lot, so you can keep it!" Astraea told her with a bright smile.


    "Really? I can keep it?"


    "Really really!"


    Tirana beamed with joy at Astaea''s confirmation, happy that she had received a new stuffed toy.


    "Now what do you say to Astraea?" Aneya asked her daughter, prompting her to do what she was taught.


    "Thank you!" She happily said while hugging the black bunny tight.


    "You''re welcome!" Astraea replied.


    "Astraea! Make sure to teach Valky well alright? And don''t forget to give her lots of love!" Kaelie said with a happy tone, having regained her bubbly demeanor after her hangover had subsided.


    "If little Valky had any problems with her body, or if there are any functions you want to add, don''t hesitate to call me alright? I''ll come and help," Vaena added on.


    Yes, big sis Kaelie, grandma Vaena! Bye-bye, everyone!" Astraea said to all the guests, all of them moving onto the magic circle.


    Astraea waved her hand at them and Valkyrie waved as well, having been taught yesterday. Kyris and Tirana waved back and all the guests disappeared from the platform as the magic circle lit up and teleported them out.


    "So sweetie, did you enjoy your birthday yesterday?" Paela asked.


    "Yeah! I loved it!" Astraea replied, her answer genuine, as it was truly the best birthday she had celebrated amongst the decades of birthdays she''s had in her previous life.


    "That''s good, because you still have plenty of birthdays to go!" Aereon told her.


    "I can''t wait!"


    -----


    After her birthday, her normal life resumed but with a lot of changes, her parents started teaching her harder things with greater frequency and despite it being useless for her.


    It allowed her to act less ignorant and use more vocabulary and she slowly eased into becoming more intelligent than they had already seen.


    She taught Valkyrie everyday and her parents started to slowly treat Valkyrie like their own child and began teaching both of them together.


    Valkyrie became more and more human-like and alive everyday which brought smiles to Astraea and her parents.


    She played with Kyris and Tirana quite frequency, there was always at least one day when they played together every week, allowing them to bond and strengthen their relationship.


    She learned a lot of new things from practicing her magic, studying her magic wand, and using holowatch which had an abundant amount of information suitable for an ignorant toddler.


    Over a year has passed since then and she had celebrated her second birthday not too long ago, receiving more cool and useful presents and making more memories.


    Astraea was currently standing infront of a colorful building covered with shapes and pictures that were attractive to children, it had beautiful plants and flowers at the front that added a sense of naturality to the building.


    All around her she could hear the chatter of children and footsteps, along with the chatter and footsteps of adults that accompanied them.


    That''s right, she was currently standing infront of her new school, the school where she was going to attend preschool.


    A thought popped into her head as she looked at the school she would be spending two years of preschool at.


    ''Preschool, beware, the cutest toddler in the Omni...err...city has arrived!''

 Preschool Arc I : Cutely Reminiscing the past Year

    For the past year, Astraea''s life had increased activity-wise due to the new relationships she''s gained, the new knowledge she learned, and the new cool stuff she could experiment and play with!


    After her first birthday, she started to frequently play with Kyris and Tirana, most of the time playing in each other''s homes and sometimes playing in the parks and playgrounds outside. Their homes were no less impressive than her own, as they were all upper-middle-class children, but each home had a different feel and design that made it unique from hers despite the obvious quality and high-cost that all the homes exuded.


    The playgrounds were not your normal kiddy playgrounds with sandboxes, plastic slides, and swing sets, It was like a miniature futuristic amusement park that had towering slides, flying animal rides, ziplines, super-bouncy trampolines, and many more amazing things. She hadn''t seen one before despite her occasional trips to the park with her mother as the playground seemed to have its own designated area as it was very big.


    They played a lot at that playground, but as kids are kids, they easily got tired of it and went to do other things. They did normal things kids with do with each other such as play make-believe, show off and share their toys, fighting for them occasionally and talking nonsense with each other about the things they learn or see.


    Though Astraea had regressed mentally to some extent, allowing her to become more childlike in terms of curiosity, energy, and positivity, she couldn''t help but become physically and mentally tired out from playing with Kyris and Tirana.


    It made sense as she was physically a year younger than them and despite the new wondrous things this world has to offer that Astraea had yet to learn about, literally everything about this world is wonderous to Tirana and Kyris who only have been living for a few years.


    Despite that, she didn''t let that interfere with her playtime with them as she genuinely had fun playing and getting to know them. Their bond with each other slowly strengthened, even between Tirana and Kyris, who had not played together much before they met Astraea. The two started treating Astraea like an older sibling, as despite being younger than them, she always maintained a level of maturity that allowed her to break up their fights, scold them when they do something bad, and teach them new and amazing things.


    She had to reluctantly accept the two as her new ''younger siblings'' which made the total count three. Yes, three, as there was one more younger sibling she had, Valkyrie.


    Valkyrie had been learning more and more things under the tutelage of Astraea and early on, she had been taught to move without someone using their body as a controller. She first did this by assigning certain hand signals with certain actions, like finger-walking in the air represented walking, and moving her hand up and down represented jumping.


    She quickly changed it out with the actual words of those actions after her success at having Valkyrie react to words.


    She had found out from her grandma Vaena that there was a holographic settings menu that she could access that allowed her to tinker with Valkyrie''s settings, or her body''s settings more specifically.


    She hadn''t told her about this as she had assumed that Astraea couldn''t read and that the default settings were sufficient for the time being. When asked about how she was going to use the settings, she told Vaena that she would ask for assistance from her parents.


    That was a lie though, and she had started to tinker with the settings without her parent''s knowledge.


    There were all sorts of setting from changing her appearance with illusion magic, adjusting power output to her limbs, connection to the internet and all sorts of options and settings for functions she couldn''t even imagine Valkyrie having.


    After sifting through all the settings, she found the one she was looking for, Audio settings. The setting included Audio-Input as well, making it more convenient for her. She had first assumed that Valkyrie''s audio input was currently inactive, effectively making her deaf, but she denied that possibility as it shouldn''t be something so simple.


    It was as she thought, as all the settings seemed normal and Valkyrie''s hearing should be working. As she had gone straight to the Audio-Input settings, she hadn''t properly checked the normal Audio settings and thus she went back to see if the problem lay there.


    There she found an option that solved all her problems, Artificial Voice Settings. She had originally assumed that Valkyrie was able to speak looking at the default Audio Settings but looking at the Artificial Voice Settings, she knew that this wasn''t the case.


    Artificial voice settings had things like language options, different voice samples,


    and something that literally said ''On/Off'' with ''Off'' currently lit up.


    Astraea blinked twice when she saw that option and groaned in annoyance that it was due to something so simple.


    Without further ado, she switched the option on and tinkered with a few of the voice settings before closing the holographic menu as she wanted to test the results straight away.


    "Valkyrie!" With the first word out of her mouth, she didn''t expect to get any immediate results but that was exactly what she received, as a clear and slightly artificial voice repeated after her.


    "Valkyrie!" The voice was that of a high pitched little girl as that was the voice Astraea had selected in the settings.


    From that moment, Valkyrie''s growth increased faster than it did previously, as the more words she knew of the better communication she had with Astraea, which allowed her to learn more and more.


    During the year, Valkyrie had also been taught by Astraea''s Parents, though she still learned more from Astraea. Though it wasn''t that her Parent''s were incompetent in teaching Valkyrie, but that they didn''t have a lot of time to do so and only focused on things they thought Astraea couldn''t teach, such as vocabulary, common knowledge about the world, and what was right and wrong.


    Astraea was actually able to teach all those things except for knowledge about the world but decided to lessen how much she taught those subjects to focus on teaching Valkyrie other things.


    On the matters of magic, there had been a lot of input as she had gained multiple sources of knowledge and ideas, namely her magic wand and her holowatch.


    She had studied tried to study the flow of mana when using her magic wand and it had some decent returns. She was able to sense how the mana was shaped and changed for each function that her wand performed and it gave her some ideas.


    She didn''t think she would be able to make use of the spell formulas in the first place as she wouldn''t know how to make sense out of it, and in the first place, she wouldn''t be able to perform the spell due only having an affinity for Neutral Magic.


    From the earth illusion where a chunk of dirt could be launched, she was able to learn how to condense her mana effectively and launch it as well, though it was only an illusion, the mana was not formless and followed a set paththat Astraea was able to copy.


    A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    From the windfan function, she was able to learn how to send out her mana in an expandedwave, similar to her telekinetic push but with a greater area of effect, but also weakening it. The unique thing about it was that she was able to constantly release her mana which created a ''blowing'' effect similar to thefan function, though it greatly drained her mana.


    She had also learned how to condense her mana by studying the mini wind blade function and it allowed her to create a more pinpointed and faster version of her telekinetic push, almost like a bullet, though the speed was far from it.


    From the three functions that fire had, she was able to create a sort of bubble of manathat surrounds her, though she didn''t know if it does anything yet. She was able to create a more concentrated version of the ''blowing'' effect from studying the flamethrower function and was able to create a string of mana that followed her hand and that she was able to control minimally by studying the fire-trail function.


    From the sole bubble function for water, she had learned how to create concentrated pockets of mana that was able to stay in place, moving a certain distance away would make them pop like bubbles, and slightly disturbed the area around it like a mini-explosion. She had learned how to remotely detonate the mana pockets by sending out a small bullet of mana which popped them on impact.


    She was sure there were more sophisticated ways of doing it but she couldn''t figure it out and had to resort to that.


    Her holowatch did have a lot of information like her grandpa Dagen said but a lot of it was just apps and information useful to teach kids and toddlers, she had no access to the internet whatsoever which frustrated her a little.


    They were way more informational than apps on earth despite only using pictures and audio but were still only for kids and toddler so she was able to easily absorb all the information within a few days, her enhanced memory helped too as she only had to go through things once to remember.


    Though a lot of the information was quite useless, some of it was exactly what she needed as it taught her the basics and common sense of the world like different countries,flora and fauna native to this world and more importantly, magic.


    Though the apps didn''t teach her how to use magic, it explained all there was to know about the basics of magic, from explaining the concept of magic, explanations of attributes and affinity, the history, and the applications of magic.


    In the past, imagination was used to cast magic, and those with great instinct or had a greater imagination which in turn made them great mages. One''s affinity with an attribute also affected your imagination with it as the higher the affinity the closer you are to the attribute which allowed you to have a greater imagination towards it.


    With the age of industry, technology and science, came the age offormulaic and logical magic, where scientific laws and mathematical formulas were integrated into the imaginative process of magic, making spells stronger, more complicated and more precise than ever before.


    It also introduced countless newattributes and forms of magic that the world had never heard of before, which greatly diversified magic into countless areas, and those once seen as talentless in magic or had a low affinity suddenly became magic prodigies due to having an amazing affinity with those newly discovered attributes.


    Though even in this day and age, those with amazing instinct and imagination could still easily trump others who were talentless and using formulaic magic, that was how people usually determined talent in magic other than affinity.


    It was one of the main reasons children start learning magic as early as possible, which was age four when their affinities are stabilized, to separate the good seeds from the bad ones.


    All in all, besides all the new ''spells'' she had learned from her magic wand, and a few others she had taught herself, she had increased her proficiency with her magic and was able to controlthe mana in her body subconsciously with little effort.


    The two desires to make her voice cuter and make her skin flawless worked as expected, though a child''s skin was nearly flawless in the first place. While she didn''t notice her voice changing as she spoke everyday, as she consulted her memories, she could confirm that her voice had changed in some aspects, and did sound cuter than before.


    She removed the desire for a cuter voice as she was satisfied with how it was now, and made the desire for flawless skin a little weaker as she still wanted to keep it and add other desires.


    She added two new desires, one that would lessen her mental fatigue, and one that increased her metabolism, more than a child already has. Both desires were to increase her efficiency in going through her life as she didn''t want to spend a single moment idle in the early stage of her life.


    Her second birthday had passed and it wasn''t too different from her first birthday, except for being able to have more intelligent conversations with the adults and her close relationship with Tirana and Kyris.


    She had received new presents as well but they couldn''t trump the presents from last year seeing as how she got Valkyrie and her holowatch.


    Dagen was very impressed with her growth when he had checked her holowatch, as all the teaching apps recorded her progress and all of them were at 100% completion.


    Though she spent the majority of the year with Kyris and Tirana, she did meet up with her grandparents from time to time and aunt Kaelie came to her house quite frequently too.


    Grandpa Dagen was the person she saw the least as he seemed to have his schedule packed and every time he was able to see her, he wouldn''t ask about her growth or progress, so she didn''t mention it either.


    As a reward for exceeding his expectations, he unlocked more features and functions on her holowatch than he originally planned to, or at least that''s what he said, and she was pleasantly surprised at the quality and quantity of the new functions and features.


    The birthday party seemed more lively as her relations with her relatives and friends had increased and she could say that it surpassed her first birthday in terms of interactions. Just the day after, she immediately went to ask her parents if she could attend preschool.


    Though she wasn''t idle for the past two years as she had been constantly improving herself and learning about her new world, as well as enjoying her childhood, she had become impatient just a couple months ago and wanted a change of pace, one that would advance her learning and growth.


    Preschool was the best choice as it was the earliest form of schooling she could take, attending preschool when she was just a year and a few months old did seem absurd and suspicious to her so she decided to go for the next best thing, attending when she just turned two.


    Though two still seemed too young, she knew that preschool was all based on the child''s development and she could just pass off as a highly intelligent child, which she was. Though her parents were originally reluctant as they wanted to enroll her much later, at least three years old, her constant begging and puppy eyes eventually made them relent.


    She couldn''t help but think that her Cute Charm ability was finally able to be put to use against her parents, who were already spoiling her a lot and answering to her every whim.


    Two weeks later, Astraea was now standing infront of her new school, and she couldn''t wait for all the new things she''ll get to learn.


    "Astraea, honey? You''ve been staring at your new school for quite some time now, everything alright?" Paela asked, wondering if Astraea had become nervous.


    Astraea snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that she had been dazing off thinking about the past year, she gave a bright smile to her mom and answered.


    "Nothing wrong, just excited!"


    With that, she ran ahead of her two parents as she looked forward to the things to come.

 Preschool Arc II : Cutely Knocking on the Door

    Though Astraea ran ahead, she patiently waited for her parents at the entrance, and not wandering about like a child in a fun new place.


    There were some minor administrative matters that her parents had to do but it didn''t take too long, with Astraea waiting patiently while observing her surroundings.


    When she had walked the halls of the school, she could tell that it was quite large and had a lot of students, and it also felt very high class despite the colorful and childish decorations.


    She had known about this preschool previously as Kyris had talked about it and Tirana had recently started talking about it too as she had been enrolled a few months ago when she turned three.


    She had gathered that the preschool they attended was one exclusively for the rich and high class, as they talked about things she would have never thought they would do or have at a preschool. It wasn''t just preschool either as it was also a kindergarten as Kyris had told her that he had started attending it a few months before he turned five.


    The things they taught in this worlds preschool seemed a little too advanced for kids their age but it made sense when she recalled their intelligence and maturity that could surpass many kids in her previous world, she didn''t know if it was also due to their genes as the rich tend to have better genes from having better healthcare, or if the general talent and intelligence in this world on average is higher than the previous world due to the advances in technology and healthcare.


    After her parents had completed the administrative matters, they walked her to her new classroom while reminding her of the things they had been repeated since earlier this morning.


    "Remember to be nice to everyone, and listen to your teacher when they''re talking alright?" Her dad Aereon told Astraea for the thousandth time.


    "I''m always nice to everyone! And I never forget your lessons..." Astraea replied with a slight pout.


    "Remember to share the toys when you play, and if someone is mean to you, don''t be mean to them and instead go and tell your teacher alright?" Paela added on, making Astraea groan.


    "I always share when playing with Kyris and Tirana... and I''m the one who makes them make up when they fight..." Astraea was a little annoyed that her parents had to tell her these things that should only be said to an ordinary toddler, especially since her parents already knew she was far from an ordinary child.


    Her parents looked at each other as they heard her reply and felt a bit guilty when they realized that she was right and that she never needed these reminders in the first place, nor did they have to make an effort at trying to ingrain it into Astraea since earlier this morning.


    "Sorry sweetie, your mommy and I just got a little nervous on your behalf, since it''s your first day and all and that the kids in your class will all be older than you," Aereon spoke with an apologetic tone.


    "It''s funny, isn''t it? That your parents are nervous when you''re all excited to learn and make new friends. Were you ever nervous?" Paela asked her daughter.


    "Never! Like you said I get to make new friends and learn new things! The house is also getting boring to play in, and now I get a whole school to play in!" Astraea explained, she truly meant all of those things as getting more people to recognize her cuteness was always a plus and a proper curriculum made by professional educators will always be better than what her parents could teach her.


    She figured it didn''t matter too much as most of what she''ll be taught would be useless anyway since preschool and kindergarten are mostly about building morals, language, and social skills, as well as other miscellaneous things.


    The most useful thing she could learn would be magic, as her knowledge about it was still quite abysmal.


    Her parents saw her off at her classroom door, not needing to be gently led in while holding hands like a lot of nervous kids would do.


    When her parents turned the corner and out of her sight, she gave three strong knocks to the door and immediately regretted it as now her hand hurt.


    "Can I come in?~" She said loudly, to make sure that it could be heard on the inside of the classroom.


    Not long after, a gentle male voice spoke out, with a slight tone of confusion.


    "Oh, Uhm... you can come in!"


    With the permission to enter the room, Astraea stood infront of the door, and it automatically opened once the security function had recognized her as a student.


    She casually walked inside without a care in the world and took a look at her new classroom.


    At first glance, it would look like any typical preschool classroom with colorful designs, short tables and chairs and shelves filled with toys. Upon looking closer, one would be able to see the quality of the objects of the room and the room itself that could easily surpass the quality of objects normal people possessed.


    One would be able to buy a decent house just by selling all the objects in the room.


    Having taken a good look at the room, she turned her attention at the occupants who were currently staring at her.


    There were ten toddlers all sat on cushions on the floor who were all looking at her with innocent curiosity, all wondering who the new student was.


    They all had varying features and hair colors that could only be found in fantastical worlds such as this one, as it was like looking at a rainbow of hair.


    There were six boys and four girls as she could tell, having to guess from their clothes and hair length instead of their physical features as they all looked quite androgynous. There were no uniforms that students had to wear so everyone had their own clothing.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    Another thing they had in common was their stunning looks that could rival her own cuteness.


    It was no doubt thanks to their superior genes that they had acquired from their parents. She knew that their looks were way above the average child in this world as she had seen a lot of kids around her age for the past year while playing at the park and knew that this was the effect of coming from a family of high standing.


    "Oh! And who might you be little miss? A new student?" The gentle voice from before spoke out, causing Astraea to turn her attention to the source


    The source of the voice came from a kind-looking man that had youthful features that made him look like a teen, a handsomely cute one at that.


    He had neat brown hair and lidded black eyes that gave him a sort of ordinary sleepy look. Despite looking like a teen, Astraea knew he was far from one guessed he was in his early twenties like her parents.


    He was currently sat on the ground on a cushion in front of the ten toddlers he had been previously teaching.


    "Yes! I''m a new student, nice to meet you!" Astraea waved her hand to him and her new classmates, with one of her signature smiles.


    Though he was the one to ask the question, he was still surprised that it was true as it was a bit unbelievable.


    When he had heard someone knocking on the door, he had assumed it was the parents of his new student, expecting an adult voice to call out.


    He was caught off guard when a cute voice spoke instead and became confused when a toddler that looked less than two years old entered the room without any adults.


    Though Astraea was a proper two-year-old, she was smaller than toddlers her age and people would normally assume that Astraea was younger than she actually was.


    Having enrolled in preschool at two years old along with looking younger than she actually was, the young man couldn''t help but become shocked at the clarity that Astraea spoke with, along with the social skills she had just displayed.


    Despite sporting thoughts of having a child prodigy in his class, he didn''t let it overcome his responsibility as a teacher and had asked Astraea an important question.


    "It''s nice to meet you too, before you introduce yourself, could you tell me where your parents are?


    He asked this as asides from accompanying their child to soothe their uneasiness, parents entered the classroom with their children in order to speak with their teacher.


    Though it was not a necessity or a rule that required parents to see their child''s teacher on the first day, it was only natural they would want to meet the person who would influence their child''s growth in the early stage of their life.


    They would want to gauge the teacher''s personality and experience as well as telling them details and personal needs related to their children so that the teacher would be able to better care for their child.


    It was an important requirement that preschool and kindergarten teachers were able to care for the personal needs of individual children, especially the children of the rich and influential.


    "They went home!" She answered him, the smile on her face unchanging.


    "Oh...Since that''s the case, how about you introduce yourself?" The young teacher asked her, deciding to speak to her parents when they picked her up.


    "Okay!" With that, Astraea walked up beside her teacher and faced her new classmates.


    "My name is Astraea, I turned two not long ago!" Astraea introduced herself with a charmingly cute smile that could make your heart skip a beat.


    "Let''s welcome Astraea as a class, follow after me. Hello, Astraea!" Her teacher addressed the curious toddlers, making them enthusiastically great their new classmate.


    "Hello, Astraea!"


    "Good job! I hope you''ll be able to makes friends with the whole class. You can call me Mr. Aiden, I''m your teacher"


    "How about you place your bag with the rest and get a cushion to join the lesson? We''re learning about animals!" Her teacher gestured to the book he holding, which was currently on a page about a familiar yet totally alien animal.


    "Okay!" Astraea placed her bag in a cubbyhole and got Valkyrie out from the small pouch at the side, grabbing a cushion from a corner of the room, and placed it next to someone familiar, plopping herself onto the cushion and sitting beside them.


    "Hi, Tirana!" Astraea quietly greeted her three-year-old friend, who had their eyes shining and mouth in a wide smile the moment she saw Astraea enter the room.


    "Hi, Astraea! We''re classmates! We can play together a lot more now!" Tirana replied excitedly.


    "Mhm! Let''s play a lot!"


    After greeting each other, they started to pay attention to the lesson, it was worthwile to listen as Astraea was able to learn about animals she''d never heard of before native to this world, though it wasn''t completely new to her as some animals she knew existed here.


    Every single student in the room was quietly paying attention to the interesting lesson, except a certain student in the back who was staring into the space infront of him with a shocked look on his face.


    He had turned shocked shortly after Astraea entered the room and had been unable to recover since then, still staring at the cause of his shock.


    In his vision, unseen by anyone else, was a floating rectangular screen similar to the holigraphic screen of a holowatch.


    On the screen was something that looked similar to the status screen that characters had in RPGs, his eyes unmoving from a certain part of the screen.


    <table>


    <tbody>


    <tr>


    <td>Cute Skills :</td>


    <td>Rank:</td>


    </tr>


    <tr>


    <td>Cute Body Manipulation : Self</td>


    <td>A+</td>


    </tr>


    <tr>


    <td>Natural Cuteness</td>


    <td>A+</td>


    </tr>


    <tr>


    <td>Cute Charm</td>


    <td>A+</td>


    </tr>


    </tbody>


    </table>