Before the day of John's second birthday, John already knew something was about to change. During the days before the birthday, Wayne seemed quite crestfallen and appeared to be dreading something, and due to there being nothing major except for his birthday John deduced that something was about to change after his birthday.
While anticipating the changes that were to come on his birthday, John continued his exploration of aether. For months, he had been continuously consuming aether from the nursery, and circulating it around his body, however he had encountered a major roadblock in terms of efficiency, his sleep.
Being particularly young, John required lots and lots of sleep and when he was sleeping he couldn't circulate aether throughout his body. After some time of thinking, John thought he had an inkling on what to do. However, John knew that in order to guarantee his own safety he had to utilize the research that already existed in the world. After all, it's easier to stand on the shoulder of a giant than do it yourself. The opportunity to do so, John believed, would manifest itself in the next few years when he would be given an education, until then he would have to suppress his urge to discover new knowledge, as any more probing would be dangerous to himself and risk exposing his anomaly.
The Day of John's Birthday
The door slowly opened, and John watched as Wayne accompanied a middle aged man with a beard inside the nursery.
"What do you mean, he only has basic comprehension over a few dozen words?" exclaimed the middle aged man angrily, "For a child with a Brilliant Core this is absolutely preposterous! Are you teaching him properly Wayne?"
"With all due respect Scholar Evans, I am a well known language expert who has graduated from the Aeradon Magic School, the top of my class."
"Enough," snapped the man," I have been entrusted by Lord Verrien to thoroughly educate the child, and you are no longer needed. Please excuse yourself."
"Very well," said Wayne before exiting the room. Looking at the man, supposedly Evans, John wondered with anticipation what knowledge he was about to be taught.
"Young Lord, from today I, Scholar Evans, will be responsible for your education and I will be teaching you speech as well as reading," said the man seriously, "Of course you don't understand me now, but soon enough you will."
1 Year Later
For the next year, John once again had to be tortured with being taught basic speech that he already comprehended. However, there was a silver lining, being the words that John was taught how to read. The apparent innate ability to comprehend speech had apparently not extended to words which meant that a knowledge thirsty John could temporarily quell his thirst by learning all kinds of words.
At the start John worried about being discovered as an anomaly due to a rapid speed of learning, but after Scholar Evans expressed extreme displeasure when he purposely slowed himself down, John realized that perhaps due to the core in his body, children were expected to learn faster. Realizing this John no longer held back and slowly showed his talent, learning more and more new words each day.
Time flew by like a breeze, and before John knew it, it was already his third birthday. Over the one year period, John had "learned" to speak basic sentences and read basic books. However even with his extraordinary progress John was still confined to his nursery, but what John didn't know was that, that was soon to change.
Bang, with a loud bang the doors to John's nursery flew open. "Come on, can this author come up with a better entrance for introducing new characters," thought John as he quickly looked up to see his new visitor.
A tall, burly man accompanied by maids walked in. Attempting to smile, the man came up to John's bed(it was switched sometime after his 2nd birthday) and introduced himself.
"Hello there Young Lord, My name is Augustus and I will be your new trainer," said the man," From today until you turn 6, I will teach you how to exercise yourself and maximize your body's absorption of aether.
"Training? Does that mean I go outside," asked John, faking a curious voice. "Yes, in fact we will be starting our first class today, come with Young Lord," said the man before quickly lifting up John from his bed and placing him on the ground."
"Yayyyy," said John in an enthusiastic voice, while he internally reeled from the sudden discovery he just made while being touched by the man Augustus. When touching him, John felt a large amount of aether brimming under the man's skin, it was as if he was constantly circulating aether without even thinking about it.
Trailing behind the man, John observed the surrounding in awe his he followed the man outside the mansion. Everywhere he looked he could see feats of magic such as maid's gliding around or servers suspending extremely large dishes in mid air.
Going outside to the courtyard, John looked on as he saw a multitude of knights training with swords. However unlike normal medieval knights, these knights were dashing around and swinging with speeds that even Usain Bolt would envy, all while wearing extremely thick metal armor.
While passing by the knights, John noticed that they all stopped and stared at him and his instructor Augustus, listening carefully for any gossip that he could use to gain intel John heard several conversations.
"Ohhhh, so this is the Young Lord, the new only child of Lord Verrien, after the accident… apparently he won't be named until after his awakening as to avoid attachment" said one knight before being shushed. "Shut up, you know that you could be killed if Lord Verrien or Lady Verrien heard what you just said, the High Lord and the Lady don't want anyone discussing what happened."
Slowly trailing behind Augustus, John quickly digested the information, his father had a previous child who presumably had an accident, his father was most likely very attached to the child, and he had no siblings.
"No wonder," thought John, "This explains why my father and mother don't care about me much and only visited me a few times."
In front of him, Augustus quickly stopped in front of an open field with no knights training in it. "Alright, Young Lord, from today on I will be teaching you how to maximize aether absorption."