Chapter 100 - Preparations for the Royal Academy

Chapter 100: Chapter 100 - Preparations for the Royal Academy A couple of weeks have passed, and things are finally settling down. Levinna has partially moved in with Mother but keeps coming and going to Amapytu. She travels using some special steeds rented from the adventurer’s guild. Those horses are of a stronger and faster breed, with a bit of mana, and they use some enhancement magic that makes them even faster. So, when the horse is too tired to keep up, she switches to a fresh one in one of the guild’s outposts. That way, travel between the cities is a lot faster. They will move to a mansion of their own as soon as I enter the Royal Academy. I will move into the Academy myself. I’ll live in the collective dormitories, though because of my status I’ll have a full room for myself alone. And by a full room, I mean a full noblesse room. It’s actually what would be a very pricey apartment in our world, with a living room, a small kitchen, and three bedrooms. Why three bedrooms? To house my servants, of course. Because royals have servants. Pretty normal, right? No. It isn’t normal at all. I don’t want servants. So, after some pouting and some back-and-forth, we settled on a compromise. A maid will come to my room every two days to clean things up. If she sees that I’m being too lax with my housekeeping, she will rat me out to my mother, and I’ll have to accept a maid full-time. Talk about a good incentive for me to do the chores. ::: These weeks, I’ve progressed a bit in my etiquette lessons, though some stuff I still do very half-heartedly. Like, a spoon is a spoon. I don’t get why I have to use this one for that thing and the other one for that other thing... And don’t even get me started on having to eat with a fork and knife. I want to use a spoon, and I don’t care if it isn’t a soup! Ugh, being royalty is irritating. At least I don’t have to be present in social gatherings of nobility yet. I know that that will be required of me after I come of age. I’m told that there will be a huge ball at my 15th anniversary, in which I’ll be officially presented to society. And that, after that, the marriage proposals will start falling like rain. And that will be even worse than the ball and the tea parties I’ll have to attend. And there’s something that makes it even worse. Some nobles are pushing for Mom to be the next ruler, which would make me the second in line to the throne. I don’t want that target on my back, thank you very much. I doubt that this faction will get any momentum behind it, but it exists. The ones backing it are some lesser nobles, some even with commoners’s backgrounds, who got impressed by the crowd at the execution plaza. They aren’t powerful, but if it were to be decided by popular vote, Lillian would be crowned tomorrow. The loyalist faction still backs uncle Jyllian, though. Which is a bliss. They are the same that supported the king against the Duke all those years. The Duke’s faction seems to be in disarray, with its head lopped off. Levinna told us to not be too optimistic, though, as it seems that the Church is plotting something. In any case, the adults keep repeating that I shouldn’t concern myself with that and that instead I should be focusing on preparing myself for the Royal Academy’s admission exams. There’s a lot that I need to learn about the history, geopolitics, and physical geography of the kingdom for the written test. I mean, a lot, because I’m going at it using my own standards. Of course they don’t expect ten-year-olds to write a thesis on their entrance exams. So I have to both learn what I can and try to tone down what I learn so I can pass as being the age I appear to be. Tough request, indeed. But the training for the practical exam is actually the worst part. Mom managed to set aside a training facility for my use, one that is closed off, so nobody can see me. And it’s in there that we train daily. It’s really hard to tune down the power of my spells so they look like something a ten-year-old would believably cast. And more than that, to not cast them too quickly, and also remember to literally speak the words of the aria. I’ve been used to using the ancient Draconic language for max efficiency and power and casting them silently. No child my age could ever be able to do it. And I’ve watched enough isekai to know what happens if you lose track of your common sense when dealing with the outside world. So I’m learning very inefficient arias in the Esperansy language to cast very slowly (for me) and pouring as little mana as possible on them. Also, for all purposes while in the Royal Academy, I’m a fire sorceress. Because training showed me that it would be simply impossible for me to tune lightning down enough. Keeping my lightning magic hidden will also make it a trump if anything bad happens. So I’m using one of the elements I’m worse at. And still, with all that, the power of my arias is too high. The question—and the reason for training—is not if I would be able to pass the test or not. It is to be able to not stand out too much, both during the test and during school. "Mom, why do I have to put up with all this? With Lovelace as the court wizard, she already has enough access to any place that could give us clues about our goal." "Because that was not the only reason you were going to go to school, Aurea. You need to become more knowledgeable about this world." "But I could simply study all that in the library. There’s no need to go to school just for that." "I thought that you told me that you were... what’s that name again? The scholar field that is about studying human behavior?" "Social Anthropology?" "Yes, that." "I was... but what has that to do with going to school?" "Because one of the things that you’ve told me about it is that reading things in a book can only teach you a limited part of it. And that to get a bigger picture, you need to do field research." "Yeah... that’s true... but I’m not doing research—" "Are you not? Didn’t I tell you to learn more about the broader world while in the Academy? You will only be able to learn by living in the world, not by reading dusty tomes." "Ugh... fine. You have a point, and it’s a big one I can’t argue against. But I could also learn by becoming an adventurer." "Do you think that my parents would allow for any ten-year-old to become an adventurer, even if you weren’t their granddaughter?" "..." "Now, stop sulking and go to your room and get ready. Meet me at the front door in one hour." "Huh? Where will we go?" "Visit the Royal Academy, of course!"