8 - Chapter 7 - Day 700
Adya had finally managed to convince her parents to give her unrestricted access to the library. She had been speaking and walking for over a year now, and she had increased her speech to that of a mature child. She had convinced her mother that she had managed to learn to read by herself in the last 6 months and that she would treat the books with respect and care.
As was traditional she had been assigned two personal retainers who would have their loyalty only to her and would ideally serve her for the rest of her life. The first was a secretary called Phillipa. She was still young at 18, but had been trained from a young age to fulfil the role. Her responsibility was to manage anything and everything Adya needed. Sally was still around and had progressed from the nanny to her handmaiden. Secondally, she was assigned a master at arms named Dexter as the head of her personal guards. Dexter was in his mid 20s and extremely well trained having attended the royal military academy and served in royal guards before he was poached by the family.
Both Philipa and Dexter had sworn oaths of fealty to Adya directly and not to her family even though they were employed by the family. Adya learned the reason for this was that in the past personal retainers had been bribed and used by jealous family members in internal family intrigue. Now the custom was for the main retainers to swear directly and for the general staff to be sworn to the house. Adya had learned due to the trade commitments her house, named Gurg, had more than 1000 retainers and almost 5000 guards. The family was substantially larger than most of the noble houses.
Philipa followed the young Adya into the library not sure of exactly what to expect from such a young child. Whilst she had been groomed for the role, she wasn't expecting to swear fealty to a 2 year old. Therefore she was very surprised by Adya's instructions.
“Phillipa, we have many priorities in the upcoming months.” intoned Adya in a very serious tone. “We need to cover the basics of history, geography, the current political climate, trade and trade policies to start with. We will then also look at the basics of mana control, spells and skills. Can you please start to collect what we already have in the library and see what topics we don't have books to cover the basics in those topics. If we don't have the books in the library they will need to be sourced.”
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“Yes young mistress.” replied Phillipa as started to get the basic histories for Adya. Adya sat down at the table and dove into the books whilst Phillipa started collating the other books requested by Adya and started making a list of the subjects that were not covered by the extensive library in the level of detail Adya wanted.
***
After spending the morning in the library much to the surprise of most of the household, none expecting a 2 year old to be able to focus for so long on reading. The afternoon found Adya and Dexter on the family training field.
Adya started by doing some stretches and basic warmups with Dexter before approaching the master of arms for the family. The master of arms was a grizzled old veteran named Parth. He was in his 50s having retired from the royal army.
“Parth, I would like to be trained in the use of melee weapons and unarmed combat.” requested Adya whilst Dexter looked on in shock at the request from such a young child, and a girl at that.
Parth was more reserved in his demeanour as he thought on the request from the young mistress. “It is a very demanding thing that you ask and it will take years of hard work for you to master, are you sure this is something you want to dedicate yourself to? Will you be able to persevere?” he questioned Adya. Parth didn't want to spend his time training someone who would give up as things got hard and they would get hard if she wanted to learn properly.
“Give me a chance to show you my resolve in this matter Parth.” replied Adya. “ We both know that actions speak louder than words.” Partha considered the serious child in front of him and decided to test her.
Parth set Adya to start on basic footwork and movement drills to not only test her aptitude but her commitment and mindset. Normally such boring repetition was not something children were willing to endure. To his utter astonishment, not only did Adya take to the drills with gusto, she continued for 2 hours straight in her first session. Only when he allowed her to take a break did she stop, totally drenched in sweat.
Parth just gave her an approving nod and told her she could join the training in the afternoons.
So began a new phase in Adya’s life. Mornings spent in the library trying to learn about her new world, afternoons training her body on the training fields and evenings spent in meditation and cultivation to try and form her core. In the last year her cultivation had been advancing significantly, having managed to control over 2.5 million mana simultaneously. It was still only 14% to where she needed to be, but her speed of improvement was also increasing. It was only a matter of time before she could start to make real plans.