Night has fallen and the muffled sounds from house servants sliding across the cold stone cobbled floor had disappeared.
The immeasurable amount of candles that usually lighted up the dark inner-workings of the castle, were blown out - or rather, the mana source was stopped, effectively turning off the candles.
Inside one of the bigger bedchambers, the beautifully adorned curtains were fluttering in the wind. The windows were purposely left open.
I was the reason the windows were left open. Every time I was put to sleep I threw a tantrum pointing at the window.
Eventually I had to succumb to sleep, since my stubbornness couldn’t possibly compared to my sleep needs.
The reason for leaving the windows open, was the calming night breeze.
During the recent months I started to spend most of my nights sitting in a cross-legged position, trying to grasp at elements pertaining meditation.
While I had not actually had any major breakthrough, I was pretty sure being closer to nature would help my mind shifting states.
I was basically grasping straws here. My body was still weak, but my mind was strong. Stronger than any of the other children in this castle.
In my previous life I had chanced upon some quite startling research into the ways of meditation, exploring everything from ancient martial arts and their breathing techniques to other more modern notions such as hot yoga.
From the research a theory was drawn up closely resembling the same discoveries martial art masters had made during their lifetime.
To put it in simple terms you can think of the body as the refinery and the surroundings as your raw material.
While the body not only serves as a refinery but also a dispenser or a utility tool if you will, the refinery aspect is what I’m trying to achieve by meditating right now.
To explain why I’m doing this I would have to elaborate on the discoveries I’ve made this recent year.
For starters I’ve acquired parts of the puzzle pertaining to my identity and who I am. Following my early conjectures I’ve certainly confirmed that I am indeed of noble birth.
As excited as I was about finally living my dream, I had to be able to live first which is why gaining control of my body took precedence.
On that note, I’ve gotten quite good at controlling my body despite it being weak, but I’ll explain more about that later.
My name is Dumas. I’m not exactly sure of my surname and much less my full name.
If the logic in this world follows the logic in my old world, however slightly, when pertaining to social structure, this world probably has some sort of special way to name nobles depending on the region.
I’ll have to figure out my name and research more about my dynasty, surely this is as exciting as anything could be!
If it really turns out that I’m a high ranking noble, I’ll have to enjoy it while I can.
I mean nobody knows if I can get a second chance at life like this again.
Oops. I got slightly sidetracked there. I should keep on going.
These days my mother has been accompanying me and a few chambermaids around the castle in which our family resides.
Explaining to me, that as a future noble I should know the ins and outs of my own family’s castle, my mother showed me everything about the castle she knew.
Everything from buttery to various servant latrines and garderobes everything was shown to me.
The castle was designed symmetrically with a great hall in the center.
From the great hall several hallway entrances could be found leading to various places. Two hallways leading to the west wing and two leading to the east wing.
Situated in the east wing were all the nobles. This included the big bedchambers for my family, as well as the lesser nobles employed as the castle.
The west wing was used by the countless of servants both as their workplace and their resting areas.
Things like the buttery, pantry, servant sleeping dorms, small smithies and many more interesting rooms were located here.
Attached to the west wing on the outside were the stables, which the constable took care of. I must say, I’m quite with the amount of horses here.
From just a quick look the stables are about the size of the castle itself, and the castle is not small.
Doing a quick headcount of the servants in my mind would take a while.
When my father tends to his lordly matters and has to rule his demesne, the castle steward takes care of the castle.
I’m guessing there are probably a few hundred people in this castle and the surrounding manor houses.
Every single person I met on my mother’s guided tours of the castle, stopped in their tracks, straightening their legs in the process.
Proceeding with their salute, they would bow thirty degrees, with the left arm following the line of the body and the right arm across the chest forming a fist, followed by their greeting.
The usual greeting from the servants was something along the lines of “Greetings Third Young Master!”
I later learned that this type of greeting was common etiquette for people meeting nobles of higher rank than oneself in my father’s demesne.
I seem to have forgotten to talk about my own family. In any case, I am now blessed with a loving mother and a strict father.
In addition to this I also have 2 elder brothers and an elder sister. Being the youngest of 4, not to mention that my constitution had been weak from birth, I was naturally pampered and well taken care of.
My oldest brother, who was also set to be the heir of my father’s titles, was one who excelled in most things he did.
While people would not call him a genius, at the very least he would qualify as one who could be dubbed gifted.
Named after an old war hero, probably one from this realm, his name was Bacchus and his area of expertise was ironically military prowess.
Not only had he spent countless of hours training his body and his swordsmanship, he was also quite gifted in warfare as made evident by his numerous victories in minor skirmishes around the demesne to quell bandits.
Being 15 years old than me, my oldest brother had already become an adult last year, according to the standard of this world.
This meant that I would rarely see him, as he had taken up his work as a knight of the demesne and was employed by my father not as the castle marshall, but the field marshall of the demesne army.
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Being a field marshall at the tender age of 16 was nothing to scoff at. It was for most people a considerable achievement, meaning that neighbouring realms had already heard of some of Bacchus’ exploits.
Of course, he couldn’t do his job properly right off the bat, so his work was overseen by the previous field marshall who had also acted as his mentor since he took up the sword 8 years ago.
My second brother however is something else entirely. Unlike me he wasn’t born with a weak constitution, he was just plain weak because he never really did anything besides growing plants.
One could easily mistake him for one of the gardeners, when he changed into more comfortable attire and strolled around the castle guardians.
Despite being overly interested in plants, he also had quite the affinity for magic. Curiously enough his name was Merlin, which immediately made me think of my old world.
And yes, magic.
It really does exist in this world. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but using my ‘Intense Stare’ I gleaned a bit of extra useful tidbits of information.
Naturally a castle as big as this had some servants capable of magic. Hopefully this could be one of the means to an end, for my future endeavours.
Watching my 12-year old second brother wielding his magic freely to manipulate the plants in the garden I was awestruck.
I secretly noted magic as one of my future goals.
My last sibling was one I had never met before. Ever since I was born she had never been at home.
The reason for this was that she was currently residing in another court, learning about etiquette over there.
This, of course, was just an excuse. The real reason was that she was a hostage being kept my a rival family, my father had lost a war to.
By having a family hostage one could effectively cripple a whole demesne by keeping the family of the hostage on somewhat servile terms with life threats.
That is of course if the family of the hostage values the life of the hostage.
I imagine some nobles could easily from away a daughter at a whim, if it could let him attack a rival enemy lord freely.
Since my the people around me haven’t talked to me much concerning the state of the demesne, I don’t really know much else pertaining to myself but this.
Heck I don’t even know what the name of my father is or what the name of his demesne is.
But I will have plenty of time to find this out at a later time, what takes precedence is gaining the ability and freedom to do what I want.
Enjoy the life of a noble in a lax environment.
A few other discoveries that has some relevance to this goal, is concerning the floating windows.
During the last few months many windows have been popping up, giving me information about my bodily improvements.
This further proves my theory on the floating window system being able to record my progress somehow.
Additionally it requires my knowledge of it, to be recorded as progress.
For instance, the other day when I had walked around all day, I saw down thinking I could walk no further.
I closed my eyes and focused on the sore spots on my body.
It’s really hard to explain this feeling, since I’ve never felt it before but it’s something like an instinctual inner-body analysis.
By analysis my sore spots and comparing them to how they fared earlier, I concluded which muscles had improved.
Suddenly a window popped up saying this:
Due to strenuous physical exertion you gain:
+1 Vitality
+1 Strength
So basically I had trained my body sufficiently, and I had acknowledged my improvement.
It wasn’t as if I acknowledged it blindly, since it was based on my analysis of my own body.
Now while it all may sound sort of vague, keep in mind that I carried over some abilities from the old world.
On the one hand I was still able to remember things easily and on the other hand I still retained my previous memories.
Knowing the name, position and even the function of my muscles was a given.
With excellent memory and several decades of reading, wouldn’t one expect at least expertise of this level?
Finding good use of my old memories, I started searching for something that could help me overcome my predicament and surely mediation was the thing I needed.
I fused some theories in my head and ended up with an outline of a plan.
For the next few years I should keep meditating while using inner-body analysis to keep my body improving.
This would be done by night so the adults wouldn’t know about it.
However meditation alone is not gonna bring about results. It needs to be done after physical training.
I resolved to put together a training plan and spend a few nights every week meditating. This should give me some stat points.
The additional stat points should be quite helpful, seeing as the last few ones somehow strengthened my body.
And this is basically how I got to sitting below open windows during nightime.
The night breeze helped me relax and calm down.
Being relaxed and calm enabled me to easily filter out unnecessary thoughts.
While I say “easily” I still haven’t had any breakthrough, so perhaps I haven’t really filtered out all of my thoughts.
But my gut feeling says this is the way to go, and so far my gut feeling has proved to be quite accurate.
Another gut feeling however is telling me I have to take a break from meditating and pay a visit to the chamber pots in my latrine.
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Thanks for reading this far! Rate and review it, tell me what's good and what's bad - much appreciated!
Additionally I know my chapters are rather short. This one is about 2k and the others are just above the 1k mark. Hopefully the next chapter is even longer!
Wait - was he always this weak?So did he manage a breakthrough?