“Yawn.” So hungry, I feel like I could eat a whole boar.

I lift the covers and… This isn’t my room.

Ah right, I made a mess of my room, I remember now. But did I finish designing the sewage system? That I don’t remember… Whatever, food comes first… after finding out whose room is this.

I get out of the bedroom and find out, it’s Athena’s guest quarters. “Young master Lance, you’re awake! I’ll inform Lady Athena at once, please excuse me.” There goes the maid. Oh right.

“Bring me breakfast on your way back, a big one.” I say before she leaves.

“Understood, young master.” With that I sit down and wait for my food.

I feel like I’m forgetting something… Oh right, since I passed out, Athena will be- “LANCE!” Speak of the devil, err, think of the devil? One way or the other, she’s pissed off as expected.

This is going to be a long morning.

~~

I wasn’t allowed to work on my plans for a week after that, although I don’t feel it’s much of a punishment since I could use a change of pace after concentrating on the plans so much…

Is what I thought until the princess, who was ecstatic about the castle plans, introduced me to her friends, who are also a bunch of art nerds.

“I quite like the way you used color on this one, what gave you the idea?” Asks the redhead woman (I refuse to remember their names).

What is she asking? “...I wanted to give it more color?” Is she expecting me to answer with something like ‘I wanted to bring out the soul of the princess in this painting’ or something? I’m not very good with subjective stuff like that, I just used magic to paint a picture of the princess and then stylized it in a colorful way with patterns that reminds me of the art nouveau style.

They react to my answer with silence and furrowed brows, until the brown haired man seemed to come to a realization. “I see! You used the colors surrounding the princess to bring out the flowery characteristics of her beauty.” He nods to himself while stroking his beard.

Now that I look again, the way the colors surround her does remind me of a flower- Wait a moment! I’m the one who made the painting!

“Oh! In this one she gives off a brooding feeling, like she’s getting ready for war.” No, she’s just looking down and there’s more shadows.

“Even I didn’t know I could look like that until he showed it to me.” Says the princess. “While most painters have trouble depicting reality, Lance goes beyond and carves parts of reality away to give focus to an emotion.”

I swear, I just used more black paint, that’s all.

“Speaking of carving, I heard you can also make sculptures and pottery?” The lady with the big nose asks.

“Yeah, I used to make various things to practice mana control, besides, it can be fun.” I answer.

“Did you ever make anything as big as the stained glass windows?”

“Yeah, all the time. I used to build small forts and big towers over several weeks.”

“What?! Where?!” Why is she so excited?

“Back home on the north, they were all demolished, though. Only a few bridges remained.”

“Demolished?! Was it the barbarians?!”

“Calm down!” I’m right here, no need for shouting. “I demolished them myself, they were getting in the way of the army’s work.”

“Oh… Have you built anything like that around here?”

“Aside from the train, I’m currently working on the- mhrmm” The princess puts her hand on my mouth. Rude!

“That one is confidential for now.” She says.

“Confidential? How do you plan to hide something like that?” I’m not going to make a camouflaged castle… Or am I?

“It’s only for now, don’t worry.” Oh, ok.

These higher-ups are so fussy about everything. “Anyway, on the scale of the windows, I think there’s only the train for now...” I continue to explain about the train.

These guys are a little annoying, but they’re not that bad a company, I’m feeling a little bad for not remembering their names.

Only a little though.

~~

After that break I went on to make ships and riverboats. The princess is mad that I didn’t start on the castle right away, but I need the ships to build the foundations for the castle… And I might as well make riverboats while I’m at it.

While I was working on that, I was informed that I don’t need to hide my bloodline anymore, since the people who need to know have been informed and measures have been taken in case of trouble.

I would wonder about what kind of trouble there could be, but I’d rather not stress myself with that and just be glad that something that could go wrong, didn’t go wrong. Take that, Murphy.

Some people would give surprised reactions when they see me now, but since I’m in the palace, most people here were in the know. Sadly, the number of guards that follow me everywhere I go has pretty much tripled. Oh damn, that guy is a royal knight.

I have a royal knight as a guard now… Does this change anything? I don’t think so.

Whatever, let’s remember his name. “Hello, sir. I’ll be relying on your protection from now on, can you tell me your name?”

“... Sir Lance, we’ve met before, my name is Mattias” Oh fuck. I quickly look around, I hope Athena didn’t hear that.

She heard it.

And she made sure I heard her scolding after that.

Fuck off, Murphy.

~Time skip~

Construction of the foundation for the castle started. I’m using ships to pick up sand/dirt from other parts of the bay’s underwater floor, and piling it up on the future location of the island.

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

Well, I say ‘I’m’ but it’s mostly the queen’s people using the stuff I made. When it comes to me, I’m underwater with my golems making a stone wall surrounding the initial dirt mound. This wall will be enchanted and then surrounded by more dirt. This enchanted wall will help making the foundation more solid and keep it from being eroded by waves over time.

This wall will also serve as the main protection against underground and underwater attacks, so I’ll need to prepare some countermeasures for that kind of thing as well. And, although I didn’t write it down in any of the plans, I’ll personally dig a secret tunnel that will go underground, across the bay, and back to the surface on land.

I’m using a diving suit, the type that kind of reminds you of an astronaut, to oversee the golems.

There’s no need to worry about dangerous monsters here, since everything in this bay was overhunted (overfished?) to hell and back... But being underwater is still creepy, so I have a golem keeping watch with detection spells.

That’s another thing I made, golems with detection spells, I didn’t make many because the princess found out and told me to get back to working on the castle. But I think these will help with security in places without many sorcerers. The queen has already recognized the value of mana cores and allowed some of the more trusted sorcerers to learn how to make those.

I’m excited to see what they will make.

The islands will be built as one big island, but will have a large moat filled with seawater separating the island in an outside layer and an inside layer, the outside layer will have an entrance towards the inside of the bay, that’s the main entrance and the place where we’ll build a bridge.

If you haven’t realized yet, the capital’s bay is huge, even when this is done, there will still be plenty of space for ships. And the center of the future bridge can be raised to allow for bigger ships to move freely and block the entrance to the castle at the same time.

Mother will be visiting the capital soon. She will be using magic cars to get to Zaderi (port town I’ve been to once), and from there, take one of the new ships to come here, so it won’t take that long. I hope the train is up and running by the time she goes back.

I think I’m already pretty good with the sword and body strengthening, but I have been delayed somewhat due to work. I hope mother doesn’t mind it.

~~

“Hmm... I guess this is good enough for a ten year old.” Says my unimpressed mother. She just checked how good I was with the sword. “But you rely too much on magic.” Yeah, duh, I’m a ten years old kid fighting an adult, of course I rely on magic. That’s like complaining a man hunting a bear relies too much on his spear, even if it’s true, he would be an idiot if he didn’t.

Like one would expect, I can easily surpass people who can’t use magic, but when it comes to those with it, I will always be at a disadvantage since I’m smaller. But thinking back to the barbarian Athena killed when she was ten, the current me should be able to kill him too.

“So, can I skip sword lessons for a whil-” ““No!”” Both Athena and mother interrupt me.

Damn. I like the sword, but I dislike dividing my time between the castle and the sword like I am now.

“Son, I’ve let you run wild since young because I didn’t want to stifle your potential, but now you’re ten years old, you aren’t a child anymore. You need to work on your discipline and composure.” Says mom while Athena nods. “No skipping sword lessons, no forgetting people’s names.”

I’ve been snitched on!

~Time skip~

The castle is almost done and I’m twelve years old. This construction speed might seem fast for a castle of this size but it could have been faster if those sorcerers the queen sent took their job seriously and read the instructions properly, the stuck up bastards.

All that’s left is to enchant the whole thing and the weapons, so mages and sorcerers from all over the country are being gathered so that I can use their mana.

The outer layer and the inner layer are going to be enchanted separately. The outer one will be a normal enchantment, but the inner one will have a mana core to allow it to have stronger enchantments.

The weapons are going to be of multiple types. I made enchanted ballistae since that’s what this country’s military is the most used to, but I also made some golem-like magic turrets to guard various parts of the castle, including the places no knight would want to be stationed in, like the sewer system and the basement.

But the real star of the show is the magic cannon. It doesn’t use gunpowder, because why would it? I only know how to make black powder (sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter, not sure of the amounts). But it uses the principles of an actual gun, as in, using extreme pressure in a confined space to push a projectile forward and using grooves to give it a spin in order to stabilize its flight.

This baby is what gave me the most trouble during this whole time. I needed to experiment a lot to decide on the projectile material, weight, size, shape, rotation, flight speed and so on.

I made multiple types of ammo too. There’s the solid and pointy one I just called AP for armor penetration, then you have the one with a concave point that is meant to break on impact, the hollow point or HP. I’m not sure how effective this kind will be in practice, but I imagine it should help spread out damage on lightly armored targets.

But there’s no way I’d leave it at that, is there? I turned a few rounds into mana cores and had them self-destruct on impact, resulting in the magic version of high explosive rounds, HE. And for those with enough armor to stop the AP one, I made a round with shaped charges as inspiration that concentrates the explosion of a HE round into a single point, this one was just SC for shaped charge.

Together with an HI round for high incendiary and the mana disruption round, MD, for big monsters and magic barriers, we have AP, HP, HE, SC, HI and MD. Now the problem is that few people can make any round other than AP and HP, but that’s not for me to worry.

But if you think I’d be done with just raw power you are gravely mistaken, the cannon itself has three mana cores in three different parts of it that serve three different functions.

You have the barrel core, that is responsible for shooting, the base core that is responsible for moving the barrel in reaction to the high recoil and holding the other two in place.

And the targeting system. Yes, you heard me right, I made a goddamn targeting system. The gunner uses it to mark a target and the system will compensate for the distance, wind speed, target movement and even water refraction to tell the gunner where he should aim at.

The only way to dodge is to move fast and change directions quickly, but anything that can do that shouldn’t be too heavy and you wouldn’t need a goddamn cannon to destroy, the magic turrets should be enough. And even then, the gunner can turn off certain aspects of the targeting system, like compensation for target movement, and aim by himself.

In case of flying enemies, I made magic turrets specialized for that, and if they are slow enough the cannons will work on them just fine.

To enchant the place using the mana of the many mages and sorcerers I had to make a new device, this one is a big platform with an altar-like protrusion in the center, that’s where I’ll stand on.

“Thank you for coming everyone!” I speak to the small crowd. “I’m Lance Chevalier and I’ll be the one using your mana. Just walk into the platform orderly, push most of your mana in it through your feet and walk away in that direction.” I explain.

They follow my instructions and I begin the large scale enchantments. Controlling so much mana is a little hard, but since the consumption keeps up with the supply, it’s not that bad and I get used to it quickly. The mana usage isn’t very efficient due to the huge area I’m spreading it out on, but that’s the whole point of using so many people, so it’s cool.

~~

It takes two hours of enchantment for me to be done, making the castle’s mana core took a lot of effort, only ten of my mana batteri- err, voluntary helpers still haven’t taken part.

There, now the castle is done. Now I only have to finish the bridge, set up the garden, and make every single furniture, carpet, curtain and banner… whose idea was it to have me- oh right, it was my idea, never mind.

Maybe mother is right and I do need more discipline, huh?

*Crash!* *Thump thump thump thump* *Boom!*

Oh, that? That’s just the classic ‘ambush when the country’s strongest are weakened’ being stopped by the barriers I set up earlier and being annihilated by the golems and magic turrets I left nearby. There’s also a group of royal knights left aside for just this kind of thing, but they are inside the barrier and making sure there is no enemy amongst the ones inside.

“Calm down, everyone. We were prepared for this kind of thing.” I address the ones inside. Their shoulders relax a little, but they still keep alert.

I thought anyone who would try this kind of thing would be perceptive enough to see the defenses and smart enough call off the attack, but I guess I was wrong.

Oh, right, we need captives to interrogate. I command the golems to capture the one with the fanciest clothes alive. Then I charge up in mental power and start scanning the minds of everyone inside the barrier.

I didn’t even need to get a headache. I found one amongst the ten guys that still had mana. I cast a disruption bolt while shouting “Capture that man!”

The ones near him take advantage of my disruption bolt and knock him out.

When I’m going to start checking out the ones without mana, someone charges at me with a sword, not very smart, honestly. The royal knights guarding me still have all their mana and beat him down with just their fists without me needing to do anything.

Why can’t people just play nice? I doubt these two and their families were treated badly before this.

Whatever, I’ll let the royal family worry about this mess. I have a bridge to build.

I’ll ask for the cannibal strengthening technique when this is done, if they refuse I’ll never listen to their demands again.