I behaved like I was a baby then I was a toddler. I don't know how, but I was much happier. I decided it was because of hormones in a toddler's body. I just played with stuff and was interested in minute details. My mother acted overprotective manner, always preferring to care for me herself. Not letting nannies do the bulk of childcare work. I was a lonely toddler, but one day, I found a friend who was slightly older than me; his name was Mike. We played together. One day my mother saw me playing with Mike. She said to me, "Son, I am sorry, but he is your brother, and one day you need to fight with him. You cannot be friends." I cried and told my mom, "I don't wanna fight; I wanna be friends."

I understand where my mother came from; she wanted to protect me, but the idea of killing one's own brother is a terrible thing. In the harem, there were not many men. The men there were eunuchs. Despite our mothers, Mike and I played together whenever we found each other. Also, I had sisters, and when it came to them, I had no problem playing with them because they couldn't ascent to the throne. So we didn't need to kill them.

Years go by like this, and I thought of learning to read early to gain an advantage. Still, I decided otherwise because I chose not to show any unnatural behavior. I didn't want to be seen as some sort of genius or a freak.

When I was five, they started to teach me how to read and other lessons. I intentionally showed no extraordinary progress. Within the first week, I learned how to read but pretended I didn't learn. I decided if I was going to survive, I needed to be underestimated. The best way of doing this is by presenting myself as a somewhat dumb person. So I pretended I didn't get the lessons. But secretly started to read in my own time in my room. I began to read primarily the history of the Draken empire.

Whatever I could find, I read. As far as my tutors are concerned, I was a dense kid. But behind their backs, I read. I especially read fighting manuals. I needed to fight well.

In the library librarian noticed me taking books. And said to me."My prince, you certainly like to read." I told her, "I hope you keep this fact to yourself." She said, "Your secret is safe with me, my prince." I didn't have any power to force her. I hoped she would keep her word.

Years went by when I was seven lessons of fighting began. Unlike academic lessons, I didn't intend to show myself to be dense in fighting.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Fighting lessons were done outside, and our teachers were not eunuchs. My teacher's name was Frank; he was a weapon master who knew to use every weapon. He didn't care I was a prince and lessons were hard. He forced me physically to do hard things. But I was glad. The last thing I wanted to lose was my life because I was bad at fighting. Frank didn't hesitate to give me bruises while we were sparing. He said, "You need to be better, kido." I didn't complain and tried to do whatever he said.

While sparing, I figured out what in fighting manuals was working and what did not work.

A few weeks after the fighting lessons, horse riding lessons had begun. I really liked riding horses. You need to have a rhythm with the horse when horse riding I was good at it.

Then came archery lessons. I intended to be a good fighter, but more importantly, I wanted to survive, so I tried my best to be good at archery too.

When I noticed Mike and I were training close by, I said to him, "Brother, we should try our fighting against each other." He smiled and said, "Brother, you will lose badly."

Both of us were seven years old, and we took our wooden swords and started testing each other. I saw several of his openings for an attack, but I stayed put. As I guessed, I was better than him because I have much more book experience, and those fighting manuals brought me some advantages.

Finally, he made a massive mistake, and I took advantage of it. He fell to the ground and said, "You are good; how can this happen? I have got trained for two months more than you do. Is your teacher better?" I said, "I don't know; maybe it was just luck." Mike gets angrier, to my understanding behavior. And said, "Don't mock me with your fake modesty. I know when I lose." He was pissed off, and he clearly intended to train much harder to beat me. I welcomed this rivalry.

Every week we trained, we met up, and fought against each other. Every week he got massively better. Every week I trained hard not to let my superiority get shrunk.

Our teachers noticed our rivalry, but as far as they were concerned, this was good for them and good for us, so they didn't interfere. Our mothers were in the palace, away from us, to meddle in our rivalry.

Years passed like this I never allowed Mike to catch up to me. But he tried hard. To not caught up, I tried hard too.

I was very good at horse riding, sword fighting, and archery when I was ten.

Then something weird happened. We rarely see the emperor, but he called Mike and Me. He said, "I have a guest from Begonia kingdom. King's son Prince Edward is here, and he is your age. I want to see my sons be better than a hostage."

He wanted to humiliate a hostage, how delightful dad, rubbing on the nose are we. He said, "Which one of you is better." Mike took a step forward and said, "I am a father." I didn't see any reason to correct him. If the Edvard kid was somehow better than us, he would be humiliated. But if he was, as I guessed, much worse than us, he would only bully a hostage, and I didn't intend to be a bully.