The group arrived at Ludnus just before noon and had pulled up to a 3-story villa, the ground floor was stone but the next 2 were wood, with whitewashed walls made of some unknown material.

“This is where we will be staying, while you attend school” Jared, a trainee butler under mom’s butler was accompanying us to act as our guardian. This was a house the De Ansul, family-owned but was used for generations of kids from the 3 houses, as boarding for school. “your rooms are situated on the 3rd floor, comprising of 4 rooms, 1 for each of you and 1 for your maids, there are 2 extra activity rooms on the second floor while the lounge and dining room on the ground, there is a two-story attached house at the back, the second floor is where myself the servants and knights will sleep, the ground floor is the kitchen and pantry, we have a small courtyard in the back, and a basement split into 2 rooms, a second pantry and a training room. The side of the house is the stables enough for 4 horses and a carriage.”, “any questions?”

“Nope,” the 3 shook their heads,

“Great go settle down into your rooms and I will have lunch prepared.”

“Whoever gets there first gets to choose,” Rudy shouted while running up the stairs

Fred and Delphine just walked up casually. And when they reached the top, Fred saw a smug-looking Rudy, standing at the front of the door of one of the rooms “Ha I’m here first, so I’ve chosen this one as it’s the biggest.”

Delphine just looked annoyed at his antics and tutted, Fred walked up to Rudy, then karate chopped his shoulder, causing Rudy to drop, then walked over his twitching body, “oo this room looks unoccupied, ill take this one.” Causing Delphine to giggle and went to open the other two rooms to choose before Rudy recovered,

“Sally put my suitcase in this one and hold the fort,” Delphine said and walked back to the duo to watch the antics.

“Yes, my lady”

Rudy recovered and cried “that’s not fair, I said first one up gets to choose, and I chose this one,”

Fred looked at Rudy, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

“You think just cause you are a little stronger than me that you can decide what happens, anyway, I’m going to tell if you don’t give me this room, I bet I could win in a spar, you have only used dirty sneak attacks.”

Fred walked up to Rudy and looked him in the eye, causing Rudy to quieten down, “Let me tell you about the harsh reality, Violence is the supreme authority, from which all other authorities are derived,” Fred let this sink into Rudy before continuing, “Many people will tell you that it’s something else, like due process, or the law, or a gentleman’s agreement, but each of these ideal forms of authority is enforced by the threat of violence.”, “There is no ideal justice for you unless you can back it up, and at most the people downstairs can offer, is duel to settle this matter.”

“Yeah right, I’ll see about that,” Rudy responded and went downstairs

“Is that true, I thought the king was the Supreme authority?”

“Does he not have a monopoly on violence, also, I heard that he struggles to pass laws without the duchies approval, if the duchies don’t have an offer of violence how do they have so much ‘say’ in the courts.”

Delphine pondered it for a bit then looked enlightened. “But if that’s the case, can’t we do what we want in our duchies then, Father always said we have to act in moderation with our people.”

“The people offer violence in the form of rebellion and riots; therefore, we have to offer them a preferable option to rioting, the guards and soldiers are a trained form of violence, we offer them pay and benefits and they lend us their ability to enact violence. But if we do not act responsibly with our accumulated power of violence then our neighbours can use it against us in the form of court sanctions or cause for war.”

Delphine seemed to take this all in without much difficulty, ‘Is her intelligence a factor of noble education or the system, she looks only 4-5 maybe.’

“Are you two twins?”

“No”

“How are you two in the same year, and look so much alike?”

“My mom and his mom are twins”

“Lucky bastard,” Fred mumbled

“Who’s a lucky bastard?”

“O no one, never mind”

‘Is polygamy a thing in this world? well in my previous world Christianity was the driving force in the west to try and mitigate that, but it was still quite common for people to have Mistresses in the medieval period, also if their moms are twins, and twins come from the same egg are Delphine and Rudy considered full siblings, or maybe ¾ siblings’

“Hey, Fred,” Delphine snapped Fred out of his random thoughts “are you sure that this room situation would be resolved in a duel and not something else,”

“What are the rules for deciding rooms?”

“First one up the stairs”

“Who said that, Butler Jared?”

“No Rudy, o I see, you didn’t agree to his proposal, but why would it result in a duel?”

“Exactly, however about the duel, I’ll bet you a gold coin I’m right.” Fred had a feeling he would get on with Delphine, she seemed to be able to carry herself well with discussions, especially for a kid.

They then heard footsteps coming up the stairs. “Ok you’re on,” Delphine responded. As 3 people were coming upstairs, she thought they would just resolve it peacefully.

Jared said “Rudy told me you took his room” Rudy and one of the knights were behind Jared, the knight was out of armour, but kept a sword around the waist, in case of emergency. And Rudy was just smiling smugly.

“The room wasn’t occupied when I walked in”

“Rudy said he got there first.”

“What does that mean?”

“First up the stairs gets to choose.”

“When did you say that?”

“I did…n’t it was…”

It seems Javed was stumped. The knight chimed in to resolve the situation. “How about a duel, the two can spar for the room.”

Delphine started rummaging through her purse and picked out a gold coin and handed it to Fred,

“Pleasure doing business with you.” Fred thanked.

Delphine had a feeling she would lose the bet when Fred mentioned it, but it was 1 gold coin and a bit of fun so she went with it.

Jared’s face went dark. “What was that about,”

“We betted on what method you would use to resolve this”

The knight just chuckled at this, while Rudy looked ashen, he might have claimed Fred used sneak attacks to protect his pride, but he wasn’t a fool. They had discussed on the way and Fred was level 4 whereas he was level 3, but Fred had told him that all of his exp came from exercise and skills, which gave him a lot more stat points compared to Rudy who mostly levelled up through killing subdued monsters that his dad helped him with, he still trained but not to the extent of Fred.

They moved to the back yard and the knight handed each a helmet and a wooden sword. “The first one to be knocked over loses, begin”

Rudy came on the offensive first, and Fred was parrying while stepping backwards. Rudy got confident seeing this as he was swinging his sword again and again as he stepped forwards to chase, it carried on for ten seconds, Rudy would swing his sword down from left to right then down right to left. Each swing Fred would knock his sword away as he stepped back. Then on one of the parries, instead of Fred Stepping backwards he stepped forwards into the arms range of Rudy, this meant that he couldn’t get a good swing in as the sword would overextend. At this time Fred grabbed Rudy’s Shirt with his open hand and pushed him back, landing flat on his butt.

“Winner Frederick” the knight shouted.

Rudy couldn’t say anything, he had the advantage all the time and had overextended. He was mulling it over as he sat there looking down. Then a shadow covered him, when he looked up it was Fred with his arm out to help him up. Rudy had a feeling that he could learn a lot from sparing with Fred, and so took the hand, to which Fred pulled him up.

‘Maybe I was wrong about Rudy,’ Fred had formed an impression of Rudy as an arrogant character, that wouldn’t admit his faults, but after this, Fred thought better of him, and maybe they can get along.

“Alright now that is settled Dinner is done,” Javed commented, both he and the knight was impressed by the show of sportsmanship by the two.

___

A few days later, it was the first day of school

School started at 08:00 so they got in the carriage at 7:30, it would have been later if Fred got his say, “Ugg, I need a monster, I don’t do mornings”

“Monster? How would getting a monster help with mornings?” Delphine, replied

“Killing monsters pumps you up, that’s why,” Rudy commented.

“Err… yeah let’s go with what Rudy said,”, ‘I need to find coffee in this world, I can’t be dealing with this.’

According to Rudy the principal of this school is the kings younger brother, who is also the duke of the city, he was a scholar throughout his life and didn’t want to challenge his brother for the thrown or cause instability for him, so when the king ascended, he moved over to the colony and opened up what is now the most prestigious academy in the kingdom, He opened it here instead of the capital as he believed that children should not be put under the pressure of capital politics, something all the duchies had agreed with him on as it was very easy for their young to be targeted for schemes and retaliations, so now only the university remains in the capital as a way of introducing the new adults to the court politics.

The King was very close with his brother and happy that he didn’t have to fight him for the crown, so he named his Brother Prince of Albion.

They had arrived at the gate of the school in just 10 minutes and Fred was impressed by the size. They pulled up to the entrance and got out, “Hey toby,” Rudy called out to a boy waiting by the entrance, about 3 years older than Fred,

“Hi Rudy, Delphine, ah you must be Isabella’s son, Fred was it.”

“Yes, Hello”

“Fred this is Toby, his father is your mother’s elder brother.”

“Sorry Toby, I haven’t been introduced to many people from the two families.”

“Not to worry, shall we go in I’ll bring you to meet the rest.”

They headed in through the doors, and down the large corridor, past a grand set of stairs on the right leading up and then turned left into a large hall where a lot of kids were gathered. They headed straight for a group of about 12, all different years between 4 and 10. Later years were separated into a different school. “Hey guys”

“Hey, Toby,”

“Some of you may know Rudy and Delphine, and this one is Fred, Isabella’s Son.”

They all shared greetings. Then the group heard an obnoxious voice from behind Fred.

“This school must be going downhill if they are letting bastards in”

Fred turned around to see who it is.

“What do you want Percy”, the oldest of Fred’s group, Jackson spoke up.

“What, I was just wondering why they let someone like him in” Fred perceived Percy to be 9-10

This time Fred spoke up “Maybe they were trying to placate someone’s inferiority complex”

This got a laugh from Fred’s Group, but Percy went beat red. “Listen you little shit.

“I don’t want to.” Even more, snickers could be heard from behind Fred.

This time a little fat kid spoke up, “How dare you, do you know who his father is?”

“Wow, you’re an actual person, sorry I mistook you for background decoration.” Fred had spoken with a straight face through this whole ordeal

At this time a few 3rd party groups had stopped their activity to watch the drama and had also joined in with the laughter.

“You…”

“Leave it” Percy knew to retreat at this time, they can always get back at them later. And so, their group walked off.

“That was great, kid, although this won’t be our last confrontation or was it the first, so keep your guard up.” Jackson praised Fred,

‘Kid… well you are double my age, so I’ll let that slide.’

They heard the bell ring to signal the start of class, “I’ll meet you at lunch” Jackson said and walked off with the majority of the group.

Toby stayed behind, “you know what class you guys are in?”

“1-C” Rudy replied, all 3 of them were in the same class.

“Ah, year 1 classroom C, go up the stairs we came past in the corridor and the left-hand side you will see classes 1-A, B, and finally C”

“Thanks,” the 3 said in unison, and they split to go their separate ways

The first day, in the morning they went on a tour to see all the faculties of the school and then in the afternoon, they went over the school rules, and was finally given their timetables for the year, and was dismissed at the end of the day. The timetable was filled with training and exercises in the morning and education in the afternoon, although for the first year it was language and maths, with Fridays for Geography or History, alternating each week. ‘I guess personal strength in this world is more important than academic achievement compared to my previous world.’

The next day was when official lessons began, although Fred was bored with the maths lessons as he was quite advanced compared to the others in it, and so was allowed to go to the library for self-study. Over the term, he was experimenting with Fire spice and Fire Crystals, his conundrum was that the fire spice would catch on fire as soon as a mana crystal was touching, he needed to be able to have them touching for his plans without going off, at least until they were activated.

He found in an alchemy book that what they called metal salt would do the trick. However, to his surprise, the metal salt was more in line with aluminium powder, although how they mined aluminium powder was a surprise to him with the current technology until he came across the encyclopaedia of Albion: mineral edition. In it, they showed where all of the known mineral’s resources were found or failing that, whose county supplied it. And it turns out this Metal salt, or aluminium powder rip off was found in a basin at the bottom of a metal mountain mana spring, and he found that the fire spice was found in the same way under the fire mountains, theories suggest this is a pile-up of the mountain stones after erosion.

After he got his hands on the powder, it calmed the fire spice down quite well, and not only that it had a metallic and salty taste. Now he just needed to activate it with his mana, now with a mix of ground fire crystal, Metal Salt and Fire Spice, in a ratio of 1/10/100 he could produce fire powder,

“Now for the final result” he had ordered a thin hollow metal ball with a twist cap that could fasten well and a long iron wire about 10 meters, after getting permission, he went to one of the open fields for magic practice. Rudy, Delphine and two other kids from their family wanted to tag along and had managed to pressure Fred into agreeing. Although when they met up with Fred in the morning of the weekend, they were surprised to see Fred giving out shovels to them and helmets. He had 4 balls that he had filled with powder and was attached to a metal wire each.

When they got to the Field Fred had them all dig Fox holes, when they complained he said, “you can leave, I’m not doing the test if you don’t have a fox hole.” It took them 15 minutes and Fred had made his own too. Then they set each ball at their maximum distance while still being connected to the wire leading to Fred’s hole.

“Right, everyone in your holes.” And Fred jumped in his first, while the rest grumblingly followed a pursuit. They had each, following Fred’s example, dug a two-inch trench wall with a narrow slit to allow 1 eye to watch.

“Test 1” Fred Shouted and sent an electric mana pulse into the metal wire, it was the least powerful spell a lightning mage could do but it was enough for Fred’s task, plus he hadn’t started learning any spells.

About 1 second later one of the balls exploded into a cloud of smoke with shrapnel flying into the air. Now everyone understood the Fox holes, and they were glad they made them, “That was brilliant,” Rudy shouted while cheering in the air. That demonstration had got all of the kids excited. And was gossiping until Fred reminded them that they had 3 more.

“Why are you testing so many?” Delphine inquired. And the other kids perked up to listen.

“To make sure what we witnessed was the intended effect and not a result of a malfunction.”

“O” the kids responded and nodded. Then they all hunkered down for the next 3. Overall, it was a massive result, all 4 met expected results and now he knew that he had working gunpowder to go with.