It was coming up to the end of the term and Fred was walking through the corridors when Rudy was running past towards the playground. “Rudy, wait up, what’s happening?”

“O Fred, it’s those pricks again from greater Normandy.”

Fred decided to follow Rudy to the playground, and when they got there, they saw Ronald, the second oldest of their group, holding his wrist as if it was injured while Jackson was standing in front while a few meters in front was Percy and his gang.

“What happened?” Fred asked Toby at the back.

“Percy started a fight and hurt Ronald,”

“Do none of you wants to challenge me?” Percy shouted over with chuckles from his lackeys

“Are we not doing anything about him?” Fred asked again.

“Well, he is stronger and has more levels”

“We have the numbers advantage,” some of the group who were late to arrive as well were overhearing Fred’s conversation to get updated too.

“But he’s challenging us we cant gang up on just him.”

“Fuck that, that’s playing on their terms, we will just drag his group into the mess.” “With me people” Fred shouted, encouraging the younger, hotblooded kids who were listening and ran over towards Percy, Rudy and Delphine and a few of the younger kids decided to follow a few seconds after,

“You’re challenging me, Basterd” Percy laughed at Fred’s charge, but Fred ran past him to the side and punched the fat kid, who had tried to speak to him before, right in the face dropping him, Rudy and Delphine copied Fred, running past Percy and attacking some of the kids their age as well, and this became a domino effect for the tri-houses, giving Jackson and a few older kids a chance to team up on Percy, who was above their levels. And so, a quarter of the playground turned into a massive brawl,

The Greater Normandy houses had been suppressing the tri-houses since the start of the year as while they had less member’s they were all older and therefore had better quality members compared to the Tri-houses, and they used this to massive effect by only challenging single duels and fights. But Fred thought it was stupid to play at the enemy’s advantage.

The Tri-houses seemed to have built up a lot of frustration over the 3 months and had let loose from this situation, and they were thoroughly beating Greater Normandy. This had gone way past Percy’s expectation and he was starting to panic but he couldn’t run as he was being pinned down and beaten by 3 people. This went on for a good 5 minutes while a massive crowd of the other houses and merchant kids were watching with great interest. Unfortunately, the entertainment was cut short as a few teacher-knights came in and broke them up.

While both sides took injuries, Greater Normandy looked a lot worse off, indicating a clear winner. “What is the meaning of this,” one of the knights shouted.

Percy pointed at Fred “He started it, he ran over and caused the rest of those goons to charge at us.”

The knight looked at Fred “Well?”

“It was a team-building exercise, sir” this caused the crowd to chuckle, even gaining a few smirks from the Knights colleagues.

“Do you think this is a joke?”

“Technically he’s not lying sir,” this time Jackson spoke up, and the rest of the group Straightened up as if to prepare to defend their group’s actions, Fred felt slight emotional at them sticking up for him.

Seeing this the knight decided to send the kids to the principal’s office for punishment and to defuse the situation.

There were 30 kids in the incident, and they wouldn’t be able to fit all of them in the principal’s office, so they went to one of the unused halls.

While the Principle, Prince Franconia of Albion, attended this meeting, he decided to leave the floor to the Knight, “do you think you can solve your differences through street brawls, you are the future of your houses you need to think of more mature ways to solve your conflicts.”

Fred put his hand up at this point. “Yes,” the knight allowed him to speak.

“So, do you want us to use Swords, spears and magic next time? And try and kill our enemies”

“What?”

“My family resolves border conflicts with the elves with Armed soldiers, I’m sure their families do similar things as well.” The kids all nodded in agreement, most with smirks on their faces, they could see what he was trying to do.

“No that’s not what I mean,”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“I mean learn to ignore it, if the other side is harassing you, don’t retaliate.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard”

“Excuse me?!”

“If we ignore their harassment, or not retaliate. It’s telling them that there won’t be any consequences for their harassment, which means they will do it more, this will cause us to become vindictive and eventually, we will, not if, will snap from the pressure and at that time shit will become ugly. And this applies to them too if we harass them. Is that what you want?”

“No, I,” the knight started to stutter, he was shocked for a 4-year-old to come out with such astounding philosophy.

“Then wouldn’t you agree it would be better to resolve our differences as soon as possible, with like, I don’t know, a massive Brawl.” The room started laughing at this point.

“Alright kids, Sir Aston,” the dean stepped in this time “I would have to agree with this young man, although, I believe that the best way for kids to grow and learn their limits is through scuffles I must ask you kids to not go overboard, we don’t want anybody to get hurt.”

“You may all go now.”

After the kids and the knight left, the dean turned to his aid, “keep an eye on that kid, he seems smarter than his age suggests.”

“I have been my lord, that kid is lady Isabella’s son, he’s the one the nobles claimed to have invented the Red Cherry Wine.”

“I see, now I’m even more interested in him.”

After the kids went outside, all of the Tri-house thanked him for getting them out of trouble and as well as allowing them to release their grievances. Then most of them started going their separate ways

“Seems like the Prince is a more relaxed dean than I thought, and he supports roughhousing, which is good.” He was monologing to himself but Rudy and Delphine, and a few others who were walking with them overheard.

“What’s Roughhousing”

Fred stopped and looked Rudy in the eye “Rudy, how strong are you”

“Well, my stats say…”

“No, I’m not asking your stats how strong you are, I’m asking you, how strong are you.”

“Emm… I don’t know, I only go off my stats,”

“Ok, what is your power stat?”

“Power stat?”

Fred had forgotten that the wording would be different for natives of this world. “Your strength stat.”

“It’s 1.04”

“What does that mean?”

“Err… I don’t get you”

“Humans are not statistical animals we don’t know what our true strength is looking at just numbers.”

“We aren’t animals”

“Forget it, you probably haven’t heard of evolution theory, look the point is without a visual indicator, you don’t know how strong you are. You need to compare yourself with something else or someone else.”

“Like fighting?” Delphine responded.

“Exactly, Roughhousing is to fight the world see how it retaliates against you, allowing you to find your place in it. Hence kids are more prone to getting into scuffles as their subconscious needs to find out where they stand. But like the Knight, some adults don’t understand that. But the principle does.”

“I see, so we should get into more fights to see where we stand.”

“Yeah, pretty much, and it would also help you improve with controlling and mastering your strength.”

“Cool”

___

In the last week of November, the kids had the end of term exams as a way to see their improvements, Fred had aced the language class and Maths class, but as he was already ahead of the class in maths more so than language, he had taken year 3’s exam. But he outshone in combat and fitness classes, he didn’t think it was fair for him to participate in these, but his mother told him to keep his race a secret, so he didn’t have an excuse to not participate.

As well he kept up to date with his bodily growth, the tumours on his oesophagus and heart had doubled in size, but they were still tiny, were as he had now two new tumours just under his brain halves, connected to the Brain Stem. His Gene-seed had two mini gene seeds under it about half the size of the main ones, he had received a notification that they had completed growing and was ready to be transplanted. As well as the message stating no new Gene-seeds will grow until they have been removed.

He had reached level 5 and had gained an affinity in fire at 1% with a gene bonus of 20%, while the Lightning bonus was now 10%

___

It was the end of November, which means the winter break. And kids were going home for 6 weeks. Schools were shorter in this world as a lot of learning would be in the form of running their estate and how it has been run so far, which is too specific for a school to teach, although in later years at the school they would learn about common malpractices and pitfalls in history that went wrong as a form of guide for the students.

Rudy, Delphine, and Fred headed back to their Counts. Many of the family were headed to Poilutonne as well, they would be boarding a ship there to head back to the mainland’s and so a convoy was set up to go there in one go.

“So, your dad was given the count next to us then” Fred was confused about this as George had said the family was planning to hand it to him.

“Well not given, nobody in the family wants it as they see it as an exile, so it’s on a rotation every 4 years, Dad has a county on the mainland that our mothers are running.”

“O right, how long you got left”

“Well normally dad’s term would be up in 3 years, and it would be passed to your father, but due to the whole Marriage law, it’s tough for him to be that close with your mother so close, it would probably cause the ire of the king,”

“So, what’s happening now?”

“Well officially my father stays as he is the bloodline of the family, but our dad will be swapping for our mothers, that way we can stay over here for school and our moms can spend time with us.”

“What’s your father’s thoughts or the houses thoughts on the copper mine there?”

“Well copper isn’t sought after, it’s not as good as iron and steel weapons, so they don’t have any plans to invest in it. Why, are you after it?”

“Yeah, I have some ideas at the moment, but they are in the drawing phase, I’d probably need to get some copper first to test first before I decide on anything.”

“What are you making,” Rudy asked.

Fred gestured them to come close to whisper, “It’s a secret”

He received disappointing sighs from both of them and just chuckled.

“Hey, can we come over sometime during the holiday?” Rudy asked

“Yeah, sure.” Fred responded, “We have a small house party on the last day of the year, why don’t you come over then.”

“House party for the end of the year?”

“Yeah, it’s something we started a few years ago, we would decorate the house and celebrate the end of the year” they didn’t have Christmas in this world, and except for the king’s birthday, the king’s coronation, or the harvest festival, they didn’t celebrate other events, but Fred felt that this made winter depressing, so he suggested it to his mother as something to look forward to over the winter period. Isabella was all too happy to do it.

“Cool,” “Yeah” this seemed to brighten the two.

___

Two more days had passed, and Fred was watching the scenery when he suddenly noticed something. He leapt off the Carriage and onto the back of a knight next to it.

The knight was startled but was a professional so stayed moving “sorry about that, Good sir, can you take me over to that flower Field, I found something I’m after, I just didn’t want to stop the convoy for it?”

“Sure.” After the knight conveyed it with his colleagues he separated from the convoy and headed for the field.

Fred got off the Horse and inspected the plants, he even picked one and tasted it. The knight was confused about this antic but didn’t question him. the field was an assortment of flowers, but he was only after 3 of them, he had found genus ephedra and Catha edulis as well as a poppy variant, the problem was these had mana in them, so he had to do some tests, but if the tests come back successful this would be a large step towards the Esper program.

He had gathered all he could find and fit them into 3 sacks, he had a habit of keeping a lot of empty sacks in case he found something that interested him, on him currently was about 5 more, and he had ten in his suitcase on the carriage.

The knight thought the kid was just picking flowers for a girl but was confused when Fred picked the ones that didn’t look as good as other options, but it seemed he was after specific plants as he collected Multiple copies of the same 3 plants. And then stuffed them into sacks.

Fred turned back to the knight, and hopped on the horse, thanks to his stats he was already a lot stronger than a kid his age from his old world. “Thanks, we can return now.”

They rode back to the convoy and Fred hopped back into his carriage.

“Where’d you go, Fred?” Delphine asked.

“Flower picking.” This got strange glances from the pair.

“Flower picking?” Rudy commented.

“Yeah, I study herblore and I recognised the plants from an encyclopaedia I’ve read.”

“O” this had made more sense to the two.

“What are you going to use the plants for?”

“One of the other books I have is ‘my first potion’ it’s a list of 50 of the easiest potions to do to give good exp for lower levels.”

“That’s cool, I should look out for books like that,” Delphine commented.

“What do you plan on studying?”

“I got my first two levels in Herblore. I wanted to go into perfume and then onto buff and de-buff potions that target multiple people.”

“Ah, AOE potions”

“AOE?” Delphine tilted her head to the side in confusion.

“Area of effect, it affects anyone in a certain range of an area, it’s great against numbers”

“Yes, that’s exactly it. AOE.” She muttered the last part, probably trying to remember the term.

“What about you Rudy?”

“I was thinking enchantments, I wanna wear enchanted armour into battle.”

“Enchantments?” Fred hadn’t read much about enchantments, only heard it come up in conversations before, although he could probably guess from stories he’s read before.

“Yeah, there are two common types, the first one’s can give boosts to your stat points when activated for a short duration, or the second one can form shields in specific elements of your choosing, or a neutral element shield, it’s less protective but doesn’t have a neutralising element.”

Fred had a lot to think about his future, ‘maybe I can make a storm shield or something to that effect.

“Battlefield wise what are your goals?”

“I’m planning to go down the knight profession and head towards being a Paladin-Griffin rider,” Rudy responded.

“What about you, Delphine. What combat role are you heading for?”

“Yes, I want to be a support mage cavalier. They act as magic support for Knight units. Then I want to advance to Pegasus sorceress. What about you?”

Fred was asking them as he was thinking of offering them gene-seeds at the moment “I’m undecided yet. I was thinking either Knight or heavy shock infantry.”

“Heavy shock infantry, what’s that?”

“It would an infantry unit as armoured as a knight with the role of punching through a battle line from the front, but if I am to create it, I might have to be one myself to make sure the concept works.”

“Wouldn’t that be costly on iron though?”

“I can’t go into details yet, but that might not be a problem soon,” Fred said with a wink.