The next morning i went to the army's headquarters again to help with their training. This time they were more organized and simulated a larger variety of combat scenarios, like duels and one versus many and i also built up various obstacles, walkways and rooms without ceilings using hardened dirt to simulate uneven terrain, fighting on bridges or atop castle walls and indoor environments.

Most of the structures were brought down later, but i left a dedicated obstacle course where one needs to run, skip, jump, climb and crawl to get through, since grandma took a liking to it.

After that i went to a tannery (place where leather is tanned) at the edge of town while i used a spell to protect me against the smell. I bought some good quality tanned leather to have something to compare with in case i make my own.

On the next day, before i could think about what to do, mom told me to go with her to meet someone.

"Lance, this is Horace, he's a trustworthy merchant i've known for a long time. From now on, if you want to buy or sell something, you'll go through Horace."

"Pleasure to meet you, Horace, i'm Lance." I greet the bald man with a big mustache.

"The pleasure is all mine, young master Lance, i've heard a lot about you, but the rumors could never prepare me to see how young you are." He says with a smile. "I must thank you, young master, one of the people you healed was my sister-in-law. If you need any favors, i'll be happy to help. I have trade contacts from the southernmost beach to the northernmost mountain, including the capital. If you can find it in this country, i can sell it to you!"

"I believe i'll have various things to sell in the near future, i will probably need your help then."

"I'll look forward to it."

After that short greeting, i listened to mom and Horace as they shared stories. It seems Horace is something like a childhood friend of my father.

In the afternoon i found out Athena was free and kidnapped her to roam around town with me. We went looking for street artists, like bards. Like i expected, many bards really weren't a good match for my musical tastes, but there were a few singing groups that i liked.

Athena likes street food.

The next morning i spent watching blacksmiths. Man, they sure need strong stamina to keep working for so long. I also bought a good quality short sword to have as an example for later.

Finally the time for the play arrived, today too i kidnapped not only Athena but mom too. The play was... pretty good, actually. It had some boring parts and was way longer than it needed to be, but it was fun overall.

The story was about a knight that falls in love with the noble lady he protects, the lady is touched by his selflessness and reciprocates the feelings, but if they want to marry the lady has to inherit the seat of family head so she competes against her evil sister.

Spoiler alert: The knight dies helping the lady win the seat of family head.

Renee cries a lot, but surprisingly, Joey cried too. Is he the classic 'looks tough but is a softie inside'?

The next day we left on our way back home. The bounty hunters from before are still with us, and are still being used as punching bags, but i think they improved their strengthening magic a little.

This time again we have carriages following us, but most of them are carrying soldiers to switch with the castle's current ones. I went back to casting detection spells while in the carriage and reading during rests, i don't read while in the carriage so as to not get sick... Oh wait, i can use magic to deal with that, can't i?... I started reading during the rides too, but i still stopped frequently to cast detection spells.

During the travel i started experimenting with detection spells to detect a variety of things, like ores, rocks, water and even wind currents. But i never forgot to keep casting detect human and detect monster.

The journey was mostly peaceful aside from a small group of bandits running away from the local patrol that we ran into (RIP). During rests i started practicing building structures using dirt.

With that we arrived back home. I planned on lazying around for a whole day, but auntie had other plans. "Now that we're back here, i can finally go back to teaching you history!" Oh no.

"Auntie, have mercy! We just got back!" I beg.

"Absolutely not! First we'll start with a series of tests to see if you're remembering things properly."

"You can't! This is torture!" But she's not listening to me anymore.

~~

The next day after class, i finally start studying enchantment. But mom interrupts me in order for me to build a training facility for the castle.

Sigh, i'll be with you soon, my dear enchantment.

~~

The day AFTER THAT, after class. I ACTUALLY start studying enchantment.

Enchantment has an entirely separate rune system from spellcraft, but many principles are interchangeable so it's not that hard to learn.

We can classify most enchantments as passive or active. Passive ones are in effect at all times and can be used even by non-mages (i.e. a simple durability enchantment), while active ones need the user to input mana into the object in order for the effect to activate (hence the name).

I started practicing using durability enchantments on some simple quarter staffs and went on from that.

~time skip~

It's a little more than a month from when i started learning enchanting. I still need a lot of practice, but i'm already at a point where i can do multiple active enchantments on a single item depending on the material and its size.

I'm already two years old and i'm growing pretty fast, i should be able to step up my physical exercises when i'm three. (currently it's just stretching, walking and climbing people.)

For my purposes, this level of enchanting skill is enough for now, so i move on to construction magic and architecture. I use mainly dirt and magic grown wood. Mom started complaining about my works of art getting in the way, so i had to demolish them and start using an empty plot of land near the castle to practice, what a spoilsport.

When i'm good enough with it, i dig a tunnel deep down into the earth and gather stones, then i use that to practice construction. When i get the gist of building small stone houses i take the next step and gather iron ore.

It's only for personal use, so it's not that hard to find enough.

Finally, i need to build a magic smelter that can grow hot enough to melt iron so as to clean all impurities. The melting point for iron is beyond 1500 °C, and let me tell you, that is HOT.

The book i have on smelting doesn't know how to melt iron completely, it only gets really close to it.

The biggest problem in reaching those temperatures is that the heat from the flames dissipates into the surroundings, so i build a stone (better for enchantments) furnace and give it passive enchantments to resist the heat and keep it inside the smelting chamber. Then, i give it an active enchantment to produce heat on the inside as i input mana.

The furnace works, but it's not very mana efficient, so i build and enchant similar ones again and again while experimenting with what works best. I'm pretty sure the air circulation inside the furnace matters, so i make experiments with plenty of air circulation and with very little.

I also make some spells to measure iron purity, carbon content and material hardness, sadly i couldn't give you actual numbers for the death of me. But i do have a variety of tried and tested blades and armors to compare with.

I keep making experiments with the highest possible iron purity (carbon aside) as my objective together with being able to control the carbon content and with that the hardness (more carbon = harder steel)

At some point, my enchantments had become very efficient and i couldn't decide between a couple styles of furnaces. So i decided to make a set of two furnaces, the first one melts the iron and makes it as pure as possible before it flows through the second one, in it the carbon content is adjusted and the end result is poured outside.

Like this i can make low/mild/high carbon steel as i wish.

I also want to learn how to make alloys, but that's for later. For now, i'm going to learn how to make stuff!

I make a ceramic mold in a vaguely straight 'swordy' shape to start with and wait for the molten steel in it to cool down while i build a second furnace that doesn't actually melt the stuff, only heats it enough to make it moldable. I also prepare water and oil for quenching experiments.

If i'm not mistaken, the quenching changes something about the structure of the steel and whether the cooling is slow or fast changes the end result's brittleness. After quenching one can temper the steel (making spring steel) by heating it in some way i have yet to find out.

I start with my target as the classic straight, double-edged european longsword blade that tapers to a point. I try out ways to use telekinesis to forge the blade, search for the best quenching speed and how to get the tempering just right.

By the time i make a blade just right, i'm 2 years and 8 months old. I blame Auntie for how long it took.

During this time i kept recycling the blades i'm not satisfied with, but three blades ended up pretty well so i set them aside to make proper hilts for them later, for now i just give them an ergonomic wood grip and a simple pommel to adjust the weight distribution. I don't even put a guard on them.

I sharpen and polish them (using magic, obviously, do you have any idea how long it takes to do that normally?), ooh looks pretty.

I bring them to mom to ask her opinion. Well, Joey is the one carrying them.

"Mom, what do you think of these blades?"

"... You made these?" She asks.

"Yep, but the hilt is incomplete and i haven't enchanted them yet, so please don't compare it with your own saber." Not only is her sword enchanted, i'm pretty sure it's made of some kind of alloy.

"I know." She says curtly as she stands up and grabs a normal sword from a closet. "Joseph, hold this." She gives the normal sword to Joey and holds my sword in her own hands. "Don't let go." She says as she hits Joey's sword with her own with what's probably too much strength.

She then searches the sword for damages. "Only a small chip, easy to fix." And then she looks at Joey's sword. "Oh, that dug in pretty deep." She then swings the sword for a little while. "I'd say it's about as good as a lower end enchanted sword. Good job." Success!

After that i assemble a proper hilt, with cross guard and all, and enchant them with a basic durability and sharpness enchantment, and then i make scabbards for them. And they're done! I send them to mom and have her decide what to do with them before i start to experiment with various styles of blades.

Straight or curved, single or double-edged, thrust or cut-specialized, western or eastern style. I keep making blades, recycling the ones that ended up badly or finishing up and enchanting the ones that end up well.

Until i got bored with them and started making other things... Don't look at me like that, i'm not going to make swords for the rest of eternity. What did you expect?

I moved on to other weapons after that, since armor takes too much steel and i don't want to spend that much time digging and mining, staying down there for a long time can't be good to my body.

After i got bored of making weapons aimlessly and started taking orders from the knights that work in the castle, but why does everyone want a fiery sword? That's not mana efficient at all, so i suggested putting a flamethrower spell enchantment on their off-hand gauntlet, but they were having none of it.

Of course, they had to bring the metal themselves.

After i turned three, mom finally allowed me to use body strengthening freely, so i started running and jumping around by myself. I also started experimenting with metal alloys, Horace even gifted me a book on the subject for my birthday, i gave him a fancy porcelain tea set as thanks.

Of course there is absolutely no way i'm going to spend weeks mining for the various metals myself, so i just bought them from Horace.

By this time i was getting bored with forging stuff, so i would sometimes practice combat magic, construction magic, go back to ceramic and glass or try my hands on something new like painting and sculpting.

I'm now four and my main source of entertainment is weeks long construction projects on large scale, like stone towers and small castles, but like usual i have to bring them down so they don't get in the way. I even built some bridges on the nearby rivers, but i had to destroy some of them since mom said 'barbarians could exploit them'.

Excuse me? If they get close to the castle's ballistas, there is no way my bridge will be able to help them, i've seen a few test fires of that thing.

Currently, i'm trying to come up with a way to use windmills and waterwheels to produce some kind of mana fuel or magic energy so that i can make some kind of mana engine, but it's not going very well.

"Congratulations, Lance, you've finished your basic noble education." Says auntie out of nowhere.

"... What does that mean?" I ask, confused.

"Well, it means i'm done teaching you and that you are now educated enough to get a job!"

"But... I'm like, four?"

"Indeed, you are, Lance. Congratulations on being the youngest noble to finish his basic education!"

"So i can do whatever i want from now on? And wait, what's gonna happen to you?"

"You still have responsibilities as a Chevalier. As for me, i will stay here for a while and leave for the capital when it's more convenient."

"S-so i... i don't need to study about wars anymore?" I ask, careful not to get disappointed.

"W-well, you probably should, but you don't quite need to..." She says hesitantly.

I cried. Finally. I'm finally free.