“Don’t take this the wrong way but you’re insane, I know that you live by different ideals than the rest of society, but the fact is that what you’ve just done made you the target of every traditional noble in that room.” Paul started lecturing me the moment I stepped out the hall, I know he means well but he should have understood my reasoning, in truth he probably did understand but he was unable to hold back.

“It doesn’t matter, most of them are ether incompetent or corrupt and the few that aren’t are unlikely to support me for the simple reason that I am a girl. Sooner or later, I would have made them my enemies. You can also think of it as this being part of the plan as we need money, land, and manpower, all three things we can obtain if we revoke their rank and titles, which I would have done anyway. We need all three and the easiest way to get it is by taking it from others. I can’t keep creating money or we will end up with problems so big that all we plan on achieving would result in nothing.”

“Hahaha, are you sure you should have spoken about your plans regarding Aren? You said that some of the lords are traitors, if they report what happened here Aren might take action and try to subjugate us before we can get them first, not to mention we just lost any advantage we might have gotten from a surprise attack.” Tristan is right, it was rash of me to speak of my plans in front of people I already suspect of being traitors, but I needed to convince the lords, the loyal ones at least, that I am at least worth considering, no one can rule a territory as big as a duchy alone and training people from scratch is simply impossible. We live in the Middle Ages, the few who can read and write are either nobles themselves or they are being employed by the lords in the land they live in. The few people that aren’t being employed by them directly have other duties related to the citizenry, moving them would bring more harm than good.

“I admit I made a mistake there, but we can recover. As for losing the chance to mount a surprise attack it wouldn’t have worked anyway. After all they already know of every move we make. What I truly regret is giving them a reason to invade, if what happened in the hall were to spread then they might use it as justification for an invasion.” Then again, I could also use that as cause to start revoking territories from the vassals. Everything depends on what I do from now on.

“Honestly, I am more worried that the number of kidnapers and assassins will continue to increase. After all I am the one that has to deal with them whilst our little princess sleeps.”

“Don’t complain Tristan, we all have our duty and yours is to keep our mistress safe. I on the other hand have to serve as her test subject for alchemic experiments, honestly you have it easy.” Nara is right, I did go a bit overboard when asking her to test out my concoctions but then again, I am almost immune to poison and my resistance to everything else might as well be called invulnerability. Poisons that would kill a person upon ingestion serve only to sting my tong or give me a slight stomach-ache, if it wasn’t for Nara I wouldn’t know If an antidote or medicine does indeed work on normal people. Considering everything I tested on her I doubt she can still be called normal at this point.

It won’t matter anymore after all I am done learning magic from teacher Adam and will soon move on to Aura. Count Adam taught me the basics of every type of magic along with administration, and management. I have yet to unlock my second tree of magic, but I am getting close to mastering Alchemy, once I am done with it, I will probably move on to ether enchantment or curse magic.

“Now that my father is leaving back to take care of his domain you will be left without anyone to protect you. Thankfully the duke had already agreed to my moving here before this whole fiasco.” His not wrong but I genuinely feel better now that Count Adam is leaving, even after spending eight years as his student I still can’t help but hold a certain dislike for him. Actually, it might be because of the eight years I spent with him. Nara being my ginny pig might have been hard on her but it’s nothing compared to what he did to me. From literally slicing my arm off to trying to burn me to ash, there isn’t a single experiment he did not try on me, and all of that without my permission. I have long concluded that the man is insane and that his fixation on magic is too abnormal for a normal person like myself to understand.

“It doesn’t matter, from now on I will be spending my time with the knights.”

“That’s what I am worried about, don’t expect them to be on your side, they are loyal to the lord not you.”

“I know that, stop pestering me and instead get ready to head my faction. You were there and saw the reactions of every noble, some will want to join because of my wealth, others because they see something else to be gained. For those nobles you will bleed them dry so that once I take over, they will be weak enough for me to simply snuff them out. For those you believe truly loyal keep them in reserve until the plan starts in earnest.”

‘I will not be used by others!’

The four of us continued our discussion until the middle of the night making adjustments and implementing the first part of our plan early. The next few days were quite tense, everyone avoided me like the plague, from the lowliest servant to the lesser nobles who work in the castle managing the territory, all fled the moment they saw my shadow. I started feeling like a stranger in my own home. Even my father avoided me, as for Ariel I couldn’t even apologize for what I did to her during the party. She was told not to come close to my quarters anymore, probably fearing what I might do to her now that she is pregnant. As for my mother she tried to sway me by telling me how hard ruling is and a bunch of other crap, but I suspect that others may have forced her to do so.

I also came to know a little of Tristan’s troubles as two months after my 12^th birthday he was overwhelmed by the skill and number of assassins, so much so that I had to drag him inside my room before turning them all into ash by torching the corridor where they all stood. I don’t think that I’ve ever been so mad in both my lives, I didn’t even consider capturing them like I usually do. He needed a week to recover from the many injuries he sustained. It’s like they never learn, I can’t be killed by poison, yet they keep on spicing up my food; if only they added some actual seasonings, I would welcome the poison as a sort of added cost. As for the assassins I’ve grown use to them, no matter who they work for it’s a waste to capture them since they end up killing themselves. I don’t know if they employ assassins simply to harass me but it’s really getting old.

Anyway, I would say that I succeeded in my gamble. Yup, being kept at arm’s length is me winning the bet. What? Did you expect all the nobles to come and swear their allegiance simply because I made my position clear? Nope, winning means my father not disinheriting me and the nobles not calling for my complete removal as heir candidate.

Sir Mayron has now been teaching me both Aura manipulation and swordsmanship for the past three months. Aura is the power of the soul, the stronger one’s soul the more powerful their aura but this means nothing if they can’t manipulate it, a little like myself. Whatever G did to me made my aura so powerful that not even the knight captain could compare, in terms of power only Tristian possesses an aura comparable to mine and even then, I can squash him like a bug when we compare quantity. But even with all of those advantages I am tragically incapable of manipulating my aura, it might sound like I can’t control it, which isn’t the case, but rather that doing so takes everything I’ve got. Frankly this is a lot harder than learning magic, I might even say that I am starting to miss that annoying teacher of mine. ‘No, no! don’t say that! Did you forget what that guy did to you every time you took your eyes off of him?’

At first the young knights ether tried to hit on me or bully me but I always turned the tables on them and by that I mean that I beat them up so badly that the senior knights who knew what I was capable of only looked on with pity knowing that they brought this suffering upon themselves. I spent the first two weeks of training putting the young knights in their place. Now they are all obedient little puppies that attend to my every need. Tristian laughed so hard when he saw me turning his peers one by one into my servants. Like Paul said the knights are only loyal to my father but winning their favor could help me in the future and the best way to do that is to prove myself to them, or in the case of the younger ones dominate them and awaken their masochistic desires.

My training was quite a bit harder than what I imagined. Sir Mayron had no mercy for any of the trainees including me, but he was truly a marvellous teacher, then again just about anyone could be considered marvellous when teacher Adam is the basis of my teaching standards. Within half a year I managed to learn the basics of Aura manipulation along with the fundamentals of sword play. Being quite a bit taller than others my age I chose a thin long sword as my weapon of choice, something that Sir Mayron praised me for as it is also his favourite weapon. The knights have quite a few duties including patrolling the castle town, keeping the peace, dealing with the bandits, and most important of all dealing with irregular creatures known as monsters. In other words, they are always kept busy, but I did not have to participate in all of those activities as even though I train with them I am still the daughter of the duke and as such cannot simply socialize with the citizenry. I can only imagine what Sir Mayron would think if I told him that I leave for the town every few days to take care of my business. Eventually, I did manage to convince him to let me accompany the knights in some of their excursions.

“Today we are to deal with a group of bandits who have caused havoc in both the east and south of the territory, I know that this is our sixth time subjugating them, but you must continue to be on your guard. The group has been spotted east this time but the moment they notice us they will once again flee to the mountains, and we will lose them. You must make sure not to act until we are in range to ether kill or capture them. This applies double for you Tristian, no plunging in first.”

“Oooh, come on captain they had already noticed us; I at least took out a few of them. Honestly, I think I deserve a medal don’t you all agree.” Tristian is truly the best at removing stress, his carefree attitude always manages to make me laugh and I am not the only one.

“This time we will have a guest accompanying us so let me be clear my lady, you may observe but please do not take part in the battle.”

“I will make no promises.”

“That’s what I feared” he murmured “If you act without my consent, I will make you do Aura projection from morning till night for a week.”

“Yes, captain I promise not to raise a finger.” Ok Sir Mayron does have his scary side, I can still only manage the basics of aura manipulation, to make me do aura projection for an entire day is literal torture for me.

As Sir Mayron finished his speech we departed for the eastern part of the territory.

The duchy can be divided into four regions, the first is the north with its forest area and mild terrain, the second is the central and western regions which consists mostly of flat lands meant for agriculture, the third are the mountains and highlands found in the east and finally the south is made up of marches that connect us into the enormous lake Iyana, a lake big enough to be called a sea. This also applies to the territory we lost to Aren but even though they too have a connection to the lake their southern and western territory is mostly made up of flat land and not marches. In other words, it is all farmable land that can easily be used to invade, I intend to take advantage of that characteristic when the time for reconquest comes. Maps in this world are nothing like what they were in my previous life, instead of an aerial view the maps are mostly made of what the map maker can see when drawing the map. I used those maps along with the knowledge of people who travel around the duchy to make up my own three-dimensional map, it might not be the most accurate, but it will serve me better than whatever the people of this world have.

After a week of ridding with barely any break we arrived at the last spot where the bandits were spotted, from here on the knights will form teams and start looking for traces of bandit activity. I was put in a group of four with Sir Mayron leading us. The bandit group always takes care to erase its tracks making the search for them all the harder, sadly I have no tracking skill, so I am forced to rely on the others in my group.

After a day of searching, we met back up where we separated and shared what each group learned. From what they found the group of bandits decided to separate into two and go in different directions, one aiming south the other east thus making their capture all the harder.

“Captain, I think we should leave the group heading south alone as they might cross into Aren and instead focus on the group going east.”

“You moron, the group in the east will hide in the mountains hence making it impossible to round them up and capture them.”

“He’s not wrong, if we follow the group going south, we might end up clashing with Aren and that is far worse than missing a few bandits in the mountains.”

“Captain what should we do?” everyone turned towards Sir Mayron who looked deep in thought.

“I say that these bandits aren’t really bandits but agents from Aren, it might be that they which to ether stall us in the mountains or force us into attacking them. Whichever it might be matters very little after all you have me with you and as such you should fear nothing and no one.” I presented my theory, admittedly most of the knights would have thought of it beforehand but they simply chose to keep quiet since I am here.

“Did you forget what we agreed upon?”

“I never said that I would raise so much as a finger, I don’t need to after all.”

The knights couldn’t help but chuckle knowing that what I said was true. Alchemy does not have many offensive applications, but the powers G gave me can bring devastation to any area I desire.

“This is the knight’s duty, if we start relying on you then we, the knights, might as well not exist in the first place. I understand that you could deal with just about anything, but you are only one person, you are unable to tackle every issue this duchy has.” He is right I think I went too far in trying to show-off.

“I made a decision, it is true that they might be trying to stall us whilst in the mountains but at the same time they also trapped themselves there. We will go east and hunt them down, no need to capture them, we don’t have the time, manpower or resources to keep prisoners.”

All the knights shouted their approval and moved out. The beautiful scenery that awaited made me which that I could build a villa right in the middle of this land. The sight of the enormous mountain range reaching into the sky along with a river borne of the torrents of water the peaks blessed us with made me imagine that heaven would look like this. The sights continued to be just as impressive and I kept marvelling at this new world and its otherworldly beauty. A day later and we finally found real tracks that might lead us to the bandits, but we had to stop and restore our strength, we stopped for a brief lunch, well… that is if eating dried up rations can be called lunch. Unlike other people I need very little food to sustain myself, if anything I eat out of habit and for the occasional feast. Eating rations would only be a punishment for me so instead I offered to go patrolling the area. During my round I stumbled upon a certain rock formation that drew me in with its varying colours. Being a former mining magnet, I studied the rock only to find that it contained ore deposits, from what I could tell it mostly contained Tin, Nickel, and Copper with slight traces of Iron. I couldn’t help but draw a big smile on my face, this simple rock on the side of the river is an indicator that this region is rich in mineral resources and the even better part is that when clusters of minerals are found in this manner it means that there is a real possibility of gold being amongst them. I was so excited that I created the basic equipment needed to start gold panning and went looking if the river does indeed contain gold. After spending a little over ten minutes I started finding small gold dust and even a gold nugget at the bottom of my bucket. The moment the shiny yellow pieces appeared I started making plans to exploit this new finding of mine.