Ray really wanted to enjoy the super lazy lifestyle of a baby, but he couldn't. And that was for two very conflicting reasons.

The first one was due to his extraordinary looks! For the last few days, he could only see his mother once every day, due to her ‘sickness’. She was too tired to take care of him, so naturally, he had to be taken care of by a few ‘trusty’ maids.

His father, whom Ray never saw after that day, had assigned him two maids under the recommendation of the midwife, who apparently held a very respected position.
Now, the problem was that those two maids failed miserably to find a suitable woman to breastfeed him. It’s not that no woman wanted to do it. It is just that whenever those women whom they brought looked at him they would lose all their milk… Yeah, he looked that bad!

They tried to bring a blindfolded woman… But that failed too, the moment he touched her she shivered and lost any milk she might have had. One of them even screamed and threw him away!

Finally, they brought a middle-aged woman that was so ugly that they didn’t dare to look at her. She was ok with him, but he was not Ok with her. He could tell from her smell. If her milk had an expiration date, he was sure it would have passed a few decades ago.
So after some repeated failures, he could only suck on a sack of goat milk… They didn’t invent bottles here yet.
Ray sighed as a maid carefully helped him to burp as she wiped his ass with rose water.

He wanted to enjoy the feeling, but the disgusted look on her face forced him not to… He had no fetish for this either.
Now to the second reason he couldn’t enjoy himself. It was because of the astonishing number of conspiracies that were being woven around him… Seriously, what was wrong in this household?

This was the house of his big-shot father Duke Norman Golden Spear who ruled the huge fief where he was now.
Now, Duke Norman had three main wives and 61 concubines in addition to numerous maids who held no titles.

Ray’s mother, Lady Penelope was from a very notable family and was his supposed father’s favorite wife as she had already got him three heirs with marvelous skills and talents. Ray was supposed to be the fourth… supposed. Not anymore.
Now… Where was he again… ahh yes. The conspiracies.

Until now, five days after his birth, he had already discovered 11!

Most of them were trivial and were the result of the fight between the wives and concubines for the favor of their lord and his mother, the old duchess whom he hadn't met yet. The standard royal drama bullsh*t he used to watch on TV and laugh at its stupidity. Not anymore.
Yesterday, he heard his two maids complaining about their scheme while whispering to each other. Apparently, there was a plan to replace him with another baby belonging to another family, but the switch failed as that family had no baby as ugly as him… They were even talking about increasing the dose of poison for his mother… Damn it!

What the F*ck… Was everyone around him an enemy or a spy? Ray began to cry for the third time that day and then went to sleep out of frustration, focusing on healing his damaged soul.

He needs to clean this place if he wants to survive.

…

The end of the week came fast, for a baby that was an eternity though, an eternity of feeding and sh*ting.
It was the day of the appraisal, and it was Ray’s chance to get rid of his evil maids!
A young guard’s captain dressed in formal silky attire came first thing in the morning and ordered the maids to escort the young master to the grand hall where the appraising magistrate was waiting.

He was supposed to be taken there by his mother, but she was feeling very ill that morning, maybe because of the humidity as it was raining heavily despite it being mid-summer.
Anyway, one of the maids quickly held the already prepared baby Ray and followed the handsome captain while trying to flirt with him and failing to notice the evil smile on the baby’s face as he moved his hand with great difficulty to pinch his own thigh!
Crossing multiple courtyards and wards, then walking across a heavily guarded gilded corridor they reached the grand hall at last. It was where many of the duke's family members were seated… both from the main and the branch families.
Ray didn’t know any of them, but he didn’t like the looks on their faces. The moment he was carried in, they looked at him with envy, hatred, and disgust.
Ray could easily figure out that those were the duke's brothers and uncles who lost the fight for inheritance and had to live with lower titles like counts and barons… Poor bastards.
The maid was quickly guided to a place near nine nervous pretty women also holding babies in their arms.
The appraisal could only be done once a year when an imperial magistrate passed through the dukedom.
All the newborn children will have a chance for appraisal. Of course, the duke's household would be first, and the children of lower nobles, knights, and servants, would come later. Commoners and slaves would get their chance in the public square later that day.
“Magistrate… The children are all here… 10 in total. Three are mine and the other seven belong to my brothers,” Duke Norman, who was welcoming an old man with a pointy nose, said.

Ray didn’t really care, he was busy pinching his own thigh and resisting the tears that wanted to explode through his tiny eyes.

“Let’s begin then!” the magistrate said just as a baby began to cry loudly… It was Ray… He couldn’t handle it anymore, and it was his chance.
His father shot the maid with his eyes, making her quickly try to appease the usually calm baby in her hands, but as if possessed by a devil, the baby didn’t listen and kept crying and moving to the side, causing the silky cloth covering his butt to slip and reveal his thighs and arms marked with red and purple spots. Everyone gasped, not because of the marks, but because this was their first time seeing him… What kind of abomination is this?

“What’s the meaning of this?” His father quickly grabbed the cloth and then took the baby from the surprised maid’s hands. He quickly began to examine him… Was his child being abused?

“Master… I don’t know…” the maid didn’t know anything. She was just a low-ranking spy.

“Guards, drag her to the prison and interrogate her! And get all the servants responsible for him too!” The duke ordered angrily. He didn’t like this ugly baby, but that doesn’t mean he can be bullied causally by a maid.

“No…no my lord…” the maid begged as she was dragged away, and just for a moment when she was at the door, she glimpsed at the baby’s evil grin… “It’s him… He did it..” she screamed unreasonably before her voice faded into oblivion.

“Sorry for the disturbance…. Let’s start this,” the duke said as he handed the now appeased baby Ray to another maid… His father was really pleased with himself, as he only had to shoot the baby a threatening gaze and the little bastard stopped making trouble…

“Let’s do it then… Please set the baby on the table in front of me.” The Magistrate said, making the maid quickly place Ray on the red cloth on the table.
The Magistrate glanced at Ray, hid his disgust, then began to mumble some words to activate his skill, Appraisal.
…

Ray reluctantly pressed <Yes>.

...

The magistrate didn’t speak, he just gasped and tried again… then again… then again.

Losing hope in a different result, he could only sigh and wrote the results on a piece of paper that he gave to the duke. This was a rare case of having no skills.

Ray knew well why that happened, a low appraisal skill can't possibly find his X-ranked abilities.

For a normal person this would be devastating, as unlike him, people didn't have status screens, and couldn't know what possible skills they might have. As skills names need to be called in the user's mind before using it!

Of course, some people who were appraised as having lousy abilities might discover later by chance that they have some crazy hidden ability. This would happen if the appraiser's rank was low.

Others might have some passive ability that didn't need activating. But those are rare.

The crowd began to murmur as this was against the tradition where the magistrate usually pronounced the results loudly.
Such secretive behavior could only indicate great talent or abysmal results, and from the shocked look on the duke's face when he looked at the results it was definitely the latter.

“Guards… Take the baby to his room…. and let the doctor go see him…” The duke ordered as he put the paper away, then totally forgot about Ray turning his eye to look at a blonde woman slutty who was holding a fat little baby girl.

“Lana… It’s now your turn….. You better not disappoint me…” He prayed in his heart.

Ray was dragged… No, he was carried gracefully out of the room toward his chamber where the guard didn’t find any maids… They dragged them all earlier, so he quickly took him to his mother, Lady Penelope's, room before calling the mansion's doctor, who hurried to check on him and prescribed some ornaments for the bruises on his body after making sure nothing else was wrong.

When his mother heard from the guard what happened in the hall she was really angry with the maids. She felt that it was her fault for being weak. As for the appraisal results, the guard told her that only the duke knew about those, making her a little curious.

The news came out one day later, shocking not only her but the entire mansion... Not the news about Ray's appraisal, but about the two maids, who were taking care of Ray, turned out to be spies. They took poison when the guards began to find holes in their background story. The midwife who recommended them and had been working in the mansion for the last 5 years had seemingly mysteriously disappeared.

Akaichi

This chapter was edited...