The Castle lessons

[Kota]

"Freeze those that are my enemies, I cast ice ball!" I chanted. My Staff, Incongruity lit up with a blueish color as the temperature plummeted around me. The grass of the Garden we were in glowed a soft blue as a large orb of condensed ice was formed in front of my staff. I aimed my staff right above the sky, I hoped that this spell was activated in the sky.

"Alright, Chris! When you chant a spell, make sure you know what you're planning to do beforehand! Once the spell is finished, you must use it!" I yelled. Chris was watching from a stone bench, at least I think. "Chris!?" I turned to him when I didn't get a response.

It's been some weeks since I started to teach Chris about magic. I tried starting off with just letting him read a magic book to see if he'd understand it. It was a book that was borrowed from the university's library, chosen by Gorwin himself. Turns out that the king exempted most of my classes besides the classes I needed to work on like healing. Not sure why he decided that was the best choice.

The book I chose was a simplified version of what we were taught at the university. And I'm only saying simplified because it seems like the book was written by a seven year old who just started writing. I read it myself, and I found myself even more confused by it when I saw doodles inside of it. I asked Gorwin about it and he said that the book was created by a travelling mage who had extensive knowledge in magic.

Perhaps the mage should've brushed up on his writing skills and drawing skills.

Besides the horrible writing, it did give a good gist of what magic was. Once I gave it to Chris to read, I was hoping that it'd be that easy when it came to teaching someone. I was dead wrong. Chris bombarded me with multiple questions of the same thing. Sometimes he'd ask the same damn questions after like ten seconds of reading.

"Hey, can you tell me what mana is?" Or "Hey, Is mana a sort of energy?" Why don't you read it and find out? I gave you the book for that very reason!

Really thinking about it now, I wasn't much of a great teacher. I'm pretty sure it just came down to me not really knowing how to explain things. Every time I'd give Chris an answer, it seemed like it went from one ear and out the other. I was really hoping that my actual demonstration of magic would prove useful.

But now I was looking at a sleeping Chris, dozing off on the bench.

"Hey! Chris!" I yelled. That seemed to have sprung him to life as he jolted in his seat and looked around confused before laying his eyes on me.

"Oy! What's with the yelling!?" He asked, annoyed. That attitude changed once he noticed the form of ice I made. "Woah! That's an ice spell."

"Yes, did you see how I did it?"

"Uhhh…Do it again!" Chris shrugged.

Slowly, I aimed the ice ball at him. "I'll shoot this at you. I'm not fucking kidding."

"A-ah! Wait! Alright, alright, I'll pay attention!" Chris waved his hands in a panicked manner. Once I aimed it away from him, he diligently eyed me. "Talk about harsh learning."

"Well I need to do that when it comes to you. Now watch, I'm going to fire this ice ball into the air." I aimed my staff upwards and fired, the ice ball flinging into the sky. "Spells like these usually detonate at a certain range." Both me and Chris watched as the ice ball hurled itself into the air, I'd say after twenty feet, the ice ball exploded. Ice blasting in the air as pieces of it came falling down.

"Woah! That's amazing!" Chris pumped his fist. He then hopped off the bench and ran towards me. "Can I try?"

On the first day of me training Chris, Richard was kind enough to give Chris one of his older staff. A beginner ranked staff that has seen better days with what looks like a piece of cloth holding the brown stick together. Seems like Richard might've broken it at some point and fixed it with that. It still works, but Chris could easily find a better one later.

"Just make sure you aren't pouring everything you got into the spell. As of right now, you have pretty average Mana capacity. If you wanna have a bigger mana Capacity, just keep using these spells every day. You'll eventually find yourself casting spells a lot more." I warned him. I've also been keeping an eye on his Mana supply, it was an advice that tera gave to me. In fact, most of the things I was doing with Chris was just based off of Tera's own teachings or advice that she'd give me. I'm basically just giving Chris Tera's advice instead of my own.

You know, maybe Tera should've taught Chris instead of me. But Tera hates King Lucian, so that's a no go.

"Alright, Now I'm going to need you to recreate my spell. Shoot it up in the air!"

I watched as Chris hopped forward, right into the center of the Garden. Holding his wooden staff out into the sky. As he did, a couple of the maidens in the castle were walking across the garden on the other side.

"To wash those in front of me, I cast-!" I heard Chris say, but I somehow found myself losing my attention to him as I looked at the maids.

Really, I should talk about how nice this castle is. I've been here for a couple of weeks and somehow these are the kindest people I've met here. The maids are nice. Really nice. Like really nice, I'm talking about how they'd kindly ask to wash me after me and Chris's teaching lessons. Sadly, I usually decline because I honestly don't feel dirty. I'm pretty damn sure I'd feel dirty even after the washing they'd give me, I'd also feel multiple gut punches from Lilith as she is oddly capable of finding out if I've been with other girls. If that happened, it could easily be resolved if she just washed with me…or maybe not. It might entail even more punches from her.

Actually, I think today Lilith went out with Kale to train even more for guard duty. I remember them talking about visiting the barracks before I left for the castle this morning. Hmph, I wonder how she's doing? Eh, probably nothing much. It's just training. She's probably learning ab-Why is Chris shooting a water ball now?

"Chris?!" I snapped out my thinking with that yell, watching as Chris struggled to hold onto his staff.

"K-Kota! I think I messed up the spell!" Chris tried to maintain his staff, but it seemed that he had actually out too much of his mana into the spell. A large blob of water formed at the end of the staff, aimed right at the maids who weren't looking.

"How the hell do you mess up an ice spell and turn it into a water spell?! Aim it in the sky!"

"I-I can't! I-It's gotten too big for me to lift upwards!" Chris panted as he tried his best to lift the staff upwards, but it wouldn't budge. The kid needs to work on his upper body strength.

Then, the water ball spell launched. Hurling itself towards the maids. Luckily, it was slow enough for me to react.

I quickly dropped my staff and slammed my palms to the ground, silently casting Erupt. I watched as the earthy floor in front of the maids cracked open. A solid wall of earth jutted out of the ground, standing at eight feet.

The water ball collided with the wall, simply popping and spraying water onto the wall. As soon as I stopped the Erupt spell, the wall crumbled back into the ground. The area it was formed in looked quite ugly, and the maids seemed to agree as they looked more angry over that than the fact they almost got hit by water.

"Hey, you ruined the garden! There's soil everywhere! We have to clean this up!" One of the maids yelled at me.

"I-uhhh Forgive me! Let me clean this up!" I stammered as I got to my feet and jogged to the destroyed floor. I gave Chris a long stare as I passed him. The boy seemed quite surprised and scared by his actions, judging by his face and shaking with his staff.

As I began to chant a beginner healing spell to the floor, The maids looked at me with a stern face until they saw the soil slowly draw itself back to their original spot on the floor.

Thinking to myself, I was really starting to question healing spells. It seemed they had properties of just reverting things back to where they were, but there was an extent to it. I recall at one point this week having to fix Chris's pants as he accidentally burnt them while practicing fire spells. I remember seeing the fabric stitch itself back to their normal size, perhaps I was just looking too much into this like Duvul said.

Oh yeah…The god of Magic.

Ever since the festival incident, he's been on my mind. Before I faded back to reality, I said that we'd talk again. Not sure when, but I figured he'd pull a Arael and just contact me whenever he felt like it. Which… hasn't happened yet. Which I feel somewhat glad of. Because these last few weeks were somehow the best weeks for me since I didn't have any sort of pressure on me to do something. Just living a normal life here, or whatever is normal life in this world.

Though…There is another issue that's been on my mind as well. Lilith's mother and Father. I've given Lilith the letter Sarah had for her, I didn't read it or anything but I was a little curious of what was inside of it. When Lilith read it the day I gave it to her, she didn't cry. Actually, she just hugged me and thanked me. Reminded me of how Sarah said that Lilith trusted me, It was a somber moment for me and Lilith that day. But it brought us closer together, whatever Sarah wrote in the letter seemed to spark a fire in Lilith when it came to me as she has been quite clingy now.

Not a day goes by when I wake up to have her arms wrapped around me and crushing my body, or with her insisting on helping me do chores in the house. Sometimes I catch her watching me leave the bathroom after I shower…Not that it bothered me, she could always check me out. Actually, it's kind of scary now that she's more active now than before, I'm pretty sure everyone has noticed in the house.

Kale particularly, I've noticed him being more harsh on Lilith because of it. Maybe it's because she also has to work for the king and he's making her work harder? I mean, that job shouldn't be that hard. I don't think we had any sort of attacks on Chris yet. So I'm not really sure what's with Kale.

Tera is fine, though upset that both me and Lilith are working for the King. She is not all against it because in her words "we are making Rubees!". So she's letting this slide. I've also been given a sort of exemption from going to classes at the University. I wouldn't need to attend the classes I was the strongest in, but I still had to show up to Tera's class and my other classes like Healing, Wind and Earth classes on a less frequent basis.

This almost meant less time with Griffin and Sura…and I guess Amelia.

Speaking of those three, Griffin and Sura are dating. Didn't catch any of us surprised when Griffin announced it. I guess they started dating officially after the festival where smSura accepted his proposal at the Cat Cafe they work at. I guess she caved in to his pressure, but she seems fine now. I mean, she's still the same when she's with him. Actually, I'm starting to think she liked him to begin with.

Amelia has been keeping it low key, she still visits our house from time to time at a less frequent pace and has been visiting the library to learn more about strengthening her spells. She's also been in a bad mood ever since the festival. From what she's told us, Sir Issac left at a good moment in their dance. I kept quiet during her talk as I knew why he was in a hurry. She insisted that it was because sir issac hated her and her hair, I just decided to roll with that excuse. Lilith went with it as well, seeing it as an opportunity to help shape up Amelia. So whenever she came to visit, Lilith would put her through some fitness training.

At first, I didn't want to participate in this training. But the more I thought about it, it'd probably be better if I was a little beefed up in case a situation arises where magic just couldn't cut it. Plus, I'm able to get some nice views of Lilith's body when we do training. Doing crunches with her? Nice. Seeing her do push ups? Hot. Sweat glistening? Fucking h-

"Hey! Are you done?!" One of the maids snapped me out of my thinking. I looked at her in confusion for a moment before realizing I had finished fixing the garden. In fact, it seems I went overboard as there were flowers blooming all over the area.

"S-sorry! Think I overdid it." I awkwardly scratched my head. The maids kept on frowning at me until one of them finally sighed.

"Sigh…Well at least this'll cover up some of our gardening work later on. Though it does look out of place with everything else." With more hesitation, she continued. "We'll brush this off as just part of your training with Prince chris. After all, he could learn from this." The maid panned her eyes to the little boy. "He could've gotten us wet."

When she said that, I heard Chris scurry towards me. He collapsed to his knees right next to me and bowed his head to the grass.

"Forgive me! Don't tell My father! I beg you!" He apologized in a panic. That only made the maids laugh.

"Haha! Chris we won't tell you! Though it seemed like that water shot was deliberate. You naughty boy."

"It wasn't! I swear!" Chris looked up to face the maids. "Please don't take away bath time!" Bundles of grass stuck to his brown hair, his face was somewhat brown from the soil from the ground.

I cringed very hard at that, looking away to avoid having anyone see my face. It was made apparent since I started teaching Chris that he had a weird infatuation with the maids here. I shouldn't judge him on his taste, but he takes it to another level when he asks them to feed him and cuddle with him. Maybe this is due to the absence of his mother. King Lucian did say that she sadly passed away during Chris's early age.

I've kept quiet about that topic, I didn't want to intrude on it. I've had some friends in my past life that reminded me of him, if you exclude the maid infatuation.

"Prince Christopher!" A voice rang out from behind all of us. When I turned around, I saw Richard who had just opened the garden door. "Oh. It appears I'm intruding on something. But this Is urgent" Richard walked into the garden, towards us.

"Is it time for his next classes?" I asked, standing up to face richard. Me and Richard haven't talked much since I came into the Castle, but we do have little small chats that I enjoy. He seemed fond of my magical skills and was interested in what I could do, but his lack of free time made him curious.

"Yes, it's time for Chris to attend his kingly classes." Richard said with a smile. "Can't raise a king without any knowledge of actually being one."

"Yaah, I don't wanna!" I heard Chris cry out.

Richard ignored him and continued to look at me. "How's his training going?"

"Err…He's learning. He ended up shooting a water ball." I intentionally left out some details. Richard nodded in approval.

"That's good, a lot better than when he first started. He could barely even form a spell." He then finally looked at Chris. "Come one, Chris! Got some more learning for you, we need you in your normal attire!"

Chris slowly got to his feet in a childish manner, like a balloon slowly being filled up with air. Once he got to his feet, he slowly walked his way past Richard and me. Now Richard was looking at him with concern.

"Something happened during your teaching?"

"Nope, probably just sad that he's got to end magic training."

"Hmm." Richard's eyes trailed to the maids. "Oh, Hello. Let's head back to work, There's actually a clean up in the kitchen." He nodded back towards the garden door. The two maids bowed and hurried their way to the doors.

That just left me and Richard in the garden, he observed the bundle of flowers and overgrown patches behind me. Probably noticing the differences from the rest of the garden. I felt sort of guilty over it still, so I decided to apologize for it.

"Um, sorry. I sort of overdid my healing spell on the ground."

"Haha! No need to apologize. I was only observing, I have no interest in the garden. I'm just impressed you were able to make it grow that fast." He let out a chuckle as he finished his sentence. I also let out a chuckle, though it was out of relief.

Then, he got back to business. "Alright, I need to head back to Chris's room and see if he's read-Actually…Could you see if he is ready?"

"Yeah, I can do that?" I shrugged. "Got your own business?"

"Yes, I need to do my report on the second facility for magic production. Coming out here has run my time somewhat thin. Especially with us talking right now."

"Hahh…Alright, I'll check him." I said as I walked past him, grabbing my staff from the grass as well.

"Do make it hasteful! The teachers he has aren't going to wait!" I heard Richard say as I opened the door to enter the castle.

***

The sound of my staff clanking against the floor echoed through the halls of the castle. I kept looking down at my own reflection in the pristine white glossed floor as I made my way to Chris's room. He was on the second floor of this castle, the garden was only on the first floor. Besides the very nice looking floor, The halls were drenched in luxury and fancy looking decorations. It's like looking at one of those AAA RPG games, The blue and white striped walls had paintings and windows that let the sun shine in. Lots of tables that held plants or were just there in the halls. I finally made my way to the stairs. A red carpet went up the stairs, its brown oak color stood out from the rest of the floor.

I saw those two Maids enter one of the two doors to the kitchen, bringing a mop and cleaning supplies into the kitchen.

I didn't want to waste time, so I just headed up the stairs. The second floor was similar to the first floor, only now there were dorms where everyone slept. This wasn't a particularly large castle to be honest, I remember seeing this place from the outside when I first saw it. That huge large crystal, which actually was a Mana Crystal. Those were used to power any mana equipment in this castle, it was kinda like a generator for a house. Which kinda caught me by surprise to see this place had workable lights switches. I learned this from Richard too, The other kingdoms have one as well. Ozoth and Estabon run off these and Richard also said that there were miniature mana crystals that could power other things, like lanterns. It's no wonder this place is filled with it, they're all being powered by it.

…Unlike the rest of the kingdom, which still needs torches or the lanterns to be manually turned off with water or by smoldering them. I wonder if the mana crystal could even charge the whole kingdom on its own, but I don't think King Lucian is too keen on sharing this source of power with everyone here. It's all business to him.

I found my way to Chris's room. A wooden door that had his name etched into a gold plate in the middle of it. I gave the door a few knocks, waiting patiently.

…

…

Ok, I knocked on the door with a bit of force now. Hearing some skittering and panicked muffles that was sure enough chris.

"H-hold on Richard! I-I'm still changing!" I heard him say.

"It's not Richard, It's Kota! Hurry it up, I'm not hired to babysit!" I said. There was a long pause after that before Chris spoke again.

"Can you come in?"

"No, I gotta head back to the university for my classes. Just come out and go to your classes already."

"This is important! Here, the doors open!" I heard the door click as I frowned.

God damnit. I let out a heavy sigh and grabbed the knob, opening it.

Chris's room was a mess. His bed had many clothes on it along with clothes on the floor as well. There was a table here that had our magic notes on it, but were covered by crumbs of pastel. And Chris knelt down on the floor, papers scattered around him as he tried to pick them all up while partially clothed. Only his white pants was in him.

"The hell?" I said coming into the room, Chris turned to me with puppy eyes. I noticed the paper on the floor had drawings and writing on them. What the hell was this?

"Gah-k-Kota, can you pwease help me pick up the papers? Pwease?" He said on the verge of crying. "But don't look at them!"

"You really called me in to help you pick up a bunch of papers?"

Yes! I need to change and I can't multitask!" Chris quickly got to his feet and ran towards a large closet that once opened had clothes flying out of it and into the floor, making Chris scramble to the floor to find a shirt. "I need to find the top part of this shirt, haah Father is going to kill me!"

Seeing Chris look this distress made me decide to help him. Letting out a sigh, I dropped to my knee and began to collect the papers on the floor. I tried my best to not look at the writing on the papers, but one thing caught my eye as I grabbed it. It was a picture of two people, two very familiar looking people…

I held the paper up and looked at it more closely, It was Me and Lilith. Looks like he was drawing us fighting the Owl demon. Pretty good for someone his age. Although I would say proportions were off on us, I don't recall having a giant head. Nor do I remember Lilith having large legs…or the buster blade from final fantasy.

"Nice Drawings." I said picking up another piece of paper from the floor. This one had writing on it that had handwriting that would compete with mine. Which meant it was below average. "This a diary or something?"

"Gaaah! You aren't supposed to read it!" I heard Chris say as he tried to pull his white top on. "That's a sacred text!" He wobbled around as he tried to reach me, only to fall over some clothes and onto the floor.

"Sacred text? What do you-Oh...Huh?" I had my question answered when I read the first lines of this Paper.

This looked like it was written as a fan fiction. Almost everything up to the point of me and Lilith burning the owl demon was accurate until the paper went on about how I collapsed and died on the spot. With Chris coming in to comfort Lilith and saying he was there. And then the paper ended with a cliff hanger that seemed to imply they would-what the fuck was I reading?

"Nooo! Don't read it!" Chris wailed, stumbling to his feet.

"Chris, what am I reading? Why would you write this?" I was even more confused than mad, this is something like…a Thirteen year old in my world would write on a site or something. This is odd…

Chris finally popped his head through the opening of his top, quickly dashing towards me to snatch the papers from me. Frantically, he continued to grab the rest of the papers on the floor.

"I-I was just writing some stories for myself, haha! Yes, for myself! Nothing like writing, right?!"

"You wrote about me dying. And then kissing Lilith. I have some concerns."

"No no no, you got it all wrong! That's a scrapped page! I would never write something in particular about Lilith!" Then I heard him murmur. "Although I do for the maids.."

"Uh huh" I folded my arms as he organized the sheets of paper. "You don't have…any interest in her, do you?"

Chris turned red at the question as he placed the stack of papers on his table. Guess that answers my question.

Wait, should I be more concerned about this? Another person liking her? I mean, it's not like Chris could just yoink her out of my grasp…

But what if he could?

"Sighh…alright, I'm going to put my foot down on this since I'm dating her." Chris turned around to face me, looking surprised. "What? Have you not noticed?"

Then he started to bawl.

"Waaah! It wasn't supposed to be you! It's supposed to be me with herrr! Why would she want to stick with you?!" With tears falling down his face, he grabbed the middle part of my robes and shook them. "Doesn't she think I'm cool?!

"Chris, you can't expect her to fall for you if you whine like that." I nonchalantly said.

"I'll take her from you! Just you wait, woman stealer!"

That made me annoyed, who does he think he is? You haven't known her for as long as me. The chances he has are close to none. Plus, he wouldn't even stand a chance against her beastly hugs. I'm looking out for him! I don't want him to get crushed!

Annoyed, I grabbed the sides of his cheeks and pulled. "Listen, brat. Those chances are slim as hell! Stay in your lane!

"Try me!" He said painfully, tugging even harder on my robes. "You don't know what I'm capable of!"

"You know what I'm capable of? Throwing you out that window if you don't shut up!" I angrily said, pulling harder on his cheeks.

"I bet you haven't even kissed her yet!"

"Yes I have!…have I?" I thought for a moment to myself after I said that. I actually don't recall kissing Lilith on the lips yet. Fuck.

"Haha! I guess I'll be taking that first kiss then! Mwah!" Chris looked up at me and did a mocking kiss, which made me more mad. I even considered killing him at that moment, ignoring the consequences just because of it.

As we started to get riled up, a sudden knock on the door stopped us. I looked over towards the door and released Chris.

"Yeow!" Chris rubbed his cheeks.

"Chris?Is Kota in there with you?" Behind that door was Lilith's voice. Me and Chris fell silent, staring at each other. Chris gave me an angry look as his gaze swapped from me and the door.

Another knock came from the door. "Hello? I heard you there!"

Time seemed to have slowed down as I looked at Chris with such intensity. I know what he was planning, I could see it in his eyes. There was commitment and determination in them.

After what seemed like an eternity, Chris dashed to the door. "Coming, Lilith!" The kids a lot faster than I remember, maybe because he's actually trying?

"You mother fu-."

"Oops!" Chris said out loud. "There's so much clothes on the ground, I might trip or something, woah!" He pretended to wobble his way to the door. He was planning to rush right into Lilith.

Or at least I thought until he opened the door.

"Lili-Mmph!" Chris yanked the door open, pre didn't to stumble out before he collided into someone's chest. A blue haired girl. Chris didn't react at first, his face buried right between her breasts. "Hhmph?!"

Lilith's eyes went wide open in surprise as she looked at Chris. "Chris?!"

The blue haired girl looked down at the boy, flushing red as the boy began to figure out where he was. Using his hands to get a good feel of who it was.

"Ummm…This isn't Lilith." Chris muffled out. His hands reached and felt up the blue haired girl's boobs. "Boobs are too big."

Lilith gritted her teeth in anger when she heard that, she quickly grabbed Chris by the collar of his white top and threw him off the blue haired girl. Chris landed onto his bed, face first. "My boobs are not small!" As annoyed as she looked, she then looked up at the blue haired girl. "Sorry, he's weird."

"Oh! Uhh…yes, I can see that. Perhaps I should've stayed behind you?" The blue haired girl said, covering her chest now.

"Eh, I would've thrown him out that window."

I took a good look at the blue haired lady. She kinda reminded me of Amelia. Maybe Lilith made friends with this girl. She looks older than us, and with what Chris said…yeah, she's has above average breasts.

"Hey! What are you looking at?" Lilith scolded me. She walked into the room, aggressively walking towards me. "Stop staring!"

"I-uh-well…Just that she looks a lot like Amelia? Why'd you bring her here?" I took a step back as Lilith got right into my face. She took a good look at me for a moment before backing off, smiling.

"Got back from training with Kale in Guard duties. She's a hostage we rescued in the Red light district."

"Oh, how'd that go?"

"I punched a Minotaur!" Lilith said cheerfully. "I jumped from the upper window and used the curtains as a way to get down!"

"Sounds like you had a blast." I folded my arms.

"Yeah! Oh-errr…" Lilith leaned close to me. "We came here to visit the king, but I wanted to visit you."

Very cute, But she does realize she sees me everyday, right? Like when I come back from the university and every morning? Maybe she likes seeing me teach someone? Either way, I don't mind. But something is telling me this Blue haired girl is important.

"Shouldn't you be doing your work?" I asked.

"I am! Kale told me to watch her and I am." Lilith poked my chest. "Just wanted to do a quick visit."

"Don't poke the chest, Lilith. We already talked about it."

"Oh! Sorry."

Ever since the festival, my chest wound was fully healed albeit a scar was left there as a reminder.

It doesn't hurt, but I get a weird feeling everytime someone pokes it. So I had to stop Lilith from touching my chest much to my dismay. Maybe I haven't gotten over the fact that my chest got blasted by her father, don't they call it Phantom pain or something?

Alright, enough with the chest thing. I'm somewhat curious about who the girl is.

"A-Anyways, who is she?" I pointed at the blue haired girl. Lilith took a glance at her and looked back at me.

"Oh! Her name is Claire! She came from Ozoth to Visit Amelia!" Lilith then let out a gasp. "Did you know that Amelia had an older sister?"

"…huh?" I looked at the blue haired girl in confusion.

This girl was related to Amelia?