NOVEL WEB Chapter 240: [Extra] Alexius
Everyone knew to go to Prince Rian if you wanted work and Prince Alexius if you wanted fun.
Alexius knew this and he didn’t mind. In fact, he was quite proud of it.
However, as he grew older, his thoughts unconsciously changed. Work could be fun, especially if that work produced fun things or meant that he had more gold to buy fun things.
Several people told him that if he became Crown Prince, then he would have more gold. If he became king, he could enact more holidays and make duelling an official national sport.
Alexius didn’t really believe them. But he couldn’t help having vague thoughts.
(He liked the idea of bossing Rian around.)
Normally he would go to Tierri or Adrienne to talk about his feelings, but right now, he didn’t want to. Because the two of them…were courting behind his back!!!
And he couldn’t talk to Ayden, because he and Rian were away doing something important again.
So, Alexius reluctantly talked to his cousin, Günter.
“If I were you, I would want to be crown prince,” Günter said with a snort. “You’re not ambitious enough! Do you want to go down in history as a waste prince? Hey, do you want to duel?”
Alexius huffed. It would have been better not to talk with Günter. He agreed to duel him though.
Alexius impatiently waited for Ayden’s return to the Capital.
“Something wrong?” Ayden asked.
Alexius sat on the sofa in Ayden’s office, drinking a delicious cup of bubble tea. “Can I order Rian around if I become king?”
“I doubt he’d listen to you.”
“Isn’t that treason?” Alexius said seriously.
“If your request is reasonable, then he’ll comply,” Ayden said.
Alexius made a face. “People have been telling me that I should try to become the Crown Prince instead.”
“When Rian ascends, he can make you the Crown Prince. He plans to rule for a few decades before abdicating to you, so you’ll become king in the future.” As always, Ayden delivered shocking news in a calm voice.
Alexius’s eyes widened. He almost choked on a chewy tapioca ball. “Pardon?!”
The dreamy idea of being a cool and powerful king was very different from the cold certainty that he’d have to be a busy and overworked king!
Ayden raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to try to be king?”
Alexius lowered his eyes and squirmed. “Maybe…”
“What do you like doing the most?”
In the past three years, Alexius had been in the academy. (He wasn’t in the research stream, because that was unnecessary extra work.) However, he had been organising the yearly duelling tournament.
“I like duelling and hosting events,” Alexius said.
“What do you want to have achieved in five years?”
“It would be great if we could have an international duelling tournament.”
Ayden nodded. “Good. What about ten years?”
“I want to be better than Rian.”
“And where do you see yourself in 20 years?”
“I haven’t lived 20 years yet, let alone imagine where I’ll be in 20 years,” Alexius said, pouting.
“Well, being king should be in your 50-year plan.”
Alexius felt as though Ayden had deeply betrayed him.
Ayden smiled faintly. “Alright, let’s return to your five-year plan.”
“Ayden, what do you think I should do?”
“What are your friends doing?”
“Tierri is going to the University, obviously. Adrienne is attending with him. And I don’t care about Günter. Oh, do you know what Cassiopeia Schauss is doing?”
“She plans to study at the University, the Capital Hospital, and the Schauss healers’ academy,” Ayden said. “Are you interested?”
Alexius felt dizzy simply hearing the long list of institutions. “No, no, no.”
“And you don’t want to attend University with your friends? Look, even Rian hasn’t attended University.”
Alexius wavered, but then shook his head. “I don’t want to. Ayden…”
“I want to hand over management of the floating office chairs, wheelchairs, and single-person vehicles to you. You’re already familiar with it, and by increasing your role, you’ll get more gold,” Ayden said. “And you can come with us to Angio for Prince Pollux’s wedding and start organising the Sedaveria-Angio duelling tournament.”
That didn’t sound too bad. “Okay…”
“I’ve noticed that you’re less interested in the magic-technical development of things, but you’re interested in the design and user testing. We can formalise your work on the maglev trains’ interior and exterior design. Later, we’d also need to design worker uniforms, the stations, the train tickets, advertisements…”
“Hmm…”
“Alternatively, if you want to try working with money, you could learn accounting and eventually become the treasurer of an organisation, or even the kingdom’s treasurer.”
Alexius narrowed his eyes. “If I became the Imperial treasurer, doesn’t that mean I can allocate as little or as much gold to Rian as I want?”
“Within reason, of course, but it’s true that the treasury likes to withhold as much gold as possible.”
“I want to learn that!” Alexius’s eyes started to sparkle.
“Okay, then shall I talk to Her Majesty, or will you?”
“I can talk to my mother,” Alexius said. He grinned. “Ayden, do you want to duel?”
“Come to the palace duelling field early tomorrow. You can be on my team and face off against Rian, or you can be on Rian’s team and face off against me,” Ayden said.
“That’s so hard to choose!” But despite Alexius’s complaints, he was looking forward to it.
Alexius went to Queen Mira and expressed his interest in controlling the treasury. His mother was surprised. On Alexius’s insistence, she organised one of the treasury managers to guide him.
Unfortunately, the first step was reading books (sad).
However, Alexius remained strong. It would be worth it in the end!
When Alexius told his friends what he was doing, they were sceptical.
“You’re studying finance and accounting?” Tierri asked.
“In the future, Rian will have to beg me for gold,” Alexius said.
Tierri glanced at Adrienne, sharing a look.
Alexius huffed when he saw that happening. Those two had been sharing looks for years, and now they were courting each other…
He was only a little bit, teeny bit, jealous.
(He wanted to court someone too!)
Now that Alexius didn’t have school anymore, he could see Ayden more often. He organised to meet with Ayden at least once each week, not including the various dinners throughout the week (at the Rosewood house and the Imperial Palace).
Mostly, Alexius talked about what he did recently and received encouragement and career advice from Ayden. Ayden also gave him notebooks and other stationery, since Alexius actually needed them now.
He was surprised when he first came upon Cassiopeia at the Rosewood house. “Are you here to see Ayden too?” he asked her curiously.
Cassiopeia nodded. “We talk about developing healing…”
“Ah,” Alexius understood. Ayden was probably giving her encouragement and career advice too. “Are you sure you don’t want to try duelling later? We could make a whole new paradigm of duelling that uses healing magic!”
“Do you mean that I heal you during battle to keep your strength and magic up?” Cassiopeia asked.
Alexius’s eyes widened. “That’s a great idea! We could have duels between combat-mage-and-healer pairs!”
Cassiopeia smiled. “I know that my second brother wished he could be involved in duelling.”
“If you have time, you and your brother can come to my afternoon tea tomorrow and discuss this further,” Alexius said. “I’ll send an official invitation.”
Cassiopeia nodded. “I’ll see you later, Your Highness.”
And so, Alexius met with Perseus Schauss and started to organise practice sessions to develop duelling strategies that combined combat and healing. With one member on the team who could only heal, the duelling dynamic changed as other team members also needed to protect their healer; conversely, the healer on the opposite team was a point to target.
Alexius couldn’t convince Cassiopeia (the best healer he knew) to pair with him to practice duelling. But Perseus was interested and had a lot of interested healer colleagues. Those healer colleagues had work, so they would practice duelling either in the early morning or in the late afternoon.
Alexius was full of energy every day. This really opened the field to new strategies and styles!
Aside from duelling, Alexius also did a lot of other things.
He attended Ayden’s 20th birthday party (delicious!). He liked the interesting Rosewood staff, especially the cooks who liked giving him snacks.
He also attended the special dinner marking the conclusion of the outbreak. During the dinner, Rian and Ayden and Duke Schauss spoke about what happened and the response. Cassiopeia’s role was also highlighted. Even if he didn’t like working a lot, he could admire Cassiopeia’s dedication to study.
In addition, Alexius also hosted his own social events, like table-top duelling, outings to the countryside and to the beach and to the riverside, and afternoon teas at the Imperial Palace.
When he found out that Cassiopeia could also bake, he asked her and Ayden if they wanted to have a dessert-baking duel. Both declined, but they agreed that they’d supply one afternoon tea each.
Ayden’s snacks had familiar flavours, which Alexius adored.
But Cassiopeia’s desserts had exquisite decorations in addition to tasting delicious!
“What if…what if Ayden and Cassiopeia joined forces?” Alexius mused out loud.
Rian glared at him. “Banish the thought.”
“I can only join forces with Prince Rian,” Ayden said, his tone so serious that it was clearly a joke.
Alexius gave a world-weary sigh. “Alas, Rian can neither heal nor make desserts as well as Cassiopeia.”
Rian: “…”
Alexius grinned and ducked behind Ayden before Rian could catch him~
As Alexius managed product production and learned more about finance, he found that it wasn’t as bad as he feared. The increased income was a big bonus, and it gave Alexius more conversation topics.
He finally submitted to Ayden’s questioning about his 5/10/20/50 year plan and drafted his five-year plan.
Over the next five years, he planned to make several diplomatic visits to surrounding countries to set up an international duelling competition. He wanted to earn a certain amount of money, produce a new product (what it would be was unclear right now), and contribute to the development of the maglev trains. By the end of five years, he also wanted Queen Mira to trust him enough to give him control over part of the Imperial treasury (ideally the part that gave Rian money).
“Sounds good,” Ayden said, when Alexius explained this to him.
Alexius beamed.
(Later, he showed his Imperial Mother his five-year plan. For some unknown reason, she was speechless after he told her that Ayden had told him to write it.)
Florence and Hespera’s wedding was held in the Sage fief towards the end of summer.
The ceremony was outdoors. It was a warm and sunny day, with blue skies and scattered white clouds.
The location of the ceremony was surrounded by many beautiful white flowers of different genus and cultivar. Florence and Hespera kissed under an arch of stunning red roses.
When Florence threw her bouquet into the audience, Rian snatched it from the air, and then went and acted sweet with Ayden.
With the main ceremony over, everyone could now mingle and relax before the wedding dinner later.
Alexius couldn’t stand watching Rian acting intimate with Ayden. He wanted to talk to his friends, but Tierri and Adrienne had their heads close together, acting intimate too.
In the end, he went over to Perseus Schauss. Maybe they could talk about duelling.
“Prince Alexius, do you have a moment to talk, man-to-man?” Perseus said in a low voice.
Alexius blinked. “Do you want to duel?”
“May we talk in private?”
“Yes.”
The two of them walked away from the main gathering. Perseus cast a privacy spell around them.
“Your Highness, I want to talk to you about certain matters,” Perseus said.
“Go ahead,” said the confused Alexius.
“Are you attracted to women?”
Alexius blushed. “Why are you asking me this…”
“I don’t want to assume,” Perseus said. He cleared his throat. “I’m attracted to women.”
“Yes,” Alexius said in a tiny voice.
“Then, are you interested in my sister? You’ve been watching her bake and inviting her to all your afternoon teas lately.”
Alexius: “??!! I—I haven’t really thought about it!” He blushed. “It’s interesting watching Cassiopeia bake and decorate desserts. I would watch Ayden too, but he’s too busy and Rian doesn’t like me doing so…”
Perseus: “…” His lips twitched. “If you ever become interested in my sister, you need to be serious about it.”
“I will be serious about whichever person I become interested in,” Alexius said.
“Thank you, Your Highness. Now, I know some more people who were interested in the concept of having healers in a duelling team, and the rules and winning conditions…”
Alexius was relieved. They chatted a bit, and Alexius told Perseus to invite these people to one of their duelling practice sessions. They then walked back to where everyone else was.
Alexius spotted his friends and so headed towards their direction.
But along the way, he caught sight of Cassiopeia.
Cassiopeia was wearing dark pink today. Around her, she had conjured other flowers, as she and her friends played around. The flowers danced around her in a magical swirl, as the wind tousled her wavy light pink hair.
“Your Highness,” Ethel spotted him first and greeted him.
Cassiopeia turned. “Your Highness,” she greeted. When she smiled, her eyes also curved with warm and friendliness.
Alexius’s heart inexplicably skipped a beat.
“Good afternoon, Lady Cassiopeia, Lady Ethel, and Lady Alexandra,” he said.
“Did you have an interesting talk with my brother?” Cassiopeia asked.
Alexius remembered Perseus’s words and blushed. He coughed and couldn’t quite look Cassiopeia in the eye. “We talked about duelling. I noticed the flowers that you were conjuring, they were very pretty, and more delicate than Rian’s.”
Cassiopeia smiled. “Thank you, Your Highness.” She glanced behind Alexius.
Alexius didn’t need to turn around to know that Rian was behind him. But with Rian, there had to be Ayden. Alexius went and hid behind Ayden, before saying, “You can’t stop me from telling the truth!”
Cassiopeia laughed behind her hand as Rian reached out and tried to ruffle Alexius’s hair.
Cassiopeia: Perseus is spending a lot of time with Prince Alexius. And Alexius was blushing earlier after speaking with him…Do they like each other?
Perseus: …
Alexius: …
Rian: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Thank Hestia’s lady for the support~
Thanks for everyone’s answers in the previous chapter! Thank you to Xevi for suggesting that duelling teams can include healers. And thank you for Maidengarnet for suggesting that Cassiopeia doesn’t realise she’s developing a relationship with Alexius and Alexius also not noticing 🤣
I’ll leave the rest of their development up to everyone’s imaginations. Next chapter, we’ll be focusing on Aurelia and Iris~!
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