TYRANNY: HOW TO CREATE A WORLD

Traumas Brought by a Pitiable Situation. 2

The young prince was very unhappy today. Since he arrived in this city, it seemed as if he had nothing to do. His usual servants seemed unhappy, adding to his gloom and making him even more miserable.

Every action they took was lackluster, and now the young prince didn't even seem to have the status of a prince in their eyes. He seemed to be just an ordinary child for them to take care of.

Even his mother, the third concubine, was unhappy and bored. Every time she looked at her son, she saw not her son, but the years of effort and sacrifice going to waste. With a single gesture, she dismissed all the servants from the room. She instructed the fleeing servants to clear this floor of the castle behind them in a frenzy.

This was the fourth floor of the four-story castle, and currently, besides the two imperial guards at the door, there were only the young prince and his mother. The bored concubine went to the door and asked the two guards.

"Where is Albert?" There was an eager anticipation in her face as if she wanted to hear a specific answer.

"He went to clear out the bandits in the area, Lady Frieda," said the taller guard on the left, who seemed more severe than the other. The scent and sheen of the oil indicated that he had recently applied it to the beard under his silver helmet.

"Hmm, then you're coming with me," Frieda said as she grabbed the guard's arm and dragged him inside. The guard was almost twice her size, but as she dragged him inside, she seemed stronger than the guard.

Once inside, Frieda ordered the guard to take off his clothes. The guard obeyed without a protest. Before the young prince's eyes, he began to remove his heavy armor. He quickly revealed his bronze skin and hairy chest to the young prince. Frieda, who was wearing a happy smile, watched him for a few seconds while biting her lip, and then she dragged the young prince out of the door by his white hair, which was a symbol of the imperial royal family.

The young prince struggled to hold back his tears, but this newly learned skill involuntarily manifested itself, and his tears quickly formed a stream down his smooth cheeks to his chin. Meanwhile, the other guard waiting at the door smiled and spoke to the young prince.

"You'll get used to it soon, Lord William," he said with a smile. Apart from the smile on his face, the short guard was actually sad because he was shorter than the other guard. The idea of being with a concubine made him think that it could be the highest honor he could achieve in his life, just like his tall friend had been dragged inside.

On the other hand, William didn't know what to do. With the impatience of a child who didn't know most things, he began to wait eagerly. He didn't know the guard in front of him, only that he was harmless and protected them from unknown dangers. That's why the idea of talking or playing with him didn't occur to him.

He tapped the toe of his leather shoes on the ground a few times, and a sound he heard startled him. The marks of the dried tears on his face suddenly cracked. His mother's screams from behind the locked door pierced his ears, and unable to bear it, he approached the door.

He wanted to bang on the door and ask what had happened to his mother, but the guard, whose duty it was to protect him and obey his every command, stopped him. "You cannot go in, Lord William." These words hurt William so much that he suddenly began to cry aloud.

The guard, who didn't know what to do, took him down to the lower floor where his fellow guards were waiting to take him out into the castle garden. He didn't like doing this to a prince, but it was the only solution he could think of. After leaving William, he returned to his duties, but soon, as his fantasies became reality, he forgot all that had just happened. Concubine Frieda opened the door and dragged him inside, and soon the sounds coming from the room filled the empty corridors of the castle with a volume louder than the best music in the capital's taverns.

It was the first time William had ever experienced anything like this. His father had visited many times, but he had never experienced a situation like this. When he arrived in the garden, he didn't know what to do. He was so bored that he wished Albert would come as soon as possible. In fact, one of his eyes was constantly on the iron gates of the castle.

The castle gates remained closed for almost a week. William spent his days playing with the servants under some vines in the castle garden. The week felt like a stolen time in his life because he wasn't having any fun with the reluctant servants. It was as if it had never happened or had been forgotten.

Everything changed with Albert's arrival. Despite the old man's blood-stained armor, as he stood like a spear on his brown horse, William, who had never seen blood before, greeted him with joy and ran to his side.

Albert, seeing William's gentle and adorable face running toward him, immediately dismounted and handed the reins to a nearby guard. He immediately embraced William and lifted him into his arms.

William, though a little uncomfortable with Albert's warm armor under the sun, was so fed up with what he'd experienced in the past week that he didn't care about anything else. Albert's arrival was all he cared about.

Although Albert hugged his grandson tightly, his mind was elsewhere.

Eight of his men were missing. The short journey had exceeded their estimates of the number of bandits in the area. Three of his riders and five of his spearmen had lost their lives in the ambush by these bandits. Fortunately, they had managed to kill most of the bandits and scare off a few others. Otherwise, the numerous bandits, some of them with noble backgrounds, would have been their undoing.

Albert took William to wash his hands, which were stained with his own blood from the armor, and they played for a long time. Later, as the sun began to set, he found his daughter in the guest room on the second floor of the castle, where she had been killing time. Meanwhile, his own men were busy placing the books he had brought from Sunset City and his own lands on the empty shelves in the castle's rooms. Every time he saw the empty castle, he cursed the former city lord.

"Are you going to do nothing about the city?" Albert's hidden anger was evident in his quivering eyebrows.

Frieda, though she knew the soft heart beneath her father's old and stern face, had an air of indifference toward him. Although she was aware of his anger, she knew that as a concubine, her status was higher than her father's. Indifferently, without looking at her father's face, she answered his question. She was busy watching her father's guards, who were busy working in the garden like bees.

"Do what you want, you rule the city," she replied, still not paying much attention to her father.

Albert narrowed his eyes a bit, looking at the dark silhouette shrouded in the light coming through the window to his daughter.

"What about William? Aren't you going to teach him? He's a bright child and he needs to be educated as soon as possible." Albert still couldn't see the expression on his daughter's face, and he wasn't sure what answer he wanted to hear.

William had been everything to him from the moment he was born. He wanted to see him grow up peacefully in the future, to raise him to be a strong individual.

"You should do the teaching," Frieda turned her head and looked into Albert's eyes. Perhaps she had seen the same expression on her father's face since she was sixteen.

Albert could only see a dark silhouette, faintly lit by a pair of blue eyes. Those blue eyes were slightly narrowed and brought back memories he didn't want to remember.

"Isn't this what you always wanted?" Frieda left those words behind as she left the room and disappeared down the castle's descending staircase.

Every step she took echoed like a hammer blow to Albert's heart. Albert slowly walked to where Frieda had been standing and looked out the window into the garden.

William was trying to play with some of the servants in the garden, but the indifferent attitude of the servants spoiled his fun every time.

When Frieda went down to the garden, William immediately ran to hug his mother and play, but Frieda's cold and unhappy expression further dampened his spirit. He hung his head and returned to play with some flower petals in the corner.

Albert's anger increased as he watched this scene, but his inability to say anything hurt even more. He always wanted to see his grandson as someone who would bring joy to everyone around him, not as someone who would appear sad, casting a shadow over his surroundings. When he saw him as one of the thousands of orphaned children forced to live a miserable life for years, he felt a flicker of hope in his heart. His rugged and aged face hardened even more, and suddenly the iron gates of the castle became expressionless. The tears that wanted to flow from the corners of his eyes, but were prevented by this newfound hope, dried up forever.

Albert walked away from the window with firm, strong steps and approached William in the garden. He took him by the arm and led him into the main hall.

It was perhaps the worst of times for William, but a few years that he would never remember as bad in the future had just begun. Albert trained William on his own for several months until the letters he had sent were answered. He taught him all he knew. His expertise was mainly in matters of nobility and history within the Empire, but even that had driven William to the brink, pushing him to do anything to escape as soon as possible.

By the time Albert's letters had been answered and the four tutors had arrived in Highrock City, William had already been taught about all the noble families, and he had completed his lessons on the traditions within the Empire. He didn't teach much about history because he had invited an expert in that field. He also called upon the same tutor to teach Frieda, and in fact, he had begged all four tutors to teach William.

Most tutors were reluctant to teach a prince since the chief tutor of the empire always appointed the tutors himself. But what Albert had written in his letters had intrigued them, and they couldn't resist the offer.

Albert knew how to persuade such knowledgeable people. These people didn't value money much; they could be satisfied with recognition alone. Albert's offer was in this direction – they could freely educate a prince, be remembered by him in the future, and potentially even educate his children.

Considering that the youngest among them was sixty years old, this last offer alone might not have been very enticing. However, combined with the high salary, it became very attractive to them. So they all accepted and hurried to Highrock City. Albert even sent five of his own riders to escort the teachers to their destination.