3- Time Jump, Because why not

I am now 5 years old,

I can't stress enough how I wish I can just erase the first 3 years off my memory. The struggle to sit and the crawl and walk. It was alot, good job on persevering young me.

Sometimes I really believe it was a miracle I had grown up to this degree, that toad of a woman tried to jinx me every other day for the first few months of my life, she got herself banned by the butler from ever entering the main house because of that.

I have finally became old enough to be involved in knights training, my mother is still bed bound and sleeping most of the time. The two adulterous couple were having fun travelling every other month when they weren't in the capital running our finances to the ground.

So as any normal person, I was wondering who is the real mastermind behind the dukedom and how have we not gone bankrupt yet? Well the answer was the most obvious one , it was due to the effort of both the head maid and the butler.

That was the reason the duke was unable to say a word when the headmaid reprimanded him,as she is holding his financial lifeline in her hands.

The other good news is I finally figured out which work of fiction I landed into. It was a novel i dropped half way because of how brain dead it was. "Roses of gold" was the official name. It was an academy romance about how the Crown Prince had lost his emotions at a young age and how the FL helps him regain them. It was well written until the author decided to make up a demon lord invasion and reverse harem ending and tge plit was then lost in the face slapping episodes that followed. The novel had the ML as the crown prince, with the 2 Duke heirs as supporting MLs.

So a background about this country: its called The Empire, yes just that, you can tell the author was too lazy to name it.

There are 2 dukes in this empire, the Northern Duke of Chaos which was featured in every novel and fanfic there is, and the southern Duke of Challice which is our family.

If I remember correctly, I was meant to be mentally disabled in the novel , and my younger half brother was meant to be the supporting male lead. But unfortunately for some reason there is no young brother in this timeline.

The level of technology in this world is like that of steam engine era, but with magic machinery instead. Magic is incorporated in most people's lives, but only royals are allowed to practise magic before the age of 12. All others have to wait until they enrolled in an academy to learn.

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The head maid had made recently up a very stressful daily chore list for me

Morning : running, sword and archery training

Afternoon : heir studies including etiquette, math , finance , history and geography

Evening: running and sword training

By the time sun sets I would be a tired piece of human meat. But a bonus point is that I am also allowed to see mother twice a week for one hour each. Although she is sleeping most of the time, it feels nice to be close to her.

After going through with this hell schedule for 3 months , the headmaid came to see me one morning ، apparently I am now a genius. All my tutors were praising me especially in math, but come on, anyone who had to do algebra will feel basic math was nothing.

The headmaid said she will be giving me true heir lessons after the evening training, about how to run the dukedom , as it seems my incompetent bio-donor had left everything to both her and the butler for the last 15 years.

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It has now been 4 years since I started the hell routine. I am now 9 yrs old and I have to say, I am killing it.

I just now noticed you did't know how I look like, let's paint this for you : silver hair as if woven from moonlight, phoenix eyes with blue striking orbs for iris , and a slim body build. I am as cool as an 9 year old can be. Even I get mesmerised by how cute, ahem, cool I look sometimes.

I can see the maids holding back their hands from pinching my cheeks, can't blame them I am a lady killer even at this age.

I had also become moderately good with swords, but I can beat the archers at shooting the bow. Oh how multi talented I am.

I had also started helping out the headmaid with the management of the estate , which is usually the job of the duchess, bit can be handled by the heir or headmaid in the absence of the duchess. I can now do most of the tasks on my own with the headmaid just reviewing my works before approval or corrections. I finally know how much of trouble this house is in. Regardless of the outside grandeur we are running on a deficit. If we keep going like this for 5 more years we will have no choice but to declare bankruptcy or seek help from the Imperial Family.

I had reviewed all our finances with both the butler and headmaid and our expenses hadn't changed in the last 20 years by much, the only change was mother's medicine which is still affordable each year and ,you guessed it, those two space wasting humans have been squandering double the budget of the entire duke's household for the last 10 years.

The Duke of Challice household was the most affluent household in the country after the Imperial Family before those two drove us to our current state. The good news is :that bio donor knew about his lack of business skills and didn't touch anything related to management since he became a duke.

I spent the good part of late year reviewing all our business contracts and had meetings with all the business allies -chaperoned by the butler- to renegotiate the contracts. As most of them had been up for renewal years ago, but they had been exploiting the fact that we didn't seem to care. Initially nobody would entertain me and would mainly negotiate with the butler, but we had a strategy where I use my cute child innocence to guilt trip them into signing on out terms , it didn't always work but we got what we can from it.