Who Made Me The Secret Crown Prince

Episode 1.

Luckily for Valeria, Aeternitheos ensured that his palace never ran out of gold and silver.

"Faeries always visit me with treasures," Aeternitheos innocently spoke in passing as he read a supposedly children's book on sorcerors as Valeria cleaned up his room, gawking at a gold object lying around in his bedroom."They said they're Mother's friends."

Hook, line and sinker. Valeria fell for his trick because no matter how much gold she pocketed, she would find more the next day.

Yes, he was using magic.

He was in a fantasy world! He might as well use all the abilities at his disposal.

However, it did make him sick more easily. So between those days, he would scatter around gold and silver himself.

Although the imperial maid was known for her greed, particularly regarding her mismanagement of the infant princess' funds and how the only reason she remained in this dreadful Obsidian Palace was because of the prince's little fairytale story, she was still competent at her job. Even though the prince had been cast aside in the Obsidian Palace and the treasures in this palace were vulnerable out in the open for the taking, he was still a prince, and any mistreatment towards him would be considered treason.

Valeria begrudgingly took care of the independent prince during even his weakest days, hand-feeding him soup for days, cleaning him and reading him his books. While not exactly a parental figure like Claude could be or as loving as Lilian was, Aeternitheos was almost grateful for Valeria, regardless of her reason to stay. 

Valeria looked almost worried for the first time when he got particularly ill one day, but Aeternitheos knew it was out of fear of losing her source of income. 

She was at least there for him.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Aeternitheos honestly waited as months passed, knowing the consequences of his magic would eventually catch up to him.

From his recent readings of this world, Aeternitheos confirmed that manifesting magic in this world at a young age meant burdening his young body. In the history books of the Obelian Empire, the normal age to manifest their magic properly was during their teens, and even they had a hard time stabilising their mana. 

Athanasia, in the Who Made Me A Princess timeline, was a prime example. As she possessed an overwhelming amount of mana, if it wasn't for Lucas, she would have died.

Being her twin brother did not lower the chances of his own infinite, crazed amount of mana.

But he also needed to learn how to quickly control and wield it for his means of survival.

The two-year-old took the risky chance and thus, could feel his mana going haywire after each day passed, as his still immature and frail body was trying to contain and handle the strains of enormous mana. Yet, he felt calm, as he took his usual stroll along the Obsidian Palace walls.

Unlike any of the other palaces, the Obsidian Palace was surrounded by walls, designed to make him feel trapped and suffocated. So, sometimes, when he knew Valeria was either busy doing her imperial maid duties or stealing his riches, he would escape past these walls into the gardens just past these walls.

And yes, that included more magic.

Today, in particular, he felt his mana built up to the point of suffocation so he walked deeper into the gardens to find a place to meditate. He figured he could try meditating to discharge and control his mana, or perhaps releasing his some excess mana to stabilise himself.