Is it wrong to be an Elf in a Dungeon?

...

Ember Pov

I nocked the three arrows on the bowstring and aimed at the moving bosses, and then left the hold of the bowstring, the three arrows went whizzing through the air, and two of them pierced the bosses while one of them missed," That was wonderful, Your Highness!!", Remia said as she clapped, my instructor nodded," Indeed, to think Your Highness could shoot multiple arrows with such effectiveness at age of twelve is nothing but mind boggling."

Mind boggling huh? I guess considering my young age it is indeed acceptable, but I had put my sweat and tears into this. For the last five years I had been waking up early, having breakfast, then reading books for three hours, after which I have a light supper, then I train in Archery for two hours before resting and having my lunch, after which I again train relentlessly till night.

I often do take breaks in between them for any purpose needed, after all following such a schedule robotically is impossible, however I still train hours every day in training Archery, if not for the fact that I am already very smart, and a genius in Academics, I doubt my parents would have let me maintain such a schedule which barely includes classes for etiquette and other stuff.

I have also learned to use different bows, and even have gained the capability to hit moving targets, even multiple targets, going as far as to learn shooting multiple arrows from a bow that clearly is only made for shooting one arrow at a time, and just now I managed to shoot two fast moving targets using such a bow, and multiple arrows. 

" Your Highness, here, let me wipe away your sweat", Remia said as she came with a cloth and started wiping away my sweat, meanwhile I glanced at my bow,' I am twelve right now, my plan is to get ready to leave Alf's forest around when I am between sixteen or eighteen ', I thought, I have learned everything about Alf's forest, it's geography and whatever knowledge is available about the world outside here in the library.

I did have read books related to magic, but only a few and there are a lot other that I haven't read, but it wasn't needed. I don't need to be the all-knowing saint, only what is necessary is I need to learn and master. I had plans to have a good knowledge of herbs, plants, geography, a bit about history, archery, sword, magic and spear.

But at this rate I would have to abandon my idea of learning Spear or Lances, I need to do with Sword and Magic for now. I have a good knowledge of herbs and being Royalty I had even verified my knowledge by seeing actual herbs stored in the Royal treasury from all over the world. My basic knowledge to survive was clear, but I need to get the combat knowledge.

My Archery was far from acceptable level that I want, I still haven't hunted real targets using my archery, I need to be able to survive outside, which is full of monsters. So, I will need at least some combat prowess of a level 1 at least. While I was in my deep thoughts, Remia's voice broke my trance," Your Highness!! Is something the matter?"

I looked at Remia who looked at me with worry," You haven't been replying, is something in your mind, your Highness?", she asked me, I nodded and looked at my instructor," Sir Noel, I would like to learn swordsmanship", I said, declaring my intention. If not for the best treatment I receive leaving such a grinding lifestyle would be impossible, I would like to not rather waste this time, and get my combat techniques to a good level.

" You want to learn swordsmanship? Your Highness, I think it is still early for you to delve in the art of swords, how about learning it a year later?", he said, his words made sense, but not that I want to follow that path. " Sir Noel, please I need to learn swordsmanship! I have already reached the limit of how much I can improve my archery through training", I said, he looked at me and sighed.

" Fine Your Majesty, if that's what you want then I will be happy to teach you the basics of swordsmanship. I would train you for today, but for your further training we would need His Majesty's permission", I nodded, I will get my father to agree no matter what, even if I have to use my cuteness to mother!!

After he agreed to train me, I took a small break and had a light supper, finally Noel took me a different training area, and handed me a wooden sword," We will learn the basics today, First I will teach you how to hold sword, the basic moves, the footwork, and rest of basic knowledge", he said and I nodded, he then introduced me to different types of sword.

The sword he had handed me was a basic one, and easiest to begin with, he taught me on how to hold it, what pose my body should be, and finally, the basic moves of swordsmanship, which are lunge, attack and parry. In the end I kept training with the three moves for the rest of the day till I was tired, due to my already intense schedule I had developed a well enough stamina, so I was able to cope up with the training, still I was drained by the end of the day.

In the end with Remia's help, I was escorted to my personal bathroom, where I took a refreshing bath before joining the dinner. Though this time Remia obviously didn't join me in the bath, since I had become old enough, funnily enough she had expressed a great deal of sadness two years ago when I refrained her from taking a bath together with me, while I wanted to enjoy the leisure my position provided.

It was unavoidable that I need to become independent to achieve my plans, so once I reached an age where bathing by myself was necessary, I started taking baths by myself, while Remia could have bathed me till I was fourteen, and even after that I could have hired a butler to do the job, I decided not to. Finally, I reached the dining room, lavishing dishes were presented on the table, enough to make my mouth water.

I quickly took my seat, and barely held myself back from digging in and looked at my sister and father, mother was absent this time as she had left for some job."~Ember! My brother! Give your sister a hug!!~", my sister said as she approached me and hugged me. ' Sister! I am twelve years old! Stop with this now! It makes me embarrassed or so what I would like to say, but I didn't.'

Once I leave it might be for decades that I don't meet my sister, so I let her enjoy herself spoiling me. I smiled and she rubbed her cheek against my head, and well,"Umff!", she pressed me against her breasts taking me by surprise and hugged me even more tightly, I looked at her with deadpan eyes, as she smiled and kissed my forehead.

"How about it? Your sister has grown right?", she asked in a teasing tone, not to be outdone I nodded and said," Indeed sister, you have grown up a lot, especially here", her face became flushed on my blatant words and my hands touching her breasts, she didn't break the hug though," You are getting naughty!!", she said, and I chuckled.

" Enough!", Our father suddenly ordered, my sister looked at him with a pout," You both should dine instead of doing such a disgraceful act in front of your king!", he said coldly," Father! My brother is always holed up in his archery training, and whatnot! I am also busy the entire day! So what's wrong with spoiling my little brother, meeting him after an entire day everytime for a brief moment!", she retorted.

" Riveria! Give up these childish acts! You might be young, yet you aren't kid anymore! And Ember! I can expect her to be brazen, but why do you always go with her acts?!", he reprimanded both of us, to be honest his constant rants are well annoying. We know we are Royalty and whatnot yet expecting us to live like graceful robots is honestly, disgusting.

" Hmph!", my sister snorted, and after kissing me on forehead she said," Ember, you must be hungry go and eat your food", I nodded as I looked at her kind eyes, she knew our father might get even angrier if we were to continue defying him, so she had no choice but to stop her antics. I quickly started eating my food, being extremely hungry, it was very hard for me to hold back from eating with my bare hands.

Some habits just don't die I guess, once I had finished dinner, my father asked me," Ember, I hear that you want to practice swordsmanship? ", I looked at him and nodded," Yes father, not only swordsmanship I also want to start learning Magic", I replied surprising both my father and sister." Eh? Aren't you too young Ember?! Even I started learning swordsmanship at the age of fourteen!", Riveria said.

" Yes, it might be the case sister, but I have hit limit with my archery, and it won't improve unless I get some real experience, and combat is always dangerous so I would like to learn swordsmanship, and I am also very eager to start learning the Elven Magic", I said to her, she frowned a bit but, in the end, gave up.

My father stared at me for a few moments and said," Ember, if you promise that you won't lag behind in your etiquette and academics, I will let you start training", I felt joy on hearing his words, he might be quite arrogant, but he was still my father, and well my mother was there to get him in line if oversteps it.

Thus, giving him my gratitude, I went to my room, excited to start learning the swordsmanship. Once I arrived in my room, and Remia left I closed the door, and quickly went towards my bed, bending down I took a luxurious box, it was something that I had requested my mother for, it has a lock mechanism, and if someone tries to open it forcefully, it will burn off anything inside it.

The key to the box was hanging down on my neck inside a locket, I quickly opened the locket taking out the key and opened the box, revealing a book, I took it out and placed on the table, flipping the cover, I looked at the first page and sighed. There were paragraphs written in English, Hindi and French. 

This book was where I had listed all my knowledge of danmachi, I would go through it once or twice a week, so I don't forget things. To ensure my greatest secret of reincarnation is a secret, I have taken many steps. Firstly, I have written nothing about my reincarnation, just about the plot in the book, I have written it in several languages, and the sentences in the paragraph are made up in a mixture of the languages I knew in several combination.

The combinations included two languages at minimum to all languages I knew in a paragraph. I have written it in Hindi, English, Hindlish, and French. I have also used little bit of Bengali I knew at some places, anyone who even knew all the languages will be confused unless he reads it carefully, as my handwriting wasn't beautiful either.

That was my first barrier to protect my secret, second was this box that I got from mother which was quite sturdy and had lock mechanism. If someone tries to open it by force, it will release a chemical and stored up acid, burning the book into ashes. Even if it fails to burn book completely, my objective will be achieved.

Third is naturally the key, I have two keys, one that I have stored up in a secret place, and second that I keep within my locket. Finally, I read the book every once a while to keep my memories fresh, also to ensure incase my book is destroyed or anything else happens, I am not left absolutely clueless with hazy memories of the plot.

I had done my best that I could, if this plan doesn't work then there is nothing else, I could do. Though I doubt it won't keep my secret safe, finally I started reading through the book, and after a hour or so, I kept the book back in the box, locked it, put it below my bed and kept the key in my locket, then I went to sleep, excited to finally learn something new tomorrow.

To be continued...