Sorry, made a little mistake with the previous chapters title and forgot to include: (1)
That's all, happy readings
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"That will be all for today's lesson," said Thorsten's history tutor, as they stepped away from the blackboard and began sorting their books.
"We'll be starting on the next chapter in our next lesson, so please finish going through this chapter before then—dismissed."
They didn't even wait to hear Thorsten to reply before swiftly tucking their books under their arm and hurriedly exiting the room with swift, short strides.
Even with the special privileges granted to him as a tutor, such levels of disrespect were far beyond his standing and how any teacher should behave with their student.
And as a veteran who had been tutoring the children of nobles for over a decade, this was something he had understood well.
There were even cases of tutors having their licenses revoked for such offenses, and an extreme case where someone he had been close to was executed for something less.
This then raised the question of why he would still behave like this, despite knowing better.
The answer was simple—his bowels had other priorities, forcing him to abandon all formality and devote his full attention to holding back a disaster that would stain both his trousers and his career as a tutor.
So, he ended the lesson earlier and left Thorsten to read through the remaining section during this extra time, as well as for him to find a toilet far enough away from the main house so that no one is within range to smell the fallout of his release.
Thorsten let out a small, amused chuckled as he watched the middle-aged man almost waddling his out of the room, sweating with his face turning red with how focused he was on holding himself back.
He made a silent prayer, hoping he could safely find his way to a toilet before it was too late.
It left him curious as to what the man had eaten, as at some point during their lesson, he had been able to hear the rumblings from his stomach.
To the point that he was about to forego any formalities and suggest that he go and see the palace's physician instead of going on with the lesson.
Thorsten chuckled again before finally turning his attention back towards the blackboard and the rough mind map drawn of it; with the words "Everbright Empire" written boldly in its centre.
Branching out from there were two distinct headings, each representing an integral half of the whole—together forming the foundation upon which the empire was built and allowed to flourish.
On the left were the five noble founding families that helped found the empire, which would be six if one were to include the Everbright family itself, each written out neatly with the name Baylith written at the top of the list.
And on the left were another five names—those that represented the five religions and gods of order—written similarly to those of the noble families, with the order of the goddess of light and order written at the top larger and bolder than the rest.
The teacher had added a bracket next to the name containing the words "divine mandate", something that the teacher had not been able to explain them fully before ending the class to do his business.
All he had said was that the goddess had given the king of the Everbright family a revelation that led to him gathering the founding families and uniting the surrounding kingdoms under his name to form the empire.
There had been no mention of the specifics or minor details of that time, and that was to be expected.
No one would expect your average ten-year-old to be able to fully understand the process of forming an empire.
Their reasoning and logical thinking had yet to develop enough to be able to process those nuanced subjects, and so, they would slowly introduce him to the different smaller components that made up a part of the greater whole.
Then, when he had developed the necessary critical thinking capacity, they would work on piecing those parts together so that he was able to understand how they all worked together in the formation of said whole.
The idea was simple enough to grasp—the whole could not be used without first understanding its parts.
Just as one could not apply the quadratic formula without first grasping the algebraic foundations it relies on, one cannot fully engage with history without the ability to assess arguments, identify patterns, and analyse information to understand why events occurred.
He understood this, truly he did, but that didn't stop him from being frustrated at how little information he was being given on the subject.
He couldn't help but curse whatever force had sent him here, 'Would it have killed you sons-of-b*tches to grace me with a host that was even a couple of years older?'
Thorsten's fingers began a rhythmic tapping along the desks surface as he started on his homework to finishing the remainder of this chapter.
As he read through the pages, a particular kingdom's name began to stand out among the rest of the nations mentioned in the records.
It was not as though the Frumbel kingdom had ever been a great power, nor even a particularly notable one during the Age of Division. Yet, to hear the author tell it, they might as well have been the root of all suffering in the known world.
Because whenever something needed explaining—no matter how distant, how trivial, or how utterly nonsensical—the answer, invariably, was "Frumbel."
Did farm animals begin dying off from some unknown illness? The gods, it was claimed, had struck them down in disgust at the Frumbel kingdom's "unnatural indulgences."
Had a storm rolled in, tearing roofs from homes and swelling rivers until they swallowed entire villages? Clearly, it was a divine attempt to wash the Frumbellides clean—an effort doomed to fail.
Did two neighbouring nations descend into war? The Frumbel kingdom had, without question, orchestrated it from the shadows, their appetite for bloodshed apparently without limit.
Had an ancient beast, long confined to myth, risen to lay waste to the land before vanishing once more? The Frumbellides had found it, angered it, and—through some spectacular incompetence—lost it again.
Did a snake appear in one's garden? A traveller from Frumbel must have placed it there.
Did the bread burn, the milk sour, or the wind change direction without warning? Frumbel.
Did a man misplace his keys, forget his own thoughts mid-sentence, or wake with a crick in his neck? Almost certainly Frumbel.
At that point, he stopped reading.
He stared at the page, expression flattening as the sheer scale of it settled in—not merely bias, but a relentless, almost creative determination to blame a single kingdom for every conceivable misfortune.
'Who…,' he wondered at last, 'Who in their right mind approved this?'
Because at this rate, he expected the next line to inform him that the Frumbel kingdom was responsible for stubbing one's toe, tripping over nothing… or perhaps even the simple act of existing on an inconvenient day.
And as annoying as it was, there was nothing he could do but press on, taking every mention of the Frumbel kingdom with the smallest grain of salt.
Still, irritating as the scholar's fixation was, it raised a more pressing question—one that lingered at the back of his mind as he read: why was a record so blatantly biased still in use at all?
The answer, inconveniently, lay in the work itself.
Even with all of his evident prejudice, this particular scholar's writings continued to circulate because, once one looked past the incessant references to the Frumbel kingdom, the substance of his records was among the most detailed and reliable of the age.
Which, for many, was reason enough to tolerate the constant ramblings, however grating, about Frumbel and their supposed misdeeds.
And as interesting as it was to learn about another world's history, the biases of the writer against any other kingdom that was not their own was to the point that his disdain for them had transcended time and could be felt through the page.
The further he read on, the more he began to see all the mentions of the Frumbel kingdom as more of a joke than anything else.
'Those guys from the Frumbel kingdom probably did suck, huh?'
He wondered idly, the dry crinkling of the parchment as he turned the pages echoing loudly in the otherwise empty room.
Even after finishing his assigned work, Thorsten's gaze remained fixed on the weathered pages of the old record, skimming through its later chapters in search of any mention of the gods of this world.
There were none.
The book closed with a soft thud, and he leaned back into his chair, a quiet, defeated sigh slipping past his lips as he let his weight sink into it.
The text spoke at length about divisions, conflicts, and wills of opposing men—but when it came to the gods, it offered nothing more than passing phrases and empty reverence, as if the names themselves had been carefully avoided.
'This should have been the place for it…'
As that thought reached his mind, the door to the room opened to a palace maid who appeared to be caught by surprise at Thorsten's presence in the room.
From the small bucket of water, and the cloth hanging over its edge, he could tell exactly why she was here.
So, not wanting to impede here work with his presence, calmly dismissed himself and left the classroom to let her work in peace.
The idea of returning to his room to look through his other notes crossed had crossed his mind, one quick glance at the time put an end to that thought before it could be acted on.
It was already nearing the time for his next class, so he would have to shelve any irrelevant thoughts and focus his attention to the subject of Thorsten's next class.
He let out a soft sigh, then started on his way to the next class.
"Noble etiquette, huh?" He muttered to himself, wondering how much of the lesson he could leave to this body' instincts.
His thoughts shifted as he moved, turning over a more pressing concern.
If the records would not speak of the gods, then he would have to find something that would.
With that resolve settling in, ideas on how me would go about naturally requesting theological texts began forming in his mind, as Thorsten descended the staircase in silence.