James needed a bit of privacy for the rest of the day. He was happy his family respected that. His little tantrum, he was sure, had come a moment too late. The meeting with Jason Kon would happen.
He couldn't quite remember the circumstances of their meeting from the novel, but he knew he didn't want that guy hating him. Or being anywhere near him in any case.
But if it couldn't be helped, then a plan was in order. He needed to find a way to use this body's natural gifts to get stronger. And yet, to get stronger, to become more important, more influencial. Wasn't that the exact opposite of what he wanted?
He also had a bone heavy laziness to contend with. But that wasn't such a bad thing when he thought about it. Hardwork, a bossom child of ambition. You couldn't work hard without some form of ambition.
His ambitions had been the end of his first life, and yet it went further than that. Fame, strength, influence. Those kind of things had to be worked for. Sometimes ambition led to evil. Or was that greed? But what was the difference?
Then perhaps Halden's laziness was a good thing. It just might be the perfect counter to his ambition, the one that had left his life a shambles.
If he was going to go after power, he needed a few rules. He needed to restrict his ambitions, restrict his goals. Why did he need the power anyway? He just needed enough to survive, enough to maybe protect the things he cared about. That's why becoming Duke was still meaningless to him. But finding a few divine treasures might not be the worst idea.
Sometime during the book, Jason had met a character with a strong witch factor. Being the total competitive prick he was, Jason had killed this character for daring to be a competitor in terms of strength.
Or maybe the other character was kind of evil. The reader was starting to wonder when he'd gotten biased against the hero. Anyway, Jason had harvested the witch factor, and hence began the only arc in which the protagonist tried to get stronger.
He searched for divine treasures, managing to get as many as three of them. But they were useless to a mage with the amount of power Jason had.
Unless he could have a balance of at least the four basic elements. The last one he could trace, had belonged to a tribe of witches long since thought to be lost.
The tribe might have been lost, but the line charged with keeping the divine treasure was far from finished. And the last known heir to the power was now dead, and she'd once been wife to a certain Duke in the North of Mareth.
Jason knew he couldn't get the treasure from James Halden's territory, and once told his companions he felt guilty about his relationship with James. He gave up on his mission to find the divine treasure, but James now knew where the treasure was.
Or at least roughly. If his mother had belonged to a line dedicated to protecting the treasure, then it'd make sense for her to have left it to James. She couldn't have given it to him when he was younger for fear of damaging his witch factor.
Now James had found his first step to sufficient strength. He just needed to hunt for it, like in a scavenger hunt.
"Can't have anything go too easy for me, now, could you?"
He didn't even know who he was talking to. Some kind of god, maybe. In his old world, gods had been obsolete, religion no more than a way for people to identify with each other. Now that something so supernatural was happening to him, he couldn't help but think of gods and their mysterious power.
'This is so not the time to receive spiritual enlightenment. I have work to do.'
*******************
"Gray, I haven't seen James in two days. Where has he been? I hope he's not back to—?"
"Don't worry mother," Crest replied instead of the butler. "I saw him in the library just ten minutes past."
"Oh?" Duke Desmond frowned at his son.
Then he stared at Gray while he asked his next question.
"What is he doing, do you think?"
Gray shrugged. "Beats me, your Grace. At first I was led to believe he'd been reading a few of the late Lady Lilith's favourite novels, but he recently started to read the account books and general geography of the Halden lands."
"Hmm...very curious," the duke commented.
But there was a gleam in his eyes and all could see he was not displeased.
***************
"Damn it!" James swore loudly, happy there was no one in the library this late in the night. "I messed up. There is only one day left till the bloody hero gets here. And then my life will be absolute hell. Yet I'm so closeee!"
He continued to scour the map, trying to see where his mother could have burried the divine treasure like she'd alluded to.
'If only there was something in all these documents I have opened here—'
Then something caught his eye. Something that he was surprised he hadn't seen in all the days he'd spent trying to see through his mother's head.
'...to my son James, I leave my collection of the greatest literally works of my time. And my ring, which my mother had turned into a pendant because it was too big for my slim fingers.'
Reading a copy of his mother's will is what had started him reading through her novels in the first place.
It had been absolute hell trying to guess where the treasure was buried. He'd thought reading the novels might help. Or maybe he'd just wanted to waste time reading. He already had a few suspicions, based on vague recollections of Jason working through the problem in the novels.
The ring though. His mother's ring. Now there was a sentimental thing, it brought tears to his eyes even though his personality was now a bit different. It could be argued that his mother's death had led him to become who he was, but the reader was starting to find that this character had a few layers in him. For example, was it his mother's death, or the birth of Duchess Viola that had changed him? And who had he been before anyway. Just a boy of five, right?
How he knew the ring was probably what he was looking for? The character who'd helped Jason locate the other divine treasures had used a ring as well. It was a thin connection, but James blamed his tired and lazy mind for jumping to the most convenient conclusion.
It was in no way easy rummaging through his cacophony of worldly possessions. His room was organised for him, so anything he discarded would either have been packed away for him or stolen by the maids.
He wouldn't blame them. He had way too many things he'd never even think to look for in months. It was a lucky thing the ring looked like nothing of great value.
A thin band of silver coated iron on a micro steel link chain. James held it to the light, and something in it really did reasonate with him. He smiled, then when he couldn't help it anymore he guffawed like a maniac.
He attended breakfast with the rest of the family the next morning. His red eyes earned him a few wary glances from most of the servants, and nothing more than a frown from his father.
"I want to go into town today, father."
"Oh? So what do you need then? A few gold coins?"
He frowned, considering. He knew how the money worked thanks to James' memories.
"I guess two will suffice."
"What?!" the Duchess was honestly puzzled. "That is not enough to buy a decent cup of wine even if they know you're the Duke's son. I hope you don't plan on taking some sort of cheap brew."
James once again found himself frowning. It was weird how quickly these rich parents came to accept their child's bad habits. Shouldn't they try to dissuade this kind of behavior?
Gray's incredulous face said he was thinking along the same lines as James. The boy just shrugged.
"Fine. Though I'm going for a different reason, I suppose it can't hurt to go with a little extra money."
"And a few attendants as well."
"Yeah, no. Maybe next time. I have to do something private today, and I want to be inconspicuous."
"With your hair?" Crest asked, genuinely curious.
James smiled at him. "I thank you for your concern, brother, but I assure you its no task at all to hide myself in plain sight."
Crest blinked, and his other siblings now looked on with interest. His parents exchanged dubious looks, and Gray looked on with barely concealed disapproval.
"You don't plan to do anything...bad?"
"You wound me, father. When have I ever done anything... not good?"
His father gave him a wry smile. "Oh I don't know. What about that time you slept in a bar and pissed yourself? Don't say it was your first time, we've had that argument before. What about all those times you were part of bar fights? What about that time you burnt my friend's bar to the ground because he wouldn't serve you? What about that time you slept in a cell? In your father's own city? What about getting kicked out of—?"
"Okay, okay, sheesh I get it. I've not exactly been the paragon of a saintly disposition in the past. But if anything, I feel this shows I can't do much worse, now can I?"
"That is not the most reassuring thing you could have said," the Duchess winced.
"Fine," James sighed. "I promise I won't do anything worse than those mentioned above."
"I notice that pledge doesn't say you can't do anything as bad as the crimes you've already committed. Smart not to commit yourself too much," Crest said with a nod of respect.
The Duke and Duchess glared at the boy. He blanched a little.
"What? Its basic negotiating strategy, of course I've studied about it.... No, I've never done anything like that, I swear."