Chapter 6 :

Episode 6 — The Hunting Tournament (1)

The First Imperial Prince, Rasia Abiran, moved toward his bedroom with a confused heart.

He had sent the others away and was returning after visiting his personal physician.

When that stupid old man heard that he had poured out a nosebleed, he made a face just as bewildered as the First Imperial Prince himself.

It was only natural.

The imperial family rarely fell ill.

A body twice as sturdy as others, unaffected by poison, and immune to disease.

Along with Manis, it was one of the elements that made them gods.

And yet, he had suddenly poured out an entire cup’s worth of nosebleed.

That quack old man, who took his pulse with trembling hands, had repeated only that there was nothing wrong like a grandfather clock.

Unable to overcome his anger, Rasia had tried to choke the personal physician, only to pour out another nosebleed.

“Damn it!”

Roughly wiping the tip of his nose with his sleeve, the First Imperial Prince kicked the door open and entered.

Normally, he would have dragged along rows of maids and servants to attend him, but he could not show such an ugly state to the lower ones.

Why did this suddenly happen?

Until the morning, he had not felt anything wrong with his body.

He had gone through the same routine as yesterday.

But when he used Manis during the ceremony, it had felt as if flames were flowing through every blood vessel in his body.

And then, the red blood that flowed down both hands.

For the first time in his life, Rasia felt something close to fear inside his head.

‘Surely, this will not happen every time I use my power?’

‘What happened to my body?’

‘What if I’m dying every time I use my power?’

When the hypothesis formed that he might no longer be able to use Manis from now on, his blood chilled cold.

‘.....Then what does that make my life up until now?’

It was a body that had lived its entire life to become Emperor.

But if he became a halfwit unable to use Manis, then he would become nothing at all.

He would become no different from those servants over there whom he had regarded as insects.

“No, that can’t be. In any case, he said there was nothing wrong with my body.”

He repeated it to himself, but he knew better than anyone that he had not been convinced.

Feeling his fingertips tremble with anxiety, Rasia reached toward the bedside table.

Inside the drawer was a hookah that the Second Imperial Prince had once gifted him, saying it came from a distant country where brown-skinned humans lived.

Originally, it was said to be an addictive drug, but the imperial family could not become addicted to narcotics or poisons, so he merely needed to enjoy the pleasure it gave.

He did not use it often, but nothing else made his mind feel this at ease.

It was just as he grabbed the long pipe and was about to put it in his mouth.

“If you are anxious, it would be wise to cut down on that first.”

An emotionless voice came from the window.

“Who is it!”

Rasia shouted roughly toward the direction of the sound.

A black figure slowly emerged from the shadows.

At the appearance of an unexpected person, Rasia frowned.

Black hair and black eyes.

A height and build far inferior to his other siblings, who were nearly two meters tall.

It was his halfwit younger brother, lower than an insect.

“Ha! You must truly have gone mad. Do you know where this place is, for the likes of you to…..”

Immediately afterward, Rasia’s pride was hurt by the fact that he had been startled by such an insect-like bastard, and his face reddened as he tried to shout.

“I know.”

But he could not, thanks to his calm younger brother, who cut him off without a single change in expression.

“What.....?”

Soon, the Seventh Imperial Prince looked straight into Rasia’s eyes and continued.

“Someone like me secretly got into the room of the next Emperor, which is said to be the second safest place in the empire, without even the rats or birds knowing, and yet you aren’t afraid. As expected, unlike me, the First Imperial Prince must truly be a descendant of God."

At the end of those words, the black-haired young Imperial Prince smiled crookedly for the first time.

At that sight, Rasia felt a chilly sensation sweep across the back of his neck.

It was just as he said.

Even if the people around the bedroom had been sent away, this was still the First Imperial Prince’s palace.

Once outside the floor where the bedroom was located, knights loyal to him were still patrolling the area without gaps, and devices that prevented people from climbing were also installed on the building’s outer walls.

A place where no one could enter carelessly, and no one should be able to enter.

Yet when on earth had this bastard in front of him been inside?

Fear of the unknown, something he had never felt in his peaceful life until now, was covering the First Imperial Prince several times today.

* * *

This guy is simpler and more timid than I expected.

No matter how out of his mind he was from the sudden situation, for someone who was even called the next Emperor to be unable to hide his expression this much.

I had only thrown the words out to probe him, but the First Imperial Prince was visibly shaken.

“You….what are you? You’ve lived as if you didn’t exist all this time. Cowering flat, like an insect…. So how did you get in here….”

Maybe because he had already spilled blood from his nose and thought all sorts of things alone, his face gradually distorted.

“I asked how you got in!”

I felt like I might make my eldest brother, who was almost thirty years old, cry at this rate, and if his voice got any louder, someone would surely come, so I opened my mouth.

“I climbed up the wall.”

Fortunately, the First Imperial Prince shut his mouth.

Though instead, he began looking at me as if I were sick in the head.

“....You?”

The First Imperial Prince glanced at my arm, which looked frail compared to his own—the forearm of an average man in his twenties—and frowned.

Well, if someone said they had climbed up the wall of a four-story building with this arm while avoiding countless traps, I would probably look at them that way too.

“No, it was a joke.”

“Then what was it?”

The First Imperial Prince asked with a frown, as if he was beginning to feel a different kind of fear one could feel from a madman.

“Actually....”

When I lowered my head and dropped my voice, the First Imperial Prince focused on me with a tense expression.

“I flew here like a bird.”

The face of the guy who had been listening seriously went blank for a moment, then slowly reddened.

“You, you bastard, are you playing with me right now....”

Since he would not believe me even when I told him the truth, there was nothing I could do.

I shrugged and cut off the First Imperial Prince’s words, which had quieted down thanks to that.

“Well, that isn’t important.”

“No, if that’s not important, what is!”

“Blood. You spilled it, didn’t you?”

The First Imperial Prince pressed his lips together and spoke as if chewing and spitting the words out.

“For the imperial family, something like this is nothing.”

“In a week, you’ll vomit blood from your mouth too.”

He glared at me and said,

“What kind of bullshit is that? The personal physician just said…..”

“He said there was nothing wrong.”

This time, the First Imperial Prince completely shut his mouth.

A thick suspicion seeped from his expression, as if asking how I knew that. As if asking whether I had done something to him.

“I know you’re panicking, but use your head a little. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have needed to take the risk of coming here. I could’ve just left you alone. Even to you, it feels like things will go wrong if this continues, doesn’t it?”

The First Imperial Prince was still glaring at me, but I could feel that much of his force had died down.

“And you yourself roughly know what’ll happen if you don’t listen to me right now.”

When I said that while sitting on the sofa placed in the center of the bedroom, he flinched.

“As you already know, every time you use Manis, you’ll spill blood. The more you use it, the worse it will become. Right now, it’s only your nose because the mucous membrane there is weak, but after a little more time, even if you use a single drop of Manis, you might spray blood from your whole body and die.”

The color completely drained from his face.

I’m glad my eldest brother is simple.

He reacts exactly as I give it to him with just a little fear.

Though that was probably why he got tricked in the first place.

At the situation going just as I had thought, the corner of my mouth rose crookedly again.

“Congratulations. You’ll become the insect’s spawn you despised so much.”

“....What do I have to do?”

It seemed he had finally reached a state where he could have what was called a conversation.

* * *

“Anna, I guess you were wrong after all.”

Lin whispered as she entered the dining room, pushing the tray containing the untouched lunch.

“His Highness isn’t just a little strange. He’s extremely strange.”

“He didn’t eat at all this time either?”

“Not even a single grape.”

Lin lifted a dish to show her.

Though it was already almost dinner time, the green grapes that had been placed out at lunchtime were still there in the exact same state, slightly dried.

Anna tilted her head while looking at them.

‘Lately, he had been scraping everything clean like an animal in poor nutritional condition. Did something happen again?’

She felt a sense of disharmony in His Highness’ behavioral change.

This time, it seemed not only she but a few others had noticed as well.

However, since they were people who had no loyalty or interest toward the Seventh Imperial Prince in the first place, and only thought about surviving their brutal daily lives without knowing when they might die, they simply let it pass.

Only Anna had curiosity about him amid her difficult and exhausting daily life.

Even if it was a change, it was not that the Seventh Imperial Prince had become especially kind or affectionate toward the employees.

The servants still could not properly look at the Seventh Imperial Prince’s face.

But if the reason before was that he shut himself in his room, listlessly reading books or looking out the window, then lately, surprisingly, it was because the Imperial Prince was busy.

He mostly entered the study and searched through books or diligently wrote something.

Whenever servants entered to make sure he ate his meals, he repeatedly told them to leave with a cold expression.

Later, he even threatened that anyone who looked for him while he was in the study would have to starve for the whole day.

Also, sometimes, he went outside the castle in comfortable clothes and returned covered in dust from head to toe.

On such days, the smell of alcohol wafted strongly from his clothes, so everyone thought he had been quiet lately, but had started getting drunk again and causing a disturbance outside.

Amid those indifferent people, only Anna noticed the clear look in the Imperial Prince’s eyes again.

Anna instinctively realized that some great change had happened to His Highness again, but she kept her mouth firmly shut.

She merely muttered softly to Lin, who was clearing the food,

“Maybe he’s in a growth spurt.”

Then she continued organizing the dishes.

* * *

Clop. Clop.

On top of the shaking horse, I pressed firmly against my dry eyes.

One month had passed since the First Imperial Prince spilled a nosebleed during the ceremony.

Though everyone seemed to be keeping quiet, behind his back they whispered about whether the First Imperial Prince had lost both his ability as an imperial family member and his qualification as the next Emperor.

Now that the possibility of the First Imperial Prince being appointed Crown Prince had decreased, opinions that the opportunity had gone to the Third Imperial Prince or the First Imperial Princess were slowly emerging as well.

In the original work, to dismiss this, the First Imperial Prince overexerted himself and pleaded with the Emperor to move the hunting tournament forward.

This unreasonable strategy from the anxious First Imperial Prince worked to some extent, but it ate away at his body and shortened his lifespan.

And right now, the flow of this world was following the original fairly faithfully.

The hunting tournament had been moved up, and here, the First Imperial Prince would show people that he could still fully use Manis.

The gears were turning well, just a little early.

The problem was that I still could not tell whether this was happening only within this imperial castle, or outside too—that is, to the protagonist as well.

The hunting tournament and the nosebleed incident were linked in a chain of cause and effect, so that could be accepted. But as for the other incidents, at least from within the empire, there was no way to know.

What I had to do was mediate from the middle so that the point where the two timelines connected would mesh properly.

To do that, I needed to place the events here under my control. And then, at the right time, I would fake my death and run far, far away.

As expected, this kind of passionate role doesn’t suit me.

Buu—buu—buu—

At the low sound of the horn that snatched back my mind, which had briefly wandered into future plans, I directed my gaze forward.

I saw my brothers and sisters riding in a row on white horses with golden manes.

It was the procession for the hunting tournament.

Of course, I was at the very back.

This event was one I could skip at my discretion, but today I had chosen to participate.

Because if my calculations were correct, today might bring an opportunity to change the fate of an important person and learn about the developments outside.

“A pitch-black horse that suits an insect-like bastard like you, huh?”

Before that, I would have to shake off this rooster-comb bastard picking a fight from beside me.