<Episode 29>
-Outside, back from the outside world.
The girl was biting her lip.
“……..”
Unlike before, without saying a word, she came over to him, sat down on the floor, and suddenly undid Ashamed’s collar.
“What are you doing?”
Ashamed held on to her delicate, cute hand.
Tuk–
The girl slapped Ashamed’s hand away and continued what she was doing.
The wound, which had not fully healed yet and was bleeding and felt sore.
“Hiss..”
Ashamed let out a small moan and clenched his teeth.
The small hand silently applied what appeared to be ointment to the wounds on Ashamed’s body for a while.
“If I summon Ilipia, you will get better immediately, but right now I can’t summon my spirits. I’ll at least put some ointment on you.”
The girl who blurted out those words quietly finished applying the ointment.
Ashamed looked at the girl with an indescribable feeling.
The girl carefully made eye contact with Ashamed, with a clearly agitated expression on her face.
“……What happened?”
The girl took a small breath and said.
“Why is it not enough to be imprisoned… why are you also abused?”
The corners of my eyes turned red and I spoke with difficulty.
As if it were something I was personally experiencing.
“What is your name and what is your original identity?”
Ashamed looked down at the girl blankly.
My Name, my identity.
‘-Your Royal Highness!’
“My name is…….”
Since his childhood, which now seems like a distant memory, no one has spoken his name or referred to him by his true identity.
However, at this moment.
Ashamed thought of the cold, frozen past and hugged his chest with an inexplicable feeling.
“Ashamed.”
Looking down at the little girl in front of him.
“Ashamed Haus Ruairi.”
He recited his own name, which he had kept for a long time.
“The second prince of the Roshan Empire… and the son of the current Emperor.”
The moment when she knew of the truth he had buried.
Her bright red eyes, filled with intense life, were stained with shock.
***
Ashamed Haus Ruairi.
The boy who was forgotten and imprisoned by the world was originally born as the second prince of the Roshan Empire.
‘Your Majesty, no! Please come to your senses…’
‘Child… my child…’
The life of the Empress, who became pregnant with her second child immediately after giving birth to First Prince Valerian, was in danger.
On the day that labor pains came, she finally faced the crisis that everyone had feared.
‘The unborn baby’s energy is unusual.’
‘What’s wrong with it? Answer quickly!’
‘It’s hard to believe, but… I feel a very strong chill. If it’s this powerful, it must be his main attribute, but that doesn’t make sense…’
The Roshan Empire was a nation founded with the blessings of Phoenix, the spirit king of fire.
Even if one did not receive Phoenix’s blessing, it was natural to receive the blessing of the fire spirits under him.
There was no precedent for any royal family to seat a spirit of an attribute other than fire in the position of the main attribute.
But Ashamed was different.
Ashamed was born with a cold so strong that it could freeze his mother’s body.
‘Cases like this are rare, but it would be a case where the main attribute was revealed immediately after birth. Also, when I guessed that it was unusually cold….’
‘…….Is it Ice king Frincher?’
The Emperor took the mutation as a serious matter.
Everyone who realized the Emperor’s intentions tried to dissuade the Empress, but she did not give up and gave birth.
Even though the Empress was frozen alive, she eventually gave birth to the child.
Even though in return, she was never able to get up from her seat.
‘Oswald, please do me a favor.’
‘No, Elijah. Please don’t say……..’
The glow of his warm green eyes, which resembled that of his first son who had not yet been weaned from breast, gradually faded.
The Empress smiled faintly and left a will to her husband.
‘Please love our children. So they won’t feel that they are motherless….’
‘No, Elijah, Elijah!’
The Empress died at a young age.
The Emperor was deeply devastated by the death of the Empress, his first love and comrade in arms who had gone through life and death with him countless times.
‘…….Don’t worry. Elijah. I will definitely keep your will.’
He had two sons whom the Empress left behind.
So he had to endure it.
Oswald was determined to fulfill the wish of the woman he had loved in his life and who he would love forever.
‘Your name would be … Ashamed.’
He gave his second son, who had lost his beloved mother, a name derived from the first letter of his wife’s name.
A mutant born in the imperial family that despite being blessed by the Spirit King of Fire, was blessed by the Spirit King of Ice.
Nevertheless, he was the child who inherited the blood of him and the Empress.
The Emperor did his best to take care of Ashamed.
But Ashamed was very different from an ordinary child.
‘How did you take care of your child, so that he didn’t say a word, laugh once, or cry once!’
Ashamed was a child trapped in his own world.
Separated from everything, he just stared into space with empty eyes.
He didn’t laugh neither did he cry.
Even though it was the time for him to talk, he didn’t say a word.
There was never a day when the cold and white frost around the child, enough to make him shiver, disappeared.
No matter how many times he changed nurses, maids, and knights, there was no significant change in Ashamed.
The Emperor gradually came to regard Ashamed with distaste.
[TL: What!!! How dare you!!]Even though he was scolding himself that it shouldn’t be like this, he couldn’t help but think that way as he faced those empty eyes.
‘…..The second prince’s growth development is not normal, so he will not be seen by the people.’
The Emperor decided to raise Ashamed entirely within the imperial palace.
Nevertheless, he tried his best to raise Ashamed as a normal child.
…..However, despite the efforts, no change occurred in the child.
‘Father!’
On the contrary, his first son, Valerian, became more talkative and more expressive of emotions day by day, running toward him with open arms and acting cute...
He was an absolutely adorable, completely normal child.
The Emperor naturally favored his first son, who looked exactly like his wife, rather than his second son, who killed his wife and was born with a mutant-like trait.
Thus, the Emperor gradually stopped looking at Ashamed.
[TL: Anyone give me a knife!!]Then, the sun dawned.
It all happened when Ashamed turned four years old.
***
The royal family of the Roshan Empire undergoes an attribute test when they turn four.
In the sanctum sanctorum of the temple, where only the royal family can enter, it is possible to confirm one’s innate blessings by using the power of the treasure bestowed by Phoenix, the Spirit King of Fire, to Emperor Arjan Rod.
Compared to ordinary spiritists who manifest their attributes between the ages of 8 and 12, this was the only way to confirm their innate blessings earlier than that, and this was a power that only the royal family of the Roshan Empire could enjoy.
The reason why they were so hasty in conducting the examination of the nature that would naturally manifest itself in the near future was to detect the royal family member who had received the blessing of Phoenix, the Spirit King of Fire, and designate them as successors.
‘It would have been nice if the 1st Prince had received Phoenix’s blessing… but unfortunately.’
‘It can’t be like this. Why did my son…’
However, that had long since remained only as a custom.
For some reason, the power of the blessings received from Phoenix was weakening as the descendants of the royal family passed down the generations, and cases of being born without receiving any blessings were becoming more frequent.
Although the truth was kept strictly confidential to prevent it from leaking out to the world, the royal family, who had now received Phoenix’s blessing, were grateful.
If he had received even the blessings of a fire lieutenant or a low-ranking spirit, he would have been crowned a crown prince regardless.
Oswald’s father, the previous Emperor, was such a case.
He was born with the blessings of Salamander, a lower spirit of fire. He went crazy with an inferiority complex towards his son, who was born with the blessings of Phoenix, the king of fire spirits, in just a few days, and abused his children.
Inferiority and jealousy eventually degenerated into madness, and even Archduke Heilian, who had been loyal to the Ruairi royal family since the founding of the country, was accused of treason and exiled.
‘My son is nothing more than a spiritless individual who has not received any blessings!’
The Emperor despaired at the results of the 1st prince’s attribute test.
Memories of the hellish days of his childhood began to flood him again, and he felt sick in the stomach at the thought of the child he cherished and loved the most, living with an inferiority complex like that of the mad Emperor… for the rest of his life.
However, it was impossible to hand over the throne of the Roshan Empire to the first prince who did not receive any spirit blessings.
After the first Empress died, the second Empress, who was needed to take charge of the palace’s internal affairs, gave birth to the third prince, but the child was not Elijah’s child.
The successor to Oswald’s position had to be Elijah’s child.
Therefore, the Emperor chose Ashamed as his last hope.
It didn’t matter if his main attribute was mutated.
In any case, wasn’t he born with the qualities of a powerful spiritist?
So please, he desperately hoped that at least one of the side attributes would be a fire spirit.
Because long-standing traditions could not be ignored.
‘…….your majesty!’
However, when Ashamed turned four, Ashamed’s attributes were revealed at the end of the attribute test.
‘The attributes of His Highness the 2nd Prince….’
Main attribute: Ice Spirit King Frincher.
‘This… this, how did it happen!’
The first side attribute, the spirit of fear, Wheelkassel.
The second attribute, Tregard, the spirit of hatred.
‘He’ve been blessed by the spirit of darkness!’
The Emperor was shocked and cried out.
He could get over the Ice Spirit King.
However, the other two spirits could never be tolerated.
Who was the Spirit King of Darkness?
Arkane.
A being that was extremely cruel and ferocious, as if it embodies all the darkness and evil in this universe.
Since the time human history began to be recorded, Arkane’s descendants and dark spirits, born from the significance of all negative beings, including the spirit king of darkness, Arcane, have been considered truly ominous and as beings that should never be approached.
The blessings they bestowed were in fact ‘curses’, and regardless of their nature, dark-attributed spiritists born with their blessings eventually fell into a vicious circle that they could not escape, or fell into madness and became beings that caused harm to humans in the future.
Therefore, spiritists with dark attributes had been the subject of constant ostracism throughout history.
In the long history of oppression, where people were ostracized and hated for their entire lives due to an innate blessing they could not choose, was it really inevitable that they would gradually go crazy?
Several decades ago.
The Elementalists of the dark attribute worshiped Arkane.
They joined forces with other believers and rose up across the continent.
It led to discriminatory wars and massacres.
‘The spirit kings of the natural world gave great spirit messengers to the world, so that we we would able to escape from that terrible tribulation.’
‘So let us allies make an oath.’
After the long-running disaster was over, the monarchs of all the countries on the continent, except for the Kingdom of Nisha, gathered and swore an oath.
The Spirit King of Darkness, Arkane, and the spirit masters blessed with the blessings of the dark attribute spirits under him will be put to death as soon as they were discovered.
‘That, that is not my child, it is just a taunt towards Roshan sent by Arkane! Get that thing out of my face right now!‘
Woolkassel, the spirit of fear, and Tregard, the spirit of hatred, were undeniable descendants of Arkane, the spirit king of darkness.
A dark-attribute spiritist whose identity was revealed should be immediately killed per law, but he was his son and the second prince of the Roshan Empire.
⋯⋯⋯Also, his beloved Empress died to give birth to something like that.
The Emperor could not tolerate that fact.
‘……No, with my own hands right now…!’
He denied that Ashamed was his son.
Hee was so angry that he felt like he was going to kill Ashamed at any moment.
‘Please love our children, So that they won’t feel that they are motherless…’
But then, the will left behind by his beloved Empress held him back.
The Empress Elijah sacrificed her lives to give birth to that child.
He couldn’t bear to kill the child like that.
‘……That thing shall no longer the second prince.’
Spiritists who were born with the dark attribute were ultimately reduced to being harmful, no matter what their original nature.
Thousands of years of history had proven this, and the Emperor decided that he could no longer keep Ashamed in the position of prince.
However, he cannot kill him according to the oath he made with the other allies.
There was only one conclusion.
‘But Your Majesty, the people of the empire already know that there are three princes…’
‘It does not matter. They will be informed you that the 2nd Prince is dead. And immediately erase the name of Ashamed Haus Ruairi from the royal family tree.’
The Emperor declared that Ashamed had died young.
Also, in order to completely erase all traces of Ashamed, the Empress’s son, Handel Haus Ruairi, who was originally the 3rd Prince, was appointed as the second prince.
‘I will not take your life with the last shred of warmth I have left.’
After completing all required processing.
The emperor imprisoned Ashamed in the abandoned castle of the imperial palace and spoke in a cold voice.
‘Hold your breath and live. Think of your very existence as dead. You won’t be able to come out of here for the rest of your life.’
***
TL:
Sorry about not putting the lock 🔐 emoji in front of the locked chapters, I thought it would appear automatically.
If you find any mistakes of that sort please inform me as I am still inexperienced.
Enjoy the rest of your day~
