Chương 1: Abandoned

"He has no talent?" a loud voice crackled above Arvell as he looked up to the man sitting on the royal throne.

"Y-y-yes, your majesty, we have never seen anything like this. The prince doesn't seem to possess even a single drop of mana within his body!" the priest responsible for Arvell's testing replied.

His face was visibly palpitating, but he paid it no heed.

The current situation was far too dire to worry about how he looked to the curious onlookers.

The priest quickly displayed the information for everyone in the room to see.

[Status Information]

Name: Arvell Relas Vispia

Age: 13 years old

HP: 13

STA: 10

DEF: 8

SPD: 9

PHYS ATK: 9

MAGIC CIRCLE: 0TH CIRCLE 0TH STAGE

MP: 0

Titles: Third Prince of Vispia

Skills: Incomplete Royal Swordsmanship (C+), Diplomacy (B-), Royal Pedigree (A-)

Arvell turned his head to the information displayed before him with eyes that couldn't hide his blatant disbelief.

A sea of murmurs formed among the nobles attending this supposedly auspicious day as if on cue.

"To think that someone of royal blood doesn't even possess a drop of mana, I pity the poor king."

"I thought the royal family was filled with the county's most powerful mages?"

"I believed the same. Turns out the royals are not that strong after all."

"They are you fools! Mind your tongue! The prince here just appears to be a special case."

"If he was my son, I doubt I would even let him manage the finances for my trading company."

Their words brought Arvell abruptly back to reality from his momentary shock.

'Damn these nobles, they really think I can't hear them just because they're whispering? Did they think that I wanted this?'

After hearing the noble's slanderous remarks, the shamed Arvell felt a wave of anger burning through his body.

But Arvell knew that they were right… He had failed his family.

Arvell fearfully turned to face his father, who coldly looked down at Arvell with anger and disgust, as if Arvell was a piece of trash polluting his prestigious throne room.

The King leaned forward from his throne, revealing a face still half-masked behind the shadow of his crown.

Then, his almighty voice thundered from his throne, "to think that someone of royal blood, my blood, is incapable of using even a drop of mana."

With a temporary pause in his speech, the King continued.

"From now on, I hereby banish you from this castle, live out the rest of your miserable life elsewhere, and die a dog's death.

Be grateful I'm leaving you alive. Now get out of my sight!"

Arvell's mom, the Queen, tried to grab his father-King and talk some sense into him. Instead, he slapped her hand away without a second thought. Her eyes met Arvell's eyes with forlorn.

Arvell saw the unspoken sorrow and melancholy in his mother's teary eyes. But, unlike his father, she couldn't abandon him.

As Queen, she held considerable influence over the King's decisions, just not enough in the matters of family in her capacity as Arvell's mother.

All she could do was bite her lip and hold back her tears.

Arvell forced a sympathetic smile, which only seemed to worsen her attempts at hiding her true feelings.

As Arvell turned away from his mother, he saw the venomous glares of his siblings.

After all the things he'd done for them in the past, he was somewhat appalled by their behaviour.

Especially that of his eldest sister, the First Princess Cornelia, who acted like a loving elder sister to him in the past.

Arvell averted his eyes from his two-faced siblings and returned his gaze to the exit of the throne room.

Arvell was then promptly escorted out of the throne room by the royal knights, who also seemed to be full of nothing but contempt for him.

Arvell felt like his day wasn't getting better any time soon.

As he walked down the hallway, Arvell stopped by a painting of him and his fiancé Lilianna, which was painted back when he was only five years old.

When Arvell was still the third prince of the Vispia kingdom.

Like him, Lilianna was of royal blood.

A princess, but of the Elantrya Kingdom.

Though their engagement as children was nothing but a political ploy set up by their parents, the two of them were almost inseparable as children, enjoying and relishing each other's company.

After negotiations broke down, a brutal war broke out between their two nations. As a result, their parents separated them, and their engagement was abruptly annulled.

Unfortunately, he hadn't seen or heard from her since.

The King originally planned to burn the painting after the war began; However, the painting remained untouched due to Arvell's mother pulling a few strings on his behalf.

As Arvell was reminiscing, he felt a hard shove on his back, which forced him to the floor.

"Get up and move on!" The knight harshly demanded.

Realizing he was still being "kindly" escorted by the King's knights, Arvell got up and brushed off his pants.

Arvell once again resumed walking down this seemingly endless hallway.

As they were nearing the end, he saw a familiar-looking girl in front of two burly men.

The girl was the daughter of duke Rahler.

Arvell's current fiancé, Ethelline Shea Rahler.

After the unexpected annulment of his engagement with Lilianna, the King hurriedly engaged him to the daughter of duke Rahler.

Duke Rahler was well known as a power-hungry and ambitious man; under his rule, the Rahler Dukedom became the second most powerful faction within the Vispia Kingdom.

King Vispia feared that Duke Rahler might plan a coup-d'état to overthrow him.

While the King was confident that he would thwart any rebellion, it would be a pyrrhic victory at best, allowing enemy kingdoms to strike Vispia while recovering from the civil war.

Thus King Vispia decided to use Arvell to form a political marriage with the duke's daughter to tie him down and gain his support.

As he neared her, Arvell could pick out the blatant look of disgust etched on her face.

"To think I almost married a piece of human filth like you!" she lashed out.

Arvell calmly looked up at her eyes which were practically oozing venom.

Although she acted kind and amiable on the outside, her nature was rotten to the core.

Ethelline was starkly different from the kind and good-natured Lilianna.

"Nice to meet you too, Ethelline," Arvell curtly responded.

Upon hearing his response, her evil eyes looked like they had been lit ablaze.

*Slap!*

Ethelline walked up to him and smacked her fingers across Arvell's face.

Wincing at the pain, Arvell heard some soft chuckles behind him.

Arvell turned around to see the two guards behind him trying their best to hide their laughter.

Arvell's lack of reaction to her aggression further inflamed Ethelline.

"Leave my sight! I never want to see you in the same city, much less breathe the same air with you. If I ever lay eyes on filth like you again, I will throw you out of this country myself!"

"Don't worry," Arvell let out an exaggerated sigh, "I tend to make it a principle of mine to avoid women as savage and ruthless as you."

Upon finishing his sentence, Arvell felt an indescribable pain in his gut.

Arvell looked down to see that one of the burly men beside Ethelline had embedded his fist in his gut.

Arvell collapsed to his knees while desperately gasping for air.

"Watch your words before the lady!" Arvell heard a loud noise boom above him.

Easier said than done, Arvell thought to himself.

As Arvell tried to get back to his feet, Ethelline walked over and spit on his face.

She gave Arvell one more condescending look and proceeded to walk away.

Unbeknownst to Arvell, Ethelline walked away with her angry demeanour warped into a frosty smile.

Glad to have seen the last of her face in my lifetime, Arvell thought. He began to slowly stand up while clutching his stomach.

Arvell then produced a napkin from his pocket and wiped off the spit she had left him as her parting gift.

The Knights finished their duty by opening the castle doors and kicking Arvell out, surprising the nearby town folks.

"Effective today, Prince Arvell Relas Vispia has been excommunicated from the royal family due to his lack of mana and stripped of his noble title."

The knight making this announcement took a long pause and focused his gaze on Arvell.

"He is no longer entitled to any benefits befitting noble blood and is not permitted to step a foot in the royal castle in the future."

Arvell stumbled back up to his feet, throwing a sharp glare back at the knights, who only responded with a condescending smirk, before turning around and slamming the castle doors before Arvell.

As Arvell turned around, he noticed a crowd of people had already gathered around the town square, desperately trying to inquire into the source of this commotion.

Walking through the road while being glared at by the masses left an indescribable feeling of shame in his heart.

'I didn't do this on purpose! Why must people treat a birth condition as if it was my fault? I wasn't born like this on purpose! What did I do to deserve this? Arvell furiously thought to himself.'

However, since he was still in the vicinity of the royal castle, he had to keep his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted to do was risk worsening his punishment.

And to think that all of this would happen on his thirteenth Birthday. But, of course, he would have never predicted this outcome, considering how happy and festive everyone was in the morning.

Arvell dejectedly looked out at the crowd before finding a way to slip past them.

Then, he turned and bolted into packed alleys and weaved in-between the commonfolk gathering around the source of the commotion.

***

Author's note:

Thank you very much for reading my book!

It really means a lot to have this many people read my book, something that I just wrote for fun in the beginning!

If you liked my book please continue to support me!

If you want to join the discord server the link is here: https://discord.gg/D3s9gwVjnG (if you want to just copy and paste it's also in the story synopsis)