章節 5: The Dead of Night

Arvell was violently shaken from his peaceful slumber and groggily looked up at the figure who rudely awoke him.

The intruder was fully garbed in black attire and had worn a white mask that was utterly featureless, except for two thin horizontal slits for the eyes and a small protrusion for the nose with two small holes for air.

Arvell felt a dense pressure passively emanating towards his body, giving him a sense of danger.

The masked figure impatiently turned to face Arvell.

"Prince Arvell, you have finally woken up! You need to hurry; your life is in grave danger!"

The masked figure's voice was distorted, not allowing Arvell to even determine if they were male or female.

Arvell quickly got up and grabbed the Hasty iron sword he left beside his bed. He unsheathed the blade and aimed it toward the masked figure.

"Who are you?"

Arvell inquired, but the terror in his heart betrayed his confident exterior. He felt his chest tighten with fear from being close to this person. He felt this person was strong enough to end his life and would have been powerless to do anything about it.

"Furthermore, I'm no longer a prince… if you haven't heard the news".

The masked figure shook its head and walked up to him impatiently.

"While that is true, your life is the main concern right now, not whether or not you are a prince."

Arvell looked up at the masked figure and slowly calmed his breathing to overcome the immense fear and dread he felt from this person.

His mind started rapidly thinking of who could be targeting him right now.

'Is someone after my life right now? Is it my former father? I am certain he is not stupid enough to kill me the night he abandoned me, so it must have been one of my siblings or someone who has a deep-rooted hatred of the royal family or just me in particular.'

Whomever his pursuer was, they were trying to kill him and not hold him hostage since someone like Arvell would have no real value as one. His father would gladly use his abductor's hand to kill Arvell and then pin the blame on them, effectively killing off the stain on his bloodline while raising his image of a benevolent ruler. Effectively killing two birds with one stone.

After all, if he were to pin the blame of his son's death on someone else and execute them, it would look like he cared enough to even love a son with no mana, even if he disowned him.

Thinking this, Arvell grit his teeth in frustration. 'If I die here, I'm just doing that egotistical bastard a favour.'

"So am I to assume you are here to help me escape?" Arvell inquired.

"Naturally, that is so; however, we have spent long enough in this room. The people coming after your life will be here any moment now, so it's in your best interests to hurr-."

(BOOM)

The door to the room exploded outwards, filling the room with debris and a thick cloud of wood and dust, thoroughly obscuring Arvell's view of the gaping hole left behind by the broken door.

The masked figure reached out and quickly grabbed Arvell before rushing headfirst out of the window. The figure then pulled out an elegantly crafted dragger that glistened eerily in the moonlight.

"Oh flames, become a sphere and burn my enemies… FIREBALL."

Arvell felt the air surrounding him suddenly heat up as he began to feel beads of sweat slowly sliding down his face. He craned his head to glimpse the blinding ball of crimson light that stuck out like a sore thumb in the darkness of night.

'Magic really is beautiful, isn't it?'

As Arvell became enamoured by the ball of fire that the masked figure produced, he noticed that it quickly sped towards the window that they had just jumped out of.

Two more masked figures were about to follow them by jumping after them, but they were immediately struck by this impromptu magic blast, leaving the two unlucky pursuers as charred corpses.

The sparks from the fireball spread to the nearby walls and the numerous broken wooden pieces that once served as the door to the room Arvell slept in and began to ignite themselves, creating blazing fire in the room.

The masked figure clicked its tongue. "Well, this will serve as a decoy for the pursuers for at least a little bit. Furthermore, with the noise from the door exploding, the residents should be able to realize soon enough that something's wrong".

The figure then positioned Arvell onto their back and landed on the roof of an adjacent building before dashing towards the city walls at a speed that left afterimages in their wake.

Arvell felt his stomach churning from the speed they were travelling at and used all of the willpower he could muster to suppress the urge to throw up everything he ate for supper.

After travelling near the city gates, the masked figure took Arvell to a nearby dark alleyway and took off their mask and cloak.

Arvell was stunned to realize the person who saved him was a beautiful girl who looked to be in her mid-twenties with long lustrous black hair and crimson red eyes. The girl was wearing commoner clothes previously hidden beneath her cloak.

"My name is Jessica, a mage in service of your mother, her majesty the queen."

The woman then turned to face Arvell.

"She entrusted your safety to me, and I plan to honour my lady's wishes. However, it's not safe for you to live in this country, much less the capital. So our best course of action would be to escort you outside this country where you can go into hiding."

She reached into her pockets and produced a letter sealed with the royal crest.

"My lady wanted me to pass this onto you. Unfortunately, it's too dark to read right now, but you can read it after daybreak since using fire magic inside a barrel would be quite disastrous."

"Alright, that makes sense; I should just wait for daybr… wait… what do you mean inside a barrel?" Arvell suspiciously questioned.

Jessica motioned towards a barrel that was suspiciously placed right next to the wall of a nearby building.

"We plan to smuggle you outside of the capital inside that barrel," she stated matter-of-factly.

'I guess that would work,' Arvell thought before nodding his head.

He proceeded over to the barrel, opened its lid, and found it filled to the brim with fruits.

"This barrel's already full; should I just dump these fruits?"

"The barrel has a hidden compartment with a fake bottom, just remove a few fruits, and you'll see," Jessica replied.

Arvell did as she asked and noticed that the barrel had a false bottom and that the fruits only took up a fraction of the space inside of the barrel.

"Are you going to personally carry me outside the walls while I'm hiding in the barrel?" Arvell asked questioningly.

He knew magicians typically had more muscular physiques since they could cast magic that could enhance their physical bodies, but it still felt weird to see someone who looked like a young lady carry him around.

However, he then remembered how she carried him to the alleyway on her back, making the situation more believable for Arvell.

"I'm going to carry you and drop you off on the caravan, where we will meet up with a colleague. The 3 of us then will leave the capital for the neighbouring city of Milduk before leaving Vispia and making our way to the neighbouring country of Elantrya".

"Elantrya, huh…" Arvell began to reminisce about his memories with Lilianna.

'I wonder how she's doing? She must have grown into a beautiful young lady by now.'

Arvell slowly lowered himself into the barrel, and Jessica placed the fake bottom above his head and filled the rest of the barrel with the previously removed fruits. She then lifted the barrel and put it on her shoulder, and walked towards a horse-drawn carriage where a young man was chewing on a piece of grass in his mouth.

"Took you long enough," he stated with a slightly displeased tone.

"We had a little trouble Calen, but nothing I couldn't handle," Jessica replied.

"Alright, place him in the back and let's get going. Our pursuers won't give up with just this."

Jessica gently put the barrel holding Arvell in the back of the caravan and sat beside the man named Calen at the front of the horse-drawn caravan.

Calen grabbed the reins of the horses and drove the caravan to the gates, and after giving the guards their fake identification papers, they began to set out of the capital before dawn.

***

In a dimly lit room of the royal castle, an elegantly dressed young man was relaxing on an elegant sofa created with the fur of a blood tempest bear, a beast with power comparable to that of a fourth circle magician. The man slowly twirled the wine glass in his hand before tasting the blood-red drink. Then, he slowly savoured the sweet and bitter aftertaste before feeling a presence enter his room.

"Is he dead?" the young man asked while still focusing on the wine glass in his hand.

A masked figure appeared and knelt before the young man while his entire body was shivering in fear.

"A-about that, my Lord, i-it seems that someone has aided the former prince in his escape. We suspect they may have already left the capital since we couldn't f-find their bodies among wreckages. T-The person who aided him started a fire at the inn which m-managed to reduce the pursuers into c-charred corpses."

The young man threw his glass at the masked figure in a fury.

"USELESS! Not even two fourth circle magicians were able to kill him? Who would dare protect him????? Luckily those pieces of filth managed to die on their own; if they brought their sorry asses here, I would have made them live a life worse than death!" The young man roared.

"M-My lord, the former p-prince was well-loved by the royal family before yesterday, so someone must have had lingering a-affections for him, even after he was shown to be trash."

The young man clicked his tongue and turned towards the kneeling masked figure.

"Whom else knows that the prince's body was not among the wreckage?" The young man demanded.

"J-Just the two of us and a few of your men, my lord," the masked figure faithfully responded.

"Prepare a body similar to the Arvell's; I don't care where you get it. You can go kill some slum trash for all I care. Take that body and char it beyond recognition before planting it at the fire scene. Claim that the body belongs to the Arvell and that he is dead." The young man paused to steady his breathing and calm himself down.

"Then I want you to take a team and personally hunt him down. That trashy excuse of a sibling cannot be allowed to live. If you fail this again, I will have all of your heads."

"T-Thank you for the generosity; we will not fail you again, my lord… his highness second prince Carnis!".

Carnis's face turned into a slight scowl when he heard the word 'second' preceding his title as 'prince' but decided to not act upon his impulses for the moment.

The masked man disappeared as fast as he came, leaving the second prince Carnis alone in the dimly lit room.

Carnis reclined back into his sofa and filled a new glass of wine before letting out a maniacal smirk that would have chilled the bones of anyone who had witnessed it.

"Don't think that managing to escape from me once will do you much good, you piece of manaless filth. I will make sure you realize your place in this world before you die a slow, agonizing death only befitting someone like you."

Carnis took a sip of wine before letting out a creepy crazed laughter

"HAHAHAHAHAH- (cough cough)."

"F*ck… (cough) inhaled wine while (cough) laughing again…" he muttered to himself amid his coughing spree.

If Arvell was to have witnessed his elder brother's episode, he would have simply called it karma.