Huff—! Huff—! Huff—!
"Damn it!"
I couldn't hold back the scream that ripped from deep within me. How had it come to this? How had everything gone so wrong?
I don't even know where to begin to explain. Not because the story is long, but because I probably won't live long enough to tell it.
'Gasp… I have to… survive… no matter what!'
I kept running like a man possessed, my steps wild and stumbling, an unbearable pain searing my chest.
I didn't even know where I was going.
All I wanted was to survive, to escape the human monsters who hunted me without mercy.
"This forest… Should I have even entered it in the first place? Where the hell is the exit?"
Thud—!
"Gah—!" I cried out as a sharp twist shot through my ankle. My foot had caught in a web of tangled vines, sending me staggering and crashing hard to the ground.
Pain exploded from my ankle like fire.
"Oh, no!"
Swoosh—! Thump—!
"Aaargh—!"
Before I could even get up, I tumbled right off a small cliff. I screamed as my body fell, helpless.
Luckily, the drop wasn't high, but the fall still left me racked with pain.
"Ouch… huff… Good thing the cliff wasn't too steep… but it still hurts… damn it!" I muttered, an overwhelming urge to scream in rage and despair washing over me.
I glared at my twisted ankle and said bitterly, "Just great. Now how am I supposed to run?"
Whoosh-! Whoosh-! Whoosh-!
"Oh, damn you all! From the very beginning, I was already in your hands… gasp… wasn't I?" I muttered under my breath, my head snapping up to see twenty masked warriors encircling me. No, a better name for them would be assassins, masked specters of merciless death.
Those bastards were the cause of my suffering, hunting me relentlessly for three miserable hours since I'd left the city.
"Kekeke-! To think you struggled for three whole hours just to end up here. It was getting a little boring," one of the bastards sneered.
"Kekeke-! I enjoyed the chase, but it's time for the game to end," another said, his laugh a strange, hissing sound, like a coiled serpent.
'A game! Is that what they call this?!'
"Yawn… We've been waiting a long time for you, Prince," another, who seemed to be the leader, drawled in a cold, bored tone.
His voice was dull and monotonous, his words as clear and grating as the braying of an annoying donkey. But I didn't care.
Ultimately, they wanted to kill me after toying with me for a while. Otherwise, I would have been miserably dead the moment they found me.
"What do I do now? I've lost all strength to run… Is this my fate?"
These questions, drowned in despair, had been echoing in my head for the last three hours. Fear had crept into my soul, eating away at my heart piece by piece.
'Am I going to die here? Were all those years for nothing but this miserable end?'
The "Silent Night" clan deserved more than just extermination. Perhaps I should have documented it all in detail before, just to feel a moment's revenge, and perhaps to satisfy my shattered pride!
"Hey, guys!" I yelled, my voice cracking. "Why do you want to kill a piece of useless trash like me? I have no hope of inheriting the throne, so why not just let me go? What's the point of killing a worthless prince?" I growled through gritted teeth, desperately trying to postpone my death for just a few more minutes.
"Hahaha? It's amusing to see such a panicked look on the face of one of the five princes. But whether you renounce the throne or not doesn't matter anymore. My master ordered us to dispose of you, and that's what we'll do."
"Kekeke-! Today, we drink the blood of a high prince!"
"What an honor, isn't it?"
"Offer us your head, and we'll be merciful!"
"It doesn't matter if you're a half-blood. In the end, we're not that picky!"
"I'll send you to the next life quickly, even if your blood is mixed."
They sneered and exchanged contemptuous glances, but what truly ignited my fury was their comment about "mixed blood."
"How dare you… insult my mother?" I seethed, pure hatred welling up inside me.
'Wait! Did I just call her my mother? Damn it!'
I gathered what little strength I had left.
'They won't let me escape now anyway! If I'm going to die, I'll go down fighting!' My hand tightened around the dull sword I carried—the only shred of hope I had left.
"Oh? It seems you finally learned something useful from Roman." The leader who had spoken first sounded faintly surprised. "Useless trash like you, who doesn't even have the talent to awaken the 'Records of Origin'… hold on."
'A martial art?! This boy?!'
He never expected the fifteen-year-old boy before him to know any martial arts, but it seemed he was, uncharacteristically, mistaken.
'No! It's not that strange, after all! It's true he can't learn the clan's martial arts as stipulated by the agreements of the four branches, but Roman was never part of the clan anyway. So, in a way, that agreement can be circumvented. In the end, he still has the noble blood of the Silent Night clan's Patriarch, so it's not so surprising to see those eyes that refuse to give up. Ah, this is why the hunt is worth the trouble!'
"Kill him," the masked leader declared coldly, before casually turning to sit on a large rock, ready to watch the show for his own amusement.
'Heh! If only I had some spiced popcorn,' he thought.
A few moments later, the assassins closed in, their swift movements giving me no time to think. I had no real combat skills, but I wouldn't let them take my life without a fight.
The first one lunged, his sword glinting under the moonlight. I barely dodged, my twisted ankle screaming in protest. I tried to strike back, but my body was slow, my hands trembling.
"Argh!"
The sword sliced into my shoulder, and blood flowed freely. A searing heat filled the wound, but I ignored it. I had to keep going, even if this was the end.
Another one attacked, but I couldn't evade him this time. His strike was faster, deeper. I felt a coldness spread through my limbs as I looked down at the blood pouring from my body. I looked up at the assassins, their faces devoid of emotion, as if I were nothing more than an insect in their path.
"Isn't this amusing?" I heard one of them say as I felt myself about to collapse.
'No… I won't die here… I won't give up!'
A final surge of energy coursed through my body, and I raised my sword once more. But with every movement, the pain intensified.
"Where are you, you damned System?!" I screamed.