The Hunt (1)
First Prince Rasiah Abaran walked back to his bedchamber, his mind a chaotic mess. He had dismissed his attendants and paid a visit to his personal physician. Upon hearing that the prince had suffered a nosebleed, the foolish old man had looked just as baffled as Rasiah himself. It was only natural. Members of the Imperial Family rarely fell ill. Their bodies were twice as resilient as those of ordinary humans, immune to poisons and diseases alike. Along with Manis, this divine constitution was what elevated them to the status of gods. Yet, he had suddenly spilled a whole cup's worth of blood from his nose. The quack of an old man, his hands trembling as he checked Rasiah's pulse, had merely repeated that nothing was wrong, ticking away like a grandfather clock. Unable to control his temper, Rasiah had tried to throttle the physician, only to suffer yet another nosebleed.
"Damn it!"
Wiping the tip of his nose roughly with his sleeve, the First Prince kicked his door open and stormed inside. Normally, he would have brought in a long line of maids and servants to attend to him, but he could not allow his subordinates to witness such a pathetic display.
Why did this happen all of a sudden? Until this morning, his body had felt perfectly fine. He had gone about his day just as he had yesterday. Yet, the moment he channeled his Manis during the ritual, it felt as though liquid fire was rushing through his veins. And then, the crimson blood that had poured over his hands... For the first time in his life, something akin to terror crept into Rasiah's mind. Could it be that this happens every time I use my power? What is happening to my body? What if using my power is slowly killing me? The moment the hypothesis arose—that he might never be able to use Manis again—his blood ran ice-cold.
...If so, what was the point of his entire life up to this moment? He had lived his whole life solely to become the Emperor. But if he became a half-baked failure who couldn't even use Manis, he would be reduced to nothing. He would be no different from the lowly servants he looked down upon like insects.
"No, that's impossible. The physician said there's nothing wrong with my body."
He repeated the words to himself, but he knew better than anyone that he didn't believe them. Feeling his fingertips tremble with anxiety, Rasiah reached for the nightstand. Inside the drawer lay a hookah, a gift from the Second Prince, who had claimed it came from a distant land inhabited by brown-skinned humans. It was said to be an addictive drug, but since the Imperial Family was immune to addiction and poisons, he could simply enjoy the pleasure it provided without worry. He didn't use it often, but nothing calmed his nerves quite like this. Just as he grabbed the long hose and was about to put it to his lips—
"If you're anxious, it would be wise to cut back on that first."
A detached voice drifted in from the window.
"Who's there!"
Rasiah barked toward the source of the sound. From the shadows, a dark figure slowly materialized. Rasiah grimaced at the sight of the unexpected intruder. Black hair and black eyes. A height and build that fell embarrassingly short compared to his other siblings, who stood nearly two meters tall. It was his half-baked brother, a creature he considered lower than an insect—the Seventh Prince.
"Ha! You must have lost your mind. Where do you think you are, a wretched thing like you..."
His pride wounded by the fact that he had been startled by such a pathetic insect, Rasiah's face flushed red as he prepared to roar in fury.
"I know, right?"
He was cut off, however, by his remarkably calm younger brother, who didn't show even a flicker of emotion.
"What...?"
The Seventh Prince looked Rasiah straight in the eye and continued.
"For a lowly creature like me to slip undetected into the bedchamber of the future Emperor—the second safest place in the entire Empire—and yet you show no fear. I suppose the First Prince truly is a descendant of the gods, unlike myself."
With those words, the young, black-haired prince let out a crooked smirk. A cold shiver ran down the back of Rasiah's neck. It was exactly as the boy said. Even if he had dismissed his immediate attendants, this was still the Palace of the First Prince. Just beyond this floor, knights loyal to him patrolled without a single blind spot, and the exterior walls were fitted with security measures to prevent anyone from climbing them. It was a place where no one should be able to enter, let alone dare to. Yet, how long had this bastard been standing here? A fear of the unknown, something he had never experienced in his sheltered, comfortable life, was assaulting the First Prince for the umpteenth time today.
This guy is simpler and more cowardly than I thought. No matter how disoriented he is by the sudden turn of events, for someone touted as the next Emperor, he is remarkably terrible at hiding his expressions. I only threw out a casual probe, but the First Prince is visibly rattled.
"You... what are you? You've spent your whole life acting like you didn't even exist. Groveling on the ground, like the insect you are... How did you get in here...?"
Perhaps because he had already been spiraling into dark thoughts after his nosebleed, his face began to contort with growing panic.
"I asked you how you got in here!"
At this rate, I was going to make my thirty-year-old eldest brother cry. Besides, if he raised his voice any louder, someone was bound to come. I decided to speak.
"I climbed the wall."
Fortunately, the First Prince shut his mouth. Though he did start looking at me as if I were mentally deranged.
"...You?"
The First Prince frowned, glancing at my arms, which looked incredibly scrawny compared to his (though they were actually average for a twenty-something). To be fair, if someone told me they had scaled a four-story wall while dodging countless traps with arms like these, I would have looked at them the same way.
"No, I was joking."
"Then how?"
The First Prince asked, his brow furrowing as he began to feel a different kind of dread—the kind one felt when dealing with a madman.
"Actually..."
I lowered my head and dropped my voice to a whisper. The First Prince tensed, hanging on my every word.
"I flew in like a bird."
The boy, who had been listening with absolute seriousness, stared blankly for a moment before his face slowly flushed crimson.
"You... you dare play with me—"
Well, if he won't believe the truth even when I tell him, there's nothing I can do. I shrugged and cut off the First Prince, who had at least quieted down.
"Well, that's not the important part anyway."
"What do you mean it's not important! Then what is?!"
"The blood. You spilled it, didn't you?"
The First Prince bit his lip hard before spitting out his reply.
"This is nothing to a member of the Imperial Family."
"A week from now, you'll be vomiting blood from your mouth."
He glared at me as I spoke.
"What kind of nonsense is that? The physician just said..."
"...that there was absolutely nothing wrong."
This time, the First Prince fell completely silent. A thick layer of suspicion washed over his face, clearly wondering how on earth I knew that. His eyes practically screamed: Did you do something to me?
"I understand you're panicked, but use your head. If my goal was to kill you, I wouldn't have risked coming here. I would have just left you to die. You can feel it too, can't you? That if you keep going like this, something is going to go terribly wrong."
The First Prince kept glaring at me, but I could feel his fighting spirit draining away.
"And you probably have a rough idea of what will happen if you don't listen to me right now."
I sat down on the sofa in the center of the bedchamber. The boy flinched.
"As you've already realized, you will bleed every time you use Manis. And the more you use it, the worse it will get. Right now, it's just your nose because the membranes are weak. But before long, even a single drop of Manis might cause you to spray blood from every pore of your body until you die."
The color drained completely from his face. I'm glad my eldest brother is so simple. A little scare is all it takes to get exactly the reaction I want. Well, I suppose that's why he fell for it in the first place. Watching everything unfold exactly as planned, my lips curled into a smirk once more.
"Congratulations. You're about to become one of those wretched insects you so thoroughly despise."
"...What do I need to do?"
It seemed he was finally in a state to have a proper conversation.
"Anna, you were definitely wrong."
Rin whispered as she pushed a tray containing an untouched lunch back into the kitchen.
"The Prince isn't just a little strange. He's incredibly strange."
"Did he not eat anything again?"
"Not even a single grape."
Rin held up the dish. It was already close to dinner, yet the green grapes, looking exactly as they had when served for lunch, were slightly shriveled. Anna tilted her head in confusion. Lately, the Prince had been scraping his plates clean like a starved beast. What was wrong with him now? She felt a distinct sense of incongruity in his changing behavior. This time, it seemed a few others had noticed as well. However, since they possessed neither loyalty nor interest in the Seventh Prince—focused solely on surviving their brutal, unpredictable daily lives—they simply brushed it off. Only Anna, amidst her grueling chores, harbored a quiet curiosity about him.
The change didn't mean the Seventh Prince had suddenly become kind or warm to his staff. The servants still rarely caught a glimpse of his face. But whereas before it was because he shut himself away to listlessly read books or stare out the window, lately, it was because the Prince was surprisingly busy. He spent most of his time in his study, rummaging through books or writing something down with intense focus. Whenever servants entered to bring him meals, he would repeatedly order them out with a cold expression. Eventually, he even threatened that anyone who disturbed him while he was in his study would be forced to starve for the entire day.
On other occasions, he would slip out of the castle in casual attire and return covered in dust from head to toe. On those days, his clothes reeked of alcohol, leading everyone to assume that after a brief period of quiet, he had gone back to getting drunk and causing trouble. Yet, amidst their indifference, Anna alone noticed the sharp, clear light in the Prince's eyes. Once again, she instinctively sensed that a massive change had occurred within him, but she kept her mouth shut. She merely muttered a quiet, "Maybe he's going through a growth spurt," to Rin, who was clearing away the food, and continued tidying up the dishes.
Clop. Clop.
I gently rubbed my tired eyes as I swayed atop my horse.
It had been a month since the First Prince had suffered that nosebleed during the ritual. Though everyone tried to keep it quiet, whispers had begun to spread behind closed doors that the First Prince had lost his imperial abilities and, consequently, his qualification to be the next Emperor. With his chances of being crowned Crown Prince dwindling, rumors were slowly circulating that the opportunity would now fall to either the Third Prince or the First Princess.
In the original novel, to silence these rumors, the First Prince desperately begged the Emperor to move the hunting competition forward. Though this reckless strategy born of anxiety worked to some extent, it ravaged his body and shortened his lifespan. And currently, the flow of this world was faithfully following the original plot. The hunting competition had indeed been moved forward, and the First Prince would use this event to demonstrate to the public that he could still perfectly wield his Manis. The cogs of fate were turning smoothly, albeit a bit earlier than expected.
The problem was that I still couldn't tell if these accelerated events were only happening here in the Imperial Palace, or if they were also affecting the outside world—namely, the protagonist. The nosebleed incident and the hunting competition were linked in a chain of cause and effect, so their acceleration made sense, but I had no way of knowing about the other events from within the Empire. My job was to act as a mediator in the middle, ensuring that the two timelines aligned perfectly where they connected. To do that, I needed to keep the events here under my control. Then, at the right moment, I would fake my death and run far, far away. Seriously, this high-effort role really doesn't suit me.
Bwooo— Bwooo— Bwooo—
The low drone of a horn snapped me out of my future planning, pulling my gaze forward. I saw my brothers and sisters, mounted on white horses with golden manes, riding in a grand procession. It was the parade for the hunting competition. Naturally, I was at the very back. While I had the discretion to skip an event like this, I had chosen to participate today. If my calculations were correct, today might present an opportunity to alter the fate of a key figure and catch a glimpse of how things were unfolding on the outside.
"What a pitch-black horse. It suits a wretched insect like you perfectly, doesn't it?"
But first, I would have to shake off this rooster-crested bastard picking a fight next to me.