“Urgh…”

My chest hurts. My legs hurt. My hands hurt. There’s no part of my body that’s not hurting. I couldn’t even get up, much less walk. Every inch of my body is screaming with pain now.

I stay down, pretending to be knocked out. I met with some more shoes. The kicks resounded through my head, which was dull with pain, threatening to pass out. Ah. There’s something falls on my cheek. I see, spit huh.

I won’t move. I can’t move. I just have to endure it. I have to endure it even when the hot liquid they release drenches me. They relieve themselves on my battered body, cackling away.

This humiliation, this powerlessness, there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is endure. Becoming drenched in their piss is nothing but daily life experience for me. They leave. Good. Finally, I can just relax a bit. No wait. They stopped.

Someone heads towards me. I can hear his footsteps. I don’t move. That’s a fundamental lesson here. Play dead and they’ll go away.

I can feel something grabbing my hair. The person pulls up my head by my hair. Not just my head, but my entire body. The person has completely lifted my skinny weak body, my feet waving in the hair. My hair was threatening to tear off.

“Why don’t you just piss off and die, you filthy demon?”

He lets go off my hair, wrenching his hand off, and I collapse on to my knees. I open my swollen eyes bleakly, letting the evening light enter painfully into my pupils. I look at the figure of the man in front of me. A muscular man, that’s all I can see, since the light blocks my view. I notice the clump of dark black strands in his hand. My hair. As if I care.

He spits on me, and finally walks off, and I could do nothing but stare at his back as he moved away.

“Some royalty he is!”

“Yeah right! What a joke!”

Their laughs echo through the dirty street as they move farther and farther away.

That’s right. I’m royalty. Nexus Zoltive. That’s my name. A grand name given to those of noble birth. The current first prince of the Ascalon empire, me.

But right now, I’m nothing more than a rag to wipe the floor with. My sleek black hair and my eyes, whose pupils are like fire, with red and orange waving about, were nothing but a curse to me.

I lay there, unable to even muster the strength to get up.

I stagger to my feet. Unable to balance myself, I lean on the wall. The pain from the beatings makes my body numb, and I can’t feel from time to time.

I crawl forward, keeping my hands on the wall. The smell of the slums, the stink and the unbearable stench of filth permeate my nose. I have been living in this place ever since I was born, and till now, I am unable to get used to it.

The comments from  those thugs cause an unbearable pain in my chest. Royalty? Nobility? Screw that. I would have been happy if I could live in a normal home at least.

I keep moving through the narrow streets of the slums. It’s already dark now, and there’s nobody walking around outside. I smell like piss, but oddly, in this atmosphere, it’s almost normal. Almost.

All the unpleasant memories come flooding into my mind. The truth of my lineage, the legend of the legendary Demon Lord, Neeram Ellris Zoltive, the Eternal empire Ascalon. My life.

The hero who invaded the Ascalon empire, the chosen one Gabriel, challenged the Demon Lord to a fair battle. The Demon Lord, a wicked existence of malevolence and evil, refused the duel and ordered the demons he personally trained to attack the hero, in order to tire him out. In the end, a large battle ensued and it ended with the hero thrusting the holy sword into the Demon Lord’s chest, killing him. The Ascalon empire came crashing down, its glory destroyed. Its people, women and children included were made into slaves or killed. The breakdown of one of the greatest empires.

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But the Demon Lord’s children weren’t killed or made in to slaves. Rather, they were made into experimental subjects. The children were subject to terrifying experiments and procedures, but it was a complete failure. Every child of the Demon Lord, was weak and frail. They had no talent in magic, or in the art of crossing blades. In the end, they decided to prolong the bloodline, in order to see if anyone would inherit the Demon Lord’s unrivaled strength, the “Bloodline creation project” continued.

Every one of them were weak as hell. They were all discarded, thrown into slums or to slave traders.

I was one such a child. A bit different from the others, since I am the last result of the project. However, it seemed the scientists had high expectations of me, due to the color of my eyes. Expectant, they waited for my growth.

In the end all that met them was utter disappointment.

I was a complete failure, even worse than the other subjects, since my body was weaker and even more brittle.

Without any hesitation, I was cast into these slums. The slums of Gureis kingdom, in the name of purification and education.

And here, it only got worse. The people hated me, the descendant of a Demon Lord. My black hair and eyes, were without a doubt, one of the greatest curses that existed, in my perspective.

“A full moon huh.”

That was another thing that excited those researchers. Every full moon, my hair would lighten and shine. It would turn completely white, a pure silver sheen surrounding it.

I staggered to the space I called home, an empty space of land, I had somehow cleaned up.

And as always, it was filled with filth.

The descendant of a Demon Lord. The child of the existence that bound them to the slums. A scarecrow for them to vent their anger on.

In the slums, having a shack was unexpectedly common. With some of the thick leaves and branches from the surrounding trees, constructing a home was a piece of cake.

Being homeless was rare in the slums. Well, I’m that rarity.

I collapse onto the filth, unable to move my limbs anymore.

Every time I build a shack, it was destroyed easily, as if hit by a storm. I learned a few  times later, that it was the people from here, who thought that a Demon Lord doesn’t deserve a shack. I cleaned a spot and used it to sleep, so they regularly dumped all the trash there. A truly pitiable life.

I didn’t want to become like this you know? In this world, I wish I could become something greater, rather than a child punching bag.

But what happened that day, I don't think I'll ever be able to forget it

“Oh great Demon Lord, we have come for you”

Those words from that woman completely changed my life.