Delia's heart sank as she pondered her misfortune. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. Why did bad things always seem to happen to good people like her? Admittedly, she had slipped up and spilled the secret to her cousin, but she had a perfectly plausible excuse in mind.

She planned to claim that Kon had used his silver tongue to manipulate her into doing his bidding. He had taken advantage of her trust and schemed his way into betraying her.

Okay, that last part might be a bit much.

Even though Delia wasn't happy with him, she didn't want to make her cousin look like someone who would betray his family.

Though she couldn't tell them, she had just let him go after telling him a secret her father had explicitly ordered her to hide.

Her father, uncle, and Delia stood in a dark room around a small round table. She shifted her feet and wondered whether she might lose her status as the heir.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" Her father asked.

"Father, I tried stopping him but-"

"Before you continue your lie, I will let you know right now that we have recording talismans across the clan compound," her father said.

Delia was left with her mouth agape, her excuses were destroyed before they could even start!

"I'm not mad at you," her father peered at her. His gaze was like a sharp sword that could cut through any lies and see the truth. "It was better for Kon to run away. We can spin this story and make it appear like Kon is mysterious and refuses to follow his family's dark and twisted ways. That will drum up a lot of support for him. We can have him look like the hero."

"Though not knowing where he is, now that's a real problem," her uncle added.

'He is your son! Why the hell are you making it seem like it was my job to know where he is?!' Delia wanted to say, but she hid her annoyance.

She had a good relationship with her uncle and admired him. So she wouldn't say anything rude like that. "Have you at least decided which princess he will marry?"

"The youngest," her father said without an ounce of hesitation. "She is ten years old, and we can mold her to our liking."

"That won't work," her uncle shook his head. "My son is into more mature women. His mother tried to get him engaged to one of the many girls a year or two younger than him, but he refused. In the end, he told me the reason."

Kon was into older women?

Delia had to use all her willpower to hold herself back from manically laughing.

He was going to be in so much shit once he came back! This kind of info was a gold mine!

But she came back to her senses once she realized something. "Wait, isn't the oldest princess already said to be married to a neighboring prince?"

"We're going with the second princess," her uncle clarified.

Delia frowned and recalled the details about the second princess. There wasn't much known about her, but unlike the other royal children, her mother was from a now-extinct Exorcist Clan. "The second princess. The nineteen-year-old one, right? But she has no support from the other families. She will be hard to bring into the throne."

That was when both her father and uncle smiled maliciously. They looked like twin devils of pure bloodlust as Ord seeped out of them.

Her father, the clan head, said. "That doesn't matter. We will kill everyone from the royal family as soon as Kon has a child with the princess."

Delia's eyes widened, and she looked at her uncle.

That was why he never seemed mad or wanted Kon to become the clan head! Instead, he planned to make his son something more!

"You want to make him king by proxy," Delia muttered.

Her uncle smiled; greed filled his dark gaze. "Of course! He is my son, after all!"

The rest of the meeting was spent discussing how to keep the Great Clans busy so they wouldn’t get in the way.

In the end, they came up with many ideas. Most of which Delia was forbidden from listening to because of her previous digression.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Still, she had learned something important during this meeting.

Her father had made her uncle the temporary clan head, which had been a very dangerous move. After all, nothing was stopping her uncle from taking over.

But now she understood why her father trusted her uncle so much. Her uncle wasn't just a blind follower, a puppet who did what her father wanted. No, they were both helping each other get what they wanted.

They left neither brother behind.

Delia was a bit jealous, and it was during these times she wished she had a sibling. If she had one, they could take over the world!

But the only thing she had close to a sibling was Kon, and recently he wasn't playing along with her games anymore.

She didn't even have anyone other than Kon that she could even call a friend.

That was… lonely.

Delia stared at a cockroach on the ground, and it was following a second cockroach. She smiled and took out a pair of small razor-sharp scissors. "If I don't have any friends, why should some dumb bug?"

..

Even after snipping the bug's limbs into pieces, Delia didn't feel the same joy she used to feel when she was younger.

Now, she just felt empty again. This was way more fun back when she’d show the dismembered bugs to her cousin.

She sighed and pouted at the clock. "When is that dumb cousin of mine coming back? It's already boring without him."

***

I helped lift the side of the carriage as the donkey dragged the rest. We would stop to rest every now and then.

He spent the time telling me how he ended up in this predicament. I introduced myself as Nok to the old man.

We wandered through the countryside and finally arrived at a small village. As I walked through the village, I couldn't help but notice how peaceful and serene it was.

The villagers were friendly, and the air was fresh. It was a far cry from the chaotic and dangerous world I was used to.

As I walked down the dusty road, the old man offered “Want to come in for a meal? This village might be small, but we have good traditional food.”

I hesitated, as I didn't want to impose, but the old man insisted. In the end, I agreed. One meal wouldn't do any harm.

Like many others in the village, the old man's house was built out of rough concrete and a wooden roof. It was a weird building, a mix between an old Japanese-style house and a modern concrete home.

A young girl who looked in her late teens waved at us, and quickly rushed over. “Dad! I told you not to push yourself! What happened? You are late.”

Her onslaught of questions and demands made her father wince as he rubbed his ears. Poor guy was going to end up deaf.

“Excuse me, I’m Nok, and I met your father in the nearby town,” I said.

The girl’s caramel-brown eyes stared into mine and narrowed in suspicion. “Who are you?”

I just introduced myself!

“Don’t worry; this man is trustworthy. He helped me get all the way here,” her father intervened. “He must be tired from all the labor, and the least I could do is offer him a good meal and a roof over his head for the night.”

With magical energy like Ord on my side, normal physical labor was ridiculously easy. So I wasn’t that tired.

The inside of the house was as plain as the outside, with rough wooden furniture. Everything looked cheap and outdated. But it had a homey atmosphere, which was something I couldn't say for the Dark Sword Clan compound.

"Here," the daughter served three bowls of some kind of soup. She seemed to have calmed down properly. "Sorry if I came off as rude before. It's just that many people try to take advantage of my dad just because he is old."

Seeing that she had no mother around, or any other sibling, it seemed like this family had some tragedy in its past. Which sadly wasn't so rare in a world like this.

The soup tasted bland and had no trace of seasoning in it. But as the warm liquid passed through me, it warmed my heart.

Since coming to this world, this was the first meal I could have with no worry. It wasn't a good meal, but it offered something no other meal could; ease of mind.

There was no great demon or enemy to fight. I was just eating a bland meal, and that was all there was to this.

"Nok, you don't seem to have any kind of accent," the old man addressed me. "Are you from around here?"

"I'm from a town quite far away. My father almost had a heart attack when he learned I was gallivanting on some adventure," I explained my fake backstory. Like most good lies, it had a hint of truth.

"Adventure? So young?" Asked the old man.

I shrugged. "Better get the adventure out of me now than when I get older. I can't exactly go around gallivanting and acting a fool when I have a wife and kids at home. Also, I can use the excuse of being young when doing stupid things."

The old man chuckled. "You're wise beyond your years. Because you're right, when you get a wife and kids, there's no way you'll ever do silly adventures."

We continued conversing all the way into the night. Talking about many different aspects of life, from demons to farming and politics.

The old man ended up offering me a bed to sleep on. He had an empty room for me, which proved my suspicion that something had happened to the rest of the family.

Either that, or he was some psycho murderer who killed travelers.

Every time I was about to fall asleep, my heart started beating faster, and woke me up instantly.

Lying down was a weak position to be in if someone attacked me.

That was why sleeping was dangerous, as it put even the strongest of men on their backs.