Damian felt like an idiot.

Since he was small, he did everything better than his brother. That gave him a sense of superiority. And from that, he always felt like he deserved more, he deserved better. Not that he was experiencing any shortcomings, his life as a second prince was perfectly fine. Yet, he couldn't help but want more.

Every time he got something, he thought he deserved more. Every time his brother got something, he thought he was the one that deserved it more.

That's why he wanted Casper's position as a crown prince--no, scratch that. He wanted the position of his father, the king immediately.

But now, he had been humbled several times. Despite his carefully planned actions, he kept failing. He even got help from Nova, the daughter of a Duke, yet he still failed miserably. Everything wasn't working, and now he had nothing left. To the point when he was betrayed by the elves, he could only laugh.

It turned out that he was nothing. Yes, he was slightly better than his brother, but that didn't mean anything. He was blind. Casper never made any accomplishments, after all. Being better than him was nothing amazing.

Yet he never noticed and his ego kept growing bigger every day.

What an idiot he was.

Still, when he thought all hope was lost, the elves betrayed themselves. Serena, the elf Princess, and her followers were being drugged by their own guards.

"Go!" The elf guard told him. "We give you a chance to run away, so stop spacing out and go!"

Damian didn't really understand what had happened. But he knew that if he returned to his kingdom, he would most likely be executed.

In the end, he still feared death. So he started to run from there. He looked back, half expecting the elf guards to follow him, but instead, they ran away in the opposite direction. They didn't even go back to the elf kingdom. That confused him. But he didn't stop. He kept running all night. His life depended on this after all.

And after so long running away, nestled amidst rolling hills, he found a small village. He stared at its thatched roofs, adorned with twining vines and moss, and cobblestone streets.

Prince Damian got closer to one of the villager's houses. That's when an old man from the village saw him.

"Oh, my lord, what happened to you?" he asked, worried.

"Ah, I'm... a merchant's son," Damian said, telling a blatant lie. "Our carriage was attacked by bandits and I have been running from them since then. I'm... not sure what happened to my father and the others. I'm not sure where I am either."

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The villager willingly accepted his made-up story and gave him a place to rest and food to eat. Everyone was nice to him. Their warmth made him feel bad for lying. It kind of surprised him. He had lied a lot before, but it was the first time he had felt bad like this.

At night, Damian was unable to sleep, so he decided to walk around the village until he became sleepy.

"Hey, grandpa, are you sure you want to help that kid?" someone said. "He's obviously lying. His clothes are too good for a merchant's son. Not to mention, even though he's dirty, I can tell that he was at least a noble kid."

Damian hid in a hurry, his heart racing as he sharpened his hearing. "They found out about his lie already?" he thought. "What are they going to do with him now?"

The grandpa's expression did not change. "He needs help, doesn't he?" he said. "That's why I'm helping him. It doesn't matter who he actually is. If he needs help and I can give it, I will do it."

"I see," the villager said. "Well, if you're sure about that, then I won't say anything anymore."

The grandpa smiled. "Don't worry, he's a good kid. I can tell."

For the first time, Damian felt grateful to someone to the point that he almost cried. He felt so bad that he was nothing like what the grandpa thought. He wasn't a good kid, far from it.

Damian shook his head and promised himself that he would pay him back for all the kindness he had received, a hundred times--no, a thousand times over!

Since then, Damian lived in that village in peace. He started getting to know most of the people there. If he were still in his original position, their existence would be unimportant to him, nothing more than a number. Yet, he never thought he would care enough to want to know them all.

He even started to consider continuing his life there.

But that night, things drastically changed. He was woken up by a loud noise, and then he heard screams from all over the village.

Damian then ran outside and was surprised by the destruction that had happened. Because of the darkness of the night, he couldn't see it clearly, but something was attacking the village. And it was not humans.

Damian saw panic and chaos everywhere as the villagers ran for their lives, screaming and shouting.

The air was thick with the acrid stench of smoke. The once peaceful village had been transformed into a scene of destruction and devastation. Buildings lay in ruins, their wooden frames and thatched roofs ablaze.

Despite the chaos, some brave villagers had gathered weapons.

"Protect the women and children!" yelled one of the villagers, followed by the same yell from others.

Damian was hiding behind wreckage, watching the villagers fighting with the attackers. And to his horror, he finally saw what was attacking them: a bunch of six-legged creatures, a combination of bones and darkness, tearing people apart.

Damian recognized those creatures. He had never seen them before, but Nova had described them to him once. He had dismissed it at the time as nothing but crazy talk because Nova had told him that she saw them in her nightmare. But now...

"No way..." he murmured in fear.

It was a one-sided battle. Ordinary villagers like them usually couldn't use magic, so they could only fight with normal weapons like spears and swords. However, those weapons proved to be ineffective against the creatures.

Damian was scared. He knew that he should run away. These creatures were not normal. Even if he used magic, it might still not be effective. Yet he didn't move from there.

Instead, his hand started emitting fireballs, making him easy to spot in the darkness of the night. He instantly became a target for these monsters.

When the monsters started to run towards him, Damian summoned several more fireballs and immediately flung them towards the monsters. They fell back, hurt.

His attack was working. That made Damian more confident and he started to summon more and more fire, flinging it at the monsters.

He then summoned several rings of fire around the villagers who were still alive, making these monsters hesitate to attack them.

When a bigger monster appeared, Damian summoned a laser-like continuous fire with both of his hands, forcing the monster to back down.

"That was surprising," a girl's voice came from behind those monsters. "I didn't expect a strong magic user to exist in this kind of unknown small village."

The silhouette of the girl raised her hand. Suddenly, darkness appeared from below the corpse of the villager. It ate the skin and meat of the corpse until only darkness and bones remained. Slowly, the bones and darkness created a new creature with six legs.

The girl walked closer and started caressing the new monster. Her nails were black, long, and sharp. She had shoulder-length, curly black hair, eyes as black as night, and a horn on top of her head.

Damian held his breath. That was a race known as a demon.

The demon girl smirked, showing her sharp teeth.

"But it seems like you're the only one who can use magic," she said. "Lucky me."

***