Fel merely wiped away a drop of Asnel’s blood that had splashed onto his face with his hand and walked out of the cave.
Fel ‘s expression, offering no reply, looked both angry and somewhat sad.
Felio de Spelland.
He was the crown prince of the empire and a blood-soaked madman.
The villain in the novel who grew stronger by absorbing dead souls from a young age.
With the ghost army he created, conquering the world would have been far too easy.
Even after becoming emperor, he was obsessed solely with growing his own strength.
When Duke Soliar, unable to watch it any longer, spoke up, Felio severed the duke’s neck right on the spot.
To start from the beginning of the story, the novel officially began with the protagonist awakening his power by killing the gray wolf.
Using that great power, he would take revenge on Felio for killing his father, and become the master of the House of Duke Soliar.
Anyway, the reason he was able to ascend to the position of duke despite being an illegitimate son was because he offered Felio’s head to the Second Prince.
Having protected the empire from a mad king, who could possibly fail to praise the protagonist?
An exceptional fighter backed by the imperial family, the protagonist Ethan was portrayed as a paragon of absolute goodness.
And Felio was nothing more than a tool used to elevate Ethan’s righteousness.
A villain contrasted against a good person was always nothing more than a scapegoat for a dramatic story.
[ On the day Ethan came of age, Emperor Felio vanished into the darkness. ]
Fel recited a passage from the novel that popped into his head and let out a low sigh.
It was something he had more or less anticipated from the moment he heard the words “definitive death,” but it was a fact he had stubbornly tried to ignore.
Fel had also vaguely known.
And the more he repeated his attempts to die, the more certain he became.
This body was a prop for the protagonist Ethan, which meant even death was tightly held in Ethan’s hands.
Since he couldn’t repeat an endless, promise-free waiting game forever, he had tried anything and everything that could snatch away his life.
‘I have to accept it now. Only by dying at Ethan’s hand, exactly as the novel dictates, can I escape this place.’
Then, just when would this body become emperor?
And when on earth would Ethan come of age?
The novel stated that Ethan had dispatched the gray wolf when he was fast approaching eighteen, but until just moments ago, the gray wolf had been alive.
Therefore, Ethan’s current age was at most early eighteen.
‘Ha… That’s a long way off.’
It would be nice if he knew in what year of the imperial calendar the protagonist appeared.
The unhelpful novel did not tell him in what year Felio died, nor precisely when the protagonist would appear before Felio.
‘If I wanted to find the kid, I could find him right now. The moment I meet him, I’ll just tell him to kill me. Whether I die now or after Ethan comes of age, dying by that bastard’s hand is the same either way anyway.’
Bearing the label of a monstrous crown prince and having to wait for God knows how many years was utterly horrifying.
So, for now, he would just go meet him and beg to be killed.
Fel —no, the outsider possessed within Felio’s body—thought this as he climbed onto his horse.
“Philip.”
Just as the noisy sound of hoofbeats rang in his ears, Fel reached out to a knight riding beside him.
The captain of the knights narrowed his brow, as if he already knew what that meant.
“What will you do if you fall off your horse like this?”
“That’s why I’m drinking.”
“Your Highness!”
Fel scanned Philip up and down with a look that asked, ‘So what if I shout like that?’
Urging him as if to hand it over quickly, Philip reluctantly passed over a small flask.
It was a liquor flask filled with harsh whiskey.
As if being a blood-soaked madman wasn’t enough, an alcoholic—the rumors would truly be a sight to behold.
Thinking that he hoped the protagonist would hear those rumors and hurry up and find him, Fel opened the cap of the flask.
Before long, the capital came into view.
Fel spurred his horse faster, galloping right into the central plaza of the capital.
Normally, he should have moved leisurely and waved to the imperial citizens, but…
“The hell do I care.”
People lined the wide streets in long rows.
It was a procession welcoming the imperial knights who had achieved victory in the monster subjugation.
Fel maintained a rigid expression despite the imperial citizens’ greetings.
The knights, flustered by the crown prince’s rapid pace, were scrambling to keep up, but he didn’t give a damn about that.
Crowds of people—they were the ones who would end up siding with the protagonist later on anyway.
“His Royal Highness the Crown Prince has returned!”
“The gray wolf is dead!”
“Long live His Royal Highness the Crown Prince!”
They were truly simpleminded creatures.
They had freely run their mouths with whatever they pleased—that the crown prince had gone mad, that he conversed with monsters every night—yet now here they were, welcoming him back as the light of the empire.
“Tch.”
Fel gnashed his teeth and spurred his pace further.
In the distance, the gates of the imperial palace came into view.
An incompetent emperor, and an empress who viewed her son as nothing more than a tool.
Fel had to return to that horrific place where they resided.
He had to hurry back and wait for the day the protagonist would come to kill him.
‘…I want to go home.’
The alcohol finally began to catch up with him.
The glowing blue eyes, the platinum hair signaling descent from imperial blood, and the beautiful face that was an exact copy of the emperor and empress—none of it belonged to him.
“I want to go back.”
Could there possibly exist someone in this world who yearned for death this desperately?
Fel had sometimes thought that way.
Whenever he had such thoughts, he felt utterly pathetic.
Wearing someone else’s skin, acting out that person’s part, and enduring bizarrely cruel words—
“Just how long do I…”
Telling an innocent outsider to endure all of that, God had abandoned Fel on this land and left.
As if Fel had to die by the protagonist’s hand no matter what, as if elevating Ethan was the sole reason Fel existed—he kept being forced to survive.
His throat tightened so much that words would no longer come out.
A life where he couldn’t die even when he wanted to was not happy.
It was nothing short of agonizing.
