From that day on, my life officially became a silent hell. But, as a former king who once conquered continents with an iron fist, I had one personal policy: If fate gives you bitter limes, don't make lemonade. Squeeze those limes into fate's eyes until it cries.
I refused to give up. If I didn't have mana, I would use pure physical strength. I'd become the Saitama of this fantasy world if I had to.
Thus began a regime of insane training that made the entire village of Eldhoris question the Vance family's sanity. While other kids were busy floating around with wind magic or making water balls to wash their cats, I looked like a convict serving hard labor.
"One... nine hundred ninety-nine... one thousand!"
I ran up the hill with three large boulders strapped to my back. My seven-year-old face, which was supposed to be cute, now looked more like a boiled crab trying to hold back a massive bowel movement.
"Look at that defect," whispered the village kids, who were occupied playing with small fireballs. "The great Vance's son turns out to be nothing but a professional rock scavenger."
"What a waste, he actually has a decent face," a girl replied while giggling. "Maybe he's trying to build a house from the rocks he carries, because he knows he won't be able to build a career as a mage."
I kept running. I didn't have time to deal with brats who couldn't even spell 'name' correctly without their mothers' help. I kept swinging my wooden sword in the backyard. A thousand times. Ten thousand times. Until my hands blistered, bled, and pus began to seep from between my fingers. The pain was extraordinary, but the shame I saw in Dad's eyes every time he watched me train was far more agonizing.
"Elias, son... maybe you could try... gardening? Or becoming an accountant?" Julian asked one afternoon, looking at me with a pitying gaze that made me want to hurl my wooden sword at his face.
"I will be a warrior, Father," I answered curtly, though my voice was hoarse from dehydration.
The climax happened this afternoon. An afternoon that was supposed to be a cool "Secret Forest Training" moment, but instead turned into a tragic comedy.
I was deep in the woods, trying to perform my own version of the Burst Step. Without mana, I had to rely on the explosive power of my leg muscles. I took my stance. I imagined my legs as giant springs.
"BURST STEP—!"
CRACK.
The sound was so crisp, like a cracker being stepped on by an elephant. It wasn't the sound of the earth cracking from my power. It was the sound of my shinbone surrendering to its owner's reckless ambition.
"AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHH—hmpff!" I covered my own mouth to stop the scream. I collapsed onto the muddy ground. Rain began to fall, as if the sky itself wanted to spit on my miserable fate.
"Dammit..." I panted, dragging my body over dry leaves. My leg felt like it was being stabbed by a thousand hot needles. "Why? I am King Benedict! I am the ultimate ruler! Why does this world treat me like trash that can't even sell at a flea market?!"
Just as I was mourning my fate while crawling like a pathetic caterpillar, a low growl echoed.
A foul stench hit my nose. From behind the bushes, a Shadow Wolf emerged. A monster the size of a cow with spiky black fur and hungry yellow eyes. And it wasn't alone. It was hunting a group of villagers gathering firewood, including a few of the kids who had mocked me earlier.
"RUN! THERE'S A MONSTER!" shouted one of the adults. They panicked, tripped, and got trapped in a dead end near a cliff.
The Shadow Wolf prepared to spring. Its toxic saliva dripped onto the ground.
This is it, I thought. The hero moment. The moment the 'defect' saves them all.
I tried to stand. But remember? My leg was snapped.
I fell again, face-planting into the mud. Damn, this isn't aesthetic at all.
However, seeing those children trembling in fear, something inside me ignited. Not mana. Not magic. But pure rage. The rage of a king who refused to watch his people (no matter how annoying they were) be eaten by a mangy dog in front of him.
I grabbed my cracked wooden sword. Dragging my broken leg, I crawled toward the wolf.
"Hey! You... ugly mutt!" I yelled, my voice high-pitched like a child's but booming with authority.
The wolf turned. It looked at me with confusion. It probably thought, What kind of food is this? It's broken, muddy, and loud.
"Elias?! What are you doing?! Run!" one of the villagers screamed.
"Shut up and watch!" I snapped back.
The wolf lunged. I couldn't dodge with Burst Step. So, I did the only thing a talentless kid could do: I used my own body weight. As the wolf jumped at me, I rolled under its belly, ignoring the pain in my leg that made me want to black out, and thrust my wooden sword into its crotch with all my might.
THUD.
The wolf howled in shock. It wasn't a lethal pain, but more of a profound sense of shame. It backed off, furious. It swiped at my shoulder, tearing through flesh and cloth. Fresh blood sprayed into the mud.
I collapsed. My vision blurred. Pain. So much pain.
Every cell in my body screamed: Give up! You're just a kid without mana! You're going to die!
But my soul barked back: I AM A KING!
I stood up again. Not with magic, but by stabbing my wooden sword into the ground as a crutch. I stood on one leg. Blood dripped from my forehead into my eyes, tinting my world red.
"Again..." I whispered.
The wolf attacked again. This time it bit my arm. I could hear the bone in my arm starting to crack under its fangs. But instead of pulling away, I shoved my arm deeper into its throat, choking it, while my free hand gouged its eyes with my tiny fingers.
"I... WILL... NOT... DIE... HERE!"
We rolled in the mud. I was beaten, clawed, and bitten. I was a living punching bag. But every time the wolf thought I was finished, I bit its ear. I yanked its fur. I attacked it in the most dishonorable and brutal way imaginable.
The villagers watched in horror. They saw a small child, without a drop of mana, fighting a monster as if he himself were a more bloodthirsty beast.
"He... he's insane," whispered the girl who had mocked me. They ran, finally getting away from us.
Finally, with the last of my strength, I managed to grab a sharp stone on the ground. As the wolf tried to rip my throat out, I slammed the stone into its temple repeatedly. Once. Twice. Ten times. Until the wolf stopped moving.
I collapsed on top of the monster's carcass. My body was wrecked. My leg was broken, my arm cracked, my shoulder torn, and I had lost so much blood. I felt cold. So cold.
Fate really hated me. I won, but I was going to die as a hero who smelled like mud and had no magic. How ironic.
I lost myself in the darkness of my consciousness. I crawled through the dark forest, in a territory humans were never supposed to enter. It was here, among ancient trees that looked like monsters, that I smelled something.
The scent... was sweet. So sweet it made my hungry stomach feel nauseous. It smelled like roses dipped in a pool of fresh blood.
Rustle.
Footsteps sounded softly. Graceful. Not like a human, not like an animal.
I looked up with the one eye I could still open. In front of me stood a woman. No, she was too beautiful to be called human. Her jet-black hair flowed like silk of the night, her skin was as white as an eternal corpse, and her eyes... her eyes were a blood-red that glowed in the forest's gloom. She wore an incredibly revealing black dress, emphasizing the provocative and dangerous curves of her mature body.
She looked at me, a small child drenched in mud, blood, and tears, with a gaze that was hard to decipher. There was hunger there, but also pity, and something resembling... obsession.
"A broken little king with clipped wings. Interesting," her voice was soft, like a demon's whisper promising heaven in the middle of hell. "You're struggling against a fate that doesn't want you, aren't you? You fight like a beast even though your body is just an empty vessel without mana."
I tried to reach for my wooden sword, which was snapped in two, even though my hands were shaking violently. "Who... are you? Get... away..."
The woman, Valeria, knelt in front of me. Her intoxicating scent, a mix of night-blooming flowers and iron, assaulted my fading senses. She stroked my cheek with fingers cold as ice, then slowly traced down to the gaping wound on my neck from the wolf's claws.
"I am the end of your suffering... or the beginning of your new destruction," she licked a drop of blood running down her finger, and her expression shifted into a terrifying euphoria. Her eyes glowed brighter. "Your blood... is very heavy. Very dark. There is the scent of war and thrones within it. I want to possess it. I want to sip every bit of history you're hiding."
She brought her face close to my neck. I could feel her cold breath touching my skin, and sharp fangs beginning to extend from behind her red lips.
"Be mine, boy. Give me every drop of your precious blood, and I will give you the power to rend the heavens that mock you. I will give you a power that needs no mana, yet can make the gods kneel."
In the middle of the silent forest and the cold drizzle, I realized one thing: I had just sold my soul to a monster far more beautiful and far more dangerous than any darkness of mana.
"Just do it..." I whispered before everything went totally black. "Give me... that power."
That night, under the watch of a cloud-covered moon, King Benedict died for the second time, and something far darker was born in the embrace of a vampire.