Lucien looked at their unconscious bodies, feeling the urge to devour them and progress towards his ultimate goal.
'I can't, this would spoil any innocent act I would have to go through in the future.'
'If it leaked, everyone will treat me differently, and even if I erase all the evidence, if they were send by someone, that person might spread rumors about the disappearance.'
'And whatever 180 points is not at the level where risking it is worth the trouble.'
'Now to spice things up and maybe borrow a knife to find out who planned this.'
Lucien looked around to confirm that nobody was coming in yet. Once that was done, he started giving himself a nice beating.
'This will make the fight look bitter for both sides, they can't deny hitting me, since nobody would believe.'
'It's like killing all the birds with one stone.'
'They probably had no plans on laying hands on me, just using words as a weapon, after all hurting a prince is probably over their heads.'
'And beating a prince will result in a nice interrogation, where they tell who set this whole thing up, I don't need to care about that, there will be someone to take care of the mastermind.'
'Using status to deal with trouble feels pretty nice, if only this castle was not my prison.'
After almost perfecting his external body control, the injuries he cause looked pretty bad, but were in fact only on the level of bruises and scratches.
It was not even 3 minutes after the fight finished, when someone noticed the 4 children lying down injured.
The moment Lucien was recognized as one of the kids, the whole palace was shaken.
Someone dared to injure a prince in the imperial palace, the other 3 kids were immediately taken into custody, for an interrogation, while a Light Path practitioner was rushed to heal Lucien.
Some people were pretty surprised that Lucien fought 3 kids older than himself to a draw, but looking at the current situation in the palace, nobody dared to speak. Even the emperor was notified of the matter, and he was furious.
This was a son he had high hopes for, and someone extended his dirty hand toward him. The emperor was fully aware those 3 kids were definitely not there by a coincidence, after all in the 5 years since his birth, that area was a forbidden zone.
The aura Lucien projected at birth was enough for the emperor to fully protect him in his childhood, even if that means no friends, harm was not an option.
It took less than 30 minutes to find out who send the kids, they were after all not even 10.
During a period of the next couple of hours a lot of people died, from the lackey that instructed the kids, up the chain of superiors, to the boss, which was where the clue was cutoff, the boss was found dead when the investigators got there.
When the emperor received the news, he was furious, but helpless, even if some connections were mentioned in the note, he couldn't go around killing people with no evidence, even as the emperor.
When Lucien woke up, he saw his mother who had tears in her eyes,his maid and even the emperor was there. They didn't mention anything about what occurred in the dark and just praised him on how he fought 3 older kids to a draw.
'From the look of Henry, there is definitely someone behind this and he probably didn't manage to dig all the way.'
Lucien accurately guessed, looking at the black lines all over the emperors face, he was apparently still angry about how the matter ended.
"Son, what do you feel like after a fight like that?"
"Father, I think I'm still weak and have to train harder, so I don't get injured next time and make mom cry."
The emperor smiled at the naive sentence his son just uttered.
'I should harden him a little bit, no soft heart can help the empire.'
'Hmm maybe it's time to get him a path manual and a training partner.'
"I can help you with that."
"Do you know about what a Path is?"
Lucien just nodded at the question.
"Then describe it to me?"
This caused Lucien to cringe a bit, how should he describe a path, the system explanation was way too profound. There is no way you can find that anywhere he had access to and a 5 year old thinking of that, when not even training is even more of an impossibility.
"Path is what each practitioner follows, in order to go beyond the limits of commoners and live longer."
Lucien improvised and dumbed down the improvisation even further.
"While that is true there is much more to a Path, it the way to Immortality, and the way to understanding the world we live in."
Lucien looked blankly at the emperor.
'Really? This is his much better version?'
The emperor though he was stunned by the description and smiled.
"So do you want to pick a manual about a path and how to embark on it?"
"Yes!"
Lucien tried to look more exited than ever.
"Then which path do you want to choose? You probably already heard about them from maids and gossips."
"Which one does father think is suitable for me?"
It was Henry who was stunned this time, the question was completely unexpected.
'What wisdom and sight.'
"Well if you ask me, out BloodMoon family always focused on Water and Darkness Paths, so any one of these is the best option. The manuals we have on them are comparatively on a different level."
"Then I want a Darkness Path manual, as Water is for girls."
"Hahah, if that is your choice, I'll send the best one we have to your room."
'That is more like a child.'
After that, everyone left the room, so that Lucien can rest and recover.
'Now I have my cover, so I can use Darkness Path openly soon.'
'The Light Path is pretty amazing, I'm almost recovered. 5.00 Vitality definitely helped, but a scratch or a bruise, would still take about a day at 5x common recovery.'