Life was never easy for Dominic West Lawrence. He had to fight the monsters invading the living space of his future citizens. After all, he was an heir to the duke. Although he had never had to worry about the lack of food, lack of clothing, lack of money or the possibility of needing to bow to anyone other than the king, he still had his own difficulties.
One might say that he was selfish with too many desires wanting more than what he had. Many did and he did not speak against them nor debate with them. People hear what they want to hear and people will never accept that they are wrong. Those who do are either those who are emotionally damaged, less confident ones or the sages.
He was not a sage and hence he had suffered at the beginning. But when the very ones who spoke against him bent their knees to him, he smiled. His smile had scared his mother and she stayed away from him for four months by visiting her family.
One might ask, why had he suffered. He had suffered because he was strong. Had he been born as an ordinary mage, he would surely have been taken care of by the royal academy, pass out with good grades, get selected to either go as an official mage to some family or city if not to go to war. Him being the heir to the position of the dukedom meant that he could not enjoy life as an ordinary mage. One should note that the only advantage of being a duke over an ordinary mage is that the mage will have to bow to him and follow his orders. But if the mage wanted, they could be independent ones who would not earn much but would not be under the control of the kingdom.
Humans were conscious life ever since language came into being. Wolves have emotions but they are run by instinct. They do not think. They hunt to eat, they fight to take revenge and they remember. But they cannot be named a conscious life or an intelligent species as they do not think and act on the basis of thoughts. Humans do. They kill when they are angry, when they are sad, when they are in love, when they are in lust, when they have some unspeakable emotion for some kind of ideal. They do not kill to eat as they can farm and trade. So when he a human says he suffered, it was not due to the lack of food or clothes, it was psychological.
Humans define themselves by their position in the society and the society. A prince like him had grown as a heir is supposed to and hence he had always thought that it was his duty to ensure that his subjects remain safe and happy. But only after living a long life did he learn that his point of view was wrong as the world did not think in that manner. He hence no longer cared for that position. He would not throw it away just because some subjects speak of him as a tyrant who collects taxes on them not knowing that he had spent it on an army to protect them as he was living a far more luxurious life than anyone.
He was right and he was wrong. That was what made him suffer as he knew that he thought himself as right while he was wrong too. While he protected the domain, he also stole from them. While he killed the newborn goblins and orcs to protect his domain, they called him monster. He really wished to be a monster so that he would not have to suffer from such attacks.
But the elites knew that what he had done was the right thing. He fought wars for the kingdom just when he was 14. He was named the commander of all armed forces of the kingdom when he was 18. The royal family did not care of the possibility of his overthrowing the royal family as they had artifacts and him being rewarded increased the cohesion of the kingdom.
It all went well except that he had never had any good luck with the ladies. While he had the mages and knights under the royal family and the unified council of nobles fought, many more nobles remained at home, eating, drinking, whoring and squandering the money they had.
Any political system and system of governance and any system of a society will have a few lucky ones who does not have much talent and power to keep the position but will earn it. It is not seen among the officials, scholars, knights or mages but was seen among the nobles as hereditary nobles had the right to pass the title. Rich men were another such case.
So they enjoy life as simply they can. Some really wanted to do something good but they are not talented. They give up everything and live a debauched life. This was not much of a problem as long as they did not harm others and did not do anything morally corrupt.
So what if the richest man had the quirk of killing and bought many slaves from the royal army to kill personally. So what if Marchioness Madeline slept with many boy toys. So what if many nobles had affairs.
But it affected him as ladies staying behind lived a simple life without caring for the kingdom. There were many good ladies but many were still living in their own dreams. Such ones acted against him and he could not simply slaughter 20% of the noble families.
So when the half elf Dylan made princess Bella fall in love with her, he stood against it. Humanity was strong but not strong enough. Humans were strong but had degraded such that for tens of thousands of years, humans were suffering and were considered a really weak race.
Now that he had awakened his intent, he knew the origin of mages. Intent was the extension of will into the real world tampering laws on smaller scales. A person with level 100 intent can form a permanent imprint of intent onto his body named attributes which would produce higher level of energy with higher level of mystery named mana, magical energy or sub-ether. Such attributes are at similar level to the intent that had condensed it.
But in the years long gone, such attributes kept getting smaller. A person with level 1 intent would never run out of energy when using attributes and with level 2 intent, would double energy when using the attributes.
But humans and all races now had level 0 intent that would need to consume energy to produce effects onto the universe. When humans lost their strength, they were weak. When they were weak, all slave races fought back and nearly slaughtered humanity.
He sighed as at that time he had read similar records. He was one of the few who along with the current king, queen and crown prince believed in human supremacy. The idea was not that humans were supreme but human should be the only supreme beings. Others can bow or cease to exist.
He was asked by the crown price to let princess Bella not marry Dylan, losing the incentive in international disputes. His father and her father also pushed him to seduce her and marry her as her bloodline was indeed strong enough to be the spouse the future duke.
He was not as pretty as he was when he had awakened his intent. He had found that life to be boring and never cared for women. Women were just women. So what if some were better looking while others were not. They are all women and for a man when married to a women, women only had one purpose. But that was not the case for him when finding a duchess. She was not worthy but her family was worthy of being his in-laws. So he tried to seduce her.
He spent a whole year running behind her but all lost when she married her. It might have been due to her being able to see that he never cared for her or loved her.
The royal family who now had found their daughter already married, gave him some compensation. But now, his name was dragged down as if he was someone running behind another man's women. No one really cared and some noble ladies who were already married even tried to approach him.
But he had never cared and still lived as usual. But the princess who had new power took over the throne in some manner which he was not sure off as he was not supposed to interfere in the path, he was accused of many things he had not done and above all, he was accused of insulting the royal family as he had tried to woo the princess who was to be in a sacred marriage. She also spoke in front of everyone that if he is willing to bow to her and kiss her feet and become his lover, she shall give him the right. It was nott that Dylan had some cuckold fetish nor that the queen wanted to sleep with her. She just thought that he was really in love with her and the best method to control a really strong man who had never been in love was to make him her lover.
She might not even touch her and when he starts growing weary of her, she might find someone of the royal side family looking similar to her, who was only taught to follow the orders of the queen and might order him to marry that lady. All this was based on the fact that she really knew him.
She did not. He had never did any wrong in his life. Even the commoners who badmouthed him knew that he was someone really good who had never done any harm to any other human. So he never looked down on himself. He spent the money to eat the most delicious food and had hired the most skilful chef. He had bought the best dresses and always used the best weapons and magical items. He had kept himself clean and never touched a women as the upper nobles holding the main position were to only have one spouse and he wanted to follow it, hoping his wife to be someone pure as him in that manner at the least.
So one that day, when a whore who had slept with someone other than a human came to him she spat on the ground. If she had been someone who had had multiple husbands in her past, he will surely not care as if people can get together, they can separate. But he will surely not care for women who lived a degraded life and would keep away from them even if she had only slept with one male prostitute. Mental cleanliness was far more higher than physical aversion to unclean things. So he really looked down on her who had slept with someone other than human who he had physical and mental aversion to.
He had mental aversion as he hated how their forefathers killed his forefathers and how they turned their back on him. He had mental aversion as they were not human and many had their own different ways of thought such as elves eating the body of their dead kin as per the custom. He only had respect for some groups of some races.
As for why he had physical aversion, he was from the battlefield. He had inadvertently trained himself such that every time he sees someone who is not a human, he wants to slash it once using his mana sword. Luckily, he never had to fight with someone other than humans as his allies.
So this aversion, repulsing outward, pulsed through his body. The pride he had would never allow it so he simply activated his artifact, the ring of Sodom, creating a circular ring of light above the whole royal city, ready to fall down as a beam of light and turn all life into salt.
He simply spat the word bitch and walked out. The dukedom was under pressure as all of them were scared. No nobles stopped him but looked at him with respect as he too was a noble. Nobles are those who are strong enough to do what they wanted to do. Some slept while others drank while a few killed. They would not look down on someone like him just because he lives a disciplines life as long as that is what he really wanted. Till now they thought that he had no will of his own. But he had always worked hard as he felt ordinary life, playing with children and songs and dances as boring. His action showed that he really cared and that he was a noble.
The new queen shrieked in anger, ordering the mages to kill him, but they looked away, When she looked at the knights, they acted as if they had become deaf and blind. When she looked at the nobles, they all turned and just kept enjoying their own life. But they feared. He was strong as he was well versed in swordsmanship and magic. He was the only one who had killed thousands of mages using a sword as very few knights had done it.
He was a few who could use magic spells by instinct and with the fighting style of high speed and reaction of knight and magic, he was a beast on the battlefield. They feared he would rebel. The nobles smiled as they wanted to rebel alongside him as they had grown bored of their own life. They were scared of his moral values. The new queen was scared of his power as the artifact would need a lot of mana and blood sacrifice and she was not strong enough to use it yet the elders of the royal family would bent their knees as long as they are made duke and only the queen is killed .
But his parents asked him to give up the ring of heir as they were scared of war and were under too much pressure as he was really good. Seeing that no retainer stepped up to stop him from being demoted and that no knights or mages had spoke against it, she found himself a failure as a lord. When he saw that the commoners did not speak up for him as he really checked using magic in different places, he found his actions to protect them useless.
So on the third day after he had given up his position as the heir, he simply got on his horse in front of them on a sunny day and left.