Re:Demon - Reborn as a Demon Book 1

7

"Good night big brother."

"Good night, Memoria," the handsome young man replied, turning from his door and smiling at the girl.

The instant the door closed, the smile fell off his face so fast that if it had been an anime, it would've hit the ground. The look that replaced it was one that no person in the castle had ever seen on his face, one that would've gotten a doctor called out of worry that he'd been replaced by a fake, but it was him and this was the real him, not the simpering idiot they all knew and loved.

He threw his jacket over the back of a chair, not caring if the expensive fabric wrinkled, if it did, he wouldn't get in trouble, one of the servants might, but not him. The thought caused him to look around, a glimmer of worry in his eyes. He'd forgotten to check to make sure there weren't any servants present when he'd arrived. Sure, he'd told them not to disturb him at night, but that didn't mean they listened to him, or more likely, weren't finishing things up before he arrived, like making sure he had hot coals in the warmer in winter and fresh rose water in summer, but it looked like he was alone, so he let himself relax.

When he'd first woke up in the new world, he'd immediately known what this was, after all, it was one of the most popular genres right then, an isekai. It meant that he'd been born in a new world, and if that was the case, then he was finally free. Free of all the stupidity he'd had to put up with in his last life, free of all the people that he'd known, free of everything, and even better, if he was being born in a new world, then it meant that he was the protagonist, he was the hero.

This was confirmed when he realized that he'd been born in a castle, and not in the servant's quarters, but in a luxurious bed, with curtains and silks. The walls, blurry as they were, were covered in tapestries and the furniture looked straight out of a big budget historic or fantasy movie from Hollywood, so he knew he was important.

He quickly found that he couldn't understand anything that was being said, which was a problem. In the stories, characters got an auto-translate, but he guessed he could deal. He figured it might be part of him not getting thrust in in his old body, but being born again, so he had to start over.

He also didn't remember meeting a god or goddess on the way, though since everything was a bit fuzzy, he might not remember that he had. Or maybe they'd blocked it out, so that he didn't have too big of an advantage starting out, which made sense considering he couldn't understand the language.

The first thing he'd tried to do was bring up his status screen, but couldn't figure out where it was or how to get it to appear. He tried looking in the corners of his vision, then thinking the words. He tried everything he could think of, but nothing worked. In the end, he was forced to concede that he couldn't get it to come up, so maybe it was one of those things that it was implemented on one of his birthdays, like a coming-of-age thing, so he told himself to be patient and learn everything he could first.

As he learned the language, his suspicion was confirmed, he was special. He had been born in a castle, but not just any castle, such as that of a simple noble or anything, but that of the ruling family, in other words, he was a prince. And on top of that, he was the first born, which meant he was destined to become king.

The older he got, the more things seemed to line up for him. He wasn't even two when it was discovered that he had magical capacity, though they called it something like arcanic arts here. Still, magic was magic as far as he was concerned. Magic ran on his mother's side of the family, so it didn't seem to come as that much of a surprise, though there was no guarantee about where it would show up, since peasants could be born with the gift as well, something that displeased him slightly, after all, shouldn't power like that be the domain of the nobility?