Royal death - Neil Sleek

Hyap

Using the blade arts on my nails is exhausting. I never thought that nails could also be used as a weapon. In the last 4 years, I have gained a lot. I know all about this world now, and I have also learned using my nails as blades. Even if I can’t use it when I get back to Earth, it will be helpful in escaping from here.

Art is a good djinn. If not for his very rare anger shoot-ups and djinn appearance, I would have had a hard time believing that he is from an evil tribe of demons.

Today is the last day of my training as tomorrow will mark my 4th birthday as Neil. Arteyel plans on getting us out of here on midnight. He says that we can’t wait for the morning. We have already been lucky that Furaith didn’t get any ideas up until now, he said. Still, how does this guy have this much energy at that age (Art is 44 years old).

Clang

My nails clashed with the blades. Art had promised not to use his nails and go easy on me but how is this in any way going easy?

Huff, huff

“Furaith will never give you the time for a break. You are lucky he is not in the fort today, or else we would never have been able to hold this test today.” Art said calmly as he grabbed all six blades even more strongly and pounced at me.

Evade

It was hard but all I could do was try not to get hurt. My condition was deteriorating by the minute while he seemed perfectly fine. My seemingly-eight-your-old body (by human standards) had developed to be inhumanly agile, reflexive and strong but it was still no match for a former Captain who hailed from the Valiant Battalion.

‘Finally, a weak point!’ I had seen through just one weak point of his during this long test and I jumped at the opportunity.

Art had swiftly stepped on the side but when he did, a smile appeared on his face. My nail had managed to put a scratch on his left arm which was enough to make me pass. He was proud of me; I could see it on his face.

He opened both his arms wide for me to hug him and his warm smile… vanished when a dagger pierced him in the shoulder.

Furaith! I was fuming with fury. But it was not him. Blue-skinned assassins came out from all sides and surrounded us when Arteyel stood before me like a shield. It was impossible to get help from here because we were in a forest clearing very far away from the fortress.

They were from the Sleek tribe. If I am truly an heir, then are they here to save me or eliminate me? I did not know. It was plausible to have me eliminated if there was another heir.

“What do you want?” Art asked them as he threw the blades on the ground and let his nails show themselves out. He had now acquired a defensive stance with me right behind him.

“We want the prince.” One of them replied. “And we cannot leave any witnesses behind.” Another one said as all of them lunged at us.

It was problematic, to the point that I felt like I would die here. Just like what happened with Brave, Arteyel would die even if I surrendered myself. So, I decided to fight this time. I managed to decapitate one of the assassins as Arteyel fended their attacks off and said out loud: “You puny sergeant-level assassins! How dare you act all high and mighty infront of my dark blade arts?”

He looked at me with confusion. He didn’t expect me to be on this level. It was because in our fight earlier, I was holding back quite a bit so that if someone was watching us, he wouldn’t know how strong I really was. I was at least at the level of a sergeant, if I were to guess in this fight.

But it was far from over. I was almost at my limit, but thankfully Art was not. Still, 5 of the assassins remained and Art’s shoulder kept getting worse.

‘We’ll have to end this here.’ I thought as I jumped at one of them.

Slash

It hurts. I couldn’t evade in time. Am I dying?