Surviving As the 5th Prince of the Ruined Kingdom

Prologue

I am special.

From the point where my memories begin, a translucent right hand wearing a white glove floated around me.

For convenience, I call it the ghost hand.

And besides the ghost hand, I see strange…well, what should I call it? Anyway, I see things that others cannot see.

Fortunately, the first person who realized that I could see strange things was my nursemaid.

– Prince Evan! You must never do that again!

Perhaps I was engrossed in trying to catch the floating ghost hand, like a cat chasing a fluttering butterfly.

The starting point of my memory is my nursemaid’s scary face when she noticed the strangeness and warned me, and beyond that, the ghost hand gently waving its index finger.

– You must never let others know that you can see strange things. You must keep it a secret at all costs.

My nursemaid always reminded me whenever I seemed to forget.

Even though I was too young to fully understand her words, I felt that something terrible would happen if I disobeyed her. As an obedient child, I always nodded, and thanks to that, no one has ever noticed my peculiarity until now.

And then.

– Olivia Einberg. You are under arrest for attempted murder of the royal family.

After my nursemaid was executed, everyone who knew the truth disappeared.

“……..”

Perhaps because it was the anniversary of her death, the night was quiet and still.

In remembrance of her soul, I closed the curtains by the moonlit window. The crying moon hid itself, and darkness settled into the bedroom. But my secrets still emit their own light within this darkness.

“…….. Annoying.”

I returned to the bed and turned away. The ghost hand was out of sight, but another one silently followed me.

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Imperial Mating Simulation

《Lost Saga》

ID:

Password:

[Login]

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A translucent rectangular window, just like the ghost hand.

What are those written there?

They look like ‘letters’…….

“……. Sir! Evan……. Sir!”

I opened my eyes to the sunlight tickling my eyelids and someone’s voice ringing in my ears.

At the same time, I realized once again that I am not ordinary. Ah, it wasn’t because of the things I had seen since childhood.

Just now, I recalled my previous life.

– BOOOOOOM!

While walking in front of an elementary school with my nose buried in a smartphone, I heard a tremendous roar. Looking up, a passenger car was about to run over an elementary school student just a step away.

Whether it was a sudden acceleration or a daytime drunk driving incident, I’m not sure. Before I could even think, my body moved first, and I succeeded in pushing the child away.

Why did I do that?

I never thought I would be a person who would risk my life to save a complete stranger.

Anyway, the child survived, but…

– CRUNCH!

I didn’t.

– aaaH! A person!

– What do we do! What do we do!

– Quick, call 119! Call 119!

– The child? Is the child okay?

Perhaps because I did a good deed before dying, I was reborn as a human again, but in a different world from Earth.

Evan Lionel.

Full name, Evan Sol Phillip de Lionel.

Meaning Evan, son of Phillip of the Lionel family.

The fifth prince of the Lionel Kingdom.

That was the new life given to me. Truly a remarkable rise in status compared to my previous life as an orphan.

However.

“Your Highness! Your Highness! Prince Evan! Come to your senses!”

Whether the child I saved later became a traitor who sold out the country, the circumstances surrounding me are not very good.

I recalled the face of the child I saw in my fading consciousness at the last moment of my previous life. Boy? Girl? Strangely, I don’t remember well.

What’s certain is that they seemed to be smiling.

Shouldn’t they have been crying or looking shocked?

“Your Highness! How many of these do you see?”

Blink blink.

I blinked to bring my hazy vision into focus. A familiar face waved three fingers before my eyes.

A boy? A youth? A youthful face somewhere in between. With eyes that were barely visible, he exuded a curiously sullen aura.

‘His name is…’

My past and present lives intertwined, leaving my thoughts in disarray. Perhaps that’s why his name didn’t come to me immediately.

I stared blankly at his face.

“Your Highness! Say something!”

Ah! I remembered.

Alfonso Heimdel, my personal attendant.

“Alfonso, since I’m conscious, remove your hand.”

I brushed his hand away and rose.

A stabbing pain.

The throbbing headache made me wince. Carefully, I brought my hand to my head.

‘Bandages?’

It wasn’t just a feeling of being split open—it was a real, splitting pain.

‘What happened?’

I recalled the cause of my recent loss of consciousness. The beating disguised as a duel with my stepbrother, the Fourth Prince. Scenes from before I blacked out vividly replayed in my mind.

– Thwack! Thwack! Thud!

After being pummeled like a punching bag, I managed to block one of his attacks by chance.

– Block? You blocked it?

His demeanor changed, as if he was enraged that I had blocked him.

– Then block this! Mountain Splitter!

His attack came crashing down, threatening to cleave my skull.

Somehow, I raised my wooden sword to protect my head.

– Crack! Ughh.

Unable to withstand the impact, the wooden sword shattered, splitting my crown!

Throb, throb.

The memory of that impact intensified my headache.

“Your Highness! You’re suddenly speaking haltingly! You must have sustained a head injury! I’ll fetch the healer again…”

“Enough!”

Alfonso’s fussing only worsened my already agonizing headache. Finally, my stern words made him seal his lips.

As the surroundings grew quiet, the throbbing pain in my head subsided a little.

“Wow, Your Highness. Are you really alright?”

Alfonso kept fidgeting with his fingers, as if he couldn’t let go of his concern.

“Those three. So don’t be so uptight and get out.”

“Huh? But, still…”

“Hurry up.”

The hesitant fellow slowly rose from the chair.

“Then I’ll be waiting. Call me whenever you need anything.”

“Yeah. I’ll call if I need anything.”

After watching Alfonso carefully close the door behind him, I got out of bed.

Ugh.

The moment my feet touched the ground, the muscle aches I hadn’t fully registered due to the splitting headache came rushing in.

Wobble, my legs gave way against my will. I barely avoided falling by quickly grabbing onto the bed.

‘Damn brat.’

The plump face of the 4th Prince, who comes to torment me whenever he’s bored, flashed in my mind, making me involuntarily frown.

Thud, thud.

Enduring the piercing screams from every muscle in my body, I approached the full-length mirror.

A boy with sunken black eyes that seemed to suck me in stared piercingly at me. The black hair protruding from between the bandages still glistened like silk amidst it all.

His outward appearance alone advertised his lineage from the Lionel royal family.

The 4th Prince with jet-black hair, strongly inheriting his mother’s bloodline, came to mind again. He’s the only one among the siblings without black hair, which is probably one reason he torments me so viciously.

Erasing the ill-fated brat’s face from my mind, I raised my head. A translucent hand in a white glove greeted me.

Invisible to others, but visible to me in the mirror.

When I was young, it was just a ghost hand floating around, occasionally moving its fingers at will. At some point, I became able to control it according to my will, making it clench into a fist, flip the bird, raise its middle finger, and so on.

Swoosh, swoosh, I moved the ghost hand hovering around to the table and made it grasp a cup half-filled with water.

Slither, the ghost hand passed right through the cup.

As expected, it couldn’t exert any physical force at all.

According to what I’ve learned over the roughly 13 years I’ve been with this ghost hand, there’s only one thing it can interact with.

The Emperor’s Cultivation Simulation

＜＞Lost Saga＜＞

ID:

Password:

[Login]

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A semi-transparent window floated like a hologram.

‘Korean, English.’

It was an astonishing revelation.

After scouring through countless books searching for the identity of those characters, to find out they were from my previous life – it was only natural I couldn’t decipher them.

“Lost Saga……”

A hollow laugh escaped me.

It was the title screen of the game displayed on my smartphone right before I threw myself in front of a child about to be hit by a car in my past life.

I never actually played it.

Is my mind jumbled because of that? I couldn’t recall the path I took to install it either. The only certainty was that I had finished signing up and was about to log in.

I brought my ghostly index and thumb fingers together, then spread them apart on the login window. The palm-sized window expanded to the size of a laptop screen.

Next, I tapped the space next to the ID field.

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ID: │

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A blinking cursor, a stick indicating the typing position, appeared.

And a virtual keyboard materialized.

Only now, after regaining awareness of my past life, did I realize it was nearly identical to a smartphone’s – designed for easy one-handed input.

This was always where I got stuck, unable to proceed further.

‘This time will be different.’

There was no need to strain my memory for the ID and password. In my past life, I always used the same ones when signing up.

Utilizing my ghostly hand, I typed accurately.

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ID: Kicker505

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Next was the password.

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Password: sdd230****

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Finally, I brought the phantom hand in front of [Login].

Will it work?

If it does, what will happen?

Excitement, anticipation, anxiety.

With a tangle of mixed feelings, I pressed the login button.

“Connecting to Arcana System.”

.

.

.

“Connection complete.”

Zziing!

The vast universe engulfed me.

For a moment, my mind was dazed. When I closed and reopened my eyes, I found myself at the center of countless twinkling stars.

I felt unseen presences observing me.

“Verifying visitor.”

“Evan Sol Philip de Lionel.”

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.

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“Welcome to the world of the Emperor Awakening Simulation 《Lost Saga》.”

And so began the events that would shake my destiny.