Carlos.
Carlos de Renal.
The most noble status in the world… Emperor.
But his childhood was a bit different.
In fact, he didn’t even have a name.
He was just an ordinary war orphan wandering the streets.
For convenience, let’s call him Cal.
While Cal struggled to survive by begging, a real prince named Carlos de Renal was growing day by day in the imperial palace.
Carlos de Renal was a rather peculiar child.
He found palace life suffocating and yearned to explore the vast world.
His dream was, above all, to travel the world.
However, as the Crown Prince, such a dream was unattainable.
“Travel the world? When would you ever have time for that?”
“Do you know how many years that would take? You’d have to leave the palace for ages—it’s unthinkable!”
“Please, abandon such thoughts.”
Everyone who heard of his dream opposed it.
Carlos had no choice but to settle for wandering the suburbs near the palace.
It was stifling.
Life felt unbearably restrictive.
Then, one day, while roaming a poor neighborhood, he was startled to the core.
He had come face-to-face with the boy we’ve been calling Cal.
But it wasn’t just the encounter that shocked him.
It was how remarkably similar Cal looked to him.
Carlos asked,
“Who… who are you?”
“I’m just an orphan. Who are you?”
“I’m Crown Prince Carlos de Renal. You… you look just like me. No, it’s uncanny.”
Carlos stared at Cal, stood beside him, and examined every detail, confirming just how identical they were.
Then, an idea flashed through his mind like lightning.
“You. Follow me.”
“Pardon? Ah, yes, Your Highness.”
And just like that, Cal was suddenly brought from the slums to the palace.
He was treated with utmost care—dressed in the same clothes as the Crown Prince, trained to speak in the same manner, and fed the same meals.
It was as if he were being groomed to become the Crown Prince himself.
One day, the real Crown Prince Carlos secretly summoned Cal and said,
“The day has come.”
“Huh? What day?”
“I’m going on a world tour. While I’m gone, I need you to pretend to be me. Otherwise, people will come looking for me. Just for two or three years… Understand?”
“…I-I’ll do as you command, Your Highness.”
At this time, Cal was still a naïve child who hadn’t fully shed the marks of being an orphan.
He couldn’t refuse the Crown Prince’s orders, no matter what they were.
Before leaving, the Crown Prince patted Cal on the shoulder and left him with parting words.
“See you in a few years!”
“P-Please have a safe trip, Your Highness.”
And so, Crown Prince Carlos left the palace in secret.
Now, only Cal remained in the palace.
What followed were grueling days that felt like walking on thorns.
“Doesn’t Carlos seem a little strange lately?”
“He feels different.”
“He almost seems like someone else.”
Even if they looked identical and Cal had been trained to mimic the Crown Prince’s speech, it was no easy task to act like someone else entirely.
Suspicion arose, and dangerous moments came and went.
Through these challenges, Cal gradually became more adept.
By the time one or two years had passed, he had grown so skilled that no one questioned him anymore.
Everyone believed Cal to be the real Carlos, Crown Prince.
Perhaps even Cal himself.
Yes.
Cal began to harbor ambitions.
“I am the Crown Prince. Everyone believes so. At this rate, I could even inherit the throne…”
His heart pounded.
“Me… the Emperor? The most powerful person in the world? No… this isn’t a fantasy anymore. This is reality.”
Having been treated as the Crown Prince for years, Cal’s heart had grown bold.
But one worry still lingered.
“That guy… the real Crown Prince. The time for his return is drawing near. When he comes back, no matter what, they’ll find out I’m a fake. I need to figure something out.”
Though he knew he had to act, no clever solution came to mind.
After all, his role had always been temporary—a stand-in until the Crown Prince returned.
“I can’t lose this position… It’s mine. It belongs to me. To no one else. Mine!”
Despite Cal’s growing anxiety, time marched on, and the day of the real Crown Prince’s return finally arrived.
Late at night, the Crown Prince slipped into his old quarters—now Cal’s room—through a secret passage.
When Cal, now accustomed to using the room as his own, saw Carlos, he was utterly shocked.
“Y-you’re back…!!”
“Yes. The world is vast. I’m satisfied now. I’ve seen everything I wanted to see… It was delightful.”
Carlos looked very relieved.
His long journey had left him in a shabby state, but he appeared more dignified than before.
“The fun ends here. It’s time to fulfill my duties as Crown Prince. You’ve done well in my absence, fulfilling the role I asked you to play, haven’t you? I’m impressed. Thank you for ensuring there were no problems. I’ll be sure to reward you.”
“A reward? What kind of reward…?”
“I’ll appoint you as my personal knight or a high-ranking official. When I become Emperor, I might even make you the Guardian Duke.”
“When you become Emperor…?”
“Yes. What’s with that look? Is there something troubling you?”
“Of course there is.”
Cal spoke with a completely different expression from three years ago.
“Who wouldn’t be angry when some imposter shows up and claims he’s going to be Emperor? Isn’t that infuriating? Tell me, who wouldn’t be?”
“…? What did you just say?”
The real Crown Prince Carlos was momentarily at a loss for words.
He needed time to understand what this orphan was babbling about.
After taking a deep breath, he spoke.
“You… aren’t you misunderstanding something? I had you act as my stand-in, but I never meant for you to become the real Crown Prince. Don’t you realize that as soon as I show myself, everyone will know who the real one is? Listen… don’t entertain such foolish dreams. I’ll treat you well, so dream within your limits.”
“My dream is…”
It was then.
“My dream is to be Emperor!”
Cal lunged at Carlos, his hands tightening around the Crown Prince’s neck with all his strength.
Exhausted from his long journey, Carlos couldn’t muster proper resistance.
The suddenness of the attack played a role as well.
“Urgh! W-what are you doing?! I’m the Crown Prince! D-do you think you’ll get away with this? Urk!”
“You’re right. If we’re both here, people will quickly figure out who’s real and who’s fake! That’s why you can’t stay in this world! You can’t! Die! Die! Just die already! Please die for my future!”
“Y-you crazy… bastard… I didn’t do this for… you to… Urgh! This is… absurd…”
“DIE!!!!!!”
Cal strangled Carlos for a full ten minutes.
Death by strangulation from prolonged pressure on the neck.
The Crown Prince was dead. Even in death, his face was filled with bitter resentment, his eyes refusing to close.
“I… I killed him. W-what do I do now?”
Cal, the orphan boy, was utterly panicked after what he had done.
The biggest problem was what to do with Carlos’s body.
Carrying it outside would immediately expose everything.
Asking a servant to clean it up was out of the question.
Eventually, he came up with an idea.
“That book I saw last time… Surely…”
Among the books in the Crown Prince’s study was one particularly thick, ornate volume.
Cal retrieved it and opened it.
It was a book Carlos had bought out of curiosity, about summoning demons to grant wishes.
Using the Crown Prince’s blood, Cal drew a summoning circle and recited the incantation.
“Arha Barha Arbarha. Demon, I beseech you. Devour this body and erase it from this world without a trace…”
What Cal expected was something like a goblin to appear and take the body away.
However, the reality far exceeded his imagination.
Red smoke rose from the summoning circle, and a skeletal demon in a dark robe emerged.
It was a creature of unmistakable power.
Cal stumbled backward, falling to the ground.
“A-aah…”
“Were you the one who summoned me?”
“Y-yes… W-who are you?”
“I am the Demon King.”
The Demon King!
Those words sent a chill down Cal’s spine.
He had summoned none other than the Demon King.
Was it because the summoning circle had been drawn with the blood of a noble like the Crown Prince?
He couldn’t know.
What was done was done.
The Demon King continued speaking.
“Tell me why you summoned me. If your reason is inadequate, I’ll kill you.”
“I-I’ll explain… I’ll tell you everything.”
The orphan boy Cal confessed everything—the reason he had drawn the summoning circle, and even the story of his life leading up to this moment.
He poured out his emotions with sincerity and honesty.
The Demon King responded.
“Hmm… I see. Very well. I shall grant your wish. I will make this corpse vanish without a trace—not even a drop of blood will remain. However… there is a condition.”
The Demon King’s condition was…
To be continued…