Reborn as an Extra - Chapter 227

Chapter 227: Redemption of a depressed prince… Part-2.
Born in the royal family and under the blessings of the whole empire, the prince of the Elven Empire was loved by everyone.

He grew up under the care of professionals and got the best possible teachings from selected people.

In the small eyes of the young prince, a flame of ambition appeared.

Wanting to prove that everyone’s expectations of him were not wrong, wanting to prove that his existence was not a disappointment, and wanting to prove that he could carry the burden of his father on his shoulders.

As the only son of the King of the Elves, great expectations burdened him from a very young age.

The maids that took care of his daily needs, would tell him stories about his father’s heroic deeds, and his mother would tell him stories about how she adventured with his father in her younger days.

To the young prince, it was all so fascinating to hear when he was young, but as he grew up he started to realize a difficult reality.

The world was not just a happy and good place, thousands of soldiers die every year to protect their homeland from the Demon race. (The elf continent is the closest place to the demon continent… they will be the first to get attack in case of war…)

And even this number was very low actually, in case of wars, the death of hundreds of thousands of people was common in this world.

Seeing the great burdens that were weighing on his father’s shoulders, the young prince became desperate for power.

As he grew up, his parents started to rarely meet him and they started to focus on their work more instead of spending time with him.

The time spent with parents shortened a lot, but there was still a saving light in the young prince’s world.

He had a younger sister to talk to, she was five years younger than him but she was quite smart for her age. (Yeah, Al is five years older than Rio and others…)

At the age of fifteen, the young prince became an ‘awakener’, he was happy to find out that he had the talent to one day shoulder the burdens that were weighing his father.

He now had a way to prove his worth.

The young prince took part in various competitions and tournaments from that day onwards, he fought awakeners from all over the empire in the hope of improving himself much faster compared to his peers.

Winning tournaments over and over, creating amazing records one after another, became a daily thing for the young prince.

His popularity in the empire increased to an all-time high as he proved himself worthy of the crown from a very young age.

Moreover, he was happy to see that his younger sister looked at him with awe whenever he told her stories about his adventures.

To him, those were days of great joy.

But as they say: ‘Nothing in this world is absolute…’

The day came when his young little sister who always used to look up to him awakened her talent too.

And as the only daughter of the Elf King, she proved herself to be more than worthy.

She awakened talent equaling her older brother, but her progress was much faster than her older brother.

Her abilities were insanely good and none of her peers were her match.

She went ahead and broke every single record that Al had created on his journey to fame.

She was awed by her brother’s brilliance and wanted to walk on his path but in chasing after her brother she never noticed that the eyes of her brother had changed over time.

He used to dote on her before, but as she continued to challenge his reputation further and further, her brother started to see her as a great rival.

But even that didn’t last long.

Al reached peak rank A at the age of 22, and his younger sister who was now only 17 had already reached the same realm as him.

This was the last hit that made him fall into the abyss of self-blame.

It is in nature of a living creature that if they can’t do something correct they end up resorting to self-blame and self-blame further destroys your own mindset.

Al was certainly not slow actually, his father Ryul took nearly a hundred years to reach the rank SS, which was already a very fast speed by the standards of an Elf.

Unlike humans, Elves have a very long lifespan and thus they mature slower compared to humans.

Humans at the age of 20 to 25 are already fully mature and might even reach their full potential if they work hard enough, but things are different for the Elves.

Their longer lifespan causes them to mature slower and thus they take a lot more years to reach the same rank as humans do. (A long life is not always a good thing…)

Al certainly had a bright future ahead of him if he continued to mind his own business and work hard to improve.

But his ambition was to become the world’s best, he wanted to reach the peak and the moment when he saw his younger sister surpass him, he understood one thing:

‘That he can’t become the best.’

The moment Al realized this thing, his ‘Path’ was already broken, his self-blaming caused the flames of ambition to go extinct from his eyes, his aura weakened and his ego was shattered under the bright and radiant image of his younger sister.

In this world, ‘breaking’ of ‘path’ happens when the individual ends up extinguishing their flames of ambition and dreams.

Dreams, ambition, and a will to improve are one of the main reasons why the awakening even happens after all.

By giving up on your own dreams, you will cut off your future and the ‘path’ you wanted to strive for will be broken leading to degradation.

Once a person’s ambition runs out and their ‘path’ is broken, they can never progress any further than they already have, moreover, their strength will decline considerably.

(Although you would still remain in the same rank, you will never be able to progress any further… that’s how serious this issue is…)

This ‘broken’ path concept sounds extremely serious and dangerous but it is actually extremely rare.

Among millions of awakeners, only a dozen of them ever experience such a phenomenon.

After all, dreams and ambitions are ever-changing, and just like that a ‘path’ is not a straight and solidified line.

Over the years your thinking might change and you might want to pursue something else and thus your ‘path’ will change with your ambitions, it’s not set in stone that you can’t bend your ‘path’ to other directions.

Only those who completely give up on their future and end up resorting to extreme self-blame, end up with this rare situation called ‘Broken Path’ and this is exactly what happened to Al.

‘Broken Path’ is a rare condition, but it can be cured.

It’s not permanent, if the individual somehow realizes his own worth and a new flame of ambition or hope is lit then ‘repairing’ that broken path is not impossible.

Sometimes just a simple gesture as being ‘patted’ on the shoulder with acceptance, can cure this phenomenon.

Rio knew from the start about this ‘Broken path’ phenomenon as it had appeared in the later chapters of the novel, also he knew about Al’s circumstances.

In his opinion, just a simple push was enough, he timed his words well and gave the example of Link, which made Al realize that every individual is unique.

There was no need to pursue the title of the best, it was good enough to improve on your pace.

From Rio’s words, Al realized that he needed to stop comparing himself to monsters like Link.

The moment that realization came to Al, Rio placed his hand of acceptance on Al’s shoulder.

That was the moment Al’s ‘predetermined fate’ of being face-slapped by Fade changed, the threads of fate changed due to the influence of an ‘Anomaly’ and Al got a sudden ‘Epiphany’.

The appearance of that epiphany was so perfectly timed that it immediately solidified Al’s broken path and he directly made a breakthrough.

The accumulated hard work that had no place to go, instantly burst forth when the broken path was finally mended again.

This instantly pushed Al to rank S and he immediately ascended due to his previous efforts.

Rio only played a very minimal role in all this, all he did was just say a few words and pat Al once that’s all he did.

Al was able to break through and achieve epiphany because of his accumulated efforts that had had nowhere to go and were dormant in his body.

Knowing that his work here was done, Rio donned his shadow robe and left the place unnoticed by others.

Only one thought came to his mind as he left.

‘Good, now I don’t have to worry about the relations between elves and humans breaking and I won’t be hunted down by the elves like crazy…’ (Rio)

Rio never liked troublesome things, that’s why he took action this time to alter the plot and change it to his own liking.

He didn’t want to get involved in troublesome things because of Fade’s carelessness and that’s why he thought of this method.

To him, it was just a normal or random thing to do, but for Al, this was the greatest moment of his life.

…

…

Author’s Notes.

Yo! It’s your beloved author here!

It seems that Rio really has some great repulsion to trouble, he literally changed the plot to his liking so that he doesn’t get involved in ridiculous bullsh*t…

The impact created by this little anomaly is really a big deal…

Question of the day.

What would you have done if you were in Rio’s place?

1. Ignore (Ignore Fade’s face-slapping session, but then you will get chased by the elves as Fade would kill Al, and you will become a wanted criminal as his comrade…)

2. Kill (Kill Fade first and then live a happy life, all problems get solved if a disaster magnet like Fade dies…)

3. Others (Tell me in the comments.)