Found

Several minutes later, there was only Lucien in the alley, wiping his mouth with a royal cloth used as napkin, which he then absorbed with his eyes, he even covered most of the spilled blood with some sand and other things around the place, nobody would investigate further, the slums were a place where blood was spilled daily. Thus all the traces were covered, and Lucien had around a 1000 points extra.

'I don't think I have time for another one of these meals, and surprisingly human blood and meat tasted amazing, probably one of the changes coming with the Paths.'

'I really have to find a way to absorb faster, eating them is slow, and definitely can't be used in a battle.'

'Now, lets set the scenario they find me in.'

Lucien casually walked out of the alley and proceeded towards the slums. Reputation is like a double edged blade, if you had good reputation, it could prevent enemies from acting against you, because it would taint their image in society,. Bad reputation might bring people who love using others as stepping stones to advance further, gaining better reputation by getting rid of evil vermin.

No matter on which side of it, as long as you were the best of heroes or the worst of demons, nobody would mess with you.

'It's the first time people will hear of me, since this matter will spread. It better be a touching story, so people remember me as the benevolent prince, or something along those lines. It would make shady opposing parties or on of my brothers supporters think twice before acting, since it could do a lot of damage to his image.'

He finally walked in a street on which there were old people lying about, barely surviving, it was a tragic sight, the smell was even worse.

'Hmm I can't start helping them all one by one, there is no way to know when would the guard find me.'

'This is troublesome. I don't have any food or money on me how should I do this.'

'Got it.'

Lucien walked to a shop nearby and asked how much do they sell the food for.

The shopkeeper was a bit stunned looking at this young noble, in his fancy clothes asking for the price of stale bread and other low quality goods.

"It's 1 copper coin per piece, sire."

"Ok give me a hundred, I'll pay with this coat."

The shop keeper looked on stunned, the coat was high quality stuff, it hundred copper was 1 gold coin, and the coat looked much more expensive.

Lucien noticed the hesitation.

"It's ok, you can keep the change, don't worry about it too much."

The shopkeeper looked touched, selling this coat would probably feed him and his family for a long while.

'He might even get robbed for this coat, even dying is not out of question.'

'Whatever it doesn't matter the me, when the guards investigate he will still be alive.'

"Yes Lord, I'll bring it right ahead."

When the guards finally looked through the street, they saw something which stunned them completely. It was their young lord, dragging a big bag full bread behind him, giving a piece to every person he passed by. It was incredibly touching, and some of them even teared up a little bit, regaining their faith in the goodness of humanity.

When Lucien was brought back to the palace, he got lectured by Alice, but after hearing what he was doing when they found him, the lecture was a lot more bearable.

He also got asked how did he manage to lose his guards, and all Lucien explained was that while he was excitedly looking around, he forgot about them.

'The guards are probably going to get punished.'

Leaving the castle in the near future was not a option was the last thing she said to him.

'So now I'm really imprisoned.'

The emperor also heard about the matter, and laughed about the naivety of his son for quite a while, benevolence is not a quality of an emperor in this world, one had to rule with an iron hand.

On the other hand, the news spread like a fire, all the citizen in the city heard about it and were quite impressed by the third prince. Some even decided on their own that it would be the best thing to happen to them, if he became the Crown Prince of the Scarlet Empire.

Lucien had already guessed this would happen, and was not really concerned about small matters like those, it was something he did in passing, maybe in the future he might have a use for the reputation.

He had just bought the best manual the system had to offer on the Darkness path, that would have taken a year to get without the little escapade he pulled. Looking through the methods on what made it better than than the one from the imperials, he found out the diagrams were different and there was Strength training included.

To train a stat using a manual it was basically attracting the particles of a path and then using the route described in the diagram, lead them through the body, before they dissipated, and feed them into the body at the end of the route.

For Soul, the route usually ended in the Head, just different parts, Vitality was the Heart, Agility was the Spine and Strength was the lower abdomen. In novels in his previous life that place was described to contain a Dantian.

Different routes, helped strengthen a stat faster, but just trying something without a tested diagram, would usually end in death, as the raw particles could destroy the inner body. The route from the diagrams was used to remove the raw chaotic power in them and keep the gentle and usable energy.

'For now I'll start practicing the Strength and Agility parts, as I plan to improve Soul with existence points. Practicing the diagram routes and familiarizing myself with them shouldn't differ based on which area I'm enhancing, so it won't take me more time to learn the promotion diagrams later, even if I don't focus on the Soul diagrams.'

'It's more about control over the particles while they are inside my body, making them follow the route.'