Chapter 1
There was one and only one person who became an Archmage through sheer hatred alone.
His name was Ferda Rosnova.
Born the third son of the knightly Rosnova family, he was exceptionally frail.
Because he was the child of a concubine and had blue eyes instead of the brown eyes passed down through the family, even the Rosnova servants often looked down on Ferda.
In the end, when Ferda turned eighteen, his father, Erembald Rosnova, brought him some news.
“Your engagement to the Grand Duke of Valdrowa has been arranged.”
It might sound like a simple engagement ceremony, but to nobles, “an engagement to the Grand Duke of Valdrowa” was a euphemism.
Simply put, it was a death sentence.
If he accepted the engagement, he would die; if he refused, he would defy the family’s wishes and be expelled.
“I will leave as Father wishes.”
“Good.”
Since Ferda valued his life more, he naturally chose to live and had to abandon the Rosnova name as he left.
A great sense of betrayal settled in young Ferda’s heart.
He could not forgive the brothers who had looked down on him, nor the servants.
What angered him most was his father.
‘Even though you knew everything I was doing to improve….’
To become a member of the family, he had forced his frail body to move.
Every day, he coughed blood and trained until calluses formed on his hands.
His father had looked at him as though all those efforts were admirable.
But after years of making no progress, even that expression gradually changed.
As though what he had raised all this time had been a cuckoo’s chick.
When he was finally thrown out of the family, his father’s expression was like that of someone looking down at filth.
Even days later, he could still vividly feel that gaze.
‘I won’t forgive you.’
His sorrow gradually transformed into anger, becoming flames of revenge that burned fiercely.
‘I’ll make you regret abandoning me.’
Ferda clenched his fists tightly.
Then Ferda felt something stirring and awakening inside his body.
It was the moment mana began rotating in a circle at his lower abdomen—the moment his first circle opened.
On the day Ferda Rosnova was expelled from his family, he became a mage.
* * *
Becoming a mage was a blessing.
On the continent of Serdes, one’s status changed simply by being able to use magic.
Yet awakening at eighteen, as Ferda did, was unfortunate.
Because it was far too late.
All mages used their inner power as their driving force.
To completely master that concept, one had to train from a young age.
If one did not learn it while young, one would have to suffer several times more in old age to grasp the concept.
That should have been the case, but Ferda’s late awakening was not a problem.
The driving force behind his mana was hatred and a thirst for revenge.
-To think he’s making a fuss about becoming a mage at that age.
-He said he’d do anything we told him, so we can think of him as a useful slave until graduation.
What spurred that force onward were the senior mages who ignored him and the young juniors.
Since his awakening had come late, that driving force was scattered all around him in abundance.
‘Bark as much as you like. I’ll make you lick every inch of my toes!’
His desire to become stronger and his obsession with revenge never died; they grew stronger with each passing day.
Before long, he had surpassed the promising senior mages and even easily overtaken the master who had taught him.
For a while, his toes were polished smooth, with no chance for dust to settle on them.
Ferda thought his power was a blessing.
‘When I hate someone, I become stronger.’
Things to hate were everywhere around him.
As rapidly as he grew stronger, his personality also became noticeably more ferocious.
When Ferda finally rose to the position of a sixth-circle mage—one of fewer than a hundred on the continent—commonly known as an Archmage, he crossed the line at last.
He returned to the Rosnova family, which had cruelly cast him out, and killed everyone there.
He put swords in the hands of the servants who had insulted him and made them kill one another.
He set the eldest and second sons against each other, making them hate one another until they ultimately destroyed each other.
And he made his father, toward whom he held the deepest grudge, watch all of it.
Seeing everything he had built and ought to protect collapse miserably, Erembald finally went mad and withered as though he had aged several decades.
He became a wreck of a man, like a ghost wandering the world.
Thus, everything connected to the Rosnova family disappeared except Ferda.
The revenge against the family he had so desperately yearned for had been achieved in a twisted form.
What he felt in his chest was catharsis.
‘…There are still enemies left.’
And thirst.
Ferda was no longer sane.
He had become a monster that listened only to a single emotion.
‘I must erase them all. To do that, I need even greater power.’
The anger he had once directed at his family did not cool; he turned it elsewhere, where it burned even more deeply.
People who could no longer endure his tyranny, built on absurd sophistry, drew their swords.
He became a public enemy of the continent, and dozens of intricate schemes were devised to kill him.
But every trial only made Ferda stronger.
In the end, Ferda reached the highest realm a human could attain.
He was forty-five years old.
At that relatively young age, he reached the eighth circle, known as a Mana Lord.
He had become the continent’s one and only Archmage, placing everything beneath his feet.
‘Not enough.’
Yet he still needed more power.
Even after placing everything beneath his feet, the flame kindled in his heart would not die down.
That flame whispered to Ferda.
‘They still resent me. It’s certain they’ll try to kill me again someday.’
Ferda knew the chain of hatred and revenge too well to let that happen.
‘So they can’t move… I must crush and erase every last one of them.’
To create his own utopia, Ferda began probing into the realm of the gods.
After five years of research, he discovered the ultimate material needed to reach that realm.
It was the heart of a red dragon.
It seemed like a trick of fate.
‘The Grand Duke of Valdrowa.’
His fiancé.
The pretext Erembald had used to drive him out.
Because the true identity of that being was a red dragon.
* * *
-Fate is truly a cruel thing.
Strangely enough, the speaker was the dragon said to be the strongest on the continent.
Crimson scales and magnificent horns.
Her imposing eyes and wings that seemed capable of covering the world symbolized her status.
But now, things were different.
Her scales had peeled away in places, and her horns were broken and bent, with bright-red blood streaming from within them.
The one who had driven the dragon, capable of destroying nations as casually as swatting flies, into this state was none other than a single mage.
-Who would have thought that the one who was supposed to become my fiancé would come to kill me.
Ferda smiled.
That smile was closer to a bluff born of his belief that he held the upper hand.
Having driven the dragon to the brink of death, Ferda’s own body was far from unharmed.
“You’d best die quietly by my hand, Valdrowa.”
-I know that I am called a tyrant. Yet for these past decades, and even before you were born, I have never once shown myself. Nor have I harmed a single human. And yet… I cannot understand why you show such hostility toward me.
“You did nothing?”
Valdrowa’s calm tone sounded like the voice of someone with no troubles in the world.
Ferda’s irritation surged.
“You are the root of my misfortune.”
Ever since he became the victim of the engagement ceremony, everything had twisted out of shape.
Ferda poured out his emotions fervently.
“Because of you…! Because of your pointless desire to find a fiancé, you gave them the justification to cast me out of my family!”
-Is that… because of me?
“Yes! Because you indulged in a pointless desire! Do you understand that your greed, trying to take a human as your consort despite being a vicious dragon, brought about this misfortune?!”
Ferda breathed harshly, then gave a sardonic smile.
“But at the same time, I am grateful. Thanks to it, I was able to rise to where I am.”
-I see….
Valdrowa’s face twitched strangely.
Was she angry?
Perhaps she was preparing a final desperate struggle.
It did not matter.
By pouring out that twisted emotion just now, he had been able to turn his red circle.
Ferda finished preparing to respond.
-Yes, so that is how it is. I understand now.
Valdrowa’s massive body moved.
She revealed her claws.
Sharp, sturdy blades capable of tearing knights apart with a single swipe.
Ferda reflexively prepared a magic circle.
He was late, but with this, he could at least take her down with him.
She raised her claw, but it was not aimed at Ferda.
Squelch!
The place the claw dug into was her own chest.
Ferda could not understand what she was doing.
What did that self-harm mean?
The claw tore through her tough hide, exposing the organs within in gruesome detail.
-You said you needed my heart for your magic, did you not?
Crack—!
It was the sound of blood vessels snapping.
At that moment, Ferda understood.
She was trying to destroy her own heart.
“No!”
Ferda unleashed magic at her face.
“No, you filthy lizard bitch! Can’t you stop right now?!”
Ferda could not let her destroy her heart.
This was his one and only chance to reach the ninth circle.
He could never let this chance slip away!
The scales protecting her head scattered into fragments.
But Valdrowa’s hand did not stop.
The sound of blood vessels and muscle being torn did not cease.
-You said you needed my heart, did you not?
Valdrowa’s claw was pulled from within her organs.
What emerged along with the claw was a lump of flesh larger than Ferda’s head.
“……A heart?”
It retained its shape perfectly intact.
What she had done was extraction, not destruction.
-Take it.
Valdrowa said those words with half her head gone.
Had Ferda been his usual self, he would have gratefully picked it up.
But even the twisted Ferda could not understand her actions, and he stared blankly down at the heart.
“……Why did you choose this?”
Ferda asked her.
“If you had moved… you could have killed me easily, couldn’t you? It’s not as though you didn’t know that, is it?”
-If I made one last desperate struggle… you would surely die as well. I know that.
“Then why didn’t you?”
-Because you became unhappy because of me.
Even then, Ferda remained frozen.
Valdrowa no longer had the strength to hold up her neck.
-I… have hated myself for a long time.
Her calm tone carried a thick loathing.
-I hated the vicious blood flowing through these veins. I hated myself for growing angry without reason, for carrying the impulse to destroy. Most of all, I hated that it made people afraid.
The color faded from her golden eyes.
Something swelled within her eyes, then rolled down her cheek.
Tears.
Dragon tears were different from human tears.
Dragons were not emotional enough to shed tears over something like sadness.
Yet those tears seemed molded from sorrow.
-If I die, everything will be resolved, yet I foolishly wished to live and be happy… My foolish dreams have caused trouble for too many people.
“……”
-Since you became unhappy because of me, mortal, you who suffered misfortune because of my selfishness, I hope you will be happy because of me. That is the last thing… I can do for you.
With her final breath came one wistful last word.
-Be happy, my fiancé….
The hidden tyrant of the continent, Valdrowa, met her death thus.
Ferda stared blankly down at Valdrowa, who had quietly closed her eyes.
For the first time in his life since becoming a mage through anger, he felt a strange emotion.
‘Why does this feel so unsettling?’
Ferda unconsciously placed a hand over his chest.
Ferda had come here over countless corpses.
He had killed everyone who obstructed him, taken everything he needed, and grown stronger.
He knew himself to be a broken man, devoid of conscience and empathy.
Yet for some reason, her death held him by the ankle.
As if it were a curse she had placed on him.
‘Don’t think about it, Ferda.’
Move forward.
Take what you wanted.
You have already crossed the river from which there is no return.
He picked up what she had taken out.
A dragon’s heart.
The source that could take him to the ninth circle, the dream of every mage.
An object that could elevate him from an Archmage to a demigod beyond ordinary existence.
Absorb this.
Then, as always, take revenge on everything that made him unhappy.
Continue the revenge whose reason he had even forgotten.
Ferda absorbed the essence within the heart.
As the essence of a dragon who had lived since ancient times flowed through his veins, his blood began to boil.
As tremendous power flowed into him, Ferda sensed something strange.
‘This is….’
A sensation that let him feel Valdrowa’s entire life.
‘Her emotions?’
Before he could resist, those emotions became part of Ferda.
“Ah….”
Ferda let out a cry of astonishment.
His mind began clearing with astonishing speed.
The hatred and thirst for revenge that had driven his power were disappearing.
Had her blood cleared Ferda’s mind?
‘No.’
The emotion he felt in the heart was closer to despair.
It was an emotion like standing at the edge of an abyss far deeper than Ferda’s hatred or anger.
A red dragon who had lived for thousands of years, yet had never once been loved.
The fury of uncontrollable power, the Evil Red Dragon, the Dragon Slayer….
As titles based on infamy overlaid her image, Valdrowa became a complete tyrant.
These were the curses she had accumulated over the years.
Yet Valdrowa loved those insignificant things.
That was why she chose to hide herself.
Because she loved everyone, she stoically endured loneliness and sorrow.
And Ferda had severed that final thread.
That was why Ferda’s mind had cleared.
Ferda realized how utterly trivial the anger and hatred he felt were.
“Ah….”
A small exclamation spilled from Ferda’s lips.
Ferda had not been in his right mind even once in twenty years.
Now, for the first time, he could be his whole self.
“What… have I done?”
Blinded by emotion, he had ultimately been swallowed by that power and destroyed everything.
Someone, someone’s family, someone’s village…
Was that truly what I wanted?
“Ah….”
Ferda sank to the ground where he stood.
Now that his mind had gone completely blank, a circle appeared before him.
As the circles were completed one by one, his life flashed before him like a revolving lantern.
When he opened the first circle, it was the sorrow he had felt when he was expelled from his family.
The second circle was the anger he had felt when he was mocked as talentless.
Inferiority, resentment, jealousy, betrayal….
All of Ferda’s circles had been built from negative emotions.
He had never hesitated to betray others if it meant survival, and had repeated bat-like acts to become stronger.
Thus, Ferda became an Archmage of the eighth circle.
And the emotion he felt upon reaching the ninth circle was…
‘Emptiness….’
It felt as though everything had lost its meaning.
At the same time, he was angry.
Because Valdrowa, that woman, had turned everything he had done until then into a mistake.
“You stupid, brainless bitch….”
Ferda tried blaming Valdrowa.
But it no longer felt like fuel.
He himself knew well that he did not mean the words.
In truth, the stupid one was himself for blaming her.
From the beginning, she had merely been an excuse.
Erembald had decided to cast Ferda out, so he would have made an excuse even if it had not been her.
He knew that, yet still took his anger out on her.
Valdrowa accepted his foolish sophistry.
And wished for one person to be happy.
The person trying to kill her.
Sincerely.
Ferda laughed hollowly.
Unlike Ferda’s heart, the ninth-circle magic circle shone brightly.
A mage who reached the ninth circle could cast exactly one spell.
‘Wish.’
It was absolute power that granted everything one hoped for exactly as desired, defying the providence of all things.
It was a simple spell requiring only a single word.
He held the thing he had wanted so badly, yet no words came, as though his throat were tightly blocked.
He could not think of a wish.
‘What was it that I wanted so badly?’
Erase everything that rejected him.
That had been the wish of Ferda, who had been a madman.
The Ferda of now had no such dream.
He suddenly remembered the dream he had drawn as a child.
In the clumsy drawing he had made while awkwardly gripping colored pencils was…
‘To simply build a humble family and live peacefully.’
It was also the wish Valdrowa held.
But he could not make such a wish now.
After killing so many people, he could not just go on to live comfortably.
Above all,
Ferda had killed the dragon who should have been his fiancé, and Valdrowa had met her death at the hands of the human who should have been her fiancé.
This was no different from murdering his fiancé with his own hands.
How could someone like that entertain the happy fantasy of starting a family?
-Be happy, my fiancé….
His resurrected conscience repeated those words, tormenting Ferda.
It blamed the self who had run for decades seeking only power,
It loathed the pettiness of the self who had remembered everyone’s names solely to repay them,
And his heart understood that emotion he could never ultimately express in words.
“This is meaningless….”
The magic circle shone brightly.
When the light completely faded, the ninth-circle Archmage had vanished without a trace.
* * *
“……rda?”
“……”
“Ferda.”
No, his consciousness had returned.
As the bright light receded, Ferda opened his eyes at the voice calling his name.
Before him sat a middle-aged man, not the bleeding dragon.
“Ferda? Are you listening?”
“……Yes?”
“What do you mean, yes? Your father was speaking, and you’ve just been sitting there blankly all this time?”
The middle-aged man before him furrowed his brow.
Ferda knew who this man was.
‘Erembald Rosnova.’
The man he had once fondly called Father.
He looked hale and hearty, unlike the last time Ferda had seen him.
Had he died and come to the afterlife?
Yet everything felt strangely familiar for that to be the case.
‘This is…… could it be?’
Ferda quickly understood.
The one time he had been alone with a father who had never properly spoken to him in life.
It had happened exactly once.
“Your engagement to the Grand Duke of Valdrowa has been decided. Since it was decided by the country, I hope you’ll obey without complaint.”
An engagement to the Grand Duke of Valdrowa.
‘I didn’t die. Have I returned to this time?’
The time he had considered the beginning of his misfortune.
To the time that had become the starting point of his uncontrollable thirst for revenge.
‘Why?’
He could not yet understand it with his mind.
But his heart already knew.
What he had wished for within that emptiness.
“Huh.”
An awkward sigh escaped Ferda’s lips.
“You brat, are you sighing while I’m talking?”
“I’m sorry. It’s nothing.”
“Repeat what I just said.”
“You said I was engaged to the Grand Duke of Valdrowa.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
“I do.”
Get out of this house.
That was how Ferda understood it, and he answered his father.
“I understand.”
“Yes, you must be going through quite a lot as well… Hmm?”
Erembald opened his eyes wide and looked at him again.
“W-What did you just say?”
Ferda looked down at the documents laid before him and answered once more.
The meaning of this regression was to face what he had been unable to do in life.
“I will. I will accept that engagement.”
To formally become engaged to the tyrant Valdrowa.