Chapter 116
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Lucy released Ferda’s hand and plucked a rose leaf from the garden.
When she clenched the leaf in her small hand, it instantly became a dried tobacco leaf and slipped into her pipe.
She lit it with a spark from her finger, then drew in the smoke deeply again.
Ferda, who had been waiting for her to finish, finally asked his question.
“What do you mean by saying it will become a blessing?”
Ferda could not understand what she meant.
Lucy answered with a mature smile.
“As you know, cultivating the Blue Circle generally begins with meditation.”
Most Blue Circle cultivation methods begin with meditation.
Emptying the mind or focusing on a single thought to maintain a steady rhythm while shaping the mana circuit.
The way to mess with people like that is, naturally, to shatter their composure.
“What is the source of strength for the Red Circle?”
“The emotion from which the circle originated.”
“Exactly. If it began with joy, growth means continuing into greater joy; if it began with hatred, it means continuing into greater hatred.”
Lucy nodded.
“Conversely, how would you interfere with them?”
“Contradictions and dilemmas.”
A hater loses his life as a mage precisely when he loses the reason he had to hate.
Give him contradictions and dilemmas, and his emotions cool.
Ferda knew that well, having always kept it in mind as he lived.
“There are two things in your heart right now: love and regret.”
“That’s right.”
“If you wish to grow stronger purely according to Red Circle theory, you must nurture your love and suppress your regret. That way, you will become stronger solely through your love, won’t you?”
Ferda already knew that much.
He gave a light nod and asked her,
“So you’re saying you know how to get rid of that regret?”
Lucy shook her head.
“That would be a foolish choice, child. Are you trying to burn down the house because you fear bedbugs? Even removing a single emotion is enough to destroy the balance.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means that all emotions are connected through cause and effect.”
Lucy drew deeply on her pipe.
“There is positivity because negativity exists. You possess love because you possess that regret.”
Ferda frowned slightly.
“If I don’t erase the regret, won’t it keep testing me?”
Ferda said so, but it still felt as though he had gained one more unnecessary organ.
Lucy must have expected him to think that way.
She, too, had mastered the Red Circle.
“Then let me ask you. Why do you possess that regret?”
“That is……”
When Ferda hesitated, Lucy added,
“You need not answer me. Think it over carefully and find the answer yourself.”
Because he had killed Waldrova.
The purest woman of them all.
If he erased this regret…… what would become of his feelings for her?
When he thought about it that way, he felt he understood.
He understood why the regret had to remain.
“Child, your regret is like your heart. If there is too much or too little, something will go wrong, and if it disappears, you will die. If you learn to control it, however, it can become an excellent driving force. Do you understand?”
Ferda nodded.
“Then what should I do?”
Lucy drew a straight line with her index finger and said,
“Draw a line.”
“Draw a line?”
“If you build a fence between your emotions so they cannot mix, you will be able to understand what each of them is made of.”
As a mage who wielded the Red Circle, Ferda could roughly understand what she meant.
Emotions were vague, like paint.
Unless one concentrated, they flowed together, becoming muddied and losing their essence.
The moment the essence disappeared, the growth of the Red Circle died.
In that regard, Ferda was an elite.
He had reached the ninth circle purely by converting everything into anger.
‘But this time, I have to divide two.’
This was his first mana circle powered by love, and the first time regret had interfered with it.
Naturally, this was also his first time building fences around the two emotions.
A mana circuit powered by both his love for Waldrova and his regret.
How was he supposed to build a fence between the two?
“In that sense, child, you have already taken one step.”
“What step?”
“Shape of Shadow.”
It was a mana cultivation method recorded in Barbatos’s shadow arts.
“The shadow becomes me, and I become the shadow. Do you remember that line?”
Ferda nodded.
“The answer lies there.”
Lucy left it at that.
Ferda felt as though she had stopped halfway through her explanation, but Lucy paid no attention.
“And what should I give you as another reward……”
Lucy tilted her pipe.
“Hmm……”
She stared intently at her pipe, then grinned.
Ferda wondered if she was planning to give him some useless object.
Then the thorny vines circling Lucy gathered around the hand holding her pipe.
A hundred snakes tangled together in a disorderly mass, rose up, and spat something out.
It was a straight, branch-like stick.
Perhaps because he was consciously looking for it, it resembled the pipe Lucy was holding.
“What do you think this is?”
“……A pipe?”
“Why would I give you something like that? You’re too young to know the true taste of tobacco.”
She blew smoke at him with an irritating expression, as though telling him not to smoke such things.
Of course, Ferda had tried smoking before.
But he had stopped because of the hazy sensation it caused.
So just as he was about to ask what it was,
Crackle!
Red sparks flew around the stick.
It was Heaven-Reversing Lightning.
She laughed as though she were enjoying the expression on Ferda’s face.
“It’s called Jibeol.”
“Jibeol?”
“I named it Jibeol. It’s a magic wand I made myself.”
“Is that so?”
“You know the branch I struck with lightning? The thing that would make any mage come running with fire in his eyes. It will absorb that power on its own. Then the instability will settle, and you will be able to use its power in full.”
Ferda could not understand why she was explaining this to him.
From the context alone, it sounded as though she intended to give it to him, but he did not jump to that conclusion.
It could also be a test of his desires.
“Take it.”
He had suspected as much, but it was true after all.
Even after she explicitly told him to take it, Ferda could not bring himself to grasp the wand.
“My arm is falling off, child. I may look like this, but I’m a delicate girl, you know?”
“……”
“I offer you a gift, and you look like a pig that has just been handed a mountain of rice. Why? Do you think I’m going to butcher you?”
“It does seem that way.”
Lucy let out a sharp laugh.
“What insolence. Why can’t you imagine that I might give it to you for free?”
“Because people like that all died long ago.”
“True. That is also true.”
She cackled as she spoke.
“As I said, I help women with tragic fates. Waldrova has a tragic fate as well. That is why I wanted to help her. But it was not easy.”
“Why not?”
“Isn’t there a particularly savage dog around her?”
He knew who she meant without needing to ask.
Hadn’t that savage dog stopped her from entering this place?
‘Who knows what she’ll do when I return.’
He had already resigned himself to getting scrubbed down again.
Just thinking about the green towel in Ruri’s hand made him tense reflexively.
“Since that puppy says she cannot trust a witch’s word, how could I help her?”
It was only natural that she would not listen.
Ruri was Waldrova’s attendant, while Lucy was a witch infamous across the continent.
There was no way she would stand by and watch a witch toy with her.
“Since I had no means of contacting her, I thought I could help her through you. Even though you are a man, there is no reason to feel uneasy about saving a woman with a tragic fate.”
Listening to her, Ferda did not feel that she was lying.
He had felt it when he fought her in the past as well: despite being the leader of the witches, she did not seem filled with malice.
She seemed like Ferda was now, becoming infinitely calm as she descended into emptiness.
Was she bewitched, or was she certain of herself?
If she was bewitched, then she did not trust herself; if she was certain, then she trusted herself.
There was no room for hesitation.
Only then did Ferda accept the wand.
When he gripped the blunt end of the wand she had handed him, a change occurred.
In an instant, the branch transformed into a smooth black wand.
It took a form that suited Ferda’s appearance and clothing without the slightest incongruity.
The ability to transform itself was a trick other staffs could perform as well.
There was only one thing that surprised Ferda.
‘I can’t sense any magic power.’
Normally, staffs and wands assisted with spell formulas, so they always possessed a reservoir for storing magic power.
The better the staff, the larger its reservoir tended to be, but even a poor-quality staff could not lack one entirely.
Ferda cautiously sent mana into it.
Crackle!
Red lightning began to writhe.
‘It isn’t releasing converted mana. It converts it instantly.’
He could cast magic immediately whenever he wished, and since it held no magic power, it could be treated as nothing more than an ordinary wand.
It was a magical tool that amounted to a dream for every mage.
“I shall use it carefully.”
“Hmm? Why are you suddenly speaking so formally?”
“After helping me this much, how could I not show you proper respect?”
“Hmm, is that so? What a good child.”
Lucy stared at him with alluring eyes.
It looked as though honey might drip from them.
“Is there anything else you need?”
“I would like a little more of a clue regarding how Shape of Shadow can help……”
“Hahaha, was that why you were flattering me?”
It would have been a lie to say it was not.
Now that Ferda was in a good mood, he had to get as much information out of her as he could.
“Very well. I shall tell you. In Eastern terminology, it is called Spirit-Self Unity. Isn’t making it obey you like a limb the essence of shadow arts?”
“Yes.”
“If you truly believe that the shadow can become you, then is there anything you cannot do?”
What did she mean?
Ferda wanted Lucy to explain further, but before he could even ask the question, her small finger touched his lips.
“This is the last favor I can grant you, as well as a clue and the principle behind it.”
Lucy’s small finger slowly rose and touched Ferda’s forehead.
At that moment, Ferda’s mind was sucked somewhere else.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in the place where he had received the invitation.
* * *
After Ferda disappeared, only the witches remained in the witch’s garden.
Lucy covered her face with a black cloth and returned to the Rose Pavilion.
The witches laughed and chattered as they usually did.
“What did you think of Ferda, that man?”
“He’s an insolent bastard. He kept speaking informally to Big Sister.”
“I wanted to force this needle under his fingernails, but……”
“There’s nothing better than seeing such a blunt man scream.”
“I like moaning. I’ll make him moan for three hours.”
The witches cackled as they listed their twisted fetishes.
Then they turned their attention to Lucy and lightly prodded her.
“Big Sister seems unusually demure today. Did you decide to go with that concept?”
Lucy Filiaz.
Big Sister seemed uninterested in the topic of conversation, sitting limply in her seat and smoking endlessly.
The other witches watching her joined in.
“Indeed, you seem more troubled than usual, Big Sister.”
“It’s a man you haven’t seen in a long time. You must have been excited.”
“Youth, youth.”
Lucy tapped the ash from her pipe into the ashtray.
Despite all their mockery, she did not show the slightest anger before opening her mouth.
“Ferda Waldrova.”
The name emerged together with the tobacco smoke.
When a man’s name came from Lucy’s lips, it meant he had become a target.
“What would you like to do to him?”
“I’m curious what kind of scheme you’ll plot.”
They fidgeted as though they were dying of suspense.
Lucy answered them.
“Look into him a little more.”
“That’s it? Nothing else?”
“There is.”
Lucy added, as though she had just remembered something,
“Do not lay a hand on that child.”
The witches’ giggles abruptly stopped.
“That’s an uncharacteristic order. Because he’s a man?”
“Oh my, has our Big Sister really become interested in men?”
“You pathetic things, pathetic things. It is not because of some simple amusement like the sort you enjoy.”
Lucy raised her head and spoke while looking at the seated witches.
“Because I do not want to see you die by that child’s hand.”
“……What?”
“Does that make any sense? A mere nineteen-year-old brat killing us?”
If anyone else had said it, they would have assumed it was a joke, but Lucy’s words carried weight.
When speaking to the witches, she did not casually say things she did not mean.
“So, um…… you’re talking about some reincarnation story, right?”
“Do you think this is some trivial story? I am telling you that child has erased your existence from this land before.”
“Did he actually invade this place?”
“It went beyond an invasion.”
She puffed out a cloud of smoke.
“He even took my life.”
Every witch held her breath.
It was a silent question, and at the same time, sheer astonishment.
Limbo was a land that no being could properly track.
That child had entered such a land and killed Lucy Filiaz, the mother of all witches.
It was practically impossible.
The witches who had teased her and treated it as a joke fell silent along with Lucy.
It was the first true silence to settle over the Rose Pavilion.
They were probably turning the matter over in their heads in their own way.
‘If I had died there, it must have had a purpose.’
Lucy regarded this as another message sent to herself.
She did not know its meaning, but it was a signal telling her that Ferda was special.
‘Was all of that…… for that woman after all?’
Lucy casually released mana into her hand.
It took on a fixed shape.
It was a rune.
The rune that had dwelled in Echidna’s heart and nearly killed her while she was helpless.
That rune was a vast collection of information forged purely from emotion.
‘Is this rune that child’s regret?’
Just as Echidna had, Lucy tried to sample its flavor.
But she withdrew her hand without even tasting it.
Even she, Big Sister, could not withstand this.
Although she could be called an authority on the Red Circle, she wondered how a human could possess emotions of such magnitude.
The answer was obvious.
‘He must have turned back time.’
She could not help wondering how Ferda had managed to do that.
To reach that realm, one had to enter the domain of the ninth circle, the demigods, and use a “Wish.”
‘Did he reach even the place I gave up on because I could not?’
It would have been a lie to say she felt no jealousy.
But she knew it was futile and killed the emotion.
‘He sang of regret with a wish…….’
Lucy smiled.
“I won’t be bored for a while now that I have someone worth watching.”
An emotion worn thin over more than a thousand years stirred within her chest.
It was undoubtedly excitement.
It was undoubtedly excitement.