It's Okay to Cry

Silverwind is a dragon with silver hair and silver eyes.

Among the dragons, he had the mildest temperament, and his exceptional sociability had once earned him the greatest reputation among the guardian dragons, to the point that he had been friendly with humans of all kinds.

If everything in the world has an opposite to maintain balance, then that opposite to Silverwind would be his Spawn.

Just as Silverwind had a mild temperament, his Spawn valued tradition and discipline.

Every individual was important in the fight against the Frost Giants swarming from beyond the northern wall.

That was why the rough northern barbarians considered becoming a Spawn of the Silver Dragon the most honorable thing they could do.

From that perspective, Luri was an unusual case, and the fact that she had ignored tradition and undergone the ascension ceremony was not viewed favorably.

No, they could overlook the fact that she had used some flexibility to become a Dragon Spawn through the ascension ceremony.

However, the problem came to light because Luri insisted that she truly intended to become a warrior.

From then on, all that remained for Luri was merciless territorial bullying.

“Lord Goz was especially severe.”

Goz Silverwind had been second-in-command even then, and a loyal subordinate who supported Silverwind.

He was stricter about tradition and discipline than anyone else, to the point that he seemed to have the exact opposite temperament from Silverwind.

Since Luri was not a carefully selected warrior, she had to be taught from the basics, and the foundation of those basics was perseverance.

Goz singled Luri out under the pretext of teaching her perseverance.

What he did was far removed from teaching.

It was one-sided beatings and cruel abuse.

Goz put Luri through hell time and again, intending to kill her.

It had unquestionably been an atrocity, since even those who had disliked Luri began to pity her.

She endured absurd treatment in the body of a young girl that would have made even other warriors submit.

Fear of Goz naturally took root in Luri's heart.

The fact that she had to see his face whenever she opened her eyes brought her to tears, and sometimes she even prayed that tomorrow would not come.

But somehow, she never gave up.

She knew the pain that came from giving up.

The sense of responsibility she had cultivated after falling into the gutter became the warrior's tenacious perseverance.

For the father who took me in, Silverwind, I will become a warrior.

What does not kill me will make me stronger.

That resolve became reality.

Luri, who had been put through hell under Goz, became a warrior.

Having endured decades in an environment harsher than anyone else's, she grew faster than the other Dragon Spawn, until no one could look down on her.

When she had been a Spawn for fifty years, she was mentioned as a new member of the royal guard.

The position closest to the Silverwind she admired.

However, Luri did not want to rise to that position.

“Do you know why?”

“I don't.”

“To join the royal guard, you have to bring down another member of the royal guard. But once you've become one, choosing to give up is more shameful than dying in bed.”

In other words, she could only rise to that position by fighting a battle to the death.

Even if she surrendered, she had to wash away her shame with death.

That was the tradition of Silverwind's Spawn.

“It would be an honorable challenge for everyone else, but not for me.”

It was not the honor of a warrior, but the killing of family.

As someone who still cherished her family, Luri found the idea of killing them difficult to accept.

Luri never said that she wanted to give up.

She knew that such a weak reason would never be accepted.

Instead, she crossed the greatest barrier protecting the North from the frost.

She wielded the ax skills she had learned after repeatedly coming close to death against giants several times her size.

She was unquestionably an excellent warrior.

Her fear of Goz stripped away her fear of everything else, and Luri went on to perform so spectacularly that she became known as the Nightmare of the Frost Giants.

Thanks to her achievements, Luri became synonymous with the Special Mobile Brigade Silverwing, and her valor and aggressive nature brought glory to Silverwind's name.

That was Luri's life before and after she received the surname Silverwind.

After finishing that long explanation, she got to the point of what had happened.

“Today…… I fell prey to a demon's scheme.”

“What sort of scheme was it?”

“I heard the voice of…… my younger brother, whom I had forgotten long ago.”

Her voice was sinking into the distant past.

“That indistinct younger brother whose name and face I can no longer remember…… suddenly burst vividly through my memories.”

“Was he truly your younger brother?”

“If you ask whether it was real, no. It had green blood.”

“Then it must have been a monster.”

“Yes. I suppose it was…….”

Could it have been something like magic?

If it had been, Luri would have said that she had been attacked by magic.

In Luri's eyes, it had truly looked exactly like her younger brother.

‘An attack that provokes the opponent's trauma?’

Whatever it was, it had scattered its opponent's mind.

Ferda wondered what would have happened if he had suffered that attack.

“But didn't you escape?”

“I didn't escape…… I was merely saved.”

Luri bit down hard on her lower lip before managing to utter that name.

“When I was helpless against him, Lord Goz came and saved me.”

Goz Silverwind.

She had received help from the person she feared so much.

Ferda instinctively realized that Goz was the reason Luri was like this.

“If he hadn't come…… I would certainly have died.”

Luri trembled.

“Was it death that frightened you?”

“No. Death…… means very little to me.”

Having entered the jaws of death so many times, Luri had grown numb to the idea of dying.

“Then were you afraid that Goz would harm you?”

“I was afraid of Lord Goz, but…… that was merely a familiar sensation.”

“Then what made you like this?”

What hurt even more was this:

“Lord Goz…… told me that I was useless.”

The person she feared so much her own family, had said such cruel words to her.

“Those words…… are still echoing in my ears.”

The person she feared had spoken such cruel words, and they had wounded Luri.

Normally, Ferda might not have understood it, but those words pierced his heart.

What she had gone through was something Ferda had experienced recently as well.

‘Erembald Rosnova.’

Erembald had forced Ferda into the deadly position of the Grand Duke's fiancé, then abandoned him.

Ferda knew very well that he had been abandoned.

But the man who had abandoned him returned and declared that he was cutting ties with him once again.

It was something he had already known and never expected otherwise.

Yet the pain was different from what he had anticipated.

Being abandoned once again hurt even more than the first time.

Ferda had been unable to bear it; how could Luri be any different?

It would hurt her even more.

No matter how frightening she thought he was, she must have considered Goz family.

Deep down, she must have thought of him that way.

To Ferda, she no longer looked like a strong attendant, but merely a girl.

Though she had lived longer than him and was stronger, what he saw before him now was a sad child who had not been loved.

‘She has a strong sense of responsibility.’

After becoming Valdrova's attendant, her relationship with Silverwind had fallen apart.

She had been abandoned then, and now Goz had abandoned her once more.

He wondered if there was anything he could do for her.

Try.

Try not to think about it.

Move forward.

He knew such words would be utterly useless.

If the world could solve everything through effort and willpower alone, Ferda would certainly have become a knight.

So he chose his words carefully.

If.

If I were to meet myself at Luri's age, what would I say?

Thinking that way, he found the answer to his question.

Ferda spoke to Luri.

“Luri.”

“……Yes.”

“You may cry.”

“……What?”

Luri looked at Ferda as though wondering what bizarre thing he was saying.

“You don't have to hold back. You may pour your feelings out to me.”

“I'm not holding back. I…….”

“You don't have to lie.”

Ferda spoke gently, as though he were speaking to his past self.

“I know how much courage it took for you to say those words.”

“……”

“There is nothing more miserable than being unable to cry when you want to. One cry will not make everything collapse, so cry now.”

Bursting into tears meant exposing and pouring out the weakness one had kept inside.

Once you became an adult, there were times when you could not cry even when you wanted to.

They said that was something you realized only after becoming an adult, but Ferda had learned it after losing his mother.

When he realized that everything in the world was his enemy, he had had no time to cry.

Ferda knew.

People called it growing stronger, but it was undoubtedly a form of dying.

As was the law of all things, once something died, it could never come back to life.

“Are you afraid that I'll go and tell someone?”

“……”

“If you want, I'll go outside.”

Ferda tried to rise from his seat.

The moment he lifted himself from the seat, something stopped Ferda's movement.

Luri's hand seized Ferda's collar.

Luri's eyes turned toward Ferda.

Something seemed about to emerge from her trembling lips.

Instead, tears brimmed in those cold, steadfast eyes.

Luri buried herself in Ferda's shoulder.

From then on, Ferda saw nothing.

He heard nothing.

He did not even feel the shoulder against which she had buried herself growing damp.

Her sobs gradually grew louder, and Luri finally poured out all her grief.

After that, Ferda found himself at a loss.

He did not know what to do next.

He had urged her to pour everything out, yet he did not know how to comfort a girl who was crying so sadly.

Ferda's hands continued to wander.

The hand that had formed the habit because of Mori kept drifting toward Luri's head.

Isabella had said that doing that to an elder was impolite, and Luri had hated it too.

‘Would it be all right if I did it not as praise, but merely as comfort?’

Ferda carefully placed his hand on her head.

Luri lifted her face from his shoulder.

He had definitely stepped on a land mine.

He wondered whether she was about to pour out more words, but that was not it.

She moved her head from Ferda's shoulder to his chest, then buried her face there.

And cried again.

What could this behavior mean?

One thing was certain: once he held her close, stroking her head became a little easier.

Luri cried, while Ferda ran his hand over her head and comforted her.

Her sorrowful sobs, which seemed as though they would never stop, gradually subsided.

Even the sound of her sniffling disappeared, and silence descended.

“Luri.”

“……”

“Luri?”

There was no answer even when he called her.

When he leaned his ear toward the crown of her head, he heard her ragged breathing.

After crying her heart out, she had fallen asleep.

“……This is troublesome.”

He had said it was all right to cry, but he had never considered that she might fall asleep.

* * *

The sudden war came to an end.

As soon as the siege was broken and the supply lines restored, wagon trains began moving hurriedly, pouring into every part of the Far East.

They crossed the gates of the still-incomplete village and returned with countless victorious generals.

At the same time, festival supplies arrived from the Halim and Pascal merchant guilds.

The supplies from Halim included a letter handwritten by Ahmad Hashim.

-Congratulations on your victory, brother!

It was short, but that only made its sincerity more apparent.

With the support received from both places, Ferda held another festival.

People whose bodies and minds had been exhausted by the tension laughed, chatted, and sang as they celebrated their victory.

The bards staying in the village began to sing. The tiresome stories about knights disappeared, and they began singing about dragons instead.

“A lone mountain rising high in the land of demons. Red scales and golden eyes! They say an evil dragon that has taken countless lives dwells within!”

“The world surged like a lake of misunderstanding, while the truth lay buried beneath it! Only today has that truth come to light!”

“When those filthy hordes of demons put us to the test, she climbed to the summit of the lonely mountain!”

“Spreading those red scales and magnificent wings, she proclaimed to the monsters at the eastern edge!”

“It is I, Valdrova, who protects this Hestia, who protects this continent of Serdes!”

That hymn was, in fact, the most popular one.

Hadn't they been the ones who had seen Valdrova closer than anyone when they set out to exterminate the monsters?

Popularity led to money, and for bards who needed money, it became a trend.

Other bards followed suit and composed hymns of their own, so dozens had poured out in only a few days.

Ferda ordered Isabella to provide the bards with traveling expenses.

Bards were beings who wandered the continent, and to small villages, they were the news sources of the Serdes continent.

If they sang songs about Valdrova elsewhere, it would help erase her infamy.

The festival, long suppressed, continued with increasing fervor, showing no sign of ending even as the night deepened.

But Ferda did not enjoy himself there.

He knew.

The war was not over yet.

“From now on, you need to keep your wits about you.”

Olivia spoke like someone who had witnessed an even greater evil.

Ferda and Olivia were holding a meeting to settle accounts now that the war was over.

This was only one hurdle they had overcome, she said, and it was now time for new hurdles to arise.

“The Emperor has made a move.”

“You mean Godfrey Arken?”

“Yes. The man who gave me his blood.”

She never called him her father, not even to the end.

“Did the Emperor move personally?”

“Not personally, but he must have provided that incompetent crown prince with the means.”

The original plan had been to deal with all twelve colossal monsters.

However, four of them had been stopped by outside forces.

One was the Lightning Dragon, Storeus.

Two had been dealt with by Silverwind's Spawn.

“They say the remaining one was a human who barged in from the Far Eastern Alliance, but his identity is unclear……”

“A human?”

“Yes. They say that one was strong enough to turn the tide of battle.”

How strong did someone have to be to turn the tide of battle all on their own?

‘An armored knight, then.’

He had vanished just before the Beginning of Spring Festival and joined the army while trying to return.

That would make sense.

“Excluding the unidentified one, that means we were deprived of four. Will that be a problem?”

“Our objective was a complete victory in the Far East. But that complete victory was thwarted by the intervention of the Imperial capital, which took four of them from us. If it isn't complete, it loses its value.”

Ferda closed his mouth and thought.

Who had suffered the greatest blow from losing that value?

The answer came quickly.

Wasn't it right before his eyes?

‘Because she intended to use this as a stepping stone into politics.’

The Imperial political sphere was a place where those who had already profited kept profiting.

If he tried to accomplish anything there for even a slightly questionable reason, they would obviously seize on it and drag him down.

“They'll make their move now. It would be best to prepare sufficient countermeasures.”

Olivia offered that advice.

He wondered if she was making too much of it, but astonishingly, she was not.

The very next morning,

Ferda was able to confirm it with his own eyes.

People came walking across the ground where the madness of the previous night still lingered.

The Imperial knights had arrived.