Chapter 172
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Penelope froze the moment she saw her face.
An embodiment of fire and power.
From afar, when she had seen the dragon’s figure, it had been wild and brimming with ferocity.
That impression had been even stronger when she approached wearing the mask.
But the moment she saw her face, she had no choice but to admit that she had judged her incorrectly.
Her eyes drooped at the corners, armed with purity and innocence.
Her lips held the freshness of a maiden untouched by a man.
Her demeanor was calm and soothing.
Perhaps that was why Penelope’s frozen gaze began to move naturally, and she started noticing the womanly curves of her figure.
To put it metaphorically, she was like the first snow covering the earth.
At the sight of that first snow, Penelope felt a desire surge within her to plant her muddy feet in it.
That was close.
I almost swallowed my spit without thinking.
“W-was it not to your liking?”
“What? Ah! No! Not at all!”
Penelope withdrew her lascivious gaze and began flattering her again.
“You were so incredibly beautiful that I lost myself staring, Your Highness. Ha-ha!”
“Beautiful?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
Penelope’s eyes lit up as she launched into an impassioned speech.
“When I realized you were a dragon, I trembled with fear, but when I beheld your noble countenance, you were so beautiful that my trembling stopped! I finally understood what a moth feels when it leaps into a furnace!”
“There wasn’t any vacant, dazed look or anything like that…?”
“Dazed? How could you say that!”
“It is precisely that pure, fresh maidenly scent you give off that drives men wild!”
“Uh, yes. I see.”
Although her tone and vocabulary were somewhat vulgar, Valdrova interpreted them in the best possible light.
“I see. There’s someone who doesn’t like me making this expression….”
“W-what! What venomous-hearted bitch said that? If anyone dares slander Lady Valdrova, the one and only immortal Red Dragon, this Penelope will gladly wield the hammer of justice for you!”
“It was Luri….”
“Luri, you say! That damned bitch of all people…. If it’s Luri, isn’t she Lady Valdrova’s attendant?”
“Yes, she is.”
…….
Penelope’s gesture of wielding the hammer became utterly meek.
Seeing that, Valdrova confirmed that Penelope knew Luri.
“You know Luri?”
“Ah, yes……. I have a slightly unpleasant memory involving her.”
“Really?”
“I wander around the castle at my own discretion, and she comes by from time to time to warn me.”
“What kind of warning?”
“She says, ‘Don’t wander around recklessly just because you’re a demon. Is this your own home or something?’ Things like that.”
“I see.”
“No, but isn’t it a little funny? I only wander around a few places in this huge castle, and she threatens to fold my spine in half and all that.”
“I suppose she does go a little too far.”
“And then later she really does fold my spine exactly as she said!”
“……Really?”
“Three times, too!”
“U-uh? Ah, right, that was too much….”
“You think so too, Your Highness? Honestly, even I think it’s really….”
Penelope began chattering without pause.
Even though she knew Penelope was the one at fault, Valdrova quietly listened to her story.
At the same time, Valdrova felt something strange.
‘What is it…?’
At this very moment, she felt incredibly at ease.
Conversation was difficult for her.
The men she had met while serving as an armored knight,
Luri, who had stayed by her side the longest,
and even Ferda, who made her heart beat so fast.
All of them were too difficult for her to converse with.
But Penelope, who was chattering away here, was different.
No matter what she said, she was uninhibited and never at a loss for words, and, above all, her words were so trivial that Valdrova found herself enjoying them as well.
Only then did Valdrova realize
what she wanted to do by calling this girl over.
“Um….”
“Yes!”
“Shall we be friends?”
“……Huh?”
Penelope blinked foolishly.
What had just come out of that mouth?
Did she want to become friends?
What kind of sweet trap was this?
Could this be some sort of test where, if Penelope accepted the proposal, Valdrova would say, ‘Did you really fall for it?’ and kill her?
As Penelope stood there with a bewildered expression, Valdrova carefully asked,
“You don’t want to be friends…?”
It couldn’t be a test.
Just look at that expression.
She was as shy as a maiden on her wedding night.
It would be rude to interpret this as her making fun of Penelope.
“F-friends… s-sure?”
She forced out an answer despite her reluctance.
Valdrova, who had made the proposal, opened her eyes wide.
“R-really?”
“You were the one who suggested it, Your Highness….”
Penelope wondered if she had stepped on a land mine.
“Ah, yes! Right. I said we should! Yes!!”
Then a huge, radiant smile burst across Valdrova’s anxious face.
She clenched both hands tightly and bounced her shoulders as though she had accomplished something.
“Then we’re friends starting today?!”
“Y-yes….”
Penelope could not understand Valdrova’s reaction.
Was merely becoming friends really something worth being that happy about?
And with a lowly third-rate demon, at that.
‘Friends with a dragon… No sane demon would accept an offer like that…. Wait a moment….’
Penelope tried looking at it from a different angle.
‘Isn’t this freaking amazing?’
A dragon’s friend.
What demon could become friends with a dragon, the long-standing master of the Serdes Continent?
She was achieving something even the Seven Great Demons had failed to do.
A third-rate demon who had been treated as worthless in her homeland was becoming friends with a dragon in a dragon’s castle.
‘Maybe…!’
Penelope’s eyes sparkled.
‘I really might be able to overthrow Mother and become a Great Demon!’
They said that dreaming of something beyond one’s station brought calamity.
Penelope herself did not know that the sparkle in her eyes was the ominous light of a star heralding disaster.
* * *
“And that’s how it happened….”
“……”
“I wanted to cheer Lord Ferda up as a favor to a friend. She said she couldn’t do it herself, but that people would be watching, so she asked me to make it look that way….”
That explained why Ferda had been able to mistake her for Valdrova.
The clothes were ones Valdrova had worn, and the thread had been made by grinding down scales containing her aura.
It had been enough to cover Penelope’s demonic aura, making it easy to mistake her for a dragon.
“……”
Countless thoughts swirled through Ferda’s head.
His mind had become such a mess that it was practically blank.
Just as he was unable to say anything,
“……I see.”
Ferda suddenly realized something.
“Were you the one who taught her that vulgar expression too?”
“Y-yes?? What expression?”
“The expression ‘turned on.’ Did you teach it to her?”
“What? Did I teach her something like that…?”
-As a rule, the best thing a man can hear is that he’s turned you on.
-I see. But what does ‘turned on’ mean?
-You don’t know that? Of course it’s the highest compliment a man can give a woman!
“……You did?”
Penelope scratched her head awkwardly.
The moment he heard that answer, tears flowed from Ferda’s eyes.
They had flowed from his eyes, so they should unquestionably have been tears, but their color was not transparent. They were red.
Ferda was shedding tears of blood.
Ferda’s mind was as though the Knights of Calamity were rampaging through it.
He was glad that Valdrova had found a friend with whom she could open her heart and converse.
Yet in equal measure to that joy, he was furious and lamented that the friend in question had to be this piece of trash.
His Shadow Circle began to convulse violently.
Ferda’s lips moved.
“I’m going to—”
“You’re going to?”
“I’ll kill you, daughter of Sitri, Penelope!”
“Kke-kkeh-kkeh!”
Unable to restrain himself, Ferda seized Penelope by the throat.
Penelope could not fight back.
“Lord Ferda, stop.”
Luri spoke up at the sight of his irrational behavior.
“If you’re going to kill her, wait your turn! I’ll kill her first!”
Her small hand also reached for Penelope’s throat.
Luri was shedding tears of blood as well.
Ever since Valdrova introduced Penelope as a friend, Luri had bitten her lips so hard that blood had poured down them.
Penelope instinctively realized
that she would truly die if she did not resist here.
Somehow breaking free of their grasp, she shouted at the top of her lungs.
“Time out! Stop!! Regent, will you hear me out!?”
“If you offer me your neck now, I’ll send you off painlessly.”
“No! Just listen! There’s no harm in letting me remain your friend, right?”
“You’ll die even more painfully because of that statement.”
The situation was getting worse by the second.
Nevertheless, Penelope pressed on.
“Lady Valdrova thinks of me as a friend right now, you know?”
“I’ll kill you.”
Ferda’s killing intent only grew denser.
“Lady Valdrova, I mean. She’s always thinking about how she can make a good impression on you, Lord Ferda.”
Ferda’s hand paused for a moment.
Penelope seized on that hesitation and pressed her advantage.
“In that sense, by keeping me as a friend, you’ll have one of the few chances to see what’s truly in each other’s hearts—something you, Lord Ferda, might actually like very much!”
“……For example?”
“F-for example….”
She answered in a whisper beside Ferda’s ear.
“How about a daring outfit that lays bare the dynamite figure of that lovely red-haired woman?”
“……”
“Or something made from fabric as thin as a curtain, a sheer outfit that would let her figure show through here and there?”
“……”
“If you keep me as a friend, you’ll be able to see Lady Valdrova’s feminine sensuality without any filter!”
Ferda could not say a word after hearing that.
Before he could spread the wings of his imagination to their fullest,
“What are you sitting there thinking about?”
Luri glared at Ferda with narrowed, menacing eyes, annoyed by his silence.
Ferda came to his senses with a start and answered.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“For someone who wasn’t thinking about anything, you seem to have pictured a very impure version of Lady Valdrova in that head of yours.”
“……I did no such thing.”
If she had asked him even a little later, he might have answered that he had.
Ferda himself was a little startled.
That a hopeless third-rate demon had accomplished a temptation even the Great Demon Sitri could not manage.
It had to be because of Sitri’s Life Vessel.
What terrifying power.
“The moment I see her wearing the sort of thing that demon is talking about, I’ll kill that demon, of course, and gouge out Lord Ferda’s eyes as well.”
“If she says she’ll wear it, you have no right to—”
“What did you just say?”
Ferda shut his mouth.
Both of Luri’s index fingers were waiting ominously to gouge out Ferda’s eyes.
Thus, while the carriage continued moving, Luri glared daggers at Ferda, and Penelope escaped death.
* * *
The Imperial capital remained noisy even after Ferda left.
There were two demon followers within the Empire, and of all people, those two happened to be among the highest-ranking figures in the Empire.
They were perfect prey for agitators trying to secure a position in the Empire, and the nobles could no longer simply sit comfortably on their sofas.
The Imperial Guard Bureau was going through days so busy they barely had time to breathe.
“I heard you went to the Develung estate.”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
The Develung estate was famous for being spacious despite the family’s rank.
It was a place that displayed the family’s tradition and honor, making it an object of envy.
But that had been true only yesterday.
The symbol of wealth and power had become a cursed estate stained by ugly desires.
“As befitted the residence of a demon bastard, it stank from the moment you entered. And every single painting had a fucking awful taste.”
“Is it true that they burned the entire estate to the ground?”
“What else could we do? Grand Duke Golt made the decision to save the nation. I hear they burned down the estate and are building another structure.”
“They say there isn’t a single person you can trust….”
“The Grand Duke must be deeply distressed.”
Valdemar Golt was a hero of the people.
He was such a renowned nobleman that even jokingly cursing his name in a tavern could earn someone a slap.
They sympathized with Valdemar and cursed Develung, the demon’s lackey.
“I hear there was a girl rescued from that demon’s clutches?”
“She’s recovering in the infirmary. She was so heavily drugged that five priests had to work together just to reverse her total paralysis, or so I heard.”
“Really?”
“According to the journal, she was imprisoned and kept alive for no less than three years.”
“Is that really so surprising?”
“It is surprising. Apparently, one of them was a former Imperial Knight. That knight died before making it three months, while that woman survived for three years.”
When selecting Imperial Knights, every aspect was examined meticulously, but there was absolutely no compromise when it came to mental fortitude.
Even excellent swordsmanship was considered a serious disqualification if the candidate’s willpower was weak.
“Did Develung go easy on her because she was a woman?”
“Apparently not. They say she survived after enduring everything that others could not last a month through.”
“So she survived three years like that….”
“It sounds like they were trying to create an assassin for some secret organization. You know, the kind they select only after putting them through torture like this and seeing them endure it?”
“What kind of absurd thing are you talking about….”
The captain’s voice trailed off.
Suddenly, because of those words, he felt something buried in the back of his memory brush against his fingertips.
“Is there a portrait of that woman?”
“As it happens, a sketch artist drew one while we were trying to determine her identity.”
A guard handed the captain the poster that had just been drawn.
The captain’s already grim expression gradually lost its color.
“Wait a moment….”
The captain hurriedly rummaged through a drawer.
He was not searching among the missing-person posters, but among the wanted posters for criminals.
His swiftly moving fingers pulled out a sheet of paper from deep within.
“……Damn it.”
His face turned pale.
“What’s wrong?”
“That damned pig kept a heavyweight like this alive all this time!”
The guards were bewildered by the captain’s sudden fury.
“Bring a Grade One magic restraint and run to the infirmary! We have to restrain that woman!”
“What the hell—”
“Shut up and move!”
“Yes, sir!”
Taken aback by the captain’s uncharacteristic behavior, they grabbed the restraint and ran after him.
They ran without stopping even once to catch their breath, but by the time they reached the recovery room, only traces of the woman remained.
“Sound a Grade One alarm immediately!”
“A Grade One alarm?”
“Announce that all guards and the army are to be mobilized and the Empire sealed off!”
“Captain, we need at least a reason to sound that alarm.”
The captain, who had been frantic, finally regained his composure and spoke.
“Sierra….”
“Sierra?”
Those three syllables made them realize how serious the situation was.
“Announce that the Wolf of Sierra has escaped.”