Chapter 175
Ferda asked, flustered.
“Do you dislike being addressed as Your Highness?”
“It’s not that I dislike it; it just feels awkward. You’re going to be my man, Mr. Ferda, aren’t you?”
“That is correct.”
“I feel as though it creates too much distance when you call me what everyone else does.”
He nodded as though agreeing with her.
“Then may I call you Lady Valdrova?”
“I don’t like ‘Lady,’ either. I’d like you to call me affectionately, like someone who’s known me for a long time.”
“You want me to call you… Valdrova?”
“What about something like a nickname?”
“A-a nickname?”
A cute proposal, as adorable as her voice, came his way.
“Penelope, you see, calls Zed ‘Jeje,’ and Penelope ‘Pepe.’”
“Is that so?”
He knew, since she often called them that when the two talked.
“So I want to call you Pepe too, Mr. Ferda… but it feels strange for our nicknames to overlap.”
“……Indeed.”
His Shadow Circle reacted.
Hatred for Penelope boiled up in Ferda.
“Then how about Ferfer?”
“If that is what Your Highness prefers, I will gladly accept it.”
Ferfer.
It resembled the names of monsters passed down in the western region, but Ferda was satisfied with it.
“What would you like to call me, Mr. Ferda?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your nickname.”
He faltered.
“……Do I have to choose one too?”
“My name is Valdrova, so… wouldn’t that make it Balbali?”
“Bal…”
“I looked it up, and apparently that’s what they call little puppies.”
Valdrova imitated a puppy.
His face grew hot, and he could barely move his hands or feet.
He bit down hard on his lips to keep his mind from slipping, worried he might make a disgraceful expression.
“Try it once. Balbali.”
“Bal…”
“Yes.”
“Your Highness Valdrova.”
The buoyant anticipation floating up inside her went pop.
“Is it no good?”
Valdrova asked like a puppy that had been smacked after having its hopes dashed.
Ferda answered while clinging to the last thread of his barely intact reason.
“Yes, that would be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Your Highness is a dragon, and I am human. No matter how you look at it, the gap between us is as wide as that between a king and a commoner.”
And while commoners might use informal speech in married life, affectionate names between spouses were difficult in the lives of nobles, whose marriages were primarily political.
“I see.”
She seemed convinced.
Ferda could breathe a sigh of relief.
“Then when are we getting married?”
Round two followed immediately.
He felt as though the black tea he was drinking might come back up.
“I suppose it will be after Hestia Village has prospered, but…”
He thought only then would he become someone worthy of recognition by the other dragon Luri had mentioned.
“When will that be?”
“It will take at least five years.”
“I can’t wait that long.”
Valdrova was firm.
“You make even the arrival of tomorrow agonizingly exciting… I can’t wait five years.”
“Even so, getting married right away would be difficult.”
“Then at least change the way you address me. So I can wait a little longer.”
“……”
“As Balbali!”
Ferda was rendered speechless by Valdrova’s resolute expression.
Was this really the woman who had always fretted over making a verbal slip?
He wondered whether that damned demon had taught her some strange trick.
“……Bal…”
Ferda opened his mouth with difficulty.
“I don’t think I can casually call Your Highness Valdrova by name.”
Ferda spoke gently.
“The name Valdrova is one that must be spoken with respect. Treating it lightly would be unnecessary, both for me as your fiancé and for those who place their trust in Your Highness the Grand Duke.”
“Hmm… Is that so?”
Valdrova once again looked disappointed.
Of course, it was only an excuse.
An excuse Ferda had forced out because he could not bring himself to do such a thing.
He began to worry that the repeated rejections might have hurt her feelings.
“Then…”
But Valdrova did not become discouraged.
In a voice like sunlight breaking through a gloomy sky, she said,
“Let’s choose a new name.”
“A new name…?”
“Come to think of it, my name is called by many other people. And from now on, you’ll be taking the name Valdrova too, Mr. Ferda.”
The Grand Duchy of Valdrova, Valdrova Castle, and Valdrova herself.
“If we can’t make the name Valdrova something casual, then give me a name only you can call. Please make that name for me.”
“How could I possibly name Your Highness?”
“Names are meant to be called by someone, so someone else has to give them to you. So I’d like you, Mr. Ferda, to give me my name. And…”
The anticipation showed in her fidgeting fingers.
“From now on, you’ll be the one calling it most often…”
The name I would call most often.
He turned his head aside, desperately hiding his flushed face.
He thought he understood how Valdrova felt.
What could be easy for everyone else yet difficult for one particular person.
“All right. I’ll think about it and tell you.”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else you would like to discuss?”
“Hmm… Ah!”
She let out an exclamation and began chattering about something.
“Penelope, you see…”
“……”
His anticipation and embarrassment shattered into pieces.
As he listened to her talk about the first friend she had ever made, Ferda thought,
Let’s find her a new friend before we find her a name.
* * *
Ferda assessed the current situation to manage the territory.
What all living things needed was food, clothing, and shelter.
Of those, food was by far the most important, and water was an indispensable part of it.
Most of the water supply in the Grand Duchy of Valdrova was drawn from rivers, and underground reservoirs were used when water ran short.
Unless the rivers dried up completely in a severe drought, they had the conditions needed to get through difficult times.
Ferda had originally planned to draw water from the rivers as well.
But this incident made him realize how naïve that plan had been.
‘A river can be polluted at any time.’
When the monsters surrounded them, they had polluted the river to dry out the Grand Duchy.
He had learned that if things directly tied to life had too many variables, they could easily collapse.
‘But I turned it into another opportunity.’
Marquis Vernel.
They had endured the siege because he had invented a water-purification device.
After the monster extermination campaign, Isabella had been bustling about, intent on making active use of this purification device.
And she showed Ferda the fruits of that effort.
“Here it is.”
The location of the second gift Isabella had mentioned.
It was some distance from Hestia Village in the Grand Duchy.
It was safe to say it lay exactly on the border of the Demon Lands.
Where there should originally have been only wasteland, a single stone building stood forlornly.
“It looks like a cemetery.”
“It looks rather shabby from the outside.”
Isabella infused it with mana to unlock the security device, then opened the door.
Once the door opened, it became clear.
The important part was underground.
Ferda followed Isabella downward.
After descending perhaps another 5M, they left the spiral staircase and entered an open space.
“This is the second gift from Iorga Tower.”
A space as large as the Empire’s Colosseum arena.
The outer walls were supported all around by sturdy stone and other materials, while long pipes had been intricately designed inside.
It was construction that would have taken humans a good ten years.
“When did you build this place?”
“The Iorga side began construction while we were heading to the capital. You needn’t worry about its safety.”
In other words, it had taken less than a month.
For magic of this caliber, something this complex and labor-intensive was child’s play.
“Does Iorga often do things like this?”
“We do when necessary, but we don’t do this for humans. And certainly not for other dragons.”
“That is the power of an alliance.”
“That’s right.”
The alliance was only nominal, too.
‘It must be because of their pride.’
Dragonspawn pride was famous for being impossible to deal with.
Those who inherited their blood were their own fathers, mothers, and gods.
They did not forgive those who insulted them, and considered any action unworthy of their name a humiliation.
The fact that Marquis Vernel had purified the water of the Demon Lands was a humiliation to them.
These gifts could be seen as a means of making up for that humiliation.
‘I wonder what might come out if I keep pricking their pride like this?’
Ferda was reminded of the legend of the Golden Goblin.
The old joke that the more you hit it, the more money comes out seemed to overlap with Iorga.
Afraid his thoughts might be exposed, Ferda shifted his gaze along the pipeline.
The pipes looked complicated, but their basic layout was clear.
A large pipe laid where the Demon Lands had been, and a round steel barrel through which it ran.
It was arranged so that the water passed through about three of those barrels before continuing to Hestia Village.
He found himself wondering how it worked.
“Oh, I see you, Regent.”
As luck would have it, the person who could explain it arrived.
Marquis Vernel was there.
“I see you here.”
It was all the more surprising to find a man who normally should have been shut away in the laboratory at Valdrova Castle in this basement far from the village.
“Since it is important, I am checking it with my own eyes to make sure nothing has been overlooked. Hundreds of thousands of liters of water will be supplied through these pipes, so shouldn’t I inspect them thoroughly?”
His eyes shone with a brilliance different in kind from when he had made the magitech rifle.
For all his talk, it seemed he could not help being more drawn to practical places like this than to making weapons.
“Explain it to me. How does the purification work?”
“Of course! If you look over here…”
To be honest, Ferda had not expected anything from the explanation.
But something astonishing happened.
‘He explains it better than I expected.’
Unlike when he explained the principle of mana stones, he was explaining it in a manner that was simple and clear on an entirely different level.
His apt analogies made everything click.
‘Well, simplifying things so Malcolm could understand them must have been no easy task.’
The two extremes meeting had enabled him to refine his explanation into something Ferda, who lay closer to the middle, could understand.
In short, it was essentially a matter of installing several layers of fine filters to draw out water as clean as possible.
“I heard scaling it up wasn’t easy, but you managed it.”
“That’s right. I told you it would take three years, didn’t I?”
That had been the research period needed for Vernel to make it possible to draw water from the Demon Lands and supply it stably.
Since it involved scaling up the system and, above all, safety was a sensitive matter, he had said they needed to verify that the supply was stable.
“It became much easier because Iorga took charge of that part!”
Isabella picked up on Vernel’s words.
“Inside this barrel is the large-scale purification device Iorga has developed.”
“Could three years really be shortened that drastically?”
“Blue Eyes Tower aims for the finest magic on the continent. Trial runs cost a great deal of money and time, but Iorga is generous about such trial and error.”
“They’re truly amazing. If Escolleia had done this, they would only have berated us, asking whether we had money to burn.”
Isabella spoke with immense pride, and Vernel praised them.
Hearing this, Ferda muttered,
“The Golden Goblin…”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
For some reason, that word kept circling in Ferda’s mind.
* * *
Feeling there was no longer any need to be cautious, Ferda decided to use all the momentum he had built up while lying low and take the leap.
He decided to accelerate the revival of magitech in Hestia Village.
“These are the cooperation proposals sent from Escolleia. They all seem fine; they only need your approval.”
They said the number of people studying had increased, convinced that the magitech Vernel had unveiled would open a new era in Escolleia.
Astonishingly, those studying magitech came from established mage families of some standing.
Ferda could understand their feelings.
‘They want revenge on their families.’
How many of them could truly burn with scholarly passion and choose the life of a scholar?
It was a refuge chosen by those branded dullards by their families or pushed out of the succession struggles.
Those who had steeled themselves to live as mages naturally harbored hatred for the privileged people who monopolized magic.
The current president of Escolleia was one such person.
-Proposal for developing a carriage powered by mana stones
‘A carriage using mana stones…’
When that time came, the term “mana-powered automobile” would be used far more often than “carriage.”
Carriages powered by a mage’s mana rather than horses—objects that had been dismissed as undignified because they were not aristocratic.
But that stubbornness would collapse in an instant, and the roads would quickly fill with mana-powered automobiles.
‘I wanted to keep this one, but…’
You cannot make allies by taking everything for yourself.
He handed this matter over to Stephan.
It was payment for supporting the East without asking questions or raising objections.
‘It is only one of the businesses, anyway.’
Ferda had a few businesses in mind as well.
He handed Isabella the documents he had organized.
“Administrator.”
“Yes.”
“These are things I looked into personally. Could you secure investment for them here as well?”
Isabella unfolded the documents.
The moment she saw the title on the first cover, she reflexively furrowed her brow.
“Are you trying to buy the rights to mine desert sand?”
“I am.”
The South had sand in abundance.
Wondering what he intended to do with all the sand he planned to buy, she turned to the next page.
“Glass.”
What Ferda wanted was a glass business.
“Someone submitted a proposal to industrialize glass production. I intend to bring this person in and build a glass factory.”
“A glass factory… Of course, it’s a fine luxury item, but surely demand won’t be that high?”
“Look at what comes next.”
As Ferda instructed, she turned the page.
She understood what he meant.
“Glass that doesn’t break easily even without magical treatment…”
The words glass and unbreakable felt utterly incompatible.
“Do you believe this is possible, Lord Ferda?”
Isabella did not look convinced.
But Ferda knew.
Glass, once used only as an item crafted for nobles, would come to be used in common homes as well.
As magitech advanced, the paradigm of luxury would change.
“There is ample potential.”
Potential, he said.
What if someone else had said that?
Isabella would not only have rejected the project, she would have lashed out, asking whether he intended to waste money.
‘He must have something in mind.’
If there was one thing Isabella knew about Ferda, it was that he was not someone who acted on impulse.
Because she trusted him, Isabella quietly picked up the document.
“I’ll move forward with this. And…”
Isabella spoke as though she had just remembered something.
She said it with a sour expression she rarely showed.
“It seems that detestable witch has achieved results on the project.”
It was easy to tell why she disliked it without even asking.
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance