Chapter 182
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
After guiding the guests inside, Lize waited outside the door.
Her role was to guide Ferda and Erika throughout the day, so she could not leave their side.
‘What on earth could Father be talking about?’
Unable to hear what conversation was taking place beyond the closed door, she let her imagination run wild.
Since a dragonspawn and a dragon’s fiancé had visited the World Tree, it had to be something concerning the continent.
‘To think I would meet the great hero, Lady Erika, like this.’
She had an intellect worthy of bearing the mantle of wisdom among the Twelve Heroes.
Ior, known as Cold Reason, had served as the captain of the dragonspawn and, true to her reputation, supported them as they overcame every obstacle.
‘She was incredibly intelligent.’
As a member of the expedition that killed the Demon King, she possessed boldness and courage, while as the Blue-Eyed Tower Master, she had charisma and dignity in equal measure. Her appearance had made Lize’s heart flutter.
Lize thought herself admirable for not trembling pointlessly.
‘And Lord Ferda was the same.’
Ferda was remarkably young, but he possessed a gravity that suppressed his youthful vigor.
A mysterious dignity unbecoming of his age.
He was someone she could not help but admire.
‘If only I could become like him someday…….’
Her face grew hot.
She had to shake off these pointless thoughts.
Lize slapped her cheeks.
‘They look like they’ll be finishing soon, so should I prepare the bouquet I’ll give them in advance?’
Yes, that was what she would do.
Lize sang in the language of the elves.
A beautiful melody flowed on the wind, and the spirits drawn by it appeared before Lize.
The adorable spirits circled around Lize.
Each one took the shape of earth, wind, or water.
-Lize, Lize!
“Hello. You look happy today, too?”
-We’re happy because Lize called us!
-We waited and waited for you to call us!
-What should we play?
“I’m sorry, but could we play later? There’s something I’d like to ask of you.”
-What is it?
“I called you because I want to make a bouquet.”
-Did Lize make a friend?
-A friend!?
-They say Lize made a friend!
The spirits erupted in cheers.
Lize’s face turned bright red.
“N-no, it’s not a friend. I want to give them a present.”
-Lize doesn’t have any friends.
-She has no friends again.
-Just as expected of Lize! She has no friends!
“……Could you bring me some?”
-Okay!
-Of course we should, since Lize asked us to.
-Lize has no friends, so we’ll be her friends!
“Thank you, everyone.”
The adorable spirits scattered.
The blush brought on by the innocent spirits’ words refused to fade.
Since they had meant no harm, letting it pass without getting angry was the best Lize could do.
Just as she was about to wait for the guests to come out again,
Fwoosh-!
A flash of light burst forth, and something appeared before Lize.
It was Erika, who had been sitting inside.
“Uh……?”
Something was wrong.
Erika seemed frozen in a posture prepared to respond to something.
“Lady Eri……ka?”
When she did not move for a long while, Lize cautiously approached and called her name.
“Um, excuse me……”
“……”
“Are you all right?”
“……”
Erika did not answer.
Her neck creaked like an unoiled machine before her eyes met Lize’s.
Lize flinched.
There was a stillness in Erika’s eyes.
But that stillness seemed capable of bringing a storm with it.
“……Is that so?”
Those were the three syllables that escaped her lips.
With a face that calmly understood everything, she carefully rose from her seat.
She trudged toward the heart of the World Tree, whose entrance was now tightly shut.
“Um, Tower Master Erika……?”
“……”
“Should I open the door for you again? I could at least ask them to open it……”
Erika did not answer.
Instead, highly condensed mana began to ripple around her.
Two magic circles appeared in her hands.
Opposing attributes were drawn in both hands before gathering in one place.
She aimed precisely at the place where she had entered.
It was a destructive sixth-tier spell.
“Elemental Demoli—”
“Nooooo!”
Lize quickly stepped in front of her.
Erika smiled menacingly.
“Shall I blow you away too, Secretary Lize?”
“V-violence is not the answer! Please, calm down……”
“Who gets to decide that?”
“Pardon?”
“That’s what people always say, isn’t it? They do everything they intend to do, yank out a whole clump of nose hairs, and then, when it’s time for them to be punished, they block the way and say violence isn’t the answer.”
“I-I don’t know what happened, but there must be some misunderstanding, so please calm down and—”
“Yes, I’ll fix it.”
“Yes, if you would, I’ll explain everything……”
“Fix the exact center of the magic circle. Elemen—”
“Not that kind of fixing! Please listen to meeeee!”
Lize struggled desperately to hold back the fury of the dragon whose nose hairs had been plucked.
* * *
Meanwhile, Ferda and the Grand Chieftain continued their conversation, unaware of the commotion outside.
“The mana flowing through my body…… you’re saying it belongs to the Demon King?”
Ferda asked again.
He wondered whether he had heard incorrectly or whether there was some other intention behind those words.
“That is correct.”
But the answer he received remained unchanged.
Ferda’s mind was thrown into confusion.
‘Is this some ploy to confuse me?’
No, that could not be it.
If that had been his intention, he would have told Erika that Ferda possessed the Demon King’s mana while she was present.
He could have driven a wedge between them and induced Ferda to lose his reason.
The fact that the conversation had proceeded with only the two of them meant the Grand Chieftain had thoughtfully ensured that Ferda would not be misunderstood in that way.
So Ferda first calmed himself and continued speaking with the Grand Chieftain.
“My mana cannot create demonkin.”
“I know. They were created through Linne’s ability. It would be impossible with your pure mana.”
“Then how can you say that my mana is the same as the Demon King’s?”
“Because his magic power, too, was something forged from the exact same emotion as yours.”
“If you say it is the same thing……”
There were two kinds of mana that made up Ferda.
The Red Circle, driven by love.
The Shadow Circle, driven by regret.
“Did the Demon King deeply regret something?”
“No.”
Ferda had asked while hoping his premonition would be wrong, but reality answered him cruelly.
“He was a mage who had loved someone.”
Love.
An emotion that was close yet distant, easy yet difficult.
Ferda could not believe that emotion had ultimately created the Demon King.
“The Demon King……”
He had to know.
“What kind of person was he?”
If the thing inside Ferda’s body could truly create a Demon King, he had to examine the man’s footsteps.
“That man was a truly insignificant mage. Through the wife he had met long ago, he learned magic through love. But he had no great talent for magic. So he became a farmer, tending an orchard with his beloved wife and barely scraping by.”
Up to that point, it was merely the utterly ordinary story of an incompetent mage.
“But tragedy came to that man. He lost his wife.”
That, too, was a common story.
“The man performed the customary ritual to send his wife off. Even after her ashes flew into the sky and her remains had all been scattered across the earth, the emptiness in his heart remained unfilled.”
That was another common story.
“Regent Ferda.”
The Grand Chieftain, who had been telling the story, asked a question.
“Could you easily forget her?”
Ferda tried to put himself in the place of the man who would become the Demon King.
He did not need to look far; it was practically his own story.
Had his mother not been sent off in the same way?
He remembered the man sending off his wife, and himself sending off his mother.
No one had filled the emptiness inside Ferda.
His longing for Anna Rosnova was still immense.
He pictured Valdrova in her place.
“I don’t think I could.”
Surely Ferda, too, would not be able to cast it off as easily as that man.
His memories of her would become a thorn he could never pull out, leaving a wound that would never heal.
The Grand Chieftain continued his story.
“The man was the same. Unable to forget his wife, he became immersed in the sense of loss and longing.”
“Can someone feeling that way truly become the Demon King?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
It was a question based on the theory of magic.
The man had awakened his Red Circle through love.
If an emotion opposed to love took root, the Red Circle would not move.
“From what I’m hearing, it sounds like a stage in which an emotional reversal is taking place.”
Emotional reversal was when the Red Circle stopped, then began rotating backward.
Emotions were like blood.
Reversing their flow was tantamount to death.
“That is correct. In reality, he must have gone through the reversal you describe time and again.”
“And yet……”
“He did not die. Though he suffered agony close to death several times, the man did not die. That pain became his new source.”
The theory Ferda knew crumbled apart.
The backward-rotating circle had become the man’s new mana.
‘Not only did he survive an emotional reversal, it formed a new circle?’
Ferda had never heard of anyone surviving an emotional reversal.
The Red Circle mages he knew had all died without exception if they did not keep their circles running.
But there had been ample reason for this to remain unknown until now.
If an emotional reversal could grow strong enough to create a Demon King, did that not mean a second Demon King could be created again and again?
Ferda suddenly remembered a conversation he had once had with Alberto.
‘Come to think of it, he said something like this, too.’
Alberto, who had gone around silently beating down demonkin, had suddenly come to Ferda and said that he had the makings of a Demon King.
It had not made sense to Ferda, but after hearing the story of the Demon King, he understood.
The Demon King had loved someone and lost her.
Ferda loved Valdrova.
‘If I were to lose Valdrova, I would be in the exact same situation as the Demon King.’
It sounded like something out of a dream.
Dragons were called immortals and reigned as absolute beings over this continent.
Although Silverwind and Godwin had died in the Dragon-Demon War, no one dared diminish the stature of dragons.
But Ferda still did not know what the demonkin were plotting.
Just as they had moved in the shadows to pass a death sentence on the Serdes Continent, there were many ways to kill Valdrova in a single blow.
Especially if their goal was to make Ferda feel the emotion of loss, the possibility was even greater.
“Grand Chieftain, may I ask you one question?”
“Please do.”
He had repeated it in his head countless times, but the words would not easily leave his mouth.
It felt like he was reaching for forbidden knowledge.
He was curious, but he felt that once he received the answer, there would be no going back.
“……How did the wife of the man who became the Demon King die?”
Ferda assumed there had to be some reason.
Perhaps an assailant had burst in and ravaged her in front of her husband, or perhaps he had been forced to send her away by the world’s absurdity.
The anger accumulated through such a tragedy might have been unleashed against the world.
But the answer he received differed from what Ferda had hoped for.
“It was nothing more than a chronic illness. It was the providence of nature: though he tried to cure her, her body could not withstand the treatment, and she could not be saved.”
Ferda squeezed his eyes shut.
Even that most common of stories made things worse for him.
A man who became the Demon King because he could not overcome the death of the woman he loved, even though she had merely died after living out her natural span.
Ferda could not shake the feeling that the man was becoming him.
“Are you afraid?”
The Grand Chieftain asked.
“I am afraid.”
Ferda laid bare his honest feelings.
Her death was still reflected in Ferda’s eyes.
Even after being driven to the brink by malice, she had remained kind and pure to the very end.
She was a good woman who had never changed.
“Even if her existence is unchanging, I am afraid because I am someone who changes.”
Ferda was not like that.
He was a weak human, easily swept away by his emotions.
The possibility that he could kill her again weighed heavily on Ferda.
“If you fear yourself, there is a way.”
Ferda raised his head at the Grand Chieftain’s advice.
“What is it?”
“Regent Ferda, you must delve into the source of the mana you possess. You already know this vaguely, but you are different from ordinary humans.”
As the Grand Chieftain had said, Ferda knew that he was not ordinary.
Even for someone of exceptional bloodline, the Eighth Circle was a dreamlike feat, difficult unless one was born in an age suited to it.
He simply had never felt the need to delve into it.
“Regent Ferda, let us talk about your parents. What kind of person was your mother?”
“Will that help?”
“Bloodline is the source of sources.”
It was true.
Since it was not something he particularly needed to hide, Ferda decided to answer.
“My mother was……”
Ferda drew a beloved face in his mind.
“Anna Rosnova. She was kind and devoted to her family……”
Then he recalled what Erembald had said.
“And she was a follower of Sierra.”
“Sierra…… The goddess of the moon, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Then who was your father?”
His father was Erembald Rosnova.
After Ferda’s mother passed away, he had treated Ferda like a cuckoo and expelled him from the family—a cold-blooded man.
“I don’t know.”
Erembald had said that Ferda was a child Anna had brought home.
He had not merely been like a cuckoo; he had truly been a cuckoo’s child.
“Then that means you know nothing about your source.”
“That is correct.”
“Then may this old man offer you a helping hand?”
The Grand Chieftain raised a finger toward the sky.
At once, the Threads drifting through the air gathered together and formed a shape.
They created a hand twice the size of the white hand they had made before.
Ferda could guess what the hand was for.
“Do you intend to look inside me with that hand?”
“That is correct.”
He added,
“Of course, Regent Ferda, if you do not permit it, I shall withdraw here. Whether I come to know you is your choice.”
It was, of course, something Ferda would never do.
Ferda disliked the thought of someone looking into him.
He was afraid that the weakness he possessed might be exposed and cause trouble.
But more frightening than that instinctive revulsion was the prospect of repeating the past.
The tragedy of Valdrova that Ferda caused would be enough if it happened only once.
“I understand.”
Ferda permitted him to examine him.
The Grand Chieftain’s white hand gently grasped Ferda’s entire body.
The hand was made of condensed mana.
Ferda felt clean, pure mana penetrating his entire body.
Then it happened.
“Hmm…… I see…… So that is what it is……. This……”
The Grand Chieftain murmured about the information he sensed from Ferda’s body.
Ferda endured the touch while suppressing his instinctive revulsion.
“Hmm?”
The Grand Chieftain sensed something strange.
“What is this…… exactly…… Ngh!?”
“Grand Chieftain?”
“Guh-ugh!!”
The Grand Chieftain’s waist bent like an old tree.
The old man, who had been unhurried no matter what he did, opened his eyes wide.
“What on earth is happening?”
He did not answer Ferda’s question.
The Grand Chieftain’s green pupils trembled violently.
“Th-that can’t be…… How……?”
The gaze with which he had been looking at Ferda changed.
Awe could be felt in the eyes that had regarded him as nothing more than a mortal.
The change was not limited to the Grand Chieftain.
The white hand enveloping Ferda’s head loosened and scattered.
The blue mana forming the illumination turned red and began to vibrate.
Ferda realized instinctively.
He had to escape that hand if he wanted to save the Grand Chieftain.
Ferda tried to move, forcing himself to escape the hand.
The Grand Chieftain then gestured.
The hand moved and tightly grasped Ferda as he tried to escape.
Ferda was caught in the Grand Chieftain’s hand, unable to move a muscle.
“Keurgh!”
The Grand Chieftain, who had been stubbornly resisting, finally coughed up blood and collapsed.
His concentration broke, and the Threads became white hands that resumed drifting through the air.
The red sky returned to blue.
The roots on the floor supported the Grand Chieftain’s body and laid him down.
The closed door opened, and two women came running in.
“Grand Chieftain!”
Lize ran to the Grand Chieftain’s side, almost screaming.
Erika approached Ferda and asked what had happened.
“Regent, what on earth happened? Why did the World Tree vibrate like that……?”
Ferda could not answer.
He himself was bewildered by everything that had just happened, so there was no way he could explain it.
Nor did he have time to think it through and answer.
Not long after the two women entered, the door opened again.
Every High Elf inside the World Tree had sensed the Grand Chieftain’s condition and come up.
“Grand Chieftain!”
“Mother save us……!”
They all surrounded the Grand Chieftain and began to sing.
Light wrapped around the Grand Chieftain’s precarious body and began healing him.
Everyone put Ferda and Erika out of mind, but one person was different.
The High Elf elder who had disliked them pointed at Ferda and Erika and shouted,
“Restrain those suspects immediately!”