Chapter 196
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Meanwhile, the Flint expedition was in a state of emergency as they tried to rescue Ferda.
They could not leisurely search the rooms for magical artifacts or anything like that.
As the expedition's captain, Erika returned to the entrance they had made their base and directed the other adventurers.
“Did you find anything?”
The adventurers answered her question.
“The left side seems to have been used as a dormitory, so there was nothing of note.”
“We did find quite a few magical artifacts on the right, but they don't seem to be relevant...”
Both the right and left sides had been dead ends.
The only group left was the one she had led straight ahead.
“Damn it, why did he have to get caught in a trap like that...”
“What can we do...”
It was not as though they could curse him for being reckless.
Such things happened all the time in an adventurer's life, and even experienced adventurers sometimes had to pull out first.
They tried to find some clue using the Eastern characters they had hurriedly learned, but all they found was useless information.
All they had learned was that the study they had gone to was called Boyangsil, and the room beneath it was called Eumyangsil.
‘Just from the name, it sounds like a room for training...’
But the question was why such a training room had closed on its own.
Surely Ferda wouldn't impose a restriction on himself in this insane place just because he wanted to train?
“...No, is that possible?”
Since he was such an extraordinary man, Erika wondered if perhaps it was.
In any case, Erika could only hope they would be able to rescue him safely.
“Captain Eri!”
Adventurers came running from straight ahead, making a great fuss.
“I think we've found something!”
Her heart lurched.
She suppressed her expectations as much as possible and calmly examined what they had brought.
But what appeared on the very first page was a blueprint.
It was a blueprint of Gyeonghuigung itself.
“Where did you find this?!”
“We seem to have entered the Palace Lord's room, and when we started opening the books there at random, this book turned up!”
“The Palace Lord had to oversee everything, so of course it would have been there.”
A map was an adventurer's eyes, and this was like a clairvoyant eye that saw through everything.
Erika roughly flipped through the book, searching for information about Boyangsil and Eumyangsil.
“Here it is. Since ancient times, Gyeonghuigung has borrowed the power of love, and to nurture that love, it considered cultivating emotions in Boyangsil important.”
“Use love to cast magic?”
“What is this, some children's hero play? Can that really work?”
“Why? They say people with Red Circles use emotions to spin their Circles, don't they?”
“This is what happens when idiots know just enough to be dangerous. Tsk, tsk.”
“Turn off the local broadcasts. I'm going to interpret this.”
Erika silenced those who were about to fight and continued interpreting.
“Sometimes, even when a man and woman have feelings for each other, they find it difficult to... blah blah, an act contrary to the spirit of Gyeonghuigung's first Palace Lord. Opening Eumyangsil... Oh, I think I've found it.”
“What does it say we have to do?”
“It says it will automatically reopen within twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours?”
“Considering the time it takes to get back, isn't that cutting it rather close?”
“It is, but let's read a little more... Ah, there's more. A way to get out sooner is... Huh?”
Erika furrowed her brow.
“Wait, this word... Could it be translated this way?”
“Why? What is it?”
“I mean, this is... right, but...”
Erika pressed between her brows and grimaced.
She tried interpreting it again and again, but its meaning was clear.
“...It says they can't leave unless they share affection?”
“What?”
An uncomfortable silence settled over them.
“If it means affection...”
“I think it means that...”
What kind of affection could adults share?
They all knew, but no one mentioned it.
“Just a moment...”
The embarrassment lasted only a moment.
“Then, for them to get out of that room safely, that armored knight and Regent Ferda would have to...”
“Share their love... wouldn't they?”
A roughly two-meter-tall suit of armor and a relatively slender man named Ferda.
No one could picture it.
“So, to share that love—”
“Ahem!”
“Quiet!”
No, when they tried to picture it, all they could imagine was something horrifying and filthy.
But there was something even more painful.
Someone had to tell them this fact.
At a moment when they were growing close through camaraderie as comrades-in-arms.
A vicious battle of reading each other's expressions began.
In that situation, Erika calmly pointed to one person.
“...Ms. Lize?”
“Yes, Captain?”
“How about you tell them?”
“M-me??”
“Go tell them that they just need to show affection to each other and... um... get it over with quickly...”
“I-I mean, but... M-me????”
Erika calmly told her what she had to do, while Lize clasped both hands tightly and repeated what she had said.
Ferda had a partner, and Lize did not want to tell him something like that.
And no one wanted to be in this situation.
“Huh?”
Virgil, who had been looking around, spotted something and cried out.
“Th-that... It's the armored knight!”
“...What?”
“That can't be.”
Everyone looked as though they could not believe it.
If they had broken down the door to escape, the entire building should have shaken.
Even in their desperate situation, with enough depth to bury them alive, Ferda could never have allowed such a reckless act.
Then who was the armored knight coming over there?
But soon, everyone was able to confirm what the archer had seen.
As he had said, the armored knight was coming out.
The armored knight was carrying the exhausted Ferda on her back and walking toward them with the books she had collected bundled in a cloth.
The armored knight, having apparently seen them as well, awkwardly raised a hand in greeting.
The return of the two led not to relief, but to a shudder.
* * *
“Mmm...”
Ferda awoke on the armored knight's back.
The armor against his back was uncomfortable, but he could not ask to be put down just yet.
‘My body isn't moving properly...’
The exhaustion throughout his body left Ferda no choice.
What a rotten, useless body.
Ferda carefully checked his condition.
A heavy sensation he had never felt before was clearly present in his dantian.
‘The Shadow Circle is at the second stage.’
It was something formed through another's will, not created by Ferda's own.
It tried to consume Ferda.
He had been in a situation where he should have died without fail, but that was not quite the case.
‘I've reached the fifth Circle.’
It was the realm known as that of a Master Mage, one that ordinary talents could not reach even through bloody effort.
‘I completed two Circles in a single day...’
It was so absurd that he wondered who could possibly believe it.
Even if he discussed it with his former eighth-Circle self, that self would ask how such a thing had happened.
Of course, Ferda already had his answer.
‘Elinore.’
Though she had been nothing more than an illusion, with her help Ferda had been able to push back the Shadow Circle.
Ferda remained quietly awake as he was carried on her back.
Erika, walking in step with them, glanced at Ferda and was startled.
“Oh? You're awake?”
“Yes.”
She wore an extremely troubled expression.
“Captain Eri, did you rescue us?”
“...”
“Captain Eri?”
“Yes?”
“I asked whether you rescued us.”
Hearing that, Erika cautiously looked around before asking,
“Do you perhaps not know what happened?”
“I don't. I was unconscious.”
“When we tried to rescue you... it seems the armored knight found some way out.”
“Don't tell me she broke through the wall or something—”
“It wasn't anything like that.”
“Is that so?”
“She did break it, but...”
“?”
“It's nothing.”
Erika closed her mouth.
Her face was as heavy as someone who had been attacked by Trauma.
‘Why are they acting like that?’
He could not make any sense of it.
When he turned to meet the eyes of the others, they were reacting much the same way.
Some looked at him with sympathy.
Some looked as though they had witnessed a terrifying entity.
And some seemed unsure what was going on, but were simply relieved that he was all right.
Seeing those eyes, Ferda became certain of one thing.
‘I must have gone through a rough journey while I was unconscious.’
Ferda decided to think of it that way and moved on to another subject.
“When will we arrive?”
“We can get there in another hour. The expedition might... might even end in twenty-two hours...”
Erika's words trailed off.
The armored knight stopped walking, and the others stopped as well.
Ferda turned his head to look at Erika.
She gave a hand signal to stop.
“What is it?”
Her eyes were fixed on one spot.
She was a woman who never let her guard down in the Demon Lands, but now was different.
She looked as though she had found a genuine formidable foe.
“Put me down for a moment.”
Nod.
The armored knight put him down, and Ferda carefully tried standing on both feet.
He had no strength, but he managed to remain standing.
He could see what Erika was looking at.
And he understood why she was making that face.
“You...”
Black robes that matched this black-and-gray land.
That made the white skin beneath them seem even brighter.
The contrasting appearance created a sense of dissonance, and that dissonance led to wariness.
‘Gokma.’
One of Godwin's Seven Evil Stars, and the last remaining demon of Noblesse rank.
“It's a pleasure to meet you. Members of the expedition, and Captain Eri. We've met before, haven't we?”
“...We have.”
Erika had not forgotten the humiliation he had inflicted on her.
Moreover, the fact that he deliberately spoke that way despite knowing she was an Iorga spawn irritated her even more.
Excitement was poison to a mage.
She asked calmly,
“Why are you here?”
“Why am I here, you ask? What's so strange about a demon being in the Demon Lands?”
He let out an unpleasant laugh and took one step forward.
“What are you? Get lost right now!”
When the belligerent Jonathan Sina stepped forward with his ax, Erika blocked his path.
Her eyes said it all.
Not now.
Gokma applauded the action.
“An excellent choice. I have no desire to see blood spilled either. I want to applaud you weary people, not become a new trial for you.”
“Then disappear quietly, will you?”
“I would like to, but first I want to hear your review. Well? My work.”
Work.
Everyone knew what work he meant.
“Was Trauma yours?”
“Trauma... That's a decent name. Naming things isn't really my style. Thanks to you, I've acquired a good one. From now on, I'll call it Trauma.”
Erika furrowed her brow.
“It was a shoddy, laughable trick. What did you think you could accomplish with that?”
“It will work. You all possess ‘excellent’ mental strength, capable of overcoming any trial, but what do you think ordinary humans are like?”
“Other humans...”
They knew what kind of illusions Trauma brought.
It made people suffer through what they regretted most.
And with prolonged exposure, that suffering led to salvation.
The act was not merely meant to make people suffer.
‘There’s another purpose.’
He already knew they were going to Gyeonghuigung and had laid Trauma along the routes they could take.
If they had tried to fight, he could have waited for them at Gyeonghuigung.
‘But he didn’t.’
Why?
The Demon Lands were the demons' final homeland.
It must be the instinct of Dragon Spawns to be unable to tolerate anyone who sought to defile that homeland.
Though demons were said to be unusual individuals, he was one of the Dragon Spawns, so that instinct should remain in him.
He must have had a clear purpose important enough to make defiling their home irrelevant.
“Judging by your expressions, Trauma seems to have turned out to be a magnificent work. It needs a little more refinement, of course.”
Gokma sneered, while the adventurers protested, ready for battle.
“I’ll see you again later.”
Gokma stepped back and sliced a finger vertically.
Space split open along his finger, and chaotic colors shimmered within.
Gokma threw his body into it.
“Oh, right.”
He had taken one step forward, then turned around again as if he had just remembered something.
“This is a little gift.”
He spread the space wide with his fingers.
It was far larger than the rift he had made to leave.
The rift looked to be over eight meters long, even if one measured only its length.
Krrrrng—.
Yet as though even that space were insufficient, the object writhed, tearing through the rift and bursting out.
It was understandable that the space had been insufficient.
It was a gigantic monster standing no less than ten meters tall.
Gwooooooar!!
A roar that sent shock waves spreading.
The roar etched despair into the cells of their bodies.
“C-Captain Eri...!”
“W-what should we do...?”
Having run through the night to finish everything in a single day, their bodies and minds were exhausted.
In this desperate moment, they needed her judgment.
‘Just when it seemed everything was going smoothly...’
Erika had to make a decision.
If she revealed her identity and fought, she could undoubtedly defeat that monster.
Her double life would be over, but everyone could survive.
Just as she was about to make her decision, someone stepped in front of them.
“The armored knight?”
A large man in ordinary-looking armor.
While everyone, including herself, was unable to move even a step, the knight strode boldly forward.
The person inside that armor had seen that monster more than anyone else.
So she was not afraid.
If there was anything she feared, it was losing the people dear to her.
‘I mustn’t hesitate here.’
It was something no one else could bear, so she had to bear it herself.
Valdrova made her decision.
She quietly clenched her fist.
Krrrunch....
The gauntlet that nothing had ever been able to pierce shrieked as though it might shatter at any moment.
‘Without hesitation...’
She would sweep it away with a single blow.
It was then, just as that fist was aimed at the gigantic monster.
Rumble—.
What broke Valdrova's concentration was the sudden sound of thunder.
The Demon Lands were a dead land where everything had died.
Thunder was impossible here.
Clusters of difficult information slammed into Erika's mind.
Before she could understand everything, her instincts screamed.
“Everyone, get down!”
At Erika's command, everyone crouched.
At the same time, something enormous fell in front of the gigantic monster.
Fzzzt!!!
A great bolt of lightning that turned the world white for an instant.
Kuuuuung!!!
And then a tremendous shock wave created by the impact of the massive weight.
The bodies of those who had crouched rose about two meters into the air.
“Cough, cough...”
“Is everyone all right?”
The aftermath was severe, but no one had lost their life.
“What was that lightning?”
“Could the armored knight have an ability like this...?”
But Valdrova, too, merely stood there as though she had no idea what was happening.
Her power came from her fists, not from the sky.
‘This lightning...’
Valdrova felt a sense of déjà vu.
Having lived for so long, she knew it well.
Only one person could strike down lightning of this magnitude and sweep everything away.
They raised their eyes toward the spot where the gigantic monster had been.
In the swirling gray-brown dust, a silhouette of similar size had taken its place.
It revealed itself accompanied by a hearty laugh.
-Kahahahaha!! Where does a minnow think it’s crawling off to?!
It was the Lightning Dragon, Storeus.