Chapter 199
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
“……As you said, I’ll take steps to withdraw from the expedition….”
“I’m sorry. It’s a difficult time, too….”
“It’s all right. My circumstances aren’t difficult enough for Lady Valdrova to make an exception for me.”
“Blancaros warned me.”
“Lord Blancaros did?”
Erika was startled.
As Iorga’s representative, she had consistently attended the Grand Council, so she had faced Blancaros more than anyone else.
She prided herself on knowing what sort of person he was.
“If it were him, he would want to conquer the Demon Lands, so why would he be concerned about Lady Valdrova going in…?”
“He’s probably more afraid of me.”
“Ah….”
She felt like a fool for asking.
One hundred and fifty years ago, during the Dragon-Mage War, he had played the greatest role of all—and acquired a fearsome reputation in the process.
Between Godwin’s death and Silverwind’s death, Valdrova had been the link.
Many people had died, and many Dragon Spawns had died.
Once Dragon Spawns experienced death, they never forgot those who had earned their hatred.
Relations between the Guardian Dragons were hardly good to begin with, and she was hated by everyone regardless of faction.
Erika herself had hated her for a long time.
Now that she thought of it, she was starting to feel awkward again.
“How is Iorga doing?”
Erika flinched and trembled.
“She’s doing well.”
“She’s having a hard time, isn’t she?”
“……”
What was with this woman?
She couldn’t deceive her, no matter how hard she tried.
Those innocent-looking golden eyes merely gazed at her, yet they seemed to expose everything in her heart.
“……As you said, Lady Iorga’s situation isn’t good.”
In the end, Erika told her the truth.
“An aura of Godwin’s, similar to Lady Valdrova’s, began to eat away at Lady Iorga, so she chose to enter hibernation.”
“I see….”
Valdrova’s expression grew heavy.
It was obvious that she was genuinely worried about Iorga.
“There’s something I’m curious about. May I ask?”
The question of whether she could ask sounded terribly awkward.
“Please, go ahead.”
“……Could you tell me why Iorga killed her fiancé?”
She knew that Iorga had killed her fiancé.
All the dragons knew that, but none of them knew the circumstances surrounding it.
Erika hesitated for a moment.
Iorga was practically her parent.
Children who spoke ill of their parents were bound to be punished by heaven.
Erika carefully explained.
“As you know, Lady Iorga is the Aspect of Magic. The magic that flows from her hands is purer than anyone else’s.”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“Because she is such a person, she wanted her partner to be a long-lived and noble being. So she took one of the High Elves as her companion.”
“Yes.”
“……But that partner could not resist the temptation of magic and committed a taboo. They laid a hand on Lady Iorga’s magic. So Lady Iorga flew into a rage and killed her fiancé with her own hands.”
“……”
“That was what caused her to fall out with the High Elves. They claimed Lady Iorga had lured the fiancé into a trap and refused to hand over the body.”
Erika told her everything that had happened.
Valdrova lowered her head and pictured it all in her mind.
“……What was Iorga like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did she cry?”
Erika answered, unable to hide her bewilderment.
“Lady Iorga is always the same. She takes her mission seriously, so she doesn’t waste her emotions on such trivial matters.”
“Is that so? Yes, I suppose so….”
Valdrova’s response was unsatisfying, as though she were hastily covering something up.
Iorga had cried?
To say that Iorga, armed with cold and rational judgment, had been swept away by emotion was almost a grave insult.
If Storeus had said that, Erika would have protested even at the risk of death.
But Valdrova was different.
It felt as though she were an older sister asking about her younger sister’s well-being after a long separation.
Perhaps…
Erika began to suspect that Valdrova knew more than she did.
She was curious.
But she did not ask.
Simply facing another dragon like this was already difficult enough.
Instead, she changed the subject.
“Then, Lady Valdrova, do you intend to continue working as an armored knight…?”
“I don’t think that will be possible.”
“Pardon? Why not…?”
“The armor is a little cracked here. It looks like it might break if I put in just a little more force….”
She showed Erika the gauntlet.
Just as she said, an unnatural crack was visible on its otherwise ordinary-looking surface.
Erika suddenly remembered Valdrova clenching her fist as she had gone ahead of them.
‘The armor made by Lady Frontesis broke just because she clenched her fist once?’
The Bronze Dragon, Frontesis.
He was practically a god among smiths, the only being capable of working with the strongest metal on the continent of Cerdas.
The dwarves worshiped him as a god, and he had created half the divine treasures that appeared in countless tales of heroic deeds.
‘Wait a moment….’
The armored knight was Valdrova.
The parts she had refused to understand until now suddenly began to make sense.
“Um….”
“Yes?”
“By any chance, in Eumyangsil…?”
“Eumyangsil?”
“The place where you went underground with Regent Ferda?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Could you escape from there because you shared affection…?”
“U-uh, what??”
Valdrova remembered the time she had been trapped in that sealed room.
What came to mind were moist eyes and lips.
But what she had actually done was pull her own cheek.
‘……Or is that how humans share affection?’
Romantic affection between a man and a woman.
It was an incredibly heart-fluttering phrase, but perhaps it was something incomprehensible from a dragon’s perspective.
Now that she thought about it, even pulling someone’s cheek felt terribly embarrassing.
Valdrova’s face turned bright red.
“That might… be the case?”
Erika saw her expression and became certain.
‘They did it. They really did.’
Even in human society, being intimate with one’s fiancé was not particularly unusual.
It was a great relief that Ferda had not been subjected to anything strange.
“Ah.”
But Erika alone knew that fact.
“What is it?”
“Um…… Will you announce that the armored knight is Lady Valdrova?”
“Hmm? Ah, I don’t think I can.”
Valdrova stammered timidly.
The fact that she was facing Erika like this was something she technically should not have been doing, either.
Luri’s face, her eyes blazing as she warned Valdrova never to let Erika or Isabella find out, was frightening.
“If you continue to hide it, then Regent Ferda might be a little….”
“Would that cause some kind of problem?”
There was a problem.
The fact that she had been in Eumyangsil with the armored knight and emerged together was a serious scandal.
The expedition members had been sworn to secrecy, but even that had its limits.
Rumors were bound to spread in an instant, just as word traveled a thousand li without legs.
“……It’s nothing.”
Erika kept this fact to herself.
Nothing would happen.
After all, it had ended as nothing more than a simple incident, so there was no need to explain it.
Erika thought so.
* * *
Luri was tidying up Ferda’s office.
Ferda always managed his office himself, so it was kept clean at all times.
All tidying meant was giving the dust on the windowsill a quick wipe, so it took less than three minutes.
Even so, Luri had deliberately come inside.
She had no idea how to relieve the stress caused by Storeus’s pressure.
When she had lived as a warrior, she had released that anxiety by killing Frost Giants, and when she lived as a peaceful maid, she relieved it by eating.
But those methods had their limits.
The new method of relieving stress she had discovered was Ferda.
Simply lingering around him reassured her.
Of course, Luri herself did not properly recognize that fact.
She merely thought it was much the same as usual.
‘I’m only going to say hello and leave.’
She might exchange a little trivial conversation with him, but wasn’t that something they always did?
Ferda had probably gone to fetch Mori to translate a book, and when he returned, Luri could grumble that he was trying to translate another strange book.
There was no reason to be nervous.
‘If it’s something I can read, perhaps I could talk about it like this…?’
Without thinking, she picked up one of the books he had brought.
At that moment, the sound of the office door opening struck Luri’s ears.
She steeled herself, turned around, and began to offer a polite greeting….
“Hello, Maid!!”
“……Is that you?”
Penelope had entered.
“What is with that look, as if you’re looking at a cockroach!?”
“You’re worse than one. Cockroaches at least die.”
“Wow, what vicious abuse. Calling a devil a cockroach.”
Luri waved her hand dismissively at her with a look of disdain.
“Stop loitering and get out of here. Everyone else is working.”
“Aw, that’s hurtful. I’m working too, you know?”
“You’re spouting one unbelievable lie after another.”
“No, I’m serious! Didn’t you know? I may not look it, but I’m none other than—!! The head of product planning at Hestia Trading Company!”
The company was doomed.
If she could breathe fire, Luri felt like blasting it out with all her might.
But all that came out was a sigh, so a sigh was all she could let out.
“Anyway, as Head of Product Planning, I’ve prepared a wonderful gift for Regent Ferda!”
“What is it?”
“Ta-da!”
She had brought a banner.
The banner read:
-Congratulations on the opening.
Luri tilted her head as she read the message.
“Did you open a tunnel or something?”
“Yes, apparently word that it’s been opened has spread everywhere?”
Where exactly was that supposed to be?
For some reason, the smile on that insolent face bothered her.
It definitely was not for anything good.
“I need to show this to Regent Ferda first, but where did he go?”
“He went to fetch a scribe because he needs a book translated.”
“Ah, is that the cute blond girl with two mothers?”
“Two mothers?”
“You know, the bespectacled woman and the gloomy woman.”
They were Isabella and Echidna.
“Whenever I tried to approach her, her two mothers threatened to kill me. Was I allowed to approach her?”
“Do not assume everyone is like you, you lowly demon.”
“Aw, that’s too harsh. I can be useful, too.”
Penelope stuck out her lower lip, spoke nasally, and pretended to wipe away tears with her fist.
Luri felt like hitting her.
She crept closer and glanced at Ferda’s desk.
The books sitting on his desk had been brought from the East.
“Huh?”
Penelope recognized the writing.
“These are Eastern characters, aren’t they?”
“Do you know about Eastern characters?”
“Yes, well, when I had nothing better to do, I used to kill time reading human novels… Huh?”
Penelope’s words caught in her throat as she read the title of the book.
“What? Why is this here…? Wait, could this be one too?”
“What is it?”
“No, it’s just… perhaps I’m a little flustered?”
Penelope noticed that Luri was holding another book as well.
“Don’t tell me that book is also…?”
Penelope glanced at the title, looked back and forth between the book and Luri, and grinned.
That expression finally touched Luri’s most sensitive nerve.
“Why are you making that face?”
“No, I mean, what else could I do? Isn’t it fitting that a Dragon Spawn even more vicious than us devils is holding a book like that? Perhaps because you have such a girlish body, you look just like a girl in the throes of adolescence?”
“May I take that to mean you want your spine folded?”
“Ah! It’s not that~ Should I say it? If I do, there’ll be no going back~”
Penelope’s sinister grin did not fade.
When Luri approached with every intention of actually folding her spine, Penelope opened her mouth.
“Stop, stop! You don’t know what Eastern characters mean, do you?”
“Isn’t that why I’m doing this?”
“You don’t even know what the book you’re holding is about?”
“No.”
“Mm-hmm, yes, of course. So, gack! I’ll tell you! Let go of my hand! My neck is breaking! It’s going to snap like a hollow pastry!”
She only listened when force was involved.
Luri relaxed her grip.
“……So, to start with, this is what you’d call a novel?”
“A novel?”
“Yes. See this book here?”
She pointed to the book on the desk.
“Its title is The Nine Cloud Dream. You don’t know what that means either, do you?”
“What is it?”
“If you unpack the title, it reads, ‘The tale of how I, once a mere third-rate scholar, reincarnated as an invincible general and shared a bed with forty-nine beauties.’”
“He became a general and… what?”
“He slept with forty-nine women.”
“By ‘slept,’ you mean….”
“This.”
Penelope made an obscene gesture.
Luri barely managed to hold on to her reeling mind; it would not have been strange to say she had suffered a mental attack from a devil.
“……So you mean it’s an erotic book?”
“Porn.”
“……All of them?”
“Yes.”
Her mind went blank.
Had Ferda gone to fetch Mori so he could read these pornographic novels?
Was he going to have a blond-haired girl translate obscene content for him?
‘He doesn’t know, right?’
Ferda had common sense.
No matter how little self-awareness Mori possessed, would he really make such a young girl do something so terrible?
Her instincts refused to understand, while her mind kept trying to understand, creating a terrible discord.
“And do you know why I reaaally laughed?”
“……Why?”
“As for the title of that book….”
Penelope whispered carefully.
The moment she heard the title, Luri’s businesslike expression shattered.
“……Don’t joke around.”
“I’m not joking~ No matter how I look at it, isn’t it fate??”
“Shut up!”
“Gack!”
Luri, having lost her reason, grabbed Penelope by the neck.
“You damn devil! How dare you mock a Dragon Spawn? I’ll kill you right here and set everything straight!”
“Gack-gack! Help! Somebody help! Zed! Ferda! Lady Valdrova! Save meee!”
“……What are you doing?”
Luri could not kill her.
Ferda and Mori had entered unexpectedly.
His voice unsettled Luri, and Penelope took advantage of the opening to escape.
Luri stood with her back turned, while Penelope found a way out and scampered toward Ferda.
“O-oh, you’ve arrived! My savior?”
“Speak from a distance. Why are you here?”
“What do you think? I’m working as the Head of Product Planning for Hestia Trading Company!”
“What work?”
“I came to find a little inspiration?”
Ferda understood.
She meant that she was loafing around exactly as it appeared.
“If you have no business here, leave.”
“Yes, that’s what I was going to do. Since you’re about to have a veeeery important matter to attend to, nyahaha—pffk!”
Penelope’s body flew sideways as she was about to leave with a smug grin.
Luri had kicked her hard in the side and sent her flying.
“You’re more violent than usual.”
“……”
Luri said nothing, keeping her back turned.
“Luri?”
“!!”
Luri raised her head and looked at Ferda.
Ferda, who was facing her, was even more startled.
The Dragon Spawn with the businesslike expression was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, she looked like an innocent girl in a maid’s uniform who was terribly flustered.
Her silver eyes trembled as though an earthquake were shaking them, and her face had turned as red as a radish.
A breath welled up from her startled chest and escaped her lips.
Ferda realized it as he watched her.
“Have you caught a cold?”
“……”
“Apparently even Dragon Spawns can catch colds. Wouldn’t it be better for you to rest today?”
“……”
“Isn’t that thing in your hand my book?”
“!!”
Luri reflexively hugged the book tightly to her chest.
The cursed words Penelope had uttered kept echoing in her mind.
The title of that book was—
“Give me back that book.”
49 Ways to Tame an Insolent Maid.
Ferda wore his usual polite expression.
That polite expression stirred Luri’s emotions even further.
Even though she knew how soft those hands were, they looked incredibly rough and large.
Luri’s heart pounded just as violently.
“I-I refuse…!”
The words came out slurred like a fool’s.
“I have to read that book.”
49 Ways to Tame an Insolent Maid.
“No!”
“No this or that. It’s mine.”
“I belong to Lady Valdrova!”
“……?”
He suddenly wondered what nonsense she was talking about.
“I brought it, and the ownership belongs to me—.”
“Didn’t you say you didn’t want it?!”
Luri shouted at the top of her lungs.
She was so flustered that the horns and tail she had hidden emerged, threatening Ferda.
Ferda took a small step back, wondering what on earth was happening.
In that opening, Luri scooped up all the books on the desk in her arms.
He saw her face as her hair flew around her.
“You…!”
With a face that looked as though she might cry, she said,
“You perverted masochist!”
With that sudden abuse, Luri flew away.
She vanished like the wind, leaving no chance to say anything.
Left awkwardly behind, Ferda and Mori looked at each other.
“It seems we have nothing left to do now.”
“……”
Mori reacted with profound dejection.
Ferda quietly patted her head.