Chapter 21
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
She wore a light, flowing dress, and her hair had been combed smooth as silk, like a young lady’s.
She had already been beautiful, but once properly dressed, she shone like the daughter of a noble house.
“Is this your handiwork?”
“Hehe, yes. She wouldn’t answer and just sat there, so she looked like a doll. I was bored, so I played with her a little. Is it all right?”
Echidna twisted about bashfully.
Ferda recalled the golem Echidna had made.
It had looked like a child’s drawing, with unnecessarily large, sparkling eyes and a tiny head.
‘Is it because she’s a woman too that her aesthetic sense isn’t warped when it comes to women?’
It had been pointless, but it wasn’t bad.
‘It’s actually quite good.’
Even if Mori was a tool, she was clearly a living being, and living beings required more delicate care than tools.
Since Mori couldn’t look after herself, it was only natural that she needed someone to take care of her.
“If you have the time, could you look after Mori?”
Echidna’s eyes sparkled as she vigorously nodded.
“Of course! You have no idea how wonderful it is to touch such a pretty child with my own hands. Ehehe, ehehehe……!”
“I’d rather you didn’t do anything strange. She’s an indispensable talent.”
“Ah, I-I don’t do that sort of thing either. I’m not an evil witch who eats children or men, you know? I’ll cherish her, brush her hair, feed her, and take care of her!”
Since even the way she spoke was ominous, everything she said sounded strange.
Echidna, who had been laughing gloomily, absentmindedly brought a lock of Mori’s hair to her nose and inhaled its scent.
‘She really is strange.’
Ferda decided not to doubt his judgment.
Mori simply looked up at Ferda, unfazed.
Her face showed that she was waiting only for his next command.
“That’s all for today. Return to your room and rest well for tomorrow.”
Mori nodded, rose from her seat, and walked away.
That was when it happened.
Kuuung—!
The castle reverberated loudly once.
Mori lost her footing as she walked and fell over.
“Oh my! Mori!”
Echidna hurried over and helped Mori to her feet.
Ferda held his breath and waited, wondering whether there would be another tremor.
Fortunately, there was no second one.
Echidna broke the silence in a flustered voice.
“W-What happened? Does this sort of thing happen often here?”
“This is the first time.”
The castle occasionally shook, but this was the first time it had happened in the middle of the night.
‘And it’s never shaken this hard before.’
As regent, Ferda needed to find out what was happening.
“Echidna.”
“Yes?”
“Lay Mori down in her room. She’ll be needed tomorrow. And you return quietly as well. Understood?”
“Ah, understood!”
Echidna picked Mori up and moved away.
After watching Echidna leave, Ferda stepped into the corridor and continued walking.
‘The sound must have come from the lair.’
Ferda decided to go down to the lair.
After walking for quite some time, he saw a soft light glowing in the middle of the corridor.
It was Luri, holding a lantern.
“You’re going the wrong way.”
With a calm, expressionless face, she pointed in the direction Ferda had come from.
“The bedroom is in the opposite direction.”
Though she pretended merely to be giving him directions, Ferda glimpsed her true intentions.
“You’re hiding something from me.”
“Yes.”
She did not deny it.
“So could you please return to your room?”
“That won’t do. As the person who will become the master of this castle, I need to know what is happening.”
“You are not the master of this castle.”
“I will be soon.”
The silver and blue eyes held one another’s gaze.
The two exchanged words without either of them giving an inch.
Luri was the one who took a step back from the standoff.
“My master is suppressing her bloodlust.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have no need to worry. What just happened is rare. It normally doesn’t occur. The rest of the time, she is occupied with her work—”
Ferda stepped closer to Luri.
His eyes narrowed fiercely.
“What do you mean?”
Irritation and anger radiated from him.
They were emotions he had never once shown Luri, despite how rudely she had treated him until now.
Luri furrowed her brow.
“What else could it mean? What would she do to suppress the urge to destroy?”
“…….”
“My master is fighting the desire to smash through that enormous iron door and turn the world upside down. That desire, which knows no solution other than crushing everything in its path, accumulates within her heart every single day. Because it is her very nature.”
An evil dragon would forever remain an evil dragon.
The reason she could not bear the name Guardian Dragon was partly due to the slander against her, but ultimately because she could not withstand her destructive urges.
“My master lived by killing monsters and venting that destructive impulse. If those monsters stopped appearing, what do you think she would do?”
Ferda recalled the memories of Valdrova etched into his heart.
The answer sprang from Ferda’s lips.
“……Destroy herself?”
“Yes. If there is nothing to destroy, she does that.”
Luri knew this well, for she had watched over her for a long time.
And it was like a natural disaster that even her loyal attendant could do nothing about.
“The person you are engaged to is precisely such a person. Unable to control herself, she has already inflicted many wounds on others.”
Therefore, Luri warned Ferda, who was so young and foolishly stubborn.
“So I would rather you didn’t keep saying that you want to see her. If your selfish feelings end up hurting my master—”
Please stop.
Luri, who had been delivering a sharp rebuke to Ferda, could say no more.
Luri’s eyes widened as she looked up at him.
There was good reason: something utterly out of place was falling from Ferda’s face.
‘Tears……?’
Tears were flowing from the eyes of that thick-skinned man, Ferda.
Only a single drop.
Though his expression remained unchanged, tears were flowing down his face, and Luri was left in shock.
There was no doubt that he was crying because of what she had just told him.
Ferda realized it only belatedly when he felt something trickling down his cheek.
“Ah.”
Ferda, too, was startled by his own condition.
He brushed it away with his index finger and apologized to her.
“I’ve shown you something unpleasant.”
Unlike his eyes, his voice held no moisture.
It was as if his tear ducts had shriveled up and forcibly expelled the water that had collected inside them.
“I understand what you mean.”
Ferda abandoned the inquiry and returned to his room.
“I’m sorry for bothering you. I’ll return.”
Luri quietly watched Ferda walk away.
By the time Ferda’s figure had faded from sight, she was finally able to open her mouth.
“What an inscrutable man…….”
Luri had watched many humans over the course of her long life, so she thought she understood them well.
Yet the more she came to know Ferda, the less she understood him.
He was a man who had broken even an ally’s finger in the name of fairness, and killed a noble because he foresaw trouble if the man were left alive.
A man without blood or tears had shed tears.
‘Just from hearing about my master…… can someone really do that?’
They had known of each other’s existence for less than a year.
And yet how could he feel such profound emotions?
No matter how many times Luri repeated the question to herself, she could not find an answer.
* * *
“Tears……”
Ferda was surprised by that fact as well.
That he could shed tears.
Those tears had not been caused by his own emotions.
‘They seeped into me while we were having that conversation.’
When he realized that the great vibration had been Valdrova,
and that she had been engaging in self-destructive behavior,
Valdrova’s emotions seeped into Ferda.
‘Self-loathing.’
Whenever she could not control herself, she cultivated her self-loathing.
She plunged herself into the vile things she had buried at the bottom of the pit of her emotions.
She listened to the cursed voices echoing in the deep abyss and strangled herself until she suffocated.
Crushed beneath that self-loathing, she suppressed her destructive urges.
She wanted to exist, but at the same time, she did not want to exist.
She fought alone like that every day.
That indescribable emotion was raging deep within Ferda’s core.
‘The Red Circle is spinning.’
It was still not enough to advance another level.
If Ferda focused and stayed awake for several days straight, he could undoubtedly reach the Third Circle.
It would be dangerous, but it would also bring rapid advancement.
‘No.’
However, Ferda put the brakes on the spinning Red Circle.
‘Not this time.’
Ferda recalled the emotions he had felt when he reached the Second Circle.
The sensation that had been tickling him vanished along with the achievement.
‘I mustn’t forget this…….’
In this life, he had decided to live for her.
The resolution he had made back then was that even if he could not make her happy, he would not make her sad.
This emotion was directly connected to her sorrow.
He did not want to brush aside her sadness along with his achievement.
‘I’ll solve that first.’
Moving forward would come afterward.
That is why I am standing here.
* * *
The next morning.
Ferda went to Mori, who was waiting near the study.
Echidna had groomed her from head to toe.
Ferda asked her:
“Do you know a great deal about dragons?”
She had the Library of All Things in her head.
It contained all the information about everything in the world.
So, naturally, she nodded.
“Even about the Red Dragon, Valdrova?”
Nod, nod.
“Can you describe her?”
Mori nodded, took hold of her pen, and began to write.
Instead of the flowing script used by scribes, she wrote in clear, legible block letters.
-Dragons are those who fought to turn primordial chaos into order. What the survivors were granted was the very essence that forms the continent. The Blue Dragon, Morgan, was granted the power to rule over mana and water, while the Silver Dragon, Silverwind, was granted the power to control wind and ice.
It was a passage from the history of the continent that Ferda had heard in a cultural studies lesson as a child.
-The Red Dragon was granted the power to wield strength and fire. Her individual martial prowess is the greatest among all the dragons.
“So is that why there are so many slanderous names like tyrant and demon dragon?”
-Although she is consistently described as an object of awe, her official designation as an evil dragon is relatively recent in dragon history.
“Since when?”
-Since the War of Dragons and Demons—in other words, since Godwin’s death.
The Black Dragon—the Aspect of Darkness.
It was the day the first dragon on the continent was killed.
-The Black Dragon Godwin was known as a dragon who ruled over darkness, but it was only later, when he revealed his ambition, that they learned chaos was also part of the essence granted to him. Godwin revealed his ambition, became the source of all demonic forces, and threw the continent into chaos. However, the other rulers rose up, and he was ultimately killed by the Red Dragon Valdrova.
“So?”
-The leading hypothesis is that Godwin’s power destabilized Valdrova’s power during the process of killing him. As a result, the Aspect of Power was unable to suppress her own power, causing further casualties.
Valdrova’s rampage.
Although the Demon King’s arrival killed many people, her rampage also killed and burned many.
‘Innocent humans and creatures—and even Silverwind.’
It was a tragedy for which she would have to atone for all eternity.
“Is there no way to suppress it?”
Mori closed her eyes without a word.
She was searching through all the books in her head.
After meditating for five minutes, she opened her eyes again.
She shook her head.
“I see.”
Ferda accepted it calmly.
It had been contradictory from the outset.
If there were a way to suppress the Red Dragon, known as the Aspect of Power, could she still be called the Aspect of Power?
She was condemned to suffer because of her own power forever.
‘Is there truly nothing I can do for her?’
Ferda was tormented by the thought.
He pictured her stripping away her own scales and bleeding.
Helplessness pressed down on him like a thousand-weight burden, while a thousand spears of despair pierced his heart.
He felt a pain akin to what he had felt when he absorbed her heart.
‘If only I could do something for her…….’
That was when it happened.
A tiny touch tapped against Ferda’s collar.
Mori, who had been holding her pen, tugged on his clothes.
A tool did not move without reason.
The fact that she had moved meant that Ferda’s command was taking effect.
“Does this mean you have an answer for me?”
Mori nodded.
She moved her pen again.
-Based on the information provided, I have confirmed a hypothesis for suppressing her.
The moment Ferda saw the next sentence she had written, the dense fog in his heart cleared and the sun rose.
Mori’s eyes were clear as she looked straight at Ferda.
-According to the hypothesis, Ferda Valdrova, you can suppress her.