Chapter 233
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Meanwhile, the Imperial Army.
“The barrier protecting the inner city is collapsing!”
The mage checking the situation shouted.
As Ferda had said, all the totems had collapsed, and the absolute barrier had lost its power.
Ureas, who had been taking a strategic break with his arms crossed, asked the adjutant beside him.
“What about the allied forces?”
“Their strategy is similar to ours. They seem likely to charge when the barrier collapses.”
“So it’s first come, first served.”
Greed flickered in Ureas’s eyes.
Everyone already knew why he intended to enter the inner city.
Yet no one dared offer him honest advice.
Even if the battle was going poorly, Ureas would immediately execute anyone who displeased him.
He rose from his seat and shouted.
“Prepare yourselves, soldiers! The time to behead the demonkin lackeys is near!”
Ureas drew his sword, and his personal guards also made every preparation.
The Imperial Army was not the only one moving.
A moment later, another barrier around the inner city collapsed, revealing an entrance before them.
“Good, soldiers! Advance!!”
The spearmen entered first.
They were used as experimental rats to assess the situation.
As expected, the moment they entered the inner city, the monsters launched an ambush.
It was a space packed with monsters and demonkin.
“May Althe’s light be upon us!”
The knights, armed with knightly honor, drove the enemies back.
Even the knight-class demonkin, who had been evenly matched enough to seize several knights, could not put up much of a fight.
It was then.
Something charged toward them from among the monsters and demonkin.
“May the void be with King Heinkel!”
It had the shape of an ordinary human, but hair that radiated a red glow.
Just as one of the knights tried to block it with his body, it exploded on the spot.
Bang!
Blood and pieces of flesh flew everywhere, creating a grotesque scene.
“Damn it!”
Though they were equipped with helmets and armor, those protections necessarily left small gaps to allow movement while blocking sharp swords and arrows.
They could not prevent the fanatic’s blood from seeping inside.
Just as he felt a slight sense of disgust and was about to rejoin the battle,
“Huh……?”
The knight, who had tried to touch his face as though it were merely unpleasant, sensed something strange and threw off his helmet.
“Aaaah! Aaaaagh!!”
His companions, puzzled by his sudden loss of composure, were horrified when they saw his face.
His face was collapsing as though it were being dissolved by acid.
The damage spread rapidly from the places where the blood had splashed, and in less than ten seconds, he was reduced to a skeleton.
That was not the end.
-Hwehehe……!
Clack!
Death was only the beginning.
Black magic stripped away every right and authority from those who stepped into its domain, then rebuilt them anew.
The knight became a Bone Knight and a slave to the black mage, swinging his sword at his allies.
“Watch out for the blood! They’re creating undead with it!”
It was a common suicide tactic used by black magic fanatics.
This was not something that could be solved simply by telling people to be careful.
This was a place where the crystallized essence of black magic had settled upon the ground, a darkness that even a single torch could not pierce.
The knight commander, unable to stand by and watch, drew a scroll as his trump card.
“You filthy, wicked things! May Althe’s light be upon you!!”
When he tore the scroll, the magic circle inside rose into the air and activated.
The high-level light magic, Sacred Sanctum.
A gentle light rose from the floor around the knight commander, brightly illuminating the dark interior.
-Grrr……!
-Kheek!
It was a powerful light that stripped the undead of their mana and purified them.
However, the Legion’s mana was so powerful that it could do little more than make them falter.
Yet that alone was enough.
“Look! Those wicked things are losing their strength!”
“Althe is great!”
“The Arken Empire is eternal!”
“Light upon the Emperor!”
The knights, bolstered by the great power of faith, were emboldened and shouted their battle cries.
In a war where people charged into death, anyone was bound to go mad.
“Find the sources of King Heinkel’s power! Then kill every last one of them!”
Ureas prepared to head for the audience chamber.
He smiled at how smoothly everything was proceeding.
Until he heard that voice.
-Brother!
The smile that had settled on Ureas’s lips vanished.
It was the voice of a woman he knew all too well.
“Olivia?”
Ureas could not understand.
She was supposed to be waiting in the rear as planned.
There was no way he could hear Olivia’s voice here.
‘Could it be a hallucination?’
He already knew about the demonkin’s method of using illusions to bewitch their opponents.
So he had to stick to the plan.
-Aaaah!! Brother! Save me!
“Olivia!”
“Commander!?”
But none of that mattered.
If he could hear Olivia’s voice, then Olivia was here.
With his eyes rolled back, Ureas began running toward the sound.
“Everyone, follow the commander!”
To protect Ureas, who was acting on impulse, his guards had no choice but to break formation and run after him.
Ureas charged headlong into the enemy lines.
“Get out of my way, you pieces of trash!!”
Ghouls blocked his path and demonkin followers rushed at him, but Ureas smashed through every obstacle with agile movements and pressed onward.
In the end, his personal guards could not catch up with him.
The place he reached looked like one of the castle’s storerooms.
When he peered through a small hole, Ureas’s worst fear became reality.
“Brother!”
Some ruffians were trying to rape Olivia.
“Gaaah!!”
Bang!
Using superhuman strength, Ureas smashed through the door and entered.
Before they could react, he threw his sword at one of them.
The rapidly spinning sword pierced the man’s head and embedded itself in the wall, while Ureas lunged at the remaining man, seized him by the collar, and slammed him onto the floor.
Then came the mount.
Thud! Thud!
“Don’t touch my sister!!”
With his gauntleted fist clenched tight, he smashed the man’s face until its shape disappeared completely.
As the rush that had swept over him subsided, Ureas freed Olivia.
“Olivia, are you hurt—.”
“Brother……!”
Olivia embraced him with tearful eyes.
“Thank you. For saving me…….”
Ureas could not believe it.
His sister, who would not even let him hold her hand, was now in his arms.
Something began to boil inside Ureas’s chest.
When he tried to embrace Olivia in return, she slipped out of his arms.
“I’m so relieved. I thought I would never be able to hold my head up and speak again…….”
Olivia sniffled through her tears, unable to continue.
Ureas comforted her.
“Do not worry. Who could hide beneath the light of Althe? Even if you had suffered such humiliation, Althe would never abandon you.”
“I wasn’t talking about Althe.”
Olivia wiped away her tears and said,
“I was talking about Regent Ferda.”
“……What?”
Ureas was shaken to the core.
His words caught in his throat, and he could only gasp for breath.
As though Ureas’s expression did not concern her at all, Olivia continued.
“The person who takes my first time must be none other than Regent Ferda.”
He was confused.
Even so, he somehow managed to open his mouth.
“Th-that man already has a fiancée, does he not? The dragon is his fiancée, is she not?”
Although he said this, Ureas knew the laws of the Empire.
The Empire permitted polygamy, and Ureas already had three wives.
One was the daughter of a duke, and the other two were daughters of counts.
Ureas could, as could most nobles, but Ferda never could.
He was human, while Valdrova was a Red Dragon.
Even if she was treated like a guard dog, she was still a dragon.
She would not even take another man herself, much less allow Ferda to take a concubine.
“That’s not true.”
Olivia’s lovely voice rang clearly in his ears.
“Lady Valdrova is extremely generous, you see.”
With every syllable she uttered, Ureas’s heart crumbled piece by piece.
“You know, don’t you? In a dragon’s life, humans are nothing more than amusement. Humans seem like mere pets. And you cannot share that kind of love with a pet. So what else can you do? You find the pet a suitable mate.”
“Th-then…….”
“Yes.”
Olivia placed a hand over her chest and said,
“I’ve decided to marry Lord Ferda.”
Those words tore Ureas’s heart apart.
It was impossible.
There was no way Olivia could say something like that.
Even though he knew she had no feelings for him,
even though he knew she had feelings for Ferda,
she was not the kind of girl who would openly say something that would tear his heart apart.
Yet those words pierced him like a dagger, and even now, they were slowly making their way toward his heart.
Why?
He knew that Olivia was not here, that her story was a lie, and that none of this was happening, yet it was unbearably painful.
It was then.
Ureas, who had collapsed to the floor, noticed the object in Olivia’s hand.
It was the source of this delusion, the one truth that proved thousands of lies to be true.
The decisive object that would make him let go of his last shred of reason.
That object was a handkerchief.
But it was not Olivia’s.
Ureas knew what Olivia’s handkerchief looked like.
It had frills and gave off a faint scent of roses.
As an imperial princess, everything she owned had to be pure white or gold.
But that handkerchief was black.
A black handkerchief embroidered with red could not possibly belong to the imperial princess.
Ureas knew who owned it.
‘Ferda Valdrova.’
It belonged to that man.
No item the imperial princess held lasted for more than two days, yet this one remained unchanged even after several days.
She had no intention of returning it to Ferda, and whenever something troubled her, she would fiddle with the handkerchief where no one could see, or cautiously breathe in its scent.
Even Ureas, who was not particularly clever, understood its meaning clearly.
Olivia had feelings for Ferda.
Her feelings for him went beyond mere affection, and her gaze never left Ferda.
“Olivia…….”
Ureas called her name.
She was his only sister.
It was a brother’s duty to support his sister’s love.
He could not do that.
“Olivia…….”
Ureas did not want to let Olivia go.
He had always projected his mother onto her to soothe his own loneliness.
He knew it was ugly and that he had to stop, but he did not stop.
Why?
Why was he so obsessed with Olivia?
Because he missed his mother?
He missed her, but he was no longer a child.
His complicated emotions tormented and confused Ureas.
Amid the agony that threatened to drive him mad, something astonishing happened.
“Ah…….”
Those tangled emotions began to intertwine even more tightly.
Like strands twisted together to make a rope, the complicated feelings found a pattern.
They bound together firmly and formed a single, elongated emotion.
“Olivia is…… mine.”
It was love.
When the shackles of blood ties and convention could no longer hold him back, Ureas felt something break free inside his heart.
It was an overwhelming power, the source of his very being.
If he had to define it, it was golden blood.
“Commander, you cannot stay here. Please, leave this place……”
The adjutants who had arrived late forgot what they were going to say.
“Good heavens, Althe……”
There was nothing left there that could be called Ureas.
* * *
“Hmm…….”
Ferda, who had been dragged away without being able to resist the summoning magic, opened his eyes.
The dark interior of the inner city.
Although not a single ray of sunlight entered properly, reaching the fifth circle had given him vision that could pierce the darkness.
The place where Ferda had been summoned appeared to be King Heinkel’s bedchamber.
‘Life signs…….’
None.
He extended his shadow and searched the area thoroughly, but there was nothing there.
Ferda paused to catch his breath and thought.
‘As expected, the Legion was not something to underestimate.’
Before Gokma invited Ferda, he had used only three things to interfere with the summoning formula.
Mana Flare, a spatial-transference spell formula, and an artifact activation.
In a normal battle between mages, they would have delayed the formula or used auxiliary magic to dismantle the interference.
Gokma had not done that.
It meant that petty tricks did not work against an Invitation.
They said that winning a siege required three times as many troops, did they not?
It seemed mages were no exception.
‘But why invite me to a place like this?’
He could sense neither life nor magic there.
‘If he intended to kill me, he would have dropped me into a room teeming with monsters.’
Could even this be a hallucination?
Ferda thought it over carefully.
Perhaps, when he opened his eyes, he had confronted Trauma, even if only for a moment.
He considered it rationally, and then pessimistically, again and again, but he had not met its eyes.
‘That means he intends to use me as a chess piece.’
The question that followed was whether those words belonged to King Heinkel or Gokma.
It might have been Gokma’s.
‘Demon King.’
Suddenly, he remembered what Alberto had told him when he came to visit.
Alberto had told him that Ferda was a man who could become the Demon King—and that Gokma was the one who had said so.
He must intend to turn Ferda into the Demon King for the glory of the demonkin.