Chapter 33
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance
Valdrowa's daily routine was remarkably simple.
The enemy appears.
Tear them apart.
Roar.
Go home.
Her deeds were closer to those of a barbarian warrior than to those befitting a Grand Duke.
She had always devoted her strength to protecting people, and had never felt particularly averse to doing so.
Yet recently, she had begun hesitating over one thing.
-Grrr—.
Roaring.
The roar, so perfectly suited to the exhilaration of battle and declaring victory, had recently begun to embarrass her.
-Ah……
A voice that dwindled away like a mouse's tail.
Valdrowa cut short the feeling of release, then cleared her throat.
Valdrowa's eyes slid toward the place that had made her this way.
Her gaze turned toward the summit of the Lonely Mountain.
Whenever Valdrowa went to battle, Ferda was always waiting atop the Lonely Mountain.
‘Didn’t he come today either……?’
But all she could see at the summit was the level, tamped-down ground.
As always, he had not come to look down on her.
Valdrowa found Ferda's gaze burdensome.
Whenever he watched her, she became inexplicably hurried and restless, making herself look pathetic.
Sometimes she even wished he would not watch her.
‘Yes, that might be better.’
Valdrowa spread her wings and returned to her lair.
The Lonely Mountain of the Far East.
She had chosen it as her home because humans could not see it well, as expected.
As she entered the long cave, Luri greeted her.
“You worked hard, Master.”
Valdrowa passed her without replying.
Seeing that she did not respond even to a casual greeting, Luri followed her inside the iron door.
“Is something the matter?”
-It is nothing.
Valdrowa coiled herself up as if to say there was no need to worry.
“Please tell me anyway. Let me be of assistance.”
-Hmm……
-Has Ferda…… grown tired of me?
“……Pardon?”
Luri wore an incredulous expression.
-He did not come today either.
Valdrowa had thought it fortunate that he had not come.
But a still greater emptiness had taken root than that thought.
It was an ordinary day, no different from any other.
And yet she felt as though something enormous had vanished.
“It has only been twice. A week, at most. That is far too short a time compared to the years you have endured, Lady Valdrowa.”
-Of course. I know that.
Only a week at most, only twice at most……
Why was that word—“only”—so heavy?
“Lord Ferda has been busy lately.”
Ferda had been dealing with many matters recently.
He was cooperating with merchants and handling the proposals submitted by local lords.
Once he entered his office, he often did not emerge until the moon was high in the sky.
-Even so…… did he not continue coming before?
Valdrowa was right.
No matter how busy he was, Ferda came out whenever he heard that Valdrowa was fighting.
And whenever their eyes met, he always smiled at her.
-He must have lost his affection because…… I do not even give him a glance.
She lowered her head gloomily and sighed.
Of course, Luri did not think so.
‘If he had grown tired of her, he would not be working so hard.’
Ferda was moving to care for those under Valdrowa's rule.
The driving force behind it was undoubtedly his affection for Valdrowa.
-Luri.
“Yes, Master.”
Valdrowa painfully opened her mouth.
-You know…… that thing the young ladies do.
“Are you referring to a tea party?”
-Yes. That thing.
Luri was considerably surprised by her words.
Valdrowa had avoided contact with humans ever since the incident with the prince.
-Could you…… suggest a tea party to Ferda?
She had taken a great step forward by deciding to face her fiancé.
* * *
Ferda had become a Third-Circle mage with three overlapping circles.
The First Circle was a point,
the Second Circle was drawing lines that connected points,
and the Third Circle was for those who manipulated lines and wove them into surfaces.
Those surfaces were magic circles, and this was the stage at which one could truly begin using magic.
‘The Magic Library is broken, too.’
The Magic Library was a memorization method that filled one part of the mind exclusively with magic and formulas.
It could only be established upon reaching the Fifth Circle, and had naturally vanished when Ferda returned to the past.
‘Even so, the magic is in my body.’
The magic beneath the realm of the unconscious.
Like rummaging alone through a collapsed library, he decided to try drawing spells at random.
He concentrated his mana in his right arm.
Mana moved as quickly and naturally as the three overlapping layers of his Circle.
‘Drawing a magic circle.’
It was the stage of being a true mage, and yet not being a mage at the same time.
That was because it was the stage when one began serious practice in drawing magic circles.
‘The first step is materialization.’
Ferda recalled the magic circle standardized in his memory.
Normally, at this stage, one materialized it alongside an incantation while looking at a magic circle drawn in a spellbook.
The more skilled one became, the shorter the materialization process grew.
Ferda, however, approached this materialization differently.
Without even knowing its purpose, he began drawing a magic circle by relying on his unconscious.
Like casting a fishing rod into a lake, he waited and waited.
He simply waited for a large fish that could not resist the bait to bite.
‘I can feel it.’
Then he moved on to the second step.
‘Standardization.’
Ferda imagined a pen moving across his palm.
Following the pen's movements, a simple magic circle formed on Ferda's hand.
‘The third step: realization.’
The framework was complete, so this was the stage of injecting mana in earnest.
Once complete, a magic circle changed color as it determined the nature of the mana.
The magic circle, which had glowed a soft blue, suddenly burst into brilliant light.
‘This magic……’
Before Ferda could realize it, his body moved first.
With only his index and middle fingers extended, he pointed at one spot on the wall.
Thus came the final step.
Incantation.
“Elemental Bolt.”
At the same moment Ferda uttered the spell, a sharp electrical crack rang out.
Crackle—!
A lightning projectile flying in a straight line.
Along with Mana Shot, it was the basic offensive spell known as Elemental Bolt.
‘That was dangerous.’
If he had not aimed properly, the dent over there would have contained part of Ferda's body.
‘Drawing it out of my unconscious is not entirely pleasant.’
Even so, Ferda did not stop.
The more deeply a spell was stored in his unconscious, and the more familiar it felt in his hands, the more that meant he had favored using it.
He emptied his mind, ventured inward, and searched for another spell.
‘I can feel it.’
Ferda once again surrendered himself to the sensation and drew a magic circle.
He proceeded through materialization, standardization, and realization.
Then the magic circle, which had glowed a soft blue, turned pitch-black.
Its attribute was darkness.
In other words, it was pure black magic.
Which of the dark-attribute spells he knew was there?
Before he could arrive at an answer, Ferda's hand moved again. This time, he brought the hand displaying the magic circle toward a candle.
Only then did its name emerge.
“Shadow Hand.”
At that moment, the shadow cast by the candle began to bubble like lava.
Ferda's shadow swelled larger and larger, then detached from his arm as though shedding its skin.
It was another hand made of magic.
‘I can properly feel the side effects, too.’
There was a similar spell in the Third Tier called Magic Hand.
In the case of Magic Hand, which separated and floated in the air, it was closer to something superimposed—a glove.
That was because it connected to the right hand and imitated its movements.
Shadow Hand, however, did not superimpose itself. It flew.
It caused an entirely new hand to emerge.
‘It has no price, but it does have a major condition.’
Black magic, which offered high performance for little mana, demanded two things.
The “price” of having one's mind corrupted the more one used magic.
The “condition” of needing one's mind when using magic.
The unfamiliarity he felt as the new hand emerged was the condition.
He became confused over whether it was his hand or an imaginary one.
If he could not accept it, he failed to satisfy the “condition” for using Shadow Hand.
A mage who failed to meet the condition suffered excruciating phantom pain.
Such risks held no meaning for Ferda.
He had mastered the condition for Shadow Hand long ago.
‘Even so, it still does not feel completely like my arm.’
Ferda looked down at the black hand.
He tested it with fluid, delicate movements, tracing waves with its fingers.
It was as natural as his original hand.
Ferda turned his gaze and looked up toward the shelf.
It was a distance that would normally require him to stand and walk ten steps.
Ferda stretched out his hand toward it.
‘An arm can stretch.’
Following Ferda's imagination, which shattered common sense, the shadow hand stretched straight beyond its limit.
It extended the distance of ten steps, picked up the book resting on the shelf, and returned.
‘A Third-Tier spell, but one too taxing for a Third-Tier mage to use.’
The more finely it could move, the more imagination and mental strength it demanded.
That was the essence of black magic.
It offered high performance, but demanded a correspondingly high level of ability.
If one did not meet that level, these spells were liable to drive one mad.
‘It should become more stable once I reach the Fourth Circle.’
Thinking that, Ferda muttered,
“The next stage……”
Ferda's thoughts became complicated.
It was time to seek improvement, but he lacked the usual stimulus.
‘What I need to stabilize her completely is the amount of mana possessed by a Fourth Circle.’
It was the amount of mana required to completely suppress Valdrowa's dragon blood.
He wanted to rise somehow, if only for that.
Yet something was blocking him now.
Reaching the Third Circle so effortlessly was part of the reason, but the biggest reason was the aptitude test he had taken recently.
‘Mana fatalism……’
Ferda had learned many things from his money-hungry master, including the theory of magical fatalism.
It was a theory more meaningful to holders of the Red Circle than to those of the Blue Circle.
It was derived from fatalism, and held that even if another version of oneself awakened for a different purpose and through different events in another timeline, one's attributes would remain unchanged.
‘It was a pointless subject of debate.’
It was as meaningless as proving Utopia.
It was not called a “spell for sorting out human relationships” for nothing.
Yet Ferda, having experienced turning back time, could not dare dismiss it.
‘I no longer harbor hostility toward my family or hatred toward the world.’
Having resolved to live solely for her, he thought his attributes should be different as well.
Yet he had been given darkness and electricity.
They were exactly the same spells Ferda had used in the past.
‘What did I feel when I first learned these were my attributes?’
Whatever it had been,
he had been delighted.
There were two attributes that Blue-Circle mages could not properly handle.
Light and darkness.
Light manifested in priests through an upright heart.
Darkness manifested through negative emotions, as it did for Ferda.
Having an aptitude for darkness had the disadvantage of making it impossible to use light magic or magic that healed others.
But it had the advantage that one's other elemental magic did not deteriorate as drastically as it did for other Red-Circle holders.
Thus, Ferda could wield every element except light nearly as well as an Elemental Master.
‘But now……’
It was not good.
The story was different now that he was entangled with Valdrowa.
The blessing that had allowed Ferda to flourish in the past now felt like a curse.
‘Valdrowa is suffering because of the Aspect of Darkness, and I possess the darkness attribute.’
It had already been proven that he affected her by infusing her with mana.
But what if what Ferda was doing was not simple stabilization, but watering another seed of darkness in her, who suffered from darkness?
If what he gave ultimately led to her destruction, could it be said that he was doing it for her sake?
‘If the mana that killed her is killing her once again……’
If fate, like mana, remained unchanged.
‘Am I allowed to stay by her side?’
Even for Ferda, once a Great Mage who had commanded heaven and earth, this was unknown territory.
Whenever he stood before the unknown, Ferda had always challenged it.
But now it merely plunged him into deep contemplation.
A mage's inquiry led directly to magic.
Ferda's deep contemplation drew another spell out from his unconscious.
Following his instincts, he standardized another magic circle.
Only once the magic circle had been standardized did he finally realize it.
‘What spell is this?’
It was not merely something he had forgotten; it was a form he had truly never seen before.
Runes were densely embedded in formulas so complex they were impossible to fathom.
Judging by complexity alone, it was on a level comparable to Sixth-Tier spells.
Yet if it were Sixth Tier, it would have broken apart during standardization; it should not have appeared like this.
Above all, he would have remembered it.
It was certainly a spell drawn from his unconscious.
He had drawn Shadow Hand and Elemental Bolt from his unconscious as well, but he had eventually recognized their names.
Yet this spell, though it floated above his palm, did not bring a name to mind.
‘As if it had never had a name to begin with.’
He did not know what it was.
Ferda used the manifested Shadow Hand to take magical copying paper from the cabinet.
He placed it directly over the magic circle he was maintaining and copied its shape and patterns.
He examined the magic circle.
He tried to understand it, but even with his knowledge, it was something he could not analyze.
Knock-knock—
Someone knocked.
-It is Luri.
Ferda rolled up the copied parchment and set it aside.
“Come in.”
The young maidservant entered after opening the door.
Her face was expressionless, as usual.
“You look troubled.”
“I suppose I do after thinking about this and that.”
He glossed over the magic circle and his thoughts.
He thought it was not something Luri needed to know.
“What do you think about a tea party?”
While they were eating lunch, Luri had posed that question.
“A tea party? With whom?”
“Who else would it be besides Master?”
Luri's tone was harsher than usual.
“A request came for you to arrange one ‘personally,’ Master. If you wish, we can hold it this afternoon.”
“A tea party with my fiancé……”
Ferda imagined it in his mind.
Her wearing a dress and elegantly lifting a teacup.
Valdrowa joining in amid such a bright, lovely atmosphere.
‘I definitely want to see that.’
Proceed immediately.
Under normal circumstances, that was what Ferda would have answered.
“It is a good idea, but I do not think the timing is quite right.”
“……Pardon?”
Luri asked again as though she had misheard him.
Ferda answered once more.
“I mean there is no need to rush ahead. I need some time to think, so let us postpone it for now.”
“……”
Ferda spoke calmly, as he always did.
Luri stared intently at Ferda before opening her mouth.
“Are you playing hard to get with Master?”
“Playing hard to get?”
“The lovers’ battle to seize the upper hand. A scheme to make Lady Valdrowa fall completely for Lord Ferda……”
“It is nothing like that.”
When it came to romance, it was not easy for him to come up with such a sophisticated idea.
“Then is something wrong?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“I ask because I fear it may be the end of the world when someone who used to sing about wanting to see Master every day says that.”
“That is not it, so do not worry.”
“I will not back down until you answer me.”
Since Ferda was acting differently from usual, Luri was being equally persistent.
She looked ready to follow him even into the privy.
He considered ignoring her anyway, but—
“Have you grown tired of Master?”
He could not bring himself to do so.
The moment he heard those words, Ferda felt his heart sink.
“Why would you say that?”
“Master said so. She said you had not been watching her fight until recently. She said you must have grown tired of her because you do not even show your face.”
Grown tired of her?
How could that be?
Ferda wanted nothing more than to see her as well.
It was simply that watching her was no longer the same as it had been.
“If you have not grown tired of her, I would appreciate an answer that fits.”
Luri's loyal eyes gleamed silver.
Ferda brought out the words that had been circling inside his mouth.
“……I have merely had a lot on my mind lately.”
“Even a blind man would know that. What are you worried about?”
“There is darkness in my mana. I have been troubled by the fear that darkness might harm her.”
“Is that so?”
Luri removed her glove and held out her hand.
“Then try it on me.”
“You mean on you?”
Luri nodded.
“I am a Spawn who inherited a dragon’s blood as well. It may be only a drop in the bucket, but I can at least tell whether something harms you, Master, so try it.”
Ferda decided to take her hand and test it without thinking any further.
A small hand, like a child's.
But it was not completely soft.
Ferda infused his mana into that hand.
“How is it?”
Luri, who had been concentrating deeply on the sensation, tilted her head.
“……I am not sure what I am supposed to feel. It is only magic flowing into me, is it not?”
“You do not feel anything in particular?”
“No.”
The amount of mana Ferda released was equivalent to one Mana Shot.
Valdrowa had already reacted to this amount.
“I will let a little more flow.”
This time, it was five shots’ worth. It was enough mana to reach her mana circuits and let her feel something.
Luri's expression also changed subtly.
“How about now?”
“As you said, I do feel something, but I do not sense any harm. It is only mana, after all.”
Luri furrowed her brow and looked up at Ferda as though dumbfounded.
“Did you frighten yourself by worrying that Master would collapse from this little?”
“……Yes.”
“You turn people into dogs and break their fingers, yet you are terribly timid when it comes to Master.”
The embodiment of unstoppable power, the Red Dragon, Valdrowa.
Yet before Ferda, she was merely a fragile woman, like a single flower.
The fear that he might harm that woman was far too heavy a burden for Ferda.
“As the one who is to become your husband, should you not ease your worries rather than create more of them over such a trivial concern?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“Whew……”
Ferda nodded, and Luri let out a deep sigh.
Ferda could clearly feel how much trouble she had endured being caught between the two of them.
“So what will you do?”
What else?
“I will accept the invitation. My fiancée personally requested it, so I cannot ignore her.”
There was no choice but to face it.
“Understood.”
After hearing his answer, Luri politely bowed and left the dining room.
While she was gone, Ferda glanced at the parchment he had set aside.
‘It would only trouble me if I tried to find out right now.’
He could ask Mori and identify the type of magic circle.
He could also ask Echidna, who was well versed in runes, to interpret it.
But he had a feeling this magic circle was something he needed to understand for himself.
Thus Ferda carefully folded the parchment and slipped it between the pages of a book.
If it were naturally forgotten, then happened to fall out when he took the book down one day, he would think about it again then.
With that thought, he decided to forget it.
* * *
‘Honestly, he puts his hands to work in the most pointless places.’
Luri grumbled inwardly as she walked down the long corridor.
He had arrogantly refused the invitation, and the reason was trivial as well.
‘He is usually so forward, so why does he act like this in front of Master?’
He became a psycho who would obtain anything by any means, but when it came to Valdrowa, he was nothing but a foolish coward.
‘He thinks his mana will harm Lady Valdrowa……’
Luri looked down at her right hand.
She had said she felt nothing, but in truth, Luri had sensed something strange.
And that hand Ferda had held still retained it.
‘I do not know what this is……’
It felt strange, but there was no doubt that the sensation was harmless.
‘I cannot mention it and frighten him……’
Luri put her glove back on and continued on her way.
Even the loyal attendant had to spend her days busily, without so much as a moment to close her eyes.