Chapter 4
After leaving the dragon’s lair, Luri led Ferda to another place.
It was inside a castle built halfway up a mountain visible from afar.
A road led straight up toward the cave leading to the lair, and following it brought them directly to the main entrance hall.
“Neat.”
Ferda could tell that Valdrowa was more serious about marriage than anyone else.
Otherwise, she would not have gone so far as to build a proper-looking castle atop her lair, nor would she have tailored everything to human standards.
‘They said it was built for the Third Prince’s engagement.’
If the Third Prince married Grand Duke Valdrowa, he would gain the power that came with it.
He would effectively become the king of the eastern region, so she must have created a residence befitting his position.
However, an incident had occurred in which he was torn apart down to the level of consonants and vowels.
The place had effectively become somewhere no one used.
Ferda had assumed it would naturally be abandoned after the Third Prince’s death, but it was being maintained strangely well.
It did not feel as though they had hurriedly cleaned in preparation for Ferda’s arrival. Rather, there were subtle signs that it was carefully maintained on a regular basis.
“Who manages this castle?”
“I do.”
“Is there anyone besides you?”
“I alone attend to my mistress.”
“Then all of this……”
“I manage all of it. That should be answer enough.”
Luri continued to reply curtly.
She seemed extremely displeased that he had accepted the engagement.
‘Like a dog.’
It was not an insult. She was literally like a dog.
A dog that growled at the threat of the affection it had received being directed elsewhere.
That was why Ferda could simply let it go.
‘As long as she doesn’t bite me, it’s no concern.’
A guard dog only needed to guard the house well.
Luri led Ferda to an incredibly spacious bedroom.
‘This is about the same as combining five rooms I used to occupy.’
It was on a level comparable not only to his father Erembald’s chambers, but even to the emperor’s bedroom.
“This is the guest bedroom.”
“The guest room is this extravagant?”
“The guest being received by none other than a dragon, the ruler.”
Dragons were beings at least comparable to the emperor of the Empire, if not superior.
In any case, the fact that he had been shown to that room told him enough about his current position.
“For now, am I merely a ‘guest’?”
“Yes. Since you are not yet the fiancé, you are ‘exactly’ a guest.”
“Do you show this much hostility to guests?”
He had asked purely out of curiosity.
“No. I simply hate humans.”
“You’re honest.”
“And among them, I hate you the most.”
“You’re being unnecessarily honest.”
“There’s no reason to hide it.”
Luri shrugged with an expressionless face.
She was so irritating that it was as though she were shouting for him to hit her.
“Yes, it’s better not to hide things, after all.”
Ferda genuinely believed this was better.
It was a hundred times better than smiling like a noble while planning to stab him in the back.
Whenever Ferda accepted her words calmly, Luri instead shot him a displeased sidelong glance.
“I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“Aren’t you afraid of me?”
Ferda tilted his head at the question.
“Why should I be afraid?”
“Because I tried to break your neck. If my mistress had not given the signal, I would have snapped it just like that.”
Crack-crack.
When Luri clenched and unclenched her delicate hand into a fist, a murderous sound rang out.
‘I would have died…….’
He already knew that Luri harbored murderous intent toward him.
Even so, Ferda had no intention of avoiding her hand.
‘If the engagement failed, I would have had no reason to live anyway.’
Back then, he had thought that dying would not be so bad.
Hiding his true thoughts, he changed the subject.
“Let’s put off this pointless discussion of rank for later. So when will the engagement ceremony be held?”
“The engagement ceremony with my mistress will be held one month from now.”
“Will it be conducted formally?”
“If you call inviting people she does not even care about and making a fuss ‘formal,’ then no. We will hold a simple ceremony in the lair. There will be three of us.”
“Three?”
“My mistress, me, and the guest.”
She kindly indicated Ferda with a nod of her chin.
“I see. One month from now.”
“Since we are discussing it, there is one more thing I would like to tell you.”
Luri said this.
“Although the engagement ceremony will be held one month from now, that is also a deadline.”
“What sort of deadline?”
“The deadline for proving that you possess the ability to be her fiancé.”
Ferda thought about it once more.
Getting married was insanely difficult.
“Was this ordered by Grand Duke Valdrowa?”
“No. This is my own decision.”
“That sounds arbitrary. Is an attendant allowed to impose her own will?”
“If it is necessary, it is something I must do. To be perfectly honest, my mistress is far too soft compared to her reputation.”
She really was incredibly honest.
“You already know that, don’t you? That must be why you did not bow your head before the tyrant Valdrowa, either. In all of history, you are the only human who could show such an attitude while standing before a dragon.”
“I see.”
“My mistress wanted to become engaged to a human in the first place, so I let it slide. But unlike my mistress, I am not soft.”
Luri’s eyes gleamed sharply.
They were eyes that made the air cold, as though a well-honed sword had been pressed to his neck.
“I believe that the consort of a Great Ruler must possess a ‘caliber’ befitting that position.”
A dragon and a human.
The gap between them was so vast that it could not be compared to something like the difference between an emperor and a beggar.
In other words, she had set an utterly unreasonable condition.
“So? Are you saying that a mere human like me must gain power comparable to a dragon right now?”
“Of course not. I do not expect you to become strong immediately.”
Luri snorted.
“You need only show that you possess ability.”
She clenched her small fist as she spoke.
“Willpower is unnecessary. Willpower cannot solve everything. What matters is showing, within a month, that even you, as frail as can be, possess at least a thread of potential.”
She emphasized this in a firm, clear tone.
“That is the first gate for the fiancé who would inherit Valdrowa’s name.”
After taking all of that in with his eyes and ears, Ferda thought,
‘My fiancé has found herself a truly good person.’
Although her mouth was foul and she hated him to the extreme, Ferda liked Luri.
She hated humans, but she did not conceal what Ferda needed as a fiancé and demanded that he meet it.
That meant she was more loyal to Valdrowa than she was consumed by her own hatred.
‘She is this loyal…… so why didn’t I see her even once?’
When Ferda raided Valdrowa’s lair, Luri had not been there.
He tilted his head at the strangeness, but put it off until later since it was not important.
“I understand. So let’s say I demonstrate my ability. How far would I have to rise, then? Would I need to become the equivalent of the emperor of the Empire?”
Luri shook her head.
“At the very least, you must be strong enough that the other ‘Great Rulers’ cannot look down on you.”
That meant he needed ability that could easily surpass the emperor of the Empire.
“I see.”
“?”
When Ferda calmly answered back, Luri tilted her head.
“Aren’t you being too arrogant? Are you stupid? Or do you think dragons are laughable? Either way, I don’t like it.”
“Neither.”
“Do not think this will be easy. Especially for a human as weak as you.”
“As it happens, I don’t think it will be easy, either.”
“Then why are you acting like that?”
“Don’t worry about my attitude. If I show enough ability to convince you within a month, won’t that be enough?”
“……”
Luri pushed out her lower lip.
She could not help feeling displeased after having her own words thrown back at her.
‘He’s overflowing with confidence.’
Luri thought about it, but could not figure out the source of that confidence.
Luri already knew how Valdrowa’s fiancé was used in the Arken Empire.
It had become a sort of euphemism used when driving out useless half-wits. How could someone like that possibly possess talent comparable to a Great Ruler?
But Ferda was different.
‘Enough.’
He was the youngest person on the continent to reach the eighth circle, an Archmage who had once used the ninth-circle Wish spell.
He was a man who had already made the emperor of the Empire kneel at his feet.
‘It is possible to attain a caliber that does not fall behind a dragon’s.’
If it was merely possible, then it was nothing to Ferda.
Certainty settled over Ferda’s face.
“Disgusting human.”
Luri said this with an utterly fed-up expression.
* * *
The castle built atop Valdrowa’s lair was named Valdrowa Castle after her.
Ferda stayed at Valdrowa Castle for a week.
His overall life there was not bad.
The only problem was that he had to handle almost everything by himself.
Nobles always traveled with servants to attend to them. Unless they brought at least one servant, they could not maintain their dignity as nobles.
So if someone had told him to live without an attendant, he would have leaped up and asked whether they took him for a nobody.
But this was not a problem for Ferda, either.
‘I’ve grown used to living alone.’
If anything, it was more uncomfortable when someone came to dress him.
For someone accustomed to standing on his own, life at Valdrowa Castle was generally free of inconvenience.
‘It’s actually better than living at the mansion.’
When he had been with the Rosnova family, Ferda had always been on edge.
Even while being hated, he had no one he could trust.
Anyone who seemed to grow close to him was always desperate to drag him into a swamp.
‘That Luri woman hates me, but compared to back then, she’s practically an angel.’
At least Luri did not put strange things in his food or smear soap on the marble as childish pranks.
That alone made her nothing short of an adorable little puppy.
‘Though I don’t know how long even that will last.’
Luri had given Ferda an assignment.
To prove that he possessed potential rather than being a hopeless half-wit.
‘The deadline is one month.’
What could he show within that time?
Ferda considered what he could do from several different angles.
But there was only one conclusion he reached.
‘Magic, then.’
Ferda possessed a talent for magic.
If he showed Luri a fragment of that talent, she would acknowledge him at least a little.
‘To use magic, I need to break through a mana circle.’
A circle was a circuit created by rolling the mana moving chaotically through the body into the shape of a single ring.
The problem was that Ferda did not know how to create that circle.
‘No, I do know how.’
He needed overwhelming vengeance and hatred.
If he followed the path Ferda had once walked, he would become an eighth-circle mage even faster than before.
‘But I must not do that.’
Ferda recalled something his master had once said.
-The first button is the most important. Whether the first circle is Red or Blue determines the course of a mage’s life. But you do not need to worry about that, do you?
He was a fat, lecherous man who cared about nothing but money, but he had done his part when it came to magical training.
A Red Circle was a mana circuit created by emotional upheaval.
A Blue Circle was a mana circuit created through calm meditation.
Each had clear strengths and weaknesses.
A Blue Circle formed slowly, but it was stable.
Because it allowed a mage to calmly assess the circumstances in any situation, eighty percent of mages possessed Blue Circles cultivated through training.
A Red Circle, on the other hand, formed quickly but was unstable.
Unlike the Blue Circle, which emphasized composure, its primary driving force was emotional upheaval.
Thus, although one could grow strong quickly, one was liable to be consumed by those emotions and become insane.
‘What I need to do is break through a Blue Circle.’
If he wanted to avoid ending up in the same future, that was the right answer.
But the circumstances were not on Ferda’s side.
‘I heard it takes at least three years for a Blue Circle to form.’
He had to show convincing results within the three weeks he had left.
The time was absurdly short, but Ferda did not grow impatient.
He would find a way to accomplish it somehow.
* * *
“Are you making preparations?”
Luri, who had always quietly brought him breakfast and nothing more, asked him a question for the first time.
Ferda quietly speared a piece of salad with his fork and answered,
“I’m making preparations.”
“You say that, but there has been no change at all.”
“I’m working on it while thinking that things will work out if I keep at it.”
“I see.”
Luri did not seem to have high expectations.
Over the past few days, Ferda had been researching ways to break through a mana circle.
But the only thing he had realized with certainty was that the two circles differed in nature, even though they used the same mana.
‘I won’t even be qualified by the time of the engagement ceremony.’
It was not like Ferda to make a bold claim and then accomplish nothing.
Nevertheless, he would calmly search for a method again today.
Just as he was about to welcome another morning,
Ruuuumble!
A clash and tremor that shook heaven and earth traveled through the castle.
It had happened nearby.
“What was that?”
Luri answered,
“My mistress is conducting a monster extermination today.”
“A monster extermination?”
“She is sweeping away the things crawling in from the Land of Demons at the eastern edge.”
Ruuuumble!
Normally, it would have been something he could simply dismiss with a ‘Is that so?’ But Ferda was different today.
‘Perhaps…….’
Ferda had a hunch.
Perhaps the answer he was searching for lay there.
“I want to see that battle.”
“Pardon?”
Luri answered with an expressionless face.
“It would be better if you did not.”
“Why not?”
“A mortal’s mind is fragile. No one who has witnessed my mistress’s battle has remained sane.”
Ferda recalled his former self.
Back then, he had been in the grip of madness.
He had been able to encounter dragons known as Great Rulers time and time again.
But the one that had chilled him the most was the red dragon.
‘It might be because she was showing hostility.’
Even so, there was such a thing as caliber.
If he had felt fear even when he was an Archmage, what would happen to him now?
He might wet himself and let out an ugly scream.
“So please do not indulge in pointless curiosity.”
“No.”
Ferda shook his head at Luri’s warning.
This was not pointless curiosity.
It was an inquiry in search of the answer,
“I want to watch that battle.”
It was the duty of one who would take a consort.