Damn It

Grand Council Hall.

Representatives of all the sentient races spread across the entire continent of Cerdess had gathered in the Grand Council Hall.

Though the hall was spacious and filled with people, it had no assigned seats.

Yet everyone sat with their own factions or neighboring allies, displaying the size of their power.

‘It was truly a tense balance back then.’

To Ferda's eyes, it was like looking at a map of the various factions.

The largest nation on the continent was the Arken Empire.

To counter it, the kingdoms were pursuing a comparable scale in the form of an alliance.

That meant the balance of power on the continent was still being maintained.

As a member of the Arken Empire, Ferda took a seat among the Arken Empire's faction.

The Grand Council Hall lacked the splendor he had felt in the banquet hall.

Its design was restrained to prevent anyone from getting carried away by such splendor, making it resemble other councils.

The seats arranged in a semicircle were designed to draw everyone's attention toward the center.

And seated in that central position was the master of this Grand Council Hall.

‘The White Dragon, Blancaros.’

Snow-white hair, white eyes, and the beautiful face of a young man untouched by the passage of time.

The whiteness was so otherworldly that it was enough to make one mistake it for radiance emanating from him.

That was the immortal beauty possessed by dragons.

‘So this is truly a dragon.’

As Ferda watched him, his eyes, which had remained still, moved.

Ferda thought he might have imagined it, but that illusion did not last long.

Blancaros was staring at Ferda.

His white eyes were cold and pure.

The moment that gaze touched him, Ferda felt the Circles within his body stir.

An instinctive warning one felt in the presence of an absolute powerhouse.

Strangely, there was no displeasure in that warning.

Just as when he had stepped into Blancaros's territory.

Three men and women with similarly white hair stood behind him.

They were the three spawns Blancaros had created through the ascension ritual.

The Tongue, the Scales, and the Hand.

Blancaros moved his hand.

When he crooked a finger, the woman who had been standing erect and orderly cleared her throat and opened her mouth.

She was Blancaros's Tongue.

She spoke for the White Dragon and served as the representative conducting the proceedings of this council.

Her voice rang loudly through the hall.

“I sincerely thank everyone who has come for the peace of the continent.”

She read from the script she held.

With a touch of formality, she began reciting the agenda items to be discussed in earnest.

“We shall begin the mediation of the dispute between King Hurdret and Duke Yurei.”

The first matter was a simple dispute.

It was called a dispute, but its scale was that of a war.

At that, a man frowned and rose from his seat.

“I sincerely thank the representative of the Master of Great Order for arranging this gathering. Before we proceed, I request a correction so that the facts may be set straight. This entire situation, this calamity, was a war caused by King Hurdret’s invasion.”

Then another man rose.

It was King Hurdret, the man who had been named.

“It was our people who died first. What was I supposed to do when the villagers rose to avenge them?”

“You were the one who brought in the army, King Hurdret!”

“Please maintain decorum. This is a place for mediation. The final compensation will be determined based on the evidence submitted.”

Blancaros's Tongue cut off their quarrel, preventing the argument from dragging on.

“Each side, please submit the evidence you have prepared.”

The evidence collected by Hurdret's and Yurei's sides was documented and submitted.

The purpose of mediation was to receive compensation for the damage suffered in the war.

The submitted documents rose one by one and spread out before Blancaros.

It took only one minute for him to read everything written over two months by the ministers of each country and domain.

Blancaros crooked a finger at a boy.

The boy was holding a set of scales.

He was Blancaros's Scales.

The scales the boy held tilted to one side.

As Blancaros's Hand watched, it began documenting the result, while the Tongue delivered the verdict.

“Judgment! Duke Yurei shall pay King Hurdret sixty thousand gold in compensation.”

It was a moment when joy and sorrow crossed.

Duke Yurei, having been ruled against, flew into a rage.

“That makes no sense! They were the ones who invaded, so why am I the one who has to pay compensation!?”

“It has been determined that you violated the laws of war by taking no prisoners and obstructing the priests treating the wounded. After weighing everything, we have determined that Duke Yurei bears greater fault.”

Duke Yurei rebutted.

“Other countries do the same things! Surely King Hurdret’s knights did such things too! Yet you’re saying we aren’t allowed to—”

“As I said, you need only present evidence.”

Blancaros's Tongue explained once again in a businesslike voice.

“This is an absolutely neutral zone, a place where law and order are observed. If you request mediation here, we act according to the laws and order of the continent of Cerdess. Evidence takes precedence over custom. If the same acts were committed, present the same evidence.”

In other words, even if the other side acted first and they had merely retaliated, without evidence, Yurei would be the only one judged to have done it.

Depending on how decisive the collected evidence was, it was more than enough to turn the aggressor into the victim and the victim into the aggressor.

Yurei's face was twisted with fury.

Blancaros's Tongue, who had been silently looking down at him, pointed to the result confirmation document before him and spoke.

“Duke Yurei, now that the dispute mediation is complete, please sign to confirm the result.”

Duke Yurei stared down at the document, consumed by anger and grief.

He had no choice.

The moment he signed the document, he would cross an irreversible river.

Whether he was wronged or not, from that moment on, he would become the aggressor.

‘Its effect was absolute.’

Once it was decided, it could not be undone.

‘But he couldn't refuse, either.’

Everyone seated here was both witness and judge, while they could also become predators.

Refusing to accept a verdict handed down by the Grand Council would give them an excuse to tear him apart.

The enemy of yesterday was still an enemy, but yesterday's ally could become today's enemy.

“I shall… abide by your words.”

Duke Yurei accepted it humbly.

His handwriting trembled as though an earthquake were shaking it.

‘Was this the moment when the aggressor and victim changed places?’

With no information, that was all Ferda could do—speculate.

“If you felt wronged, you should have seen it through to the end yourself.”

Someone muttered under their breath.

Ferda quietly agreed with those words.

If he had wanted to secure compensation, he should not have sought mediation; he should have fought a war of annihilation in which one side was destroyed.

If you ended things halfheartedly, it was only natural for them to return as revenge.

Blancaros's Tongue moved on to the next dispute.

There were several more disputes after that, but they were extremely minor.

Conflicts between dwarves and elves.

Internal strife among the dwarves over dynasties and bloodlines, and so on…

They fought endlessly, repeatedly postponing disputes in which nothing was exchanged but arguments that would never be resolved and that neither side intended to resolve.

Thus, after two hours, they brought the endless fighting to an end.

“There are no more mediation cases, so let us move on to the agenda. As proposed by the chancellor of Escolleia…”

The Tongue swallowed, paused for a beat, and said,

“The agenda is the proliferation of monsters and the possibility of the demonkin’s return.”

As Escolleia was a vast city of scholars, its leader was a chancellor rather than a mayor.

The bald chancellor stepped onto the platform.

Years of burning academic fervor had left him looking as though even his hair roots had vanished.

“It has been 138 years since Godwin, the Master of Deep Darkness who led the continent into chaos, died. However, if you look at this graph…”

The chancellor used magic to turn his drawing into an image and floated it in midair.

Pointing to the graph with a finger, he said,

“Unlike his death, the graph drawn to date shows that monsters are rapidly increasing.”

An upward-trending graph.

But the increase itself was not large.

Seeing the graph, people began tossing out comments one by one.

“It hasn’t gone up by very much.”

“Isn’t the problem not how much it has increased, but the fact that it’s increasing at all?”

“Those are only projected figures, aren’t they? They could actually fall further. You seem to be overreacting.”

Opinions were almost evenly divided.

One side thought making a fuss over a slight increase was ridiculous.

The other thought it was serious enough to warrant such a commotion.

They argued back and forth in that manner.

Listening closely, it was clear that rather than the continent's well-being, they were doing nothing but looking for excuses against one another.

‘An excuse to arm themselves.’

The side calling for vigilance wanted to arm itself.

The side calling it a fuss wanted to prevent the others from arming themselves and making pointless expenditures.

They did not care whether the continent broke apart.

Only what they possessed mattered.

That was when it happened.

“Watch your words!”

Someone slammed a desk and rose with overwhelming force.

Yet the voice was young and girlish, far removed from that force.

When they turned their heads, Erdes Roton was standing there.

“The fiancée of His Grace the Grand Duke Valdrova is here, you know! Do you think you can get away with flapping your mouths like that?”

Everyone whipped their heads around looking for Ferda, and those who found him fixed their eyes on him.

Ferda muttered inwardly.

That damn woman.

“You mean Valdrova’s representative?”

“That evil dragon has brought a representative?”

People whispered, reciting rumors about Ferda Valdrova one by one.

The chancellor, whose face already looked as though he were walking barefoot across a thornbush, appeared even more troubled, as if a spark had landed on his instep.

He glanced at Erdes, who had brought things to this point.

She looked happy.

Like an arsonist watching a fire across a river.

He had come because there were times when he needed to step forward, but for now he wanted to gauge the atmosphere a little longer.

With everyone's attention focused on him, Ferda decided to say what he had to say.

“It is true that monsters are continuously flocking to the Far Eastern territories. However, that seems different in nature from the matter being discussed here, so I will refrain from speaking on it separately.”

“Thank you, Regent, for putting it that way. I am discussing the frequency of monster appearances across the continent, excluding the Far Eastern territories.”

The chancellor looked like a man who had seized a lifeline.

It was clear that his right to speak was very weak.

“Thus, our current speculation is that someone is deliberately summoning and creating monsters—in other words, that the demonkin’s followers may be increasing.”

“Demonkin followers…”

“Aren’t they madmen who can’t be compared with devil worshipers?”

Though demonkin followers and devil worshipers were both scorned by society, the two were clearly different.

While devils wanted to rule this world, demonkin wanted this world destroyed.

Devil worshipers had something to gain, but demonkin followers had nothing to gain.

In other words, they were pure incarnations of evil itself.

“What could they possibly gain from that?”

“If it is the demonkin’s desire, wouldn’t it be the resurrection of the Black Dragon Godwin?”

The resurrection of the Black Dragon Godwin!

This was a problem on an entirely different level from the mere increase in monsters.

Even those who had criticized it as a fuss fell silent.

Everyone's attention had already shifted to the dragon spawns occupying the front seats.

“A resurrection…”

Chairman Blancaros spoke for the first time.

No sooner had the Master of Order spoken than the atmosphere was seized in his grasp.

“What do you think?”

Blancaros asked the dragon spawns.

The first to answer was a Silverwind spawn.

The silver-haired ones each bore scars in various places on their bodies, regardless of age or sex.

They were the honorable medals of the Silverwind who guarded the north.

“Unlike the rising number of monsters, we are still steadily wiping out the remnants. I swear, no one hates the Black Dragon Godwin more than we do.”

“I have always held your loyalty to Silverwind in high regard. What of Iorga?”

Iorga’s representative was a young, sophisticated woman of great poise.

Her face had the vitality of a woman in her early twenties, but it also possessed a dignity forged over the years.

“We have detected no unusual fluctuations in mana on the continent of Cerdess. We are also continuing to receive reports through adventurers about areas that could be concealed. If there had been a major incident capable of turning the continent upside down, we would have been the first to notice.”

Naturally, a priest of Odograsado took over.

“Our Golden Scales Order is also keeping a close watch on the demonkin’s movements, and we see nothing in particular that needs to be treated as a problem.”

All three representatives of the dragons attending the Grand Council answered that there was no need to make an issue of it.

They were all representatives of guardian dragons whose foremost concern was the safety of the continent.

They were far removed from the politics of mere humans, and their words carried a different weight.

Having heard them, Blancaros closed his mouth again.

Once again, Blancaros's Tongue answered in his place.

“I conclude that this agenda item need not be treated as an immediate problem, but that we must remain vigilant in light of the continued upward trend. Do you object, Chancellor of Escolleia?”

“I do not.”

The chancellor, who had been sweating profusely, shook his head and stepped down from the platform.

Since it was too ambiguous to conclude that it was mere alarmism, he was satisfied simply to have it recorded.

“The next proposer is Ferda Valdrova…”

Blancaros's Tongue stopped speaking.

It was different from the pause when she had read what the chancellor had proposed.

She was hesitating over whether it was permissible to announce this.

That hesitation made her shift her gaze toward Blancaros.

Blancaros noticed the Tongue’s gaze and answered with his eyes.

Blancaros's Tongue received her instruction.

“The agenda is to recognize the status of the Red Dragon Valdrova… as a guardian dragon.”

The sound vanished from the Grand Council Hall.

Those inside were figures of ducal rank.

They ruled territories the size of countries and possessed military might.

It was sensitive enough to make even such people hold their breath.

Since it had already drawn attention once, there was no need for anyone to look around.

It was an issue so sensitive that ordinary humans would never dare propose it, let alone participate in it.

It was suicide.

It was something no one could do unless they were utterly determined to die.

Yet Ferda, who had made that proposal, rose from his seat as if to flaunt it.

The way he walked was like watching an acrobat.

The spectators felt dizzy, while the person walking was completely unfazed.

Once he stepped onto the platform, Ferda looked up at the council seats.

What he could do was obvious.

“I am Regent Ferda Valdrova. Though this is my first council meeting, I have presumptuously put forward a proposal.”

He swept his gaze over them once before opening his mouth.

“As you can well understand from this proposal, I came prepared to make someone here my enemy.”

And having put forward the proposal, all he could do was stand by his convictions.