Chapter 58
Ferda asked Chancellor Bernard.
Ferda brought over a bottle of liquor.
“What is this?”
“I thought you might need it.”
“The whole bottle...?”
“It’s been a difficult day, hasn’t it?”
Today was, quite literally, a difficult day.
Aside from the times he had drunk dozens of cups of coffee, Bernard’s heart had never pounded so violently against his ribs.
He couldn’t calm down.
With trembling hands, Bernard gripped the neck of the bottle and drank straight from it.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
Whiskey with an alcohol content of over sixty percent.
His throat felt as though it were burning, but he didn’t lower the bottle until he had emptied half of the potent liquor.
“Thank you for saving me.”
“There’s no need to thank me.”
“May I ask you one thing? I have to ask because this won’t... it simply won’t leave my mind.”
“Go ahead.”
“How... how did you know I would be in danger?”
How did he know?
It was the technique the now-deceased Thessalos Walther had sung the praises of so often.
Yet when Walther suddenly announced that the technique was flawed, Bernard had been angrier than anyone.
That righteous anger had clarified everything and helped Thessalos Walther realize.
-Bernard wasn’t the same Bernard he had been back then.
But by then, it was already too late.
He could not prove anything, the technique had vanished, and Bernard had ended his life as the worst chancellor in history.
In any case, Ferda recalled that memory and thought about when the chancellor had been most vulnerable.
The most dangerous moment for him was, naturally, when he was returning to the city.
‘I was lucky.’
The surveillance that might have continued for much longer had been resolved so quickly.
Ferda answered his question.
“I have ears too.”
Having heard those words somewhere before, Bernard gave a hollow laugh.
“Damn it, everyone else heard it, so why was I the only one who didn’t...?”
“That isn’t the only problem. Did someone who was essentially the chancellor of a city really come here without bringing an army? Exposing yourself to danger was inevitable.”
“Because it isn’t efficient.”
“Efficiency is foolishness to nobles.”
“Exactly. I’m feeling that in my bones today. The people who say, ‘Who would be happy that the chancellor of Escolleia was attacked?’ will taste hell starting today.”
Bernard’s face grew bright red.
Anger and drunkenness were severing the last threads of his reason.
“I never imagined... that demons would target me. To think the very demon everyone mocked as a delusional fantasy appeared before me...!”
His eyes quickly grew moist, as though he were about to cry.
“Please don’t cry.”
“Sniff, sniff... I’m sorry.”
Ferda watched Bernard wipe away his tears with a displeased expression.
“In any case, you must understand now. Demons are constantly seeking to lead this continent down the road to ruin.”
“Yes....”
“This continent must belong entirely to us. Even if it does not, it must never fall into the hands of demons.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“So I have a proposal for you.”
Ferda held out his hand to Bernard, who was intoxicated by alcohol and emotion.
“Lend me the technology known as the demon-appearance prediction device.”
Bernard’s floaty thoughts instantly settled.
“Lend it to you...?”
“Exactly. The blueprints and mechanisms needed to create the monster-appearance prediction device.”
His words were polite, but they amounted to a demand that Bernard hand over everything.
The moment he heard that demand, Bernard understood instinctively.
“Is that... what this is about?”
Bernard asked in a trembling voice.
“What is?”
“The surveillance you placed on me, waiting until I was in danger, and then...”
His finger tapped the half-empty bottle.
“Giving me this potent liquor by the bottle as well. Wasn’t all of it part of a scheme to get my technology?”
A cheap trick meant to shake him up and make him emotional.
Ferda must have been hoping he would let go of the last thread of reason precariously hooked around his pinky finger.
Ferda would deny it.
As any noble would when hiding his intentions, he would feign innocence and argue.
Bernard was choosing what to say in rebuttal, but there was no need.
“That’s right.”
Ferda admitted it readily.
Bernard, whose emotions had reached their peak, sprang to his feet.
He raised his voice in indignation.
“Manipulating someone in distress to get what you want...! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Regent Valdrova!”
Unlike the rampaging Bernard, Ferda asked calmly,
“Why should I be ashamed?”
“You’re asking why you should be ashamed? Do you really not know?! Did you think you could exploit someone’s life like that to win his favor?!”
“If I wanted your favor, I would have flattered you. I would have captivated you with empty words. But I have no interest in your approval.”
Ferda’s eyes indicated Bernard’s head.
“The sole reason I want you to live is that you possess that technology.”
“So you’re saying I survived because I was useful?”
“You nearly died because you knew about that technology. Is it really surprising that it was also the reason you survived?”
Bernard could not refute him.
He had nearly died because he was useful, and he had survived because he was useful.
But that also meant he was nothing without it.
Bernard could not bear being treated as such a person.
“You...! You’re not even human!”
He pointed at Ferda with a wavering finger, drunk and unsteady.
His soles thudded against the floor as he walked toward the door.
“If you leave this place, you will die.”
Bernard’s footsteps stopped.
The ominous words seemed to bind his feet like a noose.
“Are you threatening me now?”
“No. I’m simply stating a fact. If you wander around this late at night, monsters, not demons, will eat you.”
“I’d rather be eaten than stay in a place like this!”
Ferda set down his teacup and rose from his seat.
“If that happens, everything you have built will collapse in vain.”
Bernard’s body flinched.
Those seemingly callous words were not an expression of Ferda’s selfishness.
They were Bernard’s own innermost thoughts.
“I heard that the person who attacked the chancellor imitated him. What could someone do while wearing the chancellor’s form?”
“........”
“He could quietly destroy everything only the chancellor knows. The blueprints and records would have become a handful of ashes scattered by the wind. As if... nothing had ever existed in the first place.”
“....”
“What would come next? What do you think someone wearing the face of an incompetent chancellor would do? He would sit at your desk without permission and lie down in your bed. He would scribble with your pen and stamp approvals on everything. He would squander the budget and bring you and the city to ruin.”
“Uuugh....”
Bernard sank to the floor.
To Bernard, Escolleia and his research were his wife and son.
The thought of that wife and son being destroyed without his knowledge was horrifying.
“Sniff... sob, sob....”
Bernard finally burst into tears.
He curled up and trembled.
He was isolated and alone.
“I am the man who declared that I would conquer the demon lands. Demons are my enemies, a race of cockroaches that must disappear.”
Ferda held out his hand.
“To achieve that dream, I need the technology you possess.”
Bernard looked down at his hand.
All Bernard knew about Ferda Valdrova was that he was a third-circle mage.
Yet his hand was callused, not soft like the hands distinctive to the scions of prestigious mage families.
He came from a family of knights.
And he had once dreamed of becoming a knight.
That dream had been crushed, and he had become the Grand Duke’s fiancé.
Ironically, Bernard sensed honor and trust in that palm.
“I’ll share the blueprints and mechanisms for the device I’m making. In return....”
Bernard poked himself in the chest with a finger unsteady from drunkenness.
“This knowledge belongs entirely to me. Make that clear.”
Bernard was asserting his copyright.
It was a warning not to take even a little credit for it.
Copyright was a scholar’s pride and everything to him.
But to Ferda, it meant nothing.
“Your name will surely remain in history.”
* * *
Ferda headed to the Consilius territory with Chancellor Bernard.
When Bernard returned to Escolleia, Ferda planned to have Arwen look after him generously before escorting him back.
“How is the chancellor?”
Ferda asked Count Consilius, who was sitting across from him.
“The priests say the shock was so severe that he needs another day of rest. Someone who would normally have died of high blood pressure or a heart attack nearly died at someone else’s hands for the first time.”
“Is that so?”
“More than that, his body was damaged by drinking so much alcohol so suddenly. It was as if he had gone on a binge somewhere....”
“I gave it to him. It was the liquor you gave me as a gift.”
“You gave him the whole bottle?”
“He drank half of it right there.”
“Why would you do something so barbaric....”
“Because it’s painful.”
Ferda took a sip of tea.
“I gave it to him because he must be suffering enough to die.”
“It’s a miracle he didn’t actually die.”
“Resting is fine, but send him to Escolleia as quickly as possible. There’s something I need to get from him.”
“I’ll tell Arwen.”
Consilius looked bewildered.
He recalled that, just a few hours earlier, he had seen something astonishing when Ferda’s carriage entered his castle.
“Come to think of it, I’ve seen what must be several thousand monsters in my lifetime, but demons... I think this is my first.”
“There’s no need to be surprised. I had never seen one either.”
“More than anything, this is the first time I’ve heard of a demon that imitates a human.”
Demons had three distinctive traits.
Pointed teeth, red eyes, and black skin.
“I think you may have mistaken it for a doppelgänger.”
“A doppelgänger.”
“If it has no form of its own and imitates another’s appearance and voice, it can only be a doppelgänger. Chancellor Bernard was confused and must have been flustered.”
“You mean he might have mistaken it.”
“Yes.”
It was a reasonable argument.
After hearing it, Ferda thought it over carefully.
“Do you know the difference between a doppelgänger and the original human?”
“Because they imitate outward appearances, they cannot imitate what is beneath the clothes. That’s why we strip them to check.”
“Correct. But I hear this one reproduced everything inside as well. Even its genitals.”
“You examined even its genitals...?”
“If you’re careless, you’ll pay dearly.”
“Indeed. In any case, if even its genitals were identical, then it was practically a clone, not an imitation.”
“That isn’t all. I sensed the exact same mana from it as from Chancellor Bernard. It didn’t imitate Bernard; it became him.”
“It became him... Then it must have been difficult to tell them apart. Sir Jed’s powers of observation must be extraordinary.”
“I was lucky.”
Ferda was grateful that Jed was bald, and even more grateful that he kept that head polished to a gleam.
“So, are you keeping that doppelgänger demon under control?”
“Yes. We secured it in restraints and ordered the executioner to torture it.”
“Is he still doing it?”
“Yes.”
“How many hours has it been?”
“He started as soon as we arrived, so it’s been about four hours.”
Ferda rested his index finger against his chin.
“How long do you think it will take to extract the information?”
“He’s a skilled technician. If you give me two days....”
“Given my impatience, even one day is too long.”
“I’ll tell him to do his best.”
“No.”
Ferda rose from his seat.
“I may be impatient, but it would be inefficient to cause trouble when there’s already a solution.”
“Are you saying you intend to torture him yourself?”
“I have some expertise in that area as well.”
A noble had just said that he had expertise in torture.
Yet it was not surprising.
Ferda was the man who had killed Thessalos Walther without even blinking.
“May I use the alchemy workshop?”
“Yes. However, we don’t have enough ingredients for poison. Will that be all right?”
“It’s fine. I’m not making poison anyway.”
“Ah, in that case, please feel free to use it....”
Ferda walked toward the workshop, and Consilius watched his retreating back.
‘If it’s not poison, then what on earth is he making... Huh?’
His thoughts were swallowed by the question.
What he saw was Ferda’s back growing more distant.
Something was squirming and moving on his back beneath his black clothes.
‘I must be getting old; I’m seeing all sorts of things.‘
Rubbing his eyes, Consilius rose from his seat as though it were nothing.
* * *
Deep in the underground dungeon of Count Consilius’s castle.
The executioner, wearing a black hood, was carrying out his duty.
The man wearing Chancellor Bernard’s appearance hung there in a wretched state.
His tendons had even been severed on the steel torture rack, so even someone with a knight’s strength could not easily escape.
An unexpected guest entered this place, where no one came except the executioner and the prisoner.
“Greetings, Regent Valdrova.”
“May I see your handiwork?”
“Yes, of course.”
The executioner stepped aside, and Ferda walked forward.
The man’s condition was truly pitiful.
His face was swollen, and his body was covered in bruises.
“Impressive.”
Ferda muttered.
“You’re remarkably skilled at making someone suffer without killing them.”
“....You flatter me.”
The executioner was flustered by a compliment he had never received before.
This was an unpleasant place, practically bordering on hell.
For someone to enter it without hesitation and call his work impressive....
“Your role ends here.”
“I haven’t obtained any information yet....”
“I’ll take over. Here’s your payment.”
Ferda handed the executioner three gold coins.
The executioner was dumbfounded by the sudden windfall, but he knew exactly what he had to do.
After the executioner left, Ferda dragged over a chair and looked up at the bound man.
The man’s eyes were gently closed, and his head hung down.
“I know you’re still conscious. Now that you’re a demon, shouldn’t you stop pretending to be a feeble human and living like one?”
The man, who had been letting his head droop, raised it.
Unlike his swollen face, his eyes were still alive.
A glimmer of interest began to appear in Ferda’s eyes.
The story continues off the page
The Last Dance Before Midnight
A masked dragon asks the lanternwright for one slow dance