Hatred and Obsession

“Wow. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of Valdrova Castle at least once, but I never expected an opportunity like this to come up.”

Erdes took exaggerated steps, dancing as she walked.

Her distracting gait would normally have drawn criticism, but no one said a word.

That alone showed how serious the atmosphere was.

“But why is it so quiet? Isn’t it suspicious that the regent is personally showing us around? Did you kill everyone because you didn’t like us? Or are you preparing to stab us in the back?”

She had quite the way with words.

“Everyone working inside the castle is an ordinary person. They’re not the sort capable of doing something like that.”

“Ah, I suppose that’s true. If a swallow-looking fellow and a fellow streaming tears and snot are knights, what sort of disgrace would the others put on display?”

Erdes giggled.

She acted like an immature child, but she was not someone to overlook.

This woman was the greatest mage on the continent.

Destroying an entire family with a single finger would be easy for her, and even kings bowed their heads at her appearance.

She was a living calamity, a reckless mage.

That was why Ferda had herded everyone in the castle together.

The castle’s staff were far from accustomed to high formalities and had no ability to withstand that pressure.

“Anyway, it feels meaningful to have actually come here. Valdrova Castle is truly huge. I even tried breaking in without permission once, but I couldn’t pierce the barrier at all.”

“Am I supposed to be pleased about that?”

“You should be. This is praise from humanity’s strongest mage, you know? If I couldn’t break through it, that means no other human ever could, right?”

Ferda muttered inwardly.

After getting so thoroughly crushed by me.

Goz was the one who objected.

“It was built for dragons. Naturally, a human cannot tamper with it alone.”

“Are you defending it just because you’re both dragons? Honestly, dragons are impossible to understand.”

“Mind your words, Erdes Roton.”

“Yes, yes.”

Ferda was annoyed, but he agreed.

To think those who hated Valdrova were defending her.

Was this a case of even mortal enemies respecting certain lines?

While Erdes grumbled, they reached the end of the red carpet.

Ferda felt as though he were standing at the end of a fuse.

Would this bomb explode, or would it be a dud?

Carrying that thought with him, he opened the door.

The reception room was made of gold and red marble.

A single attendant stood ready to receive them, prepared for every contingency.

She lifted the wide hem of her skirt and bowed.

“Welcome. I am Luri, Lady Valdrova’s attendant.”

She stood demurely, as though nothing were wrong.

Yet her eyes kept trying to avoid meeting Goz’s.

Goz, for his part, paid Luri no attention.

Unlike when he had tried to abduct her, his lukewarm reaction felt suspicious in itself.

Meanwhile, Erdes giggled and threw herself onto the sofa without permission.

“Oh, come on, you keep making the atmosphere so murderous. This is why men are hopeless, you know? In an old-fashioned place like this, you’re supposed to laugh and chat, right? Hey, maid, could you get me a cup of tea?”

“I’ll have it ready shortly.”

As Luri moved, Ferda raised a hand lightly to stop her.

“Tea for the greatest mage on the continent? Do you really need to prepare it?”

“In that case……”

“I’ll pour it myself.”

The reason Ferda had volunteered was that Erdes’s behavior was beginning to feel strange.

If he left her alone, he would get swept up in her pace.

Ferda intended to serve the tea.

He did not, however, rise from his seat.

A shadow moved at his feet, then leaped out as it took shape.

It was Ferda’s Shadow Hand.

Erdes’s face stiffened as she watched.

Making it so obvious that he used black magic was tantamount to provoking her to kill him.

Ferda paid no attention and poured a cup of tea.

His etiquette was flawless.

“This is a premium tea from the plateaus of the western region. Please have a cup.”

He set the steaming tea before her, but her gaze was fixed solely on Ferda.

Her lifeless, rotten-fish eyes looked ready to draw a blade at any moment.

“Too bad I’m not thirsty?”

“Didn’t you say you needed something to wet your throat?”

“Exactly. Women really are impossible to understand, aren’t they?”

Murderous intent gleamed in her smiling eyes.

Ferda, however, met that gaze head-on and took a sip of tea.

She’ll shut that mouth of hers now.

“Now, let us talk.”

Goz adjusted his seat and leaned forward.

“I mean, why you secretly set foot in someone else’s territory.”

He was trying to establish the background of the incident first.

Ferda answered.

“There was a demon research facility nearby.”

“A research facility from your imagination?”

“Wasn’t there a landslide in that area recently? As though something had exploded.”

“……”

He did not answer.

Which meant it was true.

“I realized it was where they were conducting their project and tried to destroy everything. That’s why I had to move quickly.”

“So you used the Bending Bridge to cross over and get the jump on them?”

The words Bending Bridge came from Goz’s mouth.

That must have been information Erdes had given him.

“Why didn’t you inform us?”

Goz asked.

“Because it had to be done covertly.”

“And why was that?”

“Didn’t I say it was covert?”

Goz’s face twisted savagely.

He looked ready to bare his claws at any moment.

“Ferda Valdrova, as if trespassing into our territory without permission weren’t enough, you killed His Lordship’s son with your own hands. If you truly do not desire war, you had better speak plainly.”

Ferda did not avoid wars that came to him.

But he had no intention of starting one needlessly.

“As I said before, I did kill that Abel Silverwind fellow. And yes, he was the one who caused the trouble. But none of it happened because it was what I wanted.”

Ferda added,

“He was a demon worshiper. It seems he was trying to gain power through rebellion with a demon’s help.”

“How did you find that out?”

“There was no need to complicate matters. He confessed everything on his own. I don’t know whether he saw me as a fish already caught or mistook me for a priest in a confessional, but he confessed of his own accord.”

Goz did not fly into a rage at the words demon worshiper.

Which meant Sitri had stamped the contract seal securely.

The balance shifted slightly.

Ferda decided to say something that was perhaps a little unnecessary.

“Do you know what else he said? That Goz Silverwind was nothing more than a usurper, unworthy of his power.”

“It sounds like there’s quite a bit of discontent on the Silverwind side too. Don’t tell me some small fry grew ambitious and started harboring thoughts of—”

“Shut up.”

“You know I’m on your side, right?”

He cut off Erdes, who was picking at a painful wound.

“There may well be those who doubt my power. And if they are Silverwind descendants, it is only natural that they should challenge it. But if what they gain comes from a contract with a demon, that is another matter entirely.”

What they wanted was pure strength.

Strength forged from the blood inherited from the master of steel and wind.

“But what does that have to do with the one you killed? Are you saying he did me a favor?”

“Do you think so? I told him I would help if he wanted to overthrow you.”

A breeze stirred.

How could he not be furious when someone had openly proposed a plot to kill him?

“But he refused. Not because he was noble, but because he needed me for his own plan to overthrow you.”

The wind died down.

“You? A mere human?”

“He said he would use me as bait, then absorb my power.”

“Whom? Valdrova?”

“Luri.”

Goz’s body went rigid at those words.

Erdes, watching his reaction, cut in.

“Luri? Who is that?”

“She exists. There’s a girl by that name.”

Goz tried to brush it off vaguely, but Erdes was persistent.

She glanced at the silver-haired child maid and clapped her hands.

“Wait, is it that little miss? Looking at her, I guess it is. There was a trace of a small frame left behind—was that little miss the one? Is that child the—”

“Erdes Roton. I did not bring you here so you could chatter.”

His vertically slit pupils glared menacingly.

His gaze seemed even more irritated than before.

Erdes gave an awkward smile and mimed locking her lips.

Irritated, Goz’s gaze unconsciously shifted to Luri.

Luri could not turn around; only her back was visible.

Ferda continued explaining the situation.

“Luri came to save me, and in the end, she had no choice but to kill Abel.”

“Hmm. Then shall we call our Luri, who miraculously survived that place, and have her testify?”

Do whatever you want. I have nothing to hide.

Ferda was just about to nod at Erdes’s suggestion when—

“Enough. You have said quite enough.”

It was Goz who refused the testimony.

At Goz’s interference, Erdes glared at him in displeasure, then turned her eyes to Ferda.

She smiled sweetly again.

“Well then, since the two gentlemen have had their say, I suppose it’s my turn to speak.”

Was there even such a thing as taking turns in this conversation? The way you kept barging in, I thought it was just a chaotic mess where everyone said whatever they wanted.

He nearly said it sarcastically, but held back.

Erdes stretched grandly and smiled languidly.

“Well, it was a moving story, Regent Ferda. But I don’t think I can take it at face value, you know?”

It was the reaction he had expected.

“There must have been evidence that he had made a deal with a demon, right?”

“Yes, I found it. He hid it in a rather unusual place, too. His heel. Well, no one checks every nook and cranny down there, so it’s understandable that Silverwind didn’t know.”

She acknowledged that it had been in a place easy to overlook.

But Ferda felt uneasy about the way she was looking at him.

“But I’m Erdes Roton.”

The greatest mage on the continent.

A paragon of mages, a witness to history, and a war hero.

A lawless tyrant whose word became law and who recognized no borders.

At the same time, an authority on black magic.

Someone once said love and hatred were separated by only a thin line.

Erdes knew black magic as well as she hated it.

“I can spot the schemes of those goddamn demon bastards in no time. For example, when the seal was stamped, for one.”

A smile played at the corners of Erdes’s mouth.

She looked like a spider watching prey caught in its web.

“The contract seal engraved on Abel Silverwind hadn’t even dried yet, had it?”

Ferda had not known that it was possible to determine when the seal had been stamped.

He had no interest in contracts with demons.

No, more precisely, the nature of such contracts and the like had never been his concern.

The only things that mattered were how demons ensnared humans and how to avoid it.

That was what most people focused on.

Erdes’s obsession, by contrast, was broader.

She was obsessed with everything connected to black magic.

It was a compulsion.

The kind of person who pursued every possible fixation to wash the disease of black magic from the continent.

Her obsession was ultimately driving Ferda into a corner.

“Shall I tell you what I think?”

She began laying out her deduction.

“Regent Ferda, you made ‘some sort of deal’ with Sitri, the Great Demon of Hell. You said you came to destroy the demons’ facility, didn’t you? That may have been the deal. What if it collapsed within a few hours, rather than a few days? Sitri would have an excellent pretext. Ignoring the maxim that one must never deal with demons, you quietly rode in on a Bending Bridge.”

Her words were astonishingly accurate.

They were enough to make Ferda feel the pressure.

“But then something unexpected happened. The Bending Bridge you rode in on closed for some reason. Regent Ferda was left all alone, like an abandoned duck egg, and Abel appeared. Was that unexpected event one of Sitri’s traps?”

As she asked the question, Erdes smiled with her eyes and stared intently at Ferda.

She was trying to see through the mask Ferda wore, to what lay beyond it, while Ferda desperately concealed it.

“No. It wasn’t. That wasn’t Sitri’s plan.”

Had she read his expression?

She continued with another line of reasoning.

“If it had been such a shallow trick, you would have noticed. You’re not an idiot, Regent Ferda. You would have checked repeatedly that there were no traps in the Bending Bridge. But…… even so, you couldn’t use the Bending Bridge on the way back. Which means you brought something out of that demon settlement. Something important enough to risk your life for.”

His throat was burning dry.

She continued, slowly twirling a finger as though hypnotizing him.

“The encounter with Abel Silverwind must have been one of the traps that bitch Sitri set up. It would have been someone to punish you if you entertained any other thoughts, keeping you from harboring them. Even if you died, it was a useful card that could still cause trouble afterward. But for some reason, she didn’t use that trap. Instead, she helped you by stamping a contract seal on Abel Silverwind.”

He nearly let out a gasp of admiration.

Even while being cornered, he was impressed to that degree.

Could hating one field this intensely really allow someone to see this far ahead?

The depth was on an entirely different level from anything Ferda could sense.

“Why would a demon help you? If she had simply left you alone without stamping the seal, Silverwind would have come looking for you to question you, and you would have sweated while trying to persuade them, wouldn’t you? War would practically have become a foregone conclusion, wouldn’t it? Why would she willingly give up the chaotic situation demons love most?”

His mouth went bone-dry.

He consciously kept his nerves taut, afraid his throat might bob.

“These are the three clues that led me to my conclusion.”

Erdes said as she raised her index finger.

“First, you use black magic.”

Middle finger.

“Second, the Great Demon of Hell saved you instead of trapping you.”

Ring finger.

“Third, the faint scent of a demon keeps appearing in this house.”

She struck straight at his blind spot.

No matter what, there was one conclusion Erdes must not reach.

‘Penelope.’

He was already walking a tightrope over whether he had made a contract with a demon.

If she discovered he was hiding a demon, Erdes’s hostility would swing completely against him.

That hostility would be more than a mere nuisance.

Erdes was someone the First Prince, the most influential man after the emperor of the Empire, was trying to curry favor with.

She would unquestionably put a brake on the development of the Far East.

Everything was tangled into a massive headache.

‘That would be a problem too.’

But it would be an even bigger problem if, during the process of explaining himself, it were revealed that Penelope was a means of holding the Great Demon’s life in his hands.

She would certainly cling to Penelope with all her might.

That could not happen.

Everything in this castle existed solely for Valdrova.

Just as Ferda was about to open his mouth, Erdes asked with a smile in her eyes.

“You’re a demon’s child, aren’t you?”