Chapter 1
Killing My Fiancée
There was one unparalleled individual who had become a Grand Mage through hatred alone.
His name was Ferda Rosnova.
Born as the third son of House Rosnova, a family of knights, Ferda had always possessed an unusually frail body.
He was the child of a concubine, and unlike the brown eyes passed down through generations of the Rosnova family, his eyes were blue. Because of that, even the servants of House Rosnova frequently looked down on him.
Eventually, in the year Ferda turned eighteen, his father, Erembalt Rosnova, delivered a piece of news.
“An engagement between you and the Dread Queen Valdrova has been arranged.”
It might have sounded like a simple engagement, but among nobles, the phrase an engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova was practically an idiom.
Simply put, it was a kind of death sentence.
Accepting the engagement meant walking directly to one’s death. Refusing it meant defying the family’s wishes and being exiled.
“I will leave, as Father wishes.”
“Very well.”
Naturally, Ferda valued his life more and chose to survive. He abandoned the Rosnova name and left the family estate.
A profound sense of betrayal took root in the young Ferda’s heart.
He could not forgive the elder brothers who had looked down on him, nor the servants who had treated him with contempt.
But the person who enraged him most was, of course, his father.
You knew how hard I was trying...
Ferda had forced his weak body to move so that he could be recognized as a member of the family.
Every day, he trained until he coughed up blood and calluses covered his hands.
His father had once watched him as though he found those efforts admirable.
However, after Ferda spent several years making no progress, his father’s expression gradually changed.
It was as though he had realized the child he had raised was actually a cuckoo chick.
By the time he finally cast Ferda out, his father had looked at him as though he were staring down at filth.
Even days later, Ferda could still vividly feel that gaze.
I’ll never forgive you.
His sorrow gradually transformed into rage, then blazed into the flames of vengeance.
“I’ll make all of you regret abandoning me.”
Ferda clenched his fists tightly.
At that moment, he felt something stir and awaken inside his body.
Mana began rotating in a ring around his energy core.
It was the moment commonly known as the opening of a Circle.
On the very day Ferda Rosnova was banished from his family, he became a mage.
Awakening as a mage was a blessing.
On the Serdes Continent, the mere ability to wield magic was enough to elevate one’s social standing.
However, awakening at the age of eighteen, as Ferda had, was considered unfortunate.
It was far too late.
Every mage drew upon their inner strength as a driving force.
To fully master that concept, one had to begin training from childhood.
Those who failed to do so had to learn it when they were older, enduring several times more pain in the process.
That was how it should have been.
But Ferda’s late awakening presented no obstacle whatsoever.
The force that allowed him to draw out his mana was none other than hatred and the desire for revenge.
—Making a fuss about becoming a mage at his age. Pathetic.
—He said he’d do anything we asked, so we can just consider him a useful slave until graduation.
The senior mages and even the younger students who looked down on him only strengthened that driving force.
Since he had started so late, sources of motivation were scattered everywhere around him.
Keep barking all you want. I’ll make every last one of you lick each of my toes clean.
His desire to grow stronger and his obsession with revenge never faded.
With each passing day, they made him stronger.
Before long, he surpassed not only the promising senior mages but even the master who had taught him.
For quite some time afterward, Ferda’s toes remained polished, never having so much as a chance to gather dust.
Ferda believed his power was a blessing.
Whenever I hate someone, I grow stronger.
There was no shortage of things around him to hate.
And as rapidly as he gained strength, his personality grew noticeably more violent.
Eventually, Ferda became one of fewer than a hundred people on the continent to open a Sixth Circle, earning the title of Archmage.
That was when he finally crossed the line.
He returned to House Rosnova, the family that had cruelly cast him aside, and killed every last one of them.
He placed swords in the hands of the servants who had insulted him and forced them to kill one another.
He sowed discord between the eldest and second sons, making them hate each other until they eventually destroyed one another.
As for the father against whom Ferda’s resentment ran deepest, Ferda forced him to watch everything.
Seeing everything he had built and sworn to protect collapse so miserably finally drove Erembalt insane.
He aged as though several decades had passed in an instant.
He became a ruined shell of a man, no different from a ghost wandering the mortal world.
In that way, everything connected to House Rosnova disappeared—everything except Ferda.
The revenge he had so desperately desired was achieved, albeit in a twisted form.
What filled his chest was catharsis.
...There are still enemies left.
And thirst.
Ferda was no longer sane.
He had become a monster that listened only to his own emotions.
I have to eliminate them all. And to do that, I need even greater power.
The rage once directed at his family did not cool.
Instead, it turned toward others and burned even more fiercely.
People who could no longer endure his tyranny, which he justified with absurd sophistry, finally drew their swords against him.
He became a public enemy of the entire continent, and dozens of elaborate schemes were devised to kill him.
Yet every trial only made Ferda stronger.
In the end, Ferda reached the highest realm attainable by humanity.
He was forty-five years old.
At that young age, he attained the Eighth Circle, the realm known as a Mana Lord.
He became the one and only Grand Mage on the continent, placing everything beneath his feet.
It still isn’t enough.
Yet he continued to crave more power.
Even though everything lay beneath him, the flame burning inside his heart refused to die.
That flame whispered to Ferda.
They still resent me. Someday, they will undoubtedly try to kill me again.
Ferda understood the cycle of hatred and revenge all too well.
He could not allow that to happen.
I have to crush them so completely that they can never move again... Then erase them all.
To create his own utopia, Ferda began coveting even the realm of the gods.
After five years of research, he finally discovered the ultimate ingredient required to reach that domain.
It was the heart of a Red Dragon.
It seemed almost like a cruel joke played by fate.
The Dread Queen Valdrova.
His fiancée.
The excuse Erembalt had used to drive Ferda from the family.
For the true identity of that being was none other than a Red Dragon.
—Fate truly is a cruel and capricious thing.
Strangely enough, those words were spoken by the dragon said to be the strongest on the continent.
Brilliant red scales and magnificent horns.
Overwhelming eyes and wings that seemed capable of covering the entire world symbolized her supreme status.
But now, she looked different.
Her scales had been torn away in numerous places, while her horns were broken and twisted, vivid red blood pouring from within.
And the one who had driven a dragon capable of effortlessly destroying an entire kingdom into such a state was none other than a single mage.
—To think that the one who was supposed to become engaged to me would one day come to kill me.
Ferda smiled.
It was closer to bravado, an attempt to flaunt his superiority.
After pushing a dragon to the brink of death, his own body was hardly unscathed.
“You would be better off dying quietly by my hand, Valdrova.”
—I am aware that I bear the title of Tyrant. However, throughout the past several decades, even before you were born, I have not revealed myself even once. Nor have I harmed a single human. And yet... I cannot understand why you harbor such hostility toward me.
“You haven’t done anything?”
Valdrova’s calm manner of speaking sounded like the words of someone without a care in the world.
Irritation surged through Ferda.
“You are the source of all my misfortune.”
Everything in Ferda’s life had become twisted from the moment he was selected as a sacrifice for the engagement.
Ferda passionately poured out his emotions.
“Because of you...! Because of your pointless desire to find a fiancé, my family finally had the justification they needed to cast me out!”
—That was... because of me?
“Yes! Because of your worthless greed! A savage dragon like you tried to take a human as your mate, and that greed created all this misery! Do you understand?!”
Ferda breathed heavily before curling his lips into a bitter smile.
“But at the same time, I am grateful. Thanks to you, I was able to rise all the way to where I stand now.”
—I see...
Valdrova’s face twitched strangely.
Was she angry?
Perhaps she was preparing one final act of resistance.
It did not matter.
By venting those twisted emotions, Ferda had managed to set his Red Circle in motion.
He finished preparing to counter her.
—Yes. So that was the reason. Now I understand.
Valdrova’s enormous body moved.
She revealed her claws.
They were sharp and solid blades capable of tearing knights apart with a single swing.
Ferda reflexively prepared a magic circle.
He was late, but it would still be enough to ensure mutual destruction.
Valdrova raised her claw.
However, she did not aim it at Ferda.
Shhk!
The claw plunged into her own chest.
Ferda could not understand her actions.
What was the meaning of that self-mutilation?
She tore straight through her durable hide, exposing the organs within.
—You said you needed my heart for your magic, did you not?
Snap!
The sound of blood vessels being severed rang out.
At that moment, Ferda understood.
She was trying to destroy her own heart.
“No!”
Ferda unleashed a barrage of magic at her face.
“No, you filthy lizard bitch! Stop this instant!”
Ferda could not allow her to destroy her own heart.
It was his one and only opportunity to attain the Ninth Circle.
He absolutely could not let this chance slip away!
The scales protecting Valdrova’s head shattered into fragments and scattered through the air.
Yet her hand did not stop.
The sounds of tearing blood vessels and muscles continued without pause.
—You said you needed my heart, did you not?
Valdrova’s claw emerged from within her organs.
Clutched in her talons was a mass of flesh larger than Ferda’s head.
“...Your heart?”
It remained completely intact.
What she had done was not destruction.
It was extraction.
—Take it.
The half-destroyed head of Valdrova spoke those words.
Had it been the usual Ferda, he would have thanked her and immediately taken it.
Yet even the twisted Ferda could not comprehend her actions.
He stared blankly down at the heart.
“...Why did you make this choice?”
Ferda asked her a question.
“If you had attacked... you could have killed me. Surely you knew that.”
—Had I made one final attempt to resist... you undoubtedly would have died as well. I knew that.
“Then why didn’t you?”
—Because you became miserable because of me.
Ferda remained frozen even after hearing those words.
Valdrova no longer had enough strength to hold up her neck.
—I... have long blamed myself.
A thick sense of self-loathing seeped through her calm voice.
—I despised the savage blood flowing through these veins. I hated myself for growing angry without reason and feeling the urge to destroy. What I hated most was how those things frightened people.
The color gradually faded from her golden eyes.
Something swelled within them before rolling down her cheek.
It was a tear.
A dragon’s tears were different from a human’s.
Dragons were not emotional creatures who shed tears over something as trivial as sorrow.
And yet, that tear seemed to have been formed from sorrow itself.
—Everything would have been resolved if I had simply died, yet I continued living and wished for happiness... My foolish dream has caused far too many people harm.
“......”
—You became miserable because of me. Mortal, you who suffered because of my selfishness, I pray that you may find happiness through me. That is the last thing... I can do for you.
Then, with her final breath, she spoke one last wistful sentence.
—Be happy, my fiancé...
And so Valdrova, the continent’s hidden tyrant, met her death.
Ferda stared blankly down at Valdrova as she quietly closed her eyes.
For the first time since becoming a mage through rage, he experienced a strange emotion.
“Why does this feel so unpleasant?”
Without realizing it, Ferda placed a hand over his chest.
He had reached this place by stepping over countless corpses.
He had killed everyone who stood in his way, seized everything he needed, and used it all to increase his power.
He knew that he was a broken man, devoid of conscience and empathy.
And yet, for some reason, her death held Ferda back.
Like a curse she had placed upon him.
Don’t think about it, Ferda.
Move forward.
Take what you came here to obtain.
You have already crossed a river from which there is no return.
He picked up the object she had removed from her body.
A dragon’s heart.
The source that could allow him to reach the Ninth Circle, the dream of every mage.
An object capable of elevating him beyond the realm of a Grand Mage and into the ranks of demigods.
He would absorb it.
Then, as he always had, he would take revenge on everything that had made him miserable.
He would continue pursuing vengeance even though he had long since forgotten the reason for it.
Ferda absorbed the essence contained within the heart.
As the essence of a dragon who had lived since ancient times flowed through his veins, his blood began to boil.
At the same time that an enormous power surged into him, Ferda sensed something strange.
This is...
He could feel Valdrova’s entire life.
Are these her emotions?
Before he could resist, those emotions became a part of Ferda.
“Ah...”
A gasp escaped his lips.
His mind began to clear with astonishing speed.
The hatred and desire for revenge that had driven his power were disappearing.
Had her blood purified Ferda’s mind?
“No.”
The emotions he sensed within that heart were closer to despair.
They were feelings that stood at the very bottom of an abyss far deeper than Ferda’s hatred or rage could ever reach.
A Red Dragon who had lived for thousands of years without being loved even once.
A being of uncontrollable wrath.
The Wicked Red Dragon.
The Dragonslayer.
As titles based on infamy were imposed upon her image, Valdrova became known as a complete tyrant.
These were the curses she had accumulated over the passing centuries.
And yet, Valdrova had loved those insignificant beings.
That was why she had chosen to hide herself.
Because she loved them all, she endured her loneliness and sorrow without complaint.
Then Ferda severed the last thread holding her together.
That was why his mind had become clear.
Ferda realized just how insignificant the anger and hatred he had carried truly were.
“Ah...”
A faint sound escaped Ferda’s lips.
For twenty years, Ferda had not been sane even once.
Only now had he become his true self for the first time.
“What... have I done?”
Blinded by emotion, he had ultimately been consumed by that power and destroyed everything.
Someone.
Someone’s family.
Someone’s village...
Was that truly what he had wanted?
“Ah...”
Ferda collapsed to the ground.
Now that his mind had turned completely blank, Circles appeared before him.
As each Circle was completed, his entire life flashed before his eyes.
When he opened his First Circle, there had been the sorrow of being cast out by his family.
The Second Circle was formed from the rage he felt when others mocked him for lacking talent.
An inferiority complex.
Resentment.
Jealousy.
Betrayal.
Every one of Ferda’s Circles had been built upon negative emotions.
He had never hesitated to betray others in order to survive, and he had repeatedly switched sides like a bat in order to grow stronger.
That was how Ferda became an Eighth-Circle Grand Mage.
And now, upon reaching the Ninth Circle, what he felt was—
Emptiness...
It felt as though everything had lost its meaning.
At the same time, he was angry.
Because Valdrova had turned everything he had done until now into a mistake.
“You stupid, empty-headed woman...”
Ferda tried to resent Valdrova.
However, unlike before, the emotion did not become a source of power.
He knew perfectly well that he did not mean those words.
The true fool had been Ferda, who blamed her.
She had only ever been an excuse.
Erembalt had already decided to cast Ferda out, so even if it had not been Valdrova, he would have found some other justification.
Ferda had known that.
Even so, he had taken out his anger on her.
Valdrova had accepted his foolish sophistry.
Then she had wished for one person’s happiness.
The person who had come to kill her.
She had wished for it sincerely.
Ferda let out a hollow laugh.
In contrast to his feelings, the Ninth-Circle magic array shone brilliantly.
There was only one spell a mage who had reached the Ninth Circle could cast.
A wish.
It was an absolute power that defied the laws of all creation and granted anything its caster desired.
It was a simple spell that required only a single sentence.
Although he had finally obtained what he had wanted so desperately, Ferda could not speak.
It felt as though his throat had closed.
He could not think of a wish.
What was it that I wanted so badly?
To erase everything that rejected him.
That had been the wish of the madman Ferda once was.
The Ferda of the present no longer held such a dream.
Suddenly, he remembered the dream he had drawn as a child.
In the crude picture he had made while awkwardly clutching colored pencils, there had been—
Nothing more than a modest family and a peaceful life.
That had also been Valdrova’s wish.
But he could not make such a wish now.
After killing so many people, he could not ask to live comfortably.
More importantly—
Ferda had killed the dragon who was supposed to become his fiancée, and Valdrova had died at the hands of the man who was supposed to become her fiancé.
It was no different from murdering his own fiancée.
How could someone like him ever imagine the happiness of building a family?
—Be happy, my fiancé...
His revived conscience repeated those words and tormented him.
He condemned himself for spending decades pursuing nothing but power.
He despised his own pettiness for remembering every person’s name merely so he could repay every grudge.
In the end, his heart understood the emotion he could not express in words.
“There’s no point...”
The magic array shone brightly.
When the light completely faded, the Ninth-Circle Grand Mage vanished without leaving a trace.
“...rda?”
“......”
“Ferda.”
No.
His consciousness returned.
As the dazzling light receded, Ferda opened his eyes at the sound of someone calling his name.
Sitting before him was not a bleeding dragon, but a middle-aged man.
“Ferda? Are you listening?”
“...Yes?”
“What do you mean, ‘yes’? Your father has been speaking to you, and you have done nothing but stare blankly this entire time.”
The middle-aged man sitting before him frowned.
Ferda knew who he was.
“Erembalt Rosnova.”
The man he had once affectionately called Father.
Unlike the last time Ferda had seen him, Erembalt appeared healthy and vigorous.
Had Ferda died and entered the afterlife?
But if that were the case, why did all of this feel so familiar?
This place... Could it be?
Ferda quickly understood.
There had only ever been one occasion when he had been alone with the father who had scarcely spoken to him throughout his life.
“Your engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova has been decided. It is a matter determined by the kingdom, so I expect you to obey without complaint.”
His engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova.
I didn’t die. I returned to this time?
He had returned to the period he once believed marked the beginning of his misery.
The moment that had ignited his uncontrollable desire for revenge.
“Why?”
His mind could not yet comprehend it.
But his heart already knew.
It knew what he had wished for within that emptiness.
“Hah.”
An awkward sigh escaped Ferda’s mouth.
“You brat. I am speaking to you, and you dare sigh?”
“My apologies. It was nothing.”
“Repeat what your father just said.”
“You said that I am to be engaged to the Dread Queen Valdrova.”
“You understand what that means, don’t you?”
“I do.”
Get out of this house.
That was how Ferda had understood those words.
He answered his father.
“Understood.”
“Yes. You must be suffering greatly as well—huh?”
Erembalt’s eyes widened as he stared at Ferda again.
“W-What did you just say?”
Ferda looked down at the documents placed before him and answered once more.
The meaning of this regression was for him to confront what he had failed to face in his previous life.
“I will do it.”
He would formally enter into an engagement with Valdrova the Tyrant.
“I will accept the engagement.”