Chapter 68
Change
The sun had tilted toward the west, painting the sky with sunset.
Luri summoned spirits and began cleaning up after the tea party.
Water spirits washed the tableware, while wind spirits dried it.
The desserts Ferda and Valdrova had left untouched disappeared one after another into Luri’s mouth.
It was a perfect division of labor.
Except for the fact that Ferda still had not gotten up.
“Why did you say something so unnecessary?”
Ferda asked.
It would have been a lie to say there was no emotion in his voice.
Luri stared at him with a businesslike expression.
“Womanizer.”
Ferda frowned.
“That was not cheating.”
“I merely stated the facts I saw. That you held hands with that damned woman.”
“Were you trying to ruin the mood?”
“Ruin the mood? Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”
“What?”
Ferda wondered what kind of nonsense that was.
“Would you ever have held hands if I hadn’t mentioned it?”
“You mean her hand?”
“Yes, her hand. The hand you were savoring so thoroughly. Whose efforts do you think made that possible?”
What kind of—
But when Ferda reflected on what had happened today, he could not dismiss it.
He had entered the tea party determined to do his utmost not to hurt Valdrova.
He had never planned to hold her hand today.
If Luri hadn’t brought up Olivia…
He would never have held it.
If she hadn’t mentioned that Valdrova failed to hunt yesterday…
Valdrova would have suffered tonight.
Everything had happened because Luri said things that could easily be misunderstood.
“Are you saying all of that was part of your plan?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
Luri snorted.
“My mistress is a woman with desires. Give her the slightest push, and she will take a step forward. I knew she would act if I brought up that woman.”
Ferda had momentarily forgotten.
Luri had managed this castle longer than anyone and watched over Valdrova all that time.
Naturally, she understood her better than anyone else.
Ferda could not hide his inner surprise.
Had she ever gone this far for him before?
Luri had tried to help him many times in her role as a maid.
But that help had always been indirect and solely for Valdrova’s sake.
This was the first time she had actively intervened to help him.
Perhaps that was why she looked different than usual.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
Luri asked when she noticed his gaze.
“You simply look a little different than usual.”
“How do I look different?”
“I’m not sure. Should I call it cute?”
She froze.
“C-Cute…?”
“If I had to define it, perhaps a cute little livestock animal.”
“Lord Ferda.”
Luri called his name.
With the sunset slanting into the room behind her, she no longer looked like the flawless maid.
She looked like Luri, the child.
“Do not worry.”
Ferda spoke before she could say anything.
Luri said nothing either.
She merely gave a faint nod.
Her expression abruptly twisted.
Ferda knew that look well.
It was the revulsion she had shown when they first met.
No.
It was even stronger now.
“If you intend to keep saying pointless things, please leave. You’re interfering with the cleaning.”
“Very well.”
Ferda had no desire to be caught in the blast of her irritation, so he quickly prepared to leave.
Valdrova’s lair.
Aside from the thick iron doors, it was nothing more than an enormous, untouched cavern.
A dragoon bearing the head of a red dragon entered.
It was Valdrova, the Aspect of Fire and Power.
She had just returned from the tea party.
Valdrova stood in the center of the cavern and slowly raised her head.
Only then did she truly realize that she was alone.
She pressed the jewel embedded in her chest.
Shhhk—
The dragoon armor opened from within and expelled what it contained.
Inside was a woman standing 160 centimeters tall.
“Haaaa…”
Valdrova gasped as though she had escaped a horrific battlefield.
No.
A battlefield would probably have been easier for her.
Even when she spent six straight hours subjugating waves of monsters, she had not felt this exhausted.
Today had lasted only two hours at most.
She had simply sat down and spoken with Ferda.
Yet every moment had been overwhelming for her.
Even while wearing armor this enormous.
Valdrova looked up at the armor and murmured,
“I couldn’t take it off today either…”
The armor had been created for Valdrova by a Bronze Dragon to use while she was polymorphed.
It was designed to make her look large and imposing, like a fearsome Red Dragon, and to give her a threatening voice.
Its intended purpose was to display dignity befitting a dragon and ruler.
Yet she used it for the exact opposite reason.
It had become a refuge.
Like a snail’s shell.
“What would Mister say if he saw me like this…?”
With a hollow laugh, she glanced at her reflection in the mirror beside her.
Two pairs of horns.
Golden cat-like eyes.
Loose red hair that looked as though threads had been spun from rubies.
Very few people had ever seen Valdrova like this.
Only Luri and the other dragons remembered her face.
As a result, there were few opinions of her polymorphed appearance.
Luri had described her as possessing a balanced beauty that concealed outward strength beneath gentleness.
Another dragon had simply called her “soft-hearted.”
And Ferda, a human—
“Eugh…”
She did not want to think about it.
Whenever she recalled his face from that moment, her mind turned completely white.
Her body felt weightless, as though a hundred hands were tickling her all at once.
She could not control herself in those moments when she stopped feeling like herself.
“I want to hear it…”
She wanted to hear him call her pretty.
She wanted to hear him call her beautiful.
She wanted to show him her true appearance, not the armor, and hear those words.
That was why she wore a beautiful dress beneath the armor every time.
Did Ferda know?
Did he know that inside the armor he saw was a woman wearing a dress?
That she lacked the courage to show him and hid herself inside the armor every time?
“And yet…”
Her voice was steeped in embarrassment.
She remembered what Luri had said before the tea party.
—He held hands with Olivia Arken and toured the White House with her.
Valdrova understood.
A man like Ferda could hold hands with a beautiful woman, could he not?
Yes.
Something like that could happen.
“As if…”
She had been jealous.
Of course she had been jealous.
Her fiancé had held hands with another woman.
The person who was supposed to spend the rest of his life with her had held hands with someone else.
At the same time, Valdrova found her own feelings ridiculous.
“I’m the one who always ran away…”
Ferda had always been waiting.
Valdrova was the one who hid because she lacked the courage to reveal herself.
And yet she had the nerve to become jealous.
“Idiot.”
Self-reproach.
“Stupid idiot.”
And yet the expression she wore at the end was a smile.
“Still… I did well in the end.”
She had never imagined she would be the one to suggest holding hands.
It had been impulsive, but without that impulse, she never would have dared say it.
“…”
Valdrova stared blankly at her right hand.
The hand Ferda had held.
His warmth still lingered upon it.
“It was warm…”
Valdrova had felt it clearly.
How warm a heart he possessed.
How deeply he was capable of caring for others.
That must be why this castle has become so lively.
In the year since he arrived, the castle had grown livelier, and news of the territory’s development kept reaching her.
He was accomplishing things Valdrova had never done and had never been able to do.
What she felt as she watched him was admiration.
So I need to change too.
And motivation.
Valdrova repeated it inside her head.
She had to change.
That would be the greatest reward she could offer Ferda for coming to her as her fiancé.
“I’m sleepy…”
Her eyelids grew heavy, and her body relaxed.
On days when her bloodlust surged, she could not sleep even for a moment.
Yet now, she felt that if she closed her eyes, she would sleep deeply.
She should have returned to her dragon form before sleeping.
But Valdrova could not bring herself to do so.
She wanted to treasure the warmth and traces he had left behind for just a little longer.
Valdrova lay down where she was.
Curling onto her side as though coiling her body, she held the warmth in her right hand tightly against herself.
She thought about tomorrow.
For her, tomorrow had always meant another succession of pain.
She had not wanted to think about it, and whenever the thought arose, she had gone to sleep early just to escape it.
But today was different.
The tomorrow taking shape inside her mind made her feel alive.
What should she do?
How should she do it?
What would make Mr. Ferda happy?
Drawing endless lines that never reached a conclusion, she fell asleep.
In the center of the Cerdes Continent stood a structure that seemed to pierce the heavens.
It was the tallest building on the continent.
A Magic Tower.
The Blue Dragon Iorga had built it, and all Blue Dragon spawn conducted most of their lives within it.
The building was called the Blue Eye.
Eyes existed to see.
True to its name, the Blue Eye had been created as a surveillance network to observe everything beneath the sky.
Rank was determined by one’s position within the tower.
The topmost floor was the lair of Iorga, the dragon.
The floor immediately beneath it belonged to Erika Iorga, the representative of the dragon spawn.
And she—
“It appears the humans are beginning to notice.”
“They haven’t raised the issue openly, but flaws in the Blue Eye’s surveillance magic are beginning to be pointed out.”
—felt herself aging more rapidly than ever before.
Surrounded by elders, she continued processing proposals and documents.
“What percentage do the humans estimate they can calculate?”
“They appear to estimate that performance has fallen by thirty percent, since they do not have precise data.”
It was a figure they absolutely could not overlook.
“At this rate, they may realize that Lord Iorga is absent…”
The Blue Dragon Iorga.
The Aspect of Magic, the possessor of power rivaling an Absolute, and the one who personally supplied half of the Magic Tower’s total mana.
But Iorga was also being consumed by Godwin’s darkness.
Even merely remaining in seclusion without showing herself carried far too great a risk.
That was why Iorga had unilaterally decided to crystallize her own body.
“What will you do?”
The elderly magician elders trailed off and waited for Erika’s answer.
As the leader of the Blue Dragon spawn, she remained calmer than anyone else.
Erika finished reviewing the final page of the document and tossed it onto the desk.
“For now, it remains within the normal range.”
The elders stared at her in shock.
“How can thirty percent possibly be within the normal range?”
“The actual mana loss suffered by our Magic Tower is fifty percent—half of our total supply.”
They lacked the mana required to maintain the Blue Eye’s surveillance network.
If they spread it across the same vast area as before, it lacked depth.
If they focused on depth, its range became too narrow.
“The humans estimating the loss at thirty percent means our substitutes are compensating for twenty percent of it.”
That was why they had abandoned their previous methods and were searching for more flexible alternatives.
They concentrated the surveillance network on high-risk regions, while coordinating with the Adventurers’ Guild to replace surveillance in uncovered areas with manpower.
“We need to analyze the situation further and find additional alternatives.”
“We cannot rely on adventurers forever. Unless we cure the source of the problem, everything else is meaningless.”
“Isn’t curing that source precisely why we are enduring all this hardship?”
Erika’s eyes sharpened as she glared at the elder.
“If you can produce an immediate solution, I will remain silent. Go ahead and present one.”
“Well… I cannot.”
The elder meekly lowered his head.
Erika exhaled through her nose, then gently tried to soothe them.
“I understand how anxious all of you are. I feel the same way. Our Magic Tower, the Blue Eye, is currently facing an unprecedented crisis. If we wish to preserve our reputation as the eye that watches over the continent, even using every drop of our mana would not be enough.”
But they could not do that.
“If we did, it would become impossible to create a cure for Lord Iorga. She entered hibernation after sensing that her condition was worsening, which means we do not have much time left.”
They truly lacked everything.
Mana.
Time.
Manpower.
“Nevertheless, we must appear as though we have enough leeway to handle this calmly. The moment we show uncertainty, this tower we worked so hard to build will collapse in an instant.”
The Blue Eye watched over and dominated the field of magic.
They had to make it unmistakably clear that magic remained firmly within their grasp.
“Understood.”
“We have no choice but to trust you, Leader.”
With that, the elders withdrew from the meeting.
When the final person left and the door closed—
“Haaaaaaa!”
Erika, who had maintained the face of an iron-willed leader, released a sigh like steam escaping a pressure cooker.
“Fuck…”
A curse spilled from her lips.
They said a crown carried weight.
The crown Erika wore felt as though it might someday snap her neck.
It’s not as though I can simply wipe them all out.
Looking down on other races was an instinct embedded within dragon spawn.
Other dragon spawn might have immediately threatened or attacked humans for daring to talk back.
But the descendants of Iorga could never do such a thing.
Magic was a tool for rational beings.
Losing one’s temper was irrational and amounted to signaling that one’s magic was unstable.
Their greatest weapon was composure.
They had to appear no different from usual and show absolute confidence that they could overcome anything placed before them.
As their leader, Erika was therefore left to suffer from an ever-growing illness she could never voice.
“Ugh…”
Erika rose from her seat.
She felt as though she would explode if she remained sitting, so she decided to cool her head by looking out over the scenery.
The rich colors of early autumn dotted the landscape below.
The view changed with every passing year, but her thoughts were always much the same.
The enormous mountains to the north.
The Far North…
A place inhabited by idiots with nothing but blocks of ice inside their skulls.
The plains to the west.
The territory of sanctimonious religious fanatics.
The desert to the south.
A playground for extremists obsessed with self-destruction.
The black lands to the east.
…Ferda Valdrova.
No.
Her thoughts were slightly different than usual.
Normally, she would have called it the graveyard of greedy fools slowly rotting away.
But after attending the Council of Grand Dukes, that image had been overwritten by a human’s name.
—What will you do when the end comes?
His words still lingered in her mind.
The secret end created by Godwin.
She had reconsidered that end countless times.
No answer came.
She could accept neither an optimistic future nor a pessimistic one.
No one knew the future.
It could be predicted, but seeing it in its entirety was impossible.
“Impertinent bastard…”
The descendants of Iorga lived in the present to prepare for the future.
Erika Iorga was no different.
Neither pessimism nor optimism.
That was the rationality Iorga pursued.
And yet—
Whenever Erika thought of Ferda, those words continued buzzing in her ears like a mosquito.
What will you do?
So what are you going to do?
What can you possibly do?
“Haa…”
Sensing that she had reached her limit, Erika raised a finger.
A small drop of water condensed at its tip.
It spread into a curtain and instantly surrounded her completely.
“Haa.”
She took a deep breath.
Then—
“So what?!”
She screamed.
“What makes you so damn special?!”
She stomped against the floor and wildly swung her hands.
“I went through all that trouble crushing the proposal and stopping those damned ice-brained idiots for you, so what makes you so special that you get to act like some pompous bastard?! You’re only human! A human! What the hell makes you think you’re so great?!”
If she could not calm herself, she would vent.
“I don’t care anymore! I quit! I’m not doing it! Why should I have to do any of this?! What’s the point?! Everyone only complains to me, even though none of them can do it either—!”
For several minutes, she shrieked at the top of her lungs and emptied everything she had been holding inside.
“Um, Lady Merika?”
Her secretary came looking for her and opened the door.
Erika, who had been screaming as though in the middle of a fit, moved at once.
She dismissed the curtain of water and returned to her seat.
In an instant, she resumed the appearance of the composed leader she always was.
“What is it?”
The secretary began her report, never imagining that Erika had just been rolling around in hysterics.
“I came to report on the investigation into House Rosnova that you requested. Do you have a moment?”
Her timing was impeccable.
Erika felt strangely guilty despite having done nothing wrong.
“Go ahead.”
“First, House Rosnova itself showed no major irregularities. It is one of the Empire’s knightly families, with achievements typical of humans, barely preserving its lineage. An entirely ordinary household.”
“Then there is nothing unusual about Regent Ferda’s family?”
“At least not with House Rosnova itself.”
She turned to the next page.
“The problem is Regent Ferda’s biological mother, Anna Rosnova.”
“What about her?”
“There is not a single piece of information about her.”
“Not a single one? Do you mean she was an ordinary commoner or someone of that sort?”
“No. This falls outside that category. We may need to investigate more deeply, but it almost feels as though…”
The woman hesitated, uncertain whether she should say it.
“As though we are chasing a ghost who never existed in the first place.”
“A ghost?”
It was one of the most irresponsible things an investigator could say.
Yet Erika did not dismiss it.
They were children of Iorga and knew Erika well.
If they had dared say such a thing, it meant they had investigated deeply and still failed to find so much as a speck of dust.
Erika murmured,
“An egg exists because there was a chicken.”
Every result had a cause.
A son existed because he had a mother.
Even dragons worshipped as gods had creators.
She had tried to uncover even the smallest detail about Ferda, only to be met with another unknown question.
Just what kind of man is he?
At that moment, a loud clattering came from the staircase.
A terrified man came rushing up, displaying none of the composure expected from a follower of the rational Iorga.
“W-We have an emergency!”
“Why are you making such a commotion?”
“I-It’s this! Look!”
He handed her an image reproduced through magic.
It showed several dragon spawn recovering bodies in a snowy field.
“A Silver Dragon spawn… has died?”
“Yes.”
That alone was a grave matter.
All dragon spawn remembered the deaths of those who shared their blood.
Silverwind, famous for possessing the strongest familial bonds, would never leave the killer alone.
Had he brought only that, Erika would simply have assumed that bloodshed was about to erupt somewhere.
But she instinctively knew his urgency meant something more.
“On the next image…!”
A group of Silverwind spawn flew through the sky.
Among them was a dragon spawn with enormous wings.
“The leader of those ice-brained fools is moving personally…?”
Goz Silverwind did not act personally over ordinary matters.
This was not about merely destroying an individual.
It meant he intended to destroy everything that person possessed.
Why?
Why would he move himself?
Erika thought.
One person immediately came to mind.
Surely not…
Impossible.
That bastard was not that stupid.
He knew perfectly well what kind of relationship he had with Silverwind.
There was no chance he would do something so insane.
But she needed certainty, and so she forced herself to ask,
“Who laid a hand on Silverwind’s descendant?”
The man answered, and her fears became reality.
“Regent Ferda Valdrova!”
The fuse had been lit.