Chapter 184 - The Dragon's Fiancé

Like any other dragon, Iorga was also famous for being so cruel she could be called cold-blooded.

Erica Iorga, master of the Blue Eye Magic Tower, had that same disposition, but among the dragon spawns, she was the most understanding and handled incidents with wisdom, earning great respect.

That was why few people ever saw her magic in action.

The elves were in the middle of experiencing that rare event.

Five streams of water were sweeping the elves away like a river swollen by a midsummer downpour.

"Everyone, take cover!"

"Rune of protection!"

"Collapse their forms with runes of interference!"

Hundreds of elites had gathered, but no elf present could stop the leader of the Iorga spawns once she had snapped.

Even their intricate command system, moving through shared minds, found no opening to attack.

If they moved wrong, they would end up like pebbles on a riverbank, so their best option was nothing but defense.

"Amazing..."

Rize, watching the sight, looked up with eyes drenched in awe.

"So that is the true power of the one called the wisdom of the expedition that defeated the Demon King..."

Ferda also followed Rize's gaze and looked up at Erica.

"Ohoho! What happened to all that spirit from a moment ago? Now you hide like rats!?"

"Try blocking this too!!"

"What a lovely sight! More! More! Struggle harder!! It won't be any fun if you collapse already, will it!?"

'... Wisdom?'

No matter how he looked at her, she seemed no different from a witch, and what she was doing now was pure savagery.

'Still, she hasn't completely lost her reason.'

Ferda knew the power that had pierced through the head of a demonic creature.

Erica was capable of wielding such murderous streams of water, but right now she was adjusting them so her opponents would only be knocked unconscious.

"Let us move."

"Y-Yes?"

"We need to escape while she is causing a commotion like that."

"Ah, yes!"

The reason she had finally stopped holding back was also so they could escape.

Rize gripped the strap of her bag tightly and ran ahead.

"Stop the escaped prisoners!"

"That human tried to murder the Great Chieftain!"

Apparently, Ferda took priority over Erica.

Ferda's position as Valdrova's fiancé had already been pushed aside, and killing intent so fierce it was murderous stretched toward him.

Ferda responded in kind.

"Lightning Bolt."

By nature, water and electricity were a compatible combination of magic.

Even if it did not hit directly, its influence traveled along the wet ground.

"Ggggh!"

"Ghhhrrk!"

He sent a light current flowing through, electrocuting the archers and stopping their movements.

But stopping all the agile elves was difficult for Ferda as he was now.

'Rather than countering with attacks, I should worry about my own safety first.'

Ferda changed his strategy and chanted a different spell.

"Static Force."

A lightning-type protection spell.

Ferda's hair rose into the air.

A sphere made of static electricity formed in his hand, and that sphere shot down and repelled every arrow flying toward him.

It automatically pushed away everything from every direction, but for that very reason, it was a defensive spell with heavy mana consumption.

"Call reinforcements!"

As many soldiers as fell, and as much time as they stalled, more soldiers filled the inside of the World Tree.

Just as it was becoming difficult to block the attacks, they finally reached the level where the sky carriage was.

"This way!"

When Rize placed her hand on the entrance, a corridor leading outside the World Tree was created.

"Regent!"

Erica, still running wild, spoke.

"The pointy-eared bastards are crawling in from behind like cockroaches!?"

"Is that so?"

"I'll hold them off, so please go ahead!"

"... Understood."

He decided to tell himself it was just his imagination that she sounded less like she was going to hold them off and more like she was going to enjoy herself a little longer.

Rize ran ahead.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly.

"Now, if we just get through this corridor and leave, ngh...!"

But nothing ever went that easily.

One elf was blocking the path they needed to take.

"... Elder."

The high elf elder who had been commanding them had predicted Rize's route and was blocking it alone.

His face was twisted in a most unsightly way.

"So you have finally gone and done something stupid..."

The finger pointed at Rize trembled.

"I should have known from the moment the Great Chieftain refused to cast you out... In the end, you became our disaster! You rootless wretch!"

Wounded by the elder's harsh words, Rize bit her lip.

"Do you know what you are doing? You are betraying your own people. Betraying Mother, betraying your kin, betraying the other clans who depend on us! You are doing the same thing as a dark elf!"

"I-It is not betrayal."

"Do you mean to say that obeying the Great Chieftain's words to the point of foolishness is the right thing to do? If he told you to die, would you die!?"

"That is..."

Rize could not answer.

Seeing that, he snorted as if she were pathetic.

"That is why you can never become one of us."

After saying that, he turned his eyes to Ferda this time.

"You said you were Regent Ferda?"

"I do not recall exchanging names with you."

"Hmph, fine, Valdrova's fiancé. I would prefer that you not make this incident any larger."

He gestured toward Rize with his chin and spoke.

"Hand over that child and the items. If you do, no one will hold anyone responsible for what happened today, and we will let you leave this place."

"R-Regent..."

Rize squeezed her eyes shut.

Her face looked as though she would not resent him no matter what choice he made.

Ferda looked down at Rize and said,

"Understood."

Rize's eyes went round.

They were filled with betrayal, as if she had not expected him to really hand her over.

"I shall hand her over."

Ferda grabbed Rize by the shoulder.

"Please catch her properly."

Then he raised his empty other hand.

His blackened hand returned to its original color, and a magic circle formed.

The high elf elder, Cypress, hated humans.

The mysterious power called magic should not be used by humans.

He believed it was something that only long-lived races, like elves, should possess.

In that sense, the man named Ferda was the most offensive kind of human to Cypress.

A human mage.

And a dragon's fiancé, at that.

He did not like that a mere short-lived race, incapable of accumulating merit over long ages, possessed a status beyond its station.

Such a person had caused an incident in elven territory and was trying to run away.

As if that were not enough, what Cypress read in Ferda's eyes was hostility.

A challenge to authority that should never be shown to a high elf elder.

All the things that made him angry instead made him calm.

Every movement Ferda made was nothing but laughable to him.

The mana circulating through Ferda's body was insignificant compared to his own.

If he attacked, Cypress could send it right back and show him the difference in their standing.

And now, the man before his eyes did not go against Cypress's expectations.

Pretending to hand over Rize, he laughably cast human magic.

"Lightning Spear."

CRACKLE!

Light shimmered in Ferda's hand.

'Pathetic.'

Cypress skillfully drew a rune of protection.

Judging by the scale of the mana, it was magic that his rune could repel with ease.

That was when he thought it.

The magic circle that had formed on Ferda's right hand disappeared.

'A mistake?'

It was the kind of common mistake only a worthless short-lived creature could make.

Yet that was not what it felt like.

Even though the magic had vanished, his eyes showed no sign of panic and were staring precisely at their target.

Eyes like a body being dropped into a lake whose depth could not be known.

Those eyes saw straight through him.

'A feint.'

The moment Cypress grasped the move, Ferda immediately pulled out the move he had been hiding.

The hand that had pulled Rize's body backward came forward.

In that hand was a staff Cypress had never seen before, and light was drawn around that staff.

The magic circle condensed and manifested as magic.

Even if a magic circle was created, there was no problem.

Even if one used a magical tool, if the user himself was low-grade, the power of the magic had limits.

This was power that could be blocked easily with a rune of protection.

In fact, Cypress's calculation was accurate.

But after Ferda lifted that staff, the magic circle became anything but ordinary.

Cypress was a high elf unfamiliar with human magic, but he could quickly tell.

It was not a magic circle made simply of lines and dots, but one embedded even with the characters called runes.

Among them were even several runes Cypress knew.

'The magic power gathering in the magic circle... is not that human's.'

For something formed from what was inside his body, the depth of that mana was on an entirely different level.

'Then that means...'

The moment Cypress understood, he frowned.

"It is the Great Chieftain's mana..."

Inside Mother's Heart, Threads flew through the air.

Ferda had stolen those Threads and had been waiting for a moment like this.

One question was resolved, only to lead to another.

No matter how good the mana was, who could wield magic from such a higher-order realm like that?

That was impossible even for an elf, just as a fish could not live on land.

'I must not let my guard down.'

Cypress did not let his guard down and drew as many runes of protection as he could, layering them.

He concentrated all his protections solely on the magic unfolding before him.

The yellow barrier deepened in color until it became a dark amber shell.

He was confident that it would be enough to block anything that came out of that magic circle.

But Cypress's calculation was wrong again.

CRACKLE.

The sound of wind being sucked in, and the faint crackle of sparks.

As the light began to shimmer, the elder could not hide his shock.

"That is...?!"

The light was not the blue he had seen moments earlier, but a deep crimson.

The elder had seen that light once before.

There was only one person capable of wielding lightning of that color.

A traitor who broke the vow of pure blood, recklessly had relations with a human, and passed magic down to him.

A few months after that traitor was executed, a woman appeared before the World Tree.

She came wearing black bridal robes.

She had the slight, unimpressive build of a girl, but the black makeup smeared by her tears was chilling, like looking at a vengeful ghost.

The hate-filled girl said this.

["Though we swore to spend our lives together until heaven parted us, heaven is so heartless to a woman."]

The girl who had come bearing hatred and rage raised her hand toward the sky.

["Since heaven will not punish you, I shall bring punishment upon you myself."]

It was red lightning that defied the natural order.

The lightning stretched toward the sky and shattered the World Tree.

"Fury of the Storm."

That lightning now flew toward the elder's chest.

The elder, who had been so composed, twisted his body violently.

SHATTER!

The barrier made of thick protective runes broke like thin glass.

Magic strong enough to easily block a 6th-tier emission-type spell had been shattered miserably.

"Ghh...!?"

The elder barely managed to keep his life.

He felt an emptiness in his body, along with a throbbing pain.

When he looked down at the spot, all that remained of his twisted left arm was a gaping hole.

What was left to him was the pain of having his arm blown away.

"You... You...!"

Even more painful than that was the humiliation of having been struck down.

"You worthless short-lived race—!"

He spat out his rage as though someone had touched his reverse scale, only to be blocked completely.

Ferda did not show the slightest opening and bound the elf elder's body with shadow.

Ferda cut off the source so that he could not use magic.

If he had been an ordinary human mage, covering his mouth and sealing his hand movements would have been enough, but elves were different.

Ferda knew how to subdue them.

"Frenzy."

By injecting mental magic directly into the elder's head.

"Uuugh!"

Boiling bloodlust and impulsiveness wrapped around the elder's body.

Ordinary people would reduce the agony by releasing it, but high elves could not dare do so.

A high elf's mind was connected as one.

Because they were connected as one, an individual corruption could corrupt everyone.

Elven society was extremely cruel in that regard, and the elder was no exception.

That was why the elder immediately sat down and focused his mind.

Since he could not create magic to dispel the frenzied state by himself, he controlled his emotions as much as possible so he would not be contaminated.

Cypress glared at Ferda with cold sweat running down his face.

'This brat... How does he even know something like this?'

The flaw that came from a single shared mind was something no human had ever discovered.

The nineteen years Ferda had lived were an absurdly short time.

The humans who had researched those who challenged the authority of the World Tree had lived lives twice as long as his.

There had not been a single person who had shaken him this much with one attack.

Ferda looked down at Cypress and asked,

"How does it feel to be beaten by a foolish short-lived creature, Elder?"

The elder, full of venom, answered.

"Just because I was beaten does not change the fact that you are foolish."

"It seems even some elves age in vain."

"You fool...! Do you dare speak such nonsense without even knowing that becoming a dragon's fiancé is the same as entering its maw!"

Ferda snorted as if it were laughable.

"I already know Valdrova had a first fiancé."

"I am not talking about the Red Dragon!"

Ferda's hand, which had been about to ignore him, stopped.

"Are you saying someone other than Valdrova tried to marry?"

It was impossible.

Marriage was meant to fill the flaws that each could not possess.

Immortals were perfect by their very existence.

That was why they did not make things like partners, and merely reigned above all things.

"Of course you humans would not know. To you, it was a very long time ago, but among the high elves, too, there was a dragon's fiancé."

He jerked his chin toward the far end of the long corridor.

"It was Iorga, the master of the Tower Master running wild in there. Do you know what became of that fiancé?"

Ferda did not ask.

Cypress answered without waiting.

"She devoured her own fiancé."