Chapter 21 - Why She Is an Evil Dragon

Late at night, with the moon shining brightly, Ferda walked down a corridor lit by candles.

'What a busy day this has been.'

The place had been neglected for decades, so handling the backlog of official duties was no easy task.

'Still, with Mori here, things are going smoothly.'

Her pace of work had already far surpassed that of any human.

Thanks to that, if they maintained this pace, it seemed they could finish within a year.

'My role is to assist so that she has nothing to trouble herself over.'

Ferda remembered it that way and did his utmost in his role.

Before going to his bedroom, Ferda headed to the study.

If Ferda's expectations were correct, Mori would be waiting there.

'She should be waiting by now, so I should tell her to go back.'

She was a child who could not even breathe unless she was permitted to breathe.

Ferda had not forgotten, and he was moving to order her to return to her room.

When he entered the study, he ran into someone he had not expected at all.

"Hello! Lord Ferda!"

The gloomy witch, Echidna, greeted him with an awkward smile.

"Call me Regent."

"Ah! I will. You have to call me Echidna, all right?"

"I will."

"Hehehehe..."

Echidna wore an awkward and gloomy smile.

Thinking that, Ferda passed by Echidna and walked over to Mori.

Just as Ferda expected, she was waiting there quietly.

"?"

Mori looked rather different from when Ferda had seen her in the morning.

She wore a soft, fluttering dress, and her hair had been combed neatly like silk thread, just like a young lady's.

She had already had the features of a beauty, but once properly dressed up, she shone like the daughter of a noble house.

"Is this your work?"

"Hehe, yes. She didn't answer when I called her, and she stayed still, so she was like a doll... I was bored, so I touched her up a little. Is that all right?"

Echidna twisted her body bashfully.

Ferda recalled the golem Echidna had created.

It had looked like a drawing of a child, with needlessly large, sparkling eyes and a small head.

'Is her sense of beauty not warped when it comes to women because she is a woman herself?'

It had been pointless, but it was not bad.

'In fact, this is good.'

Even if she was a tool, Mori was clearly a living being, and living beings required more delicate care than tools.

Since she could not look after herself, it was only natural that someone was needed to care for her.

"If you have the time, could you look after Mori?"

Echidna's eyes sparkled, and she nodded her head vigorously.

"Of course! I-it makes me so happy to touch such a pretty child with my own hands, hehe, hehehe...!"

"I would prefer that you not do anything strange. She is an essential talent."

"Ah, I-I don't do things like that either. I'm not a bad witch who eats children or men, you know? I cherish them, brush their hair, feed them, and do things like that!"

Because the way she spoke itself was sinister, everything she said sounded strange.

As Echidna laughed gloomily, she absentmindedly brought Mori's hair to her nose and smelled it.

'She is definitely strange.'

Ferda decided not to doubt his own judgment.

Whether Echidna did that or not, Mori merely looked up at Ferda.

Her face was waiting only for the next command.

"That is all for today. Return to your room and rest well for tomorrow."

Mori nodded, rose from her seat, and walked away.

It was then.

BOOOOM!

The castle rang out loudly once.

Mori, who had been walking, missed her step and fell over as she was.

"Oh my? Mori!"

Echidna hurriedly ran over and helped Mori up.

Ferda held his breath and waited to see if there would be a second impact.

Fortunately, there was no second one.

Echidna broke the silence in a flustered voice.

"W-what happened? Do things like this happen here often?"

"This is the first time."

It did shake from time to time, but this was the first time it had shaken in the dead of night like this.

'And this is the first time it has shaken this violently.'

As Regent, Ferda needed to find out what was happening.

"Echidna."

"Yes?"

"Lay Mori down in her room. That child is a talent I need tomorrow. And you return quietly as well. Understood?"

"U-understood!"

Echidna picked Mori up and moved.

After watching Echidna leave, Ferda stepped out into the corridor and walked.

'Most likely, that sound came from the lair.'

Ferda decided to go down to the lair.

After walking for quite some time, he saw a soft light shining in the middle of the corridor.

It was Luri, holding a lantern.

"You have gone the wrong way."

With a calm, expressionless face, she pointed in the direction Ferda had come from.

"The bedroom is the other way."

She pretended it was simple guidance, but Ferda saw through her intentions.

"You are hiding something from me."

"Yes."

She did not deny it.

"So could you return to your room?"

"I cannot do that. As the man who will become the master of this castle, I need to know about this."

"You are not the master of this castle."

"I am also the man who will soon become so."

Silver eyes and blue eyes refused to let each other go.

It was a conversation between two people who would not yield an inch.

The one who took a step back from the confrontation was Luri.

"Master is suppressing her violent impulses."

"How?"

"There is nothing for you to worry about. That one just now is not something that happens often. It does not usually occur. So that the rest may go about their livelihoods—"

Ferda stepped close in front of Luri.

His eyes twisted fiercely.

"How?"

Irritation and anger could be felt.

They were emotions he had never once shown to Luri, who had been rude to him all this time.

Luri furrowed her brow.

"How else? What would one do to suppress the urge to destroy?"

"..."

"Master fights the desire to break through those massive iron doors and overturn the world. That desire, which has nothing in it but the urge to smash everything to pieces, builds and builds in Master's heart every single day. Because that is Master's essence."

An evil dragon is an evil dragon forever.

The reason she could not bear the name of guardian dragon was partly due to slander, but in the end, it was because she could not withstand her impulse to destroy.

"Master lived by releasing that destructive urge while killing monsters. If those monsters do not appear, what do you think she does?"

Ferda recalled Valdrova's memories engraved into his heart.

The answer slipped from Ferda's mouth.

"... She destroys herself?"

"Yes. If there is nothing to destroy, she does that."

Because Luri had watched over her for a very long time, she knew it well.

And that was something like a natural disaster, one that even a loyal attendant could do nothing about.

"That is the sort of person to whom you are engaged. She has already hurt many others because she cannot control herself."

So Luri warned Ferda, who had such young and foolish obstinacy.

"So I would prefer that you not say too often that you want to meet her. If your selfish heart will wound Master—"

Stop.

Luri, who had been delivering that sharp rebuke to Ferda, could not continue.

Luri's eyes widened as she looked up at him.

That was only natural, because something that did not suit Ferda's face at all was falling from it.

'A tear...?'

A tear was flowing down from the eyes of Ferda, that shameless man.

Just one drop.

It was a tear flowing from an expressionless face, but Luri was shocked.

Because there was no doubt that he had shed that tear because of the story she had just told.

Feeling it run down his cheek, Ferda realized it belatedly.

"Ah."

Ferda was also surprised by his own condition.

He wiped it away with his index finger and apologized to her.

"I have shown you something unsightly."

Unlike his eyes, there was no moisture in his voice.

It was as if, as his tear glands shriveled, they had forcibly spat out the water pooled inside.

"I understand. I understand what you mean."

Ferda abandoned the investigation and returned to his room.

"I am sorry for bothering you. I will go back."

Luri quietly watched Ferda walk away.

By the time Ferda's figure had grown faint, she was finally able to speak.

"What an impossible man to understand..."

Having lived through many years and watched many humans, Luri had thought she knew them well.

But the more she learned about Ferda, the less she understood him.

He was a man who had even broken the fingers of his own allies because things had to be fair, and had killed nobles because they would cause trouble later.

A heartless, merciless man had shed a tear.

'Only after hearing a story about Master... Is that possible?'

It had not even been a year since they became aware of each other's existence.

Then how could he feel such deep emotion?

No matter how many times Luri turned it over in her mind, she could not find an answer.

* * *

"A tear..."

Ferda was also surprised by that fact.

To think he could shed tears.

That tear had not been caused by his own emotions.

'When we were having that conversation, it seeped in.'

When he realized that the great vibration was Valdrova,

And when he learned that she had been harming herself,

Valdrova's emotions seeped into Ferda.

'Self-loathing.'

Whenever she could not control herself, she always nurtured self-loathing.

She threw herself into the impure things buried far below in the pit of emotion.

She listened to the voices of curses echoing in the deep abyss and strangled herself until she suffocated.

Crushed by that self-loathing, she suppressed her impulse to destroy.

She wanted to exist, but at the same time, she did not want to exist.

Every day, she fought like that alone.

That indescribable emotion was surging beneath Ferda's dantian.

'The Red Circle is turning.'

It was still not enough to advance another stage.

If Ferda concentrated like this and stayed awake for several days straight, he could undoubtedly reach the 3rd Circle.

It was very dangerous, but he could achieve very rapid growth.

'No.'

But Ferda put the brakes on the spinning Red Circle.

'Not this time.'

Ferda recalled the emotion he had felt when he reached the 2nd Circle.

That something that had been tickling at him had vanished along with his achievement.

'I must not... forget this.'

He had decided to live this life for her.

The vow he had made then was that even if he could not make her happy, he would not make her sad.

This emotion was directly connected to her sorrow.

He did not want to gloss over her sorrow together with his achievement.

'I have to resolve that first.'

Moving forward came after that.

That was the reason I stood here.

* * *

The next morning.

Ferda went to Mori, who was waiting near the study.

She had been dressed up beautifully by Echidna's hands.

Ferda asked her.

"Do you know a great deal about dragons?"

What was inside her head was the library of all phenomena.

Information on all things in the world had been entered into it.

So naturally, she nodded.

"Even about the Red Dragon, Valdrova?"

Nod, nod.

"Can you describe it for me?"

Mori nodded and took up a pen, beginning to write.

Instead of the flowing cursive used by scribes, she wrote in clear block letters that were easy to read.

-The existence known as dragons were those who fought to turn primordial chaos into order. What the survivors were granted was the very essence that forms the continent. The Blue Dragon, Morgan, has the power to rule mana and water, while the Silver Dragon, Silverwind, has the power to wield wind and ice.

It was a page from a history of the continent that he had heard during his lessons in culture as a child.

-What the Red Dragon was granted allows her to wield power and fire. Her individual martial might is the greatest among all dragons.

"Is that why there is so much slander about her being a tyrant or a demonic dragon?"

-She has consistently been described as an object of awe, but it was relatively recent in dragon history that she was officially designated an evil dragon.

"Since when?"

-After the Dragon-Demon War, that is, after Godwin's death.

The Black Dragon and the aspect of darkness.

It was the day a dragon of the continent died for the first time.

-The Black Dragon Godwin was known as a dragon who ruled darkness, but when he later revealed his ambition, it became known that chaos was also an essence granted to him. Godwin displayed his ambition and became the root of all demonkind, throwing the continent into chaos. However, the other rulers stepped forward, and in the end, he died at the hands of the Red Dragon Valdrova.

"And?"

-The most likely hypothesis is that, in the process of killing him, Godwin's power made Valdrova's power unstable. As a result, the aspect of power could not suppress her own power, creating secondary damage.

Valdrova's rampage.

Many people died with the advent of the Demon King, but her rampage also killed and burned many people.

'Innocent humans and creatures, and even Silverwind.'

It was a tragedy for which she had to atone forever.

"Is there no way to suppress it?"

Mori closed her eyes as she was.

She was searching through all the books inside her head.

After five minutes of meditation, she opened her eyes again.

Shake, shake.

"I see."

Ferda accepted it calmly.

It had been a contradiction from the beginning.

If there was a way to suppress the Red Dragon, called the aspect of power, could she truly be called the aspect of power?

She had to suffer from her own power forever.

'Is there truly nothing I can do for her?'

Ferda was in anguish.

He pictured her stripping off her own scales and bleeding.

Helplessness became a weight of a thousand geun and crushed him, and emptiness became a thousand spears that pierced his heart.

It was a pain similar to what he had felt when he absorbed her heart.

'If only there were anything I could do for her...'

It was then.

A small sensation tapped at Ferda's collar.

Mori, who had been holding the pen, had tugged at his clothes.

A tool did not move without permission.

The fact that she had moved meant that an order Ferda had given had been activated.

"Has a situation come in which you can give me some sort of answer?"

Mori nodded.

She moved the pen again.

-Based on the given information, I have confirmed a hypothesis by which it may be suppressed.

The moment he saw the next sentence she wrote, the thick fog in Ferda's heart cleared, and the sun rose.

Mori's eyes looked clearly at Ferda.

-According to the hypothesis, Ferda Valdrova, you can suppress her.