Chapter 225 - Worse Than Expected

“Have you lost your mind, Regent?!”

Ureas, who had been unable to get a word out, began shouting the moment they left the tent. His eyes were fixed on Ferda.

“What do you mean?”

“Who gave you the right to take over the negotiations and settle on forty percent?!”

They did say brothers resembled one another. Ferda could see a hint of Alexander in his face.

Ureas had genuinely wanted forty-five percent. But wanting something did not make it happen. The coalition had offered twenty-seven percent. Even a compromise would never have exceeded thirty-five. With Ureas’s temperament and diplomatic skills, getting thirty would have been a miracle.

Forty percent had only been possible because Ferda had spotted an opportunity and stepped in. Yet Ureas could not let go of those last five percentage points and was taking his anger out on him. So Ferda said:

“Do not misunderstand.”

“What?!”

“I only raised it to forty percent so the far east could take ten percent.”

“You expect us to make do with thirty percent? When you brought a mere five hundred troops?!”

“You are getting three percentage points more. What exactly is the problem?”

“Unbelievable! Count Ruster! What do you make of this?!”

Count Ruster, who had been watching silently, spared him a glance and looked away. He gave no answer. Ferda’s demands might seem like daylight robbery, but he had ample justification.

Embarrassed, Ureas raised his voice again.

“Besides, if you fail, it drops to twenty percent! Aren’t we the ones shouldering that risk?!”

“If our retreat leaves us with only twenty percent, you may have all of it. I will make up the shortfall with the far east’s assets.”

Ureas’s expression stiffened at Ferda’s declaration.

“What sort of assets do you mean?”

“The magical engineering weapons you have had your eye on, Your Highness. I will supply your army with every item we have been researching, right up to our latest developments. How does that sound?”

At the prospect of strengthening his army, he could not keep the delight off his face. But his greed was stronger still.

“That still leaves us with only thirty percent, doesn’t it? I would like a little more to make up for that.”

The greedy bastard. Still, Ferda had expected this.

“Very well. I will supply magical engineering weapons whether we succeed or fail. However, I will only provide enough to equip your personal guard. Would that satisfy you?”

For Ureas, who delighted in conquest and displays of force, it was an attractive offer.

“That is unacceptable.”

Count Ruster, who had been observing the exchange, stepped in.

“If you intend to supply weapons, you must provide enough to benefit the entire imperial army. A quantity sufficient only to equip a personal guard is of no benefit.”

His expression seemed to say, Do you think the rest of us are too stupid to covet the far east’s weapons?

Ferda did not answer him. Ureas spoke up instead.

“What has you so displeased?”

Count Ruster lowered his head and replied.

“The small quantity Regent Ferda offers would do nothing to strengthen the Empire’s defenses.”

“The Empire is the emperor, and I am the man who will become the Empire. If strengthening the guard that protects me is not strengthening our defenses, what is?”

“...”

“I know you have been treating me with contempt. But if you keep pressing this matter, I will deal with you under military law.”

Only then did Count Ruster grasp Ferda’s intentions. He said nothing more, but anger at Ferda showed on his face.

Ureas cleared his throat and left Ferda with one final remark.

“Do not fail.”

He mounted his horse and headed back to the forward base. Simple as he was, he responded predictably to the carrot and the stick. Count Ruster also went on his way after giving Ferda a disapproving glare.

“You seem to make more enemies every time you do anything, Master Ferda,” Luri remarked from beside him.

“Still, they can’t lay a hand on me lightly, can they?”

“Isn’t that because I am here?”

While kings and generals traveled with knightly escorts, Ferda alone had a young girl at his side. A girl dressed as a maid, at that. Her incongruous attire made her seem even more threatening than the knights. And in truth, she was.

“There is something I am curious about.”

“What is it?”

“Why did the Second Prince stop Count Ruster when he spoke up for the national interest?”

She was asking about what had just happened. Ferda answered.

“What do you think it would be like to be the only person with a sword when everyone else was fighting with their fists?”

“It would be an unfair fight.”

“Exactly. Ureas likes being strong, but he likes having weak people to crush even more.”

That applied to the Empire’s other factions as well.

“Now Ureas has no choice but to hope I succeed.”

“Which should ensure the imperial army’s cooperation.”

That was why Count Ruster could not easily obstruct the plan even after seeing through it. It was a clever strategy indeed.

“Let us head back now. I do not wish to linger in this foul stench.”

“There is one more thing I need to check.”

Ferda had another reason for remaining while everyone else was leaving. Looking around the tent, he spotted a man. It was the Heian knight, gathering the scraps of flesh with the soldiers who had accompanied him.

Ferda approached him and asked, “Are you a knight of the Heian Kingdom?”

The vacant-faced knight started and nodded.

“Y-yes, I am.”

“May the departed rest in peace.”

“Ah, yes... Thank you.”

The knight was bewildered. How could the man who had calmly carried on negotiating amid that bloodbath now speak of peace for the departed?

“I hear you will be withdrawing once you finish here.”

“Yes.”

“There are a few things I need to know before you leave. I have some questions about your king and Yuan, the scout who blew himself up. Can you answer them?”

The knight hesitated, then nodded.

“I will tell you as much as I can.”

His reply was dispirited. Ferda began his questions.

“Could this man Yuan use magic before?”

The man considered, then shook his head.

“Not to my knowledge. Yuan used to be a hunter, so he was a skilled tracker and exceptionally good at concealing his presence, but he never trained in magic.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes. If he could wield magic like that, we would never have used him as an infiltrator in the first place.”

That was true. There was no reason to send someone gifted with magic into such danger.

“Then my second question. When did you launch the operation to infiltrate the inner castle?”

“The day it began would have been when I last saw Yuan... A week ago, then. The last I heard, he was being sent inside the outer walls, and he disappeared around that time.”

“Thank you. You have told me a great deal.”

“... Please, bring those filthy Demons to justice.”

Ferda patted his shoulder. With a conflicted expression, the man resumed gathering the remains.

As he walked away, Ferda murmured, “That settles it.”

“Settles what?”

Luri could not let the remark pass. Ferda answered her question.

“The situation is worse than I thought.”

* * *

Magic was a mysterious power of myriad forms, manifested through various media, languages, and geometric figures. But at its source lay one common element: mana.

Mana was a pure substance that could assume form through distortions and transformations guided by language and its wielder’s will. Mages were beings who harbored and produced that pure substance within their bodies.

In humans, increasing the number of Circles compressed their mana, refining it to a higher concentration and enabling them to wield more powerful magic.

Precisely because mana was a pure substance capable of becoming anything, it was dangerous. The greatest danger every mage had to guard against was a Circle running out of control.

A Circle runaway occurred when the Circle that produced pure mana inside the body devoured all the body’s nutrients, swelling beyond its limits until it burst. The higher a mage’s Circle, the harder controlling mana inevitably became, and the more closely they lived with the threat of a Circle runaway.

“That man Yuan exploded because his Circles ran out of control.”

Ferda explained, but Luri did not understand.

“Doesn’t that only happen to mages? That man had no connection to magic.”

“Correct.”

“Then had he been hiding his ability to use magic all along?”

“I doubt it.”

As the knight had said, if Yuan had possessed an aptitude for magic, the kingdom would have noticed first. They would have employed him as a mage, not some special operative sent on infiltration missions.

“I believe he must have formed his Circles after entering that city.”

“Are you saying there is a power within the Heinkel Kingdom’s walls that can create mages?”

Luri tried to reason it out for herself. But she had no way of knowing how to create a mage, and soon gave up.

“It is possible with Red Circles.”

Unlike Blue Circles, built up through calm, their mana was generated by emotional upheaval. As a Red Circle wielder himself, Ferda knew this well.

“If you experience an emotion overwhelming enough to form a Circle and endure it, a Red Circle will form.”

“Is it that easy?”

“No, it is difficult. Dwelling on that one emotion continuously until you form a Circle is no simple feat.”

Prolonged joy became pain, and prolonged sorrow led to numbness. Yet he believed it was possible because the Demons possessed one unusual thing.

“Trauma.”

Luri flinched at the word. Her own memories of that time were still vivid.

“With the right use of it, it is certainly feasible.”

Ferda had felt regret while looking at that thing. His regret had been so profound and intense that it had carried him to a new stage.

“Can someone become a bomb like that simply by forming a Red Circle?”

“The 1st Circle cannot produce that kind of force. Even the most powerful explosion at the 1st Circle would amount to cardiac arrest. Only at the 2nd Circle does it begin to resemble an actual explosion.”

“Then you mean he had reached the 2nd Circle?”

Ferda shook his head.

“Judging by the explosive force, he was at the 3rd Circle.”

The 3rd Circle. Even Luri knew how difficult it was to reach that stage.

“Are you saying he reached the 3rd Circle in less than a week, Master Ferda?”

“I am certain.”

“Is that possible?”

Even if Red Circles formed faster than Blue Circles, reaching the 3rd Circle in so little time was difficult. But it was not impossible. The price was simply far from small.

“Why else do you think he went so mad?”

He had become a Demon Follower and blown himself up along with his king for their cause. He was certainly not sane.

Only then did Luri understand what Ferda meant by the gravity of the situation.

“If they can use Trauma to mass-produce suicide troops like him, then the situation is indeed as serious as you say.”

“Yes. The kingdoms’ coalition alone may not be enough to handle this.”

An army of a hundred thousand, unable to take a single fortress. The thought of 3rd Circle bombs swarming inside the walls made the obstacle seem impossibly high.

“Then we will need reinforcements?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have anyone to ask?”

“There is someone I have in mind.”

Someone he had expected to be the first to come running when something like this happened. Someone whose continued absence puzzled him. The reason he had done no more than think of this person was that they were not someone he could readily approach.

He wondered what to do now.

It was then that a chill wind brushed Ferda’s skin, at odds with the scorching sunlight.

As a mage, he knew the sensation well. It arose when an enormous current of magical power disturbed the surroundings. What Ferda could sense so clearly, Luri could sense as well.

“Master Ferda?”

She asked, wondering if he had caused it. Ferda turned his gaze toward one spot and said:

“It seems the other party has been curious all this time as well.”

A round portal had opened in the sky where he looked up. Terrifying magical power poured from it.

At the same time, tremors rose through the ground. Those came not from mana but from galloping horses. Ureas and his men, who had left ahead of them, were riding back. Their faces were frantic.

“Regent! Turn your horse around and join us at once!” Ureas shouted. “Erdes, that crazy bitch, is about to go on a rampage!”