Chapter 33 - Mana Fatalism

Valdrova's daily routine was truly simple.

An enemy appears.

She tears it apart.

She roars.

She goes home.

Her actions were closer to those of a barbarian warrior than anything befitting the title of Grand Duchess.

She had always devoted her strength to protecting people, and she had never felt much resistance toward doing so.

Even so, recently, she had begun to hesitate over one thing.

ROA—

It was roaring.

That roar, so perfectly suited to the exhilaration of battle and the declaration of victory, had recently begun to embarrass her.

-Aah...

Her voice shrank away like a mouse's tail.

Valdrova let her sense of release burn out incompletely and cleared her throat.

Valdrova's eyes slid toward the place that had made her like this.

Her gaze turned toward the peak of the lonely mountain.

Whenever Valdrova went out onto the battlefield, Ferda had always been there at the summit of the lonely mountain.

'Did he... not come today either?'

But all she could see at the summit was the flat area that had been leveled there.

He had not come to look down as he always did.

Valdrova found Ferda's gaze burdensome.

When he watched her, she grew needlessly impatient and restless, making herself look unsightly.

At times, she had even thought it would be better if he did not watch.

'Yes, perhaps this is better.'

Valdrova spread her wings and moved, returning to her lair.

The lonely mountain of the far east.

She had chosen that place as her home precisely because it was hard for humans to see.

When she entered the long cave, Luri greeted her.

"You have worked hard, Master."

Valdrova passed her without answering.

Seeing that she did not even respond to a light greeting, Luri followed her in through the iron door.

"Has something happened?"

-It is nothing of consequence.

As if to say there was nothing to worry about, Valdrova coiled herself.

"Please do not say that, and tell this girl. I will be of help to you."

-Hmm...

-Ferda... has he grown tired of me?

"... Pardon?"

Luri wore an expression of sheer disbelief.

-He did not come today either.

Valdrova had thought it was fortunate that he had not come.

But an emptiness far greater than that thought had taken root in her.

It was a day no different from any other.

And yet it felt as if something great had disappeared.

"It has only been twice at most. One week. Compared to the years Lady Valdrova has lived through, it is an absurdly short time."

-Of course. I know that as well.

Only a week, only twice...

Why was that word, only, so heavy?

"Lord Ferda has been moving busily of late."

Recently, Ferda had been handling many things.

He cooperated with merchants, and he also dealt with matters raised by the local lords.

Once he entered his office, it was common for him to emerge only after the moon had risen high in the sky.

-Even so... did he not continue coming out before?

Valdrova was right.

No matter how busy he was, when Ferda heard that Valdrova was fighting, he came outside.

And when their eyes met, he always smiled at her.

-He must surely... have lost affection for me because I never even gave him a glance.

She lowered her head in gloom and let out a sigh.

Of course, Luri did not think so.

'If he had come to dislike her, there is no way he would be moving so busily.'

Ferda had moved in order to care for the things beneath Valdrova.

The driving force behind it was undoubtedly affection for Valdrova.

-Luri.

"Yes, Master."

Valdrova opened her mouth with difficulty.

-That... thing young ladies do.

"Do you mean a tea party?"

-Yes. That.

Luri could not help being rather surprised by her words.

Valdrova had avoided contact with humans ever since the incident with the prince.

-Could you... propose a tea party to Ferda?

She had taken a great step toward facing her own fiancé.

* * *

Ferda had become a 3rd Circle mage, possessing three overlapping rings.

The 1st Circle was a point,

the 2nd Circle was drawing a line that connected point to point.

And the 3rd Circle was for those who handled lines and wove them into a plane.

That plane was the magic array, the stage where one could begin using magic in earnest.

'The Magic Library is broken too.'

The Magic Library was a memorization method that filled one part of the mind purely with magic and formulas alone.

It could only be established after reaching the 5th Circle, and it had naturally disappeared when Ferda returned to the past.

'Still, the magic is inside my body.'

The spells lay beneath the realm of the unconscious.

As if rummaging alone through a collapsed library, he decided to draw magic at random.

He concentrated his mana into his right arm.

With three overlapping Circles, the movement of mana was fast and natural.

'Drawing a magic array.'

It was a stage where one was a true mage, and at the same time, not a mage.

That was because it was the stage where one began training in earnest to draw magic arrays.

'The first stage is concretization.'

Ferda recalled the standardized magic array in his memories.

Usually, at this stage, one looked at the magic array drawn in a magic book and concretized it along with an incantation.

The more skilled one became, the shorter that concretization process grew.

However, Ferda did this concretization differently.

Without knowing the purpose, he began drawing a magic array by relying on his unconscious.

As if casting a fishing rod into a lake, he waited and waited.

He waited only for a big catch that could not resist the lure of the bait to bite at last.

'I can feel it.'

Then he moved on to the second stage.

'Formalization.'

Ferda imagined a pen dancing above his hand.

Following the movement of that pen, a simple magic array formed in Ferda's hand.

'The third stage is realization.'

Since the frame had been made, this was the stage of pouring mana into it in earnest.

The completed magic array changed color as it determined the nature of the mana.

The magic array, which had held a faint blue color, flared brightly and emitted light.

'This magic is...'

Before Ferda could recognize it, his body moved first.

With only his index and middle fingers extended, he pointed at one part of the wall.

And then came the final stage.

Incantation.

"Elemental Bolt."

The moment Ferda recited the magic spell, a sharp sound of electricity rang out.

CRACKLE!

A bullet of lightning flew in a straight line.

It was Elemental Bolt, a basic attack spell along with Mana Shot.

'That was dangerous.'

Had he not aimed properly, that sunken mark would have had part of Ferda's body buried in it.

'Drawing it out from the unconscious is not entirely good.'

Even so, Ferda did not stop.

The more a spell was lodged in his unconscious, the more familiar it was to his hand, the more it meant he had favored it.

He emptied his mind, went inward, and tried searching for another spell.

'I can feel it.'

Ferda once again gave himself over to his senses and drew a magic array.

He passed through concretization, formalization, and even realization.

Then the magic array, which had held a faint blue color, was dyed pitch-black.

The attribute was darkness.

In other words, pure dark magic.

Among the spells of that darkness attribute, what did he know?

Before the answer could settle, Ferda's hand moved again. This time, he brought the hand bearing the magic array toward a candle flame.

Only at the end did the name come out.

"Shadow Hand."

At that moment, the shadowed portion beneath the candle flame bubbled like lava.

Ferda's shadow gradually swelled, then separated onto Ferda's arm as if shedding its skin.

It was another hand made of magic.

'I can feel the side effects properly too.'

Among 3rd-tier spells, there was a similar technique called Magic Hand.

In the case of Magic Hand, which separated and floated in the air, it was closer to an overlay, to a glove.

That was because it connected to the right hand and then imitated the movements of that right hand.

But in the case of Shadow Hand, it was not something overlaid, but something that grew out.

An entirely new hand came into being.

'There is no price, but there is a major condition.'

High-performance dark magic relative to mana demanded two things.

The "price" of one's mind becoming tainted the more one used the magic.

The "condition" of requiring one's mind when using the magic.

The foreign sensation one felt when a new hand came into being was the condition.

One would experience confusion over whether this was one's own hand or an imaginary hand.

If one could not accept that, it meant one failed to satisfy the "condition" for using Shadow Hand.

A mage who could not satisfy the condition would suffer terrible phantom pain.

To Ferda, even that danger was meaningless.

He had already mastered Shadow Hand's condition long ago.

'Still, it does not yet feel completely like my arm.'

Ferda looked down at that black hand.

He tested it with flexible, precise movements, drawing waves with its fingers.

It was as natural as a hand that had always been there.

Ferda turned his eyes and looked up toward the shelf.

Ordinarily, it was a distance that would require him to get up from his seat and walk ten steps.

Ferda stretched his hand toward it.

'An arm is something that can stretch.'

In accordance with Ferda's imagination, which shattered common sense, the shadow hand exceeded its limit and stretched out.

It extended the distance he would have had to walk ten steps, then grasped the book placed on the shelf and returned.

'It is 3rd-tier magic, but it is a spell too burdensome for a 3rd-tier mage to use.'

Because it could move in such fine detail, it demanded a great deal of imagination and mental strength.

That was the essence of dark magic.

It had high performance, but demanded a high standard befitting that performance.

If one did not meet that standard, they were spells that could easily drive one mad.

'Once I reach the 4th Circle, it should become more stable.'

Thinking so, Ferda muttered.

"The next stage..."

Ferda's thoughts became complicated.

It was a time when he needed the desire to improve, but right now, he did not have the same stimulus as usual.

'What is needed to completely stabilize her is a 4th Circle amount of mana.'

That was the amount of mana necessary to completely suppress Valdrova's bloodlust.

Even for that alone, he wanted to rise somehow.

But now, something felt blocked.

Part of the reason was likely that he had reached the 3rd Circle without any sense of force, but the greatest reason was, as expected, the aptitude search he had recently done.

'Mana Fatalism...'

Ferda had learned many things under a master greedy for money, and among them was something called Magic Fatalism.

It was a theory that resonated more with possessors of the Red Circle than the Blue Circle.

Its content was a story derived from fatalism, stating that even if another version of oneself in a different timeline awakened through different purposes and events, the attributes one possessed remained unchanged.

'It was a useless topic of debate.'

It was as meaningless as proving utopia.

It was not called a relationship-ending spell for nothing.

But because Ferda had turned back time, he could not dare dismiss it.

'I no longer have hostility toward my family or hatred toward the world.'

Because Ferda had sworn that he would live only for her, he thought his attributes would also be different.

But what he was given was darkness and lightning.

They were exactly the magic Ferda had used in the past.

'How did I feel when I first learned I had these attributes?'

In any case.

He had been pleased.

There were two attributes that the Blue Circle could not properly handle.

They were light and darkness.

Light manifested through the upright hearts of priests.

Darkness manifested from negative emotions, as it had with Ferda.

Having an aptitude for the darkness attribute had the drawback that one could not use light magic or magic of the line that healed others.

However, it had the advantage that other elemental magic did not decline by a large margin compared to other Red Circle possessors.

That was why Ferda had handled every element except light as well as any Elemental Master.

'But now...'

It was not good.

The story now, entangled with Valdrova, was different.

This blessing that had allowed Ferda to play an active role in the past now felt like a curse.

'Valdrova is suffering because of the Aspect of Darkness, and I possess the darkness attribute.'

It had already been proven that injecting mana affected her.

But what if what Ferda was doing was not simply stabilizing her, but watering another seed of darkness in her, when she was already suffering from darkness?

If what he gave her ultimately led to destruction, could it be called being for her sake?

'If the mana that killed her is going to kill her once again...'

If fate, like mana, did not change.

'Is someone like me allowed to be by her side?'

Even to Ferda, who had once been a Great Mage and commanded heaven and earth, that was an unknown realm.

When he stood before such unknowns, Ferda had always challenged them.

But now, it only plunged him into deep thought.

A mage's inquiry led directly to magic.

Ferda's deep worry drew out yet another spell from his unconscious.

Following his feeling, he formalized the magic once more.

Only after that magic array had been formalized did he barely notice.

'What spell is this?'

It was not simply something he had forgotten, but a form he truly had never seen before.

Runes were densely embedded among formulas that could not have been more complex.

Judging by complexity alone, it was at a level comparable to 6th-tier magic.

However, if it were 6th-tier, it would have broken during formalization, and there was no way it would appear like this.

Above all, he would have remembered it.

It was certainly a spell he had drawn out from within his own unconscious.

Shadow Hand and Elemental Bolt had both been drawn from his unconscious, but he had recognized their names, even if belatedly.

And yet, even though this spell was floating above his palm, no name came to mind.

'As if it never had a name to begin with.'

He did not know what it was.

Using the manifested Shadow Hand, Ferda took spell-copying parchment from the cupboard.

He placed it directly over the magic array he was maintaining, copying the shape and patterns.

He examined that magic array.

He tried to understand it, but it was an object he could not analyze even with his knowledge.

KNOCK KNOCK.

Someone knocked.

-It is Luri.

Ferda rolled up the copied parchment and gathered it in one place.

"Come in."

The door opened, and the young maidservant entered.

Her face was expressionless as usual.

"You look troubled."

"I ended up that way after thinking about this and that."

He glossed over the magic array and his thoughts.

He thought it was not an issue Luri particularly needed to know.

"What do you think about a tea party?"

While he was eating lunch, Luri threw out that question.

"A tea party, you say? With whom?"

"Who else could there be besides Master?"

Luri was speaking more sharply than usual.

"Master sent a request for me to arrange it 'personally,' so I am asking you like this. If you wish, I will have it held this afternoon."

"A tea party with my fiancée..."

Ferda imagined it in his head.

The sight of her wearing a dress and gracefully lifting a cup of tea.

Valdrova joining a bright and splendid atmosphere.

'I definitely want to go see it.'

Proceed with it no matter what.

Ordinarily, Ferda would likely have answered that way.

"It is a good idea, but I do not think the timing is quite right."

"... Pardon?"

Luri asked again, as if she had heard wrong.

Ferda answered once more.

"I am saying there is no need to rush too far ahead. I need time to think for the time being, so let us postpone it."

"..."

Ferda spoke calmly, as he always did.

Luri stared intently at Ferda, then opened her mouth.

"Are you playing hard to get with Master?"

"Playing hard to get?"

"I mean the struggle between lovers to seize the initiative. A scheme to make Lord Ferda fall completely for..."

"It is not like that."

When it came to lovers, it was not easy for him to have such high-level ideas.

"Then has something happened?"

"Nothing in particular."

"Seeing that someone who usually sings about wanting to meet her is acting like this, I wondered if you might be about to die."

"It is nothing like that, so do not worry."

"I will not step back until you answer."

Because Ferda was different from usual, Luri also acted persistent.

She seemed ready to follow him even to the privy.

He wondered whether he should still ignore her, but,

"Have you grown tired of Master?"

he could not dare do so.

The moment he heard those words, Ferda felt as if his heart had dropped.

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"Master said so. That recently, you have not been watching her fight. She said it seemed you had grown tired of her because she never so much as showed her face."

Grown tired?

How could that be?

Ferda, too, wanted nothing but to see her.

It was only that watching her no longer felt the same as before.

"If you have not grown tired of her, then I would like you to give an answer befitting that."

Luri's loyal eyes shone silver.

Ferda brought out the words that had only been circling inside his mouth.

"... I have merely had many worries recently."

"Even a blind man could tell that. What are these worries?"

"Darkness dwells in my mana. I was troubled, wondering if that darkness might be harming her."

"Is that so?"

Luri took off her glove and held out her hand.

"Then try it once."

"On you?"

Luri nodded.

"I am also a spawn who has inherited a dragon's blood. It may be only a drop in the bucket, but I can at least determine whether something harms Master, so try it."

Ferda did not think further and decided to take that hand and test it.

A child's small hand.

But that hand was not simply soft.

Ferda injected his mana toward that hand.

"How is it?"

Luri, who had been sensing it deeply, tilted her head.

"... I do not really know what I am supposed to feel. Is it not merely magic power flowing in?"

"Do you feel nothing in particular?"

"No."

The amount of mana Ferda released was the amount for one Mana Shot.

In Valdrova's case, she had already reacted even to that amount.

"I will send a little more."

This time, it was an amount equal to five. At this level, it was an amount sufficient to touch the mana circuits and make one feel something.

A subtle change also appeared in Luri's expression.

"How is it now?"

"As you said, I do feel something, but there is no sense that it is harmful. It is merely mana."

Luri furrowed her brow and looked up at Ferda as if dumbfounded.

"Did you frighten me by worrying that Master would collapse from only this much?"

"... Yes."

"You turn people into dogs and even break fingers, yet when it comes to Master, you are terribly timid."

The unstoppable Aspect of Power, Red Dragon, Valdrova.

Such was she, and yet before Ferda, she was only a woman as delicate as a single flower.

The concern that he might harm that woman was far too heavy a burden for Ferda.

"As the man who will become her Consort, you should not create worries for Master because of such a trifling concern, instead of easing them."

"Yes, you are right."

"Phew..."

Ferda nodded, and Luri let out a deep sigh.

Ferda could clearly feel how much hardship she had endured while caught between the two of them.

"So what will you do?"

What else could he do?

"I will accept that invitation. My fiancée requested it personally, so I cannot ignore it."

He had no choice but to face it.

"Understood."

After hearing his answer, Luri gave a polite bow and left the dining room.

While she was gone, Ferda glanced at the parchment he had gathered to one side.

'Trying to understand it immediately will only become another worry.'

He could ask Mori and search for the type of magic array.

He could also ask Echidna, who was well-versed in runes, to interpret it.

But he had a feeling that this magic array was something he had to realize on his own.

That was why Ferda neatly folded the parchment and placed it between the pages of a book.

If it was naturally forgotten, then one day suddenly slipped out when he took out the book, he could think about it again then.

Thinking so, he decided to forget it.

* * *

'Honestly, he makes me work over the most pointless things.'

As she walked down the long corridor, Luri grumbled inwardly.

He had insolently refused the invitation, and his reason had been trivial.

'He usually charges ahead without hesitation, so why is he like that in front of Master?'

He became a psycho who obtained whatever he wanted by any means, but when it came to Valdrova, he was nothing but a foolish coward.

'His mana harming Lady Valdrova...'

Luri looked down at her right hand.

She had said she felt nothing, but in truth, Luri had felt a strange sensation.

And that sensation still remained in the hand Ferda had held.

'I do not know what this is...'

It gave her a strange feeling, but it was undoubtedly harmless.

'There is no need to mention it and frighten him...'

Luri put her glove back on and moved on.

Even the loyal attendant had to spend busy days with no time to blink.