Chapter 5 - It Was Truly Beautiful

"I understand."

Luri no longer tried to stop the stubborn Ferda.

Considering how firmly she had warned him, he had thought she would refuse, but she chose to follow Ferda's wishes without protest.

After Ferda finished his meal, Luri took the lead and walked ahead.

The place she headed for was an open space in the garden.

"I will touch you for a moment."

Luri, who had hated touching him so much, said she would take hold of Ferda.

"Do so."

"Then."

Luri grabbed Ferda by the clothes.

At that moment, the blazing sun vanished.

Something blocked Ferda's sight.

It was an enormous wing.

A pair of wings had sprouted from Luri's back.

The wings beat hard toward the ground, and she soared straight up.

THOOM!

Gravity disappeared, and air resistance tormented Ferda.

It would not have been strange if he vomited up the breakfast he had just eaten at any moment.

Ferda swallowed and overcame the pressure and the wind.

The dizziness and pain lasted only a moment.

"We have arrived."

At Luri's words, Ferda opened his eyes.

The scenery spread out before Ferda had changed in an instant.

The place they had reached by flying like that was none other than the mountain summit.

'It felt like only three seconds. She reached the summit in that time?'

It was not teleportation magic; if that was purely speed, she was the fastest even among dragon spawn.

'No, she may be the fastest even among dragons.'

As Ferda stared intently at Luri, lost in that thought,

"What you should be looking at is not me."

"What?"

"Look below."

"Ah, right."

Ferda turned his head and looked down.

He looked down at the eastern side of the lonely mountain's summit.

There, a colorless plain spread out.

'The Land of Demons.'

A land where the entire area had been completely corrupted when the Demon King died.

He could see something squirming there.

'Monsters.'

Monsters.

Invaders of the continent that had been continuously flowing in since the birth of the Demon King.

Where they came from and how they were made were still complete mysteries, and even by the time Ferda killed Valdrova, nothing had been known about them.

All that was known was that their goal was the same as the Demon King's from 150 years ago.

'To make a land where only death remains.'

They destroyed and dominated all living things.

And what Ferda was looking at were the monsters coming up from the east.

'As expected of the east, the monsters are unbelievably huge.'

They were far too enormous.

Because they crawled out of the Land of Demons, which could not be purified, they boasted a tremendous size.

Just rolling over would be enough to bring down a fortress.

They were disasters on a scale humans could not handle.

Amid the drab colors of despair, a single red flame close to a primary color was swaying.

No, on second look, it was not a flame.

'Red Dragon, Valdrova.'

The one who would become Ferda's fiancée was fighting there.

Valdrova was large, like other dragons.

However, compared to the monster she was facing, she was about half its size.

She was far outmatched in body mass, but Valdrova was not such an easy opponent.

CRASH!

The monster's body and Valdrova's body collided.

There was a tremendous difference in size, but she was not pushed back an inch.

Instead, the air heaved violently.

That wave swept through the forest and reached even the high mountain where Ferda stood.

"Urgh..."

Ferda's body went stiff.

If he were an ordinary person, one might say he had simply been frightened, but the cause of this was clear.

Dragon mana had mingled into the wave and pierced through his skin.

'Dragon Fear... I suppose.'

He felt a level on an entirely different dimension from when Luri had released Dragon Fear.

Even though he knew it was not directed at him, it made him feel as if it were staring straight at Ferda himself.

'That is a Red Dragon.'

A helplessness on a different dimension, one he could not feel when he had been a Great Mage, swept through his body.

Valdrova's battle continued.

CRUNCH! CRACK!

An embodiment of power and master of fire.

The red tyrant's fight was overwhelming.

She peeled off thick hide with her sharp claws.

With her long snout and teeth, she severed the monster's blood vessels and tendons.

She moved so nimbly that the monster thrashing in desperation looked dull-witted.

She viciously aimed for its blind spots and left her opponent no opening.

Power, speed, and innate battle sense.

SCREECH!

The monster, whose every tendon had been severed, could no longer resist and collapsed where it stood.

It would die even if left alone.

Valdrova's violence did not stop.

RIIIIP! RIP!

Her claws pierced the monster's belly and tore it wide open.

The monster's purple blood and green entrails were visible even to Ferda from afar.

At the same time, Valdrova's stomach swelled greatly.

A vivid red light shone intensely beyond her white belly hide.

'Fire Breath.'

ROOOOAR!

The Red Dragon's breath, said to be stronger than the flames of hell, burned the monster from within.

SCREECH!

The monster's agonized scream burst out.

But that cry did not last long either.

Valdrova's crimson flames violently burst out from every hole in the monster's body.

The monster's insides did more than cook evenly; they began turning to ash and scattering.

Its form became ash and smoke, and on the land where only curses had settled, only the red tyrant stood.

ROOOOAR!

Valdrova's roar rang out thunderously and shook everything.

"Gah!"

Ferda could endure no longer and collapsed where he stood.

'Indeed... did Dragon Roar have this much power?'

The sensation of being overwhelmed by a dragon, something he could not feel when he had been a Great Mage.

His hands and feet trembled, and his teeth chattered.

Ferda had literally been rendered helpless.

"This is the true form of the one who will become your spouse."

Luri crouched down beside him and looked down at Ferda.

"In the blood of a Red Dragon dwells ferocious murderous intent, the essence of what you call an evil dragon. That is not something made from temperament, but an essence."

Luri emphasized the word essence.

Ferda knew why she spoke that way.

'Essence is something that cannot be changed.'

An evil dragon was forever an evil dragon.

Her murderous intent could not be removed, and there was no guarantee that murderous intent would not reach Ferda.

"What cannot live without destroying is precisely a Red Dragon. If you remain by my mistress's side, you must be prepared to be crushed in the crossfire every day."

Luri's expressionless gaze asked this.

Do you finally realize now that your decision was shallow?

'Her power certainly stirs fear.'

Even though he had seen her from afar, her gaze was vivid, as if it had dug into his mind.

That was an unavoidable and undeniable fact.

'But I am not afraid.'

Valdrova's gaze was in Ferda's mind, but at the same time, Valdrova's emotions were there as well.

The emotions toward what she had seen and felt helped him understand all her actions so far.

'That action is for the sake of this world.'

Just as she loved this world and hid her own form,

she personally hunted monsters to protect what she loved.

'She is an evil dragon.'

But at the same time, she was a knight with a noble heart, and the guardian dragon of the continent.

An ascetic moving toward an ideal she could never reach.

"Truly..."

And so the emotion called fear changed into awe.

"Splendid."

Light shone in Ferda's eyes.

He was smiling.

* * *

Luri hated humans.

If dragon blood flowed in her veins, she naturally had to harbor such feelings.

However, her own mistress, Valdrova, loved those beneath her.

'And she was hurt.'

After the murder of the 3rd Prince, the hatred Luri held toward humans became even deeper than that of other dragon spawn.

Because she hated them more than anyone, she understood the gap between humans and dragons even better, and she also understood what dragons hated.

So she already knew what would happen when an ordinary human directly saw a Red Dragon's form.

'He brought this on himself.'

Ferda had said he wanted to see.

Luri had warned him sufficiently, and had even tried to stop him.

Although she had grabbed Ferda and flown in order to bring him there before the fight ended!

She believed she had stopped him enough.

Up to that point, things had gone as Luri thought.

Ferda, watching that sight, simply stared blankly at it.

He was trembling before Dragon Fear on an entirely different level.

'A typical situation.'

That face would gradually change into fear,

and soon he would reproach himself for his shallowness and beg to be spared.

'By then, my mistress will know as well.'

That humans and dragons could never become one.

It seemed as if things were moving according to her prediction, but that was not quite the case.

"Truly... splendid."

An absurd statement popped out of Ferda's mouth.

Luri turned her head, wondering if she had heard wrong.

But as she turned her head, she became even more surprised.

'He is smiling?'

She could not understand it.

How could he smile while watching something being so brutally torn apart and burned?

Should he not be afraid that he, too, might meet a fleeting fate like that?

'No way...'

At that moment, realization struck Luri's mind like thunder and lightning.

Why this man could be so relaxed even after becoming Valdrova's fiancé.

And why he could smile like this in this situation.

If it was *that*, everything made sense.

'You crazy masochist.'

It was the moment Luri's disgust toward Ferda deepened another level.

* * *

That day, Ferda lay in bed, unable to move a muscle.

He had been hit by Dragon Fear and even experienced a Roar.

It was a situation in which an ordinary human could not have stayed sane.

Conversely, precisely because Ferda was sane, his body had broken down.

'Can I really not move?'

Just in case, he tried twitching his hand.

Instead, his toes wriggled.

When he tried to blink, his thumb fluttered,

and when he twitched his mouth, his nostrils flared.

'It seems impossible.'

The fact that his mind was intact like this was a miracle in itself.

In this situation, the best thing to do was to lie quietly and sink into thought.

'It looks like I will lose an entire day.'

It was not enough that he needed to focus on breaking through to a Circle, yet he had to lie here like this.

'Why did I want to see that in the first place?'

The reason Ferda had wanted to see it.

It was because of a hunch that perhaps that battle might give Ferda an answer.

'So did that hunch prove right?'

That was something he had to find out from now on.

Ferda decided to review everything he had watched once more.

He went back to the moment he had arrived at the mountain summit.

The smell of the air he had breathed, the temperature touching his skin, even the feel of the uneven gravel against the tips of his feet.

He recalled everything clearly.

In the world of mental imagery he had created, he lowered his gaze and recalled the fight with her as well.

It had not been the battle of an infamous evil dragon,

'but a noble battle carried out by a noble red knight.'

She was the one who would soon become Ferda's spouse.

At that moment, he felt something stirring in his lower abdomen.

'This is...'

Ferda knew this sensation well.

It was the same turbulence he had felt when he was banished from House Rosnova.

'A Red Circle is being formed.'

A Red Circle, formed through the turbulence of emotion.

Since Ferda had been trying to make a Blue Circle, this was naturally something he had to reject.

'How peculiar.'

But Ferda did not do so.

He had felt that this Red Circle was different in nature.

'This emotion did not arise from anger and vengeance.'

This was turbulence caused by an emotion different from the one he had felt.

That emotion possessed a potential no less than anger and vengeance.

'I felt something like this while imagining Valdrova's fight.'

It was the same now.

As he thought of Valdrova, that circuit took shape more and more clearly.

Had he thought he needed to watch Valdrova's fight because of this?

'In that case...'

Perhaps this was the answer.

Ferda no longer hesitated.

He tried focusing on his feelings toward Valdrova.

The awe he had felt, and that figure of hers.

He shaped that vague emotion into words, organizing and heightening it.

The mana circuit swirled violently.

The dizzying rotational force grew stronger and stronger. It tried to swallow Ferda like a storm-tossed sea.

However, Ferda was a man who had already reached Great Mage through a Red Circle.

He delicately controlled the vortex created by turbulence.

He gathered in what tried to fly apart, compressed it, and shaped it.

At last, it drew a single circle.

'Circle.'

At the same time, while feeling the lingering sense of relief and exhilaration, he once again confirmed the source of this emotion.

'It was not made based on hatred and vengeance.'

In other words, there would be no identical future, and no identical mistake.

'Done.'

Ferda was delighted by that fact.

Ferda's nostrils flared.