I Married the Dragon I Killed
Chapter 33
Chapter 33
Valdrova’s daily routine was remarkably simple.
An enemy appears.
Tear them apart.
Roar.
Go home.
Her actions were closer to those of a barbarian warrior than a Grand Duchess.
She had always dedicated her strength to protecting the people, and she harbored no great aversion to that role.
However, lately, there was one thing she had begun to hesitate to do.
—Krowargh!
That was roaring.
She had begun to feel embarrassed by that roar, which was normally so well-suited for the exhilaration of battle and the declaration of victory.
—Ah…
Her voice trailed off, small as a mouse’s tail.
Valdrova let the sense of release burn out incompletely and cleared her throat.
Her eyes flickered toward the place that had made her this way.
Her gaze turned toward the summit of the Lonely Mountain.
Whenever Valdrova took to the battlefield, Ferda was always there, standing at the peak of that lonely mountain.
‘Did he… not come today either?’
But at the summit, she could only see the spot he had flattened out to sit on.
As had been the case lately, he had not come to look down upon her.
Valdrova had found Ferda’s gaze burdensome.
When he watched, she became inexplicably rushed and restless, making her feel as though she looked unsightly.
She had even thought that perhaps it would be better if he didn’t watch.
‘Yes, perhaps this is for the best.’
Valdrova spread her wings and returned to her Lair.
She had made her home on the Lonely Mountain in the Far East precisely because it was hidden from human eyes.
As she entered the long cavern, Ruri greeted her.
“Welcome back, Master.”
Valdrova passed her without a word.
Seeing her fail to respond to even a light greeting, Ruri followed her inside the iron gates.
“Is something the matter?”
—It is nothing.
Valdrova coiled her body as if to say there was nothing to worry about.
“Do not be like that; please tell me. I wish to be of help.”
—Hmm…
—Is Ferda… tired of me?
“…Pardon?”
Ruri wore an expression of utter disbelief.
—He did not come today either.
Valdrova had thought it was a relief that he hadn’t come.
Yet, a hollow feeling, far greater than that thought, had taken root.
It was a day no different from any other.
And yet, it felt as though something significant had vanished.
“It has only been twice. A week. Compared to the eons you have lived, Valdrova-nim, it is an insignificantly short time.”
—Of course. I know that as well.
Only a week, only twice…
Why did that word, ‘only,’ feel so heavy?
“Ferda-nim has been moving busily of late.”
Ferda had indeed been occupied with many tasks recently.
He was cooperating with merchants and handling agendas brought forward by local lords.
Once he entered his office, it was common for him to emerge only when the moon was high in the sky.
—Still… did he not always come out before?
It was as Valdrova said.
No matter how busy he was, Ferda would come outside the moment he heard Valdrova was fighting.
And whenever their eyes met, he had always given her a smile.
—Surely… since I never even gave him a glance, he must have lost interest.
She lowered her head in gloom and let out a sigh.
Ruri, of course, did not think so.
‘If he had grown to dislike you, he wouldn’t be working so frantically.’
Ferda moved to take care of everything beneath Valdrova.
That driving force was undoubtedly fueled by his affection for her.
—Ruri.
“Yes, Master.”
Valdrova spoke with effort.
—That… thing that young ladies do.
“Are you referring to a tea party?”
—Yes. That.
Ruri was quite surprised by her words.
Ever since the incident with the Imperial Prince, Valdrova had avoided contact with humans.
—Could you… propose a tea party to Ferda?
She had taken a great step forward, deciding to face her fiancé.
Ferda had become a 3rd-Circle mage, possessing three overlapping circles.
the 1st Circle is a point.
the 2nd Circle is drawing a line connecting point to point.
And the 3rd Circle is for those who manipulate lines to weave them into planes.
That plane was the magic circle—the stage where one could begin to use magic in earnest.
‘Since the Magic Library is broken.’
The Magic Library was a mnemonic technique that filled a portion of the mind purely with magic and formulas.
It was something that could only be established upon reaching the 5th Circle, and it had naturally vanished when Ferda regressed to the past.
‘But the magic remains in my body.’
Magic that resided in the realm of the unconscious.
He decided to try drawing magic at random, as if rummaging alone through a collapsed library.
He concentrated his mana into his right arm.
With circles layered three deep, the movement of mana was swift and natural.
‘Drawing a magic circle.’
The stage of being a true mage, yet simultaneously not one.
It was the stage where one began serious practice to draw magic circles.
‘The first step is manifestation.’
Ferda recalled a standardized magic circle from his memory.
Normally at this stage, one would look at a magic circle drawn in a grimoire and manifest it along with an incantation.
The more proficient one became, the shorter this manifestation process grew.
However, Ferda approached this manifestation differently.
Without even knowing the purpose, he began to draw a magic circle relying on his subconscious.
He waited and waited, like casting a fishing rod into a lake.
Waiting for a monster of the depths, unable to resist the temptation of the bait, to finally bite.
‘I feel it.’
Then he moved to the second step.
‘Formalization.’
Ferda imagined a pen dancing over his hand.
Following the movement of that imaginary pen, a simple magic circle was generated in Ferda’s hand.
‘The third step: realization.’
Now that the frame was built, it was time to inject mana in earnest.
As the completed magic circle determined the nature of the mana, its color shifted.
The magic circle, which had been a faint blue, suddenly burst with light.
‘This magic is…’
Before Ferda could even realize it, his body moved first.
With only his index and middle fingers extended, he pointed toward a spot on the wall.
And so, the final step.
Chanting.
“Elemental Bolt.”
The moment Ferda recited the spell, a sharp electric sound rang out.
Pazzzzik!
A bolt of lightning flew in a straight line.
It was Elemental Bolt, a basic offensive spell alongside Mana Shot.
‘That was dangerous.’
If he hadn’t aimed properly, that deep gouge in the wall might have been where a part of Ferda’s body was buried.
‘The task of pulling from the unconscious isn’t entirely good.’
Even so, Ferda did not stop.
The more a spell was embedded in his subconscious and the more familiar it felt to his hand, the more it meant he had favored it.
He emptied his mind and delved deeper, searching for another spell.
‘I feel it.’
Ferda once again surrendered his body to the sensation and drew a magic circle.
He moved through manifestation, formalization, and finally realization.
Then, the magic circle that had been a faint blue turned pitch black.
The attribute was darkness.
In other words, pure black magic.
What darkness-attribute magic did he know?
Before the answer could fall into place, Ferda’s hand moved again. This time, he brought the hand holding the magic circle toward a candle.
Only then did the name emerge.
“Shadow Hand.”
At that moment, the shadowed part cast by the candle bubbled like lava.
Ferda’s shadow began to swell and then separated from his arm as if shedding a skin.
It was another hand made of magic.
‘I can certainly feel the side effects.’
There is a similar technique in the 3rd Circle called Magic Hand.
In the case of Magic Hand, which separates and floats in the air, it is more like an overlay, or a glove.
This is because it is linked to the right hand and mimics its movements.
However, in the case of Shadow Hand, it was not an overlay, but an emergence.
An entirely new hand was being created.
‘While there is no price, there is a heavy condition.’
Black magic, which is high-performance relative to mana, requires two things.
The ‘price,’ where the mind is corrupted the more the magic is used.
And the ‘condition,’ which requires mental focus when using the magic.
The sense of dissonance felt as a new hand was created is the condition.
One experiences the confusion of whether this is their own hand or a virtual one.
If one cannot accept it, they fail to satisfy the ‘condition’ for using Shadow Hand.
A mage who fails the condition suffers from terrible phantom pain.
To Ferda, such risks were meaningless.
He had long ago mastered the conditions for Shadow Hand.
‘Still, it doesn’t quite feel like my own arm yet.’
Ferda looked down at the black hand.
He tested it with fluid, delicate movements, tracing waves with the fingers.
It was as natural as his original hand.
Ferda turned his gaze toward the shelf.
Normally, it was a distance that would require him to stand up and walk ten paces.
Ferda reached out toward it.
‘An arm can be extended.’
Following Ferda’s imagination, which shattered common sense, the shadow hand stretched far beyond its limits.
It reached across the distance of ten paces, picked up the book sitting on the shelf, and returned.
‘A 3rd-Circle spell, but one too taxing for a 3rd-Circle mage to use.’
As much as it can move delicately, it demands great imagination and mental strength.
That is the essence of black magic.
It is high-performance, but it demands a high level of skill to match.
If one does not reach that level, these spells are likely to drive them mad.
‘It will become more stable once I reach the 4th Circle.’
Ferda muttered to himself as he thought.
“The next stage…”
Ferda’s mind became complicated.
It was a time when he needed ambition, but currently, he lacked his usual stimulation.
‘What is needed to completely stabilize her is the mana volume of the 4th Circle.’
It was the amount of mana required to fully suppress Valdrova’s bloodlust.
For that reason alone, he wanted to ascend by any means.
But now, something felt blocked.
The fact that he had reached the 3rd Circle so effortlessly was one reason, but the biggest factor was the search for his aptitude that he had recently undertaken.
‘Mana Fatalism…’
Ferda had learned many things under a master who was greedy for money, and among them was Mana Fatalism.
It was a theory that resonated more with owners of Red Circles than Blue Circles.
Its content was a story derived from fatalism—that even if a version of oneself from a different timeline awakened through different purposes and events, the attributes they possessed remained immutable.
‘It was a useless point of debate.’
It was as meaningless as proving a utopia.
There was a reason it was called the “relationship-ending spell.”
However, since Ferda was someone who had turned back time, he could not bring himself to ignore it.
‘I no longer harbor hostility toward my family or hatred toward the world.’
Because he had vowed to live only for her, Ferda thought his attributes would be different.
Yet, what was given to him were darkness and electricity.
The exact same magic Ferda had used in the past.
‘How did I feel when I first found out I had these attributes?’
How else?
He was delighted.
There are two attributes that a Blue Circle cannot handle properly.
Namely, light and darkness.
Light manifests through a righteous heart in clerics.
Darkness manifests based on negative emotions, as it did for Ferda.
Having an aptitude for the darkness attribute has the disadvantage of being unable to use light magic or magic belonging to the healing lineage.
But it had the advantage that, unlike other Red Circle owners, other elemental magics were not significantly degraded.
Therefore, Ferda had mastered all elements except light, no less than an Elemental Master.
‘But now…’
It was not good.
Now that he was intertwined with Valdrova, the story was different.
This blessing that had allowed Ferda to be active in the past now felt like a curse.
‘Valdrova is suffering due to the status of darkness, and I possess the darkness attribute.’
It had already been proven that he could influence her by injecting mana.
But if what Ferda was doing was not simple stabilization, but watering another seed of darkness within her who already suffered from it, what would happen?
If what he gave eventually led to ruin, could it really be said he was doing it for her sake?
‘If the mana that killed her is the very thing that kills her again…’
If fate remains unchanged, just as mana does.
‘Is it right for someone like me to be by her side?’
Even for Ferda, who was once a Great Mage and had commanded the heavens and earth, this was an unknown territory.
When faced with such unknowns, Ferda had always challenged them.
But now, it only caused him to fall into deep contemplation.
A mage’s inquiry leads directly to magic.
Ferda’s deep contemplation drew out another spell from his subconscious.
He formalized the magic once more, following his intuition.
Only after the magic circle was formalized did he finally notice.
‘What kind of magic is this?’
It wasn’t that he had simply forgotten it; it was a form he had truly never seen before.
It was filled with incredibly complex formulas and dense Rune script.
In terms of complexity alone, it was at a level comparable to 6th-Circle spells.
But if it were the 6th Circle, it would have broken during formalization, and it wouldn’t look like this.
Above all, he would have remembered it.
It was definitely a spell he had pulled from his own subconscious.
He had pulled Shadow Hand and Elemental Bolt from his unconscious as well, but he had realized their names afterward.
Yet, even as this magic floated upon his palm, its name did not come to him.
‘As if it never had a name to begin with.’
He didn’t know what it was.
Using the Shadow Hand he had manifested, Ferda pulled a sheet of magic copying paper from the cabinet.
He placed it directly over the magic circle he was maintaining and copied the shape and patterns.
He examined the magic circle.
He tried to understand it, but it was something he could not analyze even with his knowledge.
Knock, knock—
Someone knocked.
—It is Ruri.
Ferda rolled up the copied parchment and set it aside.
“Come in.”
The young maid entered the room.
Her face was expressionless, as usual.
“You look like a man with many worries.”
“I ended up that way while thinking about this and that.”
He glossed over the magic circle and his thoughts.
He didn’t think it was a problem Ruri needed to know.
“What do you think about a tea party?”
Ruri threw out the question while he was eating lunch.
“A tea party? With whom?”
“Who else is there besides the Master?”
Ruri spoke more sharply than usual.
“I am asking because a request came from the Master to ‘personally’ arrange one. If you wish, we can have it this afternoon.”
“A tea party with my fiancée…”
Ferda could imagine it in his head.
The sight of her in a dress, elegantly holding a teacup.
Valdrova participating in such a bright atmosphere.
‘I certainly want to go and see.’
Proceed no matter what.
Under normal circumstances, that is how Ferda would have answered.
“It is a good idea, but I think the timing might not be quite right.”
“…Pardon?”
Ruri asked back as if she had misheard.
Ferda answered once more.
“I am saying there is no need to rush. I need some time to think for a while, so let us postpone it.”
“…”
Ferda spoke calmly, as he always did.
Ruri stared intently at Ferda before speaking.
“Are you playing hard to get with the Master?”
“Hard to get?”
“I mean a tug-of-war between lovers to seize the upper hand. Are you using a trick to make her fall madly for you…?”
“It is nothing like that.”
When it came to romance, it wasn’t easy for him to have such high-level ideas.
“Then is something wrong?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“Seeing someone who usually sings about wanting to meet her acting like this, I wondered if you were about to die.”
“It’s not that, so do not worry.”
“I will not back down until you answer.”
Just as Ferda was acting unlike himself, Ruri was being persistent.
She looked ready to follow him even to the privy.
He considered ignoring her, but then—
“Have you grown tired of the Master?”
He could not possibly ignore that.
The moment he heard those words, Ferda felt as if his heart had dropped.
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“The Master said so. She said that recently, you haven’t been watching her fight. She thinks you’ve grown tired of her because you haven’t shown your face at all.”
Tired of her.
How could that be possible?
Ferda’s only thought was that he wanted to see her.
It was just that watching her wasn’t the same as it used to be.
“If you haven’t grown tired of her, I would like you to give an appropriate answer.”
Ruri’s loyal eyes shone silver.
Ferda finally spoke the words that had been swirling only in his mouth.
“…I have just had many worries lately.”
“Even a blind man would know that. What kind of worries?”
“My mana is tainted with darkness. I was troubled, wondering if that darkness might be causing her harm.”
“Is that so?”
Ruri took off her glove and held out her hand.
“Then try it.”
“On you?”
Ruri nodded.
“I am also a spawn who has inherited the dragon’s blood. It may be a drop in the bucket, but I can at least judge if something is harmful to the Master, so try it.”
Ferda decided not to worry further and to test it on that hand.
A child’s small hand.
But that hand was not entirely soft.
Ferda injected his mana into it.
“How is it?”
Ruri, who was feeling it deeply, tilted her head.
“…I am not sure what I am supposed to be feeling. Is it not just magic power flowing in?”
“Do you not feel anything in particular?”
“I don’t.”
The amount of mana Ferda had released was equivalent to a single Mana Shot.
In Valdrova’s case, she had already reacted even at this amount.
“I will flow a bit more.”
This time it was five times that amount. This was an amount where one should feel something upon touching the mana circuits.
Ruri’s expression also changed subtly.
“Now, how is it?”
“I do feel something, as you said, but there is no sensation of it being harmful. It is just mana.”
Ruri furrowed her brows and looked up at Ferda in disbelief.
“Did you really make the Master worry by being scared that she would collapse from something like this?”
“…Yes.”
“You turn people into dogs and snap their fingers, yet you are incredibly cowardly when it comes to the Master.”
The peak of power that no one could stop, the Red Dragon, Valdrova.
She was such a being, yet in front of Ferda, she was merely a woman as fragile as a single flower.
The concern that he might harm that woman was too heavy a burden for Ferda.
“As the man who will become her husband, should you not be creating peace of mind instead of causing worry over such a trivial concern?”
“Yes, you are right.”
“Phew…”
Ferda nodded, and Ruri let out a long sigh.
Ferda could clearly feel how much trouble she had gone through while being caught between the two of them.
“So, what will you do?”
What else?
“I shall accept that invitation. I cannot ignore a request made personally by my fiancée.”
There was no choice but to face it.
“Understood.”
Having received the answer, Ruri bowed politely and left the dining hall.
While she was gone, Ferda stole a glance at the parchment he had set aside.
‘Learning about it now would only lead to more worry.’
He could ask Mori to find the type of magic circle.
He could ask Echidna, who was well-versed in Runes, for an interpretation.
But he had a hunch that he had to realize the nature of this magic circle on his own.
Therefore, Ferda folded the parchment neatly and tucked it between the pages of a book.
If it were naturally forgotten and then happened to pop out while he was pulling out a book, he would think about it again then.
With that thought, he decided to put it out of his mind.
‘He’s a man whose hands go to useless places, honestly.’
Ruri grumbled to herself as she walked down the long corridor.
He had the nerve to reject the invitation, and for such a trivial reason.
‘He’s usually so bold, so why is he like that in front of the Master?’
He becomes a psycho who gets what he wants at any cost, but when it comes to Valdrova, he’s nothing but a foolish coward.
‘To think his own mana would harm Valdrova-nim…’
Ruri looked down at her right hand.
She had said she felt nothing, but in reality, Ruri had felt a strange sensation.
And that feeling still remained in the hand Ferda had held.
‘I don’t know what this is, but…’
It was a strange feeling, but it was certainly a harmless sensation.
‘There’s no need to mention it and make him scared…’
Ruri put her glove back on and moved.
The loyal attendant had to spend her days so busy she barely had time to blink.
