I Married the Dragon I Killed
Chapter 44
Chapter 44: A Difference in Perspective
Ferda returned safely to Valdrova Castle.
Arwen watched him enter through the castle gates before immediately heading back to Count Concilus’s territory.
At the main gate, Ruri greeted Ferda and his party.
“How was your journey?”
It was a businesslike inquiry, and Ferda replied in kind.
“It was comfortable. There were no ambushes, and with an escort attached, I wasn’t bored.”
“I see. However, it seems you’ve returned with one more person than when you left?”
When they had departed from the castle, it was only Ferda, Zed, and a coachman. Now, a man laden with an excessive amount of luggage followed behind them.
“Regent-nim! I’ve loaded it onto my cart. Shall I load your luggage now as well?”
Malcolm, who had been unpacking his belongings onto the cart, belatedly noticed Ruri.
“Hieeeek! You’re the intruder from back then!?”
Malcolm recoiled, trembling in terror.
It wasn’t because he was exposed to something like Dragon Fear. Even if she were emitting it, he was already wearing a resistance ring he’d received before coming to Valdrova Castle.
He was simply a coward.
“You’ve brought back a pathetic specimen,” Ruri sighed through her nose.
“He is pathetic, but he’s also an excellent sample.”
“A sample for what?”
“What else would he be but a sample for experiments?”
“…Are you researching black magic now?”
“I need to conduct research, but not in that direction.”
Having said that, Ferda attempted to step further into the castle. However, Ruri blocked his path.
“What is it?”
“What do you mean, ‘what is it’? Do you truly not know why I’m asking?”
Ruri’s gaze shifted downward, coming to a rest on Ferda’s right hand.
“Do you not think it a serious crime to set foot in the castle while carrying such a stench?”
“….”
Ferda felt a strange chill at those words.
His gaze reflexively swept over her entire body, and he spotted an object peeking out from her pocket.
It was a coarse, green-dyed towel.
If that towel touched skin, it would strip away the very flesh along with any dirt. Of course, the agonizing pain of having one’s skin flayed was unavoidable.
Snap! Snap!
The towel, moving in sync with Ruri’s hands, let out sharp, white snaps.
Ah.
So she had been waiting for this exact moment….
Ruri had a justification. The fact that the scent of another woman lingered on Ferda’s hand could lead to a misunderstanding on Valdrova’s part. Such misunderstandings had to be eliminated in advance.
He understood the logic, yet Ferda had not forgotten the screams of the knights. Screams like children facing a demon. Ferda did not believe he could endure what they could not.
Ferda’s eyes flickered toward Ruri once more. Contrary to his apprehension, her face was filled with anticipation.
“May I ask one favor?”
“Speak.”
“I would prefer if we did this within that space-severing magic.”
He spoke like a condemned man giving his final wish, and Ruri nodded solemnly.
“Of course. We can’t have the whole neighborhood gossiping about your masochistic tendencies, Ferda-nim.”
“…Right.”
He lacked the strength to offer a rebuttal.
Ferda followed Ruri inside.
Whatever transpired in the bathhouse that day became a secret shared only by the two of them.
His body scrubbed until it shone, Ferda managed to pull on his clothes. His sensitized skin stung every time it brushed against the fabric.
‘I must endure.’
From here on, Ferda needed to focus. He looked down at the book resting on his desk.
Barbatos’s Shadow Art.
The Demon of Schemes favored moving in secret; his magic specialized in striking the opponent’s blind spots by manipulating shadows like limbs.
As a magic book emphasizing secrecy, it was a difficult object to seal. Unless it was bound with silver chains treated with Shape-Locking magic, the book’s form would melt away and relocate to another place.
Barbatos’s Shadow Art emphasized one thing.
‘The shadow must become me, and I must become the shadow.’
Just as one must treat a Shadow Hand as if it were a third arm, failing to keep this in mind would result in intense phantom pains.
‘But there are things I need.’
The greatest merit was that no magic circles were required to use shadow arts. Furthermore, the hands created by the magic weren’t just constructs; they could be used like actual limbs.
This meant Ferda could manifest other magics through the Shadow Hand.
‘It doesn’t possess great raw firepower.’
Befitting the personality of Barbatos, the Demon of Schemes and Secrecy, it was on a different track from the shadow circles of other black magics.
‘Instead, it can strike where the opponent is most vulnerable.’
While weak in a direct confrontation, it possessed limitless potential in a battle of wits. This was why Ferda had chosen Barbatos’s shadow magic among so many other dark arts.
‘To read it, I have to undo these silver chains.’
To undo the silver chains, he had to dispel the magic, and to dispel the magic, he needed to decipher the runes.
Thus, Ferda sought out Echidna.
“I’d like you to undo these chains. Is it possible?”
“O-of course. I’ll do it right away, hehe.”
Echidna looked at Ferda with a silly grin. Her expression hovered somewhere between a girl infatuated with a prince and a witch harboring lewd fantasies.
“Thank you. What would you like as payment?”
“P-payment? I don’t really need anything??”
“If you’ve performed a task, you should be given a corresponding reward, should you not?”
Providing fair compensation for work—that was the best way to work with a witch without any lingering trouble.
“Payment, you say…”
Echidna’s eyes darted around. They landed on the blonde girl standing next to Ferda.
It was Mori.
“T-then, could you let me sleep with Mori for one night?”
Sleeping with Mori. If it were just two girls sharing a bed, it wouldn’t be particularly strange. However, the one asking was a witch. A witch who was currently, and rather creepily, drooling.
“Would that be alright?”
Ferda asked, looking at Mori.
Mori replied with a note she produced.
-Based on Echidna’s behavioral patterns, sleeping with her is predicted to cause a 30% drop in work efficiency.
30% was too much. He wondered what kind of behavioral patterns would cause such a massive drop.
“I cannot accept that.”
“Ehh, well, I guess it can’t be helped then…”
Then why did you even bring it up… Echidna muttered to herself.
Seeing her disappointment, Ferda decided to propose what he had in mind.
“How about I give you time to spend with Zed?”
“With Zed-nim?!”
Echidna’s face turned beet red. Caught in her excitement, she snorted and nodded repeatedly.
“S-so, h-how much time…?!”
“How about this much.”
Ferda held up three fingers.
She was immensely satisfied.
“Thirty minutes?! Mmm-hmm…! That’s great too! Let’s go with that! Deal!”
“…Understood.”
Ferda had meant three hours when he showed three fingers. However, she had cut it down to a sixth of that herself and was still satisfied.
‘Saying three hours might have actually been counterproductive.’
Too much of anything causes problems. Since the baseline for the first payment had been set, Ferda figured he could adjust the rewards based on that in the future.
“Then, shall we take a look?”
With an excited face, Echidna placed the shadow magic book on her work table. She put on a pair of thick-lensed glasses and began to observe the volume.
She observed the elements composing the book not just with her eyes, but with all five senses.
“Hmm, the material isn’t hard; it’s soft like mud. The smell is… sniff. Haa, the scent of sulfur from Hell is quite special. It’s got that stinky quality, you know? Like that weird smell from an armpit—”
“Stop.”
“Ah, yes. Hehe…”
He stopped her before she could wander off into a tangent about foul things and made her focus on the original task.
Having finished her assessment of the book, she moved on to the silver chains. When she lightly infused mana into them, blue letters rose from the chains.
They were runes.
“Mmm…”
Echidna’s gaze became remarkably serious. It was hard to believe she was the same woman who spent her time chasing after a man.
‘She’s of the same breed as Bernel.’
When focused on her work, she began to interpret the runes with a solemn demeanor.
‘If one can create runes, one can also interpret them.’
What Echidna was doing was similar to identifying and disarming a set trap. By interpreting the runes, she could understand how the magic functioned and identify the side effects that would trigger during a forced dispelling.
“They’ve placed Shape-Locking magic on it, along with a trap spell that strikes the dispeller if they try to force it. An ordinary mage would die, wouldn’t they? And this signature here… looks like it’s from the Order of Alte.”
“Can you undo it?”
Echidna giggled.
“I don’t think there’s a need to undo it.”
“Why not?”
“If we undo the Shape-Locking magic, we won’t know when this book might try to run away. Are you planning to read this book just once and be done with it, Regent-nim?”
Ferda shook his head. Even if he obtained all the magic within, it would be troublesome if this book were to be released somewhere else.
“So, let’s just loosen the conditions a bit.”
“How so?”
“By relaxing the terms of the Shape-Locking magic. Instead of simply ‘seal this book as it is,’ we change it to ‘allow a certain level of form’? Just enough so that it’s readable.”
“Proceed.”
“Understood!”
Echidna chanted an incantation while tapping the runes with her pen. A moment later, a circular magic circle unfolded before her.
It was a magic circle that appeared to be at least of the 5th Circle. She brought her fingers to the circle and began to manipulate various parts of it.
‘Manipulating a magic circle…’
Ferda hadn’t ignored the idea even back when he was an Archmage. However, destroying the magic and rewriting it was much easier and more common.
‘Rune makers are different.’
They could touch the magic itself and understand its flow. That was why they could come up with the idea of loosening conditions rather than simply breaking them.
“If I do this here… there!”
When she tapped a rune with her pen, the magic circle retracted back into the runes. Simultaneously, the tightly bound silver chains were seen loosening under Echidna’s power.
“May I read it here for a moment?”
“Yes! Of course!”
“Bring me a few thick books.”
“Books? J-just a moment!”
Clatter, bang.
Rustle, rustle.
Following his request, she held up several thick dictionaries.
“But why?”
“I need to adjust the sitting height.”
“Sitting height?”
Ferda placed about three volumes on the chair. He adjusted them to match Mori’s sitting height.
“Is this height alright?”
Mori nodded.
“Then, let’s begin the—”
“W-wait a minute!!”
Just as they were about to start, Echidna jumped in and shielded Mori.
“Were you planning to make our Mori read that book? Such a thing is more cruel than death for a child!”
“Then why else would I have brought her?”
“I thought it was because Mori wanted to see me so, so much. Isn’t that right?”
Echidna grinned at Mori, who wrote on her note.
-That is not the case.
“Ehh… I thought we’d definitely b-become friends… was I the only one who was sincere??”
-Yes.
Mori drew a firm line. Echidna sniffled at the bolt-from-the-blue confirmation.
“This is a task that only this child can do.”
“But to encounter the Demon Language written by a demon…”
“Yes, a person gradually goes mad.”
“And you’re making her do it knowing that? Isn’t that too cruel!?”
Echidna hugged Mori and rubbed her cheek against the girl’s head. He felt he understood why her work efficiency dropped.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s impossible to taint this child anyway.”
“R-really?”
Echidna asked, and Mori nodded.
“If that’s the case…”
Even in the final moment of anxiety, she stroked the girl’s hair.
“Begin.”
At Ferda’s command, Mori opened the book.
In that instant, something contained within the book began to emanate. A pungent smell of sulfur arose, and a sensation of something foul crawling over one’s entire body was felt. That was the reality of the Demon Language written by a demon.
To look upon it was a profanity; to hold it in one’s eyes was to be branded.
Whirrrr—.
Ferda and Echidna averted their eyes from the script.
The Demon Language was something forged in Hell itself. Anyone who encountered the language written by a demon would see a glimpse of Hell. Those who glimpsed Hell would hear the whispers of demons for the rest of their lives, as if branded.
It was an endless ordeal. If one could not overcome the never-ending trial, they would either become a demon worshiper or go insane. Thus, they would become a medium for demons to enter this world, taking a step toward dominion.
‘The same applies to me.’
Because the Demon Language stemmed from the very essence of the letters, it was impossible to block it in advance. Ferda had encountered the Demon Language before in order to learn demonic magic. In fact, he had been able to learn the Shadow Hand of shadow magic because he had learned the Demon Language.
‘Though I erased it all once I mastered it.’
The best method was to learn and interpret the magic, and then erase the Demon Language from one’s mind. This was why Ferda was not swayed by the magics of Hell despite knowing them.
’Now, there is no need to learn the Demon Language.’
There was someone who had already learned it and could interpret it in his stead.
The Slave Sage, Mori.
She would become Ferda’s scribe.
Mori stared clearly at the demonic script. A deep red flame ignited in her eyes. It was the script attempting to peer into Mori by using her eyes as a window.
However, there was no way it could shake Mori. It wasn’t because Mori was perfect or flawless. Even a perfect being could be shaken by the existence of a demon.
She had no sense of self. To shake someone, one must use their ego as a handle, but since she lacked that handle, there was no way they could grasp her.
She gripped her pen and began to write on the paper. Even with the windows to Hell open, she maintained ultimate rationality and continued the interpretation.
Ignoring the demonic whispers until the very last page, Mori quickly finished the interpretation and closed the book.
In Mori’s right hand was the original. In her left was the translation.
“Is it all finished?”
When Ferda asked to confirm, Mori nodded. Ferda gave the final command.
“Then, forget everything you have seen.”
In that instant, the eyes that had glowed with red flames returned to their original color. With a single command, she had truly forgotten everything. For a normal human, such an instruction would be impossible with just a word. It was a feat possible only for the Slave Sage, Mori.
A moment later, Mori’s body began to sway. She barely managed to keep her heavy eyelids open. It was the result of using too much power for the interpretation.
“Go to sleep early today.”
Once Ferda’s permission was given, the struggling Mori leaned against the back of the chair and closed her eyes.
“Echidna, could you take Mori to her room?”
“Of course!”
Echidna was looking at her with lecherous eyes.
“Hehe, hehehe, hehehehe…!”
To make matters worse, she began to drool. He felt he understood a bit more why efficiency dropped by 30%.
Ferda added a word.
“Lay her in her room and come right back out. I will not permit any contact beyond that. Do you understand?”
“O-of course! I didn’t have any other intentions at all!? None whatsoever!?”
She said that, but her smacking her lips in regret made her look anything but trustworthy.
Ferda picked up the translation she had completed. He started reading from the part about the Shadow Hand that he already knew in Barbatos’s Shadow Art.
‘She wrote it exactly as I understood it.’
With that, he judged that there would be no trouble in understanding the magic just by looking at the translation. Ferda turned back to the beginning.
‘The reason I had to obtain this magic book.’
It was the mana cultivation method. One of the ways to reach the 4th Circle from the 3rd.
‘Shape of Shadow.’
That page caught Ferda’s eye. Despite reading a grimoire from Hell—and a work by a Great Demon at that—there were no side effects.
‘How long does it normally take to reach the 4th Circle?’
The 4th Circle was the stage where one truly earned the title of a mage. It was that difficult, and even talented individuals had to devote years of effort to make it possible. It wasn’t much different for a Red Circle.
‘If anything, it was more dangerous.’
To begin with, as the stages of a Red Circle increased, so did the madness and danger; it was a high-risk path.
‘Was I ever someone who cared about that?’
Ferda had become strong for the sake of his hatred, and he was someone who did not hesitate to take on challenges to become stronger. If there was anything different from before, it was that now, it was for the sake of Valdrova.
Ferda decided to try the cultivation method immediately. Since it was an effective cultivation method, the process was simple.
He lit a candle in a sealed room where not a single ray of light entered. Then, he placed the candle behind his head to cast a long, dark shadow. He began by staring into that shadow.
At first, it was just magic using shadows, but later, one could become the shadow itself or even become someone else’s shadow. To pursue freedom beyond common sense and manipulate it was what was desired.
‘The shadow becomes me, and I become the shadow.’
Keeping that in mind, he quietly looked down at the flickering shadow in the movement of the candlelight.
It was at that moment. Ferda felt a sensation as if his body were momentarily pressed flat against the floor. He moved only two-dimensionally in a narrow, stifling space, as if trapped in a wall.
He entered a state of total concentration on the Shadow.
’Now, I close my eyes.’
Ferda took that sensation and headed toward the circles rotating within his dantian. He concentrated like that for about an hour. He needed to pull mana into the shadow to create a rotation.
‘There’s no feeling.’
Ferda’s state was far too calm. For a Red Circle, calmness was no different from a brake.
‘It’s impossible for now.’
If it seemed it wouldn’t work, he gave up without lingering regret. Ferda was still young, and he still had much work left to do.
He left the darkroom and came outside. It was a night with a waning moon. Since it had dropped to the west, it must be well past midnight.
He couldn’t tell how many days had passed. Only the hungry sound from his stomach shouted that a long time had gone by.
