Chapter 1: Killing the Fiancé
There was one singular person who became a grand mage through nothing but hatred.
His name was Ferda Rosnova.
Born as the third son of the knightly House Rosnova, he was particularly frail.
Because he was the child of a concubine, and because he had blue eyes instead of the brown eyes passed down through the family for generations, even the Rosnova household servants often treated Ferda with contempt.
In the end, his father, Erembalt Rosnova, delivered him one piece of news in the year Ferda turned eighteen.
"You have been prepared for an engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova."
It might sound like a simple engagement, but to nobles, "an engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova" was an idiom.
Simply put, it was a kind of death sentence.
If he accepted the engagement, that road ended in death, and if he refused, he would be exiled for defying the will of the house.
"I will go as Father wishes."
"Good."
Life mattered more to Ferda, so of course he chose to live, and had to cast away the name Rosnova and leave.
In young Ferda's heart, a great sense of betrayal took root.
He could not forgive the older brothers who had looked down on him, nor the servants.
And the one who made him angriest was, of course, his father.
'You knew, you knew everything about how hard I tried ....'
To be a member of this family, he forced his weak body to move.
Every single day, he practiced until he spat blood and calluses dug into his hands.
His father's gaze, once as if finding all that effort admirable.
Yet as years passed with Ferda going nowhere, that expression gradually changed.
As if what he had raised all this time was a cuckoo's chick.
When he finally drove him out, his father's face looked as though he were staring down at filth.
Even after several days, that stare still felt vividly real.
'I won't forgive you.'
His sorrow steadily turned into rage, and flared up into the flames of vengeance.
'I'll make you regret throwing me away.'
Ferda clenched his fist tight.
At that moment, Ferda felt something stir and awaken inside his body.
It was the instant a so-called Circle opened, mana spinning in a single ring within his dantian.
On the very day Ferda Rosnova was cast out of the family, he became a mage.
***
Awakening as a mage is a blessing.
On the continent of Serdes, the mere ability to wield magic changes one's status.
However, awakening at eighteen, like Ferda did, was something to lament.
Because it was far too late.
All mages make their inner power their driving force.
To fully master that concept, one had to train from childhood.
If you did not do it when you were young, you would suffer several times more in old age while learning that concept.
That was how it should have been, but for Ferda, even a late awakening was not a problem.
The driving force that let him draw up mana was hatred and the desire for revenge.
-At that age, he's making a racket about becoming a mage.
-They said he'll do anything he's told, so just think of it as getting a slave we can use until graduation.
What further spurred that driving force were the senior mages who belittled him, and the young juniors.
Since he started late, the fuel he needed was scattered everywhere around him.
'Bark all you want for a hundred days, I'll make you lick my toes from corner to corner!'
His yearning to grow stronger and his obsession with revenge never went out, and day by day it made him stronger.
Soon he surpassed not only the promising senior mages, but even the master who taught him, with ease.
For a while, his toes shone so slick there was no room for dust to settle.
Ferda thought his power was a blessing.
'If I come to hate someone, I become stronger.'
And there were hatreds lying everywhere, everywhere.
As he grew strong at a terrifying pace, his personality also grew visibly more vicious.
When Ferda rose to the rank of a Six-Circle opener, one of fewer than a hundred on the continent, commonly called an Archmage, Ferda finally crossed the line.
He returned to House Rosnova, which had cast him out so cruelly, and killed them all on the spot.
He put swords in the hands of the servants who had mocked him, and made them kill each other.
He sowed discord between the first and second sons, made them hate each other, and in the end they destroyed one another.
And as for his father, the deepest grudge of all, he made him watch everything.
As Erembalt watched what he had built and was meant to protect collapse into misery, he finally went mad, and withered as though he had aged decades more.
He became a ruin, like a ghost wandering the living world.
And so everything connected to House Rosnova disappeared, except for Ferda.
The revenge Ferda had longed for, against the family he had craved, was achieved in a twisted form.
What filled his chest was catharsis.
'.......There's still an enemy left.'
And thirst.
Ferda was no longer in his right mind.
He had become a monster that listened only to his own emotions.
'I have to erase them all. To do that, I need even greater power.'
The anger that had been aimed at his family did not cool, and turned elsewhere, burning deeper.
People who could not endure his tyranny, built on absurd sophistry, finally drew their swords.
He became a public enemy of the continent, and dozens of intricate plots were set in motion to kill him.
But trials only made Ferda stronger.
In the end, Ferda reached the highest realm a human could attain.
At the age of forty-five.
At a young age, he reached the Eighth Circle, called the Mana Lord.
He became the one and only grand mage of the continent, with everything beneath his feet.
'Not enough.'
Even then, he still needed more power.
Though he had placed everything under his feet, the flame kindled in his heart would not die.
That flame whispered to Ferda like this.
'They still resent me. Someday they will surely try to kill me again.'
Knowing well the chain of hatred and revenge, Ferda could not allow that.
'So they can't even move... I have to crush them all down and erase them.'
To build his own utopia, Ferda began to covet even the realm of the gods.
After five years of research, he discovered the ultimate material needed to reach that place.
It was the heart of a Red Dragon.
It felt like a cruel joke of fate.
'The Dread Queen of Valdrova.'
His fiancé.
The pretext Erembalt had used to drive Ferda out.
And the truth of that existence was a Red Dragon.
***
-Fate is truly a cruel thing.
The one who spoke was, strangely enough, the dragon said to be the strongest on the continent.
Crimson scales, and splendid horns.
Imposing eyes and wings that seemed as if they could cover the world, symbols of its stature.
But now, it was different.
Its scales were torn away in places, its horns snapped and broken, and bright red blood poured from within.
The one who had driven a dragon, a creature that could mockingly annihilate kingdoms, into this state, was none other than a single mage.
-To think the one who should have been engaged to me would come to kill me.
Ferda smiled.
It was a smile close to bluffing, a show of being on top.
Even though he had pushed the dragon to the brink of death, his own body was not intact either.
"It would be better for you to die quietly by my hand, Valdrova."
-I know I bear the name of a tyrant. Yet for these past decades, even before you were born, I have not shown myself even once. And I have never harmed any human. And yet... why do you show such hostility, I cannot understand.
"You did nothing?"
Valdrova's calm tone sounded like the tone of someone utterly unbothered.
Irritation surged up in Ferda.
"You are the root of my misfortune."
From the moment he was to be sacrificed to that engagement, everything in Ferda's life twisted out of shape.
Ferda poured out his emotions with feverish intensity.
"Because of you...! Because of your pointless greed to find a fiancé, the pretext to drive me from my family was completed!"
-Is that..... because of me?
"Yes! Because you indulged in pointless greed! Because you, a savage dragon, tried to take a human as a companion, that greed gave birth to misfortune, do you understand!?"
Ferda exhaled roughly, then laughed with a vicious curl of his lips.
"But at the same time, I'm grateful. Thanks to that, I could reach this place."
-Is that so...…..
Valdrova's face twitched strangely.
Was she angry?
She might be preparing a final struggle.
It didn't matter.
By vomiting out those twisted emotions just now, he could turn his Red Circle.
Ferda finished preparing to respond.
-Yes, so that is how it is. I understand.
Valdrova's massive body moved.
She bared her claws.
Sharp, solid blades that could tear knights apart with a single swing.
Ferda reflexively prepared a magic circle.
It was late, but with this, he could at least take her down with him.
She raised her claws, but not toward Ferda.
Puuk!
The claws drove into her own chest.
Ferda couldn't understand the act.
What does that self-harm mean?
Her tough hide ripped open, and the organs inside were exposed in brutal clarity.
-You said my heart is what you need for your magic, did you not?
Ttuduk -!
The sound of blood vessels snapping.
In that moment, Ferda understood.
She was trying to destroy her own heart.
"No!"
Ferda fired magic at her face in a frenzy.
"No, you filthy lizard bitch! Stop it right now?!"
Ferda could not let her destroy her heart.
It was his one and only chance to reach the Ninth Circle.
He could never, ever miss this chance!
The scales guarding her head shattered into fragments and scattered.
But Valdrova's hand did not stop.
The sound of tearing blood vessels and muscle did not cease.
-You said you needed my heart, did you not?
Valdrova's claws pulled out from within her guts.
What came out along her claws was a chunk of flesh larger than Ferda's head.
".......A heart?"
It still held its shape, perfectly intact.
What she had done was not destruction, but extraction.
-Take it.
Her head, half gone, spoke those words.
If this were the usual Ferda, he would have picked it up with thanks.
But even Ferda, twisted as he was, could not understand what she had done, and only stared blankly at that heart.
"........Why did you choose this?"
Ferda asked.
"If you had moved... you could have killed me easily. You couldn't have not known that."
-If I make my final struggle….without fail, you too would die. I know that.
"Then why didn't you?"
-Because you became unhappy because of me.
Even then, Ferda was frozen.
Valdrova no longer had the strength to even hold up her neck.
-I..... have hated myself for a long time.
In that calm tone, thick revulsion clung heavy.
-I hated this savage blood flowing through my veins. I hated myself, who rages without reason, who carries the impulse to destroy. And what I hated most was that those things frightened people.
The color faded from her golden eyes.
Something swelled within them, then rolled down her cheek and fell.
Tears.
A dragon's tears are different from a human's.
Dragons are not sentimental creatures that shed tears for something like sorrow.
And yet those tears seemed made of sorrow alone.
-If I die, everything is resolved, and yet I dared to hope for happiness while living….... my foolish dream has burdened too many people.
"......."
-Since you became unhappy because of me, mortal, you who became unhappy by my selfishness, I hope you will be happy because of me. That is... the last thing I can do for you.
A faint final word, with her last breath.
-Be happy, my fiancé......
Thus the continent's hidden tyrant, Valdrova, met her end.
Ferda stared blankly down at Valdrova, who had quietly closed her eyes.
Since becoming a mage through rage, he felt a strange emotion for the first time in his life.
'Why does this feel so unpleasant?'
Ferda unconsciously laid a hand over his own chest.
Ferda had come here over countless corpses.
He killed anyone who hindered him, and if he needed something, he seized it all to grow his power.
He knew even he himself was a broken thing, lacking conscience and empathy.
And yet, for some reason, her death was gripping his ankle.
As if it were a curse she had laid upon him.
'Don't think about it, Ferda.'
Move forward.
Take what you came to take.
You already crossed a river you cannot return from.
He picked up what she had taken out and placed before him.
A dragon's heart.
The source that could bring any mage to the Ninth Circle.
An object that could lift one from grand mage to the rank of a demigod, beyond mere existence.
He would absorb this.
And as always, he would take revenge on the things that made him unhappy.
Continue a revenge whose reason had long since been forgotten.
Ferda absorbed the essence within that heart.
As the essence of a dragon that had lived since ancient times flowed through his veins, his blood began to boil.
As tremendous power poured in, Ferda sensed something strange.
'This is....'
A sensation that let him feel Valdrova's entire life.
'Her emotions?'
Those emotions became part of Ferda before he could even resist.
"Ah....."
Ferda let out a cry.
His mind began to clear to a startling degree.
The hatred and desire for revenge that had been the driving force of his power were disappearing.
Did her blood cleanse Ferda's mind?
'No.'
The emotion he felt from that heart was close to negation itself.
An emotion like standing at the very end of an abyssal pit, incomparable to Ferda's hatred or rage.
A Red Dragon that had lived for thousands of years, and yet had never been loved even once.
The rage of power she could not contain, Evil Red Dragon, Dragon Slayer...…..
Titles built on infamy were layered over her image, and Valdrova became a complete tyrant.
Curses she had accumulated as she piled up the years.
And yet Valdrova loved those trivial things.
That is why she chose to hide herself.
Because she loved everyone, she endured loneliness and sorrow with stubborn dignity.
And Ferda severed that final thread.
That was why Ferda's mind was clearing.
Ferda realized that the rage and hatred he had felt were so utterly trivial.
"Aah.... "
A small gasp spilled from Ferda's lips.
For twenty years, Ferda had not been in his right mind even once.
Now, for the first time, he could become fully himself.
"What......have I done?"
Blinded by emotion, he was swallowed by that power and destroyed everything.
Someone, someone's family, someone's village...…..
Was that truly what I wanted?
"Aah ... "
Ferda collapsed to the ground.
With his head bleached white, Circles formed before him.
As each Circle completed, his life flashed by like a revolving lantern.
The sorrow of being driven out when he broke through the First Circle.
The anger of being mocked as talentless at the Second Circle.
Inferiority, resentment, jealousy, betrayal...…
Ferda's Circles were all built by stacking up negative emotions.
To survive, he did not hesitate to betray, and to grow strong, he repeated bat-like acts again and again.
And so Ferda became an Eight-Circle grand mage.
And the emotion he felt upon reaching the Ninth Circle was.
'Emptiness.....'
It was the feeling that everything had become meaningless.
At the same time, he was angry.
Because Valdrova, that woman, had turned everything he had done into a mistake.
"You stupid, idiotic bitch ....."
Ferda tried to resent Valdrova.
But it did not feel like a driving force anymore.
He knew, even himself, that those were words he didn't mean.
In truth, the foolish one was the one who resented her.
From the beginning, she had only been a pretext.
Erembalt had decided to drive Ferda out, so even if it had not been her, he would have made some other pretext.
Ferda knew that, yet he had taken it out on her anyway.
Valdrova accepted that foolish sophistry.
And wished for one person to be happy.
The one who came to kill her.
Truly.
Ferda let out a hollow laugh.
Unlike Ferda's heart, the magic circle of the Ninth Circle was shining brightly.
A Ninth-Circle mage could cast only one spell.
'Wish.'
An absolute power that grants anything you desire exactly as it is, defying the order of all things.
A simple spell that needed only a single word.
He had finally grasped what he had wanted so desperately, yet his throat felt choked tight, and no words came out.
No wish came to mind.
'What was it that I wanted so much?'
To erase everything that rejected him.
That was the wish of Ferda, back when he was a madman.
But the Ferda of now had no such dream.
He suddenly recalled the dream he had drawn as a child.
In the crude picture he had drawn with a clumsily held colored pencil was,
'Just building a humble family, and living peacefully.'
It was also the wish Valdrova held.
But now, he could not wish for something like that.
After killing so many people, he could not now live comfortably.
More than anything,
Ferda killed the dragon who should have been his fiancé, and Valdrova met death at the hands of the human who should have been her fiancé.
This was no different from murdering one's own fiancé with one's own hands.
How could someone like that imagine the happiness of building a family?
-Be happy, my fiancé.....
His revived conscience repeated those words and tormented Ferda.
It scolded him for running for decades with only power in mind,
It made him loathe the pettiness of remembering everyone's names just to get even,
And at last, that emotion he could not express in words, his heart understood.
"It's meaningless......"
The magic circle shone brightly.
When the light completely faded, the Ninth-Circle grand mage vanished without a trace.
***
"....Rda?"
"......"
"Ferda."
No, his consciousness returned.
As the bright light cleared and a voice called him, Ferda opened his eyes.
Before him sat not a bleeding dragon, but a middle-aged man.
"Ferda? Are you listening?"
"......Yes?"
"Yes, what. I was speaking, and you've just been staring off into space the whole time?"
The middle-aged man frowned.
Ferda knew who this man was.
'Erembalt Rosnova.'
A being he once called Father with warmth.
Unlike the last time Ferda had seen him, he looked vigorous and well.
Had he died, and come to the afterlife?
But if so, this all felt far too familiar.
'This place... is it that?'
Ferda understood quickly.
The one time in his life when he had been alone with his father, a father he had never truly spoken with.
There had been only one such time.
"Your engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova has been decided. It is a matter decided by the nation, so I want you to obey without complaint."
An engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova.
'So I didn't die, I returned to that time?'
The time he thought was the beginning of misfortune.
The time that became the spark of an uncontrollable thirst for revenge.
'Why?'
He still could not understand with his head.
But his heart already knew.
What he had wanted, in that emptiness.
"Huh."
An awkward sigh slipped from Ferda's mouth.
"You bastard, I'm talking and you're sighing?"
"I'm sorry. It's nothing."
"Repeat what I just said."
"You said there will be an engagement to the Dread Queen Valdrova."
"You know what that means, don't you?"
"I know."
Get out of this house.
Understanding that, Ferda answered his father.
"Understood."
"Yes, you must be having a hard time.... dragon?"
Erembalt's eyes went wide as he looked again.
"W, what did you just say?"
Ferda lowered his gaze to the documents on the table, and answered once more.
The meaning of this regression, facing what he could not face in life.
"I will do it, that engagement."
To formally enter into an engagement with the tyrant Valdrova.