Hey everyone! Sorry about yesterday's chapter, it got messed up in the schedule, but I've already fixed it! Also stopping by to let you know about the new DanMachi story: DanMachi: Inheriting the Legacy of Alternate Versions. It's super good and I really recommend reading it over on my account The_Mikudayo!
"Silence! Is the royal family's business something the likes of us servants are fit to judge?!"
The older guard captain spun around, her voice sharp as she cut the discussion short.
Her face had gone ashen — clearly the pressure weighing on her was no lighter than what the young maid beside her felt.
"His Majesty entrusted the Second Princess to our care. If so much as a single thing goes wrong, our entire families will pay for it with our lives!"
The guard captain's voice dropped low, ground out between clenched teeth.
"If ice water won't work, bring the coolant! If the coolant won't work, haul out every frost-cold Magic Stone we have in storage! As long as Her Highness still draws breath, we will find some way to bring her fever down!"
"But—" the young maid started to protest.
Then she saw it. The ice that should have brought relief was melting the instant it neared the closed, carved oak door — melting visibly, before her very eyes, wisps of white steam curling from its edges.
"Get in there and get to work! Don't waste time standing around!"
The guard captain snatched the basin from the maid's hands, shouldered open a side door, and pointed down the corridor beyond it.
"To the storeroom — bring out every fire-resistant blanket that arrived yesterday!"
Amid a flurry of banging doors and barked orders, the footsteps in the corridor faded away, pouring into the supply room on the other side.
The wide, opulent, red-carpeted corridor fell silent in an instant.
All that remained was the searing heat leaking, ever more visibly, from the cracks of that closed oak door — heat fierce enough that even the costly gold-patterned wallpaper along the corridor walls had begun to yellow and curl at the edges.
Haimer stood in the shadows a short distance from the room, listening quietly to everything the maids and the guard captain had said.
His eyes rested on the oak door, its handle already glowing red, and one eyebrow lifted slightly.
In his mind, the vast store of memory concerning this particular timeline snapped into perfect clarity.
"So it's true, then."
Haimer murmured under his breath.
"Stella Vermillion, ten years before the story's start — the Second Princess of the Vermillion Empire."
"Is this the moment she's caught in the backlash of that immense power of hers — the [Conceptual Interference Type: Dragon]?"
Haimer turned, his deep gaze seeming to pierce straight through the thick wall to the room beyond — to the little red-haired girl curled in agony atop the great bed.
Between the information the System provided and the memories already woven into him, he knew: Stella Vermillion had been born with monstrous potential, far beyond any ordinary soul of the Lower World.
A [Conceptual Interference Type] ability. Its name: 『Dragon God Possession』. —
It was a terrifying power that forcibly manifested the strength of the "Dragon" — apex of all mythical beasts — and crammed it into a human body.
Even so, at this childhood stage ten years before the story began, for a long time yet — even Stella herself, even the empire's foremost mana scholars — would go on mistaking it for a mere [Natural Interference Type], believing her nothing more than an exceptionally gifted fire mage.
But as a god who held authority of his own, Haimer could see straight through the illusion at a glance.
The true nature of this power was destined to awaken at some point in her future, carrying her to the very pinnacle of this world and making her the feared "Crimson Princess."
And in time she would come to understand her true power for what it was — the domineering authority known as [Conceptual Interference — Dragon].
Unlike other espers known as "Blazers,"
who had to survive countless brushes with death, pushing past the very edge of their own fate's possibilities, before they could painstakingly reach the so-called "Magus" state and brush against the boundary of causality and concept —
Stella had been born a "Magus" already, wearing nothing more than the face of an ordinary girl.
Under normal circumstances, all she needed to do was grow up, and Magus-level strength would follow naturally — no barrier to force her way through.
It was a blessing of the rarest kind, a talent so great it would drive countless others mad with envy.
And yet — at this fragile stage of her childhood —
this vastly overwhelming power was a double-edged blade sharp enough to kill her.
"Forcing a seedling to grow faster than its roots — that tends to end with the stalk breaking."
After all, a child of only a few years — bones, blood vessels, muscles all still undeveloped — simply could not serve as a fit vessel for power this violent.
It was like an ancient tyrant lizard, forced into a cage too small before it had even learned to walk — the concept of the dragon coiled within her found no outlet to vent through, and so it could only announce its presence by smashing the cage apart.
Just as the maid had described.
The slightest misstep,
and this gift she should have worn with pride would become a disaster that burned everything to ash.
Not only would it consume this opulent chamber —
Stella's own body would burn alive within flames carrying the dragon's savage concept, reduced at last to ash scattering on the wind.
A sharp crack.
A muffled sound like shattering glass came from inside the room.
And then—
"AAAAAAAH!!!"
A child's scream, shrill and utterly agonized, tore through the air.
The mana Stella had held pent up to its absolute limit burst free like a bursting dam.
BOOM! Crimson, corporeal flames of mana erupted, blasting through the window and the door's every crack, scorching the whole door red-hot.
A terrible wave of heat rolled outward in a ring. The costly vases and oil paintings lining the corridor cracked apart, curled, and charred to carbon in the searing heat.
The maids and the guard captain, who had just run off to gather supplies, came hurrying back around the corner with armfuls of heavy asbestos blankets.
But when they saw the door wreathed in crimson flame, and felt heat so fierce it seemed to cook their skin from ten meters off,
every one of them froze in place.
The blankets slipped from their arms and hit the floor.
"We — we can't get in..."
The guard captain's eyes went wide, the door reflected in them like the mouth of some infernal pit, and her legs gave out from under her, dropping her straight onto the red carpet.
"The handle's melted... the protective ward on the walls has burned right through..."
"It's over... it's all over... Her Highness Stella is finished..."
The maids clapped their hands over their mouths, their sobs swallowed by the roar of the flames.
Against heat so absolute that no fire-warding magic and no alchemical material could hold it back, these mere mortals had no way left to reach the room and save her.
Outside the window, bright moonlight spilled across the roofs of the Vermillion palace.
And beneath that moonlight, the lavish bedroom where Stella Vermillion lay blazed like a crimson sun burning abruptly into the night sky — dazzling, and terrible.
Inside the room, it felt as though one stood at the very heart of a volcano's crater.
The air itself warped and shimmered from the heat, everything in sight trembling wildly.
"It hurts..."
"It hurts, it hurts, it hurts..."
Stella, only a few years old, had hair that normally shone like radiant rubies down to her waist — now it was plastered to her cheeks and neck, soaked with sweat and scorched by the heat.
She lay curled on the specially made metal bed at the center of the room,
racked with pain.
Her small hands clawed at the sheets beneath her; her nails, bent back from the strain, had begun to bleed — but the moment blood welled up, the heat around her flashed it instantly into a mist of red vapor.
The fire-resistant garment the royal family had paid a master alchemist a fortune to craft, meant to guard against exactly this kind of magical runaway —
against a raging power now grown stronger still, laced through with the [Dragon Concept] —
the cloth had already begun to blacken and char, showing signs of coming apart, leaving broad stretches of pale, delicate skin bare to the scorching air.
And beneath that pale skin, most of all —
one could clearly see thread after thread of magma-red lines racing wildly along her veins.
Every heartbeat, every pulse of mana, brought agony — muscles tearing, bones scorching.
Her skin, unable to bear the heat radiating from within, had begun to crack in fine fissures, like fine porcelain about to shatter.
And every time it happened,
Stella's heart filled with unbearable pain and torment.
She bit through her own lip; blood ran into her mouth, but she couldn't even cry — the moment her tear ducts produced any moisture, the heat dried it instantly.
"Why... why is there something so terrible inside my body...?"
Her young mind could not begin to understand why fate's gift should be so cruel.
Her vision blurred more with every passing moment.
The scalding streams of flame she drew into her lungs were hot enough to set her own windpipe alight.
Father, Mother, her elder sister — they were all waiting anxiously outside the door, but they couldn't get in.
What was she supposed to do?
No one could save her.
Stella felt as though she were being roasted on a furnace, with nothing left to do but wait for death.
And yet — "I don't want to die..."
"I want to live... I still have to grow taller... I still have to go see the world outside..."
In her fading, unfocused crimson eyes, a fierce will to live thrashed against the dark, spilling out as faint, unyielding murmurs.
Just as Stella felt her consciousness slipping toward darkness, the charring of her body about to spread into her very organs —
A groan of straining wood—
The oak door, its very handle melted down to molten iron,
was pushed gently open from the outside — calm, unhurried, and yet undeniably powerful.
BOOM! The instant the door opened, the raging tongues of flame that should have surged outward instead seemed to meet some terrible natural enemy.
The clawing, snarling crimson fire paused, uncannily, in midair, then parted unnaturally to either side, forcing open a wide path.
And then, footsteps — steady, unhurried — sounded against the floor, scorched black and brittle.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Stella forced open eyes swollen red from the heat.
Through the warping, roiling flames, she saw a figure.
A man, walking with unhurried, easy steps through flame hot enough to melt gold and iron, into a bedroom-turned-inferno that not even a mana healer would dare set foot inside.
In the firelight, his features came into focus through Stella's blurred sight.
A face as though it had stepped straight out of a court portrait.
His features were sharp and striking, every line as though carved by a god's own hand, without a single flaw, radiating a transcendence beyond mortal comprehension.
What astonished Stella even more was that under this terrifying, mana-searing heat, not so much as a single hair on him had so much as curled.
Haimer came to stand beside the bed.
His gaze swept the edge of the metal bed frame, where the alloy was melting and dripping under the heat, hissing softly.
He could clearly sense it — inside Stella's small body, a dragon condensed out of mana and concept was roaring, brimming with unchecked life.
And yet, in Stella's clear crimson eyes, his reflection still remained.
"Good — you haven't burned your mind away just yet."
Haimer lowered his gaze. "Release of Arms." "The scale in the God of Victory's hand tips only ever toward the absolute winner."
Hmmm— A ripple of divine will spread out as Haimer released one of his own shackles.
The raging mana around them froze in an instant.
And with that, another of Haimer's divine authorities was unbound!
[Divine Status Panel (Updating...)]
[True Name]: Haimer [Race]: God (Conceptual Godhood)
[Divine Names]: War / Weapon / Strife / Ending... (and 108 other hidden entries)
[Authority]: (...existing authorities omitted...)
[New Authority Gained]:
『Scale of Judgment (Scale of Victory and Defeat)』:
In all things, there is always strife — and all strife, in turn, demands a verdict.
At the heart of every conflict lies the judgment of victory and defeat between two sides.
You are the arbiter of victory and defeat.
Once the scale in the hand of the God of Victory tips, cause and effect are already settled.
You are the god who judges victory and defeat, the very embodiment of fortune's fickle turns. Beneath the heavens, even your most trivial ruling will absolutely intervene in, and shift, the reading on the scale.
For in your eyes, no win or loss in this world carries more or less weight, no distinction of noble or common.
Be it children flipping a coin, or guessing at a number hidden in a palm —
once the outcome of victory or defeat is settled and sealed,
everything belonging to the loser — will, strength, the very logic of their conceptual existence — becomes spoils, to be stripped away, ruled over, and remade as you see fit!
As another of Haimer's divine authorities came unbound, a strange phenomenon erupted in the room.
Behind Haimer, an immense phantom scale of antique dark gold suddenly materialized in the empty air.
On the scale's left pan rested a phantasmal crimson dragon — the very concept of the rampaging mana within Stella.
On the right pan was Stella's own soul — small, frail, and struggling without end.
At first, the side bearing the dragon hung impossibly heavy, crushing down on Stella's soul.
But then, in the next instant, Haimer raised his right hand, as though setting an invisible weight onto the scale's right pan.
"Once the scale in the hand of the God of Victory tips, cause and effect are already settled."
"Beneath the heavens, I now rule... you — the loser."
Haimer's voice rang out, ethereal and vast.
As the divine words fell — BOOM! In an instant—
the dark gold scale hanging in the void plunged, its right side dropping to the very bottom.
The crimson phantom on the left, representing the [Conceptual Interference Type: Dragon], was flung upward in an instant.
The verdict of defeat was set. Cause and effect took shape.
And in that very moment, the raging power that had been rampaging wild through Stella's body suddenly felt a terrible pressure bear down within her.
A dread that rose from the deepest core of a soul.
Submission to the arbiter who had just named it the loser.
The dragon grew afraid.
It let out a shrill, anguished wail — the once-unrivaled dragon concept froze at once, ceasing its assault on Stella's body,
cowering like a stray dog stripped of its scales.
Fearful, cringing, it clawed back every scrap of the raging flame that had spilled out of her, retreating desperately into the deepest wellspring of mana within her body, not daring the slightest defiance.
The whole thing happened in the space of a single spark.
A moment before, the lavish bedroom had been an inferno of lethal heat.
The crimson flames that had already caught on the walls snuffed out utterly, as if the air itself had vanished.
The terrible heat inside the room dropped and scattered with astonishing speed.
In a matter of seconds, the room's temperature had settled back to a normal, cool level.
All that remained was the acrid stench of scorching that filled the room, and the melted, warped ruins of furniture, silently telling of the disaster that had just taken place.
"Ngh..." On the bed—
As the soul-tearing agony receded and exhaustion swept through her entire body,
Stella, clinging to the last thread of consciousness, forced her head to turn, and through weary eyes made out Haimer standing at her bedside.
"Good to see you, Miss Stella."
Haimer offered a smiling greeting.
Hearing those words,
Stella opened her mouth in confusion, as if she wanted to ask something.
"Stella!!!" "My daughter!!!"
But instead, in the very next moment—
a wild clatter of footsteps sounded outside the door.
With a resounding CRASH, the already ruined oak door was slammed open from outside.
Stella's mother, the Queen of the Vermillion Empire, and her elder sister, the First Princess, rushed into the room, their faces stricken with terror.
They had clearly noticed the flames vanish from the corridor and panicked, terrified that something dreadful had already befallen Stella.
"Stella! Are you all right?!"
The Queen, heedless of the scalding floor, rushed straight to the bedside.
Haimer had no intention of explaining any of this today.
Stella was still far too weak.
And so Haimer vanished from sight, slowly withdrawing the phantom scale from the empty air, his Divine Might folding back within him.
Watching young Stella struggle to keep her eyes focused on him,
Haimer's lips curved into a gentle smile.
"Rest well. The nightmare is over. I'll come find you again tomorrow."
With that said,
hearing this promise,
Stella at last seemed to relax, little by little.
And with that, Haimer's figure faded away amid a faint ripple in space, vanishing without a trace, leaving no sign that an outsider had ever visited.
"Oh, thank the gods, Stella! Thank the gods! I'm so glad you're all right!"
The Queen gently embraced Stella, and feeling that though her daughter's skin was still hot, her body temperature had returned to normal, burst into tears.
____
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