Chapter 33: Chapter 33
Chapter 33 - Mana Fatalism
Valdrova’s daily routine was remarkably simple.
An enemy appears.
She tears them apart.
She roars.
She returns home.
Rather than living up to the name of the Grand Duchess, her actions were closer to those of a barbarian warrior.
She had always devoted herself to protecting people, and she had never felt much resistance toward doing so.
Even so, there was one thing she had recently begun to hesitate over.
"Grrr..."
It was her roar.
That mighty roar, so fitting for the exhilaration of battle and the declaration of victory, had recently begun to embarrass her.
"Ah..."
Her voice shrank to little more than a squeak.
Valdrova let the sense of release fizzle out unfinished before clearing her throat.
Her gaze quietly drifted toward the place responsible for making her this way.
Her eyes turned toward the summit of the Lonely Mountain.
Whenever Valdrova went out to battle, Ferda was always standing atop the Lonely Mountain.
"He... didn’t come today either?"
But the summit showed nothing except the flattened ground.
As always, he had not come to watch.
Valdrova found Ferda’s gaze burdensome.
Whenever he watched her, she became inexplicably flustered and restless, making herself look ridiculous.
Sometimes she even wished he wouldn’t watch at all.
"Yeah... maybe that’s better."
Valdrova spread her wings and flew back to her lair.
The Lonely Mountain in the far eastern region.
She had made it her home precisely because it was difficult for humans to find.
As she entered the long cavern, Luri greeted her.
"Welcome back, Master. You must be tired."
Without replying, Valdrova walked past her.
Seeing that she did not even respond to a simple greeting, Luri followed her through the iron gate.
"Is something troubling you?"
"It’s nothing."
Valdrova curled herself into a coil as if to say there was nothing to worry about.
"Please don’t say that. Tell me what’s wrong. I’ll do whatever I can to help."
"Mm..."
"Has... Ferda grown tired of me?"
"...Pardon?"
Luri stared at her in disbelief.
"He didn’t come today either."
Valdrova had thought it was a relief that he hadn’t come.
But an even greater feeling of emptiness settled inside her.
It was a day no different from any other.
And yet it felt as though something truly significant had disappeared.
"It’s only been twice. Just one week. Compared to the countless years you’ve lived, Lady Valdrova, that’s an incredibly short time."
"Of course. I know that as well."
Only one week.
Only twice...
Why did the word only feel so unbearably heavy?
"Lord Ferda has been extremely busy lately."
Ferda had been occupied with many things recently.
He was cooperating with merchants and handling petitions submitted by regional lords.
Once he entered his office, it was common for him not to come out until the moon hung high in the night sky.
"Even so... didn’t he always come before?"
Valdrova was right.
No matter how busy he was, whenever Ferda heard that Valdrova was fighting, he would come outside.
And whenever their eyes met, he would always smile at her.
"He must have... lost interest in me because I never even looked his way."
She lowered her head dejectedly and let out a long sigh.
Of course, Luri didn’t believe that for a second.
If he’d lost interest in her, he wouldn’t be working this hard.
Everything Ferda was doing was for the sake of those under Valdrova’s protection.
The driving force behind it was undoubtedly his affection for Valdrova.
"Luri."
"Yes, Master."
Valdrova opened her mouth with great difficulty.
"That... thing young ladies do."
"Are you referring to a tea party?"
"Yes... that."
Luri was genuinely surprised by those words.
Ever since the Third Prince Incident, Valdrova had avoided all contact with humans.
"Could you... suggest having a tea party to Ferda?"
She had finally taken a major step toward meeting her fiancé face to face.
***
Ferda had become a Three-Circle Opener, a Mage with three overlapping Circles.
The First Circle was a point.
The Second Circle was a line connecting one point to another.
And the Third Circle belonged to those who wove lines into a surface.
That surface became a Magic Circle, marking the stage where one could truly begin casting magic.
The Magic Library is gone now.
The Magic Library was a mnemonic technique that devoted an entire section of one’s mind exclusively to magic and spell formulas.
It could only be established upon reaching the Fifth Circle, and it had naturally disappeared when Ferda returned to the past.
Even so, the magic still exists within me.
The spells resting beneath the realm of his subconscious.
Like rummaging alone through the ruins of a collapsed library, he decided to randomly draw forth whatever magic remained.
He concentrated his Mana into his right arm.
With three overlapping Circles, the flow of Mana was swift and smooth.
Draw the Magic Circle.
This was the stage of being a true mage, yet not quite a complete one.
It was the stage where one truly began practicing the art of constructing Magic Circles.
The first step is visualization.
Ferda recalled a standardized Magic Circle preserved in his memories.
Normally, at this stage, one would look at a Magic Circle illustrated in a spellbook and visualize it while chanting the incantation.
The more proficient one became, the shorter the visualization process grew.
Ferda, however, approached visualization differently.
Without even knowing what he was searching for, he relied entirely on his subconscious as he began drawing a Magic Circle.
Like casting a fishing rod into a lake, he waited...and waited...hoping that, unable to resist the bait forever, a great catch would eventually bite.
I can feel it.
Then he moved on to the second step.
Standardization.
Ferda imagined a pen dancing above his hand.
Following the pen’s movements, a simple Magic Circle gradually formed upon his palm.
The third step—materialization.
Now that the framework had been completed, it was time to pour Mana into it.
As the Magic Circle became complete, it determined the nature of the Mana, causing its color to change.
The faint blue Magic Circle suddenly burst into brilliant light.
This spell is...
Before Ferda could even recognize it, his body moved on its own.
Extending only his index and middle fingers, he pointed toward one section of the wall.
Then came the final step.
Incantation.
"Elemental Bolt."
The instant Ferda spoke the spell’s name, a sharp crackle of electricity echoed through the room.
Crackle!
A bullet of lightning shot forward in a perfectly straight line.
Alongside Mana Shot, Elemental Bolt was one of the most fundamental offensive spells.
That was dangerous.
Had he failed to aim properly, that scorched crater in the wall might have contained part of Ferda’s own body.
Drawing magic from the subconscious isn’t entirely safe.
Even so, Ferda did not stop.
The more deeply a spell was buried within his subconscious, the more it meant he had relied upon it in the past.
Emptying his mind once more, he delved inward in search of another spell.
I can feel it.
Once again, Ferda surrendered himself to his senses and drew another Magic Circle.
Visualization.
Standardization.
Materialization.
As soon as he completed all three stages, the faint blue Magic Circle turned pitch black.
Its attribute was darkness.
In other words, it was pure Black Magic.
Among darkness-attribute spells, which one did he know?
Before he could even answer the question, his hand moved on its own again.
This time, he brought the hand bearing the Magic Circle toward a candle.
Only then did the spell’s name emerge.
"Shadow Hand."
At that moment, the shadow cast by the candle began bubbling like molten lava.
Ferda’s shadow gradually swelled before peeling away from his body and attaching itself to his arm.
It was another hand created entirely through magic.
I can clearly feel the side effect as well.
There was a similar third-tier spell called Magic Hand.
A floating Magic Hand functioned more like an overlay or a magical glove.
It connected itself to the user’s right hand and simply mimicked its movements.
Shadow Hand, however, was completely different.
It did not overlay an existing hand.
It created an entirely new one.
It requires no price, but it comes with a major condition.
Black Magic, whose performance far exceeded its Mana cost, demanded two things.
A price—the corruption of one’s mind through repeated use.
And a condition—one’s mind itself was required to cast the spell.
The strange sensation accompanying the appearance of the new hand was that very condition.
Was this truly his hand?
Or merely an imaginary one?
If the caster failed to accept it, they failed to satisfy Shadow Hand’s condition.
Any mage who failed that condition would suffer unbearable phantom pain.
None of those dangers meant anything to Ferda.
He had long since mastered Shadow Hand’s condition.
Still... it doesn’t quite feel like my own arm yet.
Ferda looked down at the black hand.
He flexed each finger, testing it with graceful, intricate movements.
It felt as natural as his original hand.
His gaze shifted toward a bookshelf.
Normally, reaching it would require taking ten steps.
Ferda stretched out his hand toward it.
An arm can be made to extend.
As his imagination shattered common sense, the shadow hand stretched far beyond its normal limits.
It extended the equivalent of ten walking steps, grasped a book from the shelf, and returned it to him.
It’s a third-tier spell... but one far too demanding for a third-tier mage.
Because it could move with such incredible precision, it required extraordinary imagination and mental strength.
That was the very essence of Black Magic.
It possessed tremendous power, but demanded an equally extraordinary level of mastery.
Those who fell short of that standard were all too likely to lose their sanity.
Once I reach the Fourth Circle, it’ll probably become much more stable.
Thinking that, Ferda quietly muttered,
"The next stage..."
His thoughts grew complicated.
This should have been the moment to pursue further improvement, yet he lacked the motivation that had always driven him before.
To completely stabilize her, I’ll need the amount of Mana possessed by a Fourth Circle mage.
That was the amount of Mana required to completely suppress Valdrova’s Bloodlust.
For that reason alone, he wanted to advance somehow.
But now something seemed to be blocking his path.
Part of the reason was that he had reached the Third Circle almost effortlessly.
More than that, however, the greatest reason was the aptitude test he had recently undergone.
"Mana Fatalism..."
Ferda had learned many things under a master who was obsessed with money, and one of them was a theory known as Mana Fatalism.
It was a theory that resonated more with Red Circle users than with Blue Circle users.
Its premise was that, even if another version of oneself awakened under different circumstances and pursued a different purpose, the elemental attribute one possessed would remain unchanged.
It was a concept derived from the philosophy of fate.
It was a pointless argument.
It was as meaningless as trying to prove the existence of Utopia.
There was a reason it was jokingly called the spell that ruined relationships.
Yet Ferda, having actually turned back time, could no longer dismiss it so easily.
I no longer harbor hostility toward my family or hatred toward the world.
He had sworn to live only for her.
Because of that, he had believed his elemental attribute would also be different.
Yet the attributes he had been given were darkness and lightning.
Exactly the same magic he had wielded in the past.
How did I feel when I first discovered I had these attributes?
Regardless...
He had been happy.
There were two attributes that Blue Circle users could never properly wield.
Light.
And darkness.
Light manifested through the righteous hearts of the clergy.
Darkness manifested through negative emotions, just as it had for Ferda.
Having an affinity for the darkness attribute came with a disadvantage.
One could never use light magic or healing spells.
However, unlike other Red Circle users, one’s aptitude for the other elemental magics suffered almost no reduction.
That was why Ferda had mastered every element except light, rivaling even the Elemental Masters.
But now...
Things were different.
The circumstances surrounding Valdrova had changed everything.
What had once been a blessing that allowed Ferda to accomplish great deeds now felt like a curse.
Valdrova suffers because of the Aspect of Darkness... and I possess the darkness attribute.
It had already been proven that infusing her with Mana affected her.
But what if, instead of merely stabilizing her, Ferda was actually watering another seed of darkness within someone already tormented by darkness?
If what he gave her ultimately led only to destruction...could that truly be called helping her?
What if the Mana that once killed her... ends up killing her again?
If fate remained unchanged just as Mana did...
Do I even deserve to stand by her side?
Even for Ferda, who had once been a Grand Mage capable of commanding heaven and earth, this was an unknown territory.
Whenever he encountered the unknown, he had always challenged it.
But this time...it only left him drowning in uncertainty.
A mage’s pursuit of knowledge was inseparable from magic itself.
Ferda’s profound worries unconsciously drew forth yet another spell.
Following nothing more than instinct, he once again began standardizing a Magic Circle.
Only after its form had taken shape did he finally realize something was wrong.
What kind of spell is this?
It wasn’t merely something he had forgotten.
He had genuinely never seen a Magic Circle like this before.
Its formulas were impossibly intricate.
Every inch was densely packed with rune script.
Judging by its complexity alone, it rivaled sixth-tier spells.
Yet if it truly were a sixth-tier spell, it would have collapsed during the standardization process.
There was no way it could have taken shape like this.
More importantly...he would have remembered it.
It was unquestionably a spell drawn from his own subconscious.
Just like Shadow Hand and Elemental Bolt, both of which had surfaced from his subconscious.
Yet although he had eventually remembered their names, this spell remained different.
Even while the completed Magic Circle floated brightly above his palm...its name never came to him.
As though it had never possessed a name to begin with.
He had no idea what it was.
Using the still-active Shadow Hand, Ferda retrieved a sheet of magical copying parchment from a cabinet.
He placed it over the floating Magic Circle, copying every line and symbol onto the parchment.
He carefully examined the copied diagram.
No matter how hard he tried...it was something that lay completely beyond the limits of his knowledge.
Knock. Knock.
Someone knocked at the door.
"It’s Luri."
Ferda rolled up the copied parchment and quietly set it aside.
"Come in."
The door opened, and the young maid entered.
As always, her face remained expressionless.
"You seem deeply troubled."
"I’ve simply had a lot on my mind."
He brushed aside both the Magic Circle and his concerns with a vague answer.
He didn’t think Luri needed to know.
"What are your thoughts on having a tea party?"
While they were eating lunch, Luri suddenly asked.
"A tea party? With whom?"
"Who else could it possibly be besides Master?"
Luri’s tone was noticeably sharper than usual.
"Your fiancée personally requested that I arrange one. If you wish, I’ll prepare it for this afternoon."
"A tea party... with my fiancée..."
Ferda couldn’t help imagining it.
Valdrova gracefully drinking tea while wearing a beautiful dress.
The image of her sitting amid such an elegant atmosphere.
I absolutely want to go.
Under normal circumstances, his answer would have been immediate.
Arrange it.
Without question.
"It’s a good idea... but I don’t think the timing is quite right."
"...Excuse me?"
Luri looked at him as though she’d misheard.
Ferda calmly repeated himself.
"There’s no need to rush things. I’d like a little more time to think, so postpone it for now."
"..."
As always, Ferda spoke in an even, composed tone.
Luri stared at him for a long moment before speaking.
"Are you playing hard to get with Master?"
"Playing hard to get?"
"The kind of lovers’ game where one tries to seize the initiative. Some trick to make Lady Valdrova become even more infatuated with you..."
"It’s nothing like that."
When it came to romance, such sophisticated strategies simply didn’t occur to him.
"Then what’s wrong?"
"Nothing in particular."
"The person who kept saying he wanted to see her suddenly acts like this... I was starting to think you were dying."
"It’s nothing that serious. Don’t worry."
"I won’t leave until you tell me."
Since Ferda was acting unlike himself...
...Luri became just as persistent.
She looked ready to follow him even into the restroom.
He considered simply ignoring her.
Then she spoke.
"Have you grown tired of Master?"
He couldn’t ignore that.
The moment those words reached him, his heart nearly stopped.
"Why would you say that?"
"Master said so herself. She said you haven’t been watching her battles lately. Since you haven’t even shown your face, she thought you must have grown tired of her."
Tired of her?
How could that possibly be?
Ferda wanted nothing more than to see her.
It was simply that...watching her no longer felt the same as before.
"If you haven’t grown tired of her, then I hope you’ll answer in a way that proves it."
Luri’s loyal silver eyes shone brightly.
At last, Ferda spoke the words that had remained trapped inside him.
"...I’ve simply been troubled lately."
"Even a blind person could tell that much. What’s troubling you?"
"My Mana carries darkness. I’ve been wondering whether that darkness might ultimately harm her."
"Is that all?"
Luri removed one of her gloves and extended her hand.
"In that case... try it."
"On you?"
She nodded.
"I’m a Dragon Spawn as well. My dragon blood may be insignificant compared to Master’s, but I should still be able to tell whether your Mana is harmful."
Without further hesitation, Ferda accepted her hand.
It was a small child’s hand.
Yet it wasn’t entirely soft.
He infused his Mana into it.
"Well?"
Luri concentrated carefully before tilting her head.
"...I’m honestly not sure what I’m supposed to be feeling. It just feels like magical power is flowing into me."
"So you don’t sense anything unusual?"
"Nothing."
The amount of Mana Ferda had released was roughly equivalent to a single Mana Shot.
Valdrova had already reacted even to that amount.
"I’ll increase it."
This time, he poured in the equivalent of five Mana Shots.
It was enough to reach the recipient’s mana circuits.
Luri’s expression subtly changed.
"What about now?"
"I can feel something now, just as you said... but it doesn’t feel harmful."
"It’s simply Mana."
Frowning, Luri looked up at him in disbelief.
"So you’ve been worrying about something this insignificant all this time and making Master anxious because of it?"
"...Yes."
"You turn people into dogs and break people’s fingers without hesitation, yet when it comes to Master, you’re unbelievably timid."
Valdrova.
The Red Dragon.
The bearer of the Aspect of Strength, whose power no one could oppose.
Yet before Ferda...she was nothing more than a delicate flower.
The mere possibility of hurting that woman was a burden far too great for him to bear.
"As the man who’s going to become Master’s husband, shouldn’t you be easing her worries instead of creating new ones over something so trivial?"
"...You’re right."
"Phew..."
Ferda nodded.
Luri let out a long sigh.
Having been caught between those two, Ferda could clearly imagine just how much hardship she had endured.
"So..."
"What will you do?"
"What else?"
"I’ll accept the invitation."
"My fiancée personally requested it."
"I can’t very well ignore that."
There was only one thing left to do.
Face it head-on.
"Understood."
After receiving his answer, Luri bowed politely before leaving the dining hall.
Once she was gone, Ferda glanced toward the parchment he had hidden away.
Even if I discover its nature immediately... it’ll only become another source of worry.
He could ask Mori to identify the type of Magic Circle.
He could even ask Echidna, who was an authority on rune script, to decipher it.
Yet somehow...he felt that this was a Magic Circle he had to understand on his own.
So he carefully folded the parchment and tucked it inside a book.
If one day he happened to pull that book from the shelf and the parchment fell out...he would think about it again then.
With that thought, he decided to forget about it.
***
Honestly... he always wastes his energy on the strangest things.
As Luri walked down the long corridor, she grumbled to herself.
He had arrogantly refused the invitation.
And the reason was utterly ridiculous.
Normally he’s so fearless.
Why does he become like this whenever it’s about Master?
He could become a complete psychopath when pursuing what he wanted.
Yet when it came to Valdrova...he became nothing more than a cowardly fool.
His Mana harming Lady Valdrova...
Luri looked down at her own right hand.
She had claimed she felt nothing.
But in truth...she had sensed something strange.
And even now, the hand Ferda had held still retained that sensation.
I don’t know what this is...
It was a peculiar feeling.
Yet she was certain it wasn’t harmful.
There’s no point mentioning it and making him worry even more...
Luri quietly put her glove back on and continued walking.
A loyal Attendant had no time even to blink amid her endlessly busy days.
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