Chapter 37: Extremity of Rage
Lart had only just returned to the temporary camp of the Royal Knights stationed in Green River Village when he was spotted by his vice-captain, Lelian of Aiosen, who was famed for her keen perception.
“Captain Lart? Why are you back at this hour? Hey, I thought you’d be spending the night with that mage,” she teased. “That kid looked terribly worried about you—oh, for such a tiny injury his face went completely pale. Heavens know how long it’s been since I last saw a mage that easy to fool. Compared to him, those old foxes back at the royal court—”
At that moment, Lelian caught sight of Lart’s expression under the moonlight.
The red-haired woman blinked, then swiftly swallowed the rest of her banter.
“Uh… I have to say, you don’t look so great right now. Things with that mage… didn’t seem to be going very smoothly?” she asked cautiously.
After all, this former Chosen of the Goddess had once, without any warning, declared that he could no longer remain faithful to the Goddess and had then defected from the Church without the slightest hesitation. The mess Lart had caused back then was hardly as simple as he had made it sound to Alan.
Of course, Lelian had also heard a few rumors at the time—such as Lart having had his soul taken by some unfathomably powerful mage from the Far East—and after they arrived in Green River Village, Lart’s barely restrained infatuation with the black-haired mage had been painfully obvious.
So when Lart followed Alan away on the pretext of that minor injury, Lelian had assumed that the esteemed prince would at least enjoy a satisfied and fulfilling night in the mage’s bed.
But judging from the look on Lart’s face now…
Well, it seemed Lelian had overestimated just how irresistible this prince was to a mage.
“…That kid Gilly has a jug of good liquor stashed away—some barbarian ritual offering from the north. He’s never had much imagination when it comes to hiding things; just sneak into his tent and you’ll find it. Trust me, there’s nothing better than strong alcohol for forgetting the pain of a breakup. Besides, with your looks, there are plenty of handsome lads on this continent who’d be more than willing to commit a little blasphemy with you.”
Seeing Lart in a state she had never witnessed before, the woman said this rather stiffly.
Lelian had never been a devotee of the Goddess (which meant she couldn’t care less whether men were supposed to like men or women—she wouldn’t have minded even if they took up with a wild bear). Compared to those tedious and useless emotional entanglements, she devoted the vast majority of her energy to the pursuit of swordsmanship.
Which also meant that, at this moment, simply coming up with those few words of consolation had already taken all the effort she had.
However, Lart clearly failed to understand the goodwill behind them.
Before Lelian could finish, he cut her off.
“I’m not heartbroken! And I don’t need anyone else! I only want Alan—and Alan only needs me.”
Lart suddenly spoke in a sinister tone, his voice cold and hoarse in a way Lelian had never heard before.
Lelian stared at him in shock.
For a brief instant, she almost thought that what stood before her was some skin-stealing imposter. In that moment, the man looked as though even his soul had been steeped in the venomous fires of hell.
This was not the Lart she knew.
Fortunately, in the very next second, the man standing in the shadow of the bushes had already regained the gentleness, composure, and courtesy that Lelian was familiar with.
“…Sorry. Alan and I had a small disagreement, so I was a bit on edge.”
Seeming to notice Lelian’s unease, Lart explained quickly. His voice was still slightly hoarse, but his tone had already softened considerably compared to before.
“But it’s all right. He and I have always been like this—aren’t the closest people the most likely to quarrel? And I know Alan. By the time the sun rises tomorrow, whatever little problem we had will have already faded away in his dreams.”
Muttering on with all sorts of idle remarks, Lart tugged at the corner of his mouth and smiled at his vice-captain.
“Let Gilly keep his good liquor. Something that fine should be saved for a moment truly worth celebrating.”
‘For example, the demise of the demon dragon Veles.’
Deep within his mind, that cold, rasping voice made another faint sound.
Lart’s smile did not change; only the muscles beneath his eyes twitched ever so slightly.
“Oh, I see… then that’s for the best.” Lelian hesitated for a moment before replying softly.
Deep down, Lelian still felt that something was off.
But this was Lart, after all.
Lart, the former Child of Light.
Even after losing all divine favor, he had still become the captain of the Royal Knights. Through his own strength, he had proven that he remained Alfied’s sharpest blade, its most powerful protector.
Even if something was a little amiss now, it was probably nothing more than the usual emotional troubles of young men.
Nothing to make a fuss over.
Thinking this, Lelian quietly cast several silent scouting spells on Lart.
Just as when Lart had been injured before, she found nothing at all.
Maybe she really was being overly suspicious?
Lelian told herself.
“Hah.”
She let out a breath, though her fingers unconsciously brushed the hilt of her sword.
Whenever the black-haired mage was mentioned, the aura around Lart made Lelian deeply uneasy.
And so, she decided to change the subject.
“Since you don’t plan to drink the night away, perhaps you’d like to check the communication crystal? A message just came in from the royal capital.”
“A message from the capital?”
Lart’s cheeks tightened at once.
“Yes. It seems to concern His Highness the First Prince,” Lelian pressed her lips together. “This Blood Moon—His Highness Veles’s condition when the curse flared up was unlike anything we’ve seen before…”
“He’s about to fall and become a demon dragon—?”
Lelian heard Lart ask in a rather peculiar tone.
She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then explained, “Ah, no. Quite the opposite, actually. The court mages say that His Highness seems to have created some kind of god-given ‘miracle,’ or something along those lines.”
“A miracle… you mean, a miracle?”
“Mmm, yes. According to them, Prince Veles had already reached the final stage, but then, for reasons unknown, at the very peak of the Blood Moon, his curse suddenly appeared to weaken.”
And far away, deep beneath the Alfied Imperial Palace.
To shut out the light of the Blood Moon, this place was perpetually shrouded in darkness—cold, grim, and lethal.
Only mithril and runes emitted faint glimmers of light here.
An abnormally tall, completely naked man was bound by countless iron chains to the very center of a meticulously drawn magic circle on the ground. The surface of his once corpse-pale body was gradually being covered with hard, rough scales, and his limbs—already deformed before—had long since dragonized into a grotesque shape.
As ancient arcane chants continued to circulate, the cursed, mutated draconic power deep within Veles’s body was being steadily drawn out of him.
This level of magical extraction would be enough to reduce even an archmage of the highest rank to a desiccated corpse that would shatter at a touch.
But for Veles in his current state, it could only form a fragile and perilous balance with the power that continued to surge endlessly from within him.
To maintain even a basic human form—though his current body looked more like a grotesque fusion of human and evil dragon, a thoroughly twisted abomination, complete with claws, venomous spines, and revolting dragon wings—Veles was enduring pain like hell itself.
His mind had long since fallen into a dim, dark sea of fire. The part of him that was still human burned like a mass of molten adamant, being hammered brutally and without rhythm by some invisible demon.
Veles could feel his consciousness teetering on the brink, ready at any moment to collapse into a pool of world-scorching, apocalyptic magma.
Yet perhaps because the gradual erasure of his sanity was so unbearably painful, Veles found himself beginning to dream—and of all things, it was a cursed nightmare.
He dreamed of Lart.
His pitifully weak human brother was standing obnoxiously inside Alan’s cottage, and that man was saying something to the black-haired mage…
That man said—
“I love you, Alan—far more than that demon dragon.”
Veles’s consciousness, which should have been completely dissipated, snapped violently back into clarity at that very instant, driven by an extremity of rage.
