Chapter 40: Solution
“Then, Antara—during your time as His Highness Veles’s accompanying supervisory mage, have you ever observed that prince receiving the attention of any benevolent deity, at any point or in any manner? Or perhaps a blessing?”
Antara met his teacher—the Grand Court Mage of Kalonsa—as well as Her Majesty the Queen, in the queen’s bedchamber.
At this very moment, the red moon had only just slipped beyond the edge of the dusky violet sky. The blazing, brilliant sun was still buried beneath the earth, and would take a long while yet before dragging itself into view. A clammy dampness still clung to Antara’s outer robe—the kind of moisture unique to the underground palace chambers beneath the royal city, always tinged with an indefinable stench of fishiness and chill. Unless dried with magic, that cold, grave-like air, as though seeping up from the bottom of a tomb, would never dissipate on its own.
According to Antara’s knowledge of court etiquette, both the timing and the location were highly improper. But it was obvious that none of the three present had the leisure to care about such damnable formalities.
The one asking the question was, of course, Kalonsa. The old man’s face was covered in a fine net woven of wrinkles, yet the eyes hidden beneath those aged folds were still as sharp as tempered steel. His tone sounded calm and even, but Antara knew well that he was nowhere near as composed as he appeared.
After all, just moments ago, they had together borne witness to a miracle.
At the height of the Blood Moon, Veles—who should have completely fallen into a demon dragon—had, before their very eyes, returned to human form.
Oh, of course, certain cursed traits still lingered on Veles’s body: a few scales here and there, sharp claws, and the like… but compared to before, his condition far exceeded both the mages’ and the queen’s expectations.
As spellcasters, it was impossible for them not to know how fragile the formations were that maintained the balance of Veles’s magic. The moment the magical tide brought by the Blood Moon surged in, the pollution born of the curse deep within Veles’s body should have immediately shattered the restraints of those arrays, tearing that fragile human shell apart completely and revealing the long-suppressed essence of the demon dragon within.
Before this night, the mages—and even the queen herself—had long since prepared for the arrival of this day. They had foreseen it a very, very long time ago. Otherwise, the forbidden spell stored within the queen’s staff—meant solely to slay a demon dragon (and, at the same time, her own child)—would not have remained charged and ready all these years without ever once being allowed to lapse.
Yet all the preparations they had made—whether mental or magical—came to nothing without the slightest warning.
“Please forgive my discourtesy, but just now I tested His Highness Veles with every form of positive divine magic known to me…”
Antara pretended not to notice the intensely expectant looks cast his way by the two elders present (especially the female one). He lowered his head and delivered his report in a flat, even tone.
“Unfortunately, all the benevolent gods and neutral deities I am aware of avoided His Highness Veles’s suffering, just as they always have.”
The elf mage’s voice sounded somewhat dry.
After the dragon slayer Victor had cursed his own bloodline with his life, all dragons in this world had fallen completely into corruption and distortion. They were so twisted that they could not even be accepted by evil gods or demons—let alone by the deities who stood in the light or in the gray between. Whether healing spells or spells of light, all divine magic with a positive aspect was utterly ineffective on anyone bearing the dragon’s curse.
And precisely because of this, the three individuals standing at the pinnacle of Alfied’s arcane world were now utterly at a loss as to the anomaly occurring within Veles.
Ahem—well, let’s correct that slightly.
The elf mage who had just gone to examine Veles’s condition, and who had also accompanied His Highness to Green River Village, did in fact have a few extremely vague notions flickering through his mind.
“He loves me.”
When Veles awoke in the dungeon, his cheeks were still hollow, and his expression still haggard.
However, when Antara saw him, he felt that Veles was emanating an aura that made his skin crawl from head to toe.
Antara didn’t even know how to describe that version of Veles. But every time the elf mage met his gaze, he would inevitably experience a strange hallucination—as if tiny pink motes of light, suffused with the scent of roses, were constantly bursting out from Veles’s eyes.
“Alan said he truly likes me…”
How had Antara responded to Veles back then, again?
Oh, right—he hadn’t been surprised at all to hear Mage Alan’s name come out of Veles’s mouth. After all, anyone paying even a little attention could tell that Veles was utterly obsessed with that mage. So Antara had simply crossed his arms and shrugged, saying that if Veles really had fallen in love with the black-haired mage, then under a dragon’s innate charm magic, it was only natural for Mage Alan to say such things.
What truly left Antara speechless was Veles’s utterly resolute reply—
“No. Alan said he doesn’t like me because of magic. He likes everything about me, including what I really am.”
Antara began to suspect that Veles hadn’t turned into a demon dragon because of the curse—but had instead turned into an idiot because of it.
Otherwise, it was genuinely hard to explain why Veles would actually believe that someone in this world could be immune to a dragon’s magic, and still sincerely fall in love with a dragon.
Not a dragon in human form, either—but a dragon in its “true appearance.”
And yet Veles believed this without the slightest doubt. The way he kept touching his lips with his fingers made Antara break out in goosebumps (he had, in fact, asked whether Veles was feeling unwell—why else would he keep covering his mouth? But the foolish grin Veles showed afterward was enough to send Antara fleeing in defeat. He was convinced that for the next two hundred years, the protagonist of his nightmares would be Veles’s stupid smile).
Still… no matter what—
Veles’s excessively firm conviction did, more or less, make Antara feel a faint tremor of doubt stirring within him.
Of course, Antara wasn’t foolish enough to report Veles’s mad ramblings to his teacher or to the queen. But after weighing it again and again, he still asked that question—very tactfully.
“I’ve heard that His Highness Veles’s curse is not without a solution. There is a legend…”
“Oh? Why bring that up all of a sudden? That’s nothing but a baseless tale. An utterly impossible way to lift the curse.”
Antara hadn’t even finished speaking before Mage Kalonsa interrupted him with a weary sigh. He cast a guarded glance at the queen beside him, whose expression was dark and downcast, clearly unwilling to pursue the topic further.
Unfortunately, the usually clever and perceptive disciple seemed, this once, as though his brain had been invaded by a mind flayer. He continued on foolishly anyway.
“A pure kiss,” Antara said, almost as if talking to himself. “I actually don’t understand why this method is considered baseless. As long as His Highness Veles can receive a pure kiss, the curse on him will disappear. That doesn’t sound particularly difficult.”
All right—now Mage Kalonsa was staring at Antara as if he really were looking at a mind flayer.
And not just any mind flayer, either, but the kind that had already sucked its victim’s brain dry and was lazily swaying its tentacles.
“You think that’s not difficult? You—”
It was the queen who picked up where Kalonsa left off.
She gave Antara a bitter smile, her voice hoarse and low.
“That’s right. A kiss—on the surface, it doesn’t sound difficult at all. However, there are requirements for that ‘purity.’ It demands that someone, without magic, without deception, without any unnatural interference whatsoever, genuinely fall in love with a dragon from the depths of their heart. And that love must encompass both of the dragon’s forms. Which means that one must not only love the dragon’s human shape, but also its draconic form.”
The queen looked deeply at Antara and asked,
“Antara, do you truly believe that in this world there could be someone who—without the aid of any magic—would naturally come to love a monster covered in fangs, scales, and bony wings?”
Well—if one didn’t know a dragon’s true identity, a dragon in human form could indeed be quite likable. They usually appeared handsome and tall, possessed overwhelming martial strength, and had vast stores of knowledge. Moreover, a great dragon’s extraordinarily keen magical perception would allow it to instinctively sense its lover’s preferences, and then it would naturally assume the form those unfortunate souls favored most. But all of this still rested on one premise: the dragon’s magic—that power so overwhelming that even they themselves could not stop it, a force as instinctive as a biological reflex.
As for the dragon’s other form… oh, let’s not even go there. Even as a mere hypothetical, Antara shuddered at the queen’s question.
It was a horrifying image—one that made the elf mage feel nauseated and dizzy just to imagine.
“Ahem.”
Kalonsa coughed lightly at the side, feigning casualness.
Antara’s expression had grown far too ugly, forcing the elderly court mage to remind the elf in this manner that Veles was not only a future great dragon, but also the queen’s child.
Fortunately, the queen seemed not to notice Antara’s ashen face. Her eyes were slightly reddened, and her voice carried a tremor wholly unsuited to her royal status.
“I once believed that I could use my love to lift that child’s curse,” the queen’s tone grew lower and hoarser by the moment. “After all, a mother’s love should be the most selfless, the most generous love in the world, shouldn’t it? And yet…”
And yet she was still afraid.
A cry of pain rose silently in the queen’s heart.
When the infant Veles had once let out innocent giggles at her, for a fleeting instant the queen truly believed she could love everything about that child without reservation. But when Veles reached out from his swaddling clothes and revealed claws curved and sharp like tiny fishhooks, the queen had still, despite herself, felt fear.
She had ultimately been unable to save her own child.
Back then, after Victor cast that vicious curse, he immediately spoke of a way to lift it—the so-called pure kiss actually required someone to, from the very beginning, love a dragon for its most primal nature and form.
…A condition that was simply impossible to meet.
As the queen’s words fell, the atmosphere in the room instantly grew heavy and oppressive.
After re-examining the definition of the “pure kiss,” it became clear to everyone present that the curse on the Alfied royal bloodline was irredeemable.
“I-I’m sorry… I must have been out of my mind—”
Antara muttered, his face pale, under the piercing, dagger-like stare of Master Kalonsa.
He had no doubt that once the queen left, the teacher would give him a “very strict” lecture. And just as Antara was desperately praying to the goddess of fate for some miraculous turn, the communication stone at his waist suddenly burst forth with a dazzling blue light.
Immediately, a voice—shaken and almost breaking from sheer terror—rang out.
“Vice-Captain of the Royal Knights, Lelian, calling all who can receive this message: we are at Green River Village, Carro region, under attack by abyssal demon! I repeat, we are under attack by demons—”
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Author’s Note:
Everyone: Who would ever like a dragon? Ahhh, so terrifying—
Alan (frowning, clutching Veles tightly): …You humans, who can’t appreciate true beauty!
***TN
Happy 2026, everyone! 🎆 May every day of this year shine with happiness, love, and success! 🌸
