Chapter 3
“When I told him I regretted not being able to give him the birthday gift I had prepared myself back then, he seemed a little shaken.”
Of course, Diarin had never had such a conversation with Ezet.
But it did not matter.
No matter who Duke Concl had planted nearby, they would not have been able to hear the whole conversation perfectly.
It was enough for Diarin to report only the parts of the conversation where she had not lowered her voice, without twisting them.
“Did the Eighth Prince seem curious?”
“To some degree.”
Clinging to old feelings.
Appealing to emotions.
Duke Concl seemed to think Diarin’s story was not bad.
“And I also told him I would ask you to let him receive the key.”
“The key?”
“The key to the additional armory. It is necessary for regular monster subjugations.”
“Oh my. I took it for maintenance and forgot to return it to the Eighth Prince.”
“You are a busy man, Duke.”
There was no way he had forgotten something that important, but Diarin pretended to accept his lie.
The key to Northern Gate Stone’s additional armory was something she absolutely had to get back from Duke Concl.
“Duke, may I ask for the additional armory key as my engagement gift?”
“An engagement gift?”
It was a bold request.
Diarin smiled and spoke softly.
“There is a limit to relying only on old feelings. His Highness is the guardian of Northern Gate Stone, so he won’t be able to reject me if I bring him the key to the additional armory.”
“But the Eighth Prince could simply take the key and deceive you.”
“I’m not asking you to give it to me right now. I need protection too. If His Highness takes me to Northern Gate Stone as his ‘fiancée,’ then please send it through someone.”
“After he takes you?”
“Yes.”
Duke Concl rubbed his chin.
The Akir imperial family was sensitive to rumors.
Even if Diarin was only an adopted daughter, once Ezet took a young lady protected by a duke’s family to his territory as his fiancée, it would be realistically difficult to send her back without a proper reason.
It was not a bad plan.
“When are you supposed to meet the Eighth Prince again?”
“I told him I wanted to speak again in one week, and he agreed. Though later, it was changed to three days from now.”
“I see. Good.”
Diarin’s words perfectly matched the parts his hidden subordinate had managed to overhear.
For now, Duke Concl decided to be satisfied.
Even if Ezet Asperk Kirchen’s status had changed, he was still only a young boy, wasn’t he?
The Ezet that Duke Concl knew had originally been an insignificant prince.
A young age, a formal right to succession, and a stubborn personality that only obeyed the emperor’s order to guard the northern Gate Stone, the place farthest from the capital.
But since he was now the most likely candidate to become the next Crown Prince, Duke Concl could never let go of him as a useful piece.
If he could, he wanted to strip Diarin naked and send her straight to Ezet’s bed.
“I hear Duke Kelstuder is trying to arrange a marriage between his youngest daughter and the Eighth Prince. I am blocking him for now with your engagement.”
Tsk.
Duke Concl clicked his tongue as he thought of Duke Kelstuder.
Ezet Asperk’s return had been something even he never expected.
And what Ezet had dragged back as a trophy from underground was none other than the great vampire monster, Skellus.
The cost of all the gates that monster had destroyed was enormous.
Gates, which allowed people to travel long distances instantly, were huge magical installations powered by monster cores.
Skellus had sensed them, approached from underground, and continued sucking out their magic until they were destroyed.
It did that to anything containing magic, causing huge damage not only to the Akir Empire but to the entire continent.
The hero who had defeated that great monster, which had been the public enemy of the continent for nearly thirty years — almost like a natural disaster — was Ezet Asperk Kirchen.
That young prince.
‘The problem is…’
Among the great nobles interested in that prince was Duke Kelstuder, whom Duke Concl hated.
The Kelstuder family had governed imperial law for generations.
Sooner or later, they would find out that two years ago, Duke Concl had taken Diarin back under the excuse of “breaking the engagement.”
If they used that against him, it would be over.
So before that happened—
“You had better meet my expectations, Diarin Conclister. If you disappoint me…”
“……”
“You don’t like the cold anymore, do you? Marquis Philippe came looking for you again.”
Diarin quietly lowered her head.
Her two hands, resting on her knees, looked unnecessarily thin and pale.
The person who had taken Diarin in after she lost her parents as a child was Marquis Philippe.
He was a truly wicked man.
To turn Diarin into a doll who completely obeyed him, he often used violence against her.
The most terrible thing he did was lock Diarin inside an ice storage room.
In that dark, freezing, terrifying storage room where she might freeze to death, how much had young Diarin trembled?
Duke Concl looked satisfied as he watched Diarin unable to say anything.
“You understand what I mean, don’t you? After the Conclister territory was closed because of an epidemic, I took you in and cared for you like a father. I trust you will repay me properly.”
“…Of course, Duke.”
‘Like a father, my foot.’
That trash.
One day, Duke Concl would probably be buried somewhere sunny.
Diarin would not even need to start a fight with him.
If she simply spat while passing by his grave, the grass covering it would grow wildly from that alone.
What kind of father treated his daughter like this?
In truth, Diarin remembered three past lives.
In her previous life, Diarin had been the youngest high-ranking mage.
Thanks to that, no matter how badly she was abused, her mind had remained intact.
Of course, she still truly hated the cold…
She shivered briefly.
Being used as a political marriage tool was at least bearable.
Diarin liked Ezet more than she had expected.
The truly horrifying thing about Duke Concl was that he used Diarin for something else as well.
‘Using me for human experiments. And he calls himself a high noble?’
“Damn empire.”
Diarin quietly ground her teeth.
Two years ago, when Ezet fell into the Gate Stone underground and disappeared, Diarin was summoned back to Duke Concl’s estate.
After that, she was never able to return to Northern Gate Stone.
The reason was simple.
Duke Concl was a lover of human experiments.
The content of the experiment was simple.
In some faraway culture, there were said to be four guardian divine beasts.
Black Tortoise, White Tiger, Blue Dragon, and Vermilion Bird.
The goal was to summon a red bird resembling the Vermilion Bird, called the Red Bird, into this world.
For any divine beast to descend, a human medium was needed as a summoner.
For two whole years, Diarin was subjected to human experiments to become the summoner of the Red Bird.
She was not the only one in the laboratory.
Dozens, even hundreds of people were dragged in unconscious and carried out dead.
The only reason Diarin survived and was able to see the light of the world again was entirely because of Ezet.
Since the missing Ezet had returned after defeating the great monster, Duke Concl needed Diarin again as a political marriage piece.
Of course, Duke Concl did not know that Diarin remembered everything.
He did not know that she remembered what had happened to her for the past two years.
That was because, for two years, Diarin had been injected with powerful drugs that made her lose consciousness.
‘If it weren’t for the magic flowing inside my body, I would have already lost all my memories, become an idiot, and been killed.’
Because Diarin was a great mage who had reincarnated again and again, she was able to dress properly and go meet Ezet while still sane.
‘I wonder what Ezet’s face actually looks like.’
She wanted to see it.
Because she happened to be born with Equal Blood, she alone could not see the face of her fiancé, who was said to be so handsome and beautiful.
And there was one more question and fear she could not hide.
‘Ezet, who fell into the Gate Stone underground…’
Her childhood fiancé.
‘Did he meet me?’
Did he meet her, who had become a great monster because of the terrible side effects of the Red Bird summoning experiment and wandered through the Gate Stone underground for two years?
So this was what had happened.
The Red Bird.
A divine beast said to leave no trace, not even through magic.
None of Concl’s mages knew this, but Diarin Conclister had succeeded.
She had managed to turn those red wings into her familiar.
Of course, it had not been easy.
For the past two years, what had been forcibly injected into Diarin’s wrist was the soul stone of the Red Bird.
In the laboratory of Concl Castle, Diarin’s body had been tightly bound to the experiment table.
Fragments of the Red Bird flowed into her body.
At that moment, she was truly horrified.
If she had been able to move, she would have removed them no matter what.
She was not an ordinary human.
She was a great mage who had hidden enormous magical power inside her soul.
Just as sparks fly when stones strike each other, the Red Bird’s soul violently crashed into Diarin’s soul and her vast, ocean-like magic.
Sensing a terrible explosion powerful enough to destroy the entire continent, Diarin almost instinctively separated her soul from her body.
‘There was no other choice.’
Even if it had been in a past life, Diarin had definitely been a mage.
There had been a time when she was a mage.
A person who did not harm innocent people with the power she had been given.
A person who did not carelessly cover herself in blood.
A person who had once followed the ethics of a mage.
There was a saying:
If a pig drew an angel, it would draw an angel shaped like a pig.
If a cow drew an angel, it would draw an angel shaped like a cow.
So if a pig became a mage, it would protect other pigs.
If a cow became a mage, it would protect other cows.
Then a mage born as a human had a universal duty and responsibility to protect other humans.
And so, Diarin’s soul began to wander like a ghost.
Only to avoid killing all humans.
