Chapter 4
This was something neither Duke Concl nor the many mages who constantly came and went from Concl territory had ever noticed.
The divine beast Red Bird attached to Diarin’s soul required enormous magical power.
If refined magic stones had been piled in front of her, it might have rushed to devour them raw just to fill its hunger.
But there was nothing.
Nothing anywhere to satisfy it.
Overwhelmed by unbearable emptiness, Diarin’s separated soul wandered blankly in search of strong magic.
That place was the Gate Stone underground.
In a way, it was only natural that Diarin’s wandering soul, which had fallen into hell itself, began devouring the monsters before her.
One monster.
Two monsters.
A hundred monsters.
A thousand monsters…
Once the number of monsters she had torn apart and eaten alive surpassed ten thousand, Diarin’s soul began taking on a strange form.
Skin grew over her soul and hardened like scaled armor.
Her limbs became demonically long and uneven.
The red wings on her back splattered blood every time they flapped.
Her fingernails and toenails became beast-like.
She looked like a horrifying chimera stitched together from countless monster corpses.
It was a terrible form.
But it did not matter.
Diarin could not see herself anyway.
She was simply a monster craving prey, and wherever she passed, rivers of monster blood followed.
Even then, she could not stop.
Her hunger never ended.
Sometimes, while fighting powerful monsters, her limbs were torn off.
Blood constantly flowed from her eyes, and her ears rang as if she were drowning in the sea.
At that point, had Diarin’s sanity remained?
No.
Could she even still be called human?
‘No… I was just a monster. A monster.’
…
In any case, most of those memories were gone now.
Her memories of the Gate Stone underground only covered the first few days.
What mattered was the result Diarin had achieved.
She had finally branded the lost legend, the divine beast Red Bird.
As a result, Diarin became the summoner of the divine beast Red Bird.
Of course, neither Duke Concl nor anyone else knew this.
Not even the mages who examined her body daily had discovered it.
And because of that—
There was only one thing Diarin truly wanted to know.
Ezet…
Her fiancé.
The prince who had survived in the Gate Stone underground for two years.
‘Did we meet in that hell? Or not?’
Praying desperately that they had not, Diarin slowly closed her eyes.
Today had been an exhausting day.
〈…A-rin, Di…〉
A voice drifted into her sleeping ears.
“Mmm…”
Diarin frowned.
The heavy black dress she had worn yesterday had been exhausting enough that she still felt tired.
Even as she slowly woke up, she felt confused.
‘Why am I being woken up already?’
Duke Concl had been extremely pleased that she had arranged to meet Ezet again.
That meant for at least three days—
Even the servants of the Concl estate would have to pretend to treat Diarin politely.
The rude maid who usually ripped off her blankets every early morning should have restrained herself for now.
So naturally, she should not have been awakened this early.
〈Diarin!〉
At the sharp shout, Diarin’s eyes flew open.
It was the middle of the night.
Moonlight streamed through the poorly closed curtains.
A moment later, Diarin realized—
It was not a maid.
It was her familiar.
No—
A divine beast.
More specifically, Ol.
The right wing of the Red Bird.
Diarin buried her face into her pillow with complete annoyance.
“What is it, Ol? I’m tired…”
〈This is not the time to sleep. Wake up properly, okay?〉
A red feather filled with magic floated over and poked her cheek.
Still half-asleep, Diarin lazily waved her hand.
Instead of being caught, the feather flipped her body over completely.
Her nightgown skirt settled a moment later.
“What is wr— …Huh?”
Her sleepiness vanished instantly.
Diarin’s gaze sharpened immediately.
She carefully sat up, staring in the direction Ol’s feather pointed.
Near the bedpost.
A translucent butterfly was hiding there silently.
It was about the size of a wildcat.
Its surroundings sparkled brilliantly in five colors.
And black mist rose around it.
Glittering powder fell softly from its fluttering wings.
Beautiful.
And deadly.
‘No wonder my sleep felt strangely sweet.’
Diarin quickly pulled up her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth.
〈It seems to have followed us from near the imperial palace.〉
“Something that dangerous?”
What exactly was wrong with palace security?
〈Didn’t the Crown Prince die this time? A lot of humans must be full of anger because of it.〉
“It was certainly chaotic. There were also rumors blaming the White Swan’s summoner…”
Without taking her eyes off the monster, Diarin slowly rose.
Just as she rolled sharply to the side—
The monster lunged, revealing dozens of teeth with a tearing wind sound.
Its teeth were as hard as steel.
They could crush human flesh like pudding.
But steel could simply be shattered by diamond.
Crunch!
With a violent cracking sound, the monster’s teeth shattered.
What it had bitten was not Diarin’s neck—
But a massive, solid lump of magical power.
The monster was instantly erased from existence.
Diarin’s bedroom became silent again.
Honestly, a little noise was fine.
The place where Diarin stayed was one of the most isolated annexes in Duke Concl’s massive estate.
So even if things got somewhat noisy—
‘It should be fine.’
Diarin immediately ran to her vanity.
She grabbed a handkerchief, pressed it tightly over her mouth, and coughed violently.
Cough!
After several smaller coughs, she lowered the handkerchief.
Blood stained the once-clean cloth.
“Whew…”
Diarin calmly rolled up the handkerchief.
She quietly left her bedroom and headed to the bathroom.
A wealthy duke’s household used magically treated plumbing.
When she turned the faucet, warm water flowed out.
She washed the bloodstains from the cloth carefully.
When she returned to her bedroom, she moved quietly.
Thankfully, there were no maids guarding nearby.
Diarin slipped back into bed.
‘Isn’t this a bit too much labor for the middle of the night?’
After taking a few breaths, Diarin lifted her wrist and looked at it.
A divine beast summoner naturally carried the mark of their beast somewhere on their body.
Diarin’s mark was on the back of her hand.
A glowing red symbol representing the Red Bird shone there.
The legendary symbol.
The divine beast Duke Concl desperately sought—
Already belonged to Diarin.
The divine beast Red Bird, Ol, asked:
〈Why are you staring at it so gloomily?〉
“If you were me, wouldn’t you feel troubled too?”
Ol hesitated.
〈…Is it because you coughed blood because of us? Does it hurt a lot? Is enduring our power too difficult?〉
“It doesn’t hurt at all. I told you, I feel nothing.”
She was not just trying to comfort them.
Diarin truly felt no pain.
Normally, when a mage coughed blood, it meant their body had suffered serious damage from overusing magic.
But Diarin had cast an extremely powerful pain-numbing spell on herself.
〈Hey. Don’t you plan to remove that spell?〉
A deeper voice spoke.
Diarin answered,
“I said I’m not removing it, Lor.”
Lor.
The left wing of the Red Bird.
A naturally irritable familiar who always addressed Diarin as “Hey,” “Human,” or “Devil.”
〈I don’t know where you learned such advanced magic, but it’s not good. Avoiding pain recklessly is… a bad method.〉
Lor sounded more mature than Ol, but still somewhat lacking in vocabulary.
Like a cold, pessimistic child who had read too many books.
“I used to be a mage, so it’s fine.”
The pain-numbing spell Diarin used was extremely high-level.
It ignored normal pain almost completely while perfectly erasing magical pain.
“And I need at least this much to handle you two.”
At her calm response, both Ol and Lor awkwardly coughed.
〈…Ahem.〉
〈…Great power naturally comes with great responsibility.〉
“Sure, sure.”
Diarin answered like she was soothing children.
After a brief silence, Lor spoke again.
〈Anyway, human. That’s why you approached that boy, right? To solve this problem?〉
“Boy? You mean Ezet? The Eighth Prince?”
〈Yes.〉
“He’s not a boy. He’s His Highness. And I didn’t ‘approach’ him. I made a proposal.”
〈Isn’t that basically the same thing?〉
“No.”
〈…Humans really are difficult.〉
Ol suddenly asked curiously,
〈So how do you feel about reuniting with your fiancé after two years?〉
“…Honestly, I’m not sure. I was worried.”
Diarin and Ezet.
Though their circumstances were different, both had survived the Gate Stone underground.
Of course, Diarin had not survived there as a human.
She had been a monster.
And there was one more major problem.
‘Why can’t I properly remember what happened underground?’
Not only Diarin—
Ol and Lor also barely remembered the two years they had wandered the Gate Stone underground.
That made things frustrating.
Especially because Ezet had been trapped there during the exact same period.
But if Ezet had truly encountered Diarin there…
Well.
If that had happened, Ezet likely would not have returned alive and unharmed.
At that time, Diarin had been a demon driven mad by hunger.
If she had seen him, she probably would have torn him apart and eaten him.
Disturbing as it was—
That was simply the truth.
〈But, Master…〉
Ol spoke carefully.
〈From what I saw earlier, that prince didn’t seem that unfriendly toward you. Maybe he does have some feelings for you? Going to Northern Gate Stone might not be as terrible as you think.〉
“No, Ol. Please don’t start imagining things too. You weren’t there back then, so you don’t understand. If I go to Northern Gate Stone now, it’ll feel like sitting on a bed of thorns.”
From an outside perspective, it looked exactly like a royal who had fled during hardship shamelessly crawling back once things became stable.
No matter her real reasons—
That was how it appeared.
“And…”
Diarin stared blankly at the plain ceiling above her bed.
“Ezet was always indifferent to others.”
She tried to imagine Ezet’s face—
But all she could see was blurred fog.
