Chapter 04 …

This was something neither Duke Concle nor the countless mages coming and going through Concle territory had ever noticed.

The divine beast Jeokjo clinging to Diarin’s soul required an enormous amount of magical power.

If refined magic stones had been piled before Diarin, her soul might have lunged at them and devoured them raw.

But there was nothing.

Nowhere to fill the emptiness.

Lost within that overwhelming void, Diarin’s soul drifted blankly in search of powerful magic.

And the place it reached was beneath the Gate Stone.

The fact that Diarin’s separated soul—fallen all the way into hell—began devouring the monsters before her was, in a way, only natural.

One monster.

Two monsters.

A hundred monsters.

A thousand…

Once the number of monsters she had torn apart and eaten alive exceeded ten thousand, Diarin’s soul began taking on a bizarre form.

The skin that sprouted across her soul hardened like scale armor. Her limbs stretched like a demon’s, uneven in length, while the crimson wings attached to her back scattered fresh blood whenever they flapped. Her fingernails and claws resembled those of a beast.

She looked like a chimera stitched together from the shells of countless monsters.

It was a horrific appearance, but Diarin did not care. After all, she could not see her own form anyway.

She was merely a monster craving prey, and wherever Diarin passed, rivers of monster blood trailed behind her.

And yet she could not stop. The hunger simply would not fade.

Sometimes she fought powerful monsters and had limbs torn away. Blood constantly streamed from her eyes, and her ears rang as though submerged beneath the sea.

Had Diarin still possessed reason by then?

No—could the her of that time even be called human?

‘A monster. Just… a monster.’

“……”

In any case, the memories after that had vanished.

Her memories beneath the Gate Stone only covered the first few days.

What mattered was the result Diarin had achieved.

That overwhelming result—the successful imprinting of the lost legendary divine beast, Jeokjo.

As a result, Diarin became the summoner of the divine beast Jeokjo.

Of course, neither Duke Concle nor anyone else knew this. Even the mages who examined Diarin’s body every day had failed to discover it.

And so—

There was only one thing Diarin truly wanted to know.

Ezet…

Diarin’s fiancé, and the prince who had survived beneath the Gate Stone for two entire years.

‘Did we meet in that hell? Or not?’

Praying desperately that they had not, Diarin slowly closed her eyes.

Today had truly been an exhausting day.

〈…Arin, Di…〉

A voice settled beside her sleeping ears.

“Ugh…” Diarin groaned, frowning.

The heavy black dress she had worn yesterday had been exhausting enough that she still felt drained. Even as she regained consciousness, confusion surfaced.

‘Why are they waking me already?’

When she told Duke Concle she had arranged another meeting with Ezet, he had been extremely pleased.

Which meant that for at least three days—

Even the servants of the Concle ducal estate had to pretend to treat Diarin respectfully.

That arrogant maid who yanked her blankets away every early morning would restrain herself for a while.

Naturally, no one should have been waking her this early either…

〈Diarin!〉

At the shrill cry, Diarin’s eyes snapped open.

It was the middle of the night.

Moonlight streamed through the curtains because the maid had failed to close them properly.

A beat later, Diarin realized it had not been a maid waking her, but a familiar—no, a divine beast.

More precisely, Ol.

The right wing of Jeokjo.

Radiating annoyance from head to toe, Diarin buried her face deep into the pillow.

“What is it, Ol? I’m tired…”

〈This is no time to sleep. Please get yourself together, okay?〉

A crimson feather filled with magical power floated over and poked her cheek. Still pressing her face into the pillow, Diarin waved her hand lazily.

Instead of being caught, the feather flipped her entire body over.

Her nightgown skirt settled a beat late.

“Why are you— huh?”

The drowsiness vanished in an instant. Diarin’s gaze sharpened immediately.

Carefully rising, she kept her eyes fixed in the direction the crimson feather indicated.

Near the bedpost.

A translucent butterfly was hiding there silently. It was about the size of a wildcat, and dazzling five-colored lights glittered around it. Black mist rose from its surroundings.

Powder sparkled and drifted down from its fluttering wings.

It was powder as dangerous as it was beautiful.

‘No wonder the sleep felt too sweet.’

Diarin pulled up the sleeve of her nightgown to cover her nose and mouth.

〈I think it followed us from near the Imperial Palace.〉

“Something that dangerous?”

What kind of disaster was imperial security dealing with?

〈Wasn’t it the Crown Prince who died this time? Seems like there are an enormous number of humans raging over his death.〉

“It’s been noisy. There were also all sorts of rumors about the Swan Summoner and everything…”

Without taking her eyes off the monster, Diarin slowly rose.

Just before she rolled sideways—

With the sound of tearing wind, the monster lunged at her, revealing dozens of teeth.

Its teeth were as hard as steel. Human flesh would have been crushed and chewed apart like pudding.

But steel could always be shattered with diamond.

CRACK!

With a crushing sound, the monster’s teeth shattered into pieces.

What the monster had bitten was not Diarin’s neck, but an enormous, hardened mass of magical power.

In an instant, the monster was completely erased from existence.

Diarin’s bedroom became silent again, as though nothing had happened.

In truth, a little noise was acceptable.

The place where Diarin stayed was one of the most isolated annexes in the entire Concle estate.

So even if things became somewhat loud—

‘It should be fine.’

Diarin immediately ran to the vanity.

She grabbed a handkerchief, balled it thickly, and pressed it against her mouth. With a short groan, she coughed violently.

Several more coughs followed before she pulled the handkerchief away from her lips.

Blood stained the once-clean cloth.

“Whew.”

Used to it by now, Diarin casually rolled up the handkerchief in her hand. She opened the bedroom door and headed toward the bathroom.

Wealthy ducal families used magically treated plumbing.

When she turned the faucet, warm water flowed out. She rinsed the bloodstains from the handkerchief with lukewarm water.

When she returned to her bedroom, she moved quietly and carefully.

Fortunately, there was no maid standing guard.

Diarin quietly settled back onto the bed.

‘Isn’t this a little too much labor for the middle of the night?’

After taking several steady breaths, Diarin absentmindedly lifted her wrist to look at it.

A divine beast summoner always bore the divine beast’s mark somewhere on their body.

In Diarin’s case, the mark was engraved on the back of her hand.

The crimson symbol representing Jeokjo glowed faintly there.

The very mark from legend itself.

The divine beast Duke Concle desperately searched for with burning eyes—Jeokjo—belonged to Diarin.

The divine beast Jeokjo, Ol, asked her:

〈Why are you staring at it so uneasily?〉

“If you were me, wouldn’t you feel uneasy too?”

Ol looked nervous.

〈…Is it because you coughed blood because of us? Does it hurt a lot? Is it really hard enduring our power?〉

“It doesn’t hurt at all. I told you, didn’t I? I can’t feel anything.”

She was not simply trying to comfort the divine beast.

Diarin truly felt no pain whatsoever.

Normally, when a mage coughed blood, it meant their body had suffered serious shock from excessive magical power usage.

But Diarin currently had an extremely powerful pain-suppression spell cast upon herself.

〈Hey. Don’t you plan on解除ing that magic already?〉

A voice slightly heavier than Ol’s spoke up.

Diarin answered:

“I said I’m not解除ing it, Ror.”

Ror.

The left wing of Jeokjo.

A naturally prickly familiar who always referred to Diarin as “Hey,” “Human,” or “Devil.”

〈I don’t know where you learned such high-level magic, but it’s not good. Blindly avoiding pain is… a bad method.〉

He seemed more mature than Ol, but his vocabulary was still lacking. Like a clever, cold, cynical child who had read too many books.

“I used to be a mage, so it’s fine.”

The pain-suppression magic Diarin had cast was an extremely high-level spell. It did not react to ordinary pain, but it almost perfectly erased pain caused by magic.

“And I need at least this much to endure you two.”

At her calm words, both Ol and Ror coughed awkwardly at the same time.

〈…Ahem.〉

〈…Great power naturally comes with great responsibility.〉

“Right, right.”

Diarin answered absentmindedly, as though soothing children.

Ror stayed silent for a moment before speaking again.

〈Anyway, human. You approached that brat in order to solve this problem, didn’t you?〉

“By brat, you mean Ezet? The Eighth Prince?”

〈Yes.〉

“He’s not a brat. He’s His Highness the Prince. And I didn’t ‘approach’ him. I made a proposal.”

〈Isn’t that the same thing?〉

“No, it isn’t.”

〈…Humans are truly difficult creatures.〉

Ol interrupted with a voice full of curiosity.

〈You said he’s the fiancé you reunited with after two years. How do you feel?〉

“……Honestly, I don’t really know. I was actually pretty worried.”

Diarin and Ezet.

Though the causes and circumstances differed, they were ultimately both humans who had returned alive from beneath the Gate Stone.

Of course, Diarin had not returned in human form, but as a monster itself.

And Diarin had one more fatal problem.

‘Why can’t I properly remember what happened beneath the Gate Stone?’

Not only Diarin, but even Ol and Ror barely remembered the two years they had wandered beneath the Gate Stone.

So it was frustrating.

No—extremely frustrating.

Especially since Ezet had fallen beneath the Gate Stone during that exact same period.

But if Ezet had truly encountered Diarin down there…

Well.

If that had happened, there was no way Ezet would have returned alive and unharmed.

At that time, Diarin had been a demon driven insane by hunger itself.

If she had encountered Ezet back then, she would have pounced on him and torn him apart completely.

It sounded grotesque, but it was the truth.

〈But Master.〉

Ol spoke again.

〈From what I saw earlier, that prince guy didn’t seem all that cold toward you? Maybe he actually has feelings for you. It might not be as bad as you think if you go to Northern Gate Stone Territory.〉

“No, Ol. Can you stop filling my head with nonsense too? You weren’t there back then, so you don’t know, but if I go to Northern Gate Stone Territory this time, I’m seriously going to feel like I’m sitting on a bed of thorns.”

If you thought about it, wasn’t this basically a disgraceful situation where a royal who had fled during crisis was shamelessly crawling back once the country stabilized?

No matter the hidden circumstances, that was how it looked on the surface.

“And besides…”

Staring at the bare ceiling above her bed, Diarin murmured softly:

“Ezet was always indifferent to other people.”

She tried to recall Ezet’s face.

But all that surfaced was blurred fog.