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Chapter 03 …
“I told him I regretted not being able to give him the birthday gift I had personally prepared back then, and he seemed a little shaken.”
Of course, Diarin had never actually had such a conversation with Ezet. But that did not matter. No matter whom Duke Concle had planted nearby, they could not have perfectly overheard everything.
For Diarin, it was enough simply to repeat the portions of conversation she had intentionally not lowered her voice for—without distorting them.
“Did the Eighth Prince show interest?”
“To some extent.”
Clinging to old affection. Appealing to emotion.
Certainly, Duke Concle looked as though he judged Diarin’s story to be fairly satisfactory.
“And I also told him I would ask you, Duke, about returning the key.”
“The key?”
“The additional armory key. It’s absolutely necessary during regular monster subjugation campaigns.”
“My, my. I had taken it for maintenance purposes and completely forgot to return it to the Eighth Prince.”
“You are a busy man, Duke.”
There was no way he had truly forgotten something so important, but Diarin pretended not to notice the lie and accepted it calmly.
Because the additional armory key of Northern Gate Stone was something that absolutely had to be retrieved from Duke Concle.
“Duke. May I ask for the additional armory key as my engagement gift?”
“An engagement gift, hm.”
It was a bold thing to say. Smiling softly, Diarin continued gently:
“There’s a limit to relying only on old affection. His Highness is the guardian of Northern Gate Stone, so he won’t be able to reject the condition of bringing back the additional armory key.”
“But the Eighth Prince could simply steal the key and deceive you.”
“I’m not asking for it immediately. I need a safeguard as well. Once His Highness takes me to Northern Gate Stone as his ‘fiancée,’ then please send it through a messenger.”
“After he takes you there?”
“Yes.”
Duke Concle stroked his chin.
The Akir Imperial Family was extremely sensitive to rumors. Even if she was only an adopted daughter, once a young lady under a duke’s protection was taken to a territory as a fiancée, it would realistically be difficult to send her back without proper reason.
It was not a bad plan.
“When did you arrange to meet the Eighth Prince again?”
“I said I wished to speak with him again in a week, and he agreed. Though later it was moved up to three days from now.”
“I see. Good.”
Diarin’s words matched perfectly with the portions secretly overheard by the spy Duke Concle had planted. For now, the duke decided to be satisfied with this much.
Even if Ezet Asperk Kirchen’s status had changed now, was he not still just a child in the end?
The Ezet Duke Concle knew had originally been an insignificant prince.
Young age. A purely formal place in succession. A rigid personality whose only role was to silently obey the imperial command to guard the far northern Northern Gate Stone, the territory furthest from the capital.
But he was also the prince with the greatest potential to become the next Crown Prince, and Duke Concle absolutely could not let go of such a valuable card.
If he could have his way, he wanted to strip Diarin naked and send her straight into Ezet’s bed.
“I hear Duke Kelstuder is trying to arrange a marriage between his youngest daughter and the Eighth Prince. Though I am blocking it with your engagement.”
Tsk.
Remembering Duke Kelstuder, Duke Concle clicked his tongue.
Even for him, Ezet Asperk’s return had been utterly unexpected.
And what Ezet had brought back from beneath the Gate Stone was none other than the vampire great-monster, Skellus.
The damage that creature had caused to the empire’s Gates over the years was immeasurable.
The Gates—which instantly transported people across vast distances—were enormous magical constructs powered by monster cores. Skellus would detect them, approach underground, then continuously drain their magic power until they collapsed.
Because it indiscriminately targeted anything containing magic power, not only the Akir Empire but the entire continent had suffered massive damage.
For nearly thirty years, it had been the public enemy of the continent itself—practically a natural disaster.
And the hero who defeated that great monster was none other than Ezet Asperk Kirchen.
That young prince.
‘The problem is.’
Among the great nobles eyeing this prince was Duke Kelstuder, whom Duke Concle considered a thorn in his side.
Kelstuder was a family of civil officials who had governed imperial law for generations.
Soon enough, they would discover the truth—that two years ago, Duke Concle had taken Diarin back under the excuse of a “broken engagement.” And if they latched onto that fact, it would all be over.
So before that happened—
“You would do well to live up to my expectations, Diarin Conclester. If you disappoint me…”
“……”
“Aren’t you tired of the cold by now? Marquis Philip came looking for you again.”
Diarin quietly lowered her head. The two hands resting on her knees were uselessly slender and pale white.
The one who had taken in Diarin after she lost her parents as a child had been Marquis Philip. He was an utterly vile man.
To turn Diarin into a doll that obeyed him completely, he used violence whenever the mood struck him.
And the cruelest punishment of all was locking her inside an ice storage room.
Darkness everywhere. Freezing air. The terrifying fear that she might freeze to death.
How violently had the young Diarin trembled in that horrifying warehouse?
Seeing Diarin unable to say anything, Duke Concle wore a satisfied expression.
“You understand what I mean, don’t you? After the Conclester territory was sealed off by plague, I took you in and raised you like my own daughter. I trust you will repay me appropriately.”
“……Of course, Duke.”
‘Like my own father, my ass.’
What a piece of trash. That bastard Duke Concle would someday be buried in a sunny graveyard.
Without even needing to pick a fight with him, the spit Diarin casually dropped while passing his grave would be enough to make the grass growing over it flourish wildly.
What kind of father treated his daughter like this?
In truth, Diarin remembered three past lives.
In one of them, Diarin had been the youngest high-ranking mage.
Because of that, no matter how much abuse she endured, her mind had remained intact. Though she truly did hate the cold…
She shivered slightly.
Being used as a tool for political marriage was tolerable compared to everything else. Diarin liked Ezet more than she had expected.
What made Duke Concle truly horrifying was that he used Diarin for other purposes as well.
‘Using me for human experimentation. And he calls himself a high noble?’
“The damned empire.”
Diarin quietly ground her teeth.
Two years ago, when Ezet disappeared after falling beneath the Gate Stone, Diarin had been summoned to Duke Concle’s estate.
After that, she was never allowed to return to Northern Gate Stone again. The reason was simple: Duke Concle was obsessed with human experimentation.
The purpose of the experiment itself was simple.
In a distant culture, there were said to be four divine guardian beasts protecting the four directions.
Black Tortoise. White Tiger. Azure Dragon. Vermilion Bird.
The experiment aimed to summon into this world a crimson bird resembling the Vermilion Bird—Jeokjo.
No divine beast could descend without a human acting as a summoner and vessel.
Diarin had endured human experimentation for two entire years in order to become Jeokjo’s summoner.
She had not been the only one in that laboratory.
Dozens, hundreds of people were dragged in unconscious and later carried out dead.
The only reason Diarin survived—and the only reason she 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 Concle once again needed Diarin as a political marriage card.
Of course, Duke Concle did not know that Diarin remembered everything.
Everything she had suffered during those two years.
Because throughout those two years, she had constantly been injected with powerful drugs that caused unconsciousness.
‘If it weren’t for the magic circulating inside my body, I would have already lost all my memories or become an idiot before being killed.’
Because Diarin was a great mage who had reincarnated repeatedly, she could still calmly dress herself beautifully and go to meet Ezet.
‘What does Ezet’s face actually look like?’
I want to see it.
Because she had been born with equal-blood lineage, she alone could not properly see the face of her fiancé, whom everyone described as incomparably handsome and beautiful.
And there was one more thing—an anxiety and question she could not hide.
‘The Ezet who fell beneath the Gate Stone…’
Her childhood fiancé.
‘Did he meet me?’
The her who, due to the horrific side effects of the Jeokjo summoning experiment, had ultimately become a great monster and wandered beneath the Gate Stone for two entire years?
So this was what had happened.
Jeokjo.
A divine beast said to leave behind no traces even through magic.
None of Concle’s mages knew this, but Diarin Conclester—
She had succeeded in turning those crimson wings into familiars under her command.
Of course, it had not been easy.
For the past two years, what had been forcibly injected into Diarin’s wrists was Jeokjo’s soul stone itself.
The laboratory within Concle Castle.
Fragments of Jeokjo flowed into Diarin’s body while she was tightly bound to the experiment table.
At that moment, she had been utterly horrified. If she could have moved, she would have torn it away somehow.
She was not an ordinary human.
She was a great mage hiding tremendous magical power within her soul.
Like sparks exploding when stone struck stone, Jeokjo’s soul violently collided with Diarin’s soul and her ocean-like magical power.
Sensing a catastrophic explosion powerful enough to destroy the entire continent, Diarin instinctively separated her soul from her body almost reflexively.
‘There was no other choice.’
Though it had been in a previous life, Diarin had undeniably once been a mage.
One who did not harm innocent people with borrowed power.
One who did not recklessly stain themselves in blood.
One who, at least once, had followed the ethics of a mage.
There was a saying:
If a pig painted an angel, it would paint an angel in the shape of a pig.
If a cow painted an angel, it would paint an angel in the shape of a cow.
Then if a pig were a mage, it would protect fellow pigs.
If a cow were a mage, it would protect fellow cows.
Therefore, a mage born as a human carried the universal responsibility and ethics to protect fellow humans.
And so Diarin’s soul began wandering like a ghost.
Only to prevent herself from massacring humanity.
