Chapter 142

 It’s Okay to Cry

Silverwind was a dragon with silver hair and silver eyes.

He possessed the gentlest temperament among all dragons. Once, his remarkable affinity with humans had even allowed him to befriend them widely, earning him the greatest renown among the guardian dragons.

If everything in the world had an opposing balance, then Silverwind’s spawn stood at the exact opposite end from him.

In contrast to Silverwind’s gentle nature, his spawn placed immense importance on tradition and discipline.

That was because every single warrior mattered in the battle against the frost giants pouring in from beyond the northern wall.

For that reason, the fierce northern barbarians regarded becoming a spawn of the Silver Dragon as the greatest possible honor.

From their perspective, Luri—who had undergone the Ascension Ceremony without observing any of their traditions—was an unprecedented case and not someone they could view favorably.

No, they might have been willing to show some flexibility and overlook the fact that she had become a dragon spawn through an irregular Ascension Ceremony.

The real problem surfaced when Luri declared that she truly intended to become a warrior.

From that moment onward, she faced nothing but vicious hostility.

“The worst of them was Lord Goz.”

Even back then, Goz Silverwind had been second in command and a loyal servant who supported Silverwind.

He was stricter about tradition and discipline than anyone else, to the point that one might think his nature was the complete opposite of Silverwind’s.

Because Luri had not been carefully selected and trained as a warrior, she had to be taught from the very beginning.

And according to him, the foundation of everything was perseverance.

Under the pretext of teaching her perseverance, Goz singled Luri out.

What he did bore little resemblance to instruction.

It was nothing more than one-sided beatings and abuse.

Goz worked Luri nearly to death time and time again.

Even those who disliked her began to pity her, proving that his actions were unquestionably atrocious.

The young girl endured cruelty that would have broken even fully trained warriors.

Fear of Goz naturally took root in Luri’s heart.

The thought that she would have to see his face whenever she opened her eyes brought her to tears. Sometimes, she even prayed that tomorrow would never come.

Yet somehow, she refused to give up.

She knew the pain that came from abandoning someone.

The sense of responsibility she had cultivated after falling into the gutter transformed into the tenacious perseverance of a warrior.

I will become a warrior for Father Silverwind, who took me in.

Whatever does not kill me will make me stronger.

That determination became reality.

After being subjected to Goz’s brutal training, Luri became a warrior.

Having endured an environment harsher than anyone else’s for decades, she grew faster than the other dragon spawn.

Eventually, no one could look down on her.

Around the fiftieth year after she became a spawn, her name was brought up as a candidate for the personal guard.

It was the position closest to Silverwind, the one she admired above all others.

Yet Luri did not wish to take it.

“Do you know why?”

“I do not.”

“To join the personal guard, one must drag down an existing member. But once someone becomes a member of the guard, choosing to surrender is considered more disgraceful than dying peacefully in bed.”

In other words, she could only take the position through a duel to the death.

Even if the current member admitted defeat, they would still have to die so that their disgrace could be washed away.

That was the tradition of Silverwind’s spawn.

“To everyone else, it would have been a glorious challenge. But not to me.”

To Luri, it was not a matter of a warrior’s honor.

It was killing family.

Because she still longed deeply for familial bonds, she could not accept the idea of killing one of her own family members.

However, Luri did not say that she was giving up.

She knew they would never accept such a weak reason.

Instead, she crossed the greatest barrier protecting the north from the frost.

She wielded the axe techniques she had learned through countless brushes with death against giants several times her size.

She was unquestionably an exceptional warrior.

Her fear of Goz had stripped away her fear of everything else.

As a result, Luri distinguished herself so greatly that she came to be known as the Nightmare of the Frost Giants.

Thanks to her achievements, Luri herself became synonymous with the Silverwing Mobile Brigade.

Her imposing presence and belligerent nature brought glory to the name of Silverwind.

That was how Luri had lived, both before and after she received the surname Silverwind.

After rambling through her past, she finally reached the heart of what had happened.

“Today… I fell victim to a demon’s trick.”

“What kind of trick?”

“I heard the voice of my younger brother… the one I had forgotten long ago.”

Her voice sank into some distant, unreachable place.

“That younger brother whose name and face I can no longer remember… broke through my faded memories with perfect clarity.”

“Was it truly your brother?”

“If you are asking whether it was real, then no. It had green blood.”

“Then it must have been a monster.”

“Yes. Most likely…”

Had it been some kind of magic?

Had that been the case, Luri would have simply said that she had fallen victim to a spell.

In Luri’s eyes, however, it had genuinely looked identical to her younger brother.

“Was it an attack that exploited its victim’s trauma?”

Whatever it was, its purpose had clearly been to destabilize the victim’s mind.

Ferda wondered what might have happened had he been subjected to the same attack.

“But you escaped from it, did you not?”

“I did not escape… I was merely rescued.”

Luri bit down hard on her lower lip before finally forcing herself to say the name.

“When I was completely helpless, Lord Goz appeared and saved me.”

Goz Silverwind.

She had been saved by the person she feared more than anyone else.

Ferda immediately sensed that Goz was the reason Luri was now in such a state.

“If he had not come… I would certainly have died.”

Luri’s body trembled.

“Was it the thought of dying that frightened you?”

“No. Death… does not mean very much to me.”

Luri had entered deadly situations so many times that she had grown numb to death.

“Then were you afraid that Goz might harm you?”

“I was afraid of Lord Goz… but that is merely a sensation I am accustomed to.”

“Then what has left you like this?”

What hurt even more than that was—

“Lord Goz… told me that I was useless.”

The person she feared so deeply—someone she considered family—had spoken such cruel words to her.

“Those words… are still ringing in my ears.”

Someone she feared had said something cruel, and it had wounded Luri.

Normally, Ferda might not have understood why it affected her so deeply.

But those words pierced his own heart as well.

What Luri had experienced was something Ferda himself had gone through only recently.

Erembalt Rosnova.

Erembalt had pushed Ferda into the deadly position of becoming the Princeps’s fiancé and then abandoned him.

Ferda knew perfectly well that he had been discarded.

Yet the man who had abandoned him returned, only to declare their severance once again.

Ferda had already known the truth.

He had expected nothing from him.

But the pain was not what he had anticipated.

Being abandoned a second time hurt far more than the first.

Could Ferda, who had been unable to control his own emotions, expect Luri to be any different?

She was probably hurting even more.

No matter how frightening she considered him, she must still have thought of Goz as family.

Deep down, she undoubtedly had.

In Ferda’s eyes, she no longer looked like a strong and dependable attendant.

Although she had lived longer than him and was far stronger, all he saw before him now was a sorrowful child who had never been loved.

She has such a strong sense of responsibility.

When she became Valdrova’s attendant, her relationship with Silverwind had fallen apart.

She had been abandoned then, and now Goz had abandoned her once again.

Ferda wondered whether there was anything he could do for her.

Try harder.

Do your best not to think about it.

Move forward.

He knew that words like those would not help in the slightest.

Had everything in the world been solvable through effort and willpower alone, Ferda would surely have become a knight.

So he chose his words carefully.

Suppose I were to meet the version of myself who was like Luri is now. What would I say to him?

Once he thought of it that way, the answer came to him.

Ferda spoke to Luri.

“Luri.”

“……Yes.”

“You may cry.”

“…What?”

Luri stared at Ferda as though wondering what absurd thing he was talking about.

“You do not have to hold it in. You may pour your emotions out in front of me.”

“I am not holding anything in. I…”

“There is no need to lie.”

Ferda spoke gently, as though addressing his own past.

“I know how much courage it took for you to tell me all of this.”

“……”

“There is nothing more miserable than being unable to cry when you want to. Crying once will not make everything fall apart, so let yourself cry now.”

Bursting into tears meant exposing and pouring out the weakness one had carried inside.

Once people became adults, there were times when they could not cry even if they wanted to.

They said that was something one learned upon becoming an adult, but Ferda had learned it after losing his mother.

When he realized that everything in the world was his enemy, there had been no time to cry.

Ferda knew the truth.

Others might call that becoming stronger, but it was undoubtedly a form of dying.

And like all things in the world, once something died, it could not be brought back to life.

“Are you afraid that I might tell someone?”

“……”

“I can step outside, if that is what you want.”

Ferda began to rise from his seat.

The moment he lifted himself, something stopped him.

Luri had grabbed the hem of his clothes.

Her eyes turned toward him.

Her trembling lips tried to form words.

Instead, tears welled in those cold, steadfast eyes.

Luri buried her face in Ferda’s shoulder.

From that moment on, Ferda saw nothing.

He heard nothing.

He did not notice his shoulder growing damp where her face was buried.

Her quiet sobs gradually grew louder, and at last, Luri poured out all the grief she had held inside.

Afterward, Ferda found himself in a predicament.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do next.

He had urged her to let everything out, yet he did not know how to comfort a girl who was crying so bitterly.

Ferda’s hand hovered awkwardly in the air.

Because of Mori, it had developed the habit of reaching toward people’s heads.

Isabella had told him it was impolite to praise an elder that way, and Luri herself had reacted with disgust.

But this is not praise. Surely it is fine if I am comforting her?

Ferda carefully placed his hand on her head.

Luri immediately lifted her face from his shoulder.

He must have stepped on a land mine.

Ferda expected her to unleash another torrent of words, but that was not what happened.

She shifted her head from his shoulder to his chest and buried her face there instead.

Then she resumed crying.

What was the meaning of that?

One thing was certain: now that she was leaning against him like that, it became a little easier to stroke her hair.

Luri cried, and Ferda comforted her by gently running his hand over her head.

Her sorrowful cries, which had seemed as though they would never end, gradually faded.

Even the sound of her sniffling disappeared, and silence settled over them.

“Luri.”

“……”

“Luri?”

She did not answer when he called her.

Ferda leaned his ear toward the top of her head and heard the soft, steady sound of breathing.

After crying to her heart’s content, she had fallen asleep.

“…This is troublesome.”

He had told her she could cry.

He had not expected her to fall asleep as well.

The war that had begun so suddenly finally came to an end.

As soon as the encirclement collapsed and the supply lines were restored, processions of wagons began moving busily, pouring into every corner of the Far East.

Ferda returned through the still-unfinished gates of the village alongside countless victorious soldiers.

At the same time, festival supplies arrived from Halim and the Pascal Merchant Company.

Among the goods from Halim was a handwritten letter from Ahmed Hashim.

—Congratulations on your victory, brother!

It was a brief letter, but perhaps because of its brevity, it felt all the more sincere.

Using the support sent by both parties, Ferda held another festival.

The people, whose bodies and minds had been exhausted by prolonged tension, laughed, shouted, sang, and celebrated their victory.

The bards who had been staying in the village began to perform.

The endlessly repeated tales of knights vanished, replaced by stories of dragons.

“Upon the accursed land stood a lonely mountain! Red scales and golden eyes! They said an evil dragon who had taken countless lives dwelled there!”

“The world churned like a lake filled with misunderstanding, while the truth lay buried beneath its depths! Yet today, that truth has finally been revealed!”

“When the filthy hordes of evil sought to put us to the test, she climbed to the summit of that lonely mountain!”

“She spread her crimson scales and majestic wings and proclaimed to the monsters at the eastern edge of the world!”

“‘The one who protects Hestia—the one who protects the continent of Cerdes—is I, Valdrova!’”

That particular hymn proved to be the most popular.

After all, had the soldiers who participated in the subjugation not witnessed Valdrova from closer than anyone else?

Popularity naturally led to money, and for bards in need of coin, it became a trend.

Other bards began composing hymns as well, and within only a few days, dozens had appeared.

Ferda ordered Isabella to provide those bards with travel expenses.

Bards wandered across the continent, and in remote villages, they served as messengers carrying news from throughout Cerdes.

If they sang of Valdrova in other lands, it would help erase her infamous reputation.

The festival, all the more intense because of how long the people had been oppressed, continued without showing any sign of ending even as the night deepened.

But Ferda did not allow himself to become swept up in the celebration.

He knew the truth.

The war was not over yet.

“You need to stay sharp from this point onward.”

Olivia spoke like someone who had witnessed an even greater evil.

Ferda and Olivia were holding a meeting to settle accounts now that the war had ended.

She explained that they had merely overcome one crisis, and that the next was about to begin.

“The Emperor has made his move.”

“You mean Godfrey Arken?”

“Yes. The man who gave me his blood.”

She still refused to call him her father.

“Did the Emperor act personally?”

“Not directly. But he must have provided that incompetent Crown Prince with the means to interfere.”

The original plan had been to eliminate all twelve colossal monsters.

However, four of them had been stopped by forces from outside the coalition.

One had been killed by Storeus, the Thunder Dragon.

Two had been dealt with by Silverwind’s spawn.

“The final one was apparently killed by a human who suddenly appeared near the Far Eastern Alliance… but their identity remains unknown.”

“A human?”

“Yes. They say that one person alone was powerful enough to overturn the entire battle.”

How strong would someone have to be to change the course of a battle single-handedly?

It must have been the armored knight.

They had disappeared without warning before the First Spring Festival and must have joined the army while returning.

That explanation made sense.

“Leaving aside the unidentified individual, the capital effectively took four of the monsters from us. Is that truly such a serious problem?”

“Our objective was a complete victory for the Far East. But the imperial capital intervened and prevented us from claiming four of those victories. Once the victory is no longer complete, it loses its value.”

Ferda fell silent and considered who would suffer the greatest loss from that diminished value.

The answer came quickly.

Was that person not standing right in front of him?

She intended to use this as a foundation for entering imperial politics.

The Empire’s political world was already a place where the same corrupt people continued to hoard power.

If someone attempted to make their mark with even the slightest weakness in their justification, the others would inevitably seize upon it and drag them down.

“They will begin making their move now. You should prepare a thorough response.”

That was Olivia’s advice.

Ferda wondered whether she was making too much of the situation.

To his surprise, she was not.

The very next morning, Ferda witnessed it with his own eyes.

A group of people entered the village, walking over ground still bearing the remnants of the previous night’s frenzy.

The knights of the Empire had arrived.