Episode 14
'Agh!'
The expression on Carnelian's face upon seeing Karina was no laughing matter either. She began to panic, something he had never seen before. She asked Karina, doing her utmost to remain calm.
"So, what's your name this time? I'm Carnelian."
"Karina…."
Karina spoke through gritted teeth.
"You start with 'Ka' too."
Carnelian let out a long sigh. There were so many good names in the world; why were there so many people starting with 'Ka'?
"Who is that woman? She looks like a Seal."
"She's a Seal I'm going to kill right now…… You don't need to concern yourself, Jelrid."
Jelrid asked Karina with an extremely annoyed expression, but Karina was glaring at Carnelian with eyes full of nothing but hatred.
"I'll kill you…… A woman like you, I'll kill you!"
For whatever reason, Karina suddenly began attacking Carnelian, spewing terrifying words that didn't match her cute appearance in the slightest, and thanks to that, Lii and Jelrid had no choice but to stop fighting and simply stare blankly at the two of them in a bewildering situation.
"……."
Jelrid's expression stiffened. A look of extreme displeasure. He seemed like someone who truly despised being pushed from the center of the stage.
"N-now, hold on. Because of that matter, all this time you… me…."
Carnelian dodged Karina's fist, which left a white afterimage, and tried to speak, but Karina's eyes were fiercer than ever before.
"Did you think I would forget!"
Even Jelrid had never seen Karina so furious.
Chapter #4 The Human Heart, the Shape of the Heart
-intro
"Perhaps… humans may be beings who have forgotten how to return to being dragons. Having lived in these bodies for so long, they may have forgotten how to return to their original draconic forms, and they may have been living their lives firmly believing, 'I am absolutely not a dragon.' That's what I mean."
"Then what do you think about Seals? Aren't you curious about where on earth I came from?"
She playfully asked back about the guess I had blurted out while drunk. But unlike her expression, which seemed as though she was about to tell me at any moment, she never told me that one thing right up until the moment she left me.
"What on earth……"
Watching Karina suddenly rush at Carnelian and attack with several times more killing intent than when she had fought Lii, Jelrid dropped his sword with a hollow expression. For a Seal, in whom emotional outbursts almost never occurred, it was unexpected behavior. The Tamer Jelrid felt his Seal Karina's emotions so intensely that his head throbbed.
"Lii…… I'll postpone taking your life until next time."
"What's with the change of heart?"
"Shouldn't you thank me for letting you live a little longer?"
"I suppose I should express my gratitude for you disappearing quietly and allowing us to defeat Helmond."
Lii said so, glaring at Jelrid with a cold expression utterly devoid of gratitude, but Jelrid only responded with his usual chilling smile.
"Well, you can flee. But you won't be able to escape."
Saying so, Jelrid sheathed his fell beast in its scabbard and shouted to Karina.
"Let's go back! Karina."
Carnelian was in a state of doing nothing but defending against Karina's all-out attacks, which resembled the violent dance of a dancer. She wore a face that showed she was not in the mood to fight Karina in the slightest. Yet she couldn't shake off the persistently clinging Karina, so Carnelian kept blocking her fists and kicks with Mistral while stepping back. That was when Jelrid's voice rang out.
"Ehh! B-but, Jelrid!"
"If you want to fight that Seal, do as you please. I'm leaving first."
Karina, who had stopped attacking at Jelrid's words, whined in a frustrated voice, but Jelrid only turned his body with an annoyed expression. Such a cold-hearted Tamer.
"J-Jelrid, let's go together! Just you wait, Carnelian!"
Karina glared sharply at Carnelian with hatred-filled eyes and followed Jelrid, who was leaving the battlefield. Unable to relieve her anger, Karina pouted at Jelrid with a puffy face.
"That's not like you, Master! What the heck…… ending it like this. I just have to kill Carnelian, and you just have to kill Lii!"
"Don't worry. It's not the end; it's only just begun."
Meanwhile, once Karina disappeared, Carnelian stuck Mistral into the ground and let out a sigh.
"Really…… they forget all the good things so quickly, but remember the bad things until the day they die."
She shook her head and made a troubled expression. It seemed she was thinking about her past with Karina. When Lii looked at such a Carnelian and approached, Carnelian turned her head and smiled brightly.
"Sir Lii. Are you alright?"
Though she stood without the slightest opening, the pale aura swirling across her face made it obvious that her physical condition was quite poor. Jelrid's poison would kill an ordinary human instantly; no matter how much of a knight she was, she was a woman of tremendous mental fortitude.
"Your name is Carnelian, correct? Why are you on such bad terms with Jelrid's Seal, Karina?"
Lii asked, clutching his injured shoulder as he walked back to the main camp. Carnelian was following behind him.
"Ah, well…… we've lived long enough that there are times when we don't get along. Especially among Seals, we strangely tend not to hide such emotions very well."
"What sort of bad blood do you have with Karina?"
When Lii asked softly, Carnelian's expression seemed to grow somewhat complicated before she answered with an awkward smile.
"Ahahaha. I've forgotten. It was so long ago. Don't worry. I am on good terms with Ikates, at least for now."
"I see. I've heard a little about you from Ikates."
Lii already knew from his experience with Ikates that Carnelian's claim of having forgotten was a lie. Seals did not like talking about the past. Ikates had spoken vaguely of Carnelian's past, but one could roughly guess from the words she had once spoken: 'I never want to wake up again.'
"The Helmond army is fleeing!"
"Victory! Long live Lisenberg! Glory to Sir Lii, the Blue Falcon!"
The shouts of the Bellesima defenders began to ring out here and there. In the end, the Lisenberg army protected by Ikates managed to stop Helmond's forces, and with Jelrid having withdrawn from battle, O'Connell pulled back his troops, realizing there was no chance of victory. Thus, Lisenberg won the defense of Bellesima.
"Sir Jelrid! Why! Why did you not uphold your contract!"
"Don't call me sir. Have you forgotten I am a disgraced knight?"
"T-that's not what's important right now!"
O'Connell shouted at Jelrid, his face red. The damage to the Helmond side, which had effectively lost the battle, was enormous. He believed that Jelrid, who had been boasting so confidently, had stopped blocking Sir Lii and retreated, and that this was why the battle was lost. If Carnelian had been there, she would have surely said, 'You lost because you're an idiot, you fool.' Seated in a low field chair, chin resting on his hand, Jelrid looked up at O'Connell and spoke with a blank face.
"You're the one who deceived me."
"Deceived you? About what?"
O'Connell wore a puzzled expression.
"You can't be unaware that in a small-scale local conflict like this, just one or two Seals are enough to change the tide of war. Even if your entire feeble army charged, they'd have a hard time subduing a single Seal."
"W-why are you stating the obvious!"
O'Connell's voice trembled, feeling insulted.
"There was another Seal in this war besides Lii's Ikates. I believe her name was Carnelian…… and she was a high-ranking Seal at that. I heard from you that Lisenberg had only Lii and Ikates…… Make your excuses."
At the name 'Carnelian,' Karina, standing behind Jelrid, irritably furrowed her brow. No one knew what exactly had happened, but they certainly looked like mortal enemies.
"Th-that means!"
O'Connell was so shocked by Jelrid's words that his eyes looked like they would pop out and roll across the floor, causing Jelrid to frown slightly. With an urgent expression as though he would foam at the mouth, he repeated:
"A-a new Seal! Does that mean there is another knight serving Lisenberg?!"
"Why are you asking me? Truly pathetic. When a Seal appears in a war between nations, there is no other way to explain it than that the Seal's knight is serving that nation."
O'Connell's jaw dropped. The appearance of a new Seal and knight serving the nation of Lisenberg…… Considering the capabilities of a first-rate knight and Seal, it was an issue more shocking than an increase of tens of thousands of ordinary soldiers to Lisenberg. If that were true, it meant that the fall of Lisenberg, which they had so eagerly awaited, was now a lost cause, and it also meant they now had to worry about an invasion from Lisenberg.
"T-this is a disaster! I must report to His Majesty at once!"
Jelrid did not hesitate to sneer at O'Connell's lament.
"Will reporting change anything? A weak, insignificant nation without a single knightly house to its name. I'm amazed that people like you even tried to face Lii. If Lii had a personality like mine, your country would have vanished from the map in an instant."
'Gurk.'
Regardless of Jelrid's words, O'Connell was engulfed by unstoppable fear at the fact of a new knight and Seal's appearance. Moreover, the name 'Carnelian' was naturally one he had never heard before, and he had no idea who her Tamer was. The anxiety that if she was a high-ranking Seal, her knight must surely be an incredible figure began to take root and branch out in O'Connell's mind as his imagination ran wild. Well, to tell the truth, Carnelian had merely helped out because a war happened to break out during an extremely boring moment. If she had been amusing herself with Jullitan, sleeping, or in the middle of a meal, she absolutely would not have helped. In any case, what could be learned here was that even the cold, calculating judgment of Nightmare Jelrid Vinkristine could not keep up with Carnelian's capricious whims, which shifted like boiling porridge.
'C-could it be…… that the 'Ruthless Wandering Knight' of Bellesima from the rumors has become a knight of Lisenberg…….'
Truly, rumors travel fast. Rumors about Jullitan had even reached the ears of Helmond's general, O'Connell. And with the epithet 'ruthless,' no less. At this rate, if the rumors spread to the south, people might speak of 'a demon knight in human skin who shoots killing rays from his eyes and his atrocious Seal.' For an ignorant country youth, creating a monster was all too easy.
"That wandering knight…… aah, what am I to do about this."
O'Connell was flustered.
"Well, I never trusted the intelligence network of such a weak nation from the very beginning, but……."
Jelrid muttered thus and rose from his seat.
"……In any case, the contract is void. I have business to attend to, so I shall take my leave."
He lifted the thick cloth flap of the command tent and went outside, and Karina followed behind him. As he stepped outside, Jelrid spoke.
"Feel free to go around telling your people that I fled in fear of Lii and lost a war that was already won. For weaklings like you, it would be hard to survive in this world without at least some bluster."
In any other situation, it would have been an insult worth drawing a sword over, but as Jelrid said, O'Connell was a 'weakling' who lacked the courage to get angry at him.
Dragon Lady
Author / Kim Cheolgon
Publisher / Park Seong-in
Editor in Chief / Editorial Department
Published by / Next Level Studio
Address / 4F, 113, Seongsu-i-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul
Main Phone / 070-8801-6987
ISBN 979-11-92729-25-1
This book is published as an ebook by Next Level Studio under contract with the copyright holder.
Unauthorized reproduction of this book's contents without the publisher's permission is prohibited by copyright law.