Episode 6
The two heading for the lord’s castle eventually discovered traces of a camp Seuteon had made just in front of the castle and decided to camp there. Jullitan took out a blanket and food from the pack saddle of the Nateu he had ridden, and Carnelian made a campfire with quite skillful hands.
“Come to think of it, Carnelian… you don’t eat meals or anything?”
Jullitan mumbled, pushing dried fish jerky into his mouth. Peseteureu flesh tastes good if salted, dried, and made into jerky. Though it probably wouldn’t suit the refined tastes of nobles at all.
“I like eating delicious things. Well, but unlike you all, I don’t die of starvation, so I don’t need to eat regularly. Besides, I haven’t had much of an appetite lately….”
Saying so while acting like an old woman, Carnelian snatched a piece of dried fish from Jullitan’s hand and put it in her mouth. It seemed she still had her sense of taste.
“Then what kind of power do you people move with? If you don’t eat meals, don’t you have to gain strength from something else?”
“You’re quite a curious fellow. Mm, how should I put it… I absorb all the energy scattered around me, you could say. It’s similar to, well, if plants were to do photosynthesis, something like that.”
She seemed to be roughly trying to wrap it up because explaining was bothersome, but those words stimulated the curiosity of Jullitan, a chef responsible for human mouths.
“B-but energy? Photosynthesis? What’s that?”
“…Let’s drop it.”
Carnelian’s expression became weary.
“But Carnelian?”
“What now….”
She spoke while looking her sword over, which she had unwrapped from its cloth. A bluish light reflected by the night’s moonlight hovered around the edges of her red pupils.
“What kind of master did you meet before me? Can you tell me about the masters you were with? Were they great knights?”
“….”
Carnelian pretended not to hear and continued to look only at the surface of her sword. Carnelian’s blurred expression reflected on the silvery sword surface was hard to see, but her gaze seemed to waver. Keeping her eyes on the sword, she opened her mouth.
“Do you happen to know… the word privacy?”
“What. Is that, like, magic or something?”
She grew even more weary.
“Phew, yes. It’s a magic spell that prevents other people from intruding into your emotions. Right now that magic is cast on my emotions, so stop asking and go to sleep.”
“What about you?”
“Mind your own business. I won’t die from lack of sleep.”
Whenever Jullitan dozed off and briefly woke, she was sitting beside him looking at her sword, never sleeping. He could never forget the look in her eyes that Jullitan had seen then for the rest of his life. Eyes that looked like they would burst into tears at any moment, but ultimately seemed like tears would never flow. Though he only found out later, after learning of her past, Jullitan came to think that she resembled the heart of a widow unable to forget a painful memory.
“It’s enormous! I’m amazed something like this is a castle.”
“What, this tiny castle. It really is the countryside.”
Those were Jullitan’s and Carnelian’s assessments looking at Lord Castello’s castle. The lord’s stone castle situated within not-very-high walls was about four stories in scale, and one could tell at a glance that it had not been built for defensive purposes. If not for the numerous cheap banners and flags hanging everywhere, one might have been able to call it modest, perhaps? Perhaps because Carnelian had quite metropolitan tastes, she didn’t seem to feel any charm from the dull-looking country castle.
“The lord is waiting.”
A middle-aged man who appeared to be a steward in a gray suit greeted them with a stiff attitude at the castle entrance. Well, it was fortunate he wasn’t arrogant. He cleared his throat and looked Carnelian up and down before speaking.
“No one may enter where the esteemed Count Castello resides with weapons, save those permitted. That sword, to me….”
The steward reached his hand toward the sword Carnelian was holding, but Carnelian simply stared blankly at him, leaving the steward with an extremely embarrassed expression.
“I have no intention of parting with my sword… Well, I’ll wait here, so go in alone and apologize. Master.”
“B-but you must all enter together… Please wait a moment.”
The flustered steward seemed to go somewhere for a moment, then soon returned.
“You are permitted to enter with your sword. Then, through that door.”
“What a hassle. It’s really hard to ‘formally’ apologize.”
Carnelian grumbled and took the lead, and Jullitan could only think she was a woman he couldn’t understand at all as he watched her back. Despite it being afternoon, the castle corridor was dark.
“So it is you. I have heard much from the young man named Seuteon. Even to me, that Seal is… truly beautiful.”
Such was the first impression of the lord. He was the spitting image of his son. Jullitan tried to kneel before Castello to apologize on behalf of his Seal, regardless of what the man’s personality was like. He knew nothing of noble etiquette, but surely they wouldn’t nitpick about that.
“Regarding the unfortunate incident, I apologize—”
“Damn it, I knew this would happen!”
The moment Jullitan stood before the lord and tried to bow, Carnelian shouted sharply. Together with a tearing sound that seemed like it would rip his ears, a massive blue wave flooded the interior of the hall and began pouring into Carnelian’s body.
“Kyaaaah!”
From the shock of the wave wrapping around Carnelian’s entire body, Jullitan was sent flying far away, and Carnelian collapsed as if pressed down by massive gravity. The wave continued constricting her entire body, and she seemed unable to put up any significant resistance.
“I am not a knight, so I cannot become that Seal’s tamer… but a Seal of that caliber is worth trading for my son’s life. There are many who want you.”
“Y-you… such a trap….”
Carnelian glared at the lord with a fading voice as she lay collapsed on the floor. However, due to the endless pain of the wave burrowing into her body, she soon had no choice but to hang her head.
“What are you doing! You said you would accept our apology!”
Jullitan shouted at the lord, staggering to his feet. Blood was flowing from a wound on his forehead where he had hit the floor.
“The young man named Seuteon. He was wise. If I neutralize that Seal with a magic trap and then kill you, that Seal won’t be able to rampage… You should thank that young man. In exchange for offering that Seal to me, I am sparing your village.”
The lord’s expression was ugly as he weighed his own son’s life with a satisfied look.
“H-he really… Brother Seuteon said that….”
Jullitan muttered with unfocused eyes. It was not so much anger at betrayal, but the appearance of having been stabbed in the back by a close friend.
“You… you damned lord bastard. How long did it take to prepare this trap? It must have been hastily prepared by a couple of second-rate mages in a day or two?”
The so-called magic trap the lord had prepared was planted throughout the entire room. A supernatural trap designed to activate automatically upon detecting a Seal. With difficulty, Carnelian showed a smirk and raised her head. The continuous magical wave coiled around Carnelian’s body like a massive serpent, tearing her clothes and inflicting sharp wounds on her white skin.
“A Seal with a rough mouth. You’ll soon be sold to the city, so prepare yourself mentally.”
“It was a good plan that made excellent use of my foolish master’s mentality… but you made one mistake.”
Resisting the oppressive magical power, Carnelian raised her trembling body bit by bit. Her strained breathing was audible even to Jullitan’s ears from far away.
“Thank you. Thanks to this thrilling magic, I’m wide awake now.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“As expected of a countryside backwater lord, you don’t seem to know much about me. Did you think you could trap me with such clumsy magic!”
Was it an illusion? Jullitan thought her eyes flashed for a moment, and when she swung the sword she had been gripping tightly, the chains of the wave began to break their links. Carnelian rose from her spot, caught her rough breath, glared at the lord, and raised her sword. Carnelian’s clothes had already lost half their shape, and between them her white skin was visible.
“H-how did you break that seal….”
“Making my clothes like this! I won’t forgive you!”
*Those are clothes she borrowed from me….*
Jullitan thought that if nothing else, his Seal was a very shameless woman. She continued speaking, showing the lord a meaningful yet cruel smile.
“Shall I show you this so-called value of mine? It’s wasted on the likes of you, but let me show you a teeny bit of my ability.”
Soon Carnelian seemed to chant something in a low voice, but Jullitan couldn’t remember what came after. He felt a massive energy exploding around Carnelian, his breath was completely cut off, and soon he lost consciousness to some unknown force.
“Wh-what happened?”
Jullitan opened his eyes, holding his aching, throbbing head. A blue sky entered his eyes. Inside the castle… no.
*But it’s quite cold… huh?*
He panicked upon seeing that he was only in his underwear. Wondering what on earth had happened and looking around, he spotted Carnelian sitting beside him, hugging her sword and looking up at the sky. Jullitan narrowed his eyes and spoke to her.
“Why… are you wearing my clothes?”
“Huh? You’re awake? Master, I don’t know about naive, but you’re really weak. How do you faint from something like that? Ahah, I can clearly see you’ll suffer greatly from now on.”
She spoke with a bright, candid smile, but Jullitan’s mood was merely cold and foul.
“Don’t change the subject! I’m asking why on earth you’re wearing my clothes!”
To that, Carnelian answered with an expression that said, *Why are you asking something so obvious?*
“Well, my clothes were torn just now, so I couldn’t wear them.”
“So you stripped my clothes?”
“Then you expect a woman to wear such completely torn clothes? You really are a hopeless man!”
“Forget it. I’ll just weave some leaves to wear on the way… Damn it.”
The pot calling the kettle black. Wasn’t this situation exactly why that phrase was coined?
“But what happened to the castle?”
“Ah, that. Over there.”
Carnelian pointed behind her nonchalantly.
“….”
In Jullitan’s eyes, nothing was visible but ruins with dust rising. Could it be that this was where the castle had been until just moments ago? It was a situation closer to annihilation than destruction.
“Ahahaha. You don’t have to look so moved. That was just a very small portion of my ability; it wasn’t even a practice opponent.”
Carnelian laughed, patting Jullitan’s shoulder, but Jullitan’s expression was hardly bright. If he left catching Peseteureu to such a woman, she might immediately jump into the water and wipe out the Peseteureu eggs.
“Just what kind of woman are you….”
“Well. My ability has suited destruction more than creation from the start. I overdid it a bit because I was angry, but….”
Jullitan was grateful that his village hadn’t been reduced to a wasteland when he first awakened her.
“Anyway… now you know my words were true, right?”
“What?”
“Humans are cruel and selfish animals to begin with. Words like forgiveness and mercy never suited them from the start. They justify devouring each other as a necessary evil, yet when someone else points a blade at them, they change their attitude and call them filthy scum. Strutting around claiming to be the best in the world, yet unable to be honest with themselves—such animals of arrogance are exactly what humans are.”
Carnelian had a habit of lowering her voice when speaking her true feelings.
“Do you… think that of me too?”
“From now on, I’m going to find that out.”
Carnelian showed a slight smile and rose from her spot. If they returned to the village, what would Seuteon say to him? Jullitan was curious and afraid of that.
Dragon Lady
Author / Gim Cheolgon
Publisher / Bak Seongin
Managing Editor / Editorial Department
Published by / Next Level Studio
Address / 4F, 113 Seongsu-i-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul Special City
Main Telephone / 070-8801-6987
ISBN 979-11-92729-25-1
This book was published as an e-book by Next Level Studio pursuant to a contract with the copyright holder. Unauthorized reproduction of this book's contents without the publisher's permission is prohibited by copyright law.