Chapter 109 - What Could Not Be Discarded

Ferda could not say a word, his face blank.

'Erembalt Rosnova.'

The head of the Rosnova family.

Ferda's father.

And the source that had driven him to become a mage through the emotion of hatred.

"What will you do?"

Luri asked.

It was a simple matter.

He just needed to send him away.

Ferda had been banished from the Rosnova family, and since he no longer used that surname, they were strangers.

No matter what he said, there was no need to listen.

After all, hearing him out would only end up rehashing negative emotions that shouldn't even be stirred up.

Normally, his answer would have been decided just like that.

"Send him in. I will get ready."

"Understood."

Ferda decided to face him.

Even if he thought it might be a mistake, he had to confirm it.

Whether this hatred was still alive.

After taking about twenty minutes to prepare, Ferda walked down the hallway toward the drawing room.

Once he passed through this door, the very person who had kicked him out of his home would be waiting.

Ferda's feet did not want to move.

"Luri."

Instead, he spoke to her as she stood behind him.

"Yes."

"I will go in there alone."

"Understood."

"And make sure that no one, including you, knows what happens inside."

"... What are you planning to do?"

Thinking it was too excessive of a request, she asked Ferda.

"I'm asking you as a favor."

A request.

That word carried more weight than the word 'command'.

Which was why Luri grew even more anxious.

"Understood."

Luri quietly cast a barrier to isolate the room.

Ferda felt the space become completely separated and stepped inside.

There he is.

That bastard who treated me dreadfully and cast me out.

That bastard who returned the pain I suffered with an even more dreadful wound.

That bastard lit up with joy the moment he saw Ferda.

"Oh, my son! My son is here!"

No, he was merely pretending to be joyful.

His behavior was so awkward that even a child could have noticed it.

Perhaps because of that, his face felt even more servile.

He thought it was a relief to feel that way.

Thanks to that disappointment, contrary to his expectation that hatred would boil over, he was able to remain surprisingly calm.

"Welcome, Lord of House Rosnova."

Ferda drew a line by observing formalities.

Erembalt looked troubled.

Whatever expectations he had harbored, it was clear that the attitude Ferda was showing now was not what he had hoped for.

Ferda sat on the opposite side and looked into his face.

Erembalt avoided Ferda's gaze and pushed something forward.

"It is honey from the bees raised in the Rosnova family's territory. Um, as you know, Regent..."

"Yes, the honey of the Rosnova family is truly delicious."

"Yes, yes."

"But I don't really like it anymore."

"Ah, of course. Since you will soon be nineteen, Regent—"

"No. There was a time I almost died eating it."

Ferda's gaze stared at him coldly.

"Your second son, Huren Rosnova, poured it down my mouth and completely blocked my airway."

His complexion turned pale.

Ferda calmly continued speaking.

"If I hadn't stuck my fingers down my throat to scoop it out, I would have died right then. Ever since, just looking at a honey jar has made me tremble."

"I, I... that is..."

He seemed to be trying to make the excuse that he hadn't known.

"There were five servants alone who saw what happened that day. Yet it seems not a single one reported it to you, Lord."

"I apologize. Even if I had ten mouths, I would have nothing to say. If you wish for him to be punished, I will do it myself. No, if that doesn't satisfy your anger, I will drag him here and have him punished..."

"No. Forget it. Just get to the point."

Ferda threw his body back against the backrest.

He didn't want to engage in trivial fraternizing anymore.

"Well... recently, Big Sister barged into the Rosnova family."

Big Sister.

An alias for Erdes Roton, which was both an honorific and a derogatory term.

"She must have gone to ask questions about me."

"Yes. She asked about you, Regent."

"And you must have confessed everything."

"No. Not everything..."

"Do not even think about lying, Lord of House Rosnova."

Ferda warned him in a low voice.

"Erdes already knows that I use dark magic. Those who use dark magic face the extermination of their family at the very least. Doesn't the fact that you are alive mean that you simultaneously denied my existence and confessed everything?"

Erembalt was startled.

His dry lips merely opened and closed repeatedly.

"Am I wrong?"

Ferda pressed him for an answer.

Erembalt bowed his head, breaking out in a cold sweat.

"You are... correct."

Right, he had known.

The fact that he hadn't considered Ferda his child from the moment he kicked him out.

'It's something I already knew.'

The past was trying to pop up on its own.

A surge of emotion welled up inside him.

A headache washed over him, crushing his head.

"So did you come all this way to make that confession?"

Ferda still could not understand the purpose of his visit.

"I just came to tell you something that I didn't get around to mentioning before."

"Speak."

"Regent... do you remember Anna Rosnova?"

What?

That single phrase was enough to provoke Ferda.

Erembalt, observing Ferda's complexion, corrected his words.

"No, what I want to ask is... I mean, do you truly remember your mother, Anna Rosnova?"

Even the words chosen as an excuse failed to quell Ferda's displeasure.

"Isn't that obvious? She is my mother. And she was also your wife, Lord."

"I suppose so. That's how it should be, but..."

Erembalt continued speaking with difficulty.

"Those memories are... too unfamiliar to me."

It dug in.

Erembalt's words felt like they were digging into Ferda's heart.

It felt like listening to a dreadful joke.

He was angry, yet a laugh burst out.

He felt as if he were losing his mind.

Ferda forced himself to answer rationally.

"My mother, Anna Rosnova, had blonde hair and blue eyes. You praised her to me, saying she was a woman too beautiful for you to deserve."

Every moment flashed through Ferda's mind like a kaleidoscope.

He vividly remembered the sight of them eating together, laughing, holding hands, and whispering words of love.

Ferda clearly remembered getting goosebumps at the sight of them, so it made no sense for the person involved not to remember.

"There is only one thing I remember clearly in my right mind. The sight of a vagrant walking in carrying a child."

Erembalt said.

No, "spitting out" was a more fitting term.

Because to Ferda, it was no different from being spat at.

"Come to think of it... I had no reason to take that woman in. Even though I lost my wife, I had two sons, and I wasn't lonely. I only realized that again after she died. So..."

"So what are you trying to say?"

He looked at Ferda with a face soaked in fear and said,

"I wanted to tell you that we never shared a drop of blood in the first place. So please..."

He bowed his head low.

"I ask that you completely sever ties with the Rosnova family from now on."

Ferda could not speak.

His mind was desperately searching for words, but he couldn't grasp a single one.

His mind was in chaos.

Why do I have to listen to this kind of talk?

Why would he come before someone who thought he could live on by forgetting everything and reopen old wounds?

When he had finally managed to lay everything down.

Why drag it back out and bring it to me?

Why are you, who I hated more than anything, once again making me...

Ferda felt his consciousness fading.

His emotions were threatening to consume him.

He quietly closed his eyes.

He tried to calm his mind.

However, what he felt was the movement of his circuits.

And sweet whispers.

Ferda recognized that voice.

It was the voice he had heard in his ears when Luri was in danger.

Kill him.

You have to kill him.

If you turned him into an empty shell back then, let's strangle him to death now.

You have to return as much pain as he caused you.

Why are you hesitating?

Killing someone is only hard the first time,

The second time is easy, isn't it?

At those words, Ferda snapped out of it.

The circuits in his chest were spinning.

It was spinning so madly that it felt like it would reach the 6th Circle at any moment.

But that was not the end of it.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw that an astonishing thing had happened.

Reaching out behind the confused Erembalt Rosnova was a pair of black arms.

Could Erembalt use shadow art too?

There was no way.

That shadow was a pair of limbs created by Ferda's will.

They closed in right before Erembalt's nose, as if ready to grab his throat at any moment.

Ferda quickly withdrew the hands.

Suppressing these dizzying emotions, he spoke in a rational voice.

"Return home, Lord of House Rosnova."

Even so, an ominous aura emanated heavily from him.

Erembalt quickly stood up from his seat.

Right before he stepped out the door, he paused for a moment and looked back.

"Thank you for your mercy, Regent."

Saying that, he left.

Was he squeezing out his last remaining paternal affection, or was he acting servile to lessen any future retaliation?

Ferda had no way of knowing.

His mind was a mess.

"Lord Ferda."

As he exited, Luri came inside.

"What kind of conversation took place for him to leave with an expression like that..."

Luri could not continue her words.

Ferda was staring blankly into the air with his head bowed.

It was a face Luri had never seen before.

"Luri."

What came out of his lips, which he struggled to part, was a heavy voice.

"Could I ask you for one favor?"

"Please speak."

Ferda spoke with a trembling voice.

"I want to go see... my mother."

"Understood. Just tell me the location and I will take you there immediately."

"We just need to go to the Rosnova family estate."

"Yes."

After stepping out onto the terrace, Luri hugged Ferda tightly.

It felt like an embrace rather than carrying luggage.

She flew like a comet and arrived in front of the main gate of the Rosnova family's mansion in an instant.

"Where is the grave?"

Ferda did not answer.

Instead, he turned his steps and began to walk somewhere.

It was not in the direction of the Rosnova family estate.

Luri, who had naturally assumed the grave would be somewhere on the mansion's grounds, quietly followed behind him.

Ferda just kept walking without saying a word.

Luri knew how terribly weak his stamina was.

Before long, his heavy breathing and heartbeat pierced her ears.

"Lord Ferda."

"..."

"You're out of breath. How about taking a short rest?"

Ferda did not answer.

He only continued putting one foot in front of the other, like a person possessed by something.

Luri could have stood in front of him and stopped him.

But she did not have the confidence to do so.

What heavy burden was pressing down on those shoulders.

And she was not confident she could face the expression he was currently wearing.

She followed behind Ferda without a word.

Dripping with sweat and panting dry breaths, his feet finally came to a halt.

It was a plain.

A barren plain with a single stump.

It did not feel like he had stopped simply because he was exhausted.

"Is it here?"

Ferda nodded his head.

"Where is the grave?"

Just in case, Luri looked around over and over.

However, no matter how much she searched, there were no signs that anyone had been buried there.

"There is no grave."

Ferda reached his hand out into the empty air.

"I sent my mother off... from this place."

"Are you saying... she was cremated?"

For the people of deeply historic knight families, it was a rule to bury the dead.

No matter if she was a concubine, once she became a part of a knightly family, she had to be buried in the family cemetery.

"When my mother died, they quickly burned her body. They tried to dispose of the remains by having the servants throw them away. As if they were throwing away trash."

"..."

"So I cleaned it all up. I carefully wrapped up the ashes one by one and put them into an urn."

Ferda looked down at his two hands.

His hands were empty, but the sensation of touching the ashes was still vivid on them.

"That day, I wanted to scatter her ashes in a place my father didn't know about. Even if they scattered in the wind, I wanted to find a place where I could remember her."

"..."

"So I walked until I felt like my soul would leave my body, until I finally reached a place. This was it."

Ferda raised his head and looked up at the sky.

Traces of life were coldly scattered across the barren sky and land.

Ferda's gaze shifted down to the stump.

"There used to be a single tree here. A tree standing lonely in the plain. It looked just like me, left all alone, so I secretly scattered them under this tree."

"But why is there only a stump..."

"There was a servant who had tailed me. And they cut down that tree."

"... They did something so cruel to a son who had just lost his mother?"

Luri was furious.

Because she knew how precious family was, this matter was not something she took lightly.

She tightly clenched her fists.

She thought that when she sent that bastard packing, she should have at least threatened him thoroughly.

"I thought it was my fault."

Ferda's voice trembled.

"That if I hadn't been weak, if I had shown the qualities of an excellent knight in the family, I could have protected my desire to honor my mother..."

His own weakness.

A frail body that wouldn't even show a trace of improvement no matter how much effort he put in.

Right up until the day he died, Ferda's body was never strong.

"That was how I was kicked out of my home."

Up to that point, it was a story Luri already knew.

What happened after that was something only Ferda knew.

Ferda rambled on.

"I trained as a mage, and in a short time, I surpassed even the talented mages all at once. I actually reached the 3rd Circle."

At that time, Ferda was not overwhelmed by the emotion of hatred.

Inside his heart, there was a young boy who wanted to be acknowledged, and an angel.

The young boy thought.

Perhaps Erembalt would accept him the way he was now?

In reality, Erembalt was a father overflowing with paternal affection.

He was a good father who was faithful to his wife and did not spare advice to his sons, and at one point, he had even been Ferda's idol.

It was just that he was only like that to everyone except Ferda.

The angel in his heart said.

That their familial bonds still remained.

The boy believed that angel.

He wanted to realize that there wasn't only malice in the world.

The young boy Ferda hoped that his foolish father would ask for forgiveness.

["Where do you think you're stepping foot!"]

When he entered the mansion, what returned was a roar, as if greeting a sworn mortal enemy.

["You are no longer my son! Do you think learning some trivial magic trick gives you the right to show your face again!? Piss off right now!"]

Those words were hotter than fire and colder than ice.

The eldest son, Ellen, and Huren personally beat up Ferda, who was standing his ground, and drove him away.

It rained that day.

His mouth was full of blood and his body was soaked.

Half-crippled, it wouldn't have been strange if Ferda had died at any moment.

If he hadn't crawled out of sheer spite and laid his body down in the shade, he certainly would have become a corpse.

That day, the young boy realized.

He realized that hope was merely an illusion that forced one to continue a miserable life.

The young boy killed the angel.

The only thing that filled his heart was the malicious voice of a demon.

Seeking mercy only left greater pain, and at the end of hatred, he harbored another hatred.

Only when he felt emptiness at the end of it all did he finally regret everything.

"I thought that... was the end."

Because he had deeply regretted it at the end and had decided to live for only one clearer purpose.

That demon must have died without a doubt.

So he believed he would reclaim the innocence of that day in his heart.

"But it hasn't changed."

"What hasn't?"

"The hatred."

The tiny monster his father had created.

"That hatred, which turned me into a monster, which turned me into such an empty shell..."

Ferda clutched his chest.

"It still remains inside this chest."

Looking down at him, Luri could not say a word.

The one who broke the silence was Ferda again.

"Luri."

"... Yes."

"When I met my father, I tried to kill him."

"A father like that deserves to die."

"It wasn't my will."

That was what Ferda feared the most.

The fear that, just as he had unconsciously tried to kill his own father, he might unknowingly be choosing the option to kill Valdrova.

The fact that such a possibility still remained was far too heavy a burden for Ferda.

But how could he say that?

He didn't want to burden Luri any further.

"Do not say such pathetic things anymore."

Luri scolded him with a grumbling voice.

"You are the Regent of the Valdrova Grand Duchy's territory, the ruler of Hestia village, and the fiancé of the Great Fire. Didn't you decide to wear the crown with the resolve that your neck might break?"

"..."

"You must not make such weak statements either. Straighten your back and put strength in your shoulders. And wear an expression that suits you. For you, Lord Ferda, such worries are a luxury. You shouldn't be killing time in a place like this. Hurry back and get to work."

Luri took a step closer.

"If you, Lord Ferda, were to lose your judgment and become a monster..."

Her two small hands reached out.

"With these hands."

The two hands wrapped around his neck.

The soft skin spread a warm sensation.

Following the gesture of her hands, Ferda's head lifted.

What Luri had put on was the clumsy mask of an adult.

"I will execute you."

Eclipsing such bravado, the mask gradually cracked.

"So..."

A face awash in sorrow.

"Please... leave that foolish face behind forever, isolated to only this moment."

His emotions were threatening to encroach upon even Luri.

If Luri was like this, what about Valdrova?

She would be in even more agony.

Ferda felt his mind clearing once again.

"I've received your help again."

Ferda smiled faintly.

"Thank you."

Meanwhile, there was someone watching Ferda and Luri from afar.

It was Olivia Arken.