Chapter 142 - It's Okay to Cry

Silverwind was a dragon with silver hair and silver eyes.

He had the gentlest personality among the dragons, and with an affinity so great that he had once been friendly with humans far and wide, he was the most renowned among the Guardian Dragons.

If all things had balance, then the beings on the exact opposite side would be Silverwind's spawns.

As gentle as Silverwind was, his spawns valued tradition and discipline.

That was because every single person mattered when fighting the Frost Giants that came pouring in from beyond the northern wall.

That was why the rough barbarians of the north considered becoming a Silver Dragon spawn the greatest honor.

From that point of view, Luri, who had ignored tradition and undergone the ascension rite, was an exceptional case, and they could not look kindly on her.

No, they could have overlooked the fact that she had become a dragon spawn through the ascension rite by allowing some flexibility.

But the problem rose to the surface because Luri said she truly intended to become a warrior.

From then on, only harsh hazing remained for Luri.

"The worst of them, in particular, was Lord Goz."

Goz Silverwind was the second-in-command even then, and a loyal one who assisted Silverwind.

He was stricter about tradition and discipline than anyone, to the point that one might think he had a disposition completely opposite to Silverwind's.

Because Luri was not a carefully selected warrior, she had to be taught from the basics, and those basics came down to perseverance.

In the name of teaching that perseverance, Goz singled Luri out.

What he did was far from teaching.

It was one-sided beatings and abuse.

Goz ran Luri ragged again and again as if he meant to kill her.

Even those who had disapproved of Luri showed sympathy, so it was without question an atrocity.

As a young girl, she endured an absurdity that would have made even other warriors submit.

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

The thought that she would have to see his face when she opened her eyes made her tear up, and at times, she even prayed that tomorrow would not come.

But somehow, she did not give up.

She knew the pain that came with giving up.

The responsibility she had raised within herself after falling into the gutter became a warrior's bitter perseverance.

She would become a warrior for the father who had taken her in, for Silverwind.

What could not kill her would make her stronger.

That resolve became reality.

Luri, who had been harshly run ragged under Goz, became a warrior.

Because she had spent decades being driven in an environment harsher than anyone else's, she showed faster growth than the other dragon spawns, and no one could look down on her anymore.

Around the time fifty years had passed since she became a spawn, she was mentioned as a new member of the royal guard.

The position closest to Silverwind, whom she admired.

But Luri did not want to rise to that position.

"Do you know why?"

"I do not."

"To enter the royal guard, you have no choice but to drag down another member of the royal guard. But once one has become a royal guard, choosing to give up is more shameful than dying in bed."

In other words, it meant she could only rise to that position by fighting to the death.

Even if the opponent submitted, they had to meet death and have their disgrace washed away.

That was the tradition of Silverwind's spawns.

"It would have been an honorable challenge for everyone else, but not for me."

That was not a warrior's honor, but the act of killing family.

For Luri, who still had attachment to family, the idea of killing family was difficult to accept.

Luri did not say that she was giving up.

Because she knew no one would accept such a weak reason.

Instead, she crossed the greatest wall that held back the frost of the north.

She swung the ax technique she had learned after crossing the threshold of death at giants several times larger than herself.

She was certainly an excellent warrior.

Her fear of Goz stripped away her fear of everything other than Goz, and so Luri came to perform so fiercely that she was called the Nightmare of the Frost Giants.

Thanks to her achievements, Luri became practically synonymous with the mobile brigade Silver Wing, and her majesty and warlike disposition brought glory to Silverwind's name.

That was Luri's life before and after she gained the surname Silverwind.

At the end of that rambling story, she got to the point of what had happened.

"Today... I fell for a Demon's trick."

"What kind of trick was it?"

"I heard... the voice of that younger sibling I had forgotten long ago."

Her voice was sinking into some distant place.

"That faint younger sibling whose name and face I can no longer remember... came piercing clearly through my memories."

"Was it truly your younger sibling?"

"If you ask whether it was real, no. It had green blood."

"Then it must have been a demonic creature."

"Yes. I suppose so..."

Was it something like magic?

If it had been, Luri would have said she had been struck by magic.

To Luri, it had actually looked exactly like her younger sibling.

'Was it an attack that stimulated the opponent's trauma?'

Whatever it was, it disturbed the opponent's mind.

Ferda wondered what would have happened if he had been hit by that attack.

"But you broke free, did you not?"

"I did not break free... I was merely saved."

Luri bit her lower lip hard, then forced out that name with difficulty.

"When I was being attacked helplessly, Lord Goz came and saved me."

Goz Silverwind.

She had received help from the person she feared so much.

Ferda instinctively knew that this was because of Goz.

"If he had not come... I would certainly have died."

Luri trembled.

"Was it that death that frightened you?"

"No. Death... does not mean much to me."

Because Luri had entered deadly situations time and again, she had grown numb to death.

"Then were you afraid that this Goz might harm you?"

"I was afraid of Lord Goz... but that is merely a familiar feeling."

"Then what made you like this?"

What hurt even more than that was,

"Lord Goz... said I was useless."

The fact that the person she feared so much, her family, had spoken such harsh words.

"Those words... are still ringing in my ears."

The person she feared so much had spoken harsh words, and they had become a wound to Luri.

Normally, Ferda might not have understood that, but those words dug into his chest.

What she had experienced was something Ferda had also experienced recently.

'Erembalt Rosnova.'

Erembalt had driven Ferda into the jaws of death as the Grand Duchess's fiancé and abandoned him there.

Ferda knew very well that he had been abandoned.

But the bastard who had abandoned him came back again and declared their severance once more.

It was something he had already known, something he had not expected anything from.

But the pain was different from what he had expected.

The pain of being abandoned once more hurt even more than when he had first been abandoned.

Even Ferda had not been able to control himself, so would Luri be any different?

She would be in even more pain.

Because no matter how frightening she thought he was, she must have thought of Goz as one member of her family.

Because deep in her heart, she must surely have thought so.

In Ferda's eyes, she no longer looked like a strong attendant, but only like a single girl.

Though she had lived longer than he had and was strong, what he saw before him now was a sad child who had not been loved.

'She has a strong sense of responsibility.'

After becoming Valdrova's attendant, her relationship with Silverwind had gone wrong.

She had been abandoned then, and now she had been abandoned once more by Goz.

He wondered if there was anything he could do for her.

Work hard.

Try not to think about it.

Move forward.

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

If effort and willpower alone could solve everything in this world, Ferda would certainly have become a knight.

So he chose his words carefully.

If.

If I were to face myself from when I was about Luri's age, what would I say?

When he thought that, the answer to the question came to him.

Ferda said to Luri,

"Luri."

"... Yes."

"It is all right to cry."

"... Pardon?"

Luri looked at Ferda with eyes that seemed to ask what nonsense he was suddenly spouting.

"You may pour your feelings out to me without holding them back."

"I am not holding them back. I..."

"There is no need to lie."

Ferda spoke gently, as if speaking to his own past.

"I know how much courage it took for you to say those words."

"..."

"There is nothing more miserable than being unable to cry when you want to. Everything will not collapse just because you cry once, so cry now."

Bursting into tears meant revealing and pouring out the weakness one had been holding in.

When one became an adult, there were times when one could not cry even if one wanted to.

They said one realized that when one became an adult, but Ferda had learned it after losing his mother.

When he learned the reality that everything in the world was his enemy, he had no time to cry.

Ferda knew.

Others said that made one stronger, but that was certainly dying.

As with the principles of all things, once something died, it could not come back to life.

"Are you afraid I might go somewhere and tell someone?"

"..."

"If you wish, I will step outside."

Ferda tried to rise from his seat.

No sooner had he lifted his hips from the seat than something stopped his movement.

Luri's hand had caught Ferda's collar.

Luri's eyes turned toward Ferda.

Something seemed about to come out from Luri's trembling lips.

Instead, tears welled up in those eyes that had been cold and strong.

Luri buried herself in Ferda's shoulder.

From then on, Ferda saw nothing.

He heard nothing.

He did not feel the shoulder she had buried herself in growing damp either.

Her sobs gradually grew louder, and Luri finally poured out her sorrow.

After that, Ferda fell into difficulty.

He did not know what to do next.

He himself had urged her to pour it out, and yet he did not know how to comfort a girl crying sadly.

Ferda's hand kept wandering.

The hand that had formed a habit because of Mori kept heading toward Luri's head.

Isabella had said it was rude to praise an elder that way, and Luri had hated it too.

'If it is not praise but just comfort, would it be all right?'

Ferda carefully placed his hand on her head.

Then Luri lifted her face from his shoulder.

He had undoubtedly stepped on a land mine.

He thought she was about to pour out more words, but that was not it.

She moved her head from Ferda's shoulder to his chest, then buried her face there.

And so she cried again.

What meaning was there in this action?

What was certain was that when he hugged her in turn, it became a little easier to stroke her head.

Luri cried, and Ferda comforted her as he stroked her hair down.

The endless sound of sorrowful crying gradually died down as well.

Even the sound of sniffling disappeared, and silence came.

"Luri."

"..."

"Luri?"

There was no answer even when he called her.

When he tilted his ear toward the crown of her head, he heard the sound of soft breathing.

After crying her heart out, she had now fallen asleep.

"... This is troublesome."

He had said it was all right to cry, but he had not thought as far as her sleeping.

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

As soon as the encirclement collapsed and the supply lines were restored, lines of wagons moved busily and poured into every part of the far east.

They crossed through the gates of the village that was not yet complete and returned along with countless triumphant generals.

At the same time, festival supplies came in from Halim and the Pascal trading company.

Among the Halim supplies was also a letter written personally by Ahmed Hashim.

-Congratulations on your victory, brother!

It was short, but because of that, the sincerity in it could be felt all the more.

Using the support that had come from the two places as a foundation, Ferda held another festival.

The people whose bodies and minds had been worn out by tension laughed, talked, and sang as they celebrated their victory.

The bards staying in the village began to sing, and the stories of knights they had heard to death were nowhere to be found; instead, they began to tell stories of a dragon.

"Lonely Mountain rising tall in the Land of Demons. Red scales and golden eyes! They said an Evil Dragon that had stolen countless lives lived within!"

"The world surged with a lake of misunderstanding, and the truth lay buried beneath it! Today at last, that truth has been revealed!"

"When the filthy demonic hordes led us into trial, she climbed to the summit of Lonely Mountain!"

"Unfurling those red scales and wings full of majesty, she declared to the demonic creatures at the far eastern edge!"

"The one who protects this Hestia, the one who protects this Serdes Continent, is none other than I, Valdrova!"

In fact, that hymn was the most popular.

When they had gone out for the subjugation, had they not been the ones who saw Valdrova's form closer than anyone else?

Popularity naturally led to a great deal of money, and for bards who needed money, it became a trend.

Other bards joined in and made hymns of their own, and in just a few days, dozens had poured out.

Ferda ordered Isabella to provide travel expenses to those bards.

Bards were beings who wandered the continent, and in small villages, they were the source of news from the Serdes Continent.

If they sang Valdrova's songs elsewhere, it would be effective in erasing her ill fame.

The festival continued fiercely, as much as it had been suppressed, and even as the night deepened, it showed no sign of ending.

But Ferda did not enjoy himself there.

He knew.

The war was not over yet.

"You need to keep your wits about you from now on."

Olivia spoke as though she had witnessed a greater evil.

Ferda and Olivia were in the middle of holding a meeting to go over the results after the war had ended.

She said this was only one crisis they had passed, and that from now on, a new crisis would be created.

"The emperor moved."

"You mean Godfrey Arken?"

"Yes. The man who shared his blood with me."

She did not call him her father to the very end.

"Did that emperor move personally?"

"He did not move personally, but he must have provided that incompetent Crown Prince with some means."

The original plan had been to deal with all twelve colossal demonic creatures.

But four of them had been stopped by forces that came from outside.

One was the Thunder Dragon Storeus.

Two were dealt with by Silverwind's spawns.

"They say the remaining one was a human who intervened from the far eastern alliance's side... but his identity is unclear."

"A human?"

"Yes. They say that one person was strong enough to overturn the entire battle situation."

How strong would someone have to be to overturn the battle situation alone?

'It must be the armor knight.'

He had vanished suddenly before the Start of Spring Festival, and while trying to return, he had joined the army.

If that was the case, it made sense.

"If we exclude the one unclear creature, then that means four were taken from us. Will that be a problem?"

"Our goal was the far east's complete victory. But in that complete victory, four were blocked through intervention from the imperial capital. If it is not complete, it loses its value."

Ferda closed his mouth and thought.

He thought about who would take the greatest blow if that value was lost.

The answer came quickly.

Was she not right in front of him?

'Because she meant to use this as a foothold into politics.'

The Empire's political world was already the sort of place where the bastards who had been feeding at the trough kept feeding at the trough.

It was obvious that if one tried to do something with even the slightest half-baked justification, they would latch on and refuse to let go.

"They will move now. It would be best for you to prepare enough countermeasures for that."

Olivia advised him so.

He wondered if she was making too much of a fuss, but surprisingly, that was not the case.

The very next morning.

Ferda was able to confirm it with his own two eyes.

There were people stepping across the ground where the madness of the night before still lingered.

Imperial knights had come.