Chapter 51 - Damn It

The Grand Council hall.

The representatives of the intelligent beings spread across the entire Serdes Continent were all gathered.

Despite the spacious seating and the large number of people, there were no assigned seats in the Grand Council hall.

However, they were showing off the scale of their power by sitting together with their own factions or nearby allies.

'Things were truly tense at this time.'

To Ferda's eyes, it felt as though he were looking at a map of political power.

The largest nation on the continent was the Arken Empire.

To counter it, the kingdoms were striving for a similar scale in the form of alliances.

It meant that the continent's balance was still being maintained.

Ferda, who belonged to the Arken Empire, took a seat where the Arken Empire's forces were located.

The Grand Council hall lacked the extravagance felt in the banquet hall.

With a design that was restrained as much as possible so as not to incite excitement through splendor, it was similar to other assembly halls.

The seats, wrapped around in a hemispherical shape, were designed to draw attention toward the center.

And in that center seat sat the master of this Grand Council hall.

'White Dragon, Blancaros.'

Pure white hair, white eyes, and the face of a handsome young man untouched by the flow of time.

That white light was so foreign that it made one mistakenly believe he was radiating a brilliant glow.

That was precisely the immortal beauty possessed by dragons.

'As expected of a dragon.'

As Ferda was looking at him, his previously still eyes shifted.

Ferda wondered if it was an illusion, but that thought did not last long.

Blancaros was staring at Ferda.

His white pupils were cold and pure.

The moment that gaze touched him, Ferda felt the Circles inside his body squirm.

An instinctive warning that could be felt from an absolute powerhouse.

Peculiarly, there was no unpleasantness in that warning.

Just like when he had set foot into his territory.

Behind his back stood three men and women, similarly with white hair.

They were the three spawns Blancaros had created through the Ascension Ceremony.

Tongue, Scale, and Hand.

Blancaros moved his hand.

As he twitched his finger, a woman standing with disciplined posture cleared her throat and opened her mouth.

She was precisely Blancaros's Tongue.

She was the proxy who represented the White Dragon's will and would conduct the proceedings of this council.

Her voice rang out loudly in the hall.

"We sincerely thank those who have come for the peace of the continent."

She read down the script she was holding.

Along with some empty formalities, she began to recite the agendas brought to the meeting in earnest.

"We will now begin the mediation of the dispute between King Hudret and Duke Yurei."

The first to start was a simple dispute.

It was called a dispute, but its scale was that of a war.

At that, a man scowled and rose from his seat.

"I sincerely thank the proxy of the great Master of Order for arranging this gathering. Before we begin, I demand a correction to set things right. This entire situation is a war and a tragedy caused by King Hudret's invasion."

Then, another man stood up.

It was the singled-out King Hudret.

"The ones who died first were the people of my territory. What was I supposed to do when the villagers took action to get revenge for that?"

"But you are the one who brought in the army, King Hudret!"

"Please be quiet. This is a place for mediation. The final compensation will be determined based on the submitted evidence."

Blancaros's Tongue cut off their argument, preventing what could have become a lengthy verbal fight.

"Each side, please submit the evidence you have prepared."

The Hudret and Yurei sides documented and submitted the evidence they had gathered.

The purpose of the mediation was to receive compensation for the damages suffered from the war.

The submitted documents flew up one by one and unfolded in front of Blancaros.

The time it took him to read everything the ministers of each nation and territory had spent two months writing was a mere minute.

Blancaros twitched his finger while looking at a boy.

The boy was holding a scale.

He was precisely Blancaros's Scale.

The scale the boy was holding tilted to one side.

Watching that, Blancaros's Hand began to document it, and his Tongue delivered the verdict.

"Verdict! Duke Yurei shall compensate King Hudret with 60,000 gold."

It was a moment where joy and sorrow intersected.

Having received the losing verdict, Duke Yurei flew into a raging frenzy.

"That makes no sense! Those bastards are the ones who invaded, so why must I pay compensation!?"

"It was judged that taking no prisoners and obstructing the duties of priests treating the wounded violated the laws of war. As a result of weighing all those factors, it was determined that Duke Yurei holds the greater fault."

Duke Yurei rebutted.

"That is an act done by other nations as well! King Hudret's knights undoubtedly did the same! But to say that we cannot—."

"As stated earlier, you simply needed to present the evidence."

Blancaros's Tongue explained it once more in a businesslike tone.

"This is an absolute neutral zone and a place that strictly adheres to law and order. If you requested mediation here, it operates according to the Serdes Continent's laws and order. Evidence takes precedence over customary practices. If they committed the same acts, you just had to present the same evidence."

In other words, even if the opponent did it first and they merely retaliated, without evidence, it became an act committed solely by Yurei.

Depending on how conclusive the gathered evidence was, it was enough to flip the perpetrator and the victim.

Yurei wore a face full of spite.

Quietly looking down at that sight, Blancaros's Tongue pointed to the results confirmation document placed before him and spoke.

"Duke Yurei, the dispute mediation has concluded, so I ask for your confirmation signature."

Looking down at the document, Duke Yurei was consumed by rage and sorrow.

It couldn't be helped.

The moment he signed the document, he would be crossing a river of no return.

Whether it was unfair or not, from now on he would become the perpetrator.

'Its effect is absolute.'

Once determined, it could not be reversed.

'Even so, he cannot disobey.'

Those sitting here were all witnesses and judges, while simultaneously being capable of becoming predators.

Disobeying the verdict given at the Grand Council was giving them an excuse to tear him apart.

A situation where yesterday's enemy remained an enemy, but yesterday's ally could instantly become today's enemy.

"I will... obey."

Duke Yurei humbly accepted it.

His handwriting shook as if there was an earthquake.

'Is this the moment the perpetrator and the victim swap?'

With no information, that was the most Ferda could surmise.

"If he felt wronged, he should have seen it to the end himself."

Someone muttered quietly.

Ferda slightly agreed with those words.

If he wanted to definitely receive compensation, he shouldn't have done something like dispute mediation, but rather seen it through to an annihilation war where one side was destroyed.

It was only natural that dealing a sloppy finishing blow would instead return as retaliation.

Blancaros's Tongue moved on to the next dispute agenda.

There were a few more disputes after that, but they were very trivial matters.

Conflicts between dwarves and elves.

Internal strife among the dwarves regarding dynasties and bloodlines, and so on...

They fought while endlessly putting on hold such disputes where only arguments went back and forth, matters that would never be resolved and for which there was no will to resolve.

After two hours like that, the endless fighting concluded.

"Since there are no more mediation cases, we will move on to the agendas. As proposed by Escolaia's Chancellor..."

The Tongue swallowed her breath and paused for a beat before speaking.

"The agenda is the proliferation of monsters and the possibility of the Demons' return."

Since Escolaia was a massive city of scholars, their head was not a mayor, but a Chancellor.

The bald Chancellor stood upon the podium.

He looked as though even his hair roots had disappeared from burning with a long passion for study.

"It has been 138 years since the death of Godwin, the master of deep darkness who plunged the continent into chaos. However, if you look at this graph here..."

The Chancellor used magic to project his drawing and floated it in midair.

He pointed at the graph with his finger and spoke.

"Contrary to that death, the graph drawn up to the present shows that monsters are rapidly increasing."

An upward graph.

However, the extent of the increase itself was not large.

Looking at the graph, people began throwing in a word each.

"It's not even going up by that much."

"The problem isn't that the increase amount is high, but that it's going up at all, is it not?"

"Aren't those strictly expected figures anyway? In reality, it could drop further; you seem far too overly sensitive."

Opinions were close to fifty-fifty.

It was an overreaction over a slight increase.

It was a grave enough matter to warrant that overreaction.

They argued back and forth like that.

Listening closely, rather than it being for the peace of the continent, it was nothing more than them trying to find an excuse.

'An excuse to arm themselves.'

The side claiming they needed to raise awareness was doing so to arm themselves.

The side calling it an overreaction was doing so to prevent their arming and useless expenditures.

They didn't care whether the continent crumbled or not.

Only the things they possessed were important.

It was then.

"Why don't you all watch your mouths!"

Someone slammed their desk and stood up with an entirely different level of intensity.

However, it was a youthful voice far from intense.

Turning to look, Erdes Roton was standing there.

"Grand Duchess Valdrova's fiancé is actually right here! Do you think you can handle the consequences of running your mouths like that?"

Everyone whipped their heads around to find Ferda, and those who spotted him fixed their gazes upon him.

Ferda muttered inwardly.

That damn bitch.

"Valdrova's Regent, you say?"

"Are you telling me that quiet Evil Dragon sent her Regent here?"

The people murmured, each reciting rumors about Ferda Valdrova one by one.

The Chancellor, whose face already looked as if he were walking barefoot through a thornbush, now seemed as flustered as if a spark had landed on his foot.

Ferda glanced at Erdes, who had brought things to this state.

She wore a happy expression.

Like an arsonist watching a fire from across the river.

He had come because there was a time for him to step up, but for now, he had wanted to observe the atmosphere a bit more.

Since the attention was on him anyway, Ferda decided to say his piece.

"It is true that monsters are endlessly swarming into the far east. However, it doesn't seem to align with the topic being discussed here, so I will not make any further statements."

"I thank the Regent for speaking as such. I am also currently speaking regarding the frequency of occurrences across the continent, excluding the far east."

The Chancellor made a face like someone who had grasped a saving hand.

It was apparent that his speaking authority was very weak.

"And so, the current speculation is... that someone is intentionally summoning and creating monsters, in other words, there is speculation that Demonic Race Followers are increasing."

"Demonic Race Followers..."

"Are they not madmen who cannot be compared to Demon Followers?"

Although it was a society where both Demonic Race Followers and Demon Followers were despised, the two were distinctly different.

While Demons wanted to rule this present world, the Demonic Race wanted this present world to be destroyed.

Demon Followers had something to gain, but Demonic Race Followers were ones who had nothing to gain.

It meant they were pure lumps of evil themselves.

"What is it that they would even gain?"

"If it were the wish of the Demonic Race, wouldn't it be the return of the Black Dragon Godwin?"

The return of the Black Dragon Godwin!

It was an entirely different level of a problem compared to a simple increase in monsters.

Even those who had criticized it as an overreaction saved their words.

Everyone's attention had already shifted to the dragon spawns occupying the front seats.

"A return, is it..."

Chairman Blancaros opened his mouth for the first time.

The moment the Master of Order opened his mouth, the atmosphere was seized in his grasp.

"What do you think?"

Blancaros asked toward the dragon spawns.

The first to bite at the question was Silverwind's spawn.

Those with silver hair each bore a scar somewhere on their bodies, regardless of age or gender.

It was the honorable medal of Silverwind, who guarded the north.

"Contrary to the increasing trend of monsters, we are still steadily wiping out the remnants. I swear, there is no one whose hatred toward the Black Dragon Godwin matches ours."

"I always think highly of your loyalty toward Silverwind. What about Iorga?"

Iorga's representative, a young and sophisticated woman, was a lady of elegance.

Her face overflowed with the vitality of a woman in her early twenties, but it harbored an elegance forged by time.

"We have not detected any unusual fluctuations in magic power across the Serdes Continent. We are also continuously receiving reports through adventurers regarding spaces that could be shielded. If it were a major incident capable of overturning the continent, we would have been the first to notice."

Naturally, a priest of Odograsado took over.

"Our Golden Scale Order is also steadily monitoring the movements of the Demonic Race, and we see nothing that should be strictly considered a problem."

All three of the dragons' representatives attending the Grand Council replied that there was no need to make an issue out of it.

They were all representatives of the Guardian Dragons, who prioritized the safety of the continent above all else.

They were far removed from the politics of mere humans, and the weight of their words was different.

After hearing their words, Blancaros closed his mouth again.

Once again, Blancaros's Tongue answered in his stead.

"We shall conclude that this agenda does not need to be immediately considered a problem, but that there is a need to remain vigilant according to the continuous upward trend. Are there any objections, Chancellor of Escolaia?"

"None."

The Chancellor, who was sweating profusely, shook his head and stepped down from the podium.

It was an ambiguous matter to conclude as merely an overreaction, so he was satisfied just by reporting it.

"The next proposer is Ferda Valdrova..."

Blancaros's Tongue stopped speaking.

It was different from the pause she made when reading what the Chancellor had proposed.

A hesitation over whether it was okay to publicly announce this.

That hesitation caused her to shift her gaze toward Blancaros.

Blancaros was conscious of the Tongue's gaze, and Blancaros answered with a look.

Blancaros's Tongue received the order.

"The agenda is... to recognize the Red Dragon Valdrova's status as a Guardian Dragon."

Sound vanished from the Grand Council.

Those inside were figures of the duke class.

They were those who ruled over territories the size of a nation and possessed military might.

It was an issue so sensitive that even such individuals held their breath.

Since he had already drawn their attention once, there was no need to look around.

It was a matter so sensitive that ordinary humans would not dare propose it, nor would they even participate in it.

It was an act of suicide.

It was something one could never do unless they were crazy with a death wish.

However, Ferda, who had made that proposal, stood up from his seat for all to see.

Watching him walk was akin to watching an acrobatic stunt.

It was even identical in that the viewers felt dizzy, while the one actually walking felt nothing at all.

Having stepped onto the podium, Ferda looked up at the council seats.

What he could do was obvious.

"I am Regent Ferda Valdrova, who has impudently made a proposal despite this being my first time attending the council."

Glancing over them one by one before opening his mouth.

"As you can well see from this proposal, I have come here prepared to make enemies of someone."

And simply staying true to his convictions as much as the proposal he threw out demanded.