Chapter 15

That dawn.

Dale stepped out alone into the central courtyard of the duke’s castle and spun his magic through his heart.

“Rise, Wall of Ice.”

Testing the waters, I set up an ice wall, keeping a safe distance while aiming my finger.

“Ice Bullet, ’12-gauge 00 buckshot’.”

Simultaneously with the incantation, the ice bullet generated from Dale’s fingertips──.

Thwack!

The large ice chunk acting as the shot shell shattered into fragments, scattering eight ice pellets in the form of shotgun pellets.

“Ice Bullet, ‘Barrett M82’, ‘.416 Barrett (10.6×83mm)’.”

Bang!

Next came large-caliber anti-materiel sniper rounds.

Needless to say, there’s more than one type of bullet. Countless forms exist, tailored for purposes like suppression, lethal/non-lethal effects, and varying situations.

From .22 Long Rifle to 12.7×99mm NATO (.50 BMG).

For birds, for people or beasts, for light armor and other targets, for anti-tank, even for dedicated monster-hunting.

Therefore, the rifle and the bullet fired must differ according to the purpose.

You don’t need to be an engineer or scientist. It’s enough to simply imagine the landscape of that world.

After that, adding various forms of formulas, Dale tested his abilities by targeting the Ice Wall.

A 2nd Circle Mage. Yet, with merely one additional circle, the ‘world of Dale’ he could project into this realm expanded exponentially.

As a painter, Dale has already reached a state of near perfection. Therefore, all that remains is to expand the range of painting tools he can wield.

To this nation, the heart of the empire. To paint over it with the canvas of the hellish battlefield he experienced, without the slightest embellishment or omission.

It was at that very moment.

“Dale?”

From afar, he heard a voice calling his name. Turning his head, he saw Charlotte standing there.

A rapier gripped in her hand.

His breathing was heavy, his cheeks flushed. Sweat poured down his body like rain. Judging by the look of it, he must have been absorbed in sword training all alone until this hour when everyone else was asleep.

“So you were practicing magic here.”

“Yeah.”

Dale nodded and waved his hand, causing the towering ice wall to vanish.

“Miss Charlotte was practicing swordsmanship too?”

“Yes.”

Charlotte nodded and sheathed her rapier.

“She was learning the steps Lord Helmut taught her.”

Since that day, Charlotte’s swordsmanship skills, honed under Sir Helmut’s tutelage, have been improving by leaps and bounds. In a pure sword-to-sword contest, it won’t be long before Dale is defeated.

“Do you enjoy learning swordsmanship?”

“Ah, yeah.”

Charlotte nodded at Dale’s question.

“Um, well, you know…”

After nodding, Charlotte hesitated as if she’d realized something. After a moment’s pause, she stammered on.

“…I’m sorry for acting so selfishly.”

Just like a child confessing a mistake.

“I… I acted so rudely in front of… Lord Dale… without showing proper respect…”

“That wasn’t just rude.”

Charlotte bowed her head, looking utterly flustered. Dale stifled a laugh that threatened to burst out and continued.

“Alright, I’ll make an exception and forgive you.”

“You… really…?”

“And since this is super awkward, you don’t have to be so stiff.”

With that, Dale burst out laughing. It was a very uninhibited laugh, and at that laugh, Charlotte’s face finally turned bright red.

The moonlight at dawn was faint.

“…I really like the weather here.”

Charlotte spoke, gazing at the moon. Taken aback by her unexpected words, Dale tilted his head in surprise.

“This cold?”

The freezing cold that the frozen lands of the Duchy of Saxony boast is so notorious that it makes the people of the Empire shiver.

“Even if you swing your sword late into the night, over and over, it quickly cools your heated body.”

But thanks to that, cooling the sweat pouring down like rain is no trouble at all. It’s the one advantage this cold offers.

“I never thought anyone else would feel the same way.”

Dale, who had secretly found that point not so bad himself, felt a little pleased.

He felt the wall between them had lowered just a little.

Around that time.

Unlike Dale, who assumed everyone was asleep, the Black Duke was gazing out the window from his bedroom in the duke’s castle.

He watched his son, alone in the courtyard, stacking up an ice wall and projecting his magic toward it.

From Dale’s fingertips, ice bolts of every shape poured forth unabated.

When he first heard Sepia mention the ‘talent to take life,’ he dismissed it as typical elf exaggeration.

It was not.

──He recalled the deep darkness piled up by the ancestors of the Black Magic Tower in the past.

The unforgivable sins committed under the banner of pursuing truth. The fear most people harbored toward dark mages was never an unfounded dread.

The deep-rooted darkness of an ancient era.

The reality is that even the current Black Mage owes a great debt to that same darkness. And when that darkness combined with Dale’s ‘talent’, it conjures the abyss that would be cast through Dale’s fingertips.

A scene beyond the imagination of even the world’s Black Mages.

It was precisely then.

“What are you staring at like that?”

After finishing her shower, Elena approaches her husband. She is dressed in a damp nightgown.

It was around that time that Charlotte, having completed her sword training, revealed herself before Dale.

“Oh my!”

Elena burst out laughing in surprise at the sight.

Deep into the night. A boy and a girl stood in the courtyard of the duke’s castle.

“My son too… he’s already at that age, isn’t he?”

To Elena, unaware of the circumstances, it could only mean one thing.

The Duke of Saxony made no effort to correct her misunderstanding, maintaining a silent composure.

“Dale asked you beforehand to accept the Orhart family’s young lady, didn’t he?”

Elena chuckled delightedly.

“Could it be love at first sight?”

“Do they make a good match?”

The Duke of Saxony asked back, truly without much thought.

“Well… I suppose…”

Elena shrugged her shoulders and trailed off.

“Guiding my son to be honest about his feelings is a mother’s duty, after all.”

Having said that, she reached out her finger toward the Duke of Saxony’s nape.

“It is also the duty of a wife to wish for her husband’s happiness.”

The Duke of Saxony, understanding her meaning, turned and kissed her. After the kiss, the Duke of Saxony spoke, forcing himself to overcome his embarrassment.

“I always love you, Elena.”

“Huh, you too.”

Just as Elena wished for the happiness of her beloved family, it was also time for the Duke of Saxony to fulfill his ‘husband’s duty’.

Elena’s decision after witnessing her son and Charlotte’s secret rendezvous(?) unleashed a butterfly effect no one could have foreseen.

Some time later, on the outskirts of Saxony City. In the city’s slums, where vagrants and beggars, filth, and animal entrails lay scattered in disarray.

However, thanks to the urban revitalization project that had begun not long ago, the place had regained a considerable amount of vitality.

It was all in the name of Elena, wife of the Duke of Saxony.

Leading the duchy’s supply train into the streets, she distributed daily necessities to the starving and destitute.

Every week, she personally visited the slums, distributing food to the children and providing blankets to the destitute. Furthermore, for the vagrants on the streets, she arranged negotiations with guild representatives to help them find work.

──And that day, Elena was not the only one from the duke’s household who visited the slums.

Needless to say, Elena’s attendants and the Duke’s escort knights are no exception.

“Dale, escort Miss Charlotte properly.”

He had ordered Dale to personally attend to his own maid, Charlotte, insisting that caring for a lady was a noble’s duty.

“Yes, Mother.”

He had arranged it under the pretext of his own duties, hoping the two would act together.

“Thank you as always, my lady!”

“Madam, I’m so glad to see you looking as well as ever!”

“Did you have a comfortable journey here?”

“Thanks to you, Elena, we were able to stay warm through the winter!”

Moreover, the slum dwellers who interact with Elena wear expressions that seem to embody the very tenderness of the Virgin Mary.

‘This is what a mother does.’

Dale also takes the lead, striving to follow his mother’s example.

“Oh my, young master!”

Taking the hands of starving vagrants in his own, he ponders how they might rise again.

Charlotte, too, extends a hand of kindness with a tender smile.

“Oh dear, how could a noble lady like you…”

“Please don’t say that.”

Just as the two began to slowly drift away from where Elena’s gaze fell, a child burst into tears and ran toward them.

A child who looked to be no more than four or five years old.

“What’s wrong?”

Charlotte stroked the child’s head, saying, “Stop crying and tell me.”

“Help me, sister! My mom, my mom…”

Saying this, the child urgently tugged at Charlotte’s skirt. Toward the back of the slum, toward the end of a street hidden a little more deeply in the shadows.

“Oh, what should I do?”

Charlotte swallowed nervously, flustered.

“First, call those people over there and get them to come with us…”

“This isn’t the time for that! Hurry, hurry up and come see my mom!”

The child’s cries urging Charlotte on echoed loudly.

“……”

Unlike Charlotte, who couldn’t hide her bewilderment, Dale’s mind was extremely cold.

‘Something’s off.’

He imagined the shadowy end of the street, where the eyes of the escort knights performing the Duke’s protocol did not reach. Dale narrowed his eyes for a moment.

Just as he pondered the source of this inexplicable sense of unease.

“…!”

A sinister possibility flashed through Dale’s mind.

And upon realizing the gaze watching him, holding its breath in the distance, the possibility turned into certainty.

‘An upper-level member of the Thief Guild.’

Though dulled compared to his past life, the battlefield instincts honed over a lifetime did not fade easily.

‘Surely an operative hired by the Holy Sword to target the Daughter of the Divine Sword.’

That’s why Dale smiled quietly.

‘A rare chance to test my abilities.’

This is not a mock duel where knights clash swords fairly. Nor is it facing green-blooded monsters like orcs.

It is, above all, an opportunity to unleash 100% of one’s power without concern for others’ eyes, under the guise of self-defense.

A stage to hone one’s true talent for killing living beings.

It’s not about declaring victory or defeat.

‘How far can I dominate?’

I was simply curious. After forming the Second Circle, I had refined several of my spells over and over, specializing them for real combat. Along with that, there was the new technique expanded into the ‘Second Form’ of the Shadow Cloak—one I hadn’t revealed to anyone.

Taking the Duke’s knights along could be one approach.

But if two defenseless children, led by a child’s innocence, went without a single knight, the enemy would surely take the bait.

Convinced beyond doubt that he was the spider spinning the web.

“Let’s go, Charlotte.”

Dale grabbed Charlotte’s hesitating hand and pulled her along.

‘Gotcha!’

Thanks to Elena’s relief efforts, members of the duke’s household had begun occasionally appearing in the slums—a stroke of pure luck, one might say.

Jade, a senior member of the Shif Guild ‘Culaiscope’, spun the dagger and repositioned it in reverse grip.

“Do not lay a single finger on the eldest son of the Saxon family.”

Their target was never Dale, but merely a single maid of the Saxon household.

He was well aware of the danger in laying a hand on someone from the ducal house, especially the Saxon ducal house. Yet, faced with the vast sum of gold to be gained in return, human reason is not bound to make rational decisions.

“Subdue the little girl and swiftly escape the duchy.”

Lured by the bait, he waits for the prey approaching the slum’s mire.

He did not doubt for a moment that he was the spider spinning the web.