When Shane arrived at the Great Mezaiya Forest, his condition was truly at its worst.
The wound from Daniel’s sword had left the magical power inside his body in a turbulent state, and since he was caught in the last spell of Lucifer, he had lost thirty percent of his body.
The only reason he managed to survive was by wrapping his bleeding wounds in the Origin of Greed, which absorbed his own blood and cycled it back to his heart.
Added to that, Priscilla’s energy stubbornly held onto his life and allowed him to endure until the Lake of the World Tree could heal him.
Despite all this, Shane’s heart had once come to a complete stop.
The only reason Shane survived was Priscilla.
“I owe you my life.”
“Oh, naturally. After all, you ate the Fruit of the World Tree. A precious fruit that only grows once every hundreds of years.”
“…I’ll repay this debt one way or another.”
“Good, then. I’ll be looking forward to it. How’s your condition now?”
At Priscilla’s question, Shane began to observe his own state.
His condition was still far from ideal.
Even with the Lake of the World Tree, Priscilla’s energy, and the Fruit of the World Tree, his body was still in the midst of regeneration.
“The circles in my heart… something feels strange.”
Most concerning of all was his heart.
Perhaps due to his exposure to Daniel’s White Flame and his heart having stopped once, the four circles had disappeared and only one circle was slowly making its presence known.
“That would be what human mages call circles, correct? May I take a closer look?”
“Please.”
With the internal flow of his magical power still twisted, Shane found it difficult to assess directly, so Priscilla stepped forward.
Her hand touched Shane’s chest.
When Priscilla’s energy flowed into his body, he felt a brief tickle, and then she tilted her head with a puzzled expression.
“With a human’s circles, the more circles there are, the better, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And what exactly do they do?”
“Circles…”
Unlike warriors, who fundamentally store magical power within their bodies, mages manifest magic by absorbing natural magical power through the heart and releasing it.
The faster the circle spins, the denser and purer the magical power absorbed from the outside becomes.
Beyond that, circles serve countless roles in magical theory, which Shane briefly explained to Priscilla.
“So, in short, the more connected circles there are, the more and the purer magical power can be gathered.”
“More or less.”
“Then wouldn’t you be fine even in your current state?”
“There’s only one circle remaining, though.”
“No, um… how should I put it? It’s a bit different. You might not fully sense it yet, but if you look closely, you’ll see that, rather than decreasing, your circles have actually increased.”
“……?”
Increased circles? What could that mean?
When he looked inward, he had seen only a single circle.
But after a moment, as the tangled magical power in his body began to unravel, Shane observed his inner self once more, and his eyes widened in rare surprise.
“What’s going on?”
Just as Priscilla had said, the circles in his heart hadn’t decreased. They had increased instead.
A total of six circles, in fact.
However, their structure had changed. While circles were typically formed as interwoven rings, Shane’s circles were combined into a single form, but they were each rotating independently.
They resembled an unfinished sphere.
Moreover, the energy he felt was different.
Unlike before, it was rougher and more intense.
But it was somehow gentle at the same time. What could this dual energy possibly mean?
Shane realized he had encountered a similar energy before.
“A dragon’s…”
To be precise, it was the aura that Lucifer’s magical power had radiated.
The magical power bore a haughty air as if it was looking down upon the world. Just like its owner’s personality.
But why was it accumulating in his own heart?
“Didn’t I mention earlier? Your heart had stopped once.”
“…You did.”
“Most likely, that’s when your circle collapsed as well.”
“Wouldn’t that have killed me?”
Naturally, a circle wasn’t a consumable item; it didn’t just decrease and increase on a whim. If anything, a reduced circle would likely lead to a power surge that could end in death.
“Normally, yes. But I was here, right”
As she said this, Priscilla shrugged her shoulders and a playfully cute expression crossed her face.
“Even though your circle was destroyed once, your body must have continued trying to gather magical power just as it always had. But with the circle, which serves as a vessel for the magic, destroyed, it would have attempted to create a new one.”
“…….”
“Yet with conventional methods, that wouldn’t have been possible. A circle isn’t such a simple mechanism.”
“Don’t tell me…”
At that point, Shane felt his tangled thoughts clearing all at once.
“Yes. The dragon’s reverse scale. That probably played a major role.”
The dragon’s reverse scale that Priscilla had given him was, in essence, an item symbolizing a dragon’s status.
In the meantime, Shane’s body which was struck by the magic of Lucifer who had inherited the same dragon blood, began to analyze Lucifer’s magic patterns and use it as the basis for constructing a new vessel.
The shape of the magic structure held in the memory of the dragon’s reverse scale merged with the shape of the circle remembered by Shane’s body, and this phenomenon began to unfold.
Of course, that alone wouldn’t have been enough.
No matter how well he remembered Lucifer’s magic pattern, there were natural limits; like a dog could never become a cat, there were restrictions bound by species.
But the missing pieces had been filled in by the fruit of the World Tree.
The fruit of the World Tree was a mystical essence accumulated from the dragon’s own energy over time.
In other words, Shane’s current circles were imitating the magic structure of a specific entity.
The heart of a dragon.
“I’m curious~. It feels like you owe me quite a debt this time, doesn’t it~?”
“……”
Priscilla looked at Shane with a beaming smile, as if to ask how he intended to repay this debt.
For Shane, who had wealth beyond measure, the thought of feeling like a debtor was something he had never imagined.
***
While Shane was healing himself with mixed emotions, the Imperial Palace was also in a state of chaos.
Above all, the place where the chaos was most concentrated was the imperial family of the empire.
A faint light began to shine from the recording crystal, and an image started to play.
In the moonlit night sky, a figure wearing a half-broken mask looked down at the world that was shrouded in darkness.
A voice flowed from the recording.
[It’s unfortunate, but this is only the beginning. Deliver this message to the lion’s child. This failure was caused by his misjudgment, so do not blame us, the Nameless.]
At those words, the gathered nobles in the meeting room murmured among themselves.
The lion’s child.
It was clearly a reference to the empire’s crown prince.
– Is what this man says true?
– Unbelievable, to join hands with a terrorist organization…
– This could easily escalate into a full-blown war!
The murmuring didn’t fade, even after the recording ended.
Unlike the previous hearing with Olicia, this time a significant number of nobles were present in the audience. People sensed that this issue would greatly impact the imperial power struggle moving forward.
The entire continent was already in an uproar over the recent terrorist events.
And now, with indications that the crown prince of the empire had dealings with a terrorist organization, a misstep in handling this could indeed lead to war.
Unable to bear the sight any longer, one noble raised his voice.
“Why are you all looking like that? The man is the one responsible for the terror! Clearly, this is a scheme by those who want to undermine the empire!”
“Th-That’s right!”
“He didn’t specifically mention His Highness the Crown Prince, did he?”
“Are you seriously thinking of getting swept up in this ridiculous conspiracy theory?!”
However, contrary to their expectations, the expressions of the other nobles remained cold.
Of course, the nobles supporting Samuel had a point.
After all, there was no concrete evidence linking Samuel to the mysterious organization called Nameless.
But the timing couldn’t have been worse.
“Then how would you explain the actions of those traitors?”
“Tr-Traitors, you say?!”
The nobles backing Samuel cried out in shock at the accusation from the other side.
“Don’t even think about denying it. Hasn’t it already been confirmed that Count Salier’s ledger is genuine?”
“Th-That’s…!”
“Moreover, during Princess Olicia’s previous hearing, it was also revealed that they traded the non-human races forcibly involved in the recent terrorist incident. And weren’t all of those involved nobles under His Highness the Crown Prince? Can we truly dismiss this as just a conspiracy theory?”
This was precisely the problem.
Count Salier’s ledger.
Every noble whose name appeared in it was allied with Samuel.
Damn it…!
Samuel had been able to forcefully recruit the problematic nobles to expand his influence, but now that very choice was tightening around his neck.
Still, he couldn’t back down like this.
“They didn’t know who they were dealing with! Given the nature of the underground city, it was inevitable!”
“Are you seriously calling that an excuse?”
Of course, with this incident, it wouldn’t be revealed that the Crown Prince had traded with Nameless.
At least, his name didn’t appear in Count Saliei’s ledger.
But the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming, and in imperial politics, that was as good as concrete proof.
In the end, the hearing concluded that there wasn’t enough physical evidence against the Crown Prince, but no one believed it.
His power was ebbing away like a receding tide.
***
What did it feel like to see a plan crafted over years fall to ruin in an instant?
Samuel who was sitting on the terrace with his eyes closed quietly spoke.
“What happened to them?”
“…Their sentences are still being decided, but it seems they won’t escape execution. At worst, their entire family lines may be wiped out.”
At his subordinate’s report, Samuel finally opened his eyes and looked at the sky with eyes filled with hatred.
“Nothing is going as planned…”
He calmly set down the teacup, yet the tea within it trembled as if to show Samuel’s unsettled heart.
“Do everything you can to reduce their sentences. Execution may be inevitable, but we must prevent the annihilation of their entire bloodlines.”
Though one person paying for their crimes with death was understandable, this time, far too many nobles were at risk of spilling blood.
The problem was that these nobles were all under Samuel’s protection. If he failed to defend them properly, even the few remaining nobles loyal to him might begin to doubt his competence.
Things are already shaky enough… but this can’t go any further.
In the end, for the current situation to shift, something much bigger had to erupt.
This was precisely why Samuel hadn’t yet unleashed his anger.
It isn’t over. Not yet… it isn’t over.
With that, Samuel spoke once more.
“What about the matter we’ve been preparing?”
“All the necessary evidence has been gathered. Now, we just need to set it off.”
“This timing… isn’t ideal, so let’s proceed in two days. Spread the rumors tomorrow and make preparations. And make sure those under us are tightly monitored.”
“Yes, understood.”
“Relay the command. Prepare to advance against the Haiel Kingdom.”
The most effective way to strengthen internal unity is to strike at external enemies.
Samuel decided to stake everything on this.
But two days later.
Several rumors began circulating within the imperial palace.
Alongside whispers that the Crown Prince had begun destroying everything in his room in a fit of rage, there were also rumors of a rebellion breaking out in the Haiel Kingdom.
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