Chapter 2 — 봄의 안배
Part 2, Chapter 1
Spring’s Design
A carriage steeped in undeniable dignity.
With the Neresta family crest flying proud, the carriage thundered down the imperial highway.
Inside, Tasha sat with her legs crossed, humming softly, a faint smile playing on her lips.
Watching her, Hanabi finally ventured a cautious question.
“Did something good happen?”
Ordinarily she would never presume to pry into Tasha’s affairs.
But the Tasha she knew rarely showed her mood to subordinates.
At this point, it felt almost like an invitation to ask.
“Oh, yes. Very good indeed.”
Tasha answered as if she’d been waiting for it.
She thought back to the night before with Elric, and before she knew it, she was smiling—forgetting she was in front of a subordinate.
Hanabi, who had never seen Tasha like this, couldn’t quite hide her surprise.
Tasha caught Hanabi’s expression and shot her a look that said, What are you staring at?
Hanabi’s eyes dropped at once.
“Are we still far from arriving?”
“Yes, we’ve still got a long way to go.”
“Hmmm. I wish we could get there faster.”
“…I’ll press the coachman as much as I can.”
Hanabi, now asked the same question several times a day, gave a noncommittal answer and went to spur the coachman.
Watching her go, Tasha slipped back into her thoughts.
Honestly. Meeting Lord Elric was the luckiest break of my life.
Her mind drifted, recollecting last night all over again.
* * *
“Th-this, could it be…?”
Tasha prided herself on maintaining a perfect poker face before Elric, every inch the unruffled lady.
But the moment she saw the dragon eggs, that composure shattered.
Mouth agape, she asked, “Yes. They’re dragon eggs.”
“T-three of them, even…!”
Tasha knew very well she had to show her best to Elric.
But she was also a scholar whom Sean loved to tease as a “dragonophile.”
Her reason slipped its leash. Hands trembling, she couldn’t help but drift closer to the eggs.
Hadn’t she put aside everything else these past months just to devote herself to the Dragon’s Nest?
So for her to display only this much disgrace at the sight of eggs that might actually hatch into dragons was a miracle in itself.
“Woooow…!”
“Ahem.”
Lost in rapture as if before a priceless treasure, Tasha came back to herself at Elric’s polite cough.
“I intend to hatch these.”
“You mean to comb the Dragon’s Nest….”
Tasha nodded.
Left untouched for ages, yet still thrumming with life—dragon eggs.
To wake them would require a special method no human knowledge could supply. The method had to be in the Dragon’s Nest.
It had been quite some time since they’d found the nest, and the excavation was entering its final phase.
But she knew better.
The nest still held vast troves of ancient texts and laboratories.
And if they uncovered yet another secret chamber they hadn’t found? “Final” would be anything but final.
Even that alone made every day a thrill for her. If they also managed to hatch the eggs…
Being a mage to the bone, Tasha practically swooned just imagining it.
“Let’s leave at once.”
* * *
If only we’d reach the Nest already…!
Every day on the road to the Dragon’s Nest felt unbearably long to Tasha.
She wanted to take a teleport gate right this instant.
If the Nest weren’t in the middle of nowhere, she would’ve.
“So, Hanabi, how much longer now?”
“Um… it hasn’t even been an hour since you had me spur the coachman.”
Hanabi found this unexpected side of the usually unflappable Tasha oddly refreshing.
Once or twice. But with the constant prodding, she felt a neurosis coming on.
Tasha, for her part, just looked at her as if to say, And what do you want me to do about it?
“…I’ll go press him again.”
“The sooner we arrive, the better. There’s a lot to do.”
“Yes, ma’am…”
Leaving Hanabi’s sigh behind, Tasha calmed her excitement and glanced at the other carriage pacing theirs along the highway.
It bore the distinctive Merbinger crest.
Inside, Elric was speaking with a man.
Elric hadn’t stepped out of that carriage in days now.
They barely saw him at mealtimes.
Only then had she finally managed to get a look at the face of Elric’s guest.
And every time, a chill crept up her spine.
If my guess is right, he’s from that clan.
Tasha narrowed her eyes at the man.
Why is Lord Elric sharing a carriage with a cursed bloodline like that?
* * *
Elric peered through narrowed eyes at the man seated across from him.
They’d met after parting ways with the Star Host and heading for the Dragon’s Nest.
The man stood out in more ways than one.
“My name is Mord,” he said with impeccable courtesy.
“As you’ve no doubt noticed, I belong to the Bane Clan. We don’t carry family names.”
“The Bane Clan?”
Elric frowned, riffling through what he knew.
The Bane Clan had once bargained their souls to some nameless ancient archdemon, who promised the prosperity of their line in return.
Demonic factors flowed in their blood, granting them remarkable talent for magic. For a time, they flourished.
But that was long ago.
Now they were ordinary, like countless peoples lost to history.
If anything, theirs was a more wretched fall.
As human hatred of demonkind swelled, the Bane Clan were treated no differently and suffered relentless persecution.
Even today, the continent held a deep-seated impulse to repress and ostracize them.
But Elric knew the truth.
While the Bane Clan had indeed been tied to an archdemon, the centuries had diluted their blood so much that, in modern times, they were no different from ordinary folk.
Which is why—
The man before him felt off.
The thing is, this one feels like a half-demon….
Sensing Elric’s scrutiny, Mord spoke, still deferential.
“My nature puzzles you, I think. Your eye is true. Some of our line are born with bloodline abilities; in me, that trait manifested… abnormally. Thus the hood. I cover my face in public.”
Elric had already pieced together the source of Mord’s bloodline—his half-demonic trait.
“Was your archdemon the Goddess of Camellias?”
The Goddess of Camellias.
She who, after losing her devotees, lingered long in the Winter Palace before sleeping in the Temple of Flowers.
From this man, her mana-scent seeped thick.
“More precisely, some of my forebears intermarried with the followers of the one now called the Goddess of Camellias. They felt… equally forsaken.”
So that’s why.
Understanding the Camellia Goddess’s aura in the Bane Clan’s blood, Elric nodded slightly and pressed on.
“So why have you come to me?”
Mord met Elric’s gaze, face set, voice solemn.
“I heard you saved the abandoned mountain tribes.”
Elric caught his drift. And what does that have to do with you?
“So?”
Mord bent low until his forehead nearly touched his knees and shouted, “Save our clan as well. I’m nothing, but I’ll be your dog.”
“What the hell are you barking about?”
Elric demanded a fuller explanation.
Here’s what Mord told him.
With Crown Prince Zereitz deposed, the winds were shifting to name Fourth Prince Cromhel as heir apparent.
To bolster Cromhel, the imperial household and the Inspectorate conspired to hand him an easy, glorious achievement.
By now Elric could see the next line coming.
“And their target is the Bane Clan?”
“Yes.”
“Pretext?”
“Since when did anyone need a reason to persecute the Bane Clan?”
“…”
Elric stared at him in silence.
Mord, somehow unnerved, rolled his eyes, watching for any sign in Elric’s face.
Would you look at this guy.
Elric hadn’t offered Mord a seat in his carriage solely because he reeked of a high-ranking demon lord’s power—and even the Camellia Goddess’s aura.
That was the main reason, yes, but there was more. In Mord he sensed a strange magic he’d never once felt from any other demon.
He thought he’d hidden it, but I felt it, sure as day.
Mord’s power was real, but the feel of it was alien, dissonant—like something grafted on that wasn’t originally his.
Elric disliked that Mord had smothered that uncanny power and approached him wrapped in the familiar aura of the Camellia Goddess.
[Mephi, there’s something about this one, isn’t there?]
『Hmph. You sensed it too. That familiar, foul tang—I could never forget it.』
Mephisto didn’t name it outright.
But one thing was clear: whatever that alien magic was, Mord had no intention of showing it openly.
『To sidle up to a Merbinger while hiding your mana… I can’t tell if that’s stupidity or nerve.』
Now that you put it that way, I’m suddenly pissed. Add one count of impudence.
The more Elric thought about it, the hotter his temper ran.
You dare come to me begging while hiding a scheme?
After a long, hard stare, Elric’s expression went cold. He flung the carriage door open while it was still rattling along.
“L-Lord Elric?”
Brian the coachman, racing neck and neck with the Neresta carriage, yelped and eased the horses, calling back to him.
Elric didn’t budge. “Get out.”
“W-why…!”
Mord panicked, at a loss.
“You come asking for help and still hide something fishy. You think I’ll overlook that?”
“...!”
Mord’s eyes went wide, at a loss for words.
“Not getting out?”
When Elric moved to haul him bodily from the carriage, Mord seemed to steel himself. He dropped to his knees and cried, “I’ll tell you! Please—help us!”
“No. Too late. Get out.”
“Just this once—help me… please!”
Elric looked down at him with an icy stare and spoke just as coldly.
“We’re done talking.”
His words carried the weight of his will, and the mana around them began to boil.
Seeing his eyes, Mord sagged. In a resigned voice, he undid the buttons of his shirt and murmured one last thing.
“If you insist…”
Elric kept his hard expression, but watched, curious despite himself, as Mord began to undress.
And then—
He pressed his lips together at the sight revealed beneath the fabric.
“This is why.”
Elric’s pupils trembled.
From Mord’s back, a nauseating blackness crawled and seethed, spreading like cancer.
“This is…”
A grotesque wrongness, as if it didn’t belong to this world.
Its true nature was a kind of demon.
It latched onto a host, siphoned their sustenance, and in the end puppeteered them like a zombie—a vicious, foul thing.
It was the mark of the Grotesque.
The Mage Who Devoured Talent