I Married the Dragon I Killed [Novel] Chapter 260

Chapter 260: The Golden Rule

She could not see its form.

Its very existence rejected comprehension.

Erika decided that fact alone was enough to inspire awe.

At the same time, she realized something astonishing.

‘This is not emotional contamination.’

If there had been even the slightest sign of it, Mori would have detected it.

This was not something created from Ferda’s fear.

It meant that this being simply existed.

The more information Erika accumulated, the deeper her fear of it became.

“Do not try to understand me, child. It will only bring you pain.”

The woman spoke gently.

Not with the arrogance of a ruler looking down upon another, but with the soothing tone of a mother admonishing her child.

“If you believe your curiosity will fail to kill you again this time, that is arrogance.”

Erika’s instincts screamed.

The voice was right.

Stop.

Turn around.

Get out of this place.

Yet Erika refused to submit.

She raised her eyes and looked toward the woman’s form.

All she could see was a face blurred by fog.

It was not some trick performed by the woman.

Erika herself had judged that she could not accept what she was seeing, and her own mind was censoring the information before she could comprehend it.

“It would be better to stop.”

The woman warned her again.

Erika fixed her gaze upon that place and clenched her teeth.

She tried to understand the being’s form.

The hazy fog slowly cleared, and its outline began to emerge.

“Yes. Come closer.”

The woman no longer tried to stop her.

At the same time, the price for ignoring the warning arrived.

Erika felt her breath seize.

It was as though a massive anchor had been chained to her body and was dragging her down to the bottom of a deep lake.

That was not all.

The agony of burning alive and the agony of freezing solid struck her at the same time.

Her body felt as though it were being broken into dozens of fragments, reconstructed, then shattered again.

It was as if every kind of pain Erika had ever experienced in her life had been recalled at once and used to viciously disrupt her brain.

Even then, she did not stop.

The Aspect of Water and Magic, Iorga.

As long as those four syllables, her Golden Rule, remained engraved in the deepest part of her heart, Erika would never surrender.

And at last, Erika reached understanding.

The instant she reached the summit, everything that had been crushing her vanished.

“Well done.”

The cloudy silhouette disappeared completely.

The woman’s figure became clear, though Erika still could not see her face.

All she could make out were the corners of her smiling lips.

Yet Erika now understood her completely.

“That cannot be…”

There was a monster inside Ferda’s mind.

Erika had never taken his claims lightly.

But neither had she ever imagined something of this magnitude.

Now she understood why her own mind had rejected the information.

She understood why the woman had warned her to stop.

Erika’s face turned deathly pale.

Her lips trembled as she dared to ask a question.

“You are… according to Regent Ferda’s own account, Anna Rosnova. The woman who was his mother, correct?”

The woman, Anna Rosnova, nodded.

“Yes. There was a time when I used that name.”

“Why would a being such as you parasitize the body of a mere human and pretend to be his mother?”

“Parasitize? What an irreverent thing to say.”

Anna’s lips curled into a smile.

“It is only natural for a mother to care for her child. That child asked me for help, and I merely told him what he already possessed.”

“What Regent Ferda already possessed…?”

“Would you like to know?”

Anna extended her hand.

Something began taking shape above her palm.

“That child contains something desired by all.”

At that instant, sand tickled Erika’s feet.

Golden letters glowed beneath her.

-Do not look.

Mori.

The Observer who had remained silent until now finally carried out her duty.

-Your emotions are being contaminated.

That meant whatever Anna was about to reveal was something contained within Ferda’s emotions.

Erika stopped herself from speaking and turned her eyes away.

To prevent even stray thoughts from taking hold, she began counting prime numbers.

“Good girl. You endure temptation well. That elf could not resist.”

The woman put away whatever she had been about to reveal.

Mori’s warning vanished at the same time, and Erika looked back toward Anna while suppressing the regret rising somewhere inside her.

“Why is a being like you inside Lord Ferda’s mind?”

“What does a parent desire? Only that their child walk the proper path.”

“And what, exactly, is this ‘proper path’?”

“For him to become unhappy, just as I wished.”

“That is contradictory. How can you call it the proper path while wishing misery upon your own child?”

Anna smiled.

“Because that child was wrong in the end.”

“……”

“He died because of that crude little emotion called love.”

Anna turned her head and looked up at the statue.

“He wavered again and again. He suffered. In the end, he took everything upon himself and sacrificed himself. And yet nothing changed. ‘A dog’s death’ was quite the fitting phrase.”

The statue held the round object in its arms with a serene expression.

Anna clearly disliked the sight.

“You have cursed her until you were sick of it. Surely you know better than anyone.”

Erika did know.

Baldrova had been that kind of dragon.

A foolish, indecisive dragon who had never understood the responsibility that should have accompanied the power she possessed.

Iorga had said again and again that Baldrova was someone who should never have been given that power.

“That is why my child must be unhappy.”

Anna placed a hand over her chest.

“I wanted that child to leave the warmth of his mother’s embrace, to suffer discrimination in a cold and brutal land, to be painted blacker and blacker by endless malice until he finally became the darkest moon in the abyss.”

For the first time, Anna’s smile disappeared.

“But he could not abandon his true nature. Even when I cast his soul into the swamp of oblivion and rolled him through malice, he could not forget what he wanted.”

Erika could not fully understand what Anna meant.

One thing, however, was certain.

The reason Ferda’s inner world had been ruined to this extent was standing right in front of her.

This insane woman had been clinging to him, dragging him deeper and deeper into malice.

“So, child of Iorga.”

Anna extended a hand toward Erika.

“Will you join me in bringing misery to my child?”

Erika was naturally about to refuse.

“In return, I will save Iorga.”

“…!”

Iorga.

Everything to Erika.

After his final battle against the Black Dragon Godwin, signs had appeared that his bloodline was beginning to consume him. Until they could find a solution, he had chosen to enter hibernation.

“I will restore him to the Iorga you remember. I will allow the Aspect of Iorga to spread across the Serdes Continent for a thousand years, ten thousand years, for as long as you wish.”

“……”

“You need not doubt me.”

Erika did not doubt her ability.

Now that she knew what Anna was, she believed the woman was fully capable of doing exactly what she promised.

‘Iorga will return…’

Whenever Erika felt Iorga’s absence, she had always thought the same thing.

If she could restore Iorga to what he had once been, she would accept any sacrifice.

Ferda was merely human.

A mortal of a short-lived race for whom surviving beyond a hundred years was close to a miracle.

If she weighed their values alone, the scale was already tipped.

“I refuse.”

Yet Erika refused.

“They say that when one is stranded upon the sea, there is nothing more foolish than drinking seawater.”

Precisely because Erika understood how extraordinary Anna was, and precisely because she knew the promise could be fulfilled, Erika’s Golden Rule shone all the brighter.

She was a seeker.

A seeker was the wind that could not be caught in a net.

A lotus unstained by mud.

One who simply continued forward in silence.

“Is that so?”

Anna no longer smiled.

“Then it is time you paid the price for your intrusion.”

Her body rose into the sky.

At that instant, the gray heavens turned black.

Anna’s body merged with the darkness in the blink of an eye, winding through it like silk.

That was her true form.

A name Erika had deliberately refused to shape into language forced its way into her mind.

-Listen, child of Iorga.

The voice rang not in her ears, but directly inside her head.

I am the darkness that exists where light does not reach,

the light that shines upon the forsaken,

and the teeth turned against those who deserve punishment.

To those who call my name, I gladly place in their hands the blade of rest.

I shall show you mercy, so speak my name with that irreverent mouth.

Erika’s lips began trembling.

Though she could barely breathe, her throat and vocal cords moved instinctively.

Her lips and tongue shifted, beginning to shape the word.

“Si…”

Erika knew.

She must never say it.

The instant she spoke that name, she would receive the blade of rest.

That blade would pierce her heart and grant her eternal death.

“Si…”

That was the Goddess of the Moon and Darkness.

Sierra.

That was Sierra’s mercy.

“Si… e…”

Erika clutched her own throat, desperately trying to stop the sound from escaping.

Her mind resisted with such violence that her eyes began rolling back.

The harder she resisted, the more ferociously emotion engulfed her.

Golden letters glowed beneath her feet.

These were emotions contained within Ferda.

And Mori’s warning said that only the tiniest fraction of them was attempting to consume Erika.

Only an attempt.

And yet Erika felt as though she were going insane.

As though one light touch from something unseen would be enough to make her collapse completely.

She could not understand it.

How had Ferda lived while enduring this much malice?

When she herself wanted nothing more than to die right now…

Erika had two choices.

Die comfortably at once.

Or continue resisting and die slowly in agony.

She knew that resisting like this was the most painful possible way to die.

Even so, she refused to release her desire to live.

Her reason repeated only a single thought.

Even rolling in a field of dog shit, life in this world is better.

There is no such thing as a good death.

She longed for life.

She wished for it.

And then it happened.

The golden letters shining in the endless darkness surged upward and wrapped around her.

“Ghaah!”

At that instant, Erika felt everything crushing her disappear.

Had she unconsciously activated magic?

Or had Ferda’s mind saved her?

Neither.

A girl glowing with golden light had appeared before Erika.

“Mori…?”

The expressionless, doll-like Slave Sage.

She stood in front of Erika with one hand raised toward the heavens.

Strings of letters flowed from her palm like threads. Those letters assembled themselves into a dense barrier surrounding Erika and protecting her.

-A foolish child who took the Omniscient Archive. Unable even to choose death for yourself, do you reject rest?

A crescent-moon smile appeared within Sierra’s black form.

-Young girl who became another’s slave, do you wish only for that child to be happy?

Mori did not answer.

Naturally.

A slave could not choose for herself.

-But that child must not be happy. That is fate, and that is truth. Why can you not submit to it?

“……”

-I see. That must be why you abandoned truth.

The darkness that had seemed eternal began to recede.

Sierra’s form faded along with it.

Everything that constituted Ferda’s mind began scattering into the sandstorm.

-Child who abandoned truth and became a slave, take the irreverent one and leave. This place is the sanctuary of my child and me. If you set foot here again, then next time, I shall hold you in my embrace.

All color vanished.

Only Erika and Mori remained.

Mori, still glowing gold, turned and extended a hand toward Erika.

The gesture seemed to say that it was time to leave.

Erika quietly took her hand.

And with that, Erika escaped safely from Ferda’s mind.