Chosen by the Northern Grand Duke Chapter 201 : Chapter 201

Chapter 201: Household Matters (1)

Jis must have been born when the dead sun still existed, unknown to anyone.

The Vessel holders of Shadow who ca before him would have been the sa.

They were born intermittently, and they existed intermittently.

A star is only born when there is a King, after all.

'The Moon is born within cold.'

That was what Manoa had said.

She had ntioned that the Moon had existed for most of recorded ti.

'Even when there was no Sun, presumably.'

That was why he had never suspected the Moon of being a star — a Moon that, without the Sun, would have a short lifespan.

And yet Forbest had said the Moon was a star too.

The implication was singular.

'The Moon has Embers. Manoa didn't know.'

It would an the Moon had been concealing the existence of her Embers.

That was the only explanation for why Manoa hadn't known.

'A secret kept even from the central pillar. The Otherworld would regard the Moon as an exceptional star.'

Perhaps that was precisely why the Moon had been able to build a tower.

The Moon is born within cold.

But the reality was that Embers were added to that equation.

'And yet the lifespan is short.'

Jis, the cursed Jis, had lived for decades, even if only his inner self remained young.

'Because of the curse?'

Harad shook his head.

It was said to be a 6th Rank curse, but a re spell cannot twist certain concepts. A celestial body is a concept of Origin.

'Is it only the Moon whose lifespan is short?'

That would make her a special kind of star.

It wasn't a vagueness that resisted understanding.

Even now, on the continent, the Sun and the Moon were objects of faith.

'Is that why only the Moon possesses Embers?'

The King had scattered Embers among the stars.

They were substitutes. Without the King, no star could shine on its own.

So stars had not taken the Embers. The Moon had.

'Has the lifespan always been short because the Embers aren't the true Sun? Or because they must be used sparingly?'

Both made sense.

The Embers were a stopgap, and they were consumable.

'But then, why?'

Harad thought of Tower Master of teoric Iron, Kandenkel.

If the Moon depended on the Embers, she should have taken Manoa's Embers for herself.

She should not have had Kandenkel do it.

'The Embers belong to the Red Tower.'

'It is ancient knowledge, Witch.'

Kandenkel had known the purpose of the Embers.

And that purpose must have been proven recently.

'aning the Embers were used for sothing.'

The Moon had used the Embers for a different purpose.

That would be why Manoa was unaware of the Asura's existence.

The disappearance of the Embers must be why the Vessels of Origins tied to the Moon were beginning to shatter.

'She used the Embers that allowed the Moon to be born. There must have been a more important reason.'

It would be the intention of the last Moon, not the Moon's general disposition.

The moonlight of that ti and the moonlight of now were different.

Manoa had said as much.

The current moonlight had no intention of fulfilling the prophecy yet.

She favored Harad, and wished to conceal him. And she had spent the Embers.

'Suspiciously, maddeningly so.'

The current Moon had an ulterior motive.

Perhaps it was an inner intention that even Grand Duke Aratus did not know……

"……What are you doing?"

The words ca out slurred.

Harad swallowed hard.

"I was curious how long you could hold out."

Ellen was swinging a heart back and forth in front of Harad's face, left and right.

It was Forbest's heart.

"You're holding up remarkably well."

"It hasn't been long since I last fed."

"Even so."

Ellen grinned.

"You were lost in thought, Dear. In the old days, you would have been drooling by now."

"Back then, I was lacking in many ways."

His Rank had been low then. His magical power had been pitiful.

For Harad, who had taken the Embers, there was now sothing resembling composure.

"The addiction is deeper, though. The dicine has just grown weaker."

It was similar to how those addicted to drugs sought ever stronger doses over ti.

Unlike before, a 4th Rank heart could no longer be expected to produce any significant effect.

"Maybe that's how you overco it?"

"There's sothing to that."

Perhaps at the very end of the end, no heart would hold any appeal at all. It was a novel perspective.

Ellen's mouth began to open.

Harad quickly burned the heart away with fire and absorbed it.

'The efficiency is different, certainly.'

That was why his prediction about the Embers had been wrong.

Indeed, feeding on fire was a different matter in terms of efficiency. It was worth several tis more than ordinary Predation.

"……"

The lingering sensation faded, and when he opened his eyes, Ellen was glaring at him through narrowed ones.

"You could eat, you know."

Unlike Elaine from his previous life, Ellen was open about such things.

"I would rather not."

Harad had no desire to do that.

***

A Wall Knight — and a Knights Commander at that — had sat face to face with a mage from the Otherworld.

It had amounted to sharing a space with an enemy.

"You held yourself well, I see."

"It seed like sothing you needed."

Kesera answered without making much of it.

This reveals her character, Harad thought.

An ordinary knight would have found it impossible.

She would likely have misread the signals Ellen had been giving her as an urge to fight right away.

"What did it an, that the Vessel was shattered?"

"It ans a person was shattered."

"Are you saying all of that was once a person?"

Being cautious was another way of saying one had a sharp mind.

Kesera seed to have grasped, to so degree, the conversation between Harad and Forbest.

"More precisely, it was the Origin that resided within a person."

The entire guest room had gone up in flas, yet the furniture was perfectly intact, only slightly singed.

That was because those things Forbest had called Failed Products were imperfect Magical Beasts and Origins both.

They were inherently durable.

"So a person was shattered, and the organs were pulled out from inside."

Kesera's analogy was apt.

"They are not people."

Kesera shook her head with a look of revulsion.

She was not speaking to the house, but to the Otherworld mages who had built it. It was not sothing a human being should do.

They said they'll kill you, Dear.

Ellen had said that, but she was furious for the sa reason as Kesera as well.

It was because the Otherworld's idea of the strong and the North's idea of it were different things.

Serzila did not kill people simply for being without value. On the contrary, Serzila knew how to protect the weak. The Wall was built for that very purpose.

"So what will you do now? Are you leaving?"

The final line of the Instruction Manual had been a lie.

Even after attacking, they could leave the house freely if they wished. The house had no power to compel them to stay.

"I want to go up first. Sothing feels unfinished."

Harad looked up at the ceiling.

There was likely nothing he could do, but he couldn't help being bothered by it. He was a mage, after all. He found himself thinking of the Liberation Faction and the village.

Harad opened the door of the guest room and stepped out.

In the corridor, Ellen and Kesera overtook him and positioned themselves at the front.

"Right foot first."

Harad told Ellen, who was about to climb the stairs. The staircase, taken right foot first, was indeed silent.

It was called the fifth floor, but it was modest.

The ceiling sloped down following the shape of the roof — it was an attic.

The Instruction Manual had contained no warnings about the fifth floor.

It only stated that there was an owner here.

Harad was staring at the owner of the house.

He could not et her eyes. The owner had no eyes. A heart, blackened and roughly the size of a person, was adhered to the ceiling, pulsing.

"……"

Every object inside the house had been soone's Origin.

The house itself was no different. Only, the Origin that was this house was vast enough to contain the other Origins within it. That was both the capacity of the Origin and the capacity of the Vessel.

'So this is the Vessel.'

That great, enormous heart was the owner of this house.

A mage who had, at so point, been shattered by the Tower of Earthquakes.

'Tsk.'

When Forbest had explained the house to him, Harad had thought of the Asura.

'Bestialization.'

An Origin that had seized a shattered Vessel.

The house resembled the Asura.

But he had thought it would be more useful than an Asura.

He had thought the house would make an excellent training ground for the knights. That had been foolish thinking.

'I cannot use this.'

Harad realized that the pulsing heart was still alive.

It was a vague awareness that any mage would inevitably feel.

That shattered Vessel was still functioning. It was why he had sensed that the house possessed sothing like a mind.

But unlike the Asura, it could not regenerate.

Because the reason that Vessel had been shattered was not deficiency.

"Using it would make us no better than people."

Harad shook his head with a bitter expression.

Who, upon seeing sothing like this, would want to make use of it? To do so would be to beco the sa kind of creature as the Otherworld. Harad wanted to remain human.

"This is the only thing I can do for you."

Harad's right eye turned pitch black. A small projected sun set the ceiling's heart ablaze.

The fierce flas swelled in rhythm with the heart's pulse and swallowed the house whole. The roof vanished, and the floors collapsed. Yet no one fell. Harad, Ellen, and Kesera's bodies descended gently.

Harad thought it was the house's farewell.

Or perhaps the shattered mage's.

***

Dealing with the house had been an accomplishnt.

Of course, only Harad, who had returned from a previous life, knew the true weight of that accomplishnt — but regardless.

Simply reporting the danger that Kesera had experienced would have been rit enough.

And he had killed Forbest as well.

"I'll be more careful going forward."

Kesera said this on the way back.

It was when the Wall had co into view.

"Grand Duke Serzila gave her permission, after all."

"Serzila did?"

Harad tilted his head.

"Harad, did you not say that yourself? That you had heard about from the Grand Heir."

It had been the mont he set the third floor of the mansion ablaze.

When he had pressed Kesera toward caution.

He had said it as a vague excuse, but Kesera seed to believe that Elaine had been involved in the matter this ti.

'No wonder she accepted it so easily.'

Harad nodded for now.

"That's right."

No harm in letting it be.

Fortunately, Ellen let it pass in silence.

'I should have said that from the beginning.'

Invoking Elaine's na was far more effective with the knights.

"I do hope Carlson warms up to this as well."

"……"

Kesera muttered it loudly to herself.

Harad stuck a finger in his ear. He had no desire to know.

"Selling his na again?"

Ellen muttered quietly from behind.

Harad was too busy tending to his ear to hear.

***

When had it started?

The ti she spent lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, had grown longer.

It started after she t Harad.

Her desire for sleep had been weak before — it grew stronger after eting Harad. It was because of the dreams.

The dreams, however, did not co often.

She sotis thought that if she sketched Harad's face onto the ceiling, maybe they would co more frequently.

'He sells my na at every turn.'

Harad sold Grand Heir Elaine's na at every conceivable opportunity.

He had done it again when he t Kesera this ti.

'He must think it's fine to do so.'

Because he trusted Grand Heir Elaine?

No.

Ellen might understand it, but the points of intersection between Elaine and Harad were rare.

What Harad trusted was the dream, and the secret.

'He dreams.'

That dream was magic, and its source was Harad.

It was through eting Harad that she had co to dream.

'Like a curse.'

For Harad, it worked like a curse.

He knew about the dream, but he could not speak of it.

When he tried to speak of it, sothing lodged within Harad threatened to burst his heart.

'Harad wants to dream.'

Until I know, or until I find out.

Harad had said sothing like that once.

He wanted her to dream, and to discover the true nature of the dream. And beyond that, his secret as well.

She appeared in that dream.

An Elaine who played the role of Grand Heir just as she did, occasionally slipping out in her true form to drink, and spending ti with Harad.

'It isn't simply a dream.'

The hidden interior of the Flower Hall and the tunnels, Kubel and Shura, 2nd Knights Commander Cassion, that scoundrel Pelatz, Tunnel-Digger Rick, the Asura…… The dream aligned with reality to a certain degree.

Or it spoke of other possibilities.

If she had never t Kubel and Shura, Shura would have died in a remote village called Drot, and Kubel would have beco consud by vengeance.

Perhaps Cassion and Rick would have died too.

'Harad and I saved them.'

Was it right to think of it that way?

Ellen believed it was. Because the dream was not a simple dream. That dream had substance.

Ellen herself was proof of that.

The more she dread, the more she changed. She felt herself growing stronger.

Through the dream-Elaine, Ellen was coming to understand how Innate Strength worked.

'She exists.'

The Elaine in the dream was real.

Absurd as that sounded, Ellen was at least convinced of it.

Harad was the sa. He knew that Elaine.

That woman was Harad's person.

'How does he know?'

That was Harad's secret.

The secret Ellen had to uncover on her own.

'Does Harad dream too?'

No.

He had denied it himself once.

If he truly dread, he would have answered not with denial, but with secrecy. Because Harad was closer to a collaborator.

He wanted Ellen to uncover the secret that was the dream.

'Harad isn't dreaming. And yet he knows. It's not simply knowing, either. She is his person.'

He experienced it?

Ellen circled that word in her mind.

'He experienced it.'

Harad had wanted Ellen to chase that woman through the dreams.

But at so point, he had begun to distinguish between them as two different people.

Having been at the rcy of only his person before, he had started to be at the rcy of Ellen as well.

That was why Ellen had felt she was intruding.

From that woman's perspective, Ellen was an interloper — soone to be torn apart.

'Harad experienced that woman.'

Explaining it that way also explained why the dream had substance.

Then how did he experience her?

It was, after all, a dream.

'The Harad on that side?'

There was an Elaine who was strong enough to kill Kandenkel, and there was a weak Ellen.

Harad was the opposite.

There was the Harad of reality — shrewd and powerful — and there was the dream-Harad, dimr and weaker.

'Is there a Harad on that side too?'

Then where would he be?

'In the dream, presumably.'

Then where was the dream?

The dream had substance.

Where would that substance be?

Ellen hit a wall there.

Harad would know the location, but he could not answer.

The dream was magic to Ellen, and sothing like a curse to Harad.

'Until I know, or until I find out.'

Ellen recalled Harad's words.

He was right. In the end, she would have to keep craving the dream, keep having it.

Only then would she be able to grasp that substance.

'……Wait.'

Ellen turned over the thought she had just had.

'Harad wants to dream.'

The "" in that sentence was Elaine.

Until I know, or until I find out.

Harad had said those words to Grand Heir Elaine.

Because from Harad's perspective, it was Elaine who had been dreaming.

Harad had wanted Elaine to keep dreaming until she found out, and to bring it to light.

……And yet, who Harad actually spent ti with was Ellen.

'Not Elaine.'

Even before he could use Ellen dreaming as an excuse, Harad had already been doing so.

The person he had confided the secret to was also Ellen.

'……Has he figured it out?'

Oh, co on.

That's ridiculous.

Ordinarily, Ellen would have dismissed it just like that.

Connecting Elaine and Ellen as the sa person was next to impossible……

'But this is Harad.'

Ellen, who had been lying in bed staring at the ceiling waiting for sleep, lurched upright as if from a shock.

"Arika!"

The second-smartest person Ellen knew.

The first was Harad.