DTBTHS Chapter 17

'Nothing seems to be happening.'

She slipped out of bed and approached the window. The snowstorm still raged, obscuring everything, but she could tell the day had darkened.

'Is it already night? No, wait.'

Night? That couldn't be right. She hadn't had dinner yet.

No matter how deeply she'd been napping, Lucy would have woken her to eat and sleep properly.

The people of Snowstorm Castle acted as though the sky were falling if she missed even a single meal.

She pressed herself against the window, examining more carefully.

'The day hasn't darkened... it's a shadow.'

The moment she realized that darkness wasn't night but the shadow cast by something enormous—

Thud. The castle shook.

Ariadne staggered and fell. Fortunately, the carpet was soft enough that she wasn't hurt.

'What is this, what's—'

She raised her head. Crash! The glass window before her shattered into pieces.

And through the broken window, a massive bird made of ice thrust its head inside.

"There you are, Young Lady."

The man perched on the bird's head smiled coldly.

He wore armor engraved with the head of a long-horned deer. Ariadne recognized that armor immediately.

'Golden Horn!'

How could a knight from Eldier be here?

And an ice bird, no less. She'd heard of this. The commander of the Golden Horn Knights rode a spirit beast in the form of an ice bird.

'Could the guest from earlier actually be—'

The man reached toward her, her face drained of color.

"I'll rescue you right away. You need to return home."

Still seated, Ariadne shuffled backward. The man frowned, leaped from the spirit beast, and approached her directly.

"Young Lady, come here."

"N-no. I won't go."

"I wanted to escort you politely."

The man grimaced and reached for her.

Just before his hand could touch her, blue lightning crackled between them. The man flinched and withdrew his hand.

"Where does this insolent rat think it's crawling?"

A chilling voice sounded. The Archmage, appearing from nowhere, pulled Ariadne toward himself.

"Wordless magic—you truly are the Archmage."

The man sighed and drew a small bottle from his coat.

"I don't want to fight you, Archmage. Won't you return the young lady?"

"Young people these days don't seem to know why I'm called Archmage. Stop your nonsense and get lost, and I'll let you keep your life."

Though no wind blew, the Archmage's robes billowed. Evidence that powerful magic was being cast.

"As if I would underestimate you, Archmage."

The man suddenly hurled the bottle he'd been holding toward them. Then a sharp ice shard he'd created flew toward the bottle as it arced high.

The bottle shattered, and the dark red liquid inside poured down like rain.

It was Blighted Essence.

The moment Ariadne saw it, she lunged forward.

Blighted Essence contaminated even magical power, so ordinary magic couldn't block it. To stop Blighted Essence required a magic circle ground from spirit stones.

Without advance preparation, a mage had no way to block Blighted Essence.

'The Archmage will die if contaminated, but I won't!'

That man was doing this insane thing precisely because he knew Ariadne wouldn't die instantly from Blighted Essence. He'd probably brought incomplete Elixir as well.

She blocked the Archmage's front and squeezed her eyes shut. But the expected pain didn't come.

"Underestimating me, are you?"

A fierce mutter sounded. Ariadne opened her eyes. The hem of deep blue robes obscured her vision.

The Archmage had raised his robe to enfold Ariadne within it.

The dark red liquid hissed as it burned the robe, but it couldn't penetrate through.

"How...?"

The man staggered back a step, flustered.

"How what? Go study your history again."

The Archmage brushed aside his robe and gestured lightly.

"How I fought the Taint—it's all written in the history books."

Lightning burst from the Archmage's fingertips.

"Gah!"

The man barely dodged it. Leaping backward, he caught hold of the ice bird's neck.

The spirit beast cried out—Keeruuuu—and soared upward. A fierce wind rose. He fled just like that.

Instead of pursuing the man, the Archmage caught hold of Ariadne in his arms.

"You fearless thing!"

Green eyes frantically examined her body. After confirming she wasn't injured, the Archmage looked at her with a terrifying expression.

"Are you insane? Who are you to block your grandfather! Hm? What if something terrible had happened!"

The old man, flushed red, gripped her shoulders and scolded her. Ariadne stammered a defense.

"I-I don't die from Blighted Essence. But you do, Lord Archmage."

"So you just leap out like that? What do you take me for? Who's protecting whom! A child, a child, you really... truly..."

The Archmage's head gradually lowered. The old man pulled her into an embrace and burst into tears.

"So fearless. You have no fear. What am I to you...? You're going to be scolded terribly. I'll scold you properly. What am I to you, don't you even dislike me, hm? What am I..."

Hot tears dripped onto her neck. Drip, drip.

That heat warmed her entire body. Warmth flowed and pooled inside her chest.

Without thinking, Ariadne buried her face in the Archmage's embrace.

Against her forehead, the old man's chest—his heart beat frantically, as though terrified. The hand stroking her hair ceaselessly also trembled.

That embrace was deeply warm.

Duke Eldier read the message sent by messenger.

—The diversionary operation succeeded. We lured most of the knights and temporarily detained the Margrave as well.

However, the Snow Leopard Knights and the Margrave's combat strength exceeded expectations. We couldn't send support, so the Knight Commander had to approach the young lady alone.

Furthermore, the Archmage arrived unexpectedly quickly, and defenses against Blighted Essence were already in place, so...

The explanation ran on, but the conclusion was failure. The Duke ground his teeth and crumpled the paper.

He'd pushed this operation forward recklessly, thinking now was the opportunity with most of the Snow Leopard Knights away on subjugation.

And it had failed.

'Elixir completion is right before my eyes, yet that foolish girl.'

He hadn't expected his young daughter to torment him this way.

How preciously he'd raised her, yet she could flee in an instant like that.

'In the end, it's all for her benefit!'

Endure just a little longer and the Elixir would be complete. The family enriched by Elixir would eventually be hers to inherit.

Training from childhood would build resistance to contamination—how advantageous.

'Because she can't endure a little pain!'

The Duke struck his desk irritably.

Unable to endure mere pain, she was trying to ruin her own future completely. His daughter's shallow patience disappointed him.

In any case, the child had escaped, and the operation to retrieve her had failed.

He needed to try another method now.

'At least this incident established that the child was kidnapped, so justification is mine.'

They'd refused the escort knights a father sent to his daughter and expelled them by force. They wouldn't even allow him to see the child.

From any perspective, the Weaver side was being unreasonable.

'I should meet His Majesty the King.'

Weaver-style courtesy meant leaving only one person among the visitors intact while beating the rest to the brink of death.

One was left behind so they could carry the rest who could no longer walk on their own. Since means to return without dying on the road had been provided, it was sufficiently courteous treatment.

Learning belatedly what purpose they'd come for and how they'd been dealt with, Ariadne was flustered.

"Is that really acceptable?"

"Of course it is."

"The Duke will protest."

"Let him, it doesn't matter."

The Margrave replied indifferently. Ariadne blinked blankly.

'Is Eldier's influence weaker than I expected? Or is House Weaver's power stronger than expected?'

She couldn't tell which. As she hesitated, the Archmage holding her in his arms spoke.

"Child."

"Yes."

"Eldier is larger and wealthier than us, but that's all."

"Pardon?"

When she asked in surprise, the old man only smiled faintly.

Ariadne had been making one mistake.

She'd been gauging Eldier's power and scale based on the original novel.

But the Eldier appearing in the novel was the family after it had grown explosively while monopolizing Elixir.

She'd been considering that difference as well.

However, even the scale of "Eldier before developing Elixir" that she'd imagined while accounting for that point was exaggerated.

Furthermore, she didn't properly know what level of influence House Weaver and the Archmage wielded at this point in time.

In the original, House Weaver was a family of no significance, appearing only in Erich Weaver's flashback scenes.

Ariadne dimly realized this fact from the Archmage's attitude.

'It was both. Eldier is weaker than expected, and Weaver is stronger than expected.'

The old man jerked his chin toward the Margrave.

"Child, your uncle is an unreliable fellow, but even that fool is worth four or five Spirit Knights."

"Father, calling your son an unreliable fellow?"

"Be quiet. The rat didn't even notice when mice crawled into the child's room."

The Margrave closed his mouth and shrank. The Archmage clicked his tongue audibly.