**Chapter 56**
—
Walter of the Blood Flame had been nothing more than a disposable pawn of Marquis Yuris.
Until the very end, he never realized that he was merely an abandoned puppet.
“The Sixth Captain of the Black-Red Cultist Corps…”
Dale spoke quietly, and Sephia turned toward him, surprise flickering in her eyes.
“How do you know that name?”
Of course, he couldn’t just say it came from his memories of a past life.
“Today, the Crimson Marquis himself came to the Academy.”
“—!”
That was all Dale said. He told her what the Crimson Marquis had revealed—the truth of the Black-Red Cultist Corps, and the fact that the *Emperor* was silencing anyone who knew that truth.
He kept silent, however, about what he had seen within the Marquis’s manifested world—and about the offer Yuris had made to him, the proposal for a “new bond between red and black.”
“…I see. It must be an uncomfortable truth, even for the Empire.”
Sephia answered flatly.
“Still, to borrow our hands for such a *borrowed blade* scheme… how truly despicable.”
“He must have been certain that with you by my side, we could defeat Walter of the Blood Flame.”
Indeed, Walter could never have defeated Sephia. He had only fallen into Yuris’s trap.
In a sense, both Dale and Sephia had been playing into the Marquis’s hands all along.
“That man is… perilously dangerous.”
“I agree.”
Dale nodded in quiet assent, then looked around him.
The Frozen Crystal Wastes—Sephia’s world, the realm of the six-circle snow elf mage.
A mage’s world was like a barrier that admitted no intrusion from others—a landscape of pure thought and emotion. Thus, when a mage consciously revealed their world, it meant only one of two things:
First, when facing an enemy they must fight with all their might.
Second, when standing before someone to whom they could bare their true heart.
And this moment, Dale realized, was both.
“…Thank you for protecting me, Teacher Sephia.”
In that world, only Dale and Sephia existed. She didn’t respond immediately—only smiled with her usual gentle, affectionate warmth.
“It’s… such a beautiful world,” Dale murmured, gazing out over the crystal horizon that stretched endlessly beyond.
“When I first glimpsed your world as your student—and as a fellow mage—I saw the horizon of your loneliness and emptiness, and…”
Her voice was as kind and soft as ever.
“I thought it resembled my own world very much.”
At those words, Dale drew in a quiet breath. She was right. Sephia’s world—an endless expanse of frozen crystal. Exiled from her homeland, wandering the human lands in the body of a snow elf, she had built a world of pure, solitary thought.
Only now did Dale truly understand. She was just like him.
Two souls bound by the same cold loneliness. Before that, neither Dale’s youth nor Sephia’s long years as an elf mattered at all.
The world of thought was, in the end, a reflection of one’s heart—and right now, their hearts understood one another perfectly.
So Dale reached out and silently embraced the six-circle elf mage. For he was not the only one suffering from the cold loneliness of the frozen world.
“…I like you, Teacher,” he said softly.
“So please—wait for me a little longer.”
Rising on his toes, he brushed his lips against her cheek.
“—!”
“Until I become a man worthy of you.”
He looked up at her after the kiss.
“Ah… I-I see…”
Sephia’s long, elven ears twitched, and her face flushed red as if she’d forgotten the boy before her was only eleven years old.
When he stepped back from the embrace, Dale tilted his head.
“Or… was there no need to wait at all?”
At that teasing remark, Sephia’s expression flared crimson again—even her pointed ears turned pink.
“…Q-quite enough of that.”
Dale smiled faintly at her flustered reaction.
“Teacher Sephia,” he murmured, half to himself.
“You have a surprisingly wide defensive range.”
—
—
Red and blue mages clashed, manifesting their respective worlds of thought.
When archmages of elder rank unleashed their domains, the resulting overlap itself became a self-contained arena—an isolated barrier immune to external interference.
In other words, once such a world was deployed, it could not be broken from the outside unless another mage of comparable or greater power intervened.
And across the entire continent, fewer than a hundred mages possessed such ability.
Thus, when the two six-circle mages—Walter of the Blood Flame and Sephia—had collided, Sir Vale of House Baskerville could do nothing but wait.
Moments later, Dale and Sephia finally reappeared—thankfully unharmed.
Walter, on the other hand, had been devoured by the Shadow Lurker; not even bones remained.
“Lord Dale, are you unharmed!?”
“I’m fine, Sir Vale.”
Dale replied calmly, with Sephia—her face still flushed bright red—standing behind him.
“How are our knights?”
“Some are wounded, but thankfully, none have fallen.”
“That’s good. I’m relieved.”
Dale nodded.
“Who could have imagined an elder of the Red Tower would attack us…”
To invite the Black Tower heir to the Imperial Academy, only for him to be ambushed—
It was unthinkable, yet it had happened.
An act that could shake not only the remaining Towers but the entire Empire itself.
Without Sephia, even Dale would have stood no chance against a mage of elder rank—or so Sir Vale must have believed.
He could hardly imagine how Dale might truly fight when freed from the need to conceal his strength.
“…Since no Saxen knights were seriously harmed, I will handle today’s incident personally,” Dale said.
“Until I issue further orders, you and the knights are to speak of this to no one.”
“B-but, my lord!”
“Sir Vale. That is an order—from the heir of House Saxen.”
“…As you command.”
Sir Vale fell silent, and Dale let the matter drop.
‘My distraction could have easily dragged the knights into danger,’ Dale thought, clicking his tongue as he turned away.
Still, even he had not expected such a brazen assault—especially at a time when he had been emotionally unsettled.
“…”
He recalled the “scene of Earth” that the Crimson Marquis had once shown him.
Why had such an image existed in Yuris’s mental world?
And what had happened there, after *he* disappeared from it?
──For a mage to reveal their inner world was never a trivial act.
The world of thought was the landscape of the heart itself—a window into the soul.
To show it to another was to bare one’s very being.
As Sephia had once done to him.
To show it meant one of two things—utter rejection, or absolute acceptance. There were no exceptions.
‘Could it be… he knows who I really am?’
The thought flickered—but Dale shook his head.
‘No. Impossible.’
If the Crimson Marquis had truly known his identity, he would not have stopped there. Dale still remembered clearly how Yuris had treated him in his previous life—
And back then, the Marquis had *never* shown him his world of thought, nor spoken of Earth at all.
For the man who had once refused to share even a fragment of his heart to suddenly open it now?
‘Not a chance.’
No—Yuris did not know his true identity. Of that, Dale was certain.
Which meant the Marquis’s offer had been sincere.
He truly wished to join hands with the “Black Prince”—to affirm Dale’s existence, the future successor of the Black Tower Lord, and forge a *new bond between black and red.*
But what was the Crimson Marquis’s ultimate goal in this alliance?
What did he mean by “the ultimate power and truth”?
And what was the Emperor scheming in his silence?
The questions tangled in his mind like a storm.
But after a moment, Dale shook them off. None of that mattered right now.
All that mattered was to leave this cursed capital at once and return to the Duchy of Saxen.
His unwanted stint as an Academy student ended here.
—
—
At that same time, in the Ducal Castle of Saxen—
Just as the heir to the Black Tower Lord, Dale, had gone to the capital for the exchange between black and red, the heir to the Red Tower Lord—the “son” of Marquis Yuris—had arrived at the Duke’s residence.
**Ray Yuris.**
Strictly speaking, he was not of the Marquis’s blood. He was an adopted son—one of the many children the Crimson Marquis had taken in “for a certain reason.”
And the Black Duke was one of the few who knew what that reason truly was.
The Marquis had once gathered dozens of magically gifted children, forcing them to kill one another until only a single survivor remained—the sole heir who had endured that trial by death.
That survivor was Ray Yuris, who now stood before the world as the Marquis’s son.
He did not yet possess fame like Dale’s; his name was not known across the Empire.
He lived in the shadows, carrying out the Crimson Marquis’s will.
And so, when the Black Duke looked upon him, not a trace of emotion touched his face.
Far to the east of the known world, beyond the Sea of Death, there existed a poison called —“solitary venom.”
One filled a pot with deadly insects, letting them devour one another until only one remained—the purest, most refined toxin of all.
Ray Yuris was that final venom incarnate.
Even if he was of the same age as Dale, that truth did not change.
“Your Grace, the Black Duke,” Ray spoke first.
“As you know, both my father and His Imperial Majesty desire the same thing from you.”
“The same thing?”
“Speak,” the Duke said evenly, the foremost black mage on the continent.
“We have a list—of the hardliners within the Black Tower who are cooperating with the Red Tower.”
“…”
For a moment, a flicker of unease passed across the Duke’s expression.
“And what do you want in return?”
Dragging out talk was not his way.
“The Demon Legion—the Black-Red Cultist Corps,” Ray replied.
“His Majesty wishes for every trace of the Corps’ actions during the war to be completely erased.”
“…”
“And as coincidence would have it,” Ray continued smoothly, “among those hardliners cooperating with the Red Tower, several happen to be former captains of that same Corps.”
“Hand over the list,” the Black Duke said.
“I’m glad we understand each other so quickly.”
Ray Yuris smiled faintly and bowed his head.
To the Black Duke, those within his own Tower who allied with the Red were already traitors—men who would have to die regardless.
Whether or not they also happened to be those who remembered the “sins of the Black-Red Cultist Corps”…
…made no difference at all.
