Chapter 6
II.
<Never set foot in a dragon’s territory.>
The primary enemy of the Principality of Saint Montshire and the Ardena Empire was Betelheim, a great nation beyond the vast birch forest.
In the ninth year of the war against Betelheim, which had brought in desert barbarians and invaded the continent, a black dragon large enough to swallow the sun built its nest in the forest between the two countries. This unexpected incident greatly changed the course of the war. Neither side wished to provoke the dragon, so the conflict shifted from warfare on land to warfare at sea.
Maximilian’s father, the former Grand Duke Romundale, cast his gaze into the distance, his eyes ravaged by the long war, and warned his son, Max.
<Dragons are savage beasts. They’re cunning, and they can wield every kind of magic in the world.>
But Father.
Mother is very ill.
Our military funds have run dry, and we don’t even have money for her medicine. Then what will happen to Mother? It’s been a long time since Mother last smiled. She says she can’t sleep because of her coughing. What are we supposed to do, Father?
But Max could not ask his father those questions aloud. Hadn’t he already made his choice? He had turned his back on his sick wife and chosen his duty as a soldier.
Resentment gnawed at the boy’s heart.
<Son, your father’s marriage proposal was quite ridiculous. My grandfather absolutely despised him. So, afraid he would be chased away if he came during the day, he climbed over the wall in the middle of the night to see me. But he fell while climbing over it and broke his arm! Hehe, in the end, everyone found out, and he had to recuperate at our estate. With his forearm wrapped tightly in bandages, Lutzen kept repeating the same words. Please marry me, my lady. I will protect you so that you never know hardship for the rest of your life. I will never let so much as a single drop of water touch your hands…>
The mild-mannered Grand Duchess, who came from the south, often spent time with her only son and told him stories from the past.
She told him how innocent and rough around the edges her husband had once been. However, contrary to his promise, her delicate, jade-like hands eventually grew so rough that the nails on every finger cracked. During the war, she had personally taken charge of washing the soldiers’ clothes to make up for the shortage of workers at the frontier. After being worked day and night without rest, she fell ill and slowly withered away.
All because she had been blinded by a love that had fallen apart in barely more than a decade.
How utterly futile…
One night, the boy Max awoke to the sound of his mother’s anguished groans echoing through the walls of the estate.
Taking a matchlock musket and what little ammunition remained, the ten-year-old boy walked for a long time along the frozen, snow-covered road before reaching the birch forest.
It took only a moment to violate the taboo. All he had wanted was to hunt a rare snow-white deer that lived only in the birch forest. It was the only way he could obtain money for his mother’s medicine.
And so, he entered the forbidden forest.
There were only a few things the boy could remember afterward.
The shimmering light rippling across the lake, the beast’s impossibly vivid blue eyes, and the gunshot that tore through the darkness.
And his father’s face as he glared at him with terrifying fury.
They said Maximilian had been found near the forest with such severe frostbite that he had nearly lost his hands and feet. The boy suffered for several days before finally regaining consciousness. It was the last day of his mother’s funeral. Not long afterward, the war entered a lull.
“It’s been a long time…”
After that, he had tried several times to burn this forest to the ground.
He had failed.
More than a decade had passed since he had been that scrawny boy. Maximilian Romundale was now a towering man nearly two meters tall. He folded his arms and glared at the entrance to the forest.
He had consciously ignored this place all these years, but Gustav’s information that the dragon’s traces had faded and people had begun coming and going was true. A narrow path worn into the ground by human feet led deeper into the forest. It seemed there would be no need to ask around to find where the witch lived.
Gustav’s prediction had been exactly right.
Maximilian intended to commission the witch in the forest to find a way to break his micro-peen curse. Whether it was through trickery or anything else.
‘Wait here.’
After giving the order to his beloved horse, the man finally stepped into the forest.
Step, step… The forest, where patches of lingering snow remained here and there, carried the cool scent of damp earth. He could hear the sound of flowing water, as though there was a stream nearby, and birds occasionally fluttered between the branches of the thorny trees. The trees looked damp, their bark curling upward to reveal the pure white wood beneath. When he was young, he had often mistaken this sight for ghosts beckoning to him.
Even in broad daylight, the dense forest was as eerie as twilight.
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