CHAPTER 60………………………………..
The One Who Bears a Dragon’s Heart
That night.
I returned to the barracks and told Ronan and Hog.
“The Icemaker definitely has a Dragon Heart.”
Their eyes went wide when they heard me.
“W-what are you talking about all of a sudden…?”
“How can you be sure? We haven’t even seen Balhar Icemaker yet.”
“Sirina.”
“Lady Sirina, what do you mean?”
“Why her?”
The two of them asked almost at the same time.
“She had a dragon’s eye transplanted.”
I pointed at my eye with my finger as I spoke.
“Judging from the circumstances, it has to be Vibriont’s eye.”
“What…?”
“Is… is that even possible?!”
“It’s not impossible, but…”
It’s not a normal procedure.
Even when you transplant tissue from another human, rejection can occur.
And the eye—
Among a dragon’s body parts, the eye is the second-most saturated with mana after the heart.
Not only dragons, but almost every race follows that pattern.
“It’s almost impossible. It’s not something that can succeed just by luck. With ordinary magical knowledge you can’t even attempt it. Whoever did it knows real magic.”
“E-even so, why would someone do that…”
“To get stronger, I suppose.”
Ronan answered Hog’s question calmly.
“It’s dragon power. Anyone would covet it.”
Ronan wanted to grow stronger to prove his existence… to prove that what his mother said was true.
He understood, better than most, the desire to become stronger by any means.
“In the first place, the reason the Icemaker tried to recover Vibriont’s corpse was probably the same.”
“So you think Sirina is the result of that long research?”
“No.”
He said it with finality.
“In my opinion… she was likely an experimental subject for the research.”
“…What?”
“An ex-experimental subject?”
Even though the eye is saturated with mana, it’s second to the heart.
The heart is the part with the greatest concentration of mana.
“An experimental subject for research into transplanting a Dragon Heart.”
“…!”
“…!”
Their eyes nearly popped out.
To erase the Ice Lock she had been maintaining.
To openly plot rebellion against the Empire.
And the young lady of the Icemaker family who had a dragon’s eye transplanted.
Everything pointed to one fact—
“She had a Dragon Heart transplanted.”
There was only one possibility.
“Balhar Icemaker, that is.”
Arces, the Mordis family territory at the western edge of the north.
There lay the north’s largest lake.
Snow piled all year melted and flowed into this lake; people called it “the place where the snow sleeps.”
For some unknown reason, snow neither accumulated there nor did the water freeze.
So the lake always stayed nearly full, constantly high.
The people of Arces used the lake water as drinking water, but it had not always been so.
In the past it was so polluted that people wouldn’t draw it or even wash in it.
There were many possible causes.
Maybe the falling snow itself was polluted, or the melting snow that ran in was contaminated, or something buried underground both melted the snow and polluted it…
None of it was ever determined exactly.
So originally no one lived near the “place where the snow sleeps.”
Until the first head of the Mordis family purified the lake for the people.
Rather than tracing the cause of the pollution, the first head decided to find a way to purify it.
After many attempts he succeeded in purifying the contamination through magic.
He built the domain of Arces based on that magic, gathered people, and grew the village into a city.
Generations later,
Arces became one of the north’s leading cities, and the Mordis family’s influence began to spread across the continent.
Through exchange with the rest of the continent the Mordis family amassed great wealth.
All the while they did not neglect the management of the “place where the snow sleeps,” the first head’s legacy and the city’s only source of water.
The purification magic was passed down through the Mordis bloodline, and by now it had become an engraved sigil.
Of course Sulli Mordis had it.
“<Sinking truth, awake the deep silence, flow and ripple>.”
She had engraved the purification spell as a sigil.
“<Anti–Silentium>.”
She murmured the words and activated the magic; from her hand dipped in the bathtub of murky water came faint ripples.
As the ripples spread, the water’s dark crimson slowly faded.
Following the expanding waves the clear silver light twinkled.
When the light wrapped the surface, impurities tangled together and gathered in one place.
The clearer the water became, the darker the gathered impurities looked.
The bathwater turned slowly, and bubbles frothed where the impurities collected.
As if they were living things.
Sss— sss—
Clumps of filth floated to the surface.
Sulli frowned watching them.
She had not been the one to fill the tub.
Her job was only to purify the water already in the tub.
Filling the tub had been entirely Balhar Icemaker’s doing.
But from the floating impurities she could guess what had been thrown in.
Fragments of hair, bone, and flesh…
Human traces mixed among a monster’s remnants…
Sulli suppressed the nausea rising to her throat and recited the spell again.
“…<Remnants of filth, traces of decay, vanish into light>.”
The place where impurities had gathered shone blindingly and the bubbles began to foam.
“.”
The impurities spun in light and foam, grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared completely.
The tubwater, which had been so clouded that Sulli’s palm hadn’t reflected in it, became clear enough to see the bottom.
The water shimmered a pale sky-blue and gently settled.
Sulli slowly withdrew the hand she had been dipping into the bath.
“Al…l ready.”
She rose quietly and bowed her head toward the darkness beneath the floor.
“Balhar.”
Before the shadow in the dark revealed itself—
A low hum.
His body announced its presence first by glowing.
On both shoulders and the center of his chest.
And a white jewel shining from his abdomen—no, this was the Dragon Heart, a gem that held mana approaching infinity.
The Dragon Heart.
“You took your time.”
He shrugged off the robe he’d been wearing and walked toward the tub.
Everything embedded in his body were fragments of the Dragon Heart.
For a very long time.
Meaning he had researched the Dragon Heart long before he became head of the family.
In the past the Icemaker family had attempted to recover dragon carcasses from the snow mountains.
They failed to bring back entire bodies, but they procured several prioritized parts.
Dragon Hearts, known as tremendous sources of mana.
Eyes, the second-most mana-affinitive organ after the heart in all creatures.
Several bags full of scales and a few teeth.
A few vials’ worth of blood and saliva, pieces of flesh and some organs.
While the calamity in the snow mountains killed the Icelock heroes, the Icemakers returned having collected the spoils.
The Icemakers kept this hidden completely.
They even killed those who had brought them the spoils.
The family’s secret passed only to the head and direct heirs, guarded for hundreds of years.
For generations the Icemakers repeatedly attempted to use dragon byproducts.
Although they produced no significant result for a long time, at last their efforts bore fruit.
Splash, splash— Balhar stepped into the tub without hesitation.
He sank his body into the purified spring water.
“Fuu.”
A satisfied sigh echoed in the underground chamber.
“This one is very satisfying.”
“Th-thank you!”
Sulli couldn’t raise her head.
An overwhelming mana pressed on the surrounding air with every syllable he uttered.
Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck.
“All the stiffness in my shoulders is gone. The aching in my stomach is quiet….”
Balhar casually lifted the arm he had been soaking.
Water ran down the carved contours of his arm muscles.
At its end his hand spread wide.
Balhar looked at the back of his hand with an affectionate expression.
“Only two pieces left now.”
“Y-yes! Almost… finished!”
“The smallest fragments shouldn’t be hard to adjust, right?”
He could not transplant a Dragon Heart all at once.
Balhar split the Dragon Heart into several pieces and slowly took time to adapt them to his body.
The first piece went in his chest, then both shoulders.
He embedded the largest piece into his abdomen, and planned to implant the remaining two small pieces into each hand.
“Y-yes, of course!”
“Good, good.”
Balhar chuckled.
“You really took your time.”
To transplant a Dragon Heart into his body—that grotesque idea began with that desire.
But you can’t just cram it in without a plan.
He gathered women from the surrounding territories.
Not for pleasure, but for children.
To experiment on his own bloodline first.
Because the idea was beyond ordinary imagination, in the north he was only regarded as a pervert given to women.
Whatever they thought.
Through countless women he had many children, and except the politically-showy Sedric and Sirina—all the others…
died.
Cedric was a child for political show.
Sirina was the first stable successful transplant case.
Balhar’s personally developed anchoring ritual.
That could be completed relatively quickly.
The problem was rejection against dragon byproducts used in the anchoring ritual.
Even a drop of blood or a shard of tooth triggered violent rejection, and in the end they all lost their lives.
The only child who survived was Sirina, and the person who made that possible was—
“You have done well, Sulli.”
Sulli Mordis.
“Rejoice. The woman you love is coming. Has it been a long time since you saw her face?”
“Y-yes… i-it has….”
“Woman,” he called her—the word stung.
He didn’t consider the child to be his.
Sulli bit her lower lip hard.
Maybe Sirina would never think of me as her mother…
She hadn’t chosen to cling to Balhar or to bear his child.
The Icemakers had pressured Arces with overwhelming force and bullied the Mordis family into compliance.
When she had resolved to die, pity for the child in her womb had kept her from going through with it.
And when the infant was born, she couldn’t die because the newborn was a constant worry.
Knowing that, Balhar put a leash on Sulli.
If she disobeyed, Sirina would die.
“Look at her as much as you can while you still can.”
Balhar spoke as if showing charity.
“If she ever offends my eye, she’ll be killed.”
“T-that won’t happen….”
Sulli trembled all over, yet she clenched her fists.
“N-no… it won’t… never….”
