I had another dream.
Han Ye-an appeared in my dream, just like always. She looked pretty and was neatly dressed. I held her close in my arms and waited for her body to turn cold and lifeless. I tried my hardest to cling on to her warmth until her blood inevitably began to spill. For some reason, however, she didn’t turn into a corpse this time.
Instead, she turned into an orange-haired girl that I’d never seen before and gave me a warm hug.
Chapter 19. The Full Story
I remembered all of the time I had spent with Swan when we were little. The good, the sad, all of it. I still had questions about his strange behavior from time to time, but I understood a good bit of it now.
If you were wondering if there was a drastic difference in our relationship after my memories had returned–there wasn’t too much of a difference. I was a lot more comfortable with him than before, but it also made it a bit awkward, too. No, was it just awkward for me?
I was the one that had kissed him first, so that was a bit embarrassing. Life was so much easier when I thought it was just a dream, but he had brought the memories back and now they were haunting me.
Anyway, the one thing that I was sure about after I regained my memories were that Swan was by my side from the beginning to the end. The well-intentioned behavior he had showed only to me wasn’t to bother me, but because he had genuinely wanted to be kind to me. The excessive quantity of healing potion, him telling me not to get hurt, how he handed me a glove for me to duel Eric, so on and so forth.
I couldn’t help but smile at Swanhaden’s behavior before stiffening at the other side of his personality.
“The secret of the Blanche family………”
His torturous past stemmed from the Blanche family.
When my memories of the Blanche family secret also came with my memories, I began to pay a bit more attention to it.
The secret that the duke and the former dukes had wanted to hide so badly was about how the heirs acquired their powers. They forced the heirs through inhumane levels of torture and physical brutality and forced them to heal on their own in an empty room.
Swanhaden was too talented and was able to finish the process as a teenager, most of the dukes before this finished their training in their mid to late twenties. From what Swan had told me, the current duke was only able to finish the entire process in his mid-twenties.
I felt anxious for Swan, and I was also interested in white magic. I decided to do some research.
I also kind of wished that I would be able to stop the endless cycle of pain, and I was still grateful towards Swan, and he said that I was pretty last time and that kind of lingered in my mind…. I don’t know. I just felt bad for him and I wanted to help him.
“Shushu, are you really going to read all of that?”
“I don’t know. I just grabbed whatever I could find.”
Hestia gawked at the sheer number of books I held in my hands. I had added some muscle strengthening spells on my arms, which gave me some temporary muscles and popping veins. I easily held the books with my hand and dropped it onto the wide desk in front of me.
The books were about white magic, black magic, and background information regarding the two.
I sat my butt down in the library and quickly read through the books. Most of the books mentioned things that I already knew, but I kept reading to see if I had missed anything last time. While I was speed reading, Hestia sat next to me and wrote through what she would talk about in her next column.
If it was in the past, she would just stare blankly into the air or just do another embroidery project she didn’t care about, but she was now doing her own thing without any prompting. I was proud. I smiled towards Hestia and then turned my attention back to my books and focus.
“In the beginning, humans were only allowed normal magic while only magical beings were allowed white and black magic……?”
I reread the parts I already knew before grabbing another book. I had just grabbed at whatever was closest, but there was a lot of information that grabbed myt attention.
I stopped at a particular sentence that caught my attention. I was curious about who wrote the book, so I turned the book around to look at the cover.
The book I was currently holding was a thesis published by the Royal Research Facility and the author was none other than Hylli’s deceased mother, Caradil Evgedin.
This thesis was stashed in the back corner of the library, so I had never read it before. I dimly remembered that Caradil had researched black magic and the Augran Mountain before this.
At first glance, it was easy to think that there wasn’t a connection between white magic, black magic, and the Augran Mountain. But putting that aside, this was something that Caradil had wrote, so I read through it with interest.
“White magic and black magic, undoubtedly, belong to magical beings, but there is only one species of magical being that can handle these magics. That species is the arbitrator of the world, the keeper of the world–the dragon.”
Dragons are the arbitrators of the world? They were generally thought of as a symbol of power in a lot of mainstream, popular books, but they were also thought of as a symbol of evil. That was how much they were feared by humans.
Moreover, they said that only dragons could use black or white magic. I think I’d heard about this before.
“Humans cannot be born with those two types of magic.”
I stopped reading. If humans couldn’t be born with the ability to use white or black magic, then what did that mean about the Blanche family? They were born with white magic. Even if they payed the price for it.
Although the royal family had people they called black magicians, they technically didn’t count as black magicians. Even Hylli’s younger brother, who had a “pure lineage,” technically wasn’t one either. They were just able to use black magic through the family heirloom.
Because of that, the Blanche family was the only family in the entire continent that could use black or white magic and counted as actual users. Black magic belonged to the dragons which meant that humans couldn’t possess it, but if the Blanche family had it, then that meant…..
“Do I have to do more research about the creation of the Blanche family? But they’re so secretive, would they even have any books…..”
I pressed my temples as I paused.
When I looked next to me, Hestia was sprawled on the desk, asleep. She seemed exhausted–her posture looked incredibly uncomfortable, but she was deep asleep.
Thinking back, Hestia was incredibly knowledgeable when it came to the history of the empire. She was close with a lot of professors, and she had written a lot of manuscripts which gave her connections with authors, too, and she had a lot of unofficial information about the empire.
I should definitely ask Hestia when she wakes up, I thought to myself. I continued reading Caradil’s thesis.
I put in a lot of effort to keep my title as best in class. I studied hard and lived hard to get my hands on the scholarship that I would get if I was first in all of my classes.
But there was one class, just one class, that made me nervous for my class rank.
Empire history class. The teacher’s tone was a bit too even.
“Shushu! Wake up! Aaaaaaah, I can’t see her pupils!”
I was dozing off from some point in time. I had read through Caradil’s thesis a bit too hard. My eyes refused to open, as if they were shut closed by glue.
I forced my eyes awake somehow because Hestia was calling me, but my eyes didn’t seem ready to see light again. My eyes rolled back and hid there. Only the whites of my eyes were visible. I was so miserable that I panted.
I could only properly wake up when Hestia handed me a bit of cold water to drink.
When I regained my senses, my eyes met my teacher’s.
Out of all of the teachers in the academy, I didn’t have a great relationship with two of them: the music teacher, and my empire history teacher.
I didn’t really need to go into detail about why I didn’t have a great relationship with the music teacher, and my history teacher probably didn’t like me because I had glowing reviews from everyone else but always fell asleep in their class. But my grades were good, so they could only be annoyed.
The teacher clicked their tongue at my drowsy self. They gave me a baleful look before turning their head towards the board.
The teacher held a piece of chalk and began to write on the board from left to right.
I tried my best to stay awake by forcing my eyes wide open and sitting up straight. I scanned the teacher’s writing on the board and held up my pen to begin writing notes.
“The state of the continent before the founding of the Orde Empire, huh…..”
It was an interesting topic, so I began to pay more attention.
The teacher finished writing on the board, filling it from top to bottom. They turned their body around and began explaining, no, reading through it.
“Okay. Before the founding of our empire, the continent was filled with small empires and tribes. Before our founding emperor saved us from those evil black and white dragons, all of them were suppressed under their power.”
The history teacher insisted that everyone was suffering under the dragons. The dragons were legendary creatures, but people still believed in their existences. It was common to see children’s books or other kinds of books to mention dragons because of it.
But all of them seemed to depict dragons as evil, cruel, hateful creatures. This meant that it wasn’t too weird for dragons to be explained with such a negative bias in classes.
“Our kind and powerful emperor, the first swordmaster of our empire, wanted to capture those dragons with their ostentatious shows of power. Our emperor wanted to use the power of the dragons to found an empire for us humans!”
The history teacher stood up straight and continued his speech. He sounded incredibly proud.
“That’s all a lie. It’s all fake.”
I was quietly listening to the teacher’s explanation when Hestia’s complaints reached my ear.
“Dragons were originally protectors. They were the arbitrators for humans and magical beings, too. They were the closest beings to gods.”
This was basically the same thing that Caradil’s thesis had said, so I turned my head to look at her. Hestia narrowed her eyes at the writing on the board, then immediately raised her eyebrows when she saw my stare.
When I asked her to explain further, Hestia smiled happily.
Hestia told me that the entire story of the first emperor was wrong. It was written as if he had defeated the dragon and had sought for justice alone, but there had been a lot of people who had helped him, and they had left out the slimy, unfair plans to kill the dragons.
Hestia propped up her textbook to avoid the teacher’s gaze. There was a picture of the first emperor’s portrait on the page she had opened it on.
I also propped up my textbook and lowered my body. I was short enough that I didn’t actually need to lower my body to hide behind the textbook. My textbook was on the same page as Hestia’s, but I had drawn over some nose hairs and massive nostrils on the emperor’s portrait.
Hestia put her head close to mine as she whispered.
“I looked it up, but you’ve heard about how there’s a black market for information that opens on the day closest to the new moon? It’s not just a conspiracy–apparently, it existed at the time. I’m not too sure if it still exists, though.”
I nodded. Apparently, the location of the original black market trade had now changed to the Lunaasha’s secret lair. Yves had told me about this before.
I had another dream.
Han Ye-an appeared in my dream, just like always. She looked pretty and was neatly dressed. I held her close in my arms and waited for her body to turn cold and lifeless. I tried my hardest to cling on to her warmth until her blood inevitably began to spill. For some reason, however, she didn’t turn into a corpse this time.
Instead, she turned into an orange-haired girl that I’d never seen before and gave me a warm hug.
Chapter 19. The Full Story
I remembered all of the time I had spent with Swan when we were little. The good, the sad, all of it. I still had questions about his strange behavior from time to time, but I understood a good bit of it now.
If you were wondering if there was a drastic difference in our relationship after my memories had returned–there wasn’t too much of a difference. I was a lot more comfortable with him than before, but it also made it a bit awkward, too. No, was it just awkward for me?
I was the one that had kissed him first, so that was a bit embarrassing. Life was so much easier when I thought it was just a dream, but he had brought the memories back and now they were haunting me.
Anyway, the one thing that I was sure about after I regained my memories were that Swan was by my side from the beginning to the end. The well-intentioned behavior he had showed only to me wasn’t to bother me, but because he had genuinely wanted to be kind to me. The excessive quantity of healing potion, him telling me not to get hurt, how he handed me a glove for me to duel Eric, so on and so forth.
I couldn’t help but smile at Swanhaden’s behavior before stiffening at the other side of his personality.
“The secret of the Blanche family………”
His torturous past stemmed from the Blanche family.
When my memories of the Blanche family secret also came with my memories, I began to pay a bit more attention to it.
The secret that the duke and the former dukes had wanted to hide so badly was about how the heirs acquired their powers. They forced the heirs through inhumane levels of torture and physical brutality and forced them to heal on their own in an empty room.
Swanhaden was too talented and was able to finish the process as a teenager, most of the dukes before this finished their training in their mid to late twenties. From what Swan had told me, the current duke was only able to finish the entire process in his mid-twenties.
I felt anxious for Swan, and I was also interested in white magic. I decided to do some research.
I also kind of wished that I would be able to stop the endless cycle of pain, and I was still grateful towards Swan, and he said that I was pretty last time and that kind of lingered in my mind…. I don’t know. I just felt bad for him and I wanted to help him.
“Shushu, are you really going to read all of that?”
“I don’t know. I just grabbed whatever I could find.”
Hestia gawked at the sheer number of books I held in my hands. I had added some muscle strengthening spells on my arms, which gave me some temporary muscles and popping veins. I easily held the books with my hand and dropped it onto the wide desk in front of me.
The books were about white magic, black magic, and background information regarding the two.
I sat my butt down in the library and quickly read through the books. Most of the books mentioned things that I already knew, but I kept reading to see if I had missed anything last time. While I was speed reading, Hestia sat next to me and wrote through what she would talk about in her next column.
If it was in the past, she would just stare blankly into the air or just do another embroidery project she didn’t care about, but she was now doing her own thing without any prompting. I was proud. I smiled towards Hestia and then turned my attention back to my books and focus.
“In the beginning, humans were only allowed normal magic while only magical beings were allowed white and black magic……?”
I reread the parts I already knew before grabbing another book. I had just grabbed at whatever was closest, but there was a lot of information that grabbed myt attention.
I stopped at a particular sentence that caught my attention. I was curious about who wrote the book, so I turned the book around to look at the cover.
The book I was currently holding was a thesis published by the Royal Research Facility and the author was none other than Hylli’s deceased mother, Caradil Evgedin.
This thesis was stashed in the back corner of the library, so I had never read it before. I dimly remembered that Caradil had researched black magic and the Augran Mountain before this.
At first glance, it was easy to think that there wasn’t a connection between white magic, black magic, and the Augran Mountain. But putting that aside, this was something that Caradil had wrote, so I read through it with interest.
“White magic and black magic, undoubtedly, belong to magical beings, but there is only one species of magical being that can handle these magics. That species is the arbitrator of the world, the keeper of the world–the dragon.”
Dragons are the arbitrators of the world? They were generally thought of as a symbol of power in a lot of mainstream, popular books, but they were also thought of as a symbol of evil. That was how much they were feared by humans.
Moreover, they said that only dragons could use black or white magic. I think I’d heard about this before.
“Humans cannot be born with those two types of magic.”
I stopped reading. If humans couldn’t be born with the ability to use white or black magic, then what did that mean about the Blanche family? They were born with white magic. Even if they payed the price for it.
Although the royal family had people they called black magicians, they technically didn’t count as black magicians. Even Hylli’s younger brother, who had a “pure lineage,” technically wasn’t one either. They were just able to use black magic through the family heirloom.
Because of that, the Blanche family was the only family in the entire continent that could use black or white magic and counted as actual users. Black magic belonged to the dragons which meant that humans couldn’t possess it, but if the Blanche family had it, then that meant…..
“Do I have to do more research about the creation of the Blanche family? But they’re so secretive, would they even have any books…..”
I pressed my temples as I paused.
When I looked next to me, Hestia was sprawled on the desk, asleep. She seemed exhausted–her posture looked incredibly uncomfortable, but she was deep asleep.
Thinking back, Hestia was incredibly knowledgeable when it came to the history of the empire. She was close with a lot of professors, and she had written a lot of manuscripts which gave her connections with authors, too, and she had a lot of unofficial information about the empire.
I should definitely ask Hestia when she wakes up, I thought to myself. I continued reading Caradil’s thesis.
I put in a lot of effort to keep my title as best in class. I studied hard and lived hard to get my hands on the scholarship that I would get if I was first in all of my classes.
But there was one class, just one class, that made me nervous for my class rank.
Empire history class. The teacher’s tone was a bit too even.
“Shushu! Wake up! Aaaaaaah, I can’t see her pupils!”
I was dozing off from some point in time. I had read through Caradil’s thesis a bit too hard. My eyes refused to open, as if they were shut closed by glue.
I forced my eyes awake somehow because Hestia was calling me, but my eyes didn’t seem ready to see light again. My eyes rolled back and hid there. Only the whites of my eyes were visible. I was so miserable that I panted.
I could only properly wake up when Hestia handed me a bit of cold water to drink.
When I regained my senses, my eyes met my teacher’s.
Out of all of the teachers in the academy, I didn’t have a great relationship with two of them: the music teacher, and my empire history teacher.
I didn’t really need to go into detail about why I didn’t have a great relationship with the music teacher, and my history teacher probably didn’t like me because I had glowing reviews from everyone else but always fell asleep in their class. But my grades were good, so they could only be annoyed.
The teacher clicked their tongue at my drowsy self. They gave me a baleful look before turning their head towards the board.
The teacher held a piece of chalk and began to write on the board from left to right.
I tried my best to stay awake by forcing my eyes wide open and sitting up straight. I scanned the teacher’s writing on the board and held up my pen to begin writing notes.
“The state of the continent before the founding of the Orde Empire, huh…..”
It was an interesting topic, so I began to pay more attention.
The teacher finished writing on the board, filling it from top to bottom. They turned their body around and began explaining, no, reading through it.
“Okay. Before the founding of our empire, the continent was filled with small empires and tribes. Before our founding emperor saved us from those evil black and white dragons, all of them were suppressed under their power.”
The history teacher insisted that everyone was suffering under the dragons. The dragons were legendary creatures, but people still believed in their existences. It was common to see children’s books or other kinds of books to mention dragons because of it.
But all of them seemed to depict dragons as evil, cruel, hateful creatures. This meant that it wasn’t too weird for dragons to be explained with such a negative bias in classes.
“Our kind and powerful emperor, the first swordmaster of our empire, wanted to capture those dragons with their ostentatious shows of power. Our emperor wanted to use the power of the dragons to found an empire for us humans!”
The history teacher stood up straight and continued his speech. He sounded incredibly proud.
“That’s all a lie. It’s all fake.”
I was quietly listening to the teacher’s explanation when Hestia’s complaints reached my ear.
“Dragons were originally protectors. They were the arbitrators for humans and magical beings, too. They were the closest beings to gods.”
This was basically the same thing that Caradil’s thesis had said, so I turned my head to look at her. Hestia narrowed her eyes at the writing on the board, then immediately raised her eyebrows when she saw my stare.
When I asked her to explain further, Hestia smiled happily.
Hestia told me that the entire story of the first emperor was wrong. It was written as if he had defeated the dragon and had sought for justice alone, but there had been a lot of people who had helped him, and they had left out the slimy, unfair plans to kill the dragons.
Hestia propped up her textbook to avoid the teacher’s gaze. There was a picture of the first emperor’s portrait on the page she had opened it on.
I also propped up my textbook and lowered my body. I was short enough that I didn’t actually need to lower my body to hide behind the textbook. My textbook was on the same page as Hestia’s, but I had drawn over some nose hairs and massive nostrils on the emperor’s portrait.
Hestia put her head close to mine as she whispered.
“I looked it up, but you’ve heard about how there’s a black market for information that opens on the day closest to the new moon? It’s not just a conspiracy–apparently, it existed at the time. I’m not too sure if it still exists, though.”
I nodded. Apparently, the location of the original black market trade had now changed to the Lunaasha’s secret lair. Yves had told me about this before.
