“This isn’t ancient sorcery.”

Ariel’s low murmuring voice echoed hollowly.

His voice reverberated several times before returning to penetrate his ears.

This space seemed both very large and very small.

It even felt like continuously circling the same place.

“Ah.”

Ariel stopped walking.

Upon realizing something, one corner of his mouth turned up.

He spoke while cutting in half a magical beast that flew at him, dripping saliva with clear intent to devour him.

“No. Ancient sorcery… mixed with mental control.”

As he realized this, crack- the space began to fracture.

“How cunning.”

As if his interested smile just moments ago had been a lie, the corners of his mouth dropped.

His voice was low and deep, threatening to scrape the walls.

Crash-! Finally, the space where Ariel had been trapped completely shattered.

He was standing on a rooftop.

In front of him was Forcite’s back, looking down below.

Even the ominous energy that could no longer be hidden was visible.

“…Ariel!”

The next to arrive on the rooftop was Merrien.

She came up to the rooftop so easily that it was hard to believe she had been on the terrace just moments ago.

As if someone had cleared a path just for her.

And Merrien could immediately tell who was responsible.

“I’ve been waiting, Merri.”

Forcite spoke in a highly excited voice as soon as she arrived.

However, the voice that came from him wasn’t singular.

It wasn’t just Forcite’s voice, but a strange and grotesque voice she had never heard before overlapped with his.

“…Forcite?”

…No, is that really Forcite?

Sensing that he was different from usual, Merrien moved closer to Ariel.

Not just the voice, but the black energy surrounding Forcite seemed ready to devour him.

Its movement, overwhelming the entire rooftop, was like a living organism.

Just looking at it gave her an ominous feeling, and Merrien rubbed her goosebump-covered shoulders.

“Merri, it’s okay.”

Ariel firmly interlaced his fingers with Merrien’s. The slight trembling she had been feeling gradually subsided.

Perhaps sensing the peculiar current between them, Forcite, who had been unable to contain his joy when Merrien arrived, clenched his fist.

The black energy soon sharpened like a knife and aimed above their heads, poised to stab them.

Forcite, who had been looking down from the rooftop until now, slowly turned around. Very slowly.

“…I was only waiting for Merri. Why.”

Forcite, finally facing them, was somehow strange.

One of his eyes had turned completely black.

The ominous energy that had been creeping out, no longer concealable, had started from there.

Forcite trembled all over and then opened his eyes wide toward the empty air.

From within the eye flowing with black energy, claws three times the size of a human suddenly protruded.

As if that was the catalyst, numerous magical beasts poured out, undulating from his pupils.

Ariel quickly covered Merrien’s eyes.

“…Mmph.”

But Merrien had already felt nauseous from the shock.

She covered her mouth and suppressed the vomit rising to the back of her throat.

‘The last gate… was Forcite’s eye.’

Yes, that’s why they couldn’t find it.

When thinking of a gate, one naturally imagines a separate entrance somewhere, not a part of someone’s body being used as a gate.

Even though Ariel completely covered her eyes with clear instruction not to look, Merrien kept her eyes tightly shut.

She wanted to help him if possible, but what she had just witnessed was so disgusting that her whole body trembled.

She couldn’t shake it from her mind.

Meanwhile, magical beasts continued to emerge endlessly, and they were all dealt with by Ariel.

Even the black energy that had approached the two threateningly, sharp as blades.

Because Ariel was handling everything so cleanly, no foreign matter splashed onto them.

“You’ll have to kill me to destroy the gate.”

Two voices reverberated threateningly, seeming ready to swallow the entire rooftop.

Even at those words, Ariel didn’t bat an eye and just continued to deflect the attacks.

Forcite, or rather, whatever had consumed Forcite, had been drawing out magical beasts but now transformed the surrounding black energy to attack.

Then suddenly, he stopped his actions.

“Ah. You’ve arrived.”

While pulling up both corners of his mouth almost to his ears.

That appearance, with his mouth stretched wide in a torn manner, was too grotesque to believe it was a human face that had changed.

He snapped his fingers, and Agnes teleported into the empty air.

Trapped inside a transparent sphere.

“What is this?”

Agnes, suddenly dropped here, pressed his face against the sphere with a puzzled expression.

Then he tried to break the sphere with his fist.

He thought he could somehow manage with force, but sadly, nothing happened.

Only his body was pathetically crumpled.

No matter how hard Agnes tried, pushing with his whole body or using magic, the sphere didn’t budge.

Ariel, who had been dealing with the magical beasts pouring from below, glanced at Agnes.

“…What are you even doing?”

“Huh, Ariel?”

Agnes, who had been in a life-or-death battle with the sphere, seemed to have finally noticed Ariel. He called out brightly, his eyes crinkling with joy.

“Hey, good to see you. I was climbing stairs until just now, but there was no end. But where is this place?”

He seemed to have been unable to escape from the staircase illusion that Ariel had experienced earlier and was now bound in the sphere again.

Yet he remained cheerful, completely failing to understand his situation.

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have much awareness at all.’

Ariel turned his head away, showing complete disinterest in him.

“Don’t tell people you know me. You can’t even beat Seren at that level.”

“…What?”

Agnes, betrayed in an instant, dropped his hands in dismay.

He had sat down inside the sphere, naturally assuming Ariel would help him.

“Wow… now he abandons, wow. A friend like this.”

He was so shocked that he couldn’t speak properly, repeatedly raising and lowering his hand to his mouth.

But Forcite wasn’t patient enough to continue listening to their idle chat.

“Fellow of my kind. Why do you stand with humans and help them?”

Though the two voices still overlapped, now the voice of someone other than Forcite was heard more loudly.

Forcite and whatever it was now seemed to have completely become one.

Perhaps it had been lying dormant to merge with Forcite.

It addressed Agnes as “fellow of my kind,” speaking in a flat, rigid tone.

Was it because he didn’t consider it a major threat yet? Or was it because he vaguely knew that this being was a dragon?

Agnes, shifting his gaze slowly, showed no particular surprise.

“So you were a dragon after all.”

He simply stared intently at the energy in one of Forcite’s eyes.

“……”

Agnes suddenly recalled the terrible loneliness he had felt all this time.

When he realized he was the last dragon in the world.

Even when humans came to hunt him because of the stigma of controlling magical beasts.

He had felt endlessly lonely.

He had thought that if there were another dragon left in the world, he wouldn’t be so lonely. But…

Crunch- the sound of grinding teeth was heard even through the sphere.

“No, it’s hard to call you a dragon. How can I call something that parasitizes a human body and gnaws away at their mind a dragon?”

That thing had controlled the minds of magical beasts to cause chaos among humans. Not only that, but it had also consumed the Second Prince’s mind.

This was definitely not the kind of kin he had wanted.

Agnes’s black pupils dilated until no whites were visible.

“You who can’t even properly maintain your own body and struggle to survive.”

A dragon’s instinct, ironically, is to live by curiosity and die by curiosity.

It’s not a being that particularly clings to life.

But what was inside that prince’s eye was merely ‘something that used to be a dragon,’ desperately prolonging its life with only the desire to live.

It was no different from a monster.

“…!”

Forcite’s body twitched.

Even though Forcite was currently in a calm state without any emotions.

But soon the monster in his eye regained its composure.

“Fellow of my kind. You seem to have forgotten that you were similar in ability to this prince.”

“What?”

“And my mental control is special.”

Just like this.

-Kill your friend beside you.

Agnes, still unable to escape from the sphere, became dazed in a hypnotized state.

Crash-! Following the powerless gesture of Forcite, who had become a marionette, the sphere shattered into pieces.

Agnes, who until just moments ago had been glaring at Forcite and the monster in his eye as if ready to tear them apart, now had no focus in his eyes.

-Kill your friend beside you.

-Kill your friend beside you.

The command circled in his head.

Agnes smoothly turned his body toward Ariel.