A Beggarly Life
“First of all.”
Ferda began, and a damp echo suited to the underground chamber answered him.
“I am truly grateful to you.”
“…….”
“If you hadn’t attacked that day, I would have been forced to keep watch over Chancellor Bernard for days on end. That would have been a pointless waste of time.”
“If you’re so grateful…… would you mind untying me a little?”
“I’d rather not. I’m grateful to you, not stupid.”
Ferda brought over a chair and set it down in front of the man.
“That transformation of yours is quite fascinating. It isn’t magic imitating a form or distorting perception, and it isn’t the clumsy mimicry of a doppelganger either.”
“If it’s so amazing, shall I become the Lord Regent for you as well?”
The man chuckled as he tossed out the joke.
“Can you become me too?”
Ferda bit down on the jest without hesitation.
“As long as I have the blood, it’s possible.”
Ferda drew a clean dagger from his coat and sliced open his own arm. Bright red blood ran down his forearm.
“Become me.”
“…….”
The man caught the dripping blood and drank it. Once a considerable amount had gone down, Chancellor Bernard’s appearance began to change. He became Ferda himself—gray hair, blue eyes, the frail body that had once longed to be a knight and never could. Bruised and with broken teeth, he was still unmistakably Ferda.
“It seems you can’t repair wounds. What happened to that monstrous regenerative power of yours?”
“My role is to become that human. No human would have healing like that, would they?”
“Thorough.”
Deliberately stripping away every demonic enhancement just to perfect the imitation of a human. Ferda stared at him fixedly. The man meeting his gaze suddenly burst out laughing.
“Ferda Valdrova. I always thought you were out of your mind, but you surpass even my imagination…….”
“What do you mean?”
Ferda tilted his head.
“What you’re looking at is yourself. Yourself broken and shattered. And yet you sit there as if you’re enjoying the view.”
“I’m not enjoying it.”
“And still your eyes never wavered once?”
The man was right. Ferda showed not the slightest sign of looking away or flinching in fear. He simply observed his own ruined form.
“You…… were cast out by the Rosnova family, weren’t you?”
“…….”
“I can feel how hard you tried with this body. No muscle to speak of, yet you shattered your own bones and worked your hands raw with blisters, didn’t you?”
“…….”
“But your father never recognized it.”
“Yes. That was how I ended up engaged.”
“No. That was just the excuse they used to throw you out. You know that too, don’t you?”
The man wearing Ferda’s face smiled thinly.
“You were abandoned for lacking talent. A cast-off human, just like me.”
What his eyes pleaded for was kinship—the kinship of the same emotion that bore the name of revenge. The man with Ferda’s face hungered for vengeance. A man who would avenge himself on the king who had betrayed his faith. A man who would avenge himself on the father who had cast out his own child. That fury was something Ferda understood all too well.
“Yes. I was abandoned.”
Ferda let open disgust show on his face as he looked at that image of himself.
“But you and I are different. Completely different.”
“How?”
“The soul.”
Ferda pressed a finger against his own chest.
“My soul has always belonged to me.”
He looked up at the man with pure contempt. The man heard the words, choked with rage, and shouted.
“I never sold my soul to anyone! This path is the one I chose!”
“No. You did sell it. You let those pieces of trash appraise you and reduce you to a bargain price without a moment’s hesitation. And because of that, your thirst for revenge became cheaper than a dog’s.”
The man screamed as if the idea were absurd.
“Does that even matter? All that matters is getting the revenge! Even if I break myself, making that bastard suffer worse than hell is what counts!”
“No. Revenge is impossible without a soul.”
Ferda reached into the pouch he had brought.
“Even if that soul becomes filthy and broken, only when you hold it entirely as your own does revenge finally become real.”
What he pulled out were vials. No color, no labels—nothing to reveal their contents. Seven in all.
“So stop pretending you understand me just because you’re wearing my face.”
He uncorked one and stepped closer.
“Enjoy life.”
Upper floors of the castle, the alchemy workshop.
The alchemist was hard at work cleaning up.
“May I come in?”
At the familiar voice of the old man, the alchemist stopped and bowed low.
“Count Consiler. Of course you may enter whenever you wish.”
“Thank you for granting Lord Regent Valdrova the use of the workshop.”
“Not at all. How could a humble man like me refuse Your Excellency’s request?”
Count Consiler made a show of glancing around before speaking.
“By the way, do you know what sort of medicine Lord Regent Valdrova was making?”
“Here is the list of materials the Lord Regent requested.”
The quick-witted alchemist handed over the lists Ferda had written. Consiler scanned them. He was a knight and a soldier, yet he had picked up a fair amount of knowledge over the years—including alchemy. The basics he could grasp at a glance. That was why his face twisted with disbelief.
“These…… appear to be ingredients for a healing potion. Am I right?”
The alchemist nodded.
“Yes. That’s correct.”
“He came all the way here just to make ordinary healing potions? Something like that he could have simply asked of you, couldn’t he?”
“That’s what I thought as well.”
“‘That’s what I thought as well’?”
The sigh Consiler had been about to release vanished. The alchemist stammered.
“Well, that is…….”
“Speak freely. I’ll overlook a little criticism.”
“At the risk of my life, then…… Lord Regent Valdrova’s skill at alchemy is…… no, it was simply the worst.”
Disgust colored every word. Count Consiler blinked at the reaction.
“That bad, coming from you?”
“Yes. Complete amateur—no, worse than an amateur. If one of my apprentices had done what he did, I’d have boxed his ears on the spot.”
“Hmm…….”
“Hah—forgive me. I spoke out of turn…….”
Count Consiler stroked his beard, thought for a moment, then spoke.
“I suspect it wasn’t inexperience.”
“But the methods and techniques were completely wrong. Only a total beginner would…….”
“Tell me. What happens when the process is done incorrectly?”
“Well…….”
The alchemist began reading from the notes he had taken.
“To pick just one of the Lord Regent’s actions: he stirred far too quickly.”
“And if one stirs too quickly?”
“The healing effect is reduced.”
“What else?”
“During the cooling stage he shook the cauldron. Shaking while the medicinal properties are meant to settle evenly also weakens the restorative power. And then…….”
He continued listing every worst possible error. In that short process Ferda had committed more than twenty mistakes.
“Every single one of those steps…….”
The alchemist could not help feeling a kind of awe. While watching he had noticed nothing, yet once he picked them apart one by one the pattern became clear. Alchemy is delicate. A single error can erase the healing effect entirely or leave nothing better than flavored water. Yet every “mistake” Ferda had made consistently produced the same result.
“They all reduce both the speed and the strength of recovery…….”
Far too deliberate a direction for a mere beginner.
“Guhhhhk!”
Every muscle in the man’s body locked rigid. Veins stood out on his neck; he ground his already broken teeth until they shattered further.
“Can you feel it?”
Ferda dangled the empty vial and asked. Everything that had been inside it was now inside the man.
“Doesn’t your whole body feel like a burning field? Slow and searingly hot.”
“Guhhhhk…… what the hell did you……?!”
He could not finish the sentence. Ferda answered anyway.
“A beggarly life.”
“Wh-what is that……!”
“A name I coined. The most painful life I give to bastards like you who are ready to die. What you’re feeling right now is the growth pain of nerves that died under brutal torture coming back to life.”
“Guhhhhk……?!”
“That’s right. This isn’t killing you. I’m bringing you back to life.”
“Y-you son of a biiiiitch……!”
This could not possibly be healing. Ferda shook the empty vial as he continued.
“Isn’t it interesting? The better a healing potion, the thicker and faster the recovery. That’s why high-grade potions are always popular—they’re refined enough that you can drink them mid-battle with almost no aftereffects.”
The man had once been a knight. He had stood on real battlefields; he knew exactly how superior potions felt.
“Cheap potions, on the other hand, are agony. Slow recovery, weak effect. What I made is the cheapest of the cheap. So when I press like this…….”
Ferda’s index finger pressed firmly on a bruised spot.
“Gyaaaaah!”
A scream tore free. Even under the executioner’s torture the man had never let out a raw cry like that.
“Nerves that have just come back are exquisitely sensitive. And that was only a finger.”
He picked up something the executioner had left behind—a long, sharp object. A needle.
“What do you suppose this will feel like?”
Clank-clank!
“Stop—sto-o-op!!”
The man lost his mind and thrashed.
“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything!”
“Tell me what?”
“There’s a reason you’re doing this torture, right, you bastard?! I’ll spill it all! Where our base is—everything! Just stop! Please! Pleeease!”
Five minutes. That was how long it took for a man who had endured the executioner’s work to break. It ended remarkably quickly. After all, he had learned how to resist while dying, but never how to resist while living.
“No.”
Instead of asking questions, Ferda forced a gag into the man’s mouth.
“Your surrender is already certain, but not yet.”
He set down the empty vial and picked up the next one beside it. Liquid sloshed. To the man’s hypersensitive ears it sounded like storm waves crashing ashore.
“Sing a little longer. Feel a little more of the beggarly life you threw away.”
Down the spiral staircase that led deeper underground, the screams of a wicked man fallen into hell never ceased.
Three hours later, Ferda faced Count Consiler again in the reception room.
“I learned a few interesting facts.”
“What are they?”
“They call themselves Dopplers.”
“Dopplers? Sounds like something taken from doppelgangers.”
“Exactly. They claim the name means they are superior to mere doppelgangers.”
“Self-absorbed. Typical of demonkin.”
Count Consiler gave a dry laugh.
“I never imagined we would obtain information on the demonkin themselves.”
“The fact that they are closer to humans than true demons helped. If they hadn’t been so human, none of the torture methods I know would have worked.”
“Truly remarkable. To create something even we could never have imagined…….”
Even the alchemist who had served the castle for thirty years had been left speechless by the idea. Ferda had ruined a healing potion with dozens of times more precision and difficulty than it would have taken to make a proper one. It was an art form in its own right.
“These Dopplers—Chancellor Bernard cannot have been the first. Do you know when it began?”
“He claims it started ten years ago. He himself had only just risen from Servant-class to Knight-class, so he doesn’t know the full details.”
Demonkin have ranks. Servant-class are ordinary human thralls, disposable pieces. From Knight-class upward they begin to wield true demonic power and authority.
“If it began ten years ago, a great many must already be hidden.”
“Not only in Escoleia—inside the Grand Council itself as well.”
“That…… is impossible. The presence of Chaos’s minions inside the domain of Blancaros, Lord of the Great Order? Unthinkable.”
“I already know what Chancellor Bernard said at the Grand Council. Whether human or Doppler, the existence of demonkin thralls inside is already an established fact.”
Count Consiler understood the logic, yet accepting it fully was another matter.
“The Grand Council that was meant to unite the entire continent will now begin to lose its trust.”
The Grand Council had been founded for the harmony of the Serdes Continent. Word that a subordinate of the evil dragon Godwin had been planted inside Blancaros’s absolute domain would shake the continent. The political fallout would be far too great to handle lightly.
“What will you do?”
Consiler asked Ferda. Perhaps this man would find a wise judgment even in a crisis like this.
“The best course is still a preemptive strike.”
“Catching the enemy by surprise is indeed excellent tactics. But one needs to know the location of their base before one can strike, does one not?”
“Of course.”
Only then grasping the implication, Count Consiler’s face lit up.
“Surely you didn’t learn the location of their stronghold as well?”
“Not the main base, but a critical facility. He served as captain of the guard at the research site where they create more of their kind. That means he knows the weak points better than anyone.”
“Then we can move against them at once.”
Knowing the enemy’s location made the conditions perfect.
“There is one problem.”
“What is it?”
“That research facility lies inside Silverwind’s territory.”
“Ah…….”
Consiler knew exactly how relations with Silverwind currently stood.
“That complicates matters. If we could request Silverwind’s cooperation the whole affair would be simple…….”
“They would never grant it. And the time spent making the request would be wasted as well.”
“True. Providing them the information would be the next best option, yet even that feels unsatisfactory.”
“If our only goal were simple extermination, we could simply collapse the mountain and be done with it.”
The target of the preemptive strike was not a military gathering point but a research facility. In other words, information was the true prize—not soldiers. That place would hold not only data on the Dopplers but also the larger plans the demonkin had set in motion. Ferda made his decision.
“We strike in secret, destroy it, and withdraw.”
A razor-edge special operation that could tip into open war at the slightest misstep. Just as Ferda began to shape the outline of the plan, Count Consiler unexpectedly spoke first.
“Forgive the presumption, but would you grant this old man the chance?”
“A chance?”
“Yes.”
Count Consiler sank to one knee and laid a hand over his heart.
“As a knight who serves as the Empire’s shield and who swears loyalty to the Great Power of Strength, I wish to become a true force at Your Lordship’s side.”
He was an elderly man with hair gone white. Yet in his prime he had been a knight recognized throughout the Empire—a knight who had lost everything and engineered his own demotion. Ferda accepted the request with open welcome.
“We leave tomorrow. Begin preparations at once.”