Ch.916This Is Quite a Precious Thing…

Eleonora and Sigel, along with the other administrators, grabbed their heads and screamed in frustration, but they faithfully carried out my instructions.

Instructions to build shelter-level evacuation centers in all major cities of Hestella, and to conduct regular evacuation drills for the entire population.

Of course, it’s still only in the planning stage, and it will take quite some time until the shelters are built and completed…

Rome wasn’t built in a day. For now, I should be satisfied just with the completion of the proposal.

—-

While Eleonora conducted the political meeting on my behalf with a more depressed face than usual, I left the palace to visit Ophelia van Sigmillus’s residence.

I had something to give her.

“Ah, you’re here?”

Ophelia, whom I met again, was extracting moisture from Claire’s body as usual.

“Hng, haaaa…”

To the point where I wondered if she might suffer from dehydration.

“Just a moment. I need to collect this.”

She carefully gathered the fluid that had thoroughly soaked Claire’s thighs and poured it into a glass flask. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what she intended to use it for.

Nor did I particularly want to know.

“Come on… do that kind of thing when you’re alone. When you’re alone. Don’t do it in front of me, it’s embarrassing to watch.”

What sin did I commit in my past life to deserve witnessing this scene of my crazy sister collecting her sister’s bodily fluids in a test tube?

“That’s unfair. Until just a moment ago, we were alone, just as you said.”

Ophelia covered Claire, who had fainted, with a blanket, then pulled down her rolled-up clothes to cover herself, smirking.

“If you had given some notice that you were coming, I might understand, but how was I supposed to know to prepare for a guest when you said nothing?”

“I guess… that’s true?”

Now that I heard it, it didn’t seem wrong…

Well, let’s just move on.

Claire’s fountain show was somewhat embarrassing to watch, but it wasn’t worth wasting time arguing about.

“So, what brings you here?”

After securing the test tube filled with translucent liquid in a wooden stand, Ophelia finally turned to me and asked about my sudden visit.

“I heard you killed a dragon. Is it about that?”

“Hmm… something like that.”

“Something like that?”

Ophelia tilted her head, wondering what I meant.

I searched through the small bag I had at my side and revealed the reason I had personally come to her residence and laboratory.

– Woooong…

A crystal of mana compressed to the extreme, taking physical form. A pearl-like ore emitting a faint, iridescent light and vibrating gently.

The core extracted from the dragon’s heart.

“Wait. This is… could it be…!”

Ophelia’s eyes widened and her lips trembled as she recognized the small ore I held up.

“Yes, exactly what you think it is.”

I smiled at her reaction and lightly wiggled my fingertips holding the core.

“Ha, so the Dragon Orb actually exists? I can’t believe it…”

Ophelia shook her head in disbelief, sighing with amazement.

It was indeed surprising. Even if she knew about it in theory, this was likely the first time she had ever encountered one in person.

Not just her, but even her family’s ancestors probably never witnessed one either.

Even dragon scales, which used to be plentiful from a single dragon, had become so rare over the past 800 years that now even a weapon containing just three or four scales was considered a treasure worth an entire castle.

In such times, there was no way an ordinary noble family would have had the opportunity to see a dragon’s core, which was incomparably rarer than scales.

Moreover, Dragon Orbs weren’t guaranteed from killing any dragon—only some dragons possessed them.

From Ophelia’s perspective, it must have felt like a legendary treasure of uncertain existence suddenly appearing before her eyes.

“What to do with this… you’d know better than me, being a mage. Right?”

I held the dragon’s core in my palm and extended it toward Ophelia, who stared at me with trembling eyes, her mouth opening and closing like a fish.

Her face had become comically distorted with a mixture of shock, bewilderment, and greed.

“…You’re giving it to me? The Dragon Orb?”

Her voice was dazed, as if she’d just woken up. Her face suggested she couldn’t tell if this sudden fortune was a dream or reality. Like a young man who received dozens of winning lottery tickets as a birthday gift.

“It’s of no use to me anyway.”

Seeing Ophelia, who always appeared composed, unable to hide her shock was quite an entertaining sight, so I shrugged lightly with a grin.

“What would a knight like me do with something like this? And I can’t exactly sell it to another country either.”

I wasn’t lying. While the dragon’s core was undoubtedly a priceless treasure, to me, a non-mage, it was just an extremely expensive rock.

Selling it to another country would bring in money, but that would be shortsighted—inviting future danger for immediate profit.

If it fell into the hands of Dragonborn, it could birth a new dragon, and if Dwarves got it, they’d use it as a power source for formidable war machines.

Neither outcome would benefit humans.

And the elves were out of the question. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what those cunning, pointy-eared creatures would do with such a rare item.

Of course, whatever they did, I was certain it would be harmful to humans.

…What about selling it to the Holy State or the Empire?

That’s nonsense. The Holy State had no reason to buy it in the first place.

Since mana and holy power generally repel each other, they would have no use for a dragon’s core, just like me.

What about the Empire?

Unlike the Holy State, which had no reason to buy it, I had no reason to sell it to the Empire.

The Empire’s treasury wasn’t bottomless, and purchasing the dragon’s core from me would significantly impact their finances.

Naturally, they would then try to reduce the barrier restoration funds they had planned to provide, arguing that Hestella’s resources alone were sufficient for the restoration.

So selling to the Empire was out of the question.

If I didn’t sell the core to the Empire, both the core and the Empire’s money would be ours, but if I sold it, we’d have the same amount of money but lose the core.

Once I realized the possibility of diverting the support funds, there was no reason to sell the core to raise funds.

Well… even without such grand reasons, I had no intention of giving the core to another country from the beginning.

From the moment I found and extracted the core from Amitamir’s heart, I had already decided who would become its owner.

In other words, I had planned to gift it to Ophelia all along.

To safely overcome the coming crisis, she too needed to become incomparably stronger than she was now.

“So take it while I’m offering. If it feels too burdensome, consider it several years’ worth of salary.”

I urged her again to take the core, as if asking what she was waiting for.

“No, no matter what, this… this isn’t something that should be given to someone else…”

Despite her words, Ophelia’s fingertips were slowly but surely moving toward the Dragon Orb.

Yes, it was too tempting to refuse.

No mage could possibly reject a dragon’s core.

The Dragon Orb was a highly compressed mass of vast magical power, a mineral that continuously generated mana like a reactor core.

Used as a power source for magical tools, it would essentially create a perpetual motion machine, and if absorbed by a mage themselves, they could become a superhuman wielding dragon-like magical powers.

Of course, this wasn’t possible for just anyone—only those with the capacity to handle it could do so… but that wasn’t a concern in this case.

While an ordinary mage might struggle, someone who had reached the realm of Archmage would have sufficient capacity.

Of course, even for an Archmage, it would take time to fully digest the power of the Dragon Orb.

The only issue was that Ophelia hadn’t yet crossed that threshold… but from my perspective, that seemed imminent.

She was already on the verge of reaching the level of Archmage.

To cross the barrier before her, she needed not one step, but just half a step?

Honestly, I doubted even Jahan and Leonore together would stand a chance against her at range.

It meant that Ophelia, like me, was born with transcendent talent, though not quite at my level. Befitting one of the protagonists of the original story.

After all, wasn’t that why Claire had fallen so far as to become the witch’s subordinate?

Feeling threatened by a talent she could never hope to match, she grew jealous and crawled under the witch’s feet.

Even then, overwhelmed by the difference in talent, she couldn’t win one-on-one.

It might seem terribly unfair to those who put in many times more effort than Ophelia only to not even reach her ankles, but such was the cruel reality of talent disparity.

Ah, well, there’s that saying that genius cannot defeat hard work, and hard work cannot defeat passion… but that depends on the person.

Unlike fools who rely solely on talent and waste their gifts on pleasure, Ophelia never neglected honing her magical skills even while enjoying her “activities” with her sister.

In other words, she was a genius who worked hard and enjoyed herself too.

…Though what she enjoyed seemed to be something else entirely, but she was enjoying herself nonetheless.

So if not now, then someday she would inevitably become the strongest. Because she was a hardworking genius who enjoyed what she did.

…Of course, this was only when limiting the comparison to “human mages.”

Why?

That’s obvious. So obvious it doesn’t need to be asked.

Think about it. No matter how strong Ophelia became, could she ever defeat me?

Not a chance.

There are levels to effort, and tiers to genius.

Moreover, I had the upper hand even in terms of enjoyment, at least in combat.

Unlike me, who enjoyed combat itself, what she enjoyed wasn’t fighting but magical research, sadistic experiments, and intimate activities with her sister.

So unless we were competing in oyster-shucking, in a life-or-death battle, I would undoubtedly win by a landslide.