“Millefie, did you know Count Deuce’s heir went on a Bridal Quest?” Madeleine asked.
“Huh.”
Normally, marriages between dragonkin were negotiated by the parents, and the couple would arrange a meeting later. After that, the decision was made on whether to push through based on the compatibility of their mana.
A Bridal Quest, on the other hand, was a very forceful method. It involved the man in question transforming into a dragon in front of a crowd, and women in that crowd would need to try to suppress the transformation. Regardless of their family’s social standing, challengers would step up to try their hand.
“But no one was able to suppress him, and a Sealing Enforcer had to step in and seal him on the spot for a whole month.”
“What a horrible thing to happen.”
“Truly,” Madeleine agreed.
If a dragon’s berserk state wasn’t suppressed, they’d go insane and become a monster. Once someone got to that point, they became known as a Corrupt Dragon, feared as a threat to everyone. All sorts of problems would arise if a family produced a Corrupt Dragon. To avoid this, Sealing Enforcers were entrusted with sealing berserk dragons on the spot until they could be suppressed.
“The thought of being married to someone like Count Deuce’s heir terrifies me,” Madeleine said, shivering.
“That will never happen to my brother,” I said, reassuring her. “He always says that he doesn’t want to transform into a dragon anyway.”
“That’s a relief to hear.”
While there were hotheaded dragons like Count Deuce’s heir, there were also ones who hated confrontation like my brother. It really depended on the individual. A dragonkin’s noble rank was determined by the strength of their draconic transformations. As we were low-ranking nobles, one could easily guess just how strong our dragon transformations were.
Madeleine was quite reserved and not the ambitious type. I could tell that she cared about my brother a lot. She truly was the perfect partner for him.
We arrived at the classroom. The students were split up into smaller groups of friends, all engaged in lively conversation. The main topic of today was none other than the first public appearance of the Dragon Duke in the last hundred years.
“What a wonderful event that was!”
“Nobody knows if he’s married or still single, right?”
“As long as we don’t know yet, I can keep dreaming!”
“He should do a Bridal Quest like Count Deuce’s heir!”
“Are you planning to try your hand at the Quest if he does?”
“Of course! What about you?”
“Hmm, I don’t know yet...”
The bride of the lord of the dragonkin would absolutely need to have a massive pool of mana. Trying to suppress him even once would likely burn away your entire life. Charlotte, my previous incarnation, had known about the berserk state and the dangers that came with it. A normal human like her would be completely unable to use Suppression Magic. And yet, with teary eyes, she’d insisted that she would stay by his side nonetheless. The Dragon Duke had been greatly moved by that, and he’d sworn to make her his bride. In retrospect, if the engagement had proceeded, there was no doubt that only doom would’ve awaited the two of them.
Madeleine whispered to me. “Mille-Feuille, did you ever think about becoming the Dragon Duke’s bride?”
“Absolutely not,” I said, shooting down the idea. Getting involved with that man had gotten my previous incarnation killed. Thankfully, I felt no lingering regrets regarding that, and I refused to be the plaything of love and romance in this life. I would rather be married to someone like my brother or father—dragons whose berserk states didn’t require that much energy to subdue. The Dragon Duke was not one of those dragons.
That said, was I getting these strong feelings toward him because of Charlotte’s memories? If so, how deplorable! I tried to shove these thoughts into a far corner of my mind.
I checked on Madeleine, and she stared at me, trying to glean my thoughts. Did she want her future sister-in-law to marry the Dragon Duke?
“Madeleine, did you think I was so ambitious that I wanted to marry him?”
“N-No, I wouldn’t say that! If you married the Dragon Duke, you would be so distant from us. I want you to stay close to me and Lord Glacé, okay?”
What she’d said was so adorable that I just had to give her a big hug.
The bell rang and class began. The teacher came into the room with massive bags under her eyes. Her complexion was also paler than usual.
“I apologize for showing up to class in this state,” the teacher started. “Last night, my husband transformed, and I had to keep suppressing him until dawn.”
The teacher’s husband was a royal guard to the Dragon Duke. The class began murmuring to each other in worried voices, inquiring if something serious had happened.
“It’s nothing serious. He just got drunk and transformed,” she said, reassuring us. Relieved voices echoed throughout the room.
There were different situations in which one could transform. It could happen voluntarily, or because of emotional agitation, or one could be forced to do so from a threat to one’s life. It could also happen if one was exposed to mana or for myriad other reasons.
The stronger a dragon was, the more difficult he was to suppress and the bigger the burden it would be on the family member doing the suppressing. To address this, polygamy was allowed in dragonkin culture, but the majority of dragonkin men preferred to be faithful to one wife and disliked having several. Truly polygamous households were a rarity.
The teacher’s husband was strong enough to be assigned to the Dragon Duke’s royal guard, and therefore his dragon form was as powerful as one would expect. He was strong enough to require multiple wives to suppress him, yet she did it by herself. As a result, the teacher looked as if she were on the brink of death as she stood on the lecture podium.
Isn’t it practically abuse to force the task of suppressing a dragon transformation onto one woman? That thought bubbled into my head—one that had never even crossed my mind before. It must have been from the memories of Charlotte—someone who had been able to question things that were otherwise completely ordinary to dragonkin.
I looked at my classmates around the room. All of them expressed sympathy for our teacher’s plight, but none of them felt angry about this situation. It had been drilled deeply into us that it was the responsibility of women to suppress the transformations of the men.
Only women who’d had enough training were allowed to practice Suppression Magic. Once I graduated, I would have to suppress my brother, and perhaps my father too. Even just using this power in class ate away at us. Some young women developed skin problems, some became pale and sickly, some lost the shine in their hair, and some even started to develop eczema. If I tried to write down all the side effects, there’d be no end to the list.
Why did the dragonkin just accept this as fact? Even if the men lost their minds while transforming, was there really nothing they could do about it on their own?
My irritation just kept on growing, and as a result, I didn’t retain anything from the lecture.
During break time, Madeleine called out to me.
“Mille-Feuille, are you all right? You look pale.”
“I’m fine, Madeleine.”
Having memories of my past life was such a huge pain. I hadn’t been thinking about it until now, but inside me were my thoughts as a dragonkin woman and the thoughts of Charlotte. From her point of view, things that the Dragon Duchy of Éclair found commonplace seemed strange and unusual.
Madeleine looked worried about me as she fiddled with the pimple on her chin.
“Madeleine, don’t touch your blemish. It will get worse if you do,” I warned her.
“Oh, um, you’re right. I did it without thinking.”
Moonlight was said to heal conditions caused by using Suppression Magic, like pimples or a bad complexion. The moon could be said to be a large magicstone—a gigantic pool of magic. The moonlight that fell onto the land was infused with mana. Bathing in it helped people to replenish their mana and to restore their skin. However, recovering from mana depletion required bathing in the moonlight for an entire night. It could even take three full nights to fully recover. In any case, lost mana was not easy to restore.
“Oh, but wait a minute. What if we get ointment, let it sit in moonlight a few nights, and then use it on your pimple? That could make it heal quite quickly,” I suggested.
One could absorb and store moonlight with magic. Normally it was used on people, but it wasn’t particularly effective. The composition of mana differed from person to person, and a person could not absorb all of the rays of mana from the moon at once.
But what if I used that magic on an object instead of a person? If I reconstituted the mana into a form that most people could absorb, it might have some effect.
“Mille-Feuille, I’m not quite following what you mean. Use an ointment bathed in moonlight on my pimple? Where could we buy such a thing?” Madeleine asked, confused.
“It’s not sold anywhere yet. I was thinking that we should make one ourselves,” I explained.
Charlotte’s interests had included creating ointments and potions for cosmetic use. Thanks to her knowledge, I had just come up with this idea.
“But we can’t just make one,” I continued. “We have to let it absorb mana and store the mana in it with magic.”
“Can you use Enchant, Millefie?”
“Just a bit.”
Enchant was a spell taught to us in class, but most students weren’t able to successfully cast it due to its difficulty. Madeleine wasn’t able to use it either.
“I’m not sure if it’ll work out, but do you want to try it?” I asked her.
“Yes, that sounds fun! Please, let me help you out,” Madeleine replied.
“Of course! Let’s make it together and get rid of that pimple!”
“Okay!” And with that, we decided to take on the challenge of making a magic ointment for healing pimples.