Chapter 28

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter: 28

Chapter Title: Dragon's Bride

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‘The dragon that fell for the princess at first sight, ambushed the wedding procession, and abducted her in a bride abduction marriage.’

This was an incredibly famous tale.

I had used it for my marriage to Arpad.

And before my regression, Evangeline Ruth and Ludwig Kielern had exploited it too.

The legend of Dragon Artanus and Princess Estrid was fact and history.

The existence of Arpad standing before my eyes right now was proof of that.

The descendant who had inherited the dragon's bloodline so thickly.

But beyond the founding myth of the Estrid imperial family, there were plenty of stories about dragons abducting princesses and the knights who tried to rescue them.

Not just on Earth, but in this world too.

Yet people rarely harbored such doubts.

‘Why do dragons always abduct princesses?’

In most tales, the reason boiled down to one of two things.

First, to take her as a wife.

Second, to devour her.

But I knew those two reasons actually stemmed from the same source.

The existence of the ‘Dragon’s Bride.’

The Dragon’s Bride was a being who could make a dragon’s power and body even stronger.

“As if a part of the dragon that was meant to be whole had broken off.”

That was why dragons sought their brides in their own ways.

Some took them as lifelong mates.

Others devoured them.

The methods were polar opposites, but the dragons’ desire for their brides was the same.

Desperately so.

To the point of losing their reason.

Even turning an entire nation into an enemy and waging years of war, Artanus never gave up on Estrid.

He couldn’t.

‘Meaning Princess Estrid was that important to Artanus.’

The power of the ‘bride’ had the side effect of driving even a dragon mad, reducing it to a mere beast.

So for hybrids who couldn’t fully handle the dragon’s blood, what would a ‘bride’ be?

Especially for one who could go insane and die at any moment?

I already thought I knew the answer.

I’d seen Arpad completely consumed by madness before.

In my first life, if the emperor’s sword hadn’t taken his head before he could kill me, Arpad probably would have devoured me.

Dominated by mania, acting on beastly instinct to consume the ‘bride.’

Tension and anxiety pulled taut like a bowstring drawn to its limit.

I learned this truth in my first life, long after meeting Arpad and watching him die.

In my previous life—my third regression.

Even for me, who’d experienced death three times, the moment of dying was always a horrific, nauseating memory.

And there were moments that lingered in my memory as terribly as death, or even worse.

The times spent with ‘that man’ were like that.

‘Tower Master Gaspar.’

Among those who followed Evangeline Ruth, he was a peculiar one.

Not like the others, swayed by her abilities, charm, or uniqueness.

‘He allied with her purely for personal gain.’

In a word, he was like a mad scientist.

The kind from dramas or movies who conducted insane experiments on humans.

Swap that scientist for a mage, and the scientific experiments for magical ones—that was Gaspar.

And the field he was most obsessed with was dragons.

He wanted to create a dragon with his own hands, and the imperial royals who inherited dragon blood were the perfect test subjects he craved.

‘That’s why Gaspar cooperated with Evangeline Ruth in exchange for Arpad’s corpse.’

This was why I never suspected Evangeline Ruth didn’t truly like Arpad.

Every time, she handed over his corpse to secure the Tower Master’s aid.

And what the Tower Master received from Evangeline Ruth wasn’t just Arpad’s body.

It included humans he could use freely in his magical experiments.

Most of the test subjects Evangeline Ruth provided were death row inmates.

And I was among them.

Evangeline Ruth secretly pulled me from prison—where I was held for adultery and treason charges—and handed me over as a test subject to the Tower Master.

Gaspar cackled as he treated me especially among the subjects.

“Please, please stop! It hurts too much!”

“Can’t be helped. Eva insisted I treat you especially well and take good care of you.”

A change came to those days of endless cruel and agonizing experiments purely by coincidence.

While fleeing the pain, I couldn’t escape outside but stumbled into an even more dangerous place.

There, I encountered Arpad. Or more precisely, what had once been Arpad.

I’d met Arpad several times across my lives—as Crown Prince Arpad or Mercenary King Gerald.

But seeing his corpse reanimated as a moving monster? That was the first time.

I knew his face, yet I didn’t realize then that this being was made from Arpad’s corpse.

Its body was grotesquely deformed.

Covered head to toe in black scales, with an incomplete wing sprouting from its back. Claws like hooks that shredded bricks.

The monstrous fusion of dragon and human was utterly horrifying.

The chained beast, devoid of reason, lunged at me. I thought I was done for.

“Kraaak!!”

“Kyaaah!!!”

But I survived.

And the monster made from Arpad’s corpse had grabbed hold of me, staring with red eyes.

A monster no different from a mindless animal.

“...?”

“Grrruk......”

And the next moment.

The monster began licking the wound on my knee from when I’d fallen.

I realized it soon enough.

“My blood... you’re drinking it?”

The monster lapped at my blood like it was nectar.

When there was no more to lick, it tried to tear into my neck to drink more.

The Tower Master stopped it.

“Oh no! Can’t have that! Eva said to keep this test subject alive and return her intact!”

Under the Tower Master’s magic, the monster made from Arpad’s corpse flew back and smashed into the wall.

Tower Master Gaspar tilted his head.

“Hm? But why didn’t it kill this test subject? It always tore apart anything that got close.”

And from those horrific experiments, Gaspar drew his conclusion.

“Yes. It was because of your unique constitution! Your blood and flesh strengthen dragon power and compensate for its incompleteness.”

“So unstable hybrids have no choice but to devour you to gain your abilities.”

“Ahh. My hypothesis was right. Princess Estrid was a special existence, just like you! That’s why a colossal being like a dragon needed her.”

He cheered and used me in experiments for the next half year.

The nickname he gave me was this.

“Dragon’s Bride. No moniker suits you better.”

To the Tower Master obsessed with dragons, I was the ultimate test subject.

He always lamented.

“Ahh. I’d love to see what happens if I brought the living Crown Prince Arpad to you. Such a shame.”

And when Evangeline Ruth demanded I be returned for public execution, he even resisted.

“I haven’t finished my experiments! Give me just a bit more time!”

Still, wanting to monopolize the results, he never told Evangeline Ruth about my constitution.

Thanks to that, it took half a year to return from the mage tower to the imperial prison.

Probably, after I died, he got my corpse too.

Evangeline Ruth executed me immediately upon retrieval, so I don’t know what happened after.

My third life was horrific in so many ways.

And that half year in the mage tower was especially nightmarish.

If there was any silver lining, it was learning what abilities I had as the ‘Dragon’s Bride’ and how to use them.

No, on second thought, that’s no silver lining.

From that experience, I learned I was immensely useful to a living Arpad as the ‘Dragon’s Bride.’

But I also learned one undeniable fact.

“When a dragon meets its bride, it seeks to claim her to compensate for its own incompleteness.”

“There are many ways. The most primal and violent? Devouring her, of course.”

Gaspar would mutter on endlessly, even when I didn’t want to hear it.

About the dragon ecology he’d uncovered.

About my abilities as the dragon’s bride.

Even hypotheses on how those with dragon blood would act toward me.

Each time, I shuddered but played along.

Chatting distracted him and paused the experiments.

“So all dragons want to eat me when they see me?”

“Not all. Look at Princess Estrid—she didn’t die. And you saw her descendants.”

To Gaspar’s words, I muttered while staring at Arpad’s corpse pinned to the wall like a butterfly specimen.

“Imperial royals.”

“Right. The imperial royals. Noble bloodlines inheriting the great dragon’s lineage.”

“Would they try to eat me too?”

“Maybe. But not all brides get devoured, I said.”

He whispered in a low voice.

“Or they might try to mate with her.”

And now, before my eyes stood the man who, in the empire’s 300-year history, had inherited the dragon’s blood second only to the founding emperor.

The living Arpad.

His red reptilian eyes gleaming.