Ah~~! It’s morning and a new day has arrived since yesterday and what’s Marcel doing or rather, about to do?  

Well, he’s trying to figure out the weird gift that his future hubby gave him, the magic control technique that the Demon Lord had passed to him through the kiss yesterday. Magic control is something that Claude had also said that he was no good at unlike Silva or the expert, Allan. He had a ton of magic power and his overall reserves were quite good but what’s the use of all that magic power constantly flowing into his magic pool if his overall control over it is lacking. The answer is not good as it might cause severe damage to himself in the future if he doesn’t find a way to keep it under control. 

Since he didn’t want to die just yet, he began examining the technique that he’d received in clear detail, making sure not to miss anything. The technique was a bit hard to fully grasp, but swift understanding was his forte, so it didn’t take any more than an hour to understand half of the core basics of it. He was about to work on the other half when one of his maids, the second one Edgar, came to inform him of an urgent summons from an unknown individual. 

Marcel wanted to refuse meeting whoever it was that was looking for him, because of his, um, ‘special current situation’, but Edgar said that she’d already informed the Demon Lord of the visitor’s arrival and he approved the visitor’s request to meet his fiancé after determining that he wasn’t dangerous, so Marcel could go and listen to whatever this unknown person had to say.  

After Edgar delivered the message, she brought Marcel the location of the one looking for him, then went back on standby to observe Marcel from a distance. After all, it was the duty of his personal maids to make sure that he was safe and always got whatever it is he needed while he was back in the castle. 

The location the maid brought him was a special meeting room in the back of the Demon Lord’s castle that he hadn’t been to before. He entered the room a bit hesitantly and in the room was a man. He had green hair and eyes. 

“Oh, you’re here! That’s great! Finally, I can deliver this message from that person.” He said, genuinely delighted to see Marcel. He looked so delighted that one would think that his life would have been in danger if he didn’t meet him. He was on the verge of tears from sheer relief after meeting Marcel. 

Marcel was a bit nervous after seeing the man’s delighted expression. He didn’t know who he was or who this ‘person’ the man was talking about was, so he asked, 

“Um... excuse me, but who are you?” 

“Oh, I apologize for not introducing myself. My name is but of little relevance to you. What I can say is that I’m a messenger sent by someone who knows you fairly well.” He said with a smile. He also stared blatantly at Marcel without any intention to look away. A blush appeared on the man’s face, which made Marcel feel a bit uncomfortable. 

“Tsk! It must be because of my current looks...” Marcel thought as he stared at the man with no intention to not stare at him and getting redder the more, he stared. He’d already forgotten about looks from having been away from people who knew the former him for quite a bit.  

“Ahem! Could you please deliver this message that this ‘person’ I know sent for me?” He said, eyeing the man with a suspicious look. The man snapped out of it. 

“Right. Sorry for the delay. Here...” He handed over a letter to Marcel and then continued, “...it’s from a woman. One with ivory black hair. Do you, by chance, remember anyone like that?” The messenger asked him. 

Marcel did a quick recollection through his memories. In the demon realms, he currently only knew four people with black hair. The first was Claude who could become a man or woman at any time, like his sister/brother, Sephana. He’d seen both with black hair, which cancels out two people. The other two with black hair were Silva, his new friend, and that woman from a while ago whom he had a brief chat with when he’d just arrived in the Demon Lord’s castle. The one with blue eyes who he met a while after arriving. She was loitering around the castle, looking for something and she stopped to tell him a bit about powerful individuals in the demon realms being able to assume perfect human forms. That lady must be the one who sent the messenger to him. It must be her. 

“Mm-hmm! I remember now. It must be that woman!” He said excited, delighted as he opened the letter, he had received with a joyous expression upon realizing that it was her. She was a lot of fun to talk to from what he still remembered from that time.  

“What can this letter she sent be about?” Marcel wondered happily as he gradually unfolded the letter and looked at it, shocked as he read,  

 

“Dear Marcel, 

How have you been? Well, for me... not so great. I’ve been sick for a while now. It’s gotten quite serious and I might be at death’s door soon. I wish to see you one last time before I pass through the gates leading to the Underworld, [Cough]. It would bring me the utmost joy if you could come before that happens. 

PS: If you decide to come right away, my messenger will bring you directly to my home as quickly as he possibly can.  

Oh, and I’ve also asked for the Demon Lord’s permission beforehand, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask him again before you leave.  

Yours sincerely 

Mysterious black-haired woman.” 

 

The letter concluded. Marcel, after reading the letter with haste, went to find the Demon Lord, which he did in the throne room. He hesitantly entered slowly, then told him that he was going out to visit someone, thinking that he was going to be rejected. 

The Demon Lord looked at him from his throne and saw the slight expression of anguish on Marcel’s face and wondered what ‘that person’ had said to his wife. Marcel looked so nervous and anxious as he twiddled his thumbs and waited for the rejection. 

“Well... okay then. Be careful and try to keep yourself safe. It will be a disaster if outsiders found out who you really are.” He said and then he winked to Marcel and smiled, which Marcel found annoying and very Demon Lord-like. He smiled brightly, relieved, and nodded, then he hastily left the throne room. 

The Demon Lord looked at Marcel’s silhouette as he left the throne room, happy that he was going to meet that pleasant woman again and he couldn’t help but smile. He then noticed that he’d been smiling a lot recently unlike how he used to be and wondered what exactly it is about that little mysterious boy that made him like that.  

The Demon Lord had tried a lot to learn more about Marcel and his origins from the Spirit of the World, but Vitalis always denied him the information, well except for one vital information that will be very relevant in the future. He wanted to know more than anyone what it was about Marcel that brightened his mood so, but Vitalis never told him and trying to find the answer himself yielded nothing but dead ends, so he gave in and decided to wait until she was ready to spill the beans on Marcel’s history. Time is the solution to all questions after all. Every question will be answered when the time is right. 

He watched Marcel run from the throne room, his silhouette disappearing, and presence had left the vicinity, smiling until Marcel disappeared fully before he went back to thinking again. It wasn’t long before a messenger came to him with a message. Oh... It looks like Marcel was going to be gone for quite a while. 

Marcel, upon having received the Demon Lord’s permission to leave, went back to the meeting room where the messenger waited and then told him that they could leave now.  

Afterward, he called the maids and told them that he was leaving; something he now felt to need to do as not to cause them to panic, a situation which he had was already averted because they already knew what was going on the moment, they saw the messenger of ‘that person’. The maids sent off their master with smiles on their faces as they stood by and waited until he left. 

Marcel, after having all his necessary preparations before leaving the castle been taken care of, wondered where exactly it is that they were about to head off to, so he asked the messenger. 

“Oh, young sir. We’re heading for the world above this one. The realm intertwined with this one. We are leaving for the secret realm where only a select few can reach. You’ll understand when we leave. Now, shall we?” The messenger asked, which Marcel nodded to. 

“Okay then. Wait a moment! Please stand back! Very far back as you can stand!” The messenger said, turning beet red again when he took another glance at Marcel. Marcel also went to stand close to the entrance of the veranda he just came from. 

Marcel stood and waited as the messenger had requested, then he was shown a sight that he believed to be truly magnificent. 

The messenger whispered to himself a bit, then a strong pulse of magic power began flowing from him. A bright green light enveloped his body and he began transforming. He began growing size-wise, and by a huge margin too.  

The man grew up to an enormous size. His size was almost enough to fill the fifteen-meter wide and two-hundred-meter-long courtyard in Marcel’s section of the palace where he trained. The messenger now had a long snake-like body, covered in jade-green scales and light-green scales, four feet supporting his large body upward. He had a long neck, a tail, and two long whiskers on the sides of his face. He had a head quite similar to Winter’s in size and looks, well, apart from the different colors. The messenger had horns made of light jade with the appearance of large green branches relaxing atop his head. His green eyes shone even brighter and more magnificent than it had when he was in his human form. He looked so majestic, regal, and strong too. It was simply magnificent. 

“I’m ready now. We can leave.” The messenger said in a deep voice so commanding and majestic in force. He wanted to ask what creature the messenger was, but at this moment, it wouldn’t take a genius to guess that he was from the dragon race, even if he looked significantly different from what his idea of a dragon was. 

Marcel’s idea of a dragon was Winter or rather, the form of Winter that he saw when he visited his cave. He was large, regal, and powerful and this creature standing in front of him harbored the same aura that he felt around Winter. It was hard to explain since he couldn’t feel any of the real auras that either Winter or the messenger carried at the time but he had this feeling that they did come from the same race, plus, they were both gigantic, so he’s got one thing right at least.  

Now that the messenger had transformed, the entire courtyard that they stood in was filled with the messenger’s large dragon body. He was also so tall now that looking at him from below seemed intimidating. No wonder he said to stand back. If he was standing close, he would have been totally crushed by him transforming alone. What would he do if he had to fight such a beast one day? He’d be crushed before he can do anything. At this time, Marcel was feeling incredibly inadequate and inferior in strength but it wasn’t as bad as compared to the Demon Lord, so he was still fine. 

“Um... we should leave now. Come up.” The messenger commanded. Marcel nodded and he used a simple wind spell, [Levitate], to move himself up unto the messenger’s large body. He placed himself a bit after the neck of the messenger.  

The messenger, upon seeing that Marcel had saddled himself said, “Hold on tight!” and then he took to the skies... without any wings. 

The messenger, after taking to the skies, whispered something again that Marcel didn’t understand and then they were enveloped in a thin layer of pale green light. The messenger after, flew higher, quickly increasing the speed at which he flew to reach an even higher altitude, and strangely, Marcel wasn’t seem affected by the speed at which they were flying, at all. 

Marcel quickly realized the reason why he wasn’t affected by the wind even at the altitude that they were flying at currently at. It was the pale green light surrounding them. It was serving as a shield against the wind and making their flight smooth. 

The messenger, upon seeing Marcel deep in thought, decided to answer a few questions that Marcel might have but isn’t asking. 

“This pale green light around us is a wind barrier; a strong one at that. Normally I wouldn’t need to use it, but it’s necessary if I want to get you safely to our location. Try enjoying the scenery of the world below us as we go. It isn’t always that one gets the chance to ride a dragon after all.” The messenger concluded, blushed once again when he said ‘chance to ride a dragon’. It was quite pleasant for Marcel to watch such a majestic creature blush like that; felt more down to earth. 

Marcel nodded and then looked down below. The messenger was right. It was quite a beautiful sight to look at. 

Even though they’d flown for a while now, they were still in the skies above Sizburn, the fabled city of dragons and the home of the Demon Lord’s castle. Sizburn was shaped like a large octagon if one looked from above. Its sheer size was about seven square miles and the Demon Lord’s castle was situated just at the beginning of one of the octagon’s sides and covered the entire side. It wasn’t as big on the width though but it was still about half the size of one of the octagon’s sides. The castle... was big. It was through the long path on the left octagon of it that he had come in through the castle with Claude. He wondered how he never saw the Demon Lord’s castle and its size when he was so close to it when he first came. Maybe a high-level illusion spell was on it and that’s why he couldn’t see it before and also, those floating gates that he’s never gotten the chance to use again because of the Demon Lord and Claude personally teleporting him around. Another reason could be his perfectly convenient pair of eyes; the Spirit Eyes, but who knows really. 

After the Demon Lord’s castle with which they came from came the market, then the telecircle at the middle which was the meeting point of all the eight separate paths along each side of the octagon. There were more shops, then the residential areas in the city, and then at the end of the city, was a large and imposing statue of the Demon Lord in all his glory. 

Marcel laughed a bit when he saw the statue and wondered how the Demon Lord felt about it. If it was him, he would have felt embarrassed whenever he saw it, but hey, at least it was quite well made and looked exactly like the Demon Lord. 

After the Demon Lord’s ginormous statue was one of the paths leading outside of the city all the way to another large forest, which more elves might live in, then further from it was a small mechanized fortress city which maybe belonged to the dwarves.  

All of the sights that Marcel saw was new and beautiful in his eyes, but sadly, he wouldn’t be able to see any more than that as the green messenger increased the altitude at which he flew again until up in the clouds they were and there, an even more spectacular magnificence waited for him to admire. 

Up above in the clouds were floating islands and lots of dragons who flew about. Some of the dragons looked like Winter in appearance while some also looked like the green messenger and others, looked nothing like both of them. Some were more serpentine while some seemed more like humanoid creatures with giant wings that flew about. The dragons that he saw had different colors and roamed about oh so freely.  

There were these two species of dragon that caught Marcel’s eye after looking at the many dragons around. These were the purple dragons and the silver dragons. The purple and silver dragons looked like Winter and were both esthetically pleasing to the eye, but the feelings that they gave him was what left an impression on them.  

The purple dragons, when Marcel looked with his eyes, were surrounded by a type of spirits that he hadn’t seen before on the ground. They looked lethal and gave off the feeling of fear and death, and so too did the feeling that the purple dragons left on him when he looked at them. 

The silver dragons were surrounded by a type of formless spirits that Marcel had seen before. They looked fairly similar to the ones that he’d seen around the rifts to other places: the telecircles. They flocked the silver dragons and were in the same crisscrossed dimension as the spirits around them. Marcel guessed that the silver dragons maybe had an ability to do with spatial rifts and dimensions and that made him want to confirm which type of spirits surrounded the messenger, and the theory that was forming in his head was right. 

Around the messenger were wind spirits and like everyone he saw, including the Demon Lord, as usual, he was covered in spirits of different colors of the elements that he used, so he made a deduction that the spirits surrounding the dragons may be indicating which abilities that they used. The ability of the purple dragons was unknown to him but the silver dragons probably had spatial-type abilities while the messenger was a dragon with wind-type abilities. He looked around a bit more at the different dragons that flew all around them and his theory about the specific spirits surrounding them being related to their ability was half proven when a red dragon breathed fire while fighting a blue dragon who breathed ice at the fire dragon. They both were surrounded by fire and ice spirits respectively. 

While Marcel was coming up with all these theories, the messenger flew forward through the air crowded by the dragons and they arrived at a floating island, and one looking very luxurious at that. 

The floating island that they arrived at was brimming with life... and spirits and as the messenger flew towards the center of the floating islands. He headed straight for the extremely eye-catching and gaudy-looking palace that was irresistibly attracted at the center of all the floating islands. That island was also the largest one; about the size of one and a half of the octagon sides of Sizburn. 

The extremely large and eye-catching palace was covered in many metals and ornaments that Marcel hadn’t seen all in one place before. The palace itself was covered in precious metals like gold, silver, platinum, and adamantium and many gems like topaz, sapphires, beryl, and rubies. The gates to this palace were made of solid jade and turquoise and the decorations on the flashy gate were all made of gems and metals that drew two majestic dragons on the gates. This made Marcel wonder just who mysterious ivory black-haired lady that he was about to meet again was. 

“This is the true home of us dragons; the secret realm in the sky. Welcome to the Xiorahan Islands; one of the two main chains of islands where our race lives.” The messenger introduced the place to Marcel as he came down, ready to land. 

The messenger, after they’d arrived in front of the gaudy palace, transformed back into his human form and had Marcel follow him inside. 

They walked across the long and similarly gaudy halls like the exterior of the palace and on the way, met a few people in human form that Marcel assumed were dragons like the messenger, although gaudier and flashier than he was. He still wondered who it is that he was about to see and before he knew it, they had arrived. 

The messenger opened the door and told Marcel to enter, then he left, leaving Marcel all alone to face whatever it is that was in front of him. He started feeling stressed. Marcel hoped that the messenger would stay with him until he met the mysterious and black-haired woman and not leave him midway before he had. Now Marcel is forced to moving forward all on his own. What will he do?