Chapter 23 : Wishbone Ash (4)

Chapter 23

Wishbone Ash

“From here on, I’ll tell you my perspective on what happened.”

I have no evidence to back it up, and I’m not asking you to believe me.

Judge the following story with your own judgment.

Think of it as history outside the textbooks.

Back then, Velmount was already a great nation in its own right. But if we speak of individuals—at that time, Sir Harry was still only Major Harry of the Axis Army. He was an officer, not particularly high-ranking, but far from a disposable underling.

Major Harry was a black-magic combat mage. Like Fury, he led his subordinates directly into the front lines. He wasn’t the kind of commander who stayed behind issuing orders.

“I respected Harry,”

Dan said to the two girls.

“In the same way I respect Casca. Those two are examples of true leaders—people who don’t just sit behind the lines, but step forward and fight so others can see.”

Harry was Velmount’s version of Casca.

But there was one thing that fundamentally set Harry apart from Casca.

Gentleness.

“He was rigid. Ruthless. Lacked compassion. Completely different from Casca,” Dan continued.

“He was more like me. Our first encounter was simply the end result of my month-long hunt.”

“What did he do to you?”

Rafinya asked—a fair question, and Dan answered her directly.

“When the Diablos first set foot on human land, every time my people attempted to push into western Velmount—back when they were still allied with the Shadow—not a single unit ever came back.”

They vanished. No communication. No bodies. No remains. No matter how many squads I sent, the result was the same.

“In the end, I had to go myself.”

That was my first meeting with Harry.

The day I realized that the most terrifying black-magic user in the world existed in Velmount.

Black magic is so fundamentally different from conventional magic that it’s categorized separately. It’s primal. Grotesque. It revels in body horror—blood, pus, bones, hair, blackened fluids.

“He made every one of our soldiers explode into minced flesh,” Dan said flatly.

“His black hole tore bones from muscle, shredded bodies into fragments, and devoured them until nothing remained. I saw it with my own eyes.”

He could snap arms and legs, twist heads backward, conjure iron spikes through the abdomen—or even pull out internal organs without touching the body at all.

All through curses.

Through dolls linked to their targets.

It was sorcery.

It was voodoo magic.

Do you understand now how Velmount’s magic differed from everywhere else?

Even if this world classifies it as “magic,” in our universe, the word that fits is sorcery.

“I took heavy damage myself,” Dan said.

He traced a line across his body—from his right ribs diagonally up to his left shoulder.

“Harry’s black magic drove a massive stake through my body from the inside, along this exact line. My entrails hung out like vines on a tree.”

“I remember this clearly—getting close to him was almost impossible. It felt like something unseen was controlling the space itself. The closer I got, the more I was torn apart.”

But black magic has a weakness.

Black magic is more dangerous than any other form of magic—but its weakness lies in the law of exchange.

“Every time Sir Harry cast a curse, he suffered an equal amount of pain in return.”

“!!!”

Shock flashed across both girls’ faces.

This had never been written anywhere.

“Black magic isn’t satisfied with mana alone,” Dan said calmly.

“It’s greedier. It demands the life of its user. That’s how Casca once explained it to me.”

“And that day, I admitted it.”

Dan struck his own chest without shame.

“I couldn’t do anything to Harry. I withdrew. We lost.”

It was a power Fury had never encountered before.

“So we changed strategy. We stopped attacking the territory under Harry’s command.”

But—

“That day, I also realized something.”

The price Harry paid for mastering black magic… was his own life.

Nora / Rafinya: “!?”

To become the greatest black-magic user in human history—

what would someone have to give up?

The question was thrown directly at the girls.

“Dedication like yours?” Dan continued.

“Training until you bleed, like Rafinya? I don’t know—but I don’t think that would be enough.”

Because from what I saw… Harry traded his life for that power.

Fury couldn’t use magic. He didn’t understand its theory or structure.

But he had experience—real encounters—which taught him more than any classroom ever could.

“The most dangerous man in Velmount was selling his own soul to the most dangerous power… to become the strongest mage.”

Each time black magic’s law of exchange rebounded, Harry writhed in agony every single night.

After driving Fury back during the day—

At night, when payment came due—

That was the night Major Harry Kane’s subordinates heard the most horrifying screams they had ever heard from him.

Like an animal being slaughtered.

Like someone burning alive.

The room was wrecked. Tears and fluids poured uncontrollably. His mouth gaped, eyes rolled back, body convulsed and twisted as if every bone was being bent out of shape. Dozens of men had to restrain him just to keep him conscious.

The backlash of a curse didn’t create wounds or blood—but the pain transmitted directly through the nervous system was real.

That was the night Major Harry Kane questioned whether he should avoid facing Fury again.

The generals and high-ranking officials—who had never before seen Velmount’s precious jewel screaming like this—finally understood:

This demon… was different from all the others.

Dan stepped down from the rock and sat level with the two girls. His eyes locked onto Rafinya.

“Harry trusted his black magic the same way you trust your family’s fire magic,” Dan said quietly.

“But he went further. He traded away his lifespan for it.”

“Can you imagine being him?”

He started doing that at your age. And the stronger the black magic became, the more it destroyed its user.

“That’s not a curse—it’s the mechanism of the discipline itself.”

Now imagine this:

Every time you kill one person, the same pain is inflicted back onto you.

Now imagine how many people Harry killed during the war.

…Rafinya shuddered.

“Want my count?” Dan said.

“He killed fifty-seven Diablos.”

Fifty-seven might not sound like much—if they were human.

But if each one was a Diablo like Fury, Freya, Roma, or Everton—

Then Harry Kane left an undeniable mark in Diablo history.

And that’s without even counting how difficult it is to kill a single Diablo—

—or what Harry had to endure in return for each one of those kills.

“Mr. Fury… why has no one ever talked about this?”

Nora stared at him.

“The rebound condition of black magic you mentioned—why has no professor ever spoken about it?”

“Living among you,” Dan replied evenly,

“I’d guess they wanted to seal that knowledge away with Harry’s death—and keep people like Rafinya from ever touching it.”

When the princess voiced it aloud—

The books did say Harry was a black-magic mage, but never specified how his power worked.

That omission alone was telling.

“Harry faced the law of exchange every time he cast a curse,” Dan said.

“That’s where his mind began to break.”

“Remember this point carefully,” he added.

“Because from here on, I’m going to talk about the other factor—the one that turned Harry into the man I met during the negotiations.”