Intimidation had been the goal all along. Rohan slowly burned the book from the bottom up. Without putting the flame directly to it, he singed the paper bit by bit. The paper blackened from the bottom and shriveled.
"Hm? I think you just squinted at the smoke?"
Rohan looked at the cover and raised the corners of his mouth. It was a vicious smile no one would believe belonged to a ten-year-old kid.
Rohan leisurely kept burning the paper. The blackened, curling edge was now reaching the chest.
"When you're a picture, is your heart okay even if your chest burns?"
The face on the cover was not okay. The portrait had now openly twisted into a scowl.
"You've already been found out, so come on out. I have no intention of catching you and handing you over to the Deren Kingdom anyway."
At Rohan's words, one of the portrait man's eyes widened. The pupil in that eye rolled toward Rohan.
"That's right, look at this face. Would someone as young as me have come to catch you?"
Rohan seemed to have a point, because the man in the portrait looked thoughtful. That didn't mean Rohan stopped burning the book.
"Aaaaagh!"
In the end, with a scream, a man burst out of the book. The instant his face popped out, Rohan flung the book away in surprise.
Rohan had been through something similar before, but he still couldn't get used to the sight of a person popping out of a book.
"Whew, the air's worse out here than it was in the book."
A man stood on the book where it had fallen to the floor. Like the portrait on the cover, his face had large, bold features, but the shadows around his eyes were a little deeper. Above all, he was remarkably tall; Rohan's head barely reached his waist.
Brushing his palms together, he looked down at Rohan with displeasure. His eyes were full of malice.
"How did you know I was hiding?"
How did I know? I saw your face, that's how.
But he couldn't say that honestly.
Rohan hurriedly came up with an excuse.
"The moment I picked up the book, I sensed an ominous energy. When I saw the cover, I knew this was it."
He had borrowed, word for word, a line someone had said in his past life. Doflamingo narrowed one eye.
"Who are you? Even the way you talk isn't a child's, is it?"
Rohan wasn't fazed. He'd already had a similar experience facing his siblings at the Succession Ceremony.
"I am Rohan, youngest young master of the Baltran family. Someone you'd never dare treat as a mere child."
Hmph. He snorted. Rohan wasn't surprised.
After black mage, the epithet most often attached to his name was Kingslayer. A man who didn't fear even a nation's king would hardly be afraid of a ten-year-old brat, however illustrious his family.
Rohan met his eyes without flinching and spoke.
"So don't you dare think about running from me."
One corner of Doflamingo's mouth rose. It was an open sneer.
"Why would I run? Couldn't I just kill you right here?"
This time Rohan raised one corner of his mouth in a smile, just as he had. It was Doflamingo who was thrown.
The youngest young master of the Baltrans was nothing for him to fear. But Gion, head of the House of Baltran and Northern Grand Duke, was another matter entirely.
"If I die here, in the family's main castle, my father, Gion Baltran, will find the culprit by any means necessary."
Not just out of a father's love. If a Baltran, one of the direct line no less, were killed in the main castle, it would be nothing less than an insult to the Baltrans.
For the family's honor alone, Gion, as family head, would hunt down the culprit and exact revenge many times more cruel.
"Could he really find me?"
Doflamingo answered as if it were nothing. But Rohan noticed the guy's gaze was oddly sliding away from him.
'He's scared deep down. Because he knows there are people who can find him.'
Rohan wasn't a fool who would summon danger without a plan. He knew there were people relentlessly hunting this man.
In his past life, Rohan had crossed paths with one of them, and she had become someone he couldn't leave out when telling the story of his life.
"You know you'll get caught eventually, even hiding in that book."
She could sense this man's energy just by going near the book. The members of the group she belonged to had the same ability.
'When I ran into him, he was inside a painting, so they must have found him here in the end, and he fled.'
In the end, Doflamingo had been caught by her and Rohan.
"I'll help you stay hidden. Is there any better way than having a pure-blooded Baltran's help inside the House of Baltran?"
He snorted with an indifferent look. But he said nothing more and fell silent for a moment.
Rohan realized he was seriously considering it. Without waiting idly, he moved on to the next step.
"Of course, I have conditions too."
"What?"
He wore a how-dare-you look. But Rohan knew full well that this would actually ease Doflamingo's suspicions.
"There's no reason for me to help you hide for nothing. Teach me magic. You're a black mage, so you know some ordinary magic too, don't you?"
He had cleverly reversed cause and effect. Rohan had drawn him out in order to learn magic in the first place.
And he also knew that before Doflamingo became a black mage, he had been a leading candidate for Master of the Red Magic Tower.
"Know... some magic, you said?"
As if he'd heard something offensive, Doflamingo dug a finger into his ear and furrowed his brow.
"Let me show you how absurd that is."
He spread both hands in front of him. Flames passed between his hands. Then, at some point, the flames froze solid. It was an eerie moment, fire frozen like ice.
CRRACK!
The red ice cracked. It broke apart into pieces, and from within, green and yellow light flashed by turns.
Rohan watched in wonder as lightning passed back and forth between his hands. Doflamingo turned the mana in his hands into wind and blew it into Rohan's face.
Even as he stumbled back, Rohan kept his eyes on those hands to the very end. He wasn't watching so closely out of mere fascination.
"So you can use several elements of mana together."
"That's right. A method only I can pull off. I started dabbling in black magic to learn it. I originally belonged to the Red Magic Tower, you see."
Doflamingo expected Rohan to be surprised that he had been a mage of the illustrious Red Magic Tower. But Rohan's interest lay elsewhere, and it was Doflamingo who was surprised by his composure.
"Then would this be possible too?"
Rohan picked up the book Doflamingo had come out of. Then he found a blank page, took up a pen, and began to draw.
What he drew was a pillar in the middle with rings fitted on either side of it. Doflamingo watched Rohan's drawing with interest.
"This is the Andelian family's Blue Flame Pillar and Red Flame Ring."
"You know that?"
"Anything to do with mana, I looked into and took an interest in. If anything, how do you know it? As far as I know, the Baltran family and the Andelians are all but sworn enemies."
Rohan waved a hand. Making excuses for everything was tiring.
He decided to focus on what mattered for now.
"Never mind that. So, both sides here."
Rohan pointed the pen at both sides of the pillar. Doflamingo glanced at Rohan's face with a what-a-strange-kid look, then turned his eyes to the paper.
"Would it be possible to hang ice rings and fire rings in alternation?"
Doflamingo wore a strange expression. He seemed intrigued, and also seemed to be looking at Rohan like a cheeky brat.
Doflamingo, too, pondered for quite a while. Rohan waited without a word.
After a while, Doflamingo spoke.
"It's possible. But you'll have to learn black magic."
It wouldn't be easy. Black magic was treated as heresy everywhere on the continent. The Seven Magic Towers naturally regarded it as no different from a demon to be struck down on sight, and it fared no better in the other kingdoms or the Empire.
What was more, Rohan belonged to the Baltrans, a great house of swordsmanship. The Baltrans didn't even learn magic. A member of such a family learning black magic?
Absolutely unthinkable......
"I'll do it."
"Hm? Do you even know what black magic is?"
"Sure. The moment you're found out, you become the public enemy of every mage and get treated like the plague by everyone else."
Doflamingo began to stammer. Rohan was a child beyond anything his common sense allowed.
"A-And you'll still do it?"
Rohan nodded once more. Right now he had to get stronger, whatever it took.
The giants would come over the Wall. The moment they did, it would all be over.
Knowing the future, Rohan was in no position to choose between fire and water.
"F-Fine. Then I'll tell you what I think."
He snatched the pen Rohan was holding. Then he colored the pillar in Rohan's drawing black.
"You replace this part here with black mana."
"Black mana?"
"A term I coined. The element of mana used in black magic. Anyway, put this in the middle and you can combine mana of different elements."
"Is that so......."
There was something a little disappointing about it, so Rohan couldn't answer right away. Doflamingo picked up on that and added an explanation.
"You'll have to give up the Blue Flame Pillar. Even apart from this, if you learn the Blue Flame Pillar too, your mana will get too close to the Andelian family's. Then the White Ice Ring and all the Baltran family's supreme arts would become useless."
Rohan nodded as well. It was something he had sensed instinctively too.
The Red Flame Ring had much in common with the White Ice Ring. So as long as he could make the two manas coexist, using them afterward would pose no problem.
But the Blue Flame Pillar was an entirely new concept to the Baltran family. A method of handling mana that could never coexist with the family's swordsmanship.
"No need to be too disappointed. Black mana isn't a bad thing. No, if anything, it can be put to better use."
Doflamingo didn't offer any examples. Rohan knew that was because the examples were rather dangerous.
"All right, let's go with that. Stay hidden here for the time being. Once I'm granted my land, you can hide out there."
He didn't bother mentioning that it might be several years. Doflamingo had probably stayed here for quite a long time in his past life anyway.
Muttering to himself, Doflamingo soon picked a book from the shelf, set it down, and opened it to a page in the middle. It showed the cozy interior of a cabin with a log fire burning in the hearth.
"I'll come every weekend when there's no training, so get your lessons ready."
"Hmph, as if I'd need to prepare to teach the likes of you."
As he spoke, Doflamingo shrank and was sucked into the book. He was sitting in a rocking chair.
As if to show off, he leaned back in the chair and rocked back and forth. Rohan smiled and closed the book.
***
The next morning.
As Rohan was getting ready to leave, he received a welcome visitor.
"Elder Sister Tina!"
She was standing outside Rohan's room. Rohan was taken aback by her stiff expression.
Did I do something wrong?
He soon realized it was because of his own stiff way of speaking.
'I guess back then I called her "Sis" all sweetly.'
Rohan missed it too. He wondered whether to go back to being a little kid, even just for a while.
But he soon steeled himself. If he was soft like in his past life, he wouldn't be able to protect what was precious.
"Why were you waiting out here? You should have come in."
"I-I just got here too."
Tina gave an awkward smile.
Rohan stopped packing and let her into the room.
"Will you be staying at the main castle for a while, Elder Sister?"
"Yeah. Probably."
Her lips were still smiling, but he could see the shadow around her eyes. She was away from her training because of her engagement ceremony next month.
After her engagement, Tina went on to complete her Succession Ceremony, but afterward she left the family and became a woman of the kingdom.
'Should I stop it this time around?'
He hesitated. The engagement couldn't be stopped. There was no way he'd gain enough power to turn the tide within a month.
But the marriage itself, he wanted to stop no matter what. The problem was that her match was a prince. He would have to take on not an individual but a kingdom.
If the giants weren't stopped, the world would end. When even pouring everything into stopping them might not be enough, was it really the right choice to pour that kind of effort into saving one person?
"Oh, right. I came here for a reason, too."
Before he knew it, Tina was holding out what she had in her hands with a bright smile. It was a neatly folded gray cloth.
"I brought it as a gift for your Succession Ceremony."
He took the gray cloth she offered. It had a familiar feel.
Rohan realized what the gray cloth was and smiled.