The daily temperature difference in the imperial palace is worse than in the deserts of Jeokgwe. Before the sun sets, the palace is always clear, clean, and lively.
A warm breeze, as though welcoming its guests, caresses the skin, and the streams and ponds sing songs imbued with the dignity of the imperial family.
On the other hand, on sunless nights, a darkness deeper than anything else covers the area.
The air that had seemed so hospitable soon cuts into the skin, cold as metal, and the nature of the garden constricts the space like a Venus flytrap, as though wary of some possible intruder.
In any case, on such a murderous night in the imperial palace.
I am still in Deculein’s grasp.
“……”
He is glaring at me with eyes full of suspicion.
Well, of course.
It’s my fault for being so desperate that I brought up the Divine Language without any plausible lead-in.
“I’ll ask again. How does the likes of you know the Divine Language?”
Deculein asked.
His tone was extremely insulting. Is it because there’s nothing exceptional about me among status, position, rank, or family?
“……”
Even so, I don’t particularly cower.
Because right now, I’m definitely stronger than Deculein.
At least in terms of force.
“……I’ve been to the Altar’s Sanctuary before.”
I made that excuse for now. Deculein’s sharp gaze remained unchanged.
“And? You learned the Divine Language there?”
“……”
I shut my mouth. Deculein added with a sneer.
“You know yourself that makes no sense. The Altar are the ones who have been searching for the Divine Language all this time. The Altar and the Divine Language have no connection.”
My mouth goes dry.
Because of those blue eyes that seem as though they will pierce through my brow—no, my skull.
The moment I lowered my head slightly because the pressure was too much, thud—!
His cane struck the pavement.
“Look at me.”
“……I know a few letters of the Divine Language.”
I muttered hesitantly.
“I am asking where and how you came to know them.”
Deculein immediately asked again.
Without giving me even a moment to think.
“I just know.”
“……You just know?”
I nodded.
It’s a game that always occupied my head, whether at the company, outside the company, or even while I slept. Not only the setting and concepts of the Divine Language, but the related scenarios too—I probably know more than anyone except the author.
……The problem is, I can’t explain why I know.
What am I supposed to do?
Say that this world is actually a game, that all of you are NPCs inside it, and that I’m someone who was creating this world from outside the game?
How am I supposed to say that?
“……Yes. I just do. For no reason. It even appeared in my dreams a few times.”
Deculein’s brow twitched. The eyes glaring at me narrowed.
An extremely terrifying face.
I grow tense. Is he going to wield Wood Steel on me right now? Or will he smash my head in with his cane?
“……Tsk.”
But Deculein’s next reaction was unexpectedly surprising.
Completely outside my expectations.
“I see.”
“……?”
Deculein, the intellect of the era. The professor said to be the coldest mind on this continent, is nodding.
At a reason that isn’t even a reason—‘I just know’—he is nodding, as though he has come to his own understanding.
“……”
Lia’s eyes widen in shock, but Deculein truly does not press any further. He merely rises with a cold face that makes him hard to even speak to.
─……Professor.
At that moment, a voice drifted in from the far side of the garden.
“!”
As soon as I saw her, I straightened my back, but Deculein, who had been addressed, remained calm.
He spoke to her.
“Your Majesty. The night wind is cold. Why have you come out?”
Empress Sophien.
Famous for changing her attire every day, today she is wearing a qipao that clings tightly to her body. Even in the darkness, her figure and curves are dazzling and beautiful.
With sleep still clinging to her face, she trudges over and grabs the hem of Deculein’s clothes.
“……Professor, I thought you had left.”
Sophien murmurs as though sulking.
Deculein looks at Sophien in silence.
For some reason, there is a strange atmosphere between the two of them.
“……Your Majesty. You seem tired.”
“Yes…… Perhaps because I have been too engrossed, my body has no strength left.”
As I look back and forth between the two of them, a single thought comes to mind.
What is Julie doing right now?
“……Hmmm.”
Just then, Sophien notices me and lets out a small hum.
“You are Lia.”
“Gasp. You know my name—”
“I remember. You have been helping the attendants in the imperial palace. I know you are a good child, but…… Professor. What are you doing with this child?”
At the emperor’s question, Deculein answered briefly.
“This child is an expert in the Divine Language.”
* * *
Yu Ara’s Easter egg. An appearance that so clearly resembled Yu Ara. Therefore, perhaps it was only natural that this one would ‘know’ something……
Thinking such thoughts, Deculein looked at Lia.
However, they had moved locations.
The emperor’s storehouse, filled with all kinds of treasures.
Here, Sophien was also staring at Lia.
“Sooo…… what I mean is……”
Lia glanced around nervously as she fiddled with the Divine Language scroll. A scroll where all sorts of letters—alphabetic, hieroglyphic, or ideographic—continued on endlessly.
“I’m not…… really……”
“You don’t know?”
Deculein asked. Lia licked her lower lip.
“There are way more than I thought…… you know.”
Her sure-kill secret technique: acting like a child.
Acting as if she was not even fifteen yet.
Of course, Lia really did know which Divine Language was important, but she never imagined there would be hundreds of millions of comparison and control samples like this……
“I will throw her out.”
Deculein lifted Lia with 「Telekinesis」. Sophien nodded and joined in.
“Do not forget a spell to seal her memories as well—”
“Not yet! Not yet! I’ll write down the ‘Final Revelation’ I saw in my dream in the Divine Language!”
“……Final Revelation?”
Deculein answered Sophien’s question.
“Yes. The final revelation of the Divine Era. It is also known as the Last Testament.”
“Look! I’ll write it for you!”
The Final Revelation. An alien sentence she had tried desperately never to forget, precisely because it was so important.
This much, she knew for certain.
“……Here.”
Lia wrote down God’s Last Testament in the ‘Divine Language.’
Empress Sophien looked at the sentence and asked.
“Hmm. You saw this sentence in a dream?”
“Yes.”
“That is a lie.”
Sophien cut her off sharply. Her expression was instantly stained with darkness. Whoosh—her widened pupils were chilling, like those of a ghost.
Cold sweat soaked Lia’s back.
“You dare speak falsehoods to Us?”
“Your Majesty.”
In that instant, Deculein stepped in. Blocking the emperor’s hostility with his own body, he said,
“She is a child who has not even held her coming-of-age ceremony yet.”
“……”
Was it good persuasion?
Sophien snorted and changed her expression, while Deculein looked down at the Divine Language sentence Lia had given him.
“You wrote down the Final Revelation in the Divine Language?”
“Yes.”
“……Let me see.”
‘Your indulgence shall lead me unto death.’
Deculein gazed intently at the Divine Language sentence Lia had written, then unfolded the Divine Language scroll again. His pupils moved at an incredible speed as he looked back and forth between the two.
As if a supercomputer were calculating.
00100100101010.
“……”
Clack—
Suddenly, Deculein dropped his pen.
“……I see. Even the same revelation can become completely different depending on how it is interpreted.”
He murmured those words.
Lia, who had a rough idea of what he had realized, swallowed a laugh inwardly.
Deculein said,
“Your indulgence shall lead me unto death…… If the arrangement and interpretation of this Divine Language are changed.”
He recited another interpretation of the revelation aloud.
“‘……My death shall set you free.’”
Indulgence and freedom are similar yet different. Depending on how they are interpreted, freedom can become indulgence, and indulgence can become freedom.
Deculein nodded.
“Well, in a world where God truly existed, those believers accomplished nothing.”
Now, in his mind, the scenery of the Divine Era that ‘Quay’ had once shown him surfaced.
“They dedicated themselves to the sole value and absolute reason—that is, to ‘God.’ They did not try to develop, nor did they harbor ambition, and for such a long age they lived meaningless lives, doing nothing but interpreting and recording God’s revelations. They passed their days like inanimate objects, like mere worms.”
A world no different from the pit houses of the Stone Age.
On this vast continent, they had lived the most shabby and cramped lives of all.
“However, God did not desire that.”
Deculein surmised.
The final method God, who wished for His creations to advance, truly chose—and could choose.
“Therefore, He died by His own hand……”
There had never been any godslayer for Quay to curse in the first place.
God had issued the revelation intending from the beginning to commit suicide.
“Such an interpretation becomes possible as well.”
Tick─
Tock─
Tick─
The sound of a clock’s second hand echoed in the silence.
It was the sound of an ancient relic clock stored in this warehouse.
“……Hmm. A reward will be necessary.”
Sophien broke the silence and spoke. She jerked her chin at Lia.
“Child. Is there anything here that you want?”
“……?”
Lia blinked blankly. Sophien asked again.
“Is there nothing you want?”
“No, there is! It’s just…… anything…… Do you truly mean anything?”
At that, Deculein looked at Sophien and shook his head. But Sophien only snorted.
“Yes. Anything.”
“……”
In that case, there’s no reason to hold back.
Lia pointed to the bronze tablet in the display hall that she had been eyeing since earlier.
“That.”
“……Oh. The 「Bronze Tablet of Emperor Luketan」. You chose well.”
Sophien laughed boldly, while Deculein glared at Lia.
The 「Bronze Tablet of Emperor Luketan」.
A kind of skill book, it was an item that allowed one to acquire one of the traits of past members of the imperial family.
Of course, the qualifications were tremendous—at minimum, magic quality rank 2 and a magic capacity of over twenty thousand—but Lia had fulfilled them long ago.
“Having a good eye is also your talent and fortune. Take it.”
Sophien took out the bronze tablet and gave it to Lia.
“W-Wow…… y-yes! Thank you!”
Though half in doubt, Lia accepted it for the time being. She bent at the waist a full 180 degrees.
……
Thus, immediately after Lia fled the storehouse as though escaping, holding the bronze tablet to her chest.
In the slowly dawning early morning, Sophien looked at me, displeased, and laughed as though she found me cute.
“Was that perhaps an item you wanted?”
“No. It was simply an exceedingly precious relic.”
I cannot learn the traits of the imperial family with my body anyway, nor do I wish to. The traits of the imperial family belong solely to the imperial family.
Sophien laughed softly.
“She was a child who gave us a hint just as precious. Though it is unpleasant that she refuses to reveal its source. More than anything, what use is there in only storing treasures? Better than letting them rot until they turn to shit.”
“……”
I sighed silently.
Thump—
At that moment, Sophien’s head touched my shoulder. This time, it was quite blatant.
I turned to look at her.
“Your Majesty.”
“……What?”
“Leaning on me like this is improper for your dignity.”
“……Haha.”
Sophien laughed softly. Then she shook her head and said,
“But there is nothing to be done. Right now, Our body will not move.”
“What do you mean……”
Only belatedly did I examine her condition.
“……”
Indeed, there was no strength in her arms or legs, and her face was thick with exhaustion. Her long red hair, which had always shone with luster, looked dry and brittle.
“How strange. It is as though someone is trying to steal Our body.”
“Since when has this been happening?”
“Occasionally. But recently, it happens quite often. For half a day every day, We always end up like this.”
A voice unlike Sophien’s. Breath that seemed to wheeze with strain.
In addition to that, the red current observed through 「Vision」—the death variable.
The system’s affirmation that if Quay were to steal Sophien’s body, that moment would be ‘game over.’
“……Your Majesty.”
“But it is fine.”
Sophien moved her body. She placed her limp arms around my waist and buried her face against my shoulder as though rubbing against it.
“This too is strange, but when you are beside Us like this, it seems to get better.”
“……”
“So stay still.”
At first, I thought it was a lie. Of course, there was no way Sophien would lie, but I had no choice but to think so.
“……It is not a lie.”
However, truly, merely remaining still like this made the death variable flickering around Sophien slowly fade away.
Her wheezing breath, her complexion that had seemed to wither, returned to normal.
“It means We require recharging.”
Sophien smiled contentedly and hugged my back. She rested her eyebrows against my neck.
Like that, she fell asleep.
Zzz……
Zzz……
And again, snoring.
It was a snore cuter than was like her.
“……But when exactly did it begin?”
Careful not to wake her, I asked someone watching us.
─I cannot say precisely.
The voice I heard belonged to Keiron.
He spoke by borrowing the form of a ‘knight statue’ displayed in this storehouse.
─But the symptoms worsened after you met Quay.
“How do you know I met Quay?”
─Your medal.
“……”
I looked at the medal on my chest.
The honorary knight medal. Proof that I was a member of the emperor’s highest guard, and as its name suggested, it was shaped like a ‘knight.’
“So even this sort of medal is under your influence, Keiron.”
─Indeed. If viewed broadly, that medal too was made by creating a ‘statue’ and setting it into the medal.
Keiron can become any 「Statue」 on this continent, whether small or large.
When I met Quay, Keiron became this medal and faced Quay together with me.
“At any rate, you mean it is because of Quay.”
─That is my supposition. There is no other reason. However…… it seems there is no need to worry overmuch.
“……Why is there no need to worry?”
Keiron chuckled and pointed at me.
─Is the antidote not right beside her?
“……”
─A joke. Her Majesty is happy when she is with you, so I was happy as well, and it slipped out.
“……”
─That was not a joke.
Zzz…… Zzz……
Sophien’s small breathing flowed in from behind my back.
─But do you intend to let Her Majesty sleep like that? Hurry and escort her to bed.
“Keiron. Enough.”
─That too was not a joke. Her mouth will go crooked if she stays like that.
“……”
─Hurry.
I let out a sigh. However, because he was not wrong, I slowly rose to my feet.
─Yes. I will ensure no one sees you, so do not worry.
“Yes. I ask it of you.”
In the early dawn, as the sun began to rise.
Under Keiron’s strict escort, I walked through the imperial palace with Sophien on my back.