Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
After that, Cutie severely scolded her father until things finally calmed down enough to have a conversation.
Mary and Calaria also sat on a couch and looked at each other.
“I’m sorry for the embarrassing display just now. I’m the president of Majoram Technologies, Noted Majoram.”
Noted spoke with a bitter smile while his cheeks were pinched red.
Mary and Calaria took his hand in turns and greeted him.
“I’m Mary Pulsherima. Pleased to meet you.”
“No, no, I’m the one who is pleased to have the help of a princess. And who is this lady?”
“Calaria Turquaz. I used to be a mercenary hired by Dugan, but I’m working together with Mary now.”
“Ooh, you? Turquaz……”
For some reason, the surname Turquaz grabbed Noted’s attention and he curiously tilted his head.
“What is it?”
“It’s a rare surname, and I knew someone with the same one.”
“Father, was this person named Yueri?”
“How do you know?”
“Whoa, I was actually right.”
“……That’s a crazy coincidence, huh?”
This was so convenient that Calaria could almost be suspicious of Cutie.
But Cutie laughed at Calaria’s gaze and spoke.
“Hah, it’s not just a coincidence. After hearing of her relation to Pupa, I figured an engineer like my father might know about her.”
“Cutie is right, Yueri Turquaz is a researcher based in Pupa Industries. Indeed, I have data on her brought in by a certain spy…… Ah, sorry, we’re still introducing ourselves.”
“No, please continue.”
Noted reached out to the desk behind him and searched through some books before pulling out a computer small enough to be held by hand.
Cutie covered her face and sighed, and Mary couldn’t help but force a smile.
“There it is, it’s her.”
The photo on the screen stared at Calaria, almost devouring her.
But she shook her head.
“No, that’s just someone else with the same surname.”
“I see…… That’s a shame, or, good? It looks like she’s participating in a certain project right now.”
“World Destruction.”
“That’s right. Did you already tell them about that?”
“Yes, just earlier. She’s related to Pupa, and these two are both connected to arcana users – all that can’t be a coincidence.”
Cutie looked at Calaria, who had an annoyed expression on her face.
“……Do you want to say something?”
“The name Yueri is probably a fake name. She’s also in her late 30s. How-”
“I’m 22 years old.”
“In that case, it makes sense for her to have raised you. Besides, the arcana user of Justice can’t openly reveal her true name.”
“I suppose……”
“It’s decided. The person who raised Calaria, Yueri Turquaz, is related to Pupa. She was using the name of a coworker as an alias and working as a mercenary in other countries.”
“…..!”
Calaria looked down and bit her lips.
Cutie also seemed to think she went too far, but she was only speaking the truth.
Then, Mary gently smiled at Calaria and spoke.
“Nothing’s clear yet. Besides, even if she did use a fake name, I think that was to protect you, Miss. Calaria!”
“Yeah…… Maybe?”
“Well, I’m sure that was a part of her intentions.”
That wasn’t a convenient cover either, but the truth.
Otherwise, she would not have put her life on the line to protect Calaria from Magician’s attack.
“It looks like you got a hold of a lot of information while I wasn’t looking, Cutie.”
Despite being left outside the conversation, Noted spoke with a serious expression.
“I’ll explain later. But, father, the composition remains the same despite the new information. The Kingdom and Pupa are trying to destroy the Slava Family. So we have to fight in order to protect our own castle.”
“The word ‘same’ is too optimistic, Cutie. Because Dugan himself is on the Kingdom’s side right now.”
“You’re close with Dugan, aren’t you Mr. Noted? Did you hear anything from him?”
He looked down, and shook his head to say no.
“Nothing right now. Well, I remember something from 16 years ago. Back then, Dugan was making all sorts of moves alone without telling me.”
“16 years ago, that means……”
“It’s around the same time as your birth.”
Mary gulped.
That had to be related to her.
“I never heard about that. What was uncle hiding?”
“I still don’t know, even now. It’s really annoying. He was meddling in the Kingdom as usual, but…… ‘I can’t hand the world over to them. So I’m going to destroy them.’ Those are the only words I heard from him about that.”
“Hand…… the world over?”
“Mysterious, right?”
By itself, this information was almost meaningless.
But the reason Noted mentioned this was because it happened 16 years ago.
“That matter which occurred the same year you were born. And the awakening of Death God now. I feel the hand of fate in this.”
“It concerns me too. I have to ask him about that before I kill him.”
“……Ah, ahaha. Yeah, that’s our only choice, that’s how big things have gotten.”
He looked a little sad as he said that.
He had to kill a close friend of many years in order to protect this company – this wasn’t something he could get over easily.
“Why did Dugan change, I wonder? Normally, he would have hosted a grand funeral if his son Romeo died.”
“They had a good relationship, didn’t they?”
“I mean, look at that tower they built. Dugan also lost his wife around the same time I did. He gave that affection to his son instead after that.”
And the emotions that swelled from bereavement made the friendship between Noted and Dugan even stronger.
So it was very strange for such a bond to be broken so instantaneously like this.
“He’s being manipulated by an arcana user – that’s the only convincing theory.”
“I think that’s a high possibility as well.”
“At any rate, that doesn’t change what I must do. I will kill him.”
“Yeah…… There’s no point in me saying a bunch of cowardly stuff either. I have to be prepared to draw the line.”
Noted spoke while looking far in the distance.
Mary understood his feelings well.
But that did not mean she intended on accepting them.
“By the way, Princess Mary. I’m changing the subject, but I have some encouraging information on Death God.”
Noted suddenly stood up, put his hand on a pile of books and took a notebook.
Cutie’s cheek twitched.
“That look in your eyes…… I guess the arcana nerd is coming out now. Father, Mary is tired, and she’s going to give samples after this. Please make it quick, okay?”
“I know.”
He sat down on a couch in a manner contrasting his reply, and opened a page in front of Mary.
“The text is very dense…… Is this the history of arcana?”
“Knowledge on sorcery is required of the engineers for their work. So, I’ve been making various investigations into arcana.”
“The writings are very small. And the text looks very fresh. Is this your hobby?”
Perhaps having calmed down a little now, Calaria joined the conversation.
“Ahaha. I suppose, there’s a lot of adventure in arcana.”
Noted spoke while scratching his head.
Cutie seemed displeased to see her father like this.
She was worried about her father, who always lost sight of everything when he was into his hobbies.
(I bet Mr. Noted started investigating arcana after Cutie became an arcana user…… right?)
Cutie used the technology she took from Pupa and underwent a surgery in Majoram’s facilities, which was probably done with her father’s permission.
To Mary however, he did not look like the kind of person who would allow this.
“From way back until now, arcana users have been active in various locations. That’s why they show up in history. For example, a strategist who seemed to know the future and turned an overwhelmingly disadvantageous battle around, who called himself the arcana user of Star. Or the arcana user of Lover who seduced a king and ruined his country, and such.”
“I heard about that. The arcana user of Lover was eventually executed by the citizens, right?”
“The story goes that they thought she deceived the king by using her powers, but the truth was that they were in love.”
“I hate love stories with bad endings.”
“It’s a famous story everyone knows. Of course, such anecdotes also exist for other arcana, like Death God.”
He turned the page after saying that.
There were not only numbers there, but also an illustration of someone holding a scythe.
“500 years ago, a monster who eats the dead was subjugated by a local aristocrat. 300 years ago, there was a man who used corpses as weapons in the backcountry. 100 years ago, there was someone who controlled corpses and made them have one last conversation with their families. 50 years ago, there was a village with a custom to have their dead eaten to grieve for them. 10 years ago, bandits who attacked a village were mercilessly devoured by a traveler passing by. Well, these are just the short versions, but there are various surprisingly detailed anecdotes left behind.”
“Does that mean this power has that much of an impact?”
“But the stories are too specific, so they’re on a small scale.”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Anecdotes about Star or Lover are stories that moved countries. I thought these descriptions were unnatural, so I put a few personnel on investigating into the matter.”
“Few isn’t the right word for it, how much do you think that cost?”
“Give me a break Cutie, I got results.”
“Which are?”
“There are ‘traces’ of Death God even recently, but no eye accounts existed.”
Even if the descriptions were on a small scale, there should have still been a few things left behind.
On the contrary, there was no evidence left behind, which was clearly strange.
“I had a hunch. That this is a ‘tale’ created by someone. You can’t ascertain arcana’s presence unless you see it with your eyes. It’s no strange thing for fabrications to be mixed in. In other words, the arcana of the Death God never existed in the first place, and the real number of Gods was not 20 – that’s what I thought.”
“But the possibility of it ‘not existing’ went away with Mary’s appearance, right?”
“Indeed. Also, the ‘powers’ I’ve heard about so far correlate with what Princess Mary possesses. In other words, the anecdotes left behind in history may be ‘lies’, but Death God really did exist, and the stories were based on that truth.”
Many things were still uncertain.
Humanity still did not know anything about the system by which an arcana chose its successor.
It would be impossible to perfectly conceal everything.
As long as it wasn’t the same human living on forever.
The one thing that was clear, was that……
“So does that mean I’m the first Death God who came out onto the public stage?”
That was it.
Considering the other dozens of generations, this one was clearly different.
Noted affirmed this by nodding his head.
“That’s right! Isn’t it exciting?”
“Why did things turn out like this?”
“Considering the king’s and Dugan’s obsession, I think Death God is an arcana with some kind of a special role. I wanted to do some research into that, but……”
“We don’t have the budget for that, and more importantly, we can’t afford to take personnel away from the fighting.”
“……Well, you heard her. Anyway, these are just my wild delusions, but arcana is God, right? I think that, surprisingly, the original God of the Death God arcana was still alive up until recently.”
“Umm…… Alive?”
It was a ridiculous idea, but Noted seemed pretty confident.
He continued.
“Perhaps Death God was inherited by blood connection alone, but you got it by some kind of an accident. Perhaps that’s what the affair 16 years ago was about. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense for the ‘tales’ I talked about earlier to have been created hundreds of years ago!”
“There it is, father’s wild ideas. Don’t take him too seriously, Mary. His power of imagination is just too high even at his age.”
“There’s no problem with thinking, is there? Losing one’s creativity would be the end of any engineer!”
“It’s okay to think about that stuff in your own head, but you make things really long.”
“Cutie, this is an important conversation. We can’t counter arcana unless we know more about it. This room is constructed in a manner that it can’t be destroyed even with arcana! So listen to me, okay? To explain why God would remain in this world after choosing an arcana user, well……”
Just as Cutie feared, Noted began an extensive talk after that.
Mary looked at how annoyed she seemed while listening to him, and thought:
(I guess this is how things normally are between parents and children.)
……She ignored over half the story in the first place.