Chapter 495

“You…”

Elias felt the heat all around him recede in a circle, drawing away from him. Narke’s pale blue eyes, the same ones Elias had once seen in the hospital room, were fixed on him. The crimson fascia and insignia identifying him as a cardinal immediately caught Elias’s attention. Before he knew it, Elias spoke.

“Are you really allowed to do that?”

Are you allowed to appear like this? You didn’t want to.

But Elias knew the entrance to the archive must have been blocked by the elder. To get in here, Narke would have had no choice but to break through the walls or the ceiling. And to break through the roof of a prominent Roman family’s estate, he would have had to reveal his identity as a mage of the Papal See, even if he didn’t reveal exactly what kind of mage he was…

Narke smiled silently, and Elias understood his answer.

Narke noticed the mask and tricorn lying on the floor and raised an eyebrow. With one hand, he created an identical mask and hat and put them on. The only difference was that his were completely white, hat and all. Even behind the mask, his pale blue eyes, with their sharply defined pupils, were eerie enough that anyone could probably tell from a distance that he belonged to the Papal See.

“What did you mean when you said I changed today?”

“…Well, in a way, it means you created an opening that allowed me to come here. I wasn’t planning to come here in the first place.”

Before Elias could ask whether ‘in a way’ meant there was another sense to it, Narke gestured toward the flames.

“I only saw a future where the three of us were trapped here with no way out. I saw that the fire would only start once I came to help you.”

Fire. Only now did Elias feel his vision expanding. The archive was still burning, the flames easily three meters high. The tall bookshelves that had once stood firmly in place had collapsed long ago. The blackened books were half-burned and barely recognizable, while all the confidential documents had turned to gray ash and scattered through the flames. And yet the narrow space where the three of them stood remained untouched by the fire.

Elias brushed the ash drifting past his eyes away and asked, “Can divine power put out a fire, too?”

“Normally, it shouldn’t be able to. I couldn’t put it out just now, either.”

Now that he looked closely, it was closer to Narke releasing divine power and using it to push the air away. That must have been why Elias had been having trouble breathing. There was clearly a limit to using it to hold back the fire like this. Narke would run out of strength before long. Should they remove the spatial magic here?

But Elias had no idea whether he could destroy a coordinate system that had only been shaken slightly and hadn’t even cracked using his own power. And if they relied on Narke’s power, he wouldn’t be able to keep concentrating his divine power on holding back the fire, and they would soon be swallowed by the flames. The fact that the ceiling was open didn’t change anything. Who could say the flames wouldn’t burn them to death outside as well?

Judging from the fact that Narke had managed to enter, the spatial magic only extended as high as the dome. In other words, unlike Pleroma’s, this wasn’t a wide-area spatial magic. It was the sort of spatial magic that was placed over a building alone, as was common. Could the fire distort the spatial magic? But for now, the fire had to disappear if they wanted to get out alive.

Narke looked up at the hole in the ceiling and said, “I wish it would rain. Elias, what do you think?”

“…Yeah. Me too.” Elias held his still-sleeping friend close and looked around. His blue eyes sharpened with resolve. “I wish it would rain until every last drop of the Tiber dried up.”

“Hahaha. But if it rains, the river will overflow. Are you going to turn the river into rainwater?”

Narke laughed cheerfully and brought his staff down. Then he looked at Elias.

“Grab it.”

Light shimmered from the staff.

Elias couldn’t understand why Narke was telling him to grab someone else’s staff while mana was flowing through it. It was no different from telling him to grab a blade. Yet, as if under a spell, Elias reached out and grabbed the platinum staff.

Strangely, it didn’t hurt.

Narke looked up at the sky again.

“Should we make it so we can see the bottom of the Tiber?”

Elias couldn’t help laughing at that. The thought of Rome’s lifeblood drying up completely, the earth cracking apart, and the proud Roman elites panicking at the sight of it somehow made him laugh. Perhaps it was because, in his mind, they looked like ancient priests.

He knew well enough about the relationship between drought and rulers, priests and their people, and he knew that it wasn’t something to make light of. But he also knew the fairy-tale scene he had just imagined was ridiculous, so he couldn’t help himself.

Even so, he found himself wishing they could borrow the Tiber’s water to put out the flames trying to devour them. Or perhaps they could move the foundation and make rain suddenly fall from the sky. Maybe, if it were Narke…

Drip.

A single cold drop landed on Elias’s head, and he jerked his head up.

The rain that had been falling sporadically through his field of vision quickly turned into a torrential downpour, pounding down with the sound of waves. No matter what was on the ground below, the rain covered everything.

The small flames flickered as they tried to escape the rain, then quickly died out.

Before Elias even had time to try to shield himself, his hair was soaked and hung limply, as though he had just pulled his head out of water. He roughly swept the strands out of his eyes and covered his friend’s face. Still looking stunned, he turned to Narke.

“…Even though you don’t have a Special Ability like this.”

“I don’t.”

“Did you move something in nature using nothing but knowledge?”

Had Narke gone to the river before coming here? Or had he looked at the sky and somehow brought the clouds together? Elias had known Narke was well-read, but he had never imagined he was this capable. He had always assumed that the large-scale magic that astonished everyone who saw it, or the strange purification magic he used, was possible because of his enormous reserves of mana. He had rarely thought it might be because of some special magic formulas unique to Narke.

Narke tilted his head.

“You helped, too.”

At Narke’s choice of words, Elias opened his mouth, his brow furrowing. This was no time for that. He nodded toward the friend in his arms and said urgently, “Wake him up. I don’t know if his brain’s going to function properly if we leave him like this. Everything is still going on inside his head.”

There was no way for Elias to accurately explain everything that had flashed through his mind. Even though his explanation had been difficult to follow, Narke calmly nodded.

“Judging by the fact that he’s still lost in his thoughts, the aftereffects of the magic must still be lingering.”

Narke placed a hand on his friend’s forehead and released divine power. White light flowed across his face. As Elias focused on his friend’s sleeping face, who still showed no sign of regaining consciousness, Narke bit the inside of his lip and pressed his lips tightly together. Looking closely, Elias saw that Narke’s arm was trembling as though an electric current were running through it. Before Elias could even react and try to help, Narke let out a long breath and pulled his hand away.

“Done.”

As though those words were a signal, Elias quickly took his friend’s face in his hands and looked down at him. His thin eyelids twitched.

But that was it.

His friend’s limbs began to go limp again. Elias’s mouth fell open in shock, and Narke carefully explained, “He’s asleep now. His body must have been tired.”

“…You scared me.”

For some reason, the fact that Narke had specifically said his body was tired made Elias uneasy. There was something unsettling about those words, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he turned his head.

“The duke is going to try to kill all of us. We need to catch that bastard first. He’s blindly killing people in the name of preventing the end.”

“Yeah. We need to catch him.”

“Are you sure he was working with Terminus Eukairia?”

Narke nodded. Rather than feeling relieved that his guess had been correct, Elias let out a deep sigh before asking, “What about his accomplice? Did you find out who it is?”

“To some extent. But I don’t think the accomplice knew they were working with Terminus Eukairia.”

Elias looked at Narke, wondering what he meant. Narke listened quietly to the commotion outside before quickly continuing.

“Instead, they probably thought of themselves as ‘Duke Orsini’s collaborator on a certain matter.’”

“What does that mean? Why?”

“Otherwise, there’s no way they would have avoided being caught in the Papal See’s random inspections during the theft of the holy relics. There were countless people loyal to the head of the Orsini family, one of Rome’s most powerful houses. So simply being loyal to the Orsini family would have been enough to let them pass an inspection without much trouble. The number of people Duke Orsini has used in this way all this time would be difficult to count on two hands.”

The voices outside the archive grew louder, coming from the garden beyond the building. There were clearly people gathered outside to watch, but whether they were waiting for Narke to come out or simply too afraid to enter, no one stepped inside. A magical crime was taking place right in front of them, yet no one seemed willing to throw themselves into the middle of it. They were content to watch. Even so, Narke continued speaking quickly without pause.

“I stopped by while you two were in here, but there weren’t any letters exchanged with the Secretariat of State anywhere. He must have checked them and burned them as soon as he received them. But why burn all the ordinary official correspondence too?”

“Probably because he had something to hide.”

“Exactly. The duke himself had reason to be worried. Because…” Narke paused. “All the information he was passing on to Terminus Eukairia came from the Secretariat of State’s ‘general’ information.”

Narke emphasized the word general, raising an eyebrow with a faint smile.

“So even official letters containing nothing more than minor instructions were considered evidence of his crimes, at least in his own mind. Don’t you think?”

Elias nodded, and Narke pulled a letter from inside his coat.

“This letter had arrived in the duke’s room without going through the communication post. [To His Grace Duke Gennaro Orsini and the Duke’s Regent, Annunziata Orsini. His Holiness did not make such a decision. Nor did he send any separate letter to House Caetani. It appears there was an unfortunate error in communication. The Papal See informs you that we have not yet completed our review of the late Elda Caetani as a candidate for beatification, nor have we communicated the status of the candidate’s evaluation to anyone. We are enclosing several encyclicals¹ that may be of assistance. From the Secretariat of State of the Papal See, Marino Rucci.]”

The Secretariat of State was the pope’s office, so it was only natural that a clarification stating that the pope had not done such a thing would come through the Secretariat. But something about it bothered Elias. He pushed the rain-soaked hair falling over his face back and narrowed his eyes.

“Encyclicals?”

“Good catch.” Narke smiled. “But the encyclicals enclosed with this letter are, at least on the surface, perfectly fine. The problem lies elsewhere.”

At the words ‘perfectly fine on the surface,’ something flashed through Elias’s mind. A cipher. There had been a cipher in the letter the accomplice in the Secretariat of State had sent to Duke Orsini. Narke pulled out an elaborately decorated illuminated manuscript and handed it to Elias.

“These are the encyclicals the duke had open just before he left. Clement XII’s In eminenti apostolatus specula and Benedict XIV’s Ex Omnibus. One is an encyclical opposing Freemasonry², while the other is Benedict XIV’s response to Louis XV concerning Jansenism³ in France and the question of the Catholic Church’s authority. Even if Annunziata Orsini had been informed of the situation by the Caetani side immediately after they came by, and even if the duke had stepped back from his duties under the excuse of being ill, these encyclicals have little to do with our setup concerning Elda Caetani, whether it was about beatification or canonization.”

The elder had deciphered the code through the letter sent by the Secretariat of State and the fake encyclicals, eventually finding the ‘real encyclical’ the Secretariat had intended to convey. Elias nodded. So these people had been secretly exchanging codes through the Pope’s encyclicals. Judging by the fact that the Secretariat’s informant had sent an encyclical concerning Freemasonry, they must have suspected that someone had approached Caetani and Orsini with false information. Narke spoke.

“…Anyway, we don’t have time right now. I’ll explain later. I was planning to return to Germany and hold a trial, but I guess that’s no longer an option. It looks like I’ll have to capture the duke myself, too. Now that I’ve revealed my position as a cardinal, we have no choice but to settle everything here before we return.”

At that, Elias hoisted his friend onto his back and stood up.

“I’m coming with you. Let’s fight together. We need to find out where he ran off to, too.”

“No. I have to be the one to catch him.”

Elias narrowed his eyes at that, and Narke spoke firmly.

“What are you going to do with Lukas?”

“…….”

“We can’t just leave him here. We don’t know what kind of magic Gennaro Orsini might use or what he might do. You’ve experienced it yourself, so you know how difficult he’ll be to deal with without divine power.”

“Then what about you? Even with divine power, you’re still far younger than him.”

It felt awkward to say that after seeing Narke make the rain fall, but the truth was that Narke’s experience had to pale in comparison to that of an elder who had probably lived over a century longer than him. The same was probably true of his knowledge.

“I…”

Narke’s lips moved, but no sound came out. His expressionless face should have meant nothing more than calmness, yet Elias could read the uncertainty in it. Narke smiled.

“That’s a rather unusual thing to hear from someone in Rome.”

And so Narke went off to find Gennaro Orsini—in other words, Duke Orsini.

Elias was now in Villa Borghese, in the heart of Rome. He was at the Temple of Asclepius, set beside a blue pond that looked perfect for swimming, deep within a vast garden that resembled a forest. Being in the middle of Rome made him uneasy, but the temple was hidden from the outside by the trees, and since the grounds belonged to the powerful House Borghese, outsiders couldn’t simply wander in. More importantly, Narke must have had a reason for leaving the two of them here. Perhaps he was closer to House Borghese than Elias had realized—though Elias certainly didn’t expect that for sure.

‘To call it an unusual thing to hear in Rome… Does that mean there’s no one who can stand against him? …But he didn’t seem that confident.’

The thought didn’t last long. Elias sat leaning against one of the temple’s pillars and looked down at his friend. He had taken every piece of clothing from his bag that hadn’t gotten wet and made a makeshift bed out of them, though it looked rather uncomfortable to lie on. Elias himself would never sleep under such terrible conditions. With that thought, he quietly watched his friend.

Under normal circumstances, he would have grabbed his friend by the cheeks and pulled him awake. But not this time. Elias stared blankly at the pond, listening to the frogs croak, then uncorked a potion and drank it to ease the fatigue washing over him.

Ah. It was only after he was already halfway through the bottle that Elias realized it was the last one he had left, having used up almost everything trying to survive the fire. He shifted closer and emptied what remained of the potion into his friend’s mouth. He carefully adjusted his friend’s head so that the liquid wouldn’t go down his windpipe, but when there was still no response, Elias grew a little frightened—some part of him had expected his friend to cough instinctively.

Elias watched the ants and snails crawling around the temple and counted the stars. He counted on his fingers how many times the wind blew into the temple. But he couldn’t properly remember how the insects moved across the temple’s granite floor. He quickly forgot how much light was scattered across the sky. He didn’t even know whether the wind had caught the hem of his clothes. Before he could finish counting, his gaze had already returned to his sleeping friend.

Elias sat there quietly for a long time. At some point, a pair of pink irises began to appear in his field of vision. Elias waited until they had formed complete circles. Then he asked, “Are you awake?”

Translator Note

1. An encyclical is an authoritative pastoral letter written by the Pope and sent to Catholic bishops, the clergy, and the laity. ↩︎
2. Freemasonry is a worldwide fraternal organization based on shared moral values and secret initiation rituals. It teaches that all religions are equal paths to truth, which rejects the Catholic claim that Jesus Christ provides the sole fullness of truth. ↩︎
3. Jansenism was a 17th and 18th-century Christian theological movement within the Roman Catholic Church that emphasized divine grace, original sin, and predestination while minimizing human free will. ↩︎