Chapter 498

Elias’s words have a way of making me want to believe, just once, in something I had always thought impossible. Eternity is perhaps the most empty word of all. Even the universe has an end, so how could eternity possibly exist? According to a phrase that Marcus Aurelius used almost like a habit, a person is never remembered for ten thousand generations. The fact that Aurelius’s Meditations is still being read two thousand years later seems to contradict that essay and makes my hope fade, but when humanity comes to an end, his journal will inevitably come to an end with it. Eternity is nothing more than a self-declared claim of faith.

I’ve never gone so far as to actually say these thoughts aloud at length, but if I thought this way openly, I would probably be called pessimistic or overly dissatisfied. So my thoughts are always buried beneath more proper words, and some part of me desperately hopes they will stay that way. Even for someone as pessimistic as I consider myself to be, I don’t know why Elias’s certainty that he would never change reached me so deeply.

I looked at the stars scattered across the black sky beyond the temple’s sloping cornice. We sat in the open-sided temple, quietly looking out over the garden and occasionally exchanging a question and answer.

From what I heard, Rome had been hit by unprecedented torrential rain. The forecast had said the weather would stay clear for a while, but it had been wrong. Everywhere in Rome was soaked.

It smells like the Tiber. That was what the attendants walking through the garden among the trees of Villa Borghese said. Whenever the young attendants passed by, Elias held his breath, and I couldn’t help tensing up along with him, wondering if they knew we were here.

I couldn’t tell whether it really smelled like the river. It smelled like fresh air instead.

After the attendants had all passed, Elias kept smiling contentedly there in the middle of the scent of grass, surrounded by the drops of water falling from the right-angled eaves of the Temple of Asclepius, in the heart of Rome at night. I nodded at Elias, who was grinning for no reason I could understand.

“So, what happened?”

“Not much different from what you already know. Your deduction was right again this time. Narke went to deal with it because we need to stop that elder from interfering with the Papal See any further.”

“Hmm.”

Perhaps he thought my reaction was too lukewarm, because Elias began explaining in a little more detail.

“Well… It’s just like you heard. That elder thinks you’re going to bring about the end of the world. Because you have the ability to absorb all the information in the world. So we had a bit of an argument.”

“He thinks I’m going to build the Tower of Babel.”

“Yeah. He thinks you’re going to challenge God’s authority.”

Elias fell silent after that. I took off my boots to check the condition of my legs and said, “You heard that sound earlier, didn’t you? Like something breaking.”

“Yeah.”

“That was the artifact that gave prophecies to the elders of Rome. I broke it.”

“Huh?!”

Even Elias seemed caught off guard by that. His eyes darted all over the place. I recalled what the elder had said to me and continued.

“The duke said that I would come today and take away the prophecy. Narke called that artifact the Greek ‘Pythia of Delphi,’ but the elders in power must have regarded it as a Christian artifact that conveyed the will of Jehovah. In other words, it would be more accurate to call it a prophecy rather than an oracle. Since I broke the artifact, I suppose I really did take away the prophecy in the end.”

For a moment, I wondered if Elias had defended me because he thought I was innocent. The elder’s words seemed to contain some truth, so my own stance was different. But Elias was still looking at me with the same unwavering expression, and I let the thought go. Instead, there was something I needed to say about his belief beforehand.

“Even if it makes no sense, what would you do if it really happened that way?”

“You mean, what would I do if the world really ended because of you?”

Elias understood exactly what I meant. I nodded. He answered without the slightest hesitation.

“That duke misinterpreted the prophecy. Someone who knows or could know the world before Babel… I don’t know whether that metaphor is actually true. But if you ask me, the person building the Tower of Babel was that elder. You’re not the one who trespassed into God’s domain by dividing humans into those who aren’t human and those who are capable of remaining human. The duke is. No one has the right to decide who gets to be human. No, not even God can classify human beings.”

“Did he actually say I wasn’t human?”

“Yeah. He meant that because your abilities aren’t human, you couldn’t be human either.”

Elias spoke through clenched restraint, forcing each word out. He swallowed with difficulty and frowned.

“We live in an age that longs to become a higher form of humanity by dehumanizing other people. We casually push the lower end of humanity aside, so anyone who deviates even slightly from the standard can end up on a list of people marked for death. So… perhaps the country I both love and hate is at the forefront of turning humans into something less than human.”

He was probably talking about the fierce nationalism of the Germans that currently upheld the German Empire and would later uphold the Third German Empire—the Nazis. The precursors to Nazism had existed since the time of the Second German Empire. It couldn’t be said that things were exactly the same in this world and era, but it was true that they followed a somewhat similar course. Elias sounded as though he were prophesying the future, and I found myself looking away without realizing it. Then Elias really got started. He passionately spoke the monologue I had only ever read in books, right there in front of me.

“Even so, just as Europeans have long dehumanized Jews to restore their national pride, this kind of behavior has always existed regardless of country or era. The moment you treat it as someone else’s problem and leave it to a particular country or era, the ideology of dehumanization can rise again at any time, and then everyone will go down with it quite nicely!”

“Did you get inside my head and come back out?”

“Practically speaking, you could say that…”

“Is that so…”

“But this is just something I’ve always thought about!”

“I want to write this down in my notebook.”

“You don’t need to write it down.”

Elias brought me back to reality with an utterly unfazed expression. Strange. Feeling as though I had just been hit over the head, I rubbed my face. Elias was still glaring with narrowed eyes, waving his hands in anger as he continued.

“But this is where the problem lies. The moment people sell their humanity to an ideology like this and gain a shallow sense of pride without even realizing they’re doing it, it takes root in other parts of their minds as well. Workers start to see themselves as spiritually one with the bourgeoisie, the poor start believing they’re poor because they’re lazy and stupid, and the rich start believing they’re rich because they’re hardworking and quick-witted. In the same way, Old Humans come to believe that they’re inherently lesser than New Humans. If a way of thinking that so casually destroys even oneself can turn toward other people this easily, how much easier is it for that to happen? Can someone like that duke, who insists that you should be killed despite meeting you for the first time, really be unrelated to this problem? Can the elder’s fanatical decision really be completely unrelated to a society where human lives are treated as lighter than feathers according to arbitrary standards?”

I eagerly nodded along to whatever Elias said, pleased simply to hear him speak like this. But unlike me, who had expected him to keep rambling for a while longer, he seemed to have no intention of continuing at length. He quietly stared at the pond and the bushes with sharp eyes before concluding his speech.

“That elder never managed to convince me how or why the world was supposed to end. So if the survival of humanity can only be achieved by dehumanizing people, then I don’t want it. If America can only function with slavery, then I’d rather America fall. If feudalism can only be maintained through serfdom, then I’d rather see feudalism disappear than carry out some noble’s scheme of writing ridiculous poems to encourage the serfs because they’re needed to keep the manor running. Though, thankfully, it’s gone now. Likewise, if Europe can only survive because we have colonies, then I’d rather Europe disappear from the face of the earth. If we can only hold the Pentathlon by driving the poor out of their homes, then wouldn’t it be better for that kind of false entertainment to disappear forever? If I have to listen to some mad elder telling me that we should casually kill people who are different from us just so we can keep surviving, then this isn’t my world. Whatever happens, happens. So even if the world really does end because I chose to save you, I’m not afraid.”

Only now had I finally gotten the answer to my question. I fell silent at his words about faith and changing the world, and Elias answered that silence once more.

“The world is a fabric. It might seem fine if a thread or two comes loose, but if everyone grows complacent and more and more threads come undone, eventually what’s left won’t even be fabric anymore. It’ll just be a tangled mass, won’t it? If I don’t respect the person standing right in front of me, then I have no right to call anything justice.”

Elias lay down on the ground. I looked down at him without saying a word. He snapped his fingers, making his mana flare, and said, “Even if this becomes a world that divides people into those who deserve to live and those who deserve to die, let’s not get discouraged. I’ll just light a new fire and spread it around. If I have to scorch the loose threads to gather them back together, then that’s what I’ll do.”

“Does it really work that way?”

He laughed at my words. Then, narrowing his eyes, he said, “I’m probably not cut out to be a ruler, am I? A friend like Leo is the one who’s truly suited to be a ruler.”

When I simply continued looking down at him without reacting, Elias waved a finger absently as he thought.

“In my opinion, Leo is even more suited to it than Julia. Julia is a little more closely tied to tradition. He acknowledges the changing times for our sake and encourages us when we’re discouraged, but at his core, that cool-headed and thoughtful friend is rooted in tradition. Ah, now that I’m talking about him, I miss Julia.”

As an adult, Julia stood half a step apart from them. There was a reason he didn’t move together with Leo and Elias after graduating from school in the novel. But there was also a reason the three of them were close. Things were different now that they were on the same team, but originally, at least after they became adults, they were the kind of friends who supported one another deeply from afar rather than spending every day together.

“I’m not fond of utilitarianism. I intend to act with the goal of saving every single person, not simply as many people as possible. I know there will be plenty of times when I can’t do that. I know that, in the end, I’ll have to think in utilitarian terms. And I know that a ruler, who ought to be the most rational and reasonable of all, shouldn’t ignore the principles of utilitarianism. If I ever find myself in a situation where I have to make an immediate decision, of course I’d choose the option of killing the fewer people without a moment’s hesitation. But before that, I want to believe that the option of saving everyone is still in my hands. So, paradoxically, I’m going to choose the option where everyone dies.”

Elias murmured while staring blankly into the air.

“As you know, faith can change a lot of things.”

I nodded. Elias suddenly shifted his gaze toward me and said, “But even our team’s utilitarian would’ve chosen you if he were in this situation. I think he would’ve done it even if the world were truly on the verge of destruction.”

“Hard to say. He might think differently by then.”

“It’s not ‘hard to say.’ He’s changed a little.”

“Hm. He changed early.”

“You think? I honestly thought he’d never change.”

Elias scratched the back of his neck. I, who had read their thoughts from ten years in the future, and Elias, who was still eighteen, had different impressions of Leo. The Elias at eighteen and the Elias at twenty-eight were the same person, yet different, and Leo was the same.

As I thought that, I suddenly felt a chill run down the back of my neck.

Right. Leo. When the duke attacked us, did Leo realize that something was wrong? I hurriedly looked around and said, “I should contact Leo. I have no idea what he might be doing by now…”

“Why?”

Elias asked, his eyes widening. I thought about how to answer, then decided to tell him the truth, at least to a reasonable extent.

“We were in a pretty dangerous situation, weren’t we? He’s obviously going to be furious.”

“That’s true. Leo’s scary when he makes that face~”

Elias played it off casually. He rolled around with his arms clasped together, then turned toward the bushes and let the ants crawling by climb onto his hand. Whenever one tried to crawl up his sleeve, he pursed his lips and blew it back onto the dirt. Watching him, I asked, “When is Narke coming back? Can we keep staying here?”

“We can’t leave! If the duke sees you, he’ll probably eat you alive. Leaving now will only make things more complicated.”

“That’s true. So, what about Narke? Is he really okay right now?”

“Yeah, I wonder. Can he really fight him alone? He clearly hasn’t been in the best condition this whole time, so I don’t know how he plans to take on the duke by himself.”

He’s planning to face him alone? I was stunned for a moment, then thought about Narke’s usual behavior and shook my head.

“There seems to be a method he hasn’t told us about. Is it something he can only do in Rome? Why couldn’t he do it in Munich-Freising…?”

“Well, anyway, as long as he comes back safe and sound, that’s what matters.”

Elias suddenly got to his feet and climbed into the little boat floating on the pond. The boat rocked as though it were about to capsize, but once Elias steadied himself, standing on it like a surfboard, it slowly settled down. He looked at me and asked, “There aren’t any Atropos in this water, right?”

“It’s private property belonging to a noble family. There shouldn’t be, unless someone from the Borghese family is a Pleroma member.”

“Ugh.”

I moved closer to the edge of the pond and carefully let divine power flow into the water. Elias clapped his hands. I climbed into the Borghese family’s little boat that he was using without permission and sat across from him.

“It’s been a day since we left. We should be able to reach Bavaria tomorrow morning, right?”

“Ah~ What a shame. How can we go back after just one day? We’re supposed to stay in Italy for a long vacation!”

“Yeah, I know. But just thinking about going back is driving me crazy…”

Aren’t we supposed to go back the same way we came? Elias’s eyes lit up as though he had completely forgotten the panic he’d felt while sneaking into Switzerland from Reichenau Island.

“Let’s have another race through the waterways!”

“No!”

“Why?!”

Elias grabbed the side of the boat and twisted his body from side to side. The boat rocked so violently that it looked like it would capsize at any moment. I almost smacked Elias’s arm with the oar, but instead, I silenced him with a look. Elias only snickered.

Looking up at the sky, I said, “When we get back, I have to study Theravada Buddhism, negotiate with Einsiedel again, purify the Atropos, draw out some divine power… And somehow appease Leo, too.”

“Do you really need to appease him just because you made him worry a little? If you just leave him alone, he’ll sigh and help us with everything anyway!”

“That’s true, but I feel bad making him sigh.”

“You don’t have to feel bad. How are you going to appease him?”

I closed my eyes and thought for a moment before answering.

“Maybe with a letter?”

“A letter? I want to read it too!”

“No. That’s only for Leo.”

“Ehh.”

Elias drooped his shoulders with a strange little sound. Just as I was about to stare at him in disbelief, he quickly returned to his mature expression and said solemnly, “I’m fine with not reading the letter.”

“Why?”

“If I said I wasn’t fine, would you show it to me?”

“No.”

“See! I don’t want to pry into the part of you that Leo occupies. We’re close to you in different ways, so it’d feel wrong to read that.”

“You really can become so mature all of a sudden…”

It wasn’t the first time Elias had acted like this, but it still caught me off guard every time. Elias paid no attention to my assessment of him and simply laughed.

“Hahaha! Just like I can’t replace Leo with you, Luka, or replace you with Leo, it’s the same for you. You can’t replace what you have with Leo with what you have with me.”

He had hit the nail on the head. I smiled at Elias’s hearty laughter before muttering to myself.

“That’s what I should be saying.”

As for how much Leo meant to Elias, I couldn’t answer that lightly. The ten years’ worth of inner monologues I had read probably hadn’t fully taken root in them yet, but even now, they must have shared more love than I could imagine. Even if their affection for each other had become as familiar as the air, like the affection between brothers who would always be by each other’s side, to the point that they barely noticed how much they gave and received from one another. There was nothing more meaningless than weighing one friendship against another, but the two of them must have been indispensable to each other. In both Elias’s and Leo’s inner monologues from when they were in their mid-twenties, I had read that neither of them could imagine the 19th or 20th century without the other. Looking at them as they were now, I could hardly imagine it myself, which made those words all the more shocking in retrospect.

But perhaps this was healthier. To be honest, I hoped they would never realize just how much their friendship meant to each other. I wanted them to take each other for granted, as naturally as the air they breathed, just as they did now. I wanted them to snap at each other, actually get into arguments, find each other annoying, and treat each other as though the other were barely there, just as they did now. From their mid-to-late teens all the way into their late twenties, whenever they realized just how close they had become, it was always when they felt the other’s absence—and that absence invariably came from incidents and suffering that left them isolated from each other. I didn’t want to watch that with my own eyes.

Elias merely raised an eyebrow at my words before suddenly asking something that had crossed his mind.

“Why are you so close with Leo? He’s always snapping at you.”

“…When you actually listen to what he says, he’s always right.”

“That’s true! It’s so frustrating.”

What was he even saying…? I let out a dry laugh and asked, “What about you?”

“Why I’m close with him?”

I nodded. As I did, I looked around to see if Narke had arrived yet. I thought Elias might take some time to answer or brush it off with something meaningless, but he answered immediately.

“He’s the kind of person you can’t help but love. He can be a little annoying sometimes, but he knows how to give the love he’s received back to the world. He knows better than anyone that the love he receives isn’t something he’s entitled to, he knows how to be genuinely moved by it, and he tries to become someone who can love without shame. Of course, he doesn’t always succeed, but well, he grows as much as he tries.”

Elias spoke as though he had been thinking about it for a long time. I raised an eyebrow, quietly surprised. Even without looking ten years into the future, they were already much the same even now. Elias spoke with a dreamy expression, as though he were thinking of a future he himself had never been able to become a part of.

“There are things I find unfamiliar that he can do without a second thought.”

The reason his impression of Leo and mine were so remarkably similar was probably because Elias and I shared so much at our core. I rested my chin on my hand and nodded. Elias scooped up some water from the pond with his hand and said, “But what does any of that even mean? It’s not like we became friends because of these things. We became friends, and then I found out he was this kind of person, and that just brought us closer. Anyway, I guess I’m lucky to have become friends with someone like him when we were so young…”

More than ten years ago, Elias had taken the hand offered by the Crown Prince of Bavaria, the only one among his peers who still treated him like a person and spoke to him even after the others had begun treating him like air. A child who could stubbornly follow the path he believed was right even after being disciplined by the Emperor couldn’t have been such a bad person.

The good fortune of gaining a good friend had come alongside Elias’s miserable family circumstances. That was why I couldn’t simply agree with him, but calling it luck instead of lamenting his circumstances was very much like Elias.

I quietly asked, “What about Narke?”

“We’re friends with a lot to look forward to. We’ll be reminiscing about today ten years from now and we’re right in the middle of making those memories. Isn’t that great?”

Elias scattered water into the air as he spoke. I got splashed and was about to swear at him, but instead I just smiled and nodded.

“I agree. It’s the same for me, with both of you.”

“Right? We’re lucky!”

Elias scattered water toward the sky again. I sighed and dodged the falling droplets.

After waiting for Narke for about ten minutes, someone appeared in the middle of the temple. Elias jumped up from the boat.

“Narke!”

Narke stood there blankly, leaning on his staff. He was looking at us with nothing but a mechanical smile. I hurriedly got out of the boat and approached him.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course.”

The mana I could sense from him really was normal. I checked his status window, but all the numbers were unchanged. Narke put away his staff and approached the pond. While he wiped the blood from his clothes, Elias hurriedly asked, “What happened? Is it all over?”

“Yes.”

Before I could even ask how, Narke spoke in a firm voice.

“I’ll explain about that person after we return home. We need to leave Italy quickly now. Let’s at least stay out of the Papal States. We can’t stay here any longer.”

At those words, I asked cautiously.

“You used to go in and out of the Papal See all the time.”

“It’s a little difficult now. A lot of things have gone wrong.”

Gone wrong? That was the same thing he’d said before. I furrowed my brow. Narke took my hand and grabbed Elias with his other. Elias bent down, hurriedly stuffed the clothes into his bag, then stood up.

Just then, I noticed a white pigeon frantically circling the far side of the Borghese gardens. It was flapping helplessly in front of the barrier. I had no idea what that had to do with us, but Narke’s expression suddenly turned alarmingly grim. Then his eyes widened.

Narke quickly grabbed our hands and moved us to Piazza del Popolo, right next to the gardens. Only then did the pigeon begin circling above Narke’s head. Elias and I both stared in surprise.

“What?”

“Was that pigeon actually here for us?”

If the pigeon had arrived specifically looking for Narke, that meant it had been taught to recognize Narke’s mana. By whom? Obviously, the Italian who had put Narke’s mana into the mana palette used for pigeon communications. But after checking the message, Narke merely burst into hearty laughter. Elias and I looked at each other with wide eyes. Still grinning, Narke turned to Elias.

“Elias, do you have any paper and a pen?”

“No?!”

“Haha. Lukas, what about you?”

“I do.”

I took out my notebook and pen and handed them to Narke. He tore off a long strip of paper, wrote something on it, tied it to the pigeon’s leg, and sent it away. Even afterward, he kept looking up at the sky, waiting for a reply. Elias grabbed one of his shoulders.

“What was that? What did you write?”

“Hm? The warp coordinates~”

Narke gave him a mischievous smile.

Warp coordinates? Elias and I eyed him suspiciously, but there wasn’t anything else for us to do, so we quietly waited for the pigeon to return. All the while, I wondered why Narke was being so relaxed when he’d just said we needed to leave as soon as possible.

But the one who came to greet us wasn’t the returning pigeon.

Not long after, people appeared at the warp point in the plaza. Elias and I turned at the noise and stared, our mouths falling open. For a moment, sheer disbelief took over my mind.

Speak of the devil. A familiar face was approaching with an escort, dressed in the formal attire of the Bavarian Royal Family. Leo wore the smile he usually put on for public events, cast a soundproofing spell, and stood in front of us.

“Why.”

“…….”

“Am I not allowed to come?”

His polite expression and curt tone didn’t match at all, and I almost laughed, but I held it in. What on earth had happened over there in just one day for the Bavarian Royal Family to come all the way to Rome?

I had no idea, but for now, I shook my head in answer to Leo’s question. Elias leaned toward me, cupped a hand around his mouth, and whispered, “And here I thought we were just having a nice little chat about him for once.”

I could only nod.