All Yesterday 2

This may be evidence of a "Diablo-like organism" that lived 50,000,000 years ago.

The sound in the conference room seemed to suddenly fade from his ears.

Had he heard that correctly?

The ancestors of the Diablo people from 50,000,000 years ago?

"Diablo-like?"

Fury could no longer sit still.

He stood up and walked over to stare at the image on Thomasin's presentation screen, his eyes widening.

When he looked closely enough, he realized that it wasn't an "insect shell."

It was an organism with features resembling a horseshoe crab—except this horseshoe crab was extremely small and had a geometric body, with sharp, distinctly angular edges rather than the rounded shape of the horseshoe crabs known to humans, and it had no tail.

"Professor Pi'erre and his team are studying it extensively. He's confident that this must be evidence pointing to the ancestors of the Diablo people, Your Highness. Look."

She enlarged the light curtain, causing the image on the paper to expand. Princess Nora followed her down and took a closer look.

"This mysterious organism has a shape resembling the diamond suit from a deck of cards. It's only about the size of a small child's palm, but we're certain that it lived in the sea millions of years ago, and it was not a predator."

The woman pointed it out for Fury and Nora.

"There is a crack on the right side of its shell. But it isn't a crack caused by decomposition... it's a fracture caused by something biting into it with considerable force."

Professor Pi'erre conducted experiments and discovered that—

"Whatever bit it was probably an ordinary sea fish. Since the fracture isn't large, the creature that bit it couldn't have been very large either. This suggests that this creature probably wasn't very high on the food chain in the ancient ecosystem..."

And if an ordinary fish could bite it, that also indicated that the shell covering its body wasn't particularly strong.

It may have lived by scavenging for remains on the seabed, much like isopods.

"Therefore, based on the evidence, we can conclude that this diamond-shaped, volcanic-rock-like creature may actually have been prey for something that itself was prey."

The woman swallowed after finishing her presentation.

Dan continued staring for a long while...

before turning to ask,

"Does it have a name?"

"Yes."

Diablo - Specimen, or D-Specimen for short.

The first Diablo ancestral organism ever discovered in this world.

D-Specimen01

Tachypleus Diablo

Meaning, the horseshoe crab of Diablo.

It is estimated to have lived on this world approximately 50,000,000 years ago.

"Are you certain this organism is actually related to the Diablo people?"

"Normally... for Professor Pi'erre, even a 60% confidence level is already considered very high, Your Highness."

"Then why not 100%?"

She swallowed.

"Because... in paleontology, specimens have to be compared between organisms living in the present and those from the past. There simply isn't enough biological data on the modern Diablo people..."

"You mean humans have never seriously studied the Diablo people before?"

"I think Senior Thomasin means that there simply aren't enough specimens available for study, Mr.Fury."

Nora said,

"The Diablo people aren't birds or fish that you can just collect specimens from whenever you want, are they?"

"That's true..."

Dan thought for a moment.

Then he looked at Thomasin.

The young woman looked uneasy, confused as to why he was staring at her so intently.

Until the scene cut to the forest in Anfield.

Casca Saint-Maximin held an axe coated in holy magical energy against the arm of Prince Fury's demonic form.

"Last time I'm asking... you're absolutely sure about this?"

"For the sake of research."

"I really do love you sometimes."

With that, Casca swung the axe hard into her husband's arm, severing the demon prince's left arm clean off with holy power.

Dark red blood sprayed out in a long arc.

Yet there was no cry of pain from the prince whose body it belonged to.

Instead, it was his secretary who screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of the forest.

Thomasin could barely remain standing. She didn't know which was more shocking: discovering that Casca and Fury had a secret relationship, or suddenly finding herself in possession of a freshly severed living arm that had just been cut straight off her employer.

(Nora's Healing magic)

"Take a good look, Nora. Unless you're my wife, don't ever expect to see my blood."

"Yeah, yeah, Professor Paleontologist."

Casca teased him as she cleaned the blood off the axe handle.

The high-level magic from Princess Nora stopped the bleeding and completely sealed Fury's wound within thirty minutes.

"Leave it alone for about a month and it'll grow back normally."

After transforming back into human form,

Dan picked up his own arm with both hands and placed it into a thick iron container designed to maintain its temperature, coated with Snowhaven's black ice that Nora had helped conjure.

He handed it to Thomasin.

"And there we have it. Now you'll have a tissue sample from a Diablo person to study."

The young TA was speechless...

And likewise, over in the Diablo Kingdom, at the coastal excavation site—

Professor Pi'erre's excavation team was completely stunned when a large group of Diablo soldiers suddenly rushed to the entrance of the site,

led by Dominic,

in human form.

"What's going on?"

"An order from Prince Fury."

Dominic answered, then turned back.

"His Highness ordered all Diablo people to cut off pieces of their own flesh and send them to the professor to establish a comparative database."

"....Are you sure that's a good idea? You're saying something like that with such a cheerful smile?"

"He also asked me to tell you that his arm is on its way."

"What did you say????"

Sheffield Library

The sound of turning the pages of the final textbook eventually came to an end.

But it still wasn't enough to answer Fury's questions.

"There's something I'm wondering about now."

He said to Princess Nora.

"When did we Diablo begin to take on a human appearance?"

With his hands clasped in front of his lap, the young man tilted his head up toward the ceiling.

"The discovery of the D-Specimen indicates that Diablo-type creatures had already been living here for a very long time before that... Which means we didn't branch off from humans like you during the era when your species originated... We have our own evolutionary path. But why? Why do we have the same shape?"

There was no answer from the princess, who was sitting and listening.

But an answer came from the face of another student who entered the frame, someone who had just finished training and stopped by here.

Rafinya Saint Pauli.

"It could just be a coincidence."

The red eyes of the two stared at each other for a brief moment.

He clicked his tongue softly and lowered his gaze again.

"That's possible... It could simply be convergent evolution, nothing particularly special. But even our internal organs are similar."

Rafinya took advantage of the moment Dan was speaking and sat down beside Nora while Dan counted off the similarities on his fingers.

"We have five fingers. We stand upright. Our eyes are positioned on the same plane. And we're intelligent beings just like you. That's too much to be a coincidence. I don't believe it's convergent evolution like sharks and dolphins. It's impossible."

"But some of you have three lungs."

Princess Nora argued.

"Take Roma, for example. His true form doesn't look anything like a human. He even walks on four legs."

"But Roma has intelligence like you and me, unlike Yormundgan."

He folded his arms.

"Intelligence is what separates the Diablo from ordinary beasts."

We have armored ones, slippery ones, flying ones, and so on.

But Intelligence is what truly separates us from monsters and beasts.

Dan shifted his gaze toward Rafinya.

"Do you have any records from the Luminus people of old that mention the Diablo?"

"You mean the Starfolk or something like that?"

She nodded.

"I could try looking. We might find something."

"I don't want to interfere too much with your training, especially now that you're a third-year, Rafinya."

"I can do it, Mr.Fury. What exactly are you looking for?"

"I want to know whether the Luminus people, hundreds or thousands of years ago... recorded any Diablo who looked similar to humans."

"What makes you think that, Mr.Fury?"

"Because I have a feeling..."

Dan paused for a moment before making air quotes with his fingers for emphasis.

"From the stories passed down through my father's words... I have a feeling that a few hundred years ago, the Diablo people back then didn't have human forms."

Back then, it wasn't even the land of Diablo.

There wasn't even such a concept as the "Diablo people" yet.

"We weren't any different from animals... So..."

Dan turned and handed the task over to Rafinya.

"If we go back and examine the records of the Luminus from the era when they explored the world, and there are no records describing the Diablo as having a human-like appearance... then we can probably infer that** we may have only taken on a form resembling yours within the past few hundred or few thousand years.**"

From an evolutionary perspective, that would be an extraordinarily rapid change.

"If we had already looked the way we do now back then, humans would have recorded this physical appearance somehow. There's no way they simply wouldn't have mentioned it."

When Dan finished speaking, he turned toward Rafinya.

"Can you help me with this?"

"Yes, Mr.Fury."

"Thank you very much, Rafinya. I owe you another one. If there's ever anything you think I can help you with, just ask."

"Thank you, Mr.Fury."

At that moment, Rafinya happened to catch Princess Nora glancing at her with a flicker of jealousy.

But nothing came of it.