Chapter 131
Chapter 131
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 131
Chapter Title: The Ancient Prisoner's Confession
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“Name.”
[Barkran Kedow.]
“Is that your name? Surname?”
[Barkran’s the first name, Kedow’s the family name.]
“Got it.”
Arsen noted this down for Sufi and added the new information that ancient people had the concept of family names.
He then grilled the man named Barkran Kedow on his personal details.
It didn’t take long to compile it all.
“Barkran Kedow, second-year graduate student in the Department of History at the state-run Munich University, age 26, parents are healthy...”
[……Yeah, that’s right.]
‘Graduate school, huh. Looks like he made the wrong choice.’
He wasn’t sure if it exactly matched Earth’s graduate schools, but it came after elementary, middle, high school, and university, so it seemed close enough.
Arsen sensed the other man’s voice was still subdued.
The current setup was practically kidnapper and hostage, which was only natural. And it was exactly what Arsen had intended.
‘……For now, I’ll keep things this way.’
He’d already learned that if he let his guard down, that mouth—mouthless as it was—would run wild without restraint.
Arsen kept firing questions.
“So, what were you doing in that room?”
[Uh? Oh, well.]
Hesitant tone. Arsen lowered his voice to a sinister growl.
Like some mob enforcer.
“I don’t get what you’re hesitating for. Talking’s better than dying right now. Be honest. I’m the only one who can help you.”
A brief silence passed, and then Barkran confessed in a tone of resignation.
The story was quite shocking.
[It’s like this—Professor Yeriko, the head of the Biotechnology Department...]
His family wasn’t well-off financially. They’d never been wealthy, but sending Barkran to grad school had piled up a mountain of debt.
Apparently, college tuition was the top culprit for ruining households even in ancient times.
That’s when a professor named Yeriko approached him with an offer for an illegal human experiment.
It was obviously shady, so he should’ve refused, but thoughts of his struggling parents made Barkran accept.
He got an advance payment and underwent the experiment in a secret lab hidden in the ancient bioengineering museum...
“Ancient bioengineering museum?”
[Yeah.]
“Any chance that museum looks like this?”
Arsen described the red palace where he’d found the orb.
The basement, red outer walls, long straight corridors stretching out...
[That’s it. There was a secret lab in the museum’s library.]
“What do you mean by ‘ancient’ museum? You’re saying even by your era’s standards, it was from ancient times?”
[Obviously. But what do you mean ‘your era’? What’s that...]
Arsen ignored Barkran’s question and pressed on.
If he learned the truth, he might clam up from shock, so Arsen wanted to extract as much info as possible first.
“What was the experiment? I have a guess.”
[……Consciousness transfer experiment. Transplanting human consciousness into inorganic matter. I’m no expert, so I don’t know the details, but it seems like it worked.]
“Looks that way to me too.”
Arsen nodded in agreement while scribbling down everything nonstop, his face twisting in concentration.
He was diligently interpreting the implications hidden in this ancient man’s tale.
‘At least one weird thing makes sense now.’
One puzzle from exploring the ruins was how the items and knowledge there were too primitive.
Sure, ancient artifacts were incredibly powerful magic tools by modern standards, but for a people who launched satellites and toyed with life at will, they seemed underwhelming.
If these “artifacts” were literally museum pieces from a medieval display case, it was easier to swallow.
‘Should modern folks feel ashamed for digging out and using museum exhibits because they’re cool?’
That still left the question of where all the tech from the most advanced era—Barkran’s time, between ancient and modern—had gone.
“So... where’s Munich University? Relative to this continent.”
[Western Lehman Republic, Munich Province.]
“What’s the Lehman Republic?”
[What? You don’t know republics? Come to think of it, you didn’t know about grad schools or high schools either...]
Arsen clicked his tongue lightly.
To get basic knowledge that was common sense to the other man—like country names or societal norms—he had to reveal his own ignorance.
So far, he’d bullied the info out with threats, but the guy was starting to notice something off.
Arsen tried brushing it aside and digging more, but Barkran began dragging his feet, dodging answers.
Threaten him again? But that card wasn’t one Arsen could overuse.
His only leverage was smashing the orb the guy was trapped in, and he couldn’t inflict any other pain.
He couldn’t even test scratching the surface for pain without risking breakage.
And actually smashing it? Impossible.
This was a conversational ancient human he might never find again on this land.
In other words, if Barkran went all-in on defiance, Arsen had no moves left.
In the end, Arsen laid out his inferences about the situation.
At least hundreds, maybe thousands of years had passed since Barkran’s era, and this world was now inhabited not by ancient humans but likely descendants of combat androids.
And he himself seemed to be a half-breed of combat android and ancient human.
Barkran reacted furiously.
[What bullshit is that? Combat androids just look human-shaped; they don’t have human genes at all. How the hell would they mix? And suddenly thousands of years have passed—what the...?]
No way, show proof—he screamed, all traces of fear from the life threat gone.
Arsen could guess why.
Anxiety, probably. Deep down, instinct told him it was true, so he rebelled harder to reject it.
To show proof, Arsen secured the orb firmly in front of Jin and raced through the forest.
After a few minutes, they burst out into a vast plain.
The ground here oozed thick purple poison gas, creating a bizarre spectacle.
That was what Arsen wanted to show. If his hunch was right, no such poison existed in ancient times.
Sure enough, Barkran let out a horrified groan.
[No way…… Is this real?]
No one would fill the entire horizon with poison just to fool one guy. Who’d go to that trouble for a single grad student?
Barkran realized it too—his denials carried heavy despair.
“Believe me now?”
[……I’ll believe you.]
“Good. Let’s head back. It’s dangerous lingering here.”
With that, Arsen immediately fled the plain and plunged back into the forest.
A question came from Barkran.
[Dangerous? Why?]
“The local estate lord sent an army to kidnap mages. We beat them off once, but can’t let our guard down.”
[Estate lord? You’re joking...]
Arsen knew better than anyone how hard it was for someone dropped from modern to medieval times to adapt—how jarring the common sense gap felt.
That’s why he could calmly explain to Barkran.
“After mages wrecked the world into this mess, people can only live in estates and castles. Outside the purified zones, it’s all poison gas—only humans with stored mana, mages, or knights can operate there. The rulers of estates and castles are called estate lords or castle lords.”
No reply came.
Just as Arsen thought he was still reeling from shock, Barkran spoke in stunned horror.
And it was news that shocked Arsen even more.
[Mages broke the purification magic circles?!]
“Purification magic circles?”
[Yeah, the purification magic circles! The ones cleansing this land’s poison gas!]
Arsen halted, closed his eyes. Digesting the sudden info.
A few seconds later, calmer, he slowly rode the black lion back toward camp and asked.
“What are these purification magic circles? What do you mean they purified the poison? I thought mages made this poison?”
[Of course not. How could anyone make this? We got rid of it. With the purification magic circles.]
“Tell me more about those circles.”
[You forgot even this?]
Barkran sounded incredulous.
[There were a few hundred across the continent……I learned it in school but forgot the exact number—anyway, dozens of big ones, ten times that in smaller ones, built as structures. At spots with the strongest ley lines underground. They used those to activate magic circles purifying the continent’s poison.]
Arsen instantly thought of estate offices and castle offices. Ancient buildings that never crumbled, packed with timeless conveniences.
Who’d have guessed those were the anchors.
[That’s why we could live on this land. No idea why, but they’re broken now...]
Then, Arsen tossed out a question that just occurred to him.
Something Byulbureumi had wondered too.
“Come to think of it, was there no hatred toward mages in ancient times?”
[Hatred?]
Arsen gave a quick explanation, and Barkran insisted no such thing existed back then.
Mages were core technicians upholding civilization, treated as nobility. Every parent hoped their kid would be a mage; having one in the family was a huge blessing.
[Sure, there were anti-mage nuts opposing them, but they were treated like crazies. How do you live without magic? The planet’s environment itself was made livable by magic. Mages aren’t born genetically anyway, so no inherited class.]
“So you don’t know why the hatred started?”
[No clue.]
Arsen shook his head in brief regret, then asked something else.
“Then maybe a mage or anti-mage smashed a purification circle? Hundreds of anchors—break one, and it all crumbles?”
[That’s true, but you can’t smash purification circles.]
“Can’t smash them?”
[Yeah. They’re made of the hardest material from our ancestors’ era, before we came to this planet. Even in my time, no way to destroy them. Anti-mage crazies would riot to smash them sometimes, though.]
“But they’re smashed now, seemingly.”
[Yeah, but...]
Just then, a flare shot up from camp.
Seeing it, Arsen tsked softly.
[What?]
“They think something’s wrong since I’ve been gone too long. Gotta head back. We’ll talk details later. Lots more to ask.”
If only he could talk mentally like with Eloise, but sadly, no way for Arsen to speak.
He rarely got chances to talk to himself away from others, so he’d need some workaround.
Racing the black lion toward camp, Arsen fired his final question.
“Oh yeah—before humans came here, where were they?”
[Huh?]
“You said ‘this planet,’ right? Meaning we lived somewhere else originally?”
[Oh, that? No idea.]
“No idea?”
[Yeah. There was this ‘Oblivion Accord’—when we came from the homeworld, we scrapped most historical records and tech. No old grudges in the new world, or whatever. No one knows where our ancestors’ homeworld was or how we got here. That’s why us historians and magic engineers curse the accord nonstop.]
“If you forget your mistakes, won’t you just repeat them?”
[Exactly.]
The agreeable tone sounded almost cheerful. The type who warmed up quick to agreement? Or maybe just acting to soothe his kidnapper.
Couldn’t see his face, had to judge by voice alone—pretty annoying.
Then, Barkran asked quietly.
[Um, by the way.]
“Yeah?”
[What happened to my body? It was probably right next to this orb.]
Tricky question. Arsen fell silent a moment.
Then, quietly:
“Nothing there but this orb.”
[I see. Yeah, figured.]
His response held a hollow note.
And until Arsen reached camp, Barkran said not a word.
Arsen didn’t speak to him either.