Blue Blood (5) - The Cipher in the Diary
I cleared my throat with a small cough and began to speak. “As my wives mentioned, we came all this way at the request of Lady Henesis. We only knew that Tirsi had received a letter from her former maid. Everything after that was just following the trail until we reached this place.”
“It might be incredibly presumptuous for me—the very cause of this mess—to say this… but you’ve all been through so much. The only reason I’m even standing here is thanks to every one of you.”
“It was nothing. Just a string of lucky coincidences.”
I kept it at that and accepted her gratitude without protest. Part of me knew our efforts had been monumental, but acting humble right now would have been worse. What was the point of boasting about modesty while keeping exhausted people tied up in conversation? It benefited no one. Besides, the whole exchange felt strangely new between us.
“Anyway… when I was little, the person who used to look after me sent a letter with the news I’d been hoping for. That’s why I returned to Romania.”
Tirsi frowned, as if trying to dredge up the memory. “But while I was verifying its authenticity and making preparations, I was captured by minions of the Dark Society in Lucregens.”
“And then brought to Renapolis?”
“Yes, that’s correct. Up until then I was on high alert because the whole engagement talk seemed incredibly suspicious, but it turned out suspicion and vigilance alone couldn’t overcome the problem.”
With a sigh, Tirsi explained how she had ended up in Renapolis and everything that followed. To summarize the finer details: after staying at the lord’s mansion for several days, Diabolo had summoned her to the annex.
“Given the situation, I couldn’t refuse to go, and I intended to ask how he planned to release me. But when I actually met him, he was ten times more deranged than I had imagined.”
Tirsi’s face twisted at the recollection. “He kept spewing self-centered nonsense that made no sense, then tried to restrain me. By then I had already failed at several escape attempts, so I immediately countered with magic.”
“…I see.”
I could easily picture how hopeless Tirsi must have felt. To stand any chance against a fully powered Diabolo, you needed at least a warrior capable of using aura, or a mage skilled enough to block one. Tirsi was neither.
But this seemed to be the key part of her story, because she chuckled softly. “Diabolo just watched me cast the spell and said something like, ‘I was going to extract your low-quality mana anyway, so thanks for helping with the task~’ So I poured every last drop of mana I had left into encasing my own body in an ice coffin.”
“…The same magic you used against Tabula?”
An ice coffin. I understood what kind of spell it was. It was the ice magic Tirsi had hurled at the werewolf Tabula while he was mid-transformation. Though in that case Tabula had simply shattered the ice and emerged without a scratch.
Having pieced it together, I asked in blank astonishment, “You mean you took that spell to your own body? And it held up?”
From the way Tirsi described it, she didn’t possess any special resistance like Tabula. It sounded like she had simply, stubbornly locked herself inside an ice coffin. No wonder I was shocked.
Freezing your entire body and then thawing it without injury wasn’t the simple matter it seemed in manga or movies. Cryogenics belonged in the realm of science fiction. The human body was ridiculously complex. It wasn’t a slab of pork belly you could just microwave or leave out to thaw for an hour and a half.
No matter how much magic bent physical laws, it couldn’t completely escape every chemical reaction. Whether by magic or liquid nitrogen, if your whole body froze solid without proper preparation and then came back to life, how could it possibly be fine? Even in goldfish-freezing experiments, the revived fish usually died soon after because their internal organs were destroyed. And if it was a human with far more complex organs than a goldfish? It seemed stupid to even wonder. A hundred percent fatal.
Yet here Tirsi was, looking perfectly healthy. She must have had some kind of countermeasure in mind.
When I looked at her with that thought, Tirsi closed her mouth for a moment, then gave a small, dry laugh.
“It couldn’t withstand it. Truthfully, I did it half expecting to die.”
“…Pardon?”
“If surviving only meant I wouldn’t see anything good, I figured dying would be better. So I went all in. Honestly, I’m amazed too. How exactly am I still alive right now?”
Tirsi tilted her head with an expression of pure academic curiosity. I was completely at a loss for words.
Fuck. Why is this ice-obsessed girl casually talking about her suicide attempt like she’s discussing yesterday’s lunch?
“There’s nothing so surprising about it. It must be the power of the Elixir.”
That was when Veronica pushed through the invisible maiden’s barrier and struggled her way over to us.
“…The Elixir?”
“Indeed. The Elixir could keep a body frozen by impromptu magic alive without killing it.”
“Aha. So that’s why Diabolo was so desperate to collect high-grade Elixirs?”
Dana muttered as if it all made sense. I nodded, feeling the same.
Veronica’s explanation was reasonable. Thawing a frozen body would have killed Tirsi through osmosis, molecular restructuring, and similar phenomena. From the moment her entire body froze, she would have been in a state infinitely close to death—like proteins subjected to extreme heat.
To keep someone in that condition alive without killing them required the highest quality recovery potion. The prime example was the Elixir. Even the horrific burns I had displayed in my Jesus Gay mode—protein cell deformation caused by heat—could be healed by an Elixir.
“Moreover… the discomfort Tirsi feels in her body right now isn’t simply because she was trapped in ice for so long,” Veronica continued after careful thought. “This is a ritual that reproduces the power of the ancient mage Arma Shunas in his descendant across eras. Some physical adjustment would have been necessary to make the process smoother and more stable. Being encased in ice was ultimately a good decision.”
“That’s fortunate. If I’d been captured normally, it wouldn’t have ended with just one or two scalpel marks on my body.”
Tirsi continued to say horrifying things with complete nonchalance.
“…So while treating me inside the ice coffin with Elixir, they used black magic to adjust the results to match the ritual?”
“We can’t know for certain. Without knowing the exact details of the ritual, anything we say is pure speculation.”
Veronica turned her palm up and spoke to Franc and Dana. “In that sense, since our bodies are in good condition, it would be better for us to join the others investigating inside the mansion. A ritual of this scale must have been documented in books somewhere.”
“…No, that won’t be necessary.”
Veronica had spoken quite seriously, but Tirsi immediately shot her down. The way Veronica’s face immediately turned into an adorable pout was ridiculously cute.
“Hmm…… What do you mean by that? Was my reasoning wrong?”
“Not at all. You were exactly right. Which is why there’s no need to go far.”
Tirsi pointed at the books I had brought and set on the table. “Those books are from the collection Diabolo showed me when he called for me.”
“…Is that true?”
Veronica looked at me in surprise and poked my side. I picked up the volume Tirsi had indicated.
“This one?”
“Yes. No mistake.”
Since Tirsi sounded completely confident in her memory, I opened the book with some tension. As I turned the stiff cover, I suddenly realized something.
Wait. This is one of the books the appraisers said had no value and handed over.
The old hardcover flipped open, revealing the first pages.
January 5th, Year 03. The newly hired chef served bright red braised fish for breakfast. A fish bone got stuck in my throat, so I fired him.
Unfair, you say? I’m the one who’s been wronged. I could tolerate him making sauce out of fishy seafood. I simply wouldn’t eat it.
But I could not overlook him pouring that sauce over dried fish and calling it cooking. Three days ago he served rock-hard fried chicken, and apparently he thought he would be forgiven this time too.
I showed the book to Dana with a sour expression. Even she, who had read far more books than I had, stiffened.
“…This looks like the diary of a noble from the ancient civilization era?”
“…What? N-no, that can’t be!”
Tirsi took the book and flipped through the pages like a wife who had just seen her missing husband return with his mistress, desperately denying reality. After a few moments she gave up and let her head drop.
“It really is a diary… I guess my memory was wrong.”
I thought it was understandable. Until a few hours ago she had been trapped in ice, hovering between life and death. She looked perfectly fine now, but that was probably because the Elixir had been healing her body. When the ritual began, it filled her with dense mana that blocked the ice magic. That must have been why she had shattered the ice coffin without a scratch when she appeared before us.
Still, the fact that she hadn’t lost any memories while in that near-death state was a miracle in itself. Even with the Elixir, memory confusion was possible. So it wasn’t strange.
More importantly, I’m so fucking tired my brain has stopped working.
Right now I felt like I could drag my wives into bed and commit passionate adultery in a 3P right in front of everyone. This was the sleepiest I had felt since dropping out of Carmine University.
“…Um, Tirsi? From what you remember, this was the book Diabolo was holding at the time, right?”
Larilura, who had received the diary after it had made its rounds, tilted her head cutely.
Tirsi answered hesitantly, clearly uncertain now. “That’s what I remember, but it seems I was wrong. No matter how insane that man was, he wouldn’t have called me over just to read an old person’s diary, would he?”
“Hmmmm……?”
Larilura pondered for a moment, then sneaked a glance at my face. Her cheeks flushed slightly with embarrassment as she spoke.
“What if we think about it the other way around?”
“The other way?”
“Yes~? If we assume that Tirsi’s memory is completely correct~? Then this diary must have been ‘worth reading at the time,’ right?”
Our junior smiled brightly and flipped through the book with lively energy. “If we approach it logically? The people of the past wouldn’t have written truly valuable information in plain, straightforward words! What do you think~? This is the reasoning of the great detective Rari-lura♡!”
“Who exactly is she imitating?”
“Ahaha♡! Who else but you, Senior?”
I laughed at Larilura’s answer, wondering how long she planned to keep calling me “Senior.” Strangely enough, I had grown rather fond of the title. I couldn’t even imagine her calling me anything else.
“So, so~? I kept reading with that thought in mind, and from the middle onward the diary entries start losing their liveliness! There are still occasional interesting bits, but the feeling from the handwriting is completely different☆!”
“The atmosphere of the writing changes? From where?”
“Right here♡!”
Larilura happily thrust the open book toward me as if she had received praise. I started to read the page, but my translation ability activated faster than my eyes could focus and I widened them in shock.
“…Fuck. It’s a cipher.”
What I had assumed was simply an old person’s diary was actually a coded document. Starting from the middle of the book, the dry handwriting concealed a substitution cipher hiding the true meaning.