The Five Races (4)
Marquis Prius worked with extraordinary passion. No one had ordered him to do so, yet he took the lead on major affairs in support of Selina, meeting daily with the high priests of the Pantheon and Emperor Caesar as he filled his days to the brim.
It was enough to leave Emperor Caesar — who had watched Prius during his active years of service — staring in disbelief.
"…Marquis Prius. I never knew you were the sort of man who could work this hard — voluntarily, no less."
"I am humbled, Your Majesty. Even in the days when I served the Empire, this humble servant merely did his utmost. Now, time has simply granted me a little more experience, that is all."
If only he would stop talking.
Caesar had to carefully hide his incredulous expression. Prius was the type who performed well — but only ever did exactly what he was told.
And look at that insolence: even after Caesar and Crown Prince Julius had barged unannounced into the Marquis's office, the man remained seated and offered nothing more than a slight nod of the head. Back in the Empire he would at least have made a show of rising from his chair. Retirement, it seemed, had reduced the Emperor to the status of a neighborhood uncle.
…And yet Caesar could not scold him, for the Marquis had demonstrated a competence that outweighed every breach of etiquette.
Even now, while exchanging idle banter with Caesar, his hands never stopped. Documents flew beneath his fingers. Could a human hand gripping a fountain pen truly move with such speed and precision?
You should have worked like this when you were still in the Empire. The thought only made Caesar find the Marquis more irritating.
"It has been a very long time since I last saw you throw yourself into work like this. Since… Stultus, that cursed pig, was it?"
Crack.
"Ah."
The elegant gold-inlaid barrel of the fountain pen shattered into useless pieces.
As if some foul memory had surfaced, the Marquis's pupils clouded over.
Caesar had done it on purpose, of course — but he arranged his face into the most apologetic expression he could manage.
"Ah. Dear me, my apologies. Was that a subject better left buried?"
"…N-no, Your Majesty…"
The Marquis's hands trembled visibly. Caesar carefully suppressed a smile.
See? If you had worked even half this hard back in the Empire, how much better things would have been.
Delighted by the Marquis's exquisite reaction, Caesar pressed on.
"Those were truly difficult times… were they not? For you, and for the Chancellor as well…"
"…Cleaning up after a wretch who deserved to be deep-fried alive and fed to the beasts. Yes. We suffered quite a lot. A great deal, in fact."
"Indeed… we truly did."
Emperor and Marquis shared a hollow, haunted look.
That damned pig of a man had embezzled two-tenths of the Empire's entire annual budget and blown it on banquets — an unprecedented catastrophe that left the whole realm reeling.
To refill the vanished fifth of the national treasury, the Emperor and Chancellor had drafted letters and documents in every direction, while the Marquis carried out a fiscal bloodletting so severe it could not be watched without tears.
Budget reallocation. Massive restructuring. Departmental cuts and closures… Only through the Marquis's blood and sweat had the Empire managed to keep breathing at all.
In the brief grace period he carved out, they had clung on with desperate tenacity, grinding their very lifespans into the work.
Through sheer, grinding effort they had barely weathered the crisis… but the memory remained raw and bitter.
Marquis and Emperor regarded each other with the eyes of comrades who had crossed the line between life and death together.
"Let us leave such unpleasant talk there. But Marquis Prius — what is it you have been studying so intently all this time?"
"Ah— oh."
Caesar stepped closer, curiosity plain on his face, and peered at the Marquis's documents. The fountain pen had lingered over that single sheet for quite a while.
For a man who normally needed no more than a moment for any one page, to devote this much care to a task… Caesar's interest was piqued.
Prius's hand twitched as if to block him, then hung uselessly in midair. Too late.
"This is… a Proposal for an In-Depth Investigation into the Individuality, Characteristics, and Physical Peculiarities of the Beastkin Races? Author… Marquis Prius?"
"Ahem. Given that the mission I received from the Sixth God concerns the beastkin, it seemed only proper that I understand them in greater detail, did it not? Thus, with the cooperation of the Pantheon and Lady Selina, I sought to examine their traits more thoroughly—"
Excuses poured out unbidden. Caesar's eyes flicked sideways toward the Marquis.
He had heard the rumors well enough during his stay in the Holy City. That a noble living there was madly obsessed with animal ears. And that on the day the Marquis emerged from the gate of the Holy Land, he had passionately cried out about those very ears.
Surely not, Marquis Prius…
Caesar said nothing. He simply returned the document to Prius — and gave him a quiet pat on the shoulder.
"Your tastes truly are…"
"…"
"Do not worry. Kh— pff! I shall say nothing. You are meant to protect the beastkin, after all. Pff! It would be rather inconvenient if such baseless rumors spread."
Caesar's encouragement that was not encouragement at all. His mouth, however, twitched with stubborn honesty as he fought down the laughter trying to burst free.
Caught in his longtime superior's knowledge of his private preferences, the Marquis could only tremble in the shoulders and say nothing at all.
The library within the Pantheon.
From ancient texts written in mold-scented archaic tongues to volumes so fresh the ink had barely dried — tens of thousands of them, stacked high.
The full breadth of long theological knowledge. The very essence of sacred study.
Scholars hungry for learning and theologians deep in research each buried their heads in books, wholly absorbed. Only the occasional turn of a page, the whisper of a fountain pen across parchment, or a soft cough broke the hush.
A silence that flowed low and deep. Stillness itself.
A cradle of knowledge and learning, in every sense.
That quiet vanished beneath a wave of enormous heat.
"Here! Here it is! A passage on the Five Races!"
"Set that one aside! No — that book is about five species of mushroom, not the Five Races!"
"Why does the Pantheon even haveFifty Home-Cooked Recipes Even an Orc Can Manage? Is this some ancient cookbook? Wait — orcs? Those pigs can cook?"
"Orcs cooking? The ones that just run around going zzoon-jjueeng and nothing else?"
People shouted back and forth, racing about, piling books high and hauling them away. Such chaos in a library that held quiet and stillness as virtues.
One would expect someone to frown and object — yet no such person existed. More precisely, there was no one left who could.
The scholars and theologians who ought to have complained were themselves leading the charge, thundering through the stacks.
"I found it! I found it!! This is it! At last! My doctoral thesis is finished!"
"What is the connection between the patterns on the Holy Land's gate and the Five Races? And if the creatures carved upon that gate truly exist, then the T-rex lizards known only in legend—"
The scholars tore about with a racket that left no trace of their usual dignity.
The appearance of forgotten races!
News that struck like a boulder dropped into a still pond sent a great wave crashing through the academic world. Scholars parched for new knowledge scoured ancient texts with fire in their eyes; theologians tore through scripture and doctrine in a frenzy, desperate to grasp the deeper meaning.
And so the library never slept, thronging day and night with scholars burning with zeal.
"…The Five Races."
One step removed from the uproar, in a pool of shadow, a figure in black armor watched it all in silence. The heretic inquisitor who wore a crow-shaped mask — Number Five.
Carefully, a hand rose and removed the mask. White hair spilled down like a waterfall. Fingers smoothed it back into place.
"…The Five… Races."
White hair. Red eyes. A body that healed almost at once from any cut of a blade.
After a hesitant pause, Number Five stripped the gauntlet from one hand and cautiously extended it beyond the shadow — reaching toward the sunlight that cut across the library through a window.
Sizzle—!
"Ghhhk!"
The flesh that touched the sun cooked red as if held to flame, smoke rising from the skin. The hand was yanked back at once, but blisters were already bubbling up.
A fist clenched.
A hideously burned hand. A body that could not live beneath the sun. A wretched frame doomed to dwell forever in the shade.
…Grace.
Fall. Loss. Reversal. Corruption… Call it whatever one liked.
Now it was nothing more than a brand. The brand of the forsaken.
Number Five looked down at the ruined hand, then slipped soundlessly back into the dark.
There was somewhere that needed to be visited.
Red eyes glittered once as Number Five vanished into the shadows — and then only quiet darkness remained.
"Assistant Manager Park — finished with what I asked earlier?"
"Ah, almost, sir! Another twenty minutes and I'll be done."
"Send it to me by email when you're finished."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, right. And pull together all the materials from the new email I just sent and upload them to the server!"
"…Yes, sir."
Clack. Clack-clack-clack.
No time to breathe. The office rang with the hammering of keyboards.
This job had always been like that — dead quiet when it was quiet, then crushing when it got busy. From morning straight through lunch, I hadn't so much as touched my phone, let alone stood up from my chair.
"Whew—"
It felt like the end of a full-blown war. I bolted down a quick lunch in the precious midday break, tipped my chair as far back as it would go, and pulled out my neck pillow.
The perfect resting posture.
After racing since morning, my old, worn-out body had been screaming for rest — and this, at last, felt like living again.
"Urgh—"
A good long stretch for good measure.
With the practiced ease of a seasoned instructor, I pulled out my phone and launched the game. A round before the nap was a non-negotiable part of the routine.
The familiar temple filled the screen. A dwarf pumping short little legs for all he was worth — and Iver, headbutting a boulder with single-minded determination for reasons known only to her.
— Thud! Thud! Thud!
— "Ppi-ik! Ppi-ik! Pik!"
…What is she doing?
A little one headbutting like that was going to scramble her brains. Partly to stop her, partly just to play, I dragged her over and dunked her into the hot spring.
— Splash! Splash!
— Ppi-hik! Ppi-hihihihik!!
Iver streaked through the spring like a flying fish, utterly thrilled. Always so full of energy — it was good to see.
"Might as well check the shop."
Looking over what the Mystery Shop was selling was another habit I never skipped. First I switched to World Exploration Mode — that was the only way to open the Mystery Shop.
The continent still lay wrapped in pure white fog. The places I could actually see were extremely limited.
"Huh."
But far off in the distance—
Somewhere within that white fog, black smoke was curling upward. It looked for all the world like a fire scene.
"…Is something burning?"