Carius, That Lunatic
Deep beneath Anton Village.
On the road to Carlton's workshop.
Step. Step.
"……."
Juhan walked that path in silence. Just the day before, something he had never seen coming had hit him square on.
Estelle's proposal that he come live with her in the North. She had worn a look that would brook no argument, her eyes hard and unyielding.
Thud.
He had shoved her away without even thinking about it, putting distance between them.
Are you playing hard to get right now?
…….
And yet Estelle had only laughed, as if the whole thing amused her.
Ah—my lady?
Lady Estelle?
If the others hadn't stepped in between them just then, something would definitely have happened.
Somehow, Juhan had managed to slip free of Estelle's grasp. Now he was on his way to see Carlton, barely managing to sort his thoughts as he went. He had dropped off another metal plate, after all—maybe Carlton had managed to dig something else out of it.
Step.
He reached the entrance to Carlton's workshop soon enough. But the moment he arrived, something struck him as off.
"…Carlton?"
Creeeak—
The door to Carlton's workshop stood open, rendering the hand Juhan had raised to knock completely pointless. And the usual racket that always spilled out of the place was nowhere to be heard today.
What the hell?
Had something happened?
Creak.
"Carlton…."
The thought made him push the door open at once.
"……."
He found Carlton sitting in a chair. The only difference from usual was that the man was staring blankly into empty air, saying nothing at all.
Lost in thought or something?
He looked like someone wrestling with a problem of enormous weight. Like a man who had just taken a massive blow.
Softly.
"Carlton?"
Juhan approached carefully and tried speaking to him.
"……."
Nothing came back. Carlton just sat there on the chair in a daze, as if he hadn't heard Juhan's voice at all.
"…Hey."
Tap.
Only when Juhan gave his shoulder a light nudge did Carlton finally react.
He flinched hard.
"W-what? When did you get here?"
Carlton whipped around with a full-body shudder, staring at Juhan like he'd just seen a ghost.
"Just now."
"Hold on—how did you even get the door open? Don't tell me you broke it—"
"It was unlocked."
"What?"
Just how deep in thought had he been that he never even noticed he'd left the door wide open? As if answering that unspoken question, Carlton spoke up first.
"…My head's a complete mess. Seriously."
"What's going on?"
"It's because of those metal plates you brought me, you bastard."
"Yeah?"
Juhan asked it casually enough, but inside he was already tensing up. If Carlton had been out of it this badly, that could only mean he had found something on those plates.
"Yeah. And it's not the kind of thing you just shrug off with a 'yeah.'"
Haaah—
Carlton dragged a rough hand down his face and let out a heavy sigh. Then he turned to Juhan.
"From the moment you dropped those plates off yesterday, I haven't slept a wink analyzing them."
"…So you found something."
"Yeah. That's the problem."
Softly.
Carlton glanced toward the workbench and gave a small nod, gesturing for Juhan to bring him the notebook sitting on top of it.
Thump.
Without a word, Juhan fetched the notebook. Carlton flipped through it as he spoke.
"At first I thought it was some kind of detection device. I even said as much."
"You did."
"But then… ha. I'm going insane. For real."
Scrub, scrub.
Carlton raked a hand through his hair, looking utterly at a loss for how to even begin explaining. Then, as if he'd made up his mind, he turned to Juhan.
"There's nothing to explain. I don't even have the confidence to try. Just see it with your own eyes."
"…Huh?"
Tap, tap.
Carlton picked up the metal plate sitting in front of him and began fiddling with something on it.
See it with my own eyes? What is he talking about—
Huuuum—
In that instant, particles of light began rising into the air before Juhan. And what unfolded after that was identical in every detail to what Carlton had already witnessed.
Everything Carlton had seen was now playing out across Juhan's vision as well.
Juhan took it all in. At some point, he had stopped saying a single word.
A strange stillness settled over the workshop. Carlton was the one who broke it, with a short, pointed remark.
"You get it now?"
"……."
"Why I looked like I'd lost my mind."
But Juhan couldn't answer. The shock hit harder than anything he could have imagined—hard enough that he could barely form words at all.
One thought dominated everything else in his head.
Why?
Carius seeking out the cultists. His declaration that he had to kill someone no matter what.
No matter how generously you tried to interpret it, every single piece of it pointed straight at Juhan.
I never even showed myself outside that space.
That was the part that made the least sense. Juhan had never once revealed himself of his own free will—not to the Holy Kingdom, and not even to the cultists who served him.
And yet Carius had been moving as if he were certain that Juhan existed. He wasn't just looking for him, either. He had sworn he would hunt him down and kill him, no matter what.
Crazy.
What the hell had that man done? That was the first thought that surfaced.
Sure, someone might say a thousand years had passed—what was the point of fretting over it now? But Juhan knew Carius better than anyone alive. He was not thinking that way at all.
He definitely left some kind of scheme behind…
The problem was that he had no idea what it might be. The only thing that came to mind was that the bell and the metal plates were probably part of whatever that scheme was.
It all came down to one conclusion.
Carius, you insane bastard…
No matter how he turned it over, something was going to blow up eventually because of this.
Just as Juhan had suspected, these metal plates were not some recent creation. At the absolute minimum, they were a thousand years old.
If there was any silver lining, it was that for some reason Carius had used the plates to record those fragments of the past at all.
I need more of them. No… I need all of them.
Originally, Juhan's plan had been to head to the Holy Kingdom, accept the noble title the Saintess had promised him, and live a quiet, safe life. A modest status and a bit of power—that would have been more than enough for an ordinary existence.
But now.
"……."
Juhan's gaze drifted back to the metal plate.
That was no longer enough. Not even close.
One title won't cut it.
He needed a position high enough to move freely inside the Holy Kingdom itself—high enough to track down the remaining plates and quietly get his hands on them.
Which was why he asked Carlton,
"Have you found out anything else?"
Anything about neutralizing the plates and the bell, for instance.
"Hm? Ah… you mean what I mentioned before."
Carlton didn't seem to think it was anything particularly dramatic. From the way he talked, he appeared to believe the plates' true purpose had less to do with detection and far more to do with recording memories like the ones they'd just seen.
"This thing was definitely made in the Holy Kingdom. I'll stake my life on that."
"And?"
"And this is just a guess, but it's more than a simple detector."
"…Meaning?"
"I mean it seems to sense existence itself."
Sense existence itself. The moment Carlton said it, Juhan found himself asking before he could stop himself.
"So whatever it's detecting—there's no way for that thing to escape it at all?"
Was there really no way out? The thought of spending the rest of his life dodging metal plates and bells made the question come out sharper than he intended.
"…No. Not necessarily."
Carlton gave him a slightly odd look for a moment, then shook his head.
He made it sound almost simple, as if there was no need to get so worked up about it.
"There are two ways."
"Two? What are they?"
Flick.
Carlton held up one finger.
"The simplest method."
"Which is?"
"Carry something of comparable power with you at all times."
"……."
"Of course, no matter how I look at it, the only thing that would qualify is a holy relic… and it's not like we can just raid the Holy Kingdom's vaults, right?"
Juhan's expression hardened slightly. The Holy Kingdom's vaults—of all places, Carlton had just named the one location Juhan currently had the least chance of approaching. Walking into the Holy Kingdom with no plan at all was a catastrophe waiting to happen, the scale of which he couldn't even begin to predict.
Which left him no choice but to ask about the second method.
"So what's the second way?"
"This one's even simpler. More realistic, too."
Softly.
Carlton picked the metal plate back up and pointed at it.
"You smother it with Divine Power."
"…What?"
"When this plate was made, a massive amount of Divine Power was poured into it. We turn that against it."
The explanation that followed was straightforward.
"You overwrite the existence itself. With Divine Power."
"……."
"If it's a person, they convert to the Holy Kingdom and take Divine Power into themselves. If it's an object, you purify it with Divine Power."
Seeing Juhan's face, Carlton threw in an extra comparison.
"If you shove a torch right in front of your eyes, you can't see the starlight anymore, right? Same principle."
He said it like it was nothing. And from Carlton's perspective, it really wasn't. Any human could accept Divine Power. The level varied wildly depending on talent and effort, sure—but still.
"So. Think you can get me any more of these?"
Carlton was already leaning in and murmuring the question, as if none of the rest of it particularly mattered—
"……."
But Juhan couldn't answer.
Accept Divine Power. That simple solution Carlton had tossed out so casually was making his head spin.
Carlton was telling him, in so many words, to become a real priest of the Holy Kingdom.