Chapter 273
Chapter 273
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 273
Chapter Title: Hostile Amicable Relationship (2)
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He approached Shirone and offered a handshake.
“I must be going now. I can’t be away for too long. Since you are also an Unlocker, Mr. Shirone, knowing these things will be helpful when you work as a unique member of the magical society.”
Shirone quickly took Arius’s hand.
“Yes. This has been very helpful. Thank you.”
“Haha! There’s no need for thanks. From now on, I plan to plunder your Ataraxia.”
Arius wore a cold smile, but Shirone couldn’t see his expression. He was already succumbing to sleep, his head drooping low.
A high-level sleep spell severs the target's consciousness as cleanly as a knife, preventing them from even sensing the break in their brainwaves. Even if Shirone's consciousness were to reawaken and reconnect to his broken memories, he wouldn't feel anything was amiss.
“Shall we begin?”
Arius was a Scale Magician who dealt with the mental arts, capable of using a spell called Dive to infiltrate the human mind.
He could penetrate any of the twelve stages of the human mind, except for the twelfth layer, the shell of intellect.
However, the inside of a human mind was such a dangerous environment that even ten lives wouldn't be enough if one dived recklessly.
That was why most Divers used a method of casting a net from the surface to pull out only the desired information, with keywords playing a crucial role.
Having surreptitiously implanted a keyword in Shirone to make him recall the impression of Ataraxia, Arius stretched his back, preparing to cast the Dive spell.
Even now, dozens of Divers lost their lives every year in the human mind, but as a magician of the Seven Archmagi, he cast the spell without hesitation.
“Dive. Ataraxia.”
His detached Spirit Zone shrank to an extreme scale and penetrated Shirone’s mind. At the same moment, Arius’s form vanished from the waiting room.
He reappeared about five minutes later. He was on his knees, his clothes drenched in sweat as if he had just emerged from water.
Arius caught his breath and slowly stood up. After staring at Shirone for a long while with a troubled expression, he was about to leave when a guard's voice came from outside the door.
“Sir Shirone, the hearing is about to begin. Please attend.”
Arius clicked his tongue and activated Flicker, the trademark spell of a Scale Magician, disappearing from the waiting room.
“Huh?”
Shirone blinked and looked around.
Though he had been asleep for a full five minutes, his consciousness had been severed so cleanly it was as if those five minutes had never existed.
With his consciousness cut and then seamlessly reattached, he could only think that Arius had suddenly vanished in the middle of their handshake.
‘He’s truly elusive. Then again, so was Armin.’
When Shirone didn't respond after a while, the guard opened the door and entered.
“Sir Shirone, you must come out now.”
“Ah, my apologies. I’m coming.”
Shirone followed the guard into the courtroom.
The jury box was filled with some of Kazura's most prominent nobles, and two chairs were placed side-by-side below the judge's seat.
Instead of evidence, the evidence table was lined with various instruments, which an alchemist and a magician were inspecting.
Shirone sat in the right-hand chair and waited. A booming shout echoed from outside the courtroom, and the doors opened.
“His Highness, Orkamp, arrives!”
The nobles rose to their feet as Orkamp entered with a dignified stride.
He paid the other nobles no mind, his gaze fixed on assessing Shirone's condition. He knew Arius would have already made contact, but he had no way of knowing if the replication of Ataraxia had succeeded.
“Let us begin.”
As Arius, who sat next to Shirone, gave the order, the judge proceeded with the test.
A magician drew blood from both of them with a syringe.
The moment the needle pierced the king’s body, the atmosphere in the courtroom turned icy cold.
Once Shirone’s blood was also drawn, the alchemist mixed both samples into a substance called Oxstamine. As he swirled the beaker, the liquid changed from a deep purple to clear as water.
The alchemist explained.
“The blood mixed with Oxstamine will be stored in a vacuum for three days. A positive reaction will confirm paternity, while a negative reaction will deny it.”
The alchemist handed over the blood, and the judge placed it in an alchemical box called a Caspi.
When the lid was closed, the air was evacuated, creating a vacuum.
The box was designed to shatter if even a tiny amount of air seeped in, making it perfect for tests requiring high security.
The judge held up the Caspi and declared.
“This Caspi will be placed in a vault in the inner palace garden. The royal guard will monitor it twenty-four hours a day, and any noble with access to the inner palace may verify it at any time. However, crossing the designated proximity line is strictly forbidden. Should you wish to assign a separate monitor, their identity must be registered within one hour.”
Shirone nodded in approval of the inspectorate's judgment.
Exposing the vault to an unspecified number of people would make them all watchdogs for one another, preventing any foul play.
“This concludes the examination for the verification of the first prince of the Kingdom of Kazura.”
The proceedings ended with the judge's gavel strike.
As if he had urgent matters to attend to, Orkamp left the courtroom without so much as a word of thanks to Shirone.
Shirone, knowing Orkamp's personality, was no longer bothered by it. What concerned him more was the fact that he hadn't heard from Reina since last night.
He knew she must be incredibly busy as his legal representative, handling all the administrative work. It was because of her that he could afford to be idle.
But wasn't that why she had brought Amy along? It was strange that he hadn't received even a single message, no matter how far away her quarters were.
@
“You failed?”
Orkamp’s face contorted.
It was the first time he had heard those words since hiring Arius. It was also something that should never have been said.
The only reason he had endured the criticism and scouted a criminal from the Black Line was because he trusted his skills. And now he was hearing about failure?
“My apologies. I succeeded in casting the net, but I was unable to replicate it.”
Divers used keywords to pull concepts submerged in the depths of the unconscious to the surface, a process they described as casting a net.
“What on earth is the reason? Didn't you say it was a guaranteed success as long as you planted the keyword?”
“Replication is still possible. It’s just that there’s no need for it.”
“No need for it?”
Arius recalled the situation with a bitter expression.
“Ataraxia was encapsulated.”
“Encapsulated? Is that a code?”
“No. A code is a set of rules. Imagine writing a hundred letters on a meter-long strip of paper. You wrap it around a wooden rod of a specific thickness and read the letters that appear on one side. If a sentence is revealed, it's a code. So what is encapsulation? You write a clear sentence on a meter-long strip of paper. And then you just crumple it up randomly. There’s no pattern, and it can't be unfolded. What I actually saw was not Ataraxia, but a cloud of information, a tangled mess of all sorts of data.”
Arius raised his index finger and continued.
“So why is there no need for replication? A keyword makes the target think of a specific concept. For example, ‘An apple is delicious.’ An apple comes to your mind, Your Highness. But that is the apple *you* think of, not the perfect form of an apple. The perfect apple exists in a pre-linguistic form, dissolved in the unconscious. In the end, the thought revealed through a keyword is merely a shadow. Usually, that is enough, but when it’s encapsulated like this, it’s useless. Replicating a cloud of information would just give you another cloud of information.”
Orkamp couldn't blame Arius. He understood. Besides, blaming him would only expose his own ignorance.
“So what’s your plan now? We absolutely need Ataraxia.”
“First, you should talk to Shirone. To find a solution, I think I need to see Ataraxia myself. What kind of information system it is, what its activation principle is. I can only give you an answer after that information has been gathered. Of course, I’ve already installed a door so I can go back in at any time.”
“A demonstration of Ataraxia…”
Orkamp didn't like Arius's proposal.
Shirone was a clever boy; there was a high probability he had already guessed he wasn't invited to the royal palace just for a paternity test.
Revealing their true purpose in such a situation would be a tremendous blow to Shirone.
He was willing to bear the stigma of being a despicable father to protect the kingdom. But he wanted to avoid a situation where Shirone would refuse to cooperate as a result.
“Isn’t that too blatant? He’ll surely be suspicious.”
“Your Highness, this is a momentous event where the first prince is being replaced. The Terase faction will also try to make their move within the three days before the test results are out. If we don’t use our advantage of having the first right to negotiate with Shirone, the initiative will pass to the Terase side.”
Orkamp sank into careful thought.
Whether to embrace Shirone until the end, or to use him and cast him aside. Either way, the sooner the choice was made, the better.
“If we’re going to do it, we might as well make it grand, right?”
Arius answered with a cunning smile.
@
On his way to his parents' quarters, Shirone stopped on the second-floor corridor. An unnamed official, a messenger from Zion, was blocking his path. It was a wonder how they managed to find him so unerringly in this vast palace.
“Sir Shirone, you’ll have to come with me.”
Shirone straightened his back and drew his chin in.
He was sure he wasn't being summoned for anything pleasant, but avoidance was not a good option.
It was more effective to meet them head-on and gauge their reaction than to get stabbed in the back while running away.
“Lead the way.”
“An excellent choice, as expected. Please follow me.”
The official led Shirone to the basement. It was an area dense with storage rooms, so foot traffic was minimal, and due to frequent expansions, the layout was a complex maze.
They arrived at the outermost section, where a door had been installed in the wall.
It was not a room that had originally existed.
“This is the place. Please enter.”
Shirone, not letting his guard down, pulled the doorknob.
Contrary to his expectation of a room, a square, torch-lit cave stretched out before him, with another door visible about fifteen meters ahead.
A double entrance.
He doubted they would choose such a structure for fun, but he couldn't think of a convincing reason for it either.
About halfway through the cave, the official slammed the door shut with a loud bang. It was surely a signal to someone.
Shirone, who had stopped in surprise, took another deep breath and opened the second door.
It was an all-white room.
It wasn't painted; the entire room was made of marble. Shelves lined the walls, displaying a variety of items.
Nothing particularly luxurious caught his eye, but knowing Zion’s tendencies, this in itself felt unsettling.
Zion and Uorin were drinking tea at a table. Seeing Uorin brought a slight sense of relief, but he quickly erased the thought, realizing that even such a feeling was dangerous.
“You’re here. What are you standing there for? Come on in.”
Shirone hesitated to step forward. Zion and Uorin were looking at him with eyes full of mischief.
But since he couldn't just stand at the door forever, he took a step forward, remaining as vigilant as possible.
In that instant, the floor suddenly gave way with a soft *thump*, and his body pitched forward.
“Ugh! What the!”
Shirone quickly lifted his head. The floor was soft, so he wasn't hurt, but his face flushed red with embarrassment as he heard Zion and Uorin burst into laughter.
‘Why is this floor so soft?’
Crawling on his hands and knees, he felt around and found a boundary where the floor became solid.
“Are you okay, big brother? Sorry for the prank. But it was fun, right?”
Uorin approached and offered her hand.
As she helped him up, Shirone looked back at the spot where he had fallen. There was nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the floor.
“What is this?”
“It’s the .”
“The Anywhere… what?”