75. Forbidden Archive
75. Forbidden Archive
Demons were after Stella.
If so, did that mean the attempted kidnapping before the entrance ceremony had also been carried out on the Demons' orders?
The timing was strange for that.
If they had been after Stella, they should have been targeting her long before.
They should have been after her before she ever met me.
That clueless, pushover, danger-blind, empty-headed girl had apparently been wandering around Ge Vihenum for ages.
If they had gone after Stella then, there wouldn't have been any problem. So why now, of all times?
It wasn't as if Stella had come of age.
She ran her mouth calling herself a genius, but her talent still hadn't fully bloomed.
Without a proper teacher, she was utterly pathetic.
She had no money, and she seemed a little short on common sense too.
So someone had seen potential in this Stella that even I hadn't noticed? What kind of lunatic?
When I'd asked Sara to look into it separately, I'd heard that House Verheigen had plenty of other direct-line children besides Stella.
Three above her alone.
The age gap was large, but there were three siblings with outstanding talent.
House Verheigen's eldest son was an Archwizard who had reached the 7th Circle at thirty-two.
The second daughter, twenty-seven, was a 6th Circle Wizard.
The third son, the same age as the second daughter, was a Tier 5 knight.
And the youngest, Stella, was a 3rd Circle Wizard.
The most pathetic of them all.
Of course, according to what was known, she was the youngest 3rd Circle Wizard ever and would reach the 4th Circle soon.
But she wasn't the kind of genius who made the world gasp.
Kaloso had been 6th Circle at seventeen, after all.
So why in the world were they after this Stella?
Had I seen potential in her that those magic-obsessed bastards couldn't understand?
If so... it might be connected to Stella leaving her family and pretending to be homeless.
Was the family itself in league with Demons, trying to hand Stella over?
"...It's too early to be certain."
I cut off the endlessly spiraling thoughts and closed the cover.
For now... I'd put the information about the Legion Commanders into my head.
Along with it, the information that Stella was in danger, and the suspicion that House Verheigen might be in league with Demons, had grown stronger than before.
Even so, I had no time to keep racking my brain over a single topic.
I needed to extract more information.
I roughly sorted out the information cluttering my head and turned the cover of the next book.
[The Return of the War God.]
It was horrifyingly thick.
Thick enough that it seemed like every single thing Arisa had done after returning to the Empire had been left as a record.
At this point, it felt like Arisa herself had agreed to have it all recorded.
If only I'd had a book like this...
Clicking my tongue, I read through it at high speed.
Just as I'd heard from Fabiana, Arisa had returned carrying all of my weapons. However, there had been a gap of one year after the Demon King was sealed.
She probably hadn't spent that time where the World Tree was planted. According to Sparkle, she'd only stayed there a week.
Then where had she been and what had she done during that time?
Even if she'd walked, it shouldn't have taken a year.
Harboring doubts, I turned the page.
"...Hm."
It seemed she'd done an enormous amount of things after coming back.
She'd stayed at the inn in the Imperial Capital we used to frequent, then stormed into the Imperial Palace, received a ducal title, and secured the territory that was now the Eustetia Duchy.
And then, the castle in the Eustetia Duchy.
She built the Heavenly Cherry Blossom Palace, killed every Monster in the vicinity, and accepted new residents for the territory.
Going further, she scattered the remaining elixir over the land to make it fertile, and planted cherry trees.
Next, she returned to the Imperial Capital, built an orphanage, and established a gambling hall and a library.
The Heavenly Cherry Blossom Palace, the orphanage, the gambling hall, the library.
At a glance, it seemed random and thoughtless, but no.
Building her own residence not as a mansion but as a massive palace was something Arisa had sung about wanting to do.
The orphanage was Paulo.
The gambling hall was Luna.
The library was Kaloso.
Arisa had accomplished all of it.
And she hadn't just bulldozed through with force.
Her own status and the seat she occupied.
The feats she'd achieved, and the blank-check-level contracts she'd wrung out of the Emperor every time she killed a Legion Commander—she'd used all of it.
It wasn't coercion, either.
Reading through the process, she'd handled the politics remarkably well.
Arisa Eustetia... how in the world?
That girl had a flower garden for a brain.
She was so pure it crossed into insanity.
So the fact that she'd accomplished all of this while paying attention even to the political side of things was unbelievable.
I didn't think Arisa had been pretending to be stupid. That wasn't an act—it was genuine, 100% pure stupidity.
What the hell.
Why does she seem smarter than me...?
I was a noble... I couldn't even handle learning the work of a ducal house, the same as Arisa's, so how in the world did she...?
Was this shit full of lies like a fairy tale?
No, even "full of lies" wasn't enough. This could be 100% pure fiction.
The Arisa I knew...
"Ugh..."
Still, she was a girl who got it done when it counted.
A pointless sense of defeat left a bitter taste in my mouth.
After building the facilities her comrades had talked about, her subsequent actions were the very model of an outstanding duke.
Reviving the Empire's economy, raising public sentiment, elevating the imperial family's authority, improving the Holy Kingdom's image, and so on.
Whether it was the neighboring kingdom or anywhere else, she smoothly polished relations with every nation on the continent.
In some ways, she seemed better at politics than the Emperor.
By this point, I didn't want to read anymore...
I didn't want to see any more writing praising Arisa as amazing. That was more than enough from the damn fairy tales.
Flipping through roughly—flick, flick—I sped past and only kept things in my head if they caught my attention.
Then, in the middle of it.
A word I'd been searching for caught my eye.
[Arisa Eustetia took a disciple.]
[The identity and appearance of the girl who became her disciple could not be ascertained even by the Empire.]
[But according to the rumors that circulated, she resembled Arisa Eustetia.]
[She was said to have pink hair.]
"...A disciple."
A concealed identity and appearance.
Pink hair.
The holes that had been scattered here and there all filled in.
A disciple with pink hair.
Arisa, who took that disciple in and then vanished after the disciple's Realm had settled onto a steady trajectory.
And then.
A changing of generations.
The Emperor, the nobles, House Eustetia.
After Arisa vanished, all of it.
The generations changed.
From then on, those damn fairy tales and novels were published, plays about Arisa were produced, and countless bards sang Arisa's story.
"...Ha."
I looked at the pink hair visible at the edge of my vision. It was the same color as beautifully bloomed cherry blossoms.
The color that symbolized spring, and... the color of the cherry blossoms that girl had said she liked.
I touched that color with my fingers, rubbed it, and gripped it.
It was the same color, but a different color.
It wasn't Arisa's color.
I.
We.
Were not descendants of Arisa Eustetia.
The current House Eustetia.
Not a single drop of her blood flowed through it.
My father's worried expression came to mind.
The words my father had said before I came to the academy came to mind.
The words he'd carried around like a verbal tic came to mind.
'Eli, you are the cherry blossom of Eustetia.'
'You are Eustetia.'
'No matter what anyone says, you are Eustetia.'
The expression he'd worn each time came to mind.
A smile that seemed apologetic, that seemed pained.
Father had already known.
Then why had he hidden it?
Because he was afraid I'd be hurt. Afraid I'd lose heart.
"...Really."
Just how much did he cherish me?
A bitter smile formed on my lips.
Maybe this smile was the same as the smile my father had worn.
Letting out a hollow laugh, I turned to the very last page.
Only a short sentence was written there.
[With that, Arisa Eustetia left the Empire and set out on a journey.]
[Her exact destination could not be determined, but before leaving, she left behind ambiguous words.]
[That she was going to keep a promise.]
I closed the book.
I closed my eyes for a moment and thought of Arisa.
With what face had she built the Heavenly Cherry Blossom Palace, with what feelings had she built the orphanage, with what thoughts had she made the gambling hall, with what emotions had she opened the library?
"...She probably didn't smile."
Descendants with no blood connection.
A child bound by a master-disciple bond.
For what had she done all of that?
In such a strange relationship, why had I been born?
It was absolutely not coincidence.
Paulo, Luna, Arisa, Kaloso.
Those four, and Yurphia... or the Demon King.
Whoever the other party had been, my comrades might have made some kind of contract.
A peace treaty with the Demon King?
Bullshit.
Anyone who had ever met the Demon King would know that was bullshit.
The Demon King was not the kind of existence that would make a peace treaty.
So this was... a contract.
A contract made with something set as a condition.
...Hoping there would be a clue to that contract.
I turned the cover of [The Demon King's Seal].
This was closer to a document than a book in thickness.
Of course, it had a thick cover for protection, but the contents written inside were extremely short.
About ten pages.
And even those weren't densely written—it was a handwritten document, spaced out with readability in mind.
Reading the first sentence, it seemed to be about what happened after I'd croaked.
And.
It was handwriting I knew.
[Ronan died.]
[Trying to protect Arisa, Ronan died in her place.]
Luna.
Luna Sacred Pnasensia.
It was a document she had personally written by hand.
[Even so, we could not stand still.]
[We had to kill the Demon King.]
[That was why we had come this far, that was why Ronan had sacrificed himself, and that was why we had piled up the corpses of people.]
[So we moved forward.]
[Making a grave for Ronan was postponed until after we killed the Demon King.]
[I do feel sorry, but that dumbass Ronan can deal with it.]
[If he's so upset, he shouldn't have gone and died on his own.]
[And, knowing Ronan, he would obviously loathe being buried here.]
[If he found out a grave had been made for him in the Demon World, he'd hate it so much he'd leap out of the grave.]
[Then should we make the grave in front of the Demon King's castle?]
"...Heh."
She'd written her own thoughts in a document meant to convey information.
But... something was off.
There were gaps between the information.
It wasn't spaced out for readability—it had been deliberately erased.
The erased parts were about Kaloso.
All the information about Kaloso had been erased.
The person who erased it... was it Arisa, who had brought this to the Empire?
Why?
Before I could even begin to think of an answer.
The sentence on the next page wiped every stray thought from my head.
[We were defeated.]