Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files Translation, Starting From Book 6

[Rafflesiac]

I wonder if there's a world out there where the Blackmore plan worked and there's a fully enfleshed Saber running around. Though given that Saber never died and can't astralize, she might not fit into Gray in the first place.

[azwhoisverybored]

I'm also really curious as to what they're planning to do with a reincarnated Saber. Like, are they going to attempt to stage a coup or...?

[Takashi]

If it became possible it would make the legend true.
Arthur would come back and take Britain to glory again

[Reign]

Maybe they just assume everyone will go with it once she's back since she's like the chosen one king.

[Byegod]

I remember once someone observing that one of the other famous kings in the mountain had there myth a bit changed in fgo, aka finn mc cool if memory serves

[SirGauoftheSquareTable]

Speaking of Kings in the Mountain, I wonder if Frederick Barbarossa might appear as a Servant at some point, or if he'll be a pseudo or some other special Saint Graph if TM takes the legend that he is actually sleeping in a mountain in Thuringia as true?

[azwhoisverybored]

Disclaimer: We have reached the very incredibly confusing part of the book, also known as the conclusion + the parts leading up to it. Expect a gradual descent into madness on my part, because I certainly did not understand it on my first two readings of this book.

Chapter 3, Part 3

Chapter 3, Part 3:

We walked for about ten minutes along the footprints, and a small hut hidden in the foliage appeared.

“Ha. I didn’t know that there's be something like this here,” the knight said, shocked.

It was a small, scrappily-built hut, a bit smaller than the one Bersac lived in. Perhaps because it was in the middle of the forest, about half of the wood on the outside had rotted, to the point where it was surprising that it hadn’t collapsed yet.

“It seems that the decaying walls have been reinforced with some kind of magecraft,” my mentor said, gingerly touching the wall.

“Magecraft?”

“…It might’ve been placed here intentionally for us to find,” he muttered, and nodded to confirm what I had just said.

We cautiously opened the door and entered the hut.

My mentor stepped gently onto the decaying wooden floor and looked around, making sure that nothing like the bone soldiers we had encountered earlier would attack us from the shadows. I was also on high alert, keeping my eyes wide open and staying by my mentor’s side.

In the entrance area, there was a regular-looking set of tables and chairs. However, as we stepped further into the room, we discovered something that made me widen my eyes in shock.

“What’s that?”

The voice of the knight came from behind me.

An entire wall had been covered by a large amount of notes and pictures, which had been connected by strings of assorted colors. The combination looked almost like the patterns of Magic Circuits (TN: Actually, ‘the patterns of magecraft/magecraft patterns’ If you know what that is, please tell me.) My mentor blinked, and said a name.

“This is, an evidence board (TN: also called a conspiracy board, a crazy wall, or a murder map. Wait. Crazy wall? Murder map?? What?).”

“An evidence board?”

“It appears a lot in crime dramas. It’s a tool for visually organizing thoughts, ideas, and complex events through notes and photographs by connecting related pieces of data.”

Hearing his explanation, I somewhat recalled seeing one somewhere. No dust had gathered on top of the photos or the string, so it hadn’t been long since this was made.

Because I heard that it was a tool for organizing thoughts, I felt as if I was looking through someone else’s brain.

The photos that had been pinned up showed the village from various angles. There were wide shots of the Black Madonna and the graveyard, each with notes that looked like records of observations. The strings were probably also related to the observations somehow.

My mentor’s gaze lingered on one of the lines of notes.

“What is it?”

“…Nothing.” As he said that, he turned his gaze to one of the patterns drawn on the edge of the notes. “It seems that the person who made this evidence board was also looking into the three essential parts of a human being.”

“So, the body, the mind, and the soul…”

The true form of the masked girl and I, as well as the reason why we had been created.

“It follows the theory that I’ve been thinking about for a while. …No, it’s a lot more detailed than my theory. This person’s research goes deeper than just figuring out how Gray is the body of King Arthur and how the mind might exist underground.”

My mentor traced his fingers along the strings, as if he was trying to imitate (TN: Actually the word used here is ‘trace’) the mind fo the person who had created this evidence board.

I didn’t know why, but I felt a flurry of panic. Not only because this so-called evidence board was related to me, but also because of the fact that both my mentor and the person who created this had thought of the same thing. It made me feel an indescribable amount of fear.

Yes, fear.

I was afraid of this wall of evidence.

If the situation allowed for it, I would have curled up into a ball and screamed. The photos depicted my hometown from all sorts of angles, dissecting it up into chunks and revealing what I didn’t even notice, though I had lived here for years and years. I knew that I wasn’t able to gather anything important from it, but the way in which the information as displayed still gave me an eerie feeling. It almost gave me the feeling of a dissolution, rather than a dissection(TN:?).

“I didn’t think that we’d be able to see this kind of hard work so easily.”

Hearing the knight’s words, my mentor shook his head.

“I don’t think the person who created this tried to hide it at all. First, according to the rules of the village, nobody would reach the other side of the swamp anyway. They’ve probably also put up a bounded field accordingly, but nobody could have guessed that someone like us would get swept around in a flood and came up from under the ground.”

“That makes sense,” the knight said, nodding.

Beside him, my mentor continued.

“There’s another possibility. Perhaps… there wasn’t enough time to conceal this place properly.”

“There wasn’t enough time?”

“Look at the kitchen.”

He didn’t turn around, he just pointed in that direction.

“There are still some freshly-ground coffee beans there. Whoever was here probably planned on drinking it when they came back later. Maybe they were the more practical sort of person, who cared less about the taste and more about how easy it was to prepare the drink. Either way, I think they planned on returning immediately after they left, but never got the chance.”

“The way you say that makes you sound more like a detective than a mage.”

“If I relied on my skills as a mage alone, I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere,” my mentor said somewhat self-deprecatingly, and then turned to look at the evidence board again (TN: Wait I thought he specifically didn’t turn around a couple sentences ago wdym). He flipped through some papers that had been stapled together, and for a couple of minutes, he froze.

“A-are you alright?”

“……”

He did not respond immediately.

“…Is that the case. Ahh, is that the case? Fuck!”

Along with the curse word which would occasionally slip from his mouth, my mentor punched the wall. Though, with the strength he had, he probably wouldn’t have managed to hurt himself seriously, I widened my eyes in surprise at the act.

“S-sir?”

“Reines and I didn’t notice at the time, but someone we know was also there. Unfortunately, he left before we got involved in the reenactment.”

“Someone we know?”

He began carefully flipping through the papers again. He was probably computing a large number of formulas, and trying to imprint them into his brain. His eyes scanned across file after file, until he finally came to a conclusion.

“It’s Heartless.”

“Huh?” I couldn’t help but ask rhetorically.

For that reason, my mentor repeated the name once again.

“The person who created this evidence board was the former head of the Department of Modern Magecraft (Norwich), Dr. Heartless.”

Right.

The reason why he had returned to this village was that he wanted to find more clues about Heartless. I had completely forgotten about this because of the absurdity or our previous encounters. First, I had been shocked by the fact that the village was abandoned, and then because we had been transported to the past. I never thought that we would end up returning to our original goal.

If that was the case, this was…

“…Ah, that makes sense. Though Zepia said that he made a deal with Heartless, the villagers never mentioned anyone like Heartless. If that’s because Heartless never got to the village at all, everything would be explained. It looks as if he observed the village for quite a while.”

“W-wait, why would Heartless spend time to research this village? You said just then that he was looking into the body, the mind, and the soul, so what do these papers actually say?”

“…Let me see, most of them are theses, and there are also some spells.”

My mentor shifted his gaze to the evidence board once more.

I was absolutely terrified. Ever since my mentor had found this evidence board, uneasiness had assailed my mind, and the fear had only increased further upon learning that the person who created it was Heartless. It was almost as if my mentor was confronting an enemy on a battlefield where I was completely helpless. The constant panic made me feel as if my throat was constricting.

The more he examined the evidence board, the scarier my mentor’s gaze looked.

“…Sir?”

“Heartless was trying to interfere with the spell that the village was planning to cast.”

“Is it like what Flat does?”

I recalled how the teenager would easily mess around with other people’s magecraft.

Though I had heard stories of how Flat had infiltrated top-secret Clock Tower meetings many times before, every time I brought up the details, my mentor would frown and put his hand over his stomach.

“No, Flat’s approach just relies on his own talents to tap into things and to counter them. This is far more elaborate and well thought-out…”

At that, he put one hand on the evidence board, and his eyes continued to wander about. After a while, he bowed his head in defeat and groaned quietly.

“…It’s pointless. I can’t understand this.”

“You… can’t?”

I was shocked.

This was the first time I had seen my mentor talk in such a demoralized way at a time like this.

I never thought that my mentor, who took apart other people’s magecraft as casually as he breathed and had even gotten into several crises because of it, would not be able to understand someone’s magecraft.

“I can comprehend the general idea. The formula is derived from Celtic spiritualism(TN: it just says ‘the formula is derived from Celt’ and I don’t know what to do with it, I just randomly took a word that might fit) and witchcraft, and the spell used for interference is based on Modern Magecraft and witchcraft, with some Atlesian Alchemy mixed in. I can understand up to this point. However, the structure of the spell is so delicate that it is difficult to deduce its exact effects. There are thousands of numbers that need to be taken into consideration. If even one of them is wrong, or if the thickness of a single line was misread, it’ll lead to a completely different result,” my mentor said, pointing at the intricate lines on the notes on the evidence board.

It wasn’t just a page or two. There were dozens of sheets stuck there, and each of them had a different scribbled pattern. Some of them resembled an angel’s wings, others looked like ancient crowns, others had illustrations of star polygons, while others still had conglomerates of large amounts of strange shapes. (TN: Actually, Gray here lists off the types of star polygons used, but I’ve gotten rid of them for the sake of structure. There’s the pentagram (5-pointed star), the hexagram (6-pointed star), the hendecagram (11-pointed star), and the dodecagram (12-pointed star).)

“It’s like if you made a tiny edit to a landscape painting and accidentally turned it into a painting of a different country altogether. There’s no uniformity whatsoever in terms of brushwork and paint. It should be impossible, but somehow, with his amazing persistence and excellent skill, he somehow forced it to mesh together. Ah, is this the true ability of Dr. Heartless, who supported the Lord-less Department of Modern Magecraft (Norwich) back then?”

The head of the Department of Modern Magecraft before my mentor.

A corner of his ability was clearly displayed in front of our eyes.

“If you had a brain like Zepia’s, or perhaps first-rate Magic Circuits like Luviagelita’s, it would be possible to continue developing the foundation in the same general direction. However, neither my brain nor my Magic Circuits are capable of that sort of calculation.”

Those words were too bitter.

No matter how many times he faced it, he would not be able to give up, would he? Even more so if he had realized long ago that this was his specialty.

“At least if the Volumen Hydrargyrum (TN: Wait doesn’t that just mean ‘the volume of mercury’? How’d they get that from Moon Spirit Marrow Fluid?) was here…”

“Are you asking for me?”

Suddenly, a human figure appeared by the door.

“—Aaah!”

Not even the vigilant knight (Sir Kay) noticed her presence, and he yelled loudly, leaping backward in surprise.

I suppose that reaction was warranted, since a liquid had just suddenly taken on a human form after it slipped through the door crack. I widened my eyes in surprise as I looked at the silver person.

“Trimmau!”

“Here’s looking at you, kid. (TN: A quote from the 1942 movie Casablanca).”

I couldn’t help but blink many times in quick succession at the mercury maid who expressionlessly said what appeared to be a movie quote.

“…Why are you here?”

“Yesterday, Miss Reines ordered me to return to this village on the journey back to London. She told me to try not to get noticed by her older brother, to lend him a helping hand in case he encountered anything dangerous, and to make him feel as indebted to her as possible. Those were her orders. Since I could not find any trace of you, I was on standby mode, but I detected your reaction just then and came as quickly as I could.”

“……”

I was rendered speechless. My mentor had the same reaction, and covered his face with his hands.

“…Hahaha.” And then, he laughed, happily.

“Does that mean she did this during the First Cycle as well?”

His voice carried some resignation, but also some joy.

She had probably watched my mentor from a distance in the First Cycle as well. And then, when she made sure that no danger came of him, she had quietly returned with my mentor and I when we left the village.

“It sounds like something Miss Reines would do.”

I could feel the thoughtfulness that she had left behind seeping into my heart. If I told her that, though, she would probably look at me with a strange expression.

I wanted to go back, I thought.

I wanted to go back to the table where the girl was waiting.

I wanted to eat desserts, drink tea, and complain about my mentor together. Though the conversation would probably peter out quickly because of my stupid mouth, I would still have an extremely enjoyable time.

“But… What can Trimmau help you with?”

“(The) Volumen Hydrargyrum is the Mystic Code that used to belong to my teacher, Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald.”

This name, which I would occasionally hear, surprised me.

I had heard that my mentor had something to do with his death in the Fourth Holy Grail War.

However, for now, I put aside those thoughts and watched my mentor raise one of his fingers. As he made a hand gesture as if he was playing an orchestral instrument, Trimmau closed her eyes and also raised her right hand.

“The reason why the Mystic Code, which he made when he was in his twenties, was regarded as one of the Supreme Mystic Codes of the El-Melloi family is not only because it can serve as an excellent weapon.”

As my mentor spoke, Trimmau’s right hand instantly evaporated.

I reflexively clamped my hand over my mouth because I was worried about getting poisoned. However, the mercury did not continue to spread in the air. Instead, it condensed again in the air, in the shape of a large quantity of numbers.



“What…”

“The Volumen Hydrargyrum can also function as the El-Melloi Faction’s leading computational machine. (TN: Wait, the El-Melloi Faction? Is that a thing? Or am I interpreting this wrong?) Though only a small portion of its power can be used under my control.”

I had no idea that Trimmau had these kinds of hidden capabilities. The numbers and symbols floating in the air changed, disorienting me.

I still could not understand the relationship between the numbers and symbols that my mentor had described. However, my mentor’s gaze was extremely serious, and every time the numbers changed, by looking at it, I could glimpse the emotions circling in his heart.

For instance, agitation.

Jealousy.

Longing.

Maybe even anger.

Or, perhaps an emotion that was a mixture of all of the above.

What I saw did not tell me who Heartless was, but instead, what my mentor thought of him.

“Ah, is that the case. This spell… is a continuation of that one (TN: the wording is extremely vague). He wasn’t concerned with either one of the body, the mind, or the soul. Instead, he wanted to know how they can be preserved or deteriorate.”

As my mentor said that, he kept on looking between the evidence board and the numbers, and moving his fingers.

This time, the numbers began to turn into the patterns and pentagrams drawn on the notes. They then turned to patterns like the sun, the moon, stars, scales, fish, and mountain goats. I suppose that to a mage, those symbols were like a scientist’s equations.

At the same time, my mentor, who was surrounded by those symbols, looked like a melancholy philosopher.

Finally, the transformation stopped.

It looked as if the words on the mercury had reached some sort of conclusion.

In the space of a few seconds, my mentor froze.

“What’s wrong, Sir?”

“…I think I’ve found the answer. However…”

“…Sir?”

After a brief silence, he whirled around abruptly.

“Trimmau, how long is there until sunrise?”

“If ‘sunrise’ is defined as the sun completely rising above the horizon, there are approximately thirty-seven to forty-three minutes.”

“Then we need to get out of here immediately!” My mentor rapidly turned the floating mercury back into Trimmau’s right hand, and let his jacket flutter in the air behind him.

I caught up to him hurriedly.

“What’s the matter?”

“We need to get to the swamp. I’m sorry, there’s no time to explain now. Let’s first get running.”

“Hey, hey, are you sure you’re not going to collapse midway?” The knight teased. However, his expression became serious the moment he stepped out of the hut.

“—Huh, really in for the kill, aren’t they.”

“What do you mean, Sir Kay?”

“Whatever, the villagers looked like they were going to come sooner or later anyway. They must’ve gone through a great deal of trouble,” he replied flippantly, as if he couldn’t bother to spend more effort explaining.

I gradually heard it too— A sound coming from the foot of the mountain, in other words, the direction of the village, towards the swamp.

“Maybe the villagers sensed that something was wrong and started doing an all-out search of the mountain. Haha, if we’re going along this path, there’ll be a direct confrontation at the swamp! If we don’t make a run for it now, we’ll have to stab our friends and relatives, so you’d better make sure you’re up to the task!” The knight muttered, in the same frivolous tone as usual.
*
“Ha… Huh… Ha…” Midway up the mountainside, a man scaled the slope, walking as if his face was going to fall to the ground. It was Father Fernando. Droplets of water still dripped from his wet cassock.

He had been swept into a flood, and had just crawled out from a different cave. Even he himself had to marvel at how he was still alive. Perhaps it was because fat isn’t very dense. Though he had separated from Sister Illumia, that wasn’t a problem.

After all, the only reason why he was now desperately trying to climb the mountain was because an alive-and-well Sister Illumia had just instructed him to do so using telepathy.

Though the Holy Church prohibited all types of magecraft apart from the Baptism Rites used by priests, that was just something they said to the outside. Executors like Illumia were taught practical magecraft, such as strengthening and telepathy. Of course, these were all bundled up and given the name of “Sacraments”. It was all just a corner of the knowledge and power the Holy Church had gathered up over time.

“Ugh… Phew…”

Dragging his sweat-soaked clothing along, Fernando continued to climb upward desperately. On the unpaved dirt, every step caused him to stumble, he grumbled constantly under his breath, and nearly fell down many times.

“What do you mean go to the swamp… I nearly drowned… Sister Illumia’s treating me like her servant or something…”

As he hobbled with an expression as if he could collapse and die of exhaustion any minute, he heard a voice.

“Are you alright, Father Fernando?”

The priest nearly jumped in surprise as he saw a person emerge from the forest. It took him a few seconds to realize who the person was, and he tried to swallow his fear and call out that person’s name.

“Bersac… Blackmore…”

It was the grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard.

“…B-B-B-Bersac, what are you going t-to do to me?”

“I have no intent on harming you now,” the grave keeper said, shaking his head.

He still held the giant axe in his hands. The fact that he managed to escape the flood while still holding that axe was a testament to the grave keeper’s physical strength. On the contrary, unlike Illumia, the priest had no other abilities besides reciting Baptism Rites. As long as Bersac had the intent to do so, the priest would probably be sliced in half like the firewood he chopped every day.

Bersac continued to speak with the same calm, emotionless voice as usual.

“I just wanted to hear your opinion.”

“…You want to hear my opinion, as the grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard?”

“Perhaps.”

The grave keeper still kept his courteous attitude.

It was the same attitude that he had during the countless exchanges they had had back at the village. He wouldn’t say much, but he was ultimately respectful. Though the goal of the grave keeper did not always align with that of the Church, they had never been directly at odds with each other.

It was a strange relationship. Though they both knew that one day they could become enemies, they were still friendly to each other.

“The Holy Church isn’t at a consensus, either, is it? At least, I don’t think so,” the grave keeper said in a low voice. “I’ve always had my suspicions. Both you and Illumia keep talking to Gray whenever you two have the chance. The nun probably just wants to watch her, but I feel like you think differently. Can you tell me what your reasons for that are?”

“…If I just say you imagined it all, you won’t accept it, will you?”

Like those of a fat, cowering mouse, the priest’s eyeballs spun around and around as he observed his surroundings.

“Sister Illumia isn’t around here. Though she established a telepathic connection with you, she will not be able to monitor your every move,” Bersac added quietly.

“……”

“Father Fernando, can I hear your personal opinion?”

“Ah, uh... a-alright.”

The priest cleared his throat, and timidly attempted to read Bersac’s expression. Of course, the grave keeper’s face remained devoid of emotion.

Giving up on trying to figure out what the grave keeper was thinking, his round jaw shook as he finally opened his lips and answered the question/

“…As a representative of the Holy Church, I certainly think that King Arthur is a heretic. Even if we wanted to bring it under our religion, that way of existence is too deeply rooted in local traditions.”

The priest’s interpretation was incredibly standard for the Holy Church.

Though many of the legends about King Arthur were heavily influenced by that religion, they were no longer applicable in modern times. After all, regardless of whether it was the court magician, the enchantress, or the king herself (TN: The king… herself. …Ehh whatever), they all could not be separated from local beliefs.

However.

One of the grave keeper’s eyebrows twitched.

“But this has nothing to do with that girl at all, right?” The priest said, after a brief pause.

The summer breeze began to pick up.

“You’re saying that they’re unrelated?” The grave keeper asked slowly.

“They can’t be related, can they? Isn’t this village just pushing the beliefs of the past onto future generations and forcing other people to get sacrificed?” The priest said decisively. For a moment, his face was full of joy, like that of a traveler who was finally able to put down his bag after a long journey. However, that joy was quickly overshadowed.

“I’m not qualified to be saying that, though.”

“Why?”

“…Because of that incident ten years ago,” the priest said in a somewhat bitter voice. “I was the one who reported the changing of Gray’s face to the Holy Church.”

“……”

Bersac did not say anything, not even a remark like “I knew all along”, or “that was a surprise”.

“I didn’t think that things would get so serious back then. Of course, I felt a bit uneasy with the prospect that a girl’s face changed overnight, but I dismissed it as puberty when I found out that she was still the same person. I just thought that the villagers’ attitude towards her was worth reporting, especially her mother’s.”

A wry smile appeared on the priest’s lips.

No one in the village was unaware of how devoted that mother was to her daughter. The only reason why the faith in King Arthur, which had diminished for millennia, was on the rise again, was because of that mother and the village elder.

“So, I wrote it in my periodic reports, just in case. That’s all I did.” Perhaps because he was tired of standing, he leaned against a nearby tree and continued. “And then, after a while, I heard that Sister Illumia was being sent here. She’s a true member of the Holy Church, a prodigy trained by the Chivalric Order and given the power to expel mages and non-human creatures alike. She’s not like me, who was sent here forcibly to stand guard because I had the tiniest bit of talent.”

The priest wiped at his sweat and smiled a bitter smile.

“She keeps telling me that if there’s something that might endanger the Holy Church, removing it from its roots is also part of the Lord’s teachings. Ah, she must be correct. Actually, the two of us are from different factions. If we were born a couple centuries earlier, I would probably get hunted down by her for being a heretic.”

Such was the history of that religion.

In a sense, they hated the heretics that stemmed from their own religion more than they hated other religions. The more their values aligned, the less they could tolerate minor differences. …Perhaps that was just the nature of humanity.

“For that reason, I’m not qualified to be saying all this,” the priest mumbled. “Of course, I’m sure that what I did back then was not punishable, considering what my role was. Though I know that, I’ve wondered these years whether I can really claim to be upholding Holy Order. …What, your expression has gone all strange. Did I say anything ridiculous?”

“…Oh, no, it isn’t,” Bersac said, shaking his head.

After a pause, the grave keeper continued.

“I’m just thankful to the things I believe in that not everything in the village is a lie. At least what you saw in that village was the same at what I saw.”

“…Huh.” The priest averted his eyes before speaking again in a sincere tone. “What side do you plan on standing on?”

“Which side I stand on?”

“On the side of the Holy Church, or on the side of the villagers?” Fernando’s voice was full of passion as it resounded through the woods. “I know you have connections to the government. Illumia’s quite sensitive toward these things. But you’re not a spy, are you? The grave keepers of Blackmore Graveyard outdate King Arthur. Therefore, you don’t worship King Arthur like the other villagers. If you stand on our side, it won’t distort your beliefs, will it?”

Hearing the priest’s words, the grave keeper rose one eyebrow in surprise.

“I think I understand why the Holy Church chose you as a supervisor. Under most circumstances, no one is better at acclimating heretics than you are.”

“Are you complimenting me?”

“That was what I intended to do, yes. I plan on protecting that girl, as the grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard.”

“If that’s the case, you’ll…”

“Even if we hand Gray to the Holy Church, there’s no way to guarantee her safety. Sure, it is possible to ask for forgiveness in your religion, but that does not apply to our world. Forgiveness is meant for humans. There is no need to uphold the same standards for us inhuman folk.”

“Well. …You’re not wrong.”

“Thank you for your concern, though.”

Bersac bowed his head in thanks. Then, he suddenly crossed his arms and leaned back on a tree, like Father Fernando was doing, and closed his eyes.

“I didn’t see anything or meet anyone here. I closed my eyes because I was a little tired, and if anyone passed by here in the last couple of minutes, I didn’t notice their presence.”

“…I still have things I want to say, but I suppose I can only thank you for now.”

Fernando puffed up his chest proudly and continued to walk up the mountain.

A voice came from behind him.

“The next time we meet… We’ll have to fight each other for our lives.”

“N-n-no, ah, please spare me,” the priest said, in a distressed voice, and stumbled up the slope, trembling. Though he huffily wiped at his sweat with his soaked cassock, he did not stop walking.

Right as the priest disappeared in the fog in the distance, Bersac slowly opened his eyes. With footsteps that didn’t show a trace of fatigue, he also continued walking upward. The swamp was right up ahead. The final battle would probably happen there, the grave keeper thought. The lie that had been maintained in that village up to now was about to fall apart. The peace that everyone wished would continue was going to end.

“—Aaaaah!”

Suddenly, a scream tore through the forest.

Recognizing the voice, Bersac began to run as if he had been knocked into the air(TN:?). He reached the origin of the voice with an amazing speed. His eyes widened as he saw what was there.

“Father Fernando…!”

The priest lay there on the floor. His clothes were stained red by blood. Bersac rushed over hurriedly, put a hand on Father Fernando’s neck, and stiffened.

“He’s dead…”

But Fernando had only been out of Bersac’s line of sight for a couple of minutes. What had happened in the space of a few, short minutes?

“Did he get stabbed in the back with a dagger or something?”Bersac muttered as he examined the priest’s bloodstained back.

It went without saying that Father Fernando had never received any kind of combat training, so as long as his killer caught him by surprise, anyone in the village could have killed him. But who could it be? Fernando should have been incredibly cautious. The only person he would have let his guard down around would be Illumia, but she had no incentive to kill the priest.

Bersac also noticed another unbelievable thing.

“His clothes… [are dry]…?”
-End of Part 3 of Chapter 3 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

[Reign]

I believe "El-Melloi Faction" is correct, I'm pretty sure it refers to all the branch families under them like Archisorte and Archibald.

I've been surprised at how much I've been enjoying Bersac. He's cool.

[All fictions]

I've liked Father Fernando since the little bit about his relationship with Gray in the mats, but he really is the GOAT.

[azwhoisverybored]

Chapter 3, Part 4

Chapter 3, Part 4:

We ran down the mountain after my mentor, and were about to reach the swamp.

Trimmau cut through the dense shrubbery in front of us, creating a path. I suppose that was the most fitting job for her, considering that she didn’t get tired. Though my mentor was usually the first person to collapse from exhaustion, this time, he tried his best to endure, and continued walking down the steep slope.

The knight (Sir Kay) guarded our rear, and I stayed close to my mentor. Add still remained as a scythe in my hands, and showed no sign of waking up. Realizing this, I bit my lip.

At that moment, my mentor spoke.

“Is it really a good idea to just face the villagers like this?”

“…I think we can do it.”

“Your mother might be there.”

“…It’s okay, I know.”

I nodded twice.

The shock that came from knowing that they launched an all-out search of the mountain was temporary, because from the moment we became enemies the village, I understood that I would have to confront my mother.

“Let’s not talk about that now. What did you find out just then? What has Heartless been doing here?”

“Though I have a basic understanding of what’s written on the evidence board, I only have hypotheses about what exactly he was planning. I do have a theory about he was doing before the incident, though.”

“Before the incident?”

“It’s something that happened during the First Cycle. Bersac told me that on the first day, someone broke multiple rules.”

I recalled what Reines had told me.

After they talked to Zepia, Bersac had said something, and asked them if they knew something about it.

—“When children play outside, sometimes the rules get broken. …But this time, two rules were broken.”

“It was actually caused by Heartless approaching the village at night, possibly to make final preparations or something along those lines. After that, he [left straight away], without praying to the Black Madonna.”

“He… left…”

True, this way, two rules would be broken, the one about going out at night, and the one about praying to the Black Madonna.

“Then what about when he came?”

“That hut was built on the other end of the swamp. It’s probably outside the detection range of the magecraft. He might still have broken the rules, though. Bersac said that some rules would be broken once in a while, such as the one about going out at night. I suppose he doesn’t care that much about them, anyway.”

That was a reasonable statement.

But if that was the case, how long had Heartless secretly been in this village? How much time had he spent, staying just outside of the village and spying on us?

“……”

An eerie feeling coiled up at the bottom of my heart.

It was a different type of raw disgust to the one I had felt when I had been told of the secret of this village.

It made me feel as if I had been watched by the gaze of an insect instead of a human. We had only ever met once, on the Rail Zeppelin, but that encounter alone was enough for me to discern something inhuman about that man. What did it mean, then, if that kind of person had watched me for a long period of time?

“Heartless never really involves himself in cases,” my mentor analyzed. “Other than when he provided funds in the case at the Twin Towers of Ilsema, he’s probably also related to many other incidents. Most of them are heavily covered up, though. If he didn’t do so, he’d end up getting targeted by something.”

After saying that much, he paused for a few seconds before he continued to speak.

“I was the one who happened to put an end to that.”

“Huh.” This time, it was the knight who cooperated by responding. “I see. So that’s why the evidence board or whatever it’s called is there. Understandable. That means that the turning point of this case was…”

In response to the knight’s somewhat cheerful words, my mentor nodded sternly.

“Yes, it was me.”

“Why would it be you?”(TN: Gray says this.)

“Think about why the Holy Church would choose to act now. Since a Lord of the Clock Tower has come to visit, I don’t think it would continue to idly stand by. At least, Heartless believed that was the case. That’s why he left.”

“……”

I clenched my fists.

This was only logical. My mentor was at least still one of only twelve Lords of the Clock Tower, and his every move had to be watched. Something like a Lord visiting the village they were watching over as the Fifth Holy Grail War and the revival of King Arthur loomed just over the horizon couldn’t just be dismissed as a coincidence.

Even though it was such a natural conclusion, I had overlooked it.

“Heartless probably never anticipated that I would come to the village. Yes, it’s incredibly unexpected that one of the twelve Lords would recklessly visit this village. Even if he isn’t behind everything, he plays a role in this case.”

“We will be there soon,” the mercury maid said softly.

Just as she said, the forest immediately broke away to reveal flat land.

The light of the rising sun gently pricked my eyes.

The swamp was right in front of us.

Though I’d gotten close to this place before, now that I was right in front of it, I thought that it was a bit too big for a swamp (TN: When since did swamps have a size limit?). Though the waters were muddy now, it might have been clearer in the past.

Gradually, the beams of sunlight expanded their dominion, creeping slowly across the mountain slopes. However, I could not appreciate this breathtaking sight.

Dawn was breaking.

That meant—

“It’s almost time for you to die. No, it’s almost the time you died in the past(TN: Aaa this used to be so concise and logical),” my mentor said.

How inconsiderate. He spoke as if it was his duty to speak the truth whenever he saw it. That was probably why so many mages hated him. Because the veil of mystery that concealed the truth was an indispensable wall of defense that protected magecraft.

“Therefore, it definitely won’t deviate from this timeline.”

He uttered those words as he stared toward the swamp.

—And then.

As if that was a prophecy, something appeared.

A giant shadow tore through the mud and rose from the surface of the water.

It was much larger than a person.

A familiar building emerged from the water. No, it wasn’t just familiar. Actually, it was something that I had seen mere hours ago. The most unforgettable thing was the statue near the entrance that was now illuminated by the morning light. One half of the temple rose through the water and joined with the other half, as if they were forming a bridge.

“[That temple]… has come up from the water…?” I mumbled in confusion as I saw the sight which I could never have dreamed up of.

Yes.

Rising in the thin mist of the dawn was, indeed, the underground temple we had found before we fought with the Husk King.

Of course, according to the laws of physics, the stone structure and the foundations supporting it could never have risen from the swamp. This was undoubtedly the result of mystery, of a scale that was beyond the reach of modern mages.

“…Ah, damn it, is that what it is? Those idiot mages really care about this kind of crap” the knight said beside me.

The flippant attitude from before had disappeared completely. The knight of the round table gritted his teeth.

“That’s… Avalon…!”
*
“W-what is that!? Where’d it come from? How’d it get up here?”

The voice was more like that of a child getting excited over a new toy than someone who was genuinely surprised.

“Didn’t you say that the structure was unnatural?” Zepia replied in a calm voice.

Indeed, Flat, who had been in charge of adjusting the parameters, had said that when the flood happened.

—“The structure of that place is pretty unnatural anyway… Let me think, that means that we can use this method to mess with this place that looks like the past, right?”

It was the reason why it was relatively easy for Flat to intervene, and how Zepia accepted their success.

These two things originated from the same place. In other words, the reason why Flat was able to cause a flood was that there was already such a structure underground.

“In order to raise it, there’s actually a sequence that needs to be followed. I actually had to spend quite a bit of effort to skip all of that. The program to dispel the Bounded Field at the same time the temple started rising seems to have run perfectly.”

In response to Zepia’s words, Flat looked up.

“…So, you’re saying that you completely countered my attack by turning my intervention against me?”

“Hm,” Zepia said. His eyelashes fluttered. “That isn’t the area your instructor specializes in, so I don’t suppose he ever taught about you this. Intervention through magecraft contains techniques from all sorts of systems. Simply using regular Circuits in an unorthodox way isn’t an ability. Though it doesn’t happen very often, when a mage meets a hacker, there are some techniques that are commonly used.”

The finger of the alchemist seemed to be striking on the keys of an invisible keyboard.

Every action that he made seemed to play on a magical note in the world which resembled the past that Lord El-Melloi II was currently within. Perhaps it was these notes, which were inaudible to the human ear, was rocking the foundations of the world itself.

“For me, this is a rare, golden opportunity for me to showcase the abilities which I have long forgotten about.”

There was a detectable amount of pride and confidence in Zepia’s words.

“Ahaha! That’s awesome! I didn’t know that magecraft could be used that way! The Atlas Institute’s really full of mysteries, like a collectible card game that’s been out for a couple decades!”

“Can you calm down for a bit?” Svin warned his classmate, as he stared intently at the crystal ball. In its reflection, their beloved lecturer of the Clock Tower faced the rising tower.

“Let’s see,” Zepia said, turning to look at the crystal ball once more. “Can you arrive at the mystery you are to solve, Lord El-Melloi II?”
-End of Part 4 of Chapter 3 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

Chapter 3, Part 5

Chapter 3, Part 5:

“Avalon… Isn’t that-”

Of course, I knew that name.

It was the place where the dead King Arthur had been carried to, and where he would be revived. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call that place the most sacred place in Britain, and yet—

“It’s the temple over there…?”

“It’s probably not the real Avalon, but rather, something based on the legend. Just like Sir Kay said, analogies are incredibly important in magecraft (TN: Yeah I’m pretty sure I missed something but I can’t figure out what. So please assume Kay said something in the past couple parts about analogies/comparisons/imitations/I don’t even know how to translate that word aaa).”

“Ha. Surprisingly knowledgeable, huh?” The knight muttered, as if he admired him.

However, I felt that those words were more than his feelings on the matter. There was something else, but I couldn’t say that I understood his thoughts very well.

“According to the evidence board, the body, mind, and soul will combine into one in that temple.” my mentor said, trying to suppress the tremble in his voice.

My body would be sacrificed in that sacred place.

If that was the case, the Husk King would also be waiting there, as the mind.

“The villagers are all heading into the swamp from the bridge-like thing. I don’t know if they already knew this was going to happen, but they’re probably holding hands, being all nice to each other, and anticipating your arrival.” The knight sighed, annoyed, “But if we’re just going to walk straight in there, we’re going to lose spectacularly. If she pulls out that black lance again, it won’t be a question of whether we’ll survive, the entire mountain’ll probably get blown into smithereens. I guess it’d be a quick, painless death, but that’s still a stupid ending.”

“It won’t happen.”

Hearing a voice that denied what he said, the knight turned around.

“Something like that is not going to happen.”

There was a calm certainty in my mentor’s words.

Soon after this, I would learn the meaning of those words— That was to say, the “ending” of this Second Cycle.
-End of Part 5 of Chapter 3 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

Chapter 4, Part 1

Chapter 4, Part 1:



A few bridges had been created with the temple at its center.

That was probably also part of the mechanism. The water that still remained on the stone floorboards also seemed to be slowly draining away.

The temple, which had now been doused in water, looked completely different from when it was underground, and gave off an air of majesty.

Perhaps this was its original form. I could think of many legends about temples regaining their sacred appearances after returning to the surface from the moldy underground. In ancient legends, dead gods would also regain their glory after returning from the underworld.

A couple of groups of people had gathered at the entrance to the temple.

One group was the villagers.

There were a few dozen of them, each carrying an old axe or hoe, and keeping a close eye on us. The rest of them were probably absent either because they were too old or because they still could not move.

“It’s the body…”

“The body… of King Arthur…”

Hearing their whispers, I could not help but clamp my eyes shut.

Would they no longer call me Gray?

Behind them, there were two people. One was a female representative, and the other was the old woman.

“Mother, and Granny.”

“You stupid girl…” said the old woman in a low voice.

My mother did not say anything. My figure was reflected emotionlessly in her blank, glasslike eyes. Even at a time like this, their expression toward me did not change.

The other “group” was composed solely of Sister Illumia.

She was only wearing her nun’s clothing, and she seemed relaxed, only looking toward the villagers as if to say that even alone, she could go up against all the villagers. No, this was probably the truth. With the physical prowess she displayed, it wouldn’t take anything for her to defeat a group of regular villagers.

Actually, it was the villagers who looked terrified. No matter how fervent their belief was, it was difficult to turn inexperienced people into warriors.

And then, at an equal distance from both of the parties, were the bone soldiers. Looking at the three groups gave me a surreal feeling. The “ending” that nobody had predicted had arrived.

“…Why are you so slow?” Sister Illumia asked.

“Aren't you guys fighting?"(TN: Who says this is unclear. I just assumed it’s Sir Kay because it’s easier to translate that way)

“Of course not. Do you think this is the time to fight? After I discovered the mechanism in the swamp, I thought I was going to be the first one here. When I got here, though, it’d already become like this. …Oh, that means I’m the first witness, does that make me unreliable?”

The nun pointed her chin in that direction.

She was probably telling the truth. There were no signs of a fight in the surrounding area. Even if it was Sister Illumia, she wouldn’t have come out of a fight with that person completely unharmed.

However.

“Why would it… end up like this…” Said the old woman, in a voice that reminded me of a string that had finally snapped.

Even the old woman who had done so much in for her beliefs had finally lost her fervor.

Yes, there was no need to stop them. There was no need at all. For the thing that they had given up their lives for had already been taken away from them.

“…Oi, what… happened?”

Even the knight’s (Sir Kay’s) voice was full of confusion.

Everyone’s gaze was focused on something behind the bone soldiers, right underneath the Black Madonna statue.

Someone lay there, in the place that was supposed to be this altar.

Ah, I had seen this before. Though I had forgotten it, though I should have forgotten it, when this scene appeared in front of my eyes, I recalled it.

An intense headache hit me.

The pain made me see a flash of white, and dug out memories that had been lodged even deeper in my mind.

The first thing I remembered was the smell.

The smell of rotting weeds and water.

The miasma made it feel like my throat was going to rot as I breathed it in.

[Back then], perhaps the swamp was murkier than it was now. Swirling around my nasal cavity, this odor might even have caused disease if i breathed it for too long.

The sound came next.

It was the sound of the shrieking of what seemed like hundreds of ravens.

Next to that, someone was yelling at me.

—“You… (did something to)… me…”

Ah.

That ending had been revealed.

“The Husk King… died…?”

My voice didn’t even sound like my own.

Behind the bone soldiers, under the gaze of the Black Madonna, a pool of red blood had formed around the neck of the fallen girl.
-End of Part 1 of Chapter 4 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

[Reign]

Wow 3 in 1, thank you.

So if the temple is a replica Avalon, I guess they mean of Merlin's tower? Because Avalon is a place, not a building.

[azwhoisverybored]

So if the temple is a replica Avalon, I guess they mean of Merlin's tower? Because Avalon is a place, not a building.

I'm pretty sure it's the tower.

But then again, Avalon can mean at least three separate things.

[azwhoisverybored]

Chapter 4, Part 2

Chapter 4, Part 2:

It was evidently a fatal wound.

The girl lay unmoving on the altar. The blood had long since started to spread, and was now drying from the edges.

What lay there was now simply an object.

A hunk of meat devoid of life.

“W-why…”

My voice sounded like someone else’s entirely.

No.

I was not completely unprepared for this.

Since I had survived the First Cycle while someone who looked like me had died, there was only one person who that could be. For that reason, I had a vague premonition that the same would happen in the Second Cycle as well.

There had to be some sort of reason for this. Somehow, the Husk King had suddenly died, as if the tide of the events that had suddenly shifted.

Just as I was reeling from the shock of this, another person appeared from the bridge in the direction of the village.

“…How did this happen?”

“Bersac.”

It was the grave keeper of Blackmore Graveyard, and my other teacher, who had taught me how to fight and survive.

As he looked at the corpse of the Husk King, his serious expression did not change a bit.

“On the way here, I found the corpse of Father Fernando. It looked like he had been fighting someone… Just to be clear, I didn’t kill him.”

“What!?” Sister Illumia exclaimed, whirling around with her exquisite eyebrows raised. “You killed the priest!?” (TN: even in times of crisis this book will not stop talking about how pretty some of the characters are)

“I said, it wasn’t me.” Bersac reiterated.

I stared at him with widened eyes.

“…How…!”

It almost felt like a serial murder case.

Had this happened as well during the First Cycle?

The deaths of Father Fernando and the Husk King seemed to have dropped a huge bomb onto the current situation. It was too sudden, and too difficult to accept. What had happened to cause this?

I covered my temples with my hands to try and stop my headache when I heard a strange creaking sound.

…What was it?

It sounded like tapes were being burnt, or like the edges of documents were being singed. Just as my attention was drawn to this sound, my mentor spoke.

“So it did end up like this.”

“Did you predict that this would happen, Lord El-Melloi II?” The knight (Sir Kay) asked.

Indeed, my mentor had said something about how we wouldn’t fight the Husk King. Was that because he had already predicted her death?

“During the First Cycle, Bersac told me that Gray’s corpse had appeared next to the Black Madonna, so no one would try to follow us. I thought back then that they had discovered it in the church, but that wasn’t the case. There is another Black Madonna. Of course, Bersac didn’t have time to explain to me back then. …If that’s the case, since this isn’t the past, I think it has to be settled here,” my mentor said quietly, so the people around us wouldn’t hear us discussing the past.

However hard we tried to explain to the people here, they probably wouldn’t understand that this world was actually a reenactment.

“This place isn’t the past?”

“I’ve been wondering, if this place isn’t the past, what is it? If we assume that it’s just a simulation, there shouldn’t be a need to send us to a specific point in the past. What’s important is the meaning to this reenactment.”

After he said that, he turned to look in a different direction.

“[Magdalena]”, he called out.

For a moment, I was confused as to whose name that was, because though it was my mother’s name, nobody in the village ever called her that.

“That’s your name, right? I’ve heard Gray bring it up before.”

Have I brought it up before? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps I did mention that name once or twice in all the conversations I had had after arriving in London.

“Only you know why this ending happened.”

“What do you mean?”

My mother’s expression did not change.

No. That only lasted for a couple of seconds. As if the plaster that had been on her face had suddenly fallen apart, her expression began to violently contort.

“How…” Her throat shook. How long had it been since I saw my mother in a frantic state? “How do you know… Unless, you’re…!”

She moaned, and began to run with stumbling steps. Ripples formed under her feet in the water still on the floor of the temple as she rushed defenselessly towards the bone soldiers.

“Mother!”

“Ugh— Trimmau!”

My mentor shot out a magic bullet and called for the mercury maid’s help. Her limbs immediately dissolved and then turned into sharp blades. She slashed through the bone soldiers who were trying to guard the Husk King’s corpse and cleared out a path for my mother.

“What a pain in the ass!” The knight complained, sticking his tongue out and pulling out his sword.

Trimmau, the knight (Sir Kay) and I all rushed forward to meet the bone soldiers’ attacks. Because everything had been so sudden, the old woman and the other villagers had not had time to react yet. Just as the blades of the bone soldiers were about to land on their heads, someone charged in and used his giant axe to block the blows.

“Mr. Bersac.”

“I’m prepared to be your enemy, but I won’t stand there and watch my former companions die.” The grave keeper raised his hand and summoned a group of spirit ravens.

The ravens swooped down and pecked apart many of the bone soldiers, while others were crushed under Bersac’s axe. Though there were still a lot of bone soldiers, they were no enough to overwhelm the grave keeper. Perhaps because she didn’t care about the villagers much, Sister Illumia only watched from the side, occasionally using one hand to deal with the bone soldiers that attempted to attack her.

As that happened, my mentor cautiously walked over and extended a hand.

“Are you alright, Lady (TN: I mean he really just goes around calling people ‘lady’, I think it’s just a Case Files thing)?” He asked, helping my mother up.

I still had no idea what had happened.

Why would my mother rush toward the bone soldiers? Why would my mentor try to save her? Ah, no. What confused me most of all was was why I felt so relieved. I knew so clearly that my mother only saw me as a subject of worship, and yet, I still felt thankful that she was safe, like an idiot.

“I…” My mother muttered, and my mentor nodded gently.

“Gray, Trimmau, are you holding up?”

“W-we’re alright!” Perhaps because the Husk King wasn’t alive anymore, Bersac, the knight (Sir Kay) (TN: Would it kill you to call him by his name?) and I were able to hold off the bone soldiers.

“—Well then, let’s continue the lecture,” my mentor announced, standing up. He slowly turned to look at the villagers. “Have you ever seen the Husk King’s face?”

The old woman did not answer my mentor’s question immediately. After a while, she shook her wrinkled head.

“…There’s no need for that.”

“Exactly. Such is the nature of faith. Gods only exist when people believe in them, and even if there isn’t a taboo against seeking their true appearance, it’s only natural to not wish to do so. This isn’t an accusation, because I also believed in what you do, once. After all, from a certain distance, it’s impossible to tell who someone is if they’re wearing armor,” my mentor said, shaking his head.

“…What are you talking about?”

“I just wanted to make sure,” my mentor said, with a somewhat stiff expression. “I’m sure no one here is aware of this, but when we first escaped from the village, Gray had been in a state of mental distress. The only way I figured out that there had been unrest among the villagers was through my own deductions. It if wasn’t for the fact that all the villagers were on the move, I wouldn’t have been able to leave successfully. Yes, for that reason, I can conclude that nobody checked her true appearance, and everyone believed that the one who died was Gray.”

That was true.

But what was my mentor trying to say?

As I parried the bone soldiers’ attacks, I heard that strange sound again (TN: the sound goes ‘jijiji…jijiji’ and was written in emphasized katakana). The noise became faster and faster, and seemed to envelop the entire temple.

That was not all. Soon, a web of tiny cracks appeared in the swamp around the temple (TN: …Actually it might be a marsh…? Or maybe a bog if it smells so bad. It’s probably too irrelevant of a detail to be fussing over anyway).The clearly unnatural cracks appeared on the surface of the water, and showed no sign of disappearing.

It was as if the noise was a cacophony meant to interfere with the whole world.

“…Sir, the swamp is… [falling apart],” I whispered to him, guarding his back.

My mentor nodded. “Yes. But it seems that the only ones who noticed are the two of us and Sir Kay.”

It was strange, as if this world could no longer continue to exist. Strange phenomena appeared one after the other, and yet, neither the villagers, nor Sister Illumia, nor Bersac had any reaction.

“The reason for that is probably because we are all from the outside world. So, in other words, the people inside a world cannot perceive its correction.”

“Correction? (TN: spent too long trying to find the proper name for this, gave up)”

“Something like that appears quite frequently in science fiction. Actually, a similar theory exists in magecraft, where it is believed that time is under some sort of directional influence. Though this place is not the past, something similar probably exists here.”

Hearing my mentor’s words, I blinked.

A correctional force.

If that was the case, did the Husk King die of the same reason she did during the First Cycle?

“The time for the play has already been decided. No matter how grand the performance may be, no matter how many encores may be enacted— Or perhaps precisely for that reason, every show must come to an end. An unyielding, illogical, inexorable end(deux ex machina).”

I had heard this phrase before.

In Ancient Greek plays, people would have the gods suddenly appear when the plot reached a deadlock by delivering judgement or resolving conflict. The deus ex machina was created for this reason.

Perhaps this was acceptable for an ancient play.

Even in later decades, people said that it could stay it for its beauty. And so the story of how the scholar who lost to the demons was miraculously saved by angels was greeted with thunderous applause.

And now, what meaning did that phrase hold?

How would this play end?

And most importantly, in this situation, who was the god in question?

“Then, the reason why you rushed here was—”

“Exactly. This stage only exists in this exact time. The ending will be here soon, so we must get here in time, because only the people who usher in this moment will be fixed onto the stage.”

My mentor looked up at the center of the mass of bone soldiers.

“Gray, can you clear a path to the Husk King please,” he said calmly as he gazed toward the Husk King’s corpse.

“Yes!”

Hearing his words, I began to swing my scythe. Perhaps because we weren’t underground anymore, my Strengthening abilities had recovered somewhat. Trimmau and I worked together and carved out a path for my mentor.

With my mother in tow, and with the help of magic bullets, he finally reached the corpse. He gazed at the wretched corpse for a while before extending a hand.

“…What are you doing, Lord El-Melloi II?”

“As you can see,” my mentor answered resolutely in response to my mother’s question, “—This is her true face!”



He removed the mask. The sound of the mask hitting the floor was softer than I had expected. Nobody else would probably pay any attention to that sound, though, for I was struck speechless by that face.

…Ah.

Of course, I had also believed in it without a doubt. She was, without question, the mind of King Arthur. Even without that dark Rhongomyniad, her very existence resonated with mine, so I believed that there would be a face identical to mine under that mask.

However, it was—

“[Mother]…” I moaned, and collapsed to the floor like the mask. The face beneath the mask— ah, though it looked very young, it was impossible to mistake it for anything else— was that of my mother.

“It’s like this. You are both the victim and the culprit, Magdalena,” my mentor announced, as my mother stood there, frozen.
*
…I didn’t know.

I didn’t have this kind of memory.

But my heart still remembered it. Though it had been erased from the surface of my mind, the information still existed, carved deep into me. Floating up like bubbles from a deep, dark ocean and announcing its presence, that memory had not disappeared.

The smell of rotting weeds and water.

The piercing cries of ravens.

That was…

Yes.

That was it.

…Someone was lying there. …It wasn’t me. But, it was someone who looked like me, someone who used to look like me.

[Why?]

I heard a voice.

[Why did you… make me… into you? (TN: This is supposed to fit into the ‘you…(did something to)… me’ from earlier, but unfortunately the grammar doesn’t quite work out in English)]

They were thoughts that had not been converted into language. They were the crisscrossing thoughts of someone right next to me.

It was a conversation that should not have been heard by anyone. The only reason why I heard it was probably because I had almost completely lost consciousness, and entered some kind of strange, hazy state. If that was the case, the reason why I perceived those thoughts as sounds was because my brain had interpreted the characteristics of those thoughts.

[I’m sorry.]

Ah, that was a voice I was familiar with.

It was a voice that I had known for a long time.

[You were meant to have taken that child’s body, and that is why you have waited here. …I’m sorry. That is the only thing I can’t tolerate.]

I knew that calm, steady tone.

So steady that it terrified me. I had thought that I could never disobey this person. I had believed that I would forever live under this person’s command.

The thoughts ended here.

Less than a minute had actually passed.

And then,

“You… (did something to)… me…”

I finally understood those thoughts of the Husk King, which manifested soundlessly inside my mind.
*
“Mother…!”

It was said that, when exposed to shocks, human brains will sometimes block out information from the outside world.

I only had enough brain capacity to process the information that had just been revealed to me. My senses had stopped functioning briefly, and the world suddenly seemed to freeze, like an old movie playing from a damaged film.

Though I was in the middle of a battle, I couldn’t do anything except reflexively dodge the bone soldiers’ attacks.

However, my mentor continued to speak.

“It’s actually not quite accurate to call you the culprit. Though I say that, it’s different if I say that you were [once] the culprit. Perhaps a better way to say it would be that in the original timeline, you would have gone with your plan and [became] the killer.”

“…I,” my mother said in a low voice. She glanced at the unmasked person who looked exactly like herself, and immediately looked back to my mentor. “That means, I…”

“It’s alright.”

I didn’t know why, but my mentor’s voice was incredibly gentle and calm.

“You’ve already achieved your goal. I can assure you, not a single day of your effort was wasted.”

“……”

My mother smiled.

I didn’t remember how long it had been since I had seen that expression from her.

“Wonderful… So that’s how it is… I see…”

She covered her mouth with her hands, as if she finally understood something.

—Then, she disappeared without a trace, as if she had never existed in the first place. In her place, an old, curved dagger fell to the floor at my mentor’s feet.

“Mother!”

My own cries sounded distant. An indescribable sense of terror and despair invaded my brain. I felt like I was a sobbing child as I kneeled where my mother had just disappeared.

”Where is she!?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” My mentor said as he gestured toward the Husk King’s corpse. “This is her corpse. Although the two can coexist before the original is identified, once that happens, the copy created by the simulation must disappear, like a doppelgänger. Oh, right, Father Fernando probably also died of the same reason.”

What did this mean?

I could not understand what my mentor was saying at all. (TN: very relatable)

However, my heart had been throbbing violently in my chest ever since the Husk King was unmasked, as if it was trying to tell me something.

“El-Melloi II!” Yelled one of the villagers, the old woman who was their leader. “What have you done!?”

Her howls were more like pleas than accusations.

Like me, she could not understand what she had just witnessed. However, there was the added weight of more than a thousand years on the old woman’s shoulders.

In response to that, my mentor only took out his box of cigars from his pocket.

Though the battle had not ended yet, he lit it with a snap and placed it in his mouth.

That was not a show of his carelessness. To my mentor, this act must be like a switch, my still-fuzzy brain thought. A switch to hide his original personality, and to activate the identity of “Lord El-Melloi II” of the Clock Tower.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t have done anything. I just made a guess based on the clues that were here,” my mentor said as he exhaled a puff of smoke.

I couldn’t help but turn my head at those words. The old woman could not understand what he was trying to say, and she shot back a rhetorical question like a parrot repeating human words.

“A prediction?”

“You call Gray the body of King Arthur, yes? That means, you know that the Husk King is the mind, and even though you clearly understand that you lack the soul, you attempted to merge the two here. However, that ritual has been [distorted].”

Everyone was stunned by the impact of those words.

The only people who didn’t get affected— or at least, didn’t seem affected, were Trimmau and the bone soldiers, who didn’t have the ability to feel that way, and the knight, whose expression was impossible to discern.

Everyone else held their breaths, like suspects listening to a detective’s deduction. Nobody dared to take even a single breath. That was how impactful the face behind the mask and my mentor’s words were.

“You’re saying that the ritual… has been distorted…” The old woman’s voice was full of pain.

Perhaps she had devoted her entire life to this ritual. It wasn’t just her, either. Everyone else related to the old woman had poured precious hours and days of their life into this. Their persistence, passions, longings, history, traditions, and dreams had all been discarded for the sake of this ritual.

Just then, we had heard the sound of all of it breaking apart.

“Originally, the Husk King shouldn’t have had a face. The mind of the king alone cannot materialize completely, much like Sir Kay.”

So it was inevitable that the knight’s face would be hazy.

The knight listened silently to my mentor’s words, not confirming nor refuting any of his claims.

“For that reason, the village needs a ritual to unite the three parts of a person. Especially a Mystic Code or spell to remove Gray’s mind and soul from her body.”

My mentor picked up the dagger.

Was this the Mystic Code?

My mentor narrowed his eyes and examined it briefly before he continued.

“However, [someone] interfered with this step. Let’s assume that that person is a ‘he’. This person is a mage with a detailed understanding of the three elements of a human being, and has been watching this village for a long time.”

There was no need to ask who he was talking about.

It was Dr. Heartless. As he was the former head of the Department of Modern Magecraft (Norwich), his knowledge on the subject was guaranteed.

“He also induced one of the villagers.”

The strange noise sounded again. It was now noticeably louder and more frequent. However, the people around us still took no notice of it. To what point would these irregularities continue? No, perhaps they wouldn’t stop until they covered this entire world.

“…Sir, the noise… keeps spreading.”

“The answer is right there. (TN: Alternatively, the answer is at hand?)”

I heard the strain in his voice. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of his face. He probably didn’t have a positive outlook on the situation, either. In fact, I think that he simply betted everything on this.

—“Find the mystery that you must solve. That is the only way you can reach the end, Lord El-Melloi II.”

It was the mystery that Zepia had given us.

I didn’t know why I was so sure of it, but I knew that was what my mentor was attempting to solve.

“It was necessary for ‘him’ to have an accomplice, because even for someone like him, dodging the magecraft alarm system completely would be difficult. So you could say that it was only natural for him to look for an accomplice in the village.”

My mentor had said before that Heartless made incidents get buried in darkness. It seemed that he was already used to secretly hiring accomplices.

“And that’s how he managed to receive hints about the ritual in the village. In turn, the person who provided this information received from him the means to disrupt the resurrection of King Arthur.”

Hearing my mentor’s words, the wrinkles at the old woman’s brow deepened.

“So you’re saying that the accomplice was Magdalena?”

“Could it be anyone else?”

My mentor’s assertion caused a vein to rise on the old woman’s forehead.

“But Magdalena isn’t even a mage! Unlike Gray, she’s a failure that didn’t become King Arthur’s body! How can someone like her disrupt the ritual without a bit of assistance from a mage!?“

“Doesn’t she have the perfect means to intervene, in the form of the central focus of this ritual?”

“…You mean, Gray?”

My mentor shifted his gaze from the furious old woman to me.

“…Gray, you were there when I said that it wasn’t just manipulating Magical Energy and casting spells, everything from eating, sleeping, and even excretion is closely related to magecraft and mystery, right? (TN: That’s an absolute mess of a sentence)”

I remembered.

It was when we were at the Twin Towers of Ilsema.

I had also thought of myself back then.

—After my father’s death, my mother had started managing my life more fervently than ever. Not only for sleep and prayer, but also even [the order in which I ate my food or how I put on my clothes]. Naturally, my attitude towards my surroundings was influenced by her.

My mentor had said before that this was also a type of spell.

Transforming the macrocosmos of the world by making it mirror changes in the microcosmos of life. This was, undoubtedly, a type of magecraft. Guiding the tidal currents of the earth and the movement of the stars into the tiny vessel of a human body was a way to make greater mystery possible.

“There should have been something close to the potential to become King Arthur in your mother. It’s only natural for that to be the case. She is your mother, after all. On top of that, the village has been cultivating this potential for quite a while. Ah, that is to say, this village is under the influence of magecraft that could cause these potentials to awaken. Therefore, the means of intervention that he taught her were very simple. By synchronizing the wavelength of the person with the highest affinity to the ritual and the wavelength of your mother, you can create a path to directly intervene into the spell.”

“Synchronize…with me…?”

“Exactly. Your mother subtly shifted her wavelength to be in tune with yours through eating, sleeping, and everything else in your life.”

It was probably something similar to what Flat did. Magecraft intervention. From a technical point of view, this might be even more sophisticated.

“Though the means itself is straightforward, in practice, it is not that easy to pull off. It’s actually a difficult act that requires so much perseverance that even a real mage would complain about it. Not a single detail can be overlooked in order to completely synchronize the wavelength of her mutated daughter to her own. If we use food as an example, the difference of a couple of grams would affect the accuracy of the spell, and even the amount of bites taken would need to be managed. Imagine that, but for every hour of every day. It would require a stunning amount of energy to be able to do this without being able to ask the other person for help.”

“……”

My body shook.

My mentor’s words were only processed by my ears. My brain had not managed to comprehend the meaning behind it at all. However, I could not help but realize that this was the truth. Every feeling that I had once held for my mother reversed, along with a feeling of pain as intense as if my skin was being peeled off.

“However, she succeeded. She somehow managed to succeed. The next step was to follow what Heartless had written down on the evidence board. Though the spell was complicated, it wouldn’t be difficult to perform as long as she had synchronized herself well. What happened then was that two sets of parameters were inserted into the unstable mind of King Arthur. One was the parameters of the mind, and the other were those of your mother. Though it seemed like King Arthur on the surface, something similar to your mother’s parameters were hiding deep within. The Husk King herself probably never realized it until the end.”

Was that the reason why Heartless had approached the village before he left?

My mentor raised the ancient dagger that he had just picked up. “Is this dagger the Mystic Code used in the ritual?” He asked the old woman.

“…Indeed. This is a Mystic Code capable of separating the soul and the mind from the body, called Erosion.”

“If that’s the case, the answer is simple. During the First Cycle, Magdalena arrived here early and took the place of her daughter, stabbing the dagger into her own body. Then, the unstable mind of King Arthur was forcibly dragged into that soulless, mindless body. …However, Magdalena first stabbed herself with a regular dagger. Even King Arthur wouldn’t be able to do anything against being placed into a dead body. She had to die.”

“…W-wh-” The old woman could not finish her sentence. I didn’t know how much the other villagers knew, but they still panicked with the old woman. They couldn’t understand what the First Cycle or the Second Cycle meant, so I guess it was inevitable that they acted this way.

No, actually, I could no longer discern their expressions anymore.

*strange noise*(TN: Jijiji…jijiji in katakana, again)… the sound of the burning world had already reached the level of a din. It wasn’t just that. The [cracks] that had appeared on the swamp and the temple had spread to the villagers.

“Gray, you can feel this noise, yes?”

I nodded in response to my mentor’s question.

“…Y-yes.”

“In the words of that director of the Atlas Institute, the stage has discovered a contradiction. If the stage cannot hold against it, the reenactment loses its meaning. If the foundations collapse, we must start from the beginning. Therefore, we need to arrive here before it collapses. Ah, this reenactment really is beautifully made. Even I have doubted countless times that this was actually the past. However, that is not the case. Since this place is not the past, there must be things that cannot be concealed. In this case, that would be death.”

“…Death… cannot be concealed…”

During the First Cycle, Father Fernando had died. The Husk King— or perhaps I should say, my mother, who gave her body to her, also died.

Only the truths of that timeline could not be concealed in this reenactment, no matter what. That was why Father Fernando’s body would suddenly appear, and why the Husk King would die in my mother’s body. Perhaps, before their death, both of them had seen their own doppelgängers.

“Well then, to conclude,” my mentor said in a slightly more powerful voice. “Like I just said, in the real world, there is no way for the mind to retain its shape for a long period of time. Sir Kay can only materialize because of Add, his true form. Even so, there is no guarantee that he can sustain it for longer than a day. …However, for the Husk King, she awoke at the same time Gray had began her transformation. That is to say, ten years ago.”

My mentor paused briefly before looking to the side.

“Well then, how do [you] maintain your own existence?”

“……”

“…Oi, what’s going on?” The knight(Sir Kay) yelled at the new arrival.

I didn’t know when, but the corpse of the Husk King— or rather, what was once the Husk King had stood up.

Was this still the same Husk King as before?

I could not sense a trace of life in her as she stood there quietly with her head hung. Though her face was the same as my mother’s, she gave me the feeling of an entirely different being.

The victim who was thought to have been killed but turned out to still be alive…Though this happened quite frequently in mystery novels, this was different.

“Husk King— No. That’s not the right name to use anymore. After your reboot, you are neither Magdalena nor the mind of King Arthur, but something that consumed large amounts of Mana to continue calculating,” my mentor revealed. “[You, are Logos ReAct.]”

One of the Seven Superweapons of the Atlas Institute.

The knight(Sir Kay), who had inherited Add’s memories, did not expect that name to appear here either, and did not make an effort to hide his shock.

“Ha? So you’re saying that the Atlas Institute’s superweapon is a person?”

“Not exactly. To be precise, she is the avatar of Logos ReAct in this world,” my mentor said, looking toward the object the stood there. “I see. Since it’s the superweaapon of the Atlas Institute, it should be able to duplicate the mind of King Arthur. Such a task should probably be completable, even if it only had the excess energy outside its original functions. After all, those superweapons were created to save humanity from destruction, but are also capable of destroying the world.”

“……”

The object that was once the Husk King did not speak.

I didn’t know when it had happened, but her face had become as hazy as Sir Kay’s. Was that the face of the mind of King Arthur, or that of the incarnation of Logos ReAct?

“Indeed. This is not the past, or a time loop. Therefore, the Husk King’s death can only happen at t fixed time. The answer to this endless loop that begins and ends with death is already clear.”

He inhaled.

“This place is a grave,” my mentor proclaimed. “A tiny world after death, constructed by Logos ReAct!”

His declaration echoed in the temple.

I could not understand the meaning behind what he said at all. Instead, as if in response to his words, the noise grew louder. I felt like my eardrums were going to burst.

Everything in my field of vision was being torn apart. Every inch of the swamp, the temple, and the villagers looked like a badly scarred photo. If I inserted my fingers into those cracks, would it kill everything?

“You heard that, right?” My mentor yelled. Loudly, as if he was trying to reach the other end of the universe(sky). “You heard me, Atlas!”

His voice pierced through cacophony of noise.

“The mystery has been solved! Summer is over! Show yourself, Zepia Eltnam Atlasia!”

It was as if those words had split the world open.

In an instant, everything disappeared.

The swamp, the temple, the Black Madonna, the old woman, the villagers, Bersac, and Illumia.

And then.

In a way that was fitting for the dawn in a certain sense, a veil of darkness had been lifted, that man stood there, naturally, as if he had been waiting for this moment.
-End of Part 2 of Chapter 4 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

Chapter 4, Part 3

Chapter 4, Part 3:

It was a strange space.

There was nothing else apart from the large number of crystal balls floating in the air. In the darkness, I reached down and felt the floor, which had a texture unlike that of dirt, metal, or resin.

I forced down the uneasiness that came from everything in my line of sight suddenly changing, and heard the crisp sound of applause.

“Congratulations on reaching the truth, Lord El-Melloi II.”

The man stood there with his eyes closed.

Rather than saying that his age was difficult to discern, it was more like he was an organism that had already transcended that concept. No, it wasn’t even right to call him an organism. They were called Dead Apostles precisely for that reason, as they had deviated from everything that living organisms would do.

Apostles of death.

—“That is what you must destroy. That, and only that.”

Did what Bersac had said to me when I was still a grave keeper apply here? Could Dead Apostles and spirits (TN: Alternatively, ghosts) be regarded the same way?

Everything around us had disappeared, from the temple that had risen from below the ground, to the dead Husk King, Bersac, Illumia, Trimmau, the villagers, and my mother.

No, they had not completely disappeared. All the things I just described were now shown in the floating crystal balls.

Each crystal ball of the large number in the room showed the place we had just been in from a different angle. Everyone was completely frozen in place. This abnormal scene made me feel like everything I had experienced up to now was only a scene from a movie.

“Huh, I’ve also been dragged here. I guess that’s inevitable since Add’s my true form, but don’t you think I’ve worked without pay for too long? Back in the day, I would’ve earned a piece of land for this. Ah, but don’t actually give me a piece of land. I won’t be able to go around wooing maidens that way.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that the chatterbox of a knight was still here, and tightened my grip on my scythe.

And then, there was my mentor.

His eyes had not left his opponent, not even for a moment.

“Zepia Eltnam Atlasia. Was the answer I gave correct?”

“You could say that,” Zepia said, nodding curtly. “In modern terms, you’ve passed the level. You interacted with Logos ReAct splendidly, and managed to make the world eject you by solving its riddle. Ah, if we ignore the Husk King whose true form is Logos ReAct, if someone who understands the structure of the world enters the reenactment, it will create a paradox.”

“…So that’s why you weren’t in that world.”

“Basically, yes,” Zepia admitted.

“Um, Sir, Miss Trimmau…” I interjected quietly, watching their conversation.

“That Trimmau is just a creation of Logos ReAct, based on the Trimmau that Reines left behind in the First Cycle. The real Trimmau is probably pouring tea for Reines right now.”

Hearing my mentor’s response, I breathed a sigh of relief.

If that was the case, what about Bersac and Illumia? When we returned to the village, these people had already disappeared. And like Father Fernando, who had died already in the First Cycle, my mother…

Just as I was thinking of that, I heard the sound of footsteps.

“Professor!”

“Sir!”

The two blonde teenagers ran over, shouting in unison.

It was Flat and Svin.

“I knew you could do it!”

“Flat, that comment wasn’t necessary! How could our teacher not succeed? The fact that you even doubted that he would is rude! Even if you didn’t mind other people’s business, he would have solved it perfectly anyway!”

“What do you mean? Weren’t you the one who said that we should help him with the expression of a puppy being abandoned in the rain, Le Chien-kun?”

“T-that’s just me acting on his instructions, because he said it’s important to have good backup as a mage! Also, how is my expression related at all?”

“Your students are quite talented. I envy you,” Zepia said in a pretentious manner as he watched the two argue.

“I think so as well,” my mentor replied calmly.

Everyone was here.

My mentor, me, the knight(Sir Kay), the two teenagers.

And finally, Zepia.

“Well then, as the person who arrived at the answer, what do you seek from me, Lord El-Melloi II? Is it the whereabouts of Heartless? Or the information the Atlas Institute has on the Holy Grail War?” Zepia asked.

The tone of the director of the Atlas Institute who had sent us to the Second Cycle was unbelievably warm, as if he was congratulating us from the bottom of his heart.

However.

“…No,” my mentor said. “I haven’t arrived at any kind of answer. The mystery that I must solve is still to come, Zepia Eltnam Atlasia, ancient king of the Atlas Institute.”
-End of Part 3 of Chapter 4 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

Chapter 5, Part 1

Chapter 5, Part 1:



Suddenly, I felt as if the air itself had changed fundamentally. I even had a hallucination of sparks flying between Zepia and my mentor.

“…Huh,” the knight(Sir Kay) mumbled, as if he found it amusing.

My throat hurt.

This intense pain was caused by my anxiety.

Though it was rare, my mentor would sometimes have a very belligerent expression. Though he was usually cautious almost to the point of cowardice, in the right situation, his words and actions would become almost provocative.

For example, when he was up against the Grand puppeteer.

And also, when he confronted the former head of the Department of Modern Magecraft, Heartless.

Perhaps it was so he could make a risky move to unsettle the enemy and try to figure out what was going on. But this wasn’t all. Though he’d probably cite that as the reason if you asked him, there must be something else there.

Yes. …It must be because that was who he originally was.

Reckless, imprudent, and passionate. Sometimes, a mage like that would appear uncontrolledly in front of my eyes. Though I had never seen what my mentor was like in the past, I could not help but imagine him as he stood alongside that Heroic Spirit named Iskandar.

I suppose that to him, that would be his youth. (TN: This sounds weird)

Zepia was silent for a moment before he spoke again.

“…The mystery is still to come, you say?”

“Yes,” my mentor confirmed. “I’m not playing some sort of word game. Since I said that the Second Cycle was some sort of grave, there must be some meaning behind what I said. If this is a grave, then finding out [who it belongs to] is incredibly important.”

I thought I saw Zepia freeze for a second. Perhaps I was just seeing things.

As if he had seen an opening, my mentor continued. “However, you hastily reminded us of what we were entitled to. Why?”

“Is it difficult to believe that I would just choose to do so?”

“Yes. You don’t do anything that doesn’t need to be done. Though what you say might have been difficult for us to understand, that was simply because we did not have the capacity to understand it at the time. Think about it. Why would someone like you stay in this village?”

“Is that strange?”

“I’ve always thought so. You’ve said before that the technology of the Atlas Institute allows someone to hold command over it from anywhere in the world. Also, unlike the other members, you do not need to follow the rules of the Atlas Institute and stay within its gates,” he said, reiterating what Zepia had said. “However, this alone doesn’t constitute enough of a reason for you to stay in this village, especially.”

…Ah. True, just because he was capable wasn’t a reason why he would do it.

Even if one of the seven superweapons was really hidden in this village, that shouldn’t have been a reason why the director would visit here himself. What’s more, it had been around half a year since we left the village in the First Cycle. I couldn’t imagine why he needed to stay here for so long.

“No. This entire incident is too roundabout. Was it actually you who sent us to that Second Cycle?”

I began to recall what had happened before we were transported to the Second Cycle.

We had returned here in search of clues about Heartless, and had met Zepia in the hut outside the empty village.

—“Ah, has it started? One of the superweapons of Atlas is hidden in this village.” —“It’s one of the seven superweapons of the Atlas Institute. Its specialty is reenactment. I suppose I am already quite familiar with it. Though it doesn’t have an official name, it is commonly called Logos ReAct.”

These words were explanations.

Thinking back, that was probably the most basic preparations he had planned for us before we entered the Second Cycle.

“You did not activate it yourself. You simply [knew that it would happen].”

“…I see.”

“Though, if I’m just bringing up what happened in the past, I don’t imagine you would admit it. Therefore, please allow me to organize everything that happened during the First Cycle. —Sir Kay.”

The knight (Sir Kay) shrugged somewhat pretentiously.

“I didn’t think that my name would come up in a boring conversation between mages. I would very much like to get out of here right now, but whatever. What do you want from me?”

“I don’t think I’ve misremembered, but just in case, I’d like you to confirm something. You inherited Add’s memories, right?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. That’s why I’m not quite the same as when I was still alive.”

“If that’s the case, do you remember what Father Fernando did on the third day of the First Cycle, after I met Gray?”

“…Hmm,” the knight replied, stroking his chin. “I remember seeing him sometime in the evening. Then, Gray and I— or maybe I should say, Gray and Add returned home as usual. Later, someone slipped some sedative into her food.”

“If that’s the case, then we should assume that the temple rose from the water in the First Cycle as well, letting the Husk King and the bone soldiers come up to the surface. I presume that Father Fernando was killed during the conflicts then.”

Was that where the corpse Bersac saw came from?

I suppose Father Fernando had not been as careful as he was during the Second Cycle.

The only reason why they had gone underground and fought with the Husk King in the Second Cycle was because of our actions. Otherwise, they would only have rushed to the swamp after observing some irregularities. It was impossible that they could have imagined that those monsters would be there. It wouldn’t be surprising if they were killed by the bone soldiers that they could have dealt with if they were prepared.

“Since Sister Illumia’s corpse wasn’t discovered around that area, that means she probably survived the clash. However, either way, she wasn’t able to stop the villagers from meeting the Husk King,” my mentor said, explaining the events.

My mentor had not noticed it back then, but the reason why the Church noticed the irregularity was not just because my mentor wasn’t very good at perceiving these things, but also because they had made preparations long ago. They were sent here to monitor the village, after all, so they might even have installed devices especially for this purpose.

“Everything else went exactly like I said. Before she became the body of the mind of King Arthur, Gray’s mother killed herself and died along with the Husk King. She probably arrived there just before the villagers did, hid Gray somewhere, put on the mask, and carried out her plan. I just don’t know if it’s the mask that belonged to the Husk King, or a copy of it that she prepared.”

The villagers and the old woman who worshipped King Arthur never even thought to take off the mask.

“Before it happened, your mother probably explained part of the situation to Bersac, so he could find you successfully and take you away. Though, looking at the situation, Bersac probably wasn’t aware of the details. She might have just asked him to save Gray for her.”

And that was how Bersac ended up entrusting me to my mentor.

Everyone already knows what happened after that. After I came to London, I gradually managed to pull myself together, and experienced a multitude of cases with my mentor and the students of the El-Melloi Classroom.

“…Mother…”

There was a weight at my chest.

The feeling of having everything I knew get completely overturned that I had felt when I had heard that my mother was the culprit surged back, and I felt like my heart was being set on fire.

“…Why…?”

Whydunit.

Why would something like that happen? Did she throw away her own life for nothing? Wasn’t she one of the villagers who fervently looked forward to the resurrection of King Arthur?

“Isn’t it obvious?” To my question, my mentor responded with the most clichéd answer in the world, which, at the same time, was also an answer that I would never have been able to reach on my own. “It’s because she loves you, Gray.”

Of course.

What my mentor talked about was something that I should have never been able to obtain.

No, that wasn’t true.

I knew what it was, once. Before my face had become this one.

Back then, the world had been bright, and the stars had shone. We had laughed together countless times in the beautiful song of the birds. Why had I forgotten all of this? No matter how many times I tried to deny it, these things would never disappear from my heart.

And even if I did, my mother would never forget it. She wouldn’t forget a single second.

“I… should be the one who understands my mother the most… and I…”

“Your mother cannot reveal this matter to anyone, not even you,” my mentor said. “Therefore, your mother pretended to be the the most fanatical worshipper out of all the others in the village. If she didn’t do that, she wouldn’t have gotten the Mystic Code used to separate the body from the mind and the soul. That is why she needed to put on an act so convincing that the old woman wouldn’t have even a moment of doubt.”

It must have been such a tedious task.

How much determination must the task have taken? What kind of persistence must she have had to endure it for such a long time? Even now, I could not imagine how those years must have felt.

“That is why we must know the reason.”

My mentor’s voice was not gentle.

It was impossible for someone’s voice to be gentle when they were revealing the cruel truth. When someone is forcing someone else to confess, it is inevitable that their voice would be harsh, just like what my mentor was doing now.

“Otherwise, we would miss something more important than that. The same applies to you too, Zepia.”

He turned to look at the alchemist of the Atlas Institute again.

“You’re saying that I have a similar reason.”

“Exactly,” my mentor said, nodding.

“Well then, what would that reason be?”

“Could it be anything else other than the Contract of Atlas?”

I could feel Svin stiffen behind me.

As an honors student, he had probably heard of it before. Or, perhaps Zepia had brought it up. O recalled the conversation that I had witnessed between Zepia and my mentor.

—“Are you referring to the seven contracts that are said to be scattered around the world?”

—“Yes, the seven contracts. The Atlas Institute is obliged to assist anyone who activates them.”

“The seven contracts of the Atlas Institute. You’ve mentioned it before, right? If someone activates them, the Atlas Institute has to come to their aid. And the reason why you decided to do something so roundabout and ineffective can only be so you [wouldn’t go against the contract.]”

“To not go against the contract?”

My mentor nodded lightly. “If the contents of the contract matched what you wanted to do, you would use the opposite of a roundabout approach. If you simply wanted to drive us away, it wouldn’t be difficult at all, considering the abilities of the Atlas Institute. And yet, you didn’t, which means that you do not wish to become our enemy, but cannot help us either. …Yes. Therefore, after calculating countless results, you managed to induce our actions to just [happen to coincide] with your goals.”

“…Hm.” Zepia raised one of his eyebrows. “That can hardly be called deductive reasoning. Speculating on the basis of guesses is hardly ever a good idea. It will influence the quality of the script, you know?”

“Sorry for that, but I’m not a detective. …However, this time, I do have a piece of evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“I brought it up earlier. The evidence is who the grave belongs to.”

Once again, my mentor returned the conversation to the original topic.

I didn’t know if he was doing it on purpose, but managing to suddenly turn the focus back to something after going off in a completely different direction was one of my mentor’s talents.

“The answer to that question is obvious, too. If you think of whose death the noise started appearing around, everything becomes clear. That is the grave of the Husk King, and the grave of Gray’s mother, but also [the grave of Logos ReAct,]” my mentor said, slowly, as if he was approaching his prey. “Ah, of course, Logos ReAct cannot die. An item(TN: Alternatively, prop) is an item. It does not have life, and though there are religious customs related to animism all over the world such as tales of how they would burn objects to stop them from becoming evil spirits(TN: Hmm. Yōkai, actually. Which are, uh… Spirit entities? Ghosts? Goblins? Monsters? Demons?), but those don’t apply here.”

“……”

“It was Logos ReAct that recreated the mind of King Arthur. Even if Gray’s mother combined herself with the Husk King, this is still true. And then, the death of the Husk King sent Logos ReAct a different set of data,” my mentor said calmly to Zepia, who remained silent. “That is to say, Logos React, which can never die, was given the information of ‘death’.”

Death, given to something without an understanding of the concept.

Was what happened here really such a bizarre phenomenon?

“However, because it is an item(prop), Logos ReAct did not die. It died, and yet, it is not dead. This paradox caused an immeasurable load on that weapon. Though its computational capacity seems infinite to most people, even it could not explain and solve this paradox. And what happens next? It is said that each of the Seven Superweapons of the Atlas Institute is capable of destroying humanity. So what would happen if Logos ReAct malfunctioned?”

I blinked.

I could not imagine this at all. However, for a mage, it seemed to be something important, as even Flat let out an exclamation as if he had come across an unexpectedly good game, and then covered his mouth with his hands. Only the knight (Sir Kay) remained unaffected, and he yawned impatiently.

No.

Actually, I had some kind of idea.

“…Is that why all the people disappeared when we came back to the village?”

“Yes. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that they were all pulled into the malfunctioning Logos ReAct.”

Hearing my mentor’s response, I swallowed.

A malfunctioning weapon that was said to be capable of destroying the world. If it really could, wouldn’t we have been lucky that it only affected a single village?

“…And that’s why you have continued to watch over this village alone,” my mentor announced to Zepia.

“Huh?” I couldn’t help but exclaim. My mentor did not mind me and continued.

“Perhaps you have kept watch here alone, guarding the world. At least, I think so. Because before you, this person named Zepia, was an alchemist or a powerful Dead Apostle, you were the director of the Atlas Institute. So, what say you?(TN: I couldn’t find a better way to put this. I know it sounds incredibly weird) Since I’ve already revealed it to this point, it wouldn’t go against the contract to admit to it, would it?”

“…Not bad, Lord El-Melloi II. You really are an interesting person.” Zepia’s eyes were closed, and his shoulders shook from laughter. “As you have guessed, the Atlas Institute lent Logos React out to someone based on the contract. Before the resurrection of King Arthur is successfully achieved or definitively declared a failure, you could only watch. That is why it malfunctioned.”

Ah, this was also a whydunit. It was why he had no other choice. Why he had to stay here, alone in this village. It was the only possible result of the chain of events.

However, it was still strange.

There were still parts that had not been explained.

“…Why do you have to do this? The contract didn’t mention anything about having to continue surveilling Logos ReAct, right?” I could not help but ask. Though I thought that I would be ignored, Zepia took my question seriously.

“Didn’t your teacher say it just then? Because this is the obligation of the Atlas Institute. We have given ourselves the task of guarding over the human race, so that they can continue inhabiting this world far into the future. That is what millennia of our institute’s alchemists have dedicated their lives to.”

Zepia’s words were full of sincerity.

Though the Atlas Institute and the Clock Tower were both associations of mages, they were vastly different. The Clock Tower was a place infinitely dedicated to personal gain, while the Atlas Institute had completely abandoned all individual desires. Which was a more correct path for a person to take, I wonder? At the same time, the decisions that he made based on the contract, which seemed more like that of a machine than a person, gave me an uneasy feeling.

“In this situation, we can only take action once we have judged that the contract cannot be fulfilled. In order for that to happen… Let’s see, more than half of Wales would have to be involved in this disaster for the criteria to be met. I am here to be the first to witness that moment,” he admitted, without a trace of hesitation.

Like before, his decisions did not contain a single bit of emotion. It was a s if he was a cold, lifeless void, structured in the shape of a person.

“…Are you saying that we should destroy Logos ReAct?”

“No, I never said that. According to the contract, I don’t have the authority to say that. I am merely confirming your speculations, Lord. The destruction of half of Wales is of little consequence to me. Such a degree of disruption would activate neither Gaia nor Alaya (TN: Both are types of the Counter Force, which is the manifestation of the will/the self-protection mechanism of the earth. Alaya is a part of Gaia that is only for mankind, except it kind of separated itself like how humanity separated itself from nature…? Gaia’s also called the Counter Force of the Stars and Alaya’s also called the Counter Force of Humanity.).”

At this, Zepia stopped speaking and looked up at the sky.

Though I said that, there wasn’t a sky in this space. There was only a hazy canopy of ivory white.

Suddenly, a giant [crack] appeared on that canopy.

“Huh.”

Though the sound it made was different to the one from before, it was also similar. But why would this sound appear in a place that wasn’t the Second Cycle?

“—My apologies, but I must warn you,” Zepia said. “It seems that the malfunctioning Logos ReAct is trying to intervene to cross over here from the other side.”

“From the other side?”

“That is still unknown territory, and it has never done anything this drastic until now. I suppose she— or whatever you want to call it now is a little more committed about this than I expected. Perhaps it’s because of the fusion with the Husk King (TN: Actually it’s a lot less direct than that but I think that’s what he’s talking about?),” Zepia said plainly, as if he was announcing the results of some kind of research. “Ah, if you think you’re just being messed with by an obnoxious scriptwriter for the sake of the audience’s entertainment, you’re free to leave. You’ve already solved the mystery, after all, and I will open the gates for you to leave. Well, like I said, go and demonstrate the knowledge which you are so obsessed with. I can buy enough time for us to not get caught up in its malfunction, and the damage won’t spread all the way to London, where the Clock Tower is.”

“What about the other option?”

“…What do you mean?”

My mentor narrowed his eyes slightly at Zepia, who had paused for a beat before he asked that question.

“Would it go against the contract? I thought so. If you told us that such an option was possible, it wouldn’t be a coincidence, but a straightforward invitation for us to deal with Logos ReAct. But since you haven’t said no, that means that it’s not completely impossible.”

My mentor turned to look at me.

“Sir?”

“Gray. In the Second Cycle, I said that this was your case. So the decision is in your hands.”

“Yes.”

“My apologies. Though I’ve said all that bluster, for my own selfish reasons, I want to see this case to the end. This is the wrong choice to make, both as a mage, and as the Lord of the El-Melloi faction. However, I can’t ignore this issue, no matter what.”

“……”

Why?

Why would I feel so ashamed at such a critical moment?

“Why do you want to?”

“I can’t tell you, but I hope you can entrust me with your life.”

“…You really are an idiot, Sir. Please don’t say something like that with a look of guilt on your face.”

I couldn’t help but smile. My brain still had not fully processed anything, from my mother’s motive, to Logos ReAct, and to half of Wales being in danger. I wasn’t about to recover from such an impact anytime soon, but the obvious answer to that question slipped out of my mouth with out a moment of hesitation.

“Didn’t I entrust my life to you a long time ago?”

Hearing my response, the knight put a hand to his hazy face, as if he was letting out a silent exclamation of surprise.

Just as he seemed to want to say something, a voice came from behind me.

“Now’s not the time to retreat, Professor!” Flat said, jumping up like a rabbit with his hands in the air. “We haven’t passed the level yet! Come on, it’s not everyday you a hidden boss fight, so how can we just walk away?”

“I plan on going along with what sir and Gray-tan… Miss Gray decide on doing,” Svin said after clearing his throat. “Also, I’ve been asked to help out with my strength. It would go against the contract to not use what you’ve lent properly.”

“You still remember,” my mentor said with a wry smile.

Hearing that, the knight (Sir Kay) finally protested loudly.

“Oi, are you people stupid? Have you crushed and boiled your brains dunked them in giants’ liquor? He just told you that you could leave, so why the heck do you still want to get into more trouble, especially after all that? I’m not some girl who pulled a sword out of a rock even though she had the choice not to, and I certainly don’t plan on running off to hell like an idiot.”

“But, you’ll still accompany us there, right, Sir Kay?” I couldn’t help but say.

Hearing this, a low groan escaped from the knight’s mouth.

“…Why would you think so?”

“Because you’re also Add.”

“…You might as well say that because you’re holding my true form, I can’t escape at all, even if I wanted to. If you feel sorry for me, hurry up and get out of here. But that’s never going to happen, huh?”

“Exactly.”

Seeing my nod, the knight’s head drooped in disappointment.

My mentor spoke to Zepia again after confirming this.

“Is it fine with you if we help you stop the malfunctioning Logos ReAct?”

“Are you serious?” Zepia said with a frown.

“Of course I am. Beside that, you’ve already calculated that answer, haven’t you.”

“Naturally. The possibility isn’t high, but it is good enough to be a candidate for a choice that you could make. Everything you have done up to this point points to this answer. That is why I chose to make contact with you at the risk of violating the contract. However, I still don’t understand.”

The alchemist of the Atlas Institute shook his head for the first time.

“Why does such an option exist? With your level of intelligence, you should understand how unreasonable this is, and how dangerous Logos ReAct is. You’re going to say some ridiculous line about how this is for the sake of Wales, are you?”

Zepia became more talkative, perhaps because this was difficult to understand.

“Or, is it because of that other option you mentioned? Even if it really exists, it only does on a purely theoretical level. As a Lord, do you really want to risk your life for such an unreasonable choice? It’s not only your own life, but also the lives of your student and your disciple. As far as I know, isn't it in your nature to avoid involving students in your own battles?”

“As I said earlier, I’m not a detective,” my mentor replied in a serious tone of voice. “I don’t believe that you can find the truth by eliminating all of the illogicalities, because I am a mage. And I’ve already grown tired of always picking the best solution.”

The air was full of surprise, but only briefly.

Hearing his response, the alchemist began to laugh.

“Hahahahahahaha! You don’t plan on eliminating the illogicalities, you say? Are you a madman? A fool? An imbecile? I was wondering what you would say. I never thought it would be something so stupid and meaningless! What do you plan on doing, abandoning the optimal solution, as a creature that can live at least three hundred years even without the use of magecraft? And you’re planning to face the malfunctioning Logos ReAct with this kind of puny reasoning and pathetic physical strength? (TN: says Zepia, as I look through a list of synonyms of the word idiot)”

He sounded like he found it laughable from the bottom of his heart.

The space began to [crack apart] like the temple had, and the jeering laughter of the alchemist kept on echoing and echoing until he came to his conclusion.

“I see, that way, everything makes sense!”

“What the hell does that mean?!” The knight (Sir Kay) yelled reflexively.

“Ah, yes. Is that the case. How ridiculous. How boring. That is why I have abandoned these thoughts, and why I have stopped worrying. And you plan on continue advancing with these thoughts. I see. How boring. I see. How—”

At this, he suddenly changed a topic.

“No. I have already chosen to watch from the side, so it would be unfitting for me to continue. Let’s get beck to our main topic. You are free to stop Logos Re Act, but just as Lord El-Melloi II deduced, as per the contract, I cannot assist you,” the alchemist said calmly. “However, I am allowed to adjust the stage. Though it might not give you an advantage, it might help you relax somewhat.”

“Thank you for your help.”

Zepia raised his hands, and traced an arc in the sky.

“The time for the curtain to fall has come!”

I heard the sound of glass being smashed into pieces. It was as if we had been standing in an invisible palace of ice. I felt a dizziness a hundred times stranger than the feeling caused by being weightless in an elevator.

“Oh, yes, one more thing. Ah, since you have already decided on involving yourself, I don’t think telling you this would violate the contract. Your guess is correct, Lord El-Melloi II. [The deaths of Gray’s mother and Father Fernando have not been determined(TN: Alternatively, fixed? Confirmed?) yet.]”

“—What?!”

The shock was so great I felt as if it passed straight through me, as a silent voice sounded in my head.

——Code: Logos React, Unauthorized Activation.
——Distortion Value: B.
——Extracted Time Period: ■■■■■■■■■■
——UnLogos Program activated. Began replacing targets.
——Full process, Clear. Atlas Institute Human Order Extension Experiment Number 5, starting.
*
After the mages of the Clock Tower disappeared, Zepia sighed.

Even if it was just for a second, he needed to slow down the loss of control caused by the malfunction. Even though the contract forbade him from directly taking action against Logos ReAct, he was still allowed to indirectly prompt someone like Lord El-Melloi II.

Of course, his sixth parallel mind was telling him that there was a danger that he was still violating the contract, but the second and the third had more priority, and they claimed that this was within the regulations. The contradictions between his thoughts caused his functions to decrease by a couple of percentage points, but there was nothing he could do about it.

In the past six months, Zepia had continuously touched these crystal balls, manipulating nearly countless parameters.

In a certain sense, this was a technique more delicate than the intervention that Flat used. Even if it was another alchemist of the Atlas Institute, anyone other than him would have their brains instantly burned out by the load. If he wasn’t able to take such a load, though, it would have been meaningless for him to become a Dead Apostle.

He moved his fingers like usual, standing alone in that space.

“Is that the case. How ridiculous. How boring.”

The words flowed forth from his lips like the lyrics to a song. Those were the same things he had mocked Lord El-Melloi II’s lines with.

However, this time, he continued, as if, for the first time in decades, he reunited his first love, whose face he had already forgotten.

“I see… how— cute(TN: Alternatively, endearing? lovable? Precious? What is 愛しい supposed to mean in this context?).”
-End of Part 1 of Chapter 5 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

[All fictions]

The mats had given away the culprit, but she really was the GOAT

[Reign]

Magdalena the real MVP

[Drekk64]

Thanks for the translations!

[azwhoisverybored]

We're almost doneee

Chapter 5, Part 2

Chapter 5, Part 2:

I felt the wind caress my face. This was neither not the summer of the Second Cycle, nor the winter in real life.

The sky was overcast. Several stone pillars had been erected on the ground around us. Each one had a name carved into it, and they stood there like abandoned children, casting their sparse shadows onto the dark earth. Though it was a lot larger than the one in the village, the stagnation of the air and the damp smell of the dirt were familiar to me.

It was a graveyard.

Was this the place that Zepia had chosen for us, the grave of my mother, the Husk King, and Logos ReAct?

However, what occupied my brain now was not the environment.

“Sir!” I yelled. “What did he mean when he said that the deaths of my mother and Father Fernando had not been determined yet?”

“I was still in the hypothesis stage about this, but I didn’t want to let you down if it didn’t end up being true. Hmph, the Atlas Institute really ended up giving us something unexpected,” my mentor said with a wry smile. “As he said, your mother’s death has not been determined yet.”

“…What does that mean?”

“Because Logos ReAct is still attempting to verify the deaths, the deaths of the people who died then have not been determined. They’re probably still being kept in a deep sleep resembling death somewhere inside Logos ReAct, along with the rest of the villagers. Though I’ve had my doubts about Father Fernando, I never thought that Zepia himself would confirm it.”

“…Ah.”

A strange feeling rose up in me.

I hadn’t talked that much with Father Fernando, but I did get a strange feeling of relief when I interacted with him, simply because he saw me as myself and not the body of King Arthur.

“So that’s why they haven’t been determined. The deaths of both my mother and Father Fernando.”

Hearing our conversation, the knight(Sir Kay) spoke up as he scratched his head.

“…Huh, so that’s what it is. Mages really do the strangest things. It is pretty interesting though. So what do you plan on doing next? Can you fix whatever piece of crap that Logos ReAct is? Actually, you probably have no chance with that kind of skill level. So it’ll be up to your students?”

“We’re doing neither. I suppose it’s for this that I managed to bring this back from the Second Cycle,” my mentor said, as he took out a curved dagger.

It was Erosion.

The ancient Mystic Code that had separated my mother’s body from her mind and her soul.

“This place has to be part of Logos ReAct’s calculations. So people can bring their belongings with them.” My mentor paused for a second before answering the knight’s question. “I plan on using this Mystic Code to separate the mind of the dead Husk King from Logos ReAct.”

“—!”

I was momentarily rendered speechless.

Indeed, it could work. After all, Erosion was made for this exact purpose. Theoretically, as soon as the Husk King’s mind was removed from Logos ReAct, it should return to normal. However, it was only theoretical.

I didn’t know if it could actually be fixed. Even if you removed an arrow from a wounded animal, it would to recover completely. At most, it would just increase its chances of survival.

“What if… that won’t be enough to fix it?”

“Then our only choice is to destroy it.”

Hearing that determined voice, I could not help but swallow.

Either way, it would be an incredibly difficult task. We might not be able to keep our own lives, much less the lives of my mother and Father Fernando.

“Sir, Miss Gray, it’s here,” Svin said, with his nose twitching.

The woman(person) with a metal mask appeared in the center of the graveyard, a couple dozen meters away from us.

“…Logos ReAct.”

“It feels so much like a dream.”

The woman removed her mask. She no longer looked like my mother. She didn’t look like me, either. Her face was hazy, like the knight(Sir Kay)’s. I supposed that was what she originally looked like.

“Yes, this is the original me.”

It was completely different.

This was completely different from the Husk King that we had met in the summer of the reenactment, which felt like less than an hour ago.

“Yes. I, am the mind of King Arthur, the weapon forged by the Atlas Institute.”

As if she finally realized something, the woman raised her right hand. Darkness began to gather there, and took on a form.

“Yes. This lance is both Rhongomyniad, and Logos ReAct,” the faceless woman— Logos ReAct said, holding out the dark lance.

“Hey, that’s enough crap, don’t you think?” The knight complained.

If I had been a regular person with no idea of what was happening, just this cyclone of Magical Energy alone would be enough to cause me to pass out. And it wasn’t just that. Something had begun to form beside Logos ReAct, in a similar way the lance had appeared.

After a few seconds, the darkness became two familiar figures.

“…Mr. Bersac,” I mumbled.

“…And Sister Illumia,” said the knight.

Intense animosity radiated off of the two people.

“I see, so the Logos ReAct is able to recreate the people it absorbed,” my mentor analyzed calmly. That meant that, everything from people to items could be reconstructed through Logos ReAct’s will. “If that’s the case, Trimmau and Zepia won’t be able to get reconstructed. I guess we should count ourselves lucky.”

I couldn’t bring myself to listen to what he was saying anymore.

“Mr. Bersac!” I yelled.

“Ah, Gray. I’m still myself,” he replied, with the same deep voice that was so familiar to me.

Everything about him, from what he said to his slight nod, was exactly as usual. However, I could not let down my guard at all.

“You know, right? When I was reconstructed, my thought parameters were changed. No matter what I try to do, all I can think of now is killing you.”

“…Mr. Bersac.”

The grave keeper smiled a troubled smile as he looked at me. “Do whatever you have to. I’m just a reconstructed replica of Bersac Blackmore.”

He swung his axe towards me. The impact of my scythe blocking his stride spread throughout my entire body. I only realized then exactly how much he had been holding back in the hundreds of times we had fought as part of my training.

“Alright, let me see what you’re capable of.”

With a roar, the spirit raven in Bersac’s hand flew into the air, and I was gradually dragged into the fight.
*
Similarly, Sister Illumia was facing off against the knight (Sir Kay).

“So you’re the same kind of thing huh? I don’t enjoy committing acts of violence against women much, though.”

“Is that so? Because I absolutely love beating up men. I can’t help but feel a bit vexed if I’m up against a cute girl, but that comes with its own joys. No matter how many times I see a face that’s to my liking twist, I’ll never get bored of it,” Sister Illumia said with a smile.

Her gauntlets cracked with purple electricity. The battle-hardened Executor looked even more stunning in the mysterious light.

“Yes. Now I know everything. Including how you are a mental model based on a knight from a long time ago. And why you were originally created.”

It was impossible to sense a trace of movement from her before she struck. The knight barely managed to dodge Illumia’s punch. Did that nun have the advantage in terms of physical ability? Though the knight had received a physical form through Add, his Spirit Origin (TN: Alternatively, Saint Graph) was not stable, and he could not do much more than a regular person. What he could achieve now was probably very different from what he could do as a summoned Servant.

“Hmph.” The knight uttered, as if he found this troublesome.

He was more accustomed to using the power of that lance to fight the Husk King. It was much harder for him to swindle his opponent when he was up against someone with Sister Illumia’s speed. Thus, he was trapped in this battle which was difficult for him to win.

“Alright, let me see how a knight fights! Come on! And let me show you the power of the Lord’s teachings!” The nun said as she laughed, letting arcs of electricity shoot toward the knight.

The knight dodged the attacks, and pulled out his sword, resigned.
*
At the same time, a large number of silhouettes appeared beside the stone pillars.

Their bodies were made of crystal.

They had all used to be villagers, but they had been turned into chunks of human-shaped crystal and stripped of their will. Perhaps it was easier to have them fight like this, since they were not trained for battle.

They rushed forward like a group of zombies.

“Ohohoho(TN: Or something that sounds vaguely like that), I don’t need this place to be as crowded as a shopping center too!” Flat said, drawing a pattern in the air with his fingers.

Spikes of ice formed, and clasped onto the ankles of the horde. This was the best way to show off this teenager’s skills other than intervention, and he puffed up his chest and winked.

“Enter… the El-Melloi classroom! What do you think, Le Chien-kun?”

“Don’t count me in as well!”

His classmate, Svin, said, as he gathered his Od. The Magical Energy solidified into an invisible wolf-shaped shell that enveloped his body.

He unleashed the energy from his throat, and used his magecraft-reinforced roar to knock down the remaining crystal people.

“They’re amazingly easy to deal with.”

“No.” Lord El-Melloi II shook his head. “It’s not over yet. Don’t let down your guard yet.”

A new wave of crystal warriors had appeared beside the stone pillars. This time, they were equipped with swords and shields, and looked completely different. They also had skulls for heads.

“The bone soldiers?”

Since the villagers had been recreated, there wasn’t any reason why the same couldn’t be done for the bone soldiers. The result of the battle had not been determined just yet.
-End of Part 2 of Chapter 5 of Book 7-
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ——

Chapter 5, Part 3

Chapter 5, Part 3:

At first glance, it looked like a draw.

Though Bersac and Illumia were faring slightly better, the rest of the enemies had all been defeated by Flat and Svin. Though they had taken some countermeasures, Flat was still more than equal to the task. With my mentor’s guidance, nothing seemed to be going wrong.

However.

After I chased off the spirit raven and distanced myself from Bersac, I heard the voice of Logos ReAct.

“…I don’t understand,” the woman said, as she began to transform into something else, becoming hazier and hazier until she became [something] that no longer resembled a person.

“Why am I here? Why can I not let this be? Why did I even release the independent elements inside me? Why can I not understand this? A reexamination. Yes, I need to reexamine this. The mind of King Arthur must be preserved according to the contract. For the purpose of reexamination, partial parameters will be returned to their original value,” said Logos ReAct, who was neither my mother, nor the Husk King. “Original parameters from TRI-HERMES, received. Confirmation from the director, received. Information on the scope and migrations of humanity, received. Preservation of the human order, confirmed. Testing possibilities in parallel universes with similar conditions… three seconds until the end of the test… two seconds… one second… complete.

“According to the results, I should continue. I should perform a test for all the possibilities in this limited environment. Yes, this closed off microcosmos, is the doorway to the infinite macrocosmos.”

She answered her own question. Or, perhaps I should say, she spoke like someone calculating an equation.

“Yes. I must protect (this). I must arrive (there). I must save (it). I must prevent its destruction with all of my ability.”

…Save?

My mentor had said something similar when we were at the temple.

The Seven Superweapons of the Atlas Institute were created to save humanity from destruction. However, instead of saving humanity, the “power” within each would only end up bringing about the apocalypse again.

It was a paradox, where the goal contradicted the means. A fragment of a dream that resulted from being fixated on an unreachable goal.

…Perhaps my village was like that, too.

They wanted to resurrect the fallen King Arthur… They had started out respecting the king, and wanted to see her alive again. Resurrecting her was just the means they chose to use.

However, for the later generations, reviving the king became the goal itself. Though Grandmother had no idea why she wanted the King to be revived, she had made it the singular goal of her life.

Everyone was susceptible to make this kind of mistake. I was lost in this thought for a while before I snapped out of it when I felt the Magical Energy around me converge around the lance of Logos ReAct.

…It was…!

“I define this period of time that delayed my progress in saving humanity to be a bug. Requesting for calculations to become more efficient, and for permission to raise maximum energy output to eight percent. Permission received.”

With a whoosh, more Magical Energy coalesced onto the lance.

If she decided to release the true name of the dark Rhongomyniad, it would all be over. There was nothing we could do about it. No one else knew the true power of that Noble Phantasm better than I did.

“Do you think you have time to look away, Gray?”

Bersac was approaching.

As he did, the spirit raven flew into the air and blocked my path. I had never seen this combination before. It was too nimble to dodge and too powerful to block. I didn’t have a single way to go up against this kind of attack.

However.

“Ahhhhh!”

I lunged forward, toward Bersac’s axe.

The rim of my hood was sliced apart. If I had been even slightly off, my carotid artery would have probably been torn. I stood up immediately, and rushed toward not Bersac, but Sister Illumia.

“Huh—?”

“Sir Kay!”

Before I even spoke, the experienced knight understood what I wanted to do.

He came around behind me and blocked Bersac’s axe, as I swung my scythe and deflected Illumia’s attack.

I had swapped places with the knight.

Since the knight wasn’t used to dealing with Illumia’s speed, I would use my scythe to force her back. That was what I planned on doing.

Perhaps because she had been so focused on the knight, Illumia hesitated for a second, and with that, my scythe shattered her gauntlets.

Next to me, the knight (Sir Kay) parried Bersac’s axe, and pushed me forward with his other hand.

“Go, Gray!”

“I understand!”

I strengthened myself to the limit of my capabilities and leaped upward. I had jumped more than ten meters into the air. I needed to get to Logos ReAct!

“Flat!”

“Yes(TN: Originally in English), Professor!”

Behind me, the teenager drew a pattern in the air.

For a moment, Logos React froze. He was powerful enough to interfere with even the Atlas Institute’s technology. I gave all I had at that moment, and swung my scythe as hard as I could.

There was a clang of hard objects hitting each other. The nearly-complete scythe had deflected my scythe.

“…It cannot be deciphered. I thought so,” Logos ReAct moaned. The act of simply raising her lance against Flat’s restraints had made her completely lose her balance. In my eyes, she was covered in weak points.

“Why can I not ignore you? I serve only my own goals, and yet, why have I chased you to this point?”

There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her words.

Though it seemed like a question, did she really find it surprising?

Either way, I still told her what I thought.

“That’s because the Husk King’s inside you.”

Even now, her being was the same as mine. One of the three essential elements of a person.

Since that was the case, I was probably a defective creation. I had been made for the resurrection of King Arthur, but I had not managed to fulfill my purpose. In the end, I had managed to escape thanks to my mother’s sacrifice, and now, I was foolishly trying to stop the root of this issue, Logos ReAct. I didn’t want to escape anymore.

I still had not fully wrapped my head around the matter of my mother.

However, I still wanted to face it as best as I could.

“Why are you standing in my way?”

“I’m sorry.”

I strengthened my arms with all my might. There was plenty of Magical Energy in the environment. The air was full of the Mana from the lance. Therefore, I continued to cycle the energy, until my Magic Circuits began to burn from the strain.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just acting based on the Contract of Atlas, which told you to imitate the mind of King Arthur to the best of your ability, but you ended up malfunctioning as a result. We only care about ourselves… sometimes we give you commands, other times, we try to stop you… and now, we’re preparing to destroy you.”

I didn’t know why, but I felt my eyes moisten.

What stood in front of me was neither the mind of King Arthur, my mother, nor the real Logos ReAct. She was an amalgam of the three.

However, at the same time, I felt that she was also myself.

I recalled how it felt, being transformed into the body of King Arthur, becoming the vessel of their worship, and never even thinking to resist.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I can’t back down.”

My scythe slowly moved toward my opponent. The reconstructed Sister Illumia and Bersac should have come to stop me, but it seemed like my mentor and the knight had managed to stop them. There was no one to interfere with the fight between Logos ReAct and I.

“What is this? Is it Rhongomyniad? No, the structure is different. What is this?” Logos ReAct asked, staring at my scythe.

“To you, it’s probably the Holy Lance, Rhongomyniad,” I said.

The lance reciprocated my effort.

Though it did not speak or mock me, it still helped me, as usual.

“But, to me, it’s different,” I shouted, ignoring the pain that tore through my body as if my nerves were being torn from me. “To me, this is Add!”

I clenched the scythe even tighter. I poured out all my thoughts to this fickle thing that did not answer me anymore.

“It’s my, friend!”

“……”

For a moment, Logos ReAct was speechless.

“…Why am I here… I don’t understand… this is illogical… cannot comprehend… cannot reach a judgement… the theory is contradictory… the calculations cannot be made complete…”

As she muttered those words, she became weaker and weaker.

“What is, death?”

Perhaps that was the last question she ever asked.

She gave up all of her resistance.

The blade of my scythe cleaved through the woman’s body.

As I felt the sensation of cutting through flesh and bone, I reached out with one hand and caught the dagger that my mentor had thrown at me.

Erosion.

Without a thought in my mind, I slashed downward with that hand, and the shining golden dagger pierced through the body of Logos ReAct.
-End of Part 3 of Chapter 5 of Book 7-
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[azwhoisverybored]

...Actually the magecraft nonsense isn't over yet. There's at least half a chapter more of that. I can't believe I didn't anticipate this.

[Reign]

Using Erosion to cut the Husk King out of Logos React is actually really cool, I like that a lot.

[Garysanderson96]

Just found out about this lol
Just want to say thank you for the translation and can't wait to read more.