By Zephyria 
Rubel held the documents he had brought.
At the top of each document was a portrait drawn with delicate brushstrokes. Directly below it, a person’s profile was densely written, including their name, age, gender, physical characteristics, known personality, and a biography from birth until just before their disappearance.
The bundles of documents, prepared according to the number of people, were placed equally in front of me and Elvin.
Hugh Benson, along with Rubel, looked through the laid-out documents, pointing out each person he knew. Rubel drew an ‘X’ next to the portraits of individuals already dealt with, marking them. The sight of hands, pens, and paper moving as swiftly as flying things was something I could watch endlessly.
“Uh-huh. I caught this one. And this one. And that one too.”
“Were the three of them together, by any chance?”
“Hmmmm… Not exactly. I caught Shelly Duncan and Nick Lopez together, but I saw Jim Porter across the sea. No wonder he was acting so desperate…”
“Yes. They say the three of them were inseparable since their Academy days. Shelly Duncan dropped out due to the Duncan family’s failed investments and disappeared, while the other two joined the Duke Kiadris family as retainers.”
“Duncan was first?”
“Probably. Then he must have roped in the other two.”
Up until now, removing the black magician’s hood and confirming their face had generally been Hugh Benson’s task.
Leon was notoriously bad with the names or appearances of nobles. Elvin and Boulder wouldn’t spare a glance for things they weren’t interested in. Everyone was reluctant to have the relatively young Benjamin confirm the identities of the corpses.
And I, myself, didn’t remember the faces of the people on this continent well. Except for a few exceptional individuals, they all looked the same to me.
Because of this, only Hugh Benson, who memorized the appearances of the black magicians captured after each battle, could quickly provide satisfactory answers to Rubel’s questions. This one was here, this one was caught around this time, I haven’t seen this one…
While the two of them were so busy, I, holding the thick stack of documents, stole glances at Rubel’s profile.
He must have come straight from the banquet. The strands of hair that had fallen down the side of his cheek framed his flower-like face like a calyx. His dark, shining hair was meticulously parted, revealing a strong jawline.
He wore a shirt that didn’t fully expose his neck, and his cravat was tied tightly. Below it, he wore a brooch adorned with several thin gold chains. Each time the child tilted his head, fragments of light would glint and rest on his jawline and cheeks, looking truly lovely.
Has his forearms become a little thinner? He was definitely leaner than when we were running through the desert together. Even though Rubel had lost weight, he was still a sturdy man, yet a worried feeling arose, wondering if the child might be skipping meals.
“Why doesn’t this one have a portrait?”
“It seems he really disliked his own face. Instead, there’s a simple sketch here…”
“No, how can you identify someone with this? Red hair… red hair…”
As the child’s lips parted, uttering various words, the tip of his red tongue that was glimpsed was so…
“…Mika?”
I hastily pretended to read the document in my hand.
“Yes?”
“…No, it’s nothing.”
“…”
I put on an innocent act. Rubel didn’t seem to realize what I was thinking. The child’s dark eyes looked at me intently for a moment before returning to the file.
Thinking that I would get into trouble if I kept staring at Rubel, I stopped looking at him and carefully read what was in my hand.
Where he was born, his family relationships, what friends he made, how he dated, and how he lived… Would it have been less of a burden if he had been an evil person from the start? Looking at the records of some who had no evil deeds, I gradually felt uneasy.
Among them was a document about Hershey Milton.
There was already a death mark next to his portrait. Below his record were the misdeeds attributed to him, including numerous murders that occurred in Vivian. The former king of Vivian seemed to have associated with black magicians and used those who opposed him for zombie creation and human experimentation.
I reread the assessment that Hershey Milton had shown a particular interest in anatomy and black magic during his Academy days. Shayden had worried about me getting close to him. The memory of that man’s gleaming eyes and his final, silly smile sent a shiver down my spine.
Rubel was still questioning Hugh Benson about various matters.
“So, the number of black magicians dealt with over the past two years… is less than twenty?”
“Yes. In fact, it’s unbelievable that such a small number of individuals were wandering around the Magic Territory. Those we couldn’t catch and let escape all vanished into dark holes.”
“…Hmm. Even within the Empire, their whereabouts couldn’t be found… We really need to catch up with that teleportation magic quickly…”
“Ah, that teleportation magic. They called it ‘Portal’.”
“Portal?”
“We had conveyed the story of bringing another god along on the way through Rose’s Ranunculus. The god of magic said that this teleportation magic is a 10th Circle spell that only Spiritus and Wesley can currently use.”
“…Ha.”
“I heard from Young Master Ernhardt that Your Highness has also been conducting experiments, but perhaps…”
“…We have failed repeatedly. 10th Circle… 10th Circle.”
Rubel adjusted his posture with a worried expression.
As the child straightened his broad shoulders, his clothes pulled taut. Though they didn’t feel tight, as they were tailored to his build, my gaze involuntarily slid down to his chest before I forced it back up.
“We formed a research team by selecting thirty individuals among the wizards of the Five Magic Towers who were interested in teleportation magic. We managed to deduce the spell formulas based on Miss Philodendore’s and my testimony, but we never saw beyond the space that was torn open.”
“And so.”
“We tried putting objects into various experimental groups, but they never reappeared. And for those who volunteered, two knights, two wizards, and one pair together entered the rift in the torn space. Eight months have passed since then, but none have returned.”
“Are they dead?”
“For now, we are keeping the possibility of survival open, but…”
Knights and wizards.
For a sufficiently trained mana user, it would have taken half a year to travel from one end of the continent to the other. If they had fallen within this continent, they would have contacted us in some way, unless they were beyond the Magic Territory.
It would be difficult for them to return alive.
Still, he added that since Spiritus was there, he would ask for help in tracking them.
Hugh Benson also brought up the story Gano Paquin had told him about Beneto’s sign. He hesitantly recounted Gano Paquin’s story with an expression like someone who had bitten into a persimmon.
Surprisingly, Rubel nodded calmly without changing his expression.
“I already knew that Melatia Floyd had a separate lover.”
“…Yes?”
“I told Mika, didn’t I? That Richard Flo Searon is definitely his father’s child… Philix’s Divine Relic already proved it.”
“Ah… when I first came to the Second Prince’s Palace…?”
“Yes, then.”
Rubel’s gaze returned to Hugh Benson.
“…In this Sierran Empire, there is a Nobility Yearbook, a ledger of all the scandals of the nobles within the Empire, which is only permitted to the Emperor. Melatia Floyd could not escape the scrutiny of the Nobility Yearbook department, and the few who were permitted knew that she was having secret meetings with someone.”
“…Even though the God of Records said that other humans didn’t know?”
“Gano Paquin said that the records he accessed were secret letters received by Lucilla.”
“Yes.”
“Beneto moved the location of the Divine object before his private meeting with the First Prince. Since the Emperor also didn’t know what the First Prince knew at the time, it’s possible that the memories contained in those secret letters could be considered unknown to ‘other humans’.”
“…”
It was said that only Richard and Rubel received copies of the special Nobility Yearbook from the year Richard was born.
If Lucilla herself hadn’t tried to find out, she might not have known about Melatia’s infidelity.
I once again recalled the limitations of each god. After claiming to have gained special qualifications as a god, wasn’t he less capable than Rubel?
“At the time Philix’s Divine Relic was used, what was important to Beneto was whether the child conceived on the same day as the knight and himself, by Melatia, was truly Beneto’s seed. Because if his blood wasn’t passed down, he might not have been able to inherit it through the Divine Blood method.”
“…”
Rubel no longer called Beneto Loki Sheeran ‘father’.
I couldn’t know what he had seen or experienced while we were apart. He felt strangely unfamiliar again. Rubel took a breath and moistened his throat with tea.
“The Floyd family has already undergone a generational change. The princess who disappeared with scandal in the previous generation cannot be used as any trump card. I believe Beneto was discovered by Richard regarding a secret that he hadn’t even recorded in the ledger.”
“Another weakness?”
“A greater scandal. That he himself…”
Rubel smiled bitterly.
“Personally selected and assigned Melatia Floyd’s escort knights. He thought she was a woman unfit for the position of Empress, and he plotted to do what he shouldn’t have done to remove her from my side. If only he hadn’t laid a hand on her…”
Was I making a dumbfounded expression like Hugh Benson?
Rubel, leaving the two of us speechless, continued. His voice was gentle and calm, but that made it feel even colder.
“I have confirmed the information Lord Benson contacted me about a few days ago. Duke Widrow reported that the Widrow Duchy is operating normally and is safe… However, the decrease in the number of mutated monsters currently is a sign of the calm before the storm, so we must be cautious. We plan to dispatch reinforcements.”
“…”
“But I suspect Wesley Kiadris is currently in Floyd.”
“Because those heretics took over Owen and started to devour Floyd?”
“No, more than that… It’s because all the informants dispatched to Floyd at present are dead or missing. A few managed to return, but most of them said they were killed by swords that suddenly appeared out of thin air, without even realizing they were being followed.”
Swords that suddenly appeared out of thin air.
Hershey Milton had also died like that. Rubel would know about what happened at the Vivian royal castle before, but just in case, I added my thoughts.
“The god of magic said that the Ninth God is more talented in magic than swords. Perhaps the reason he fights with a sword like a hermit crab, poking out like a spear, is due to that.”
“…Yes. I’ll think about that more, too.”
There was a brief silence as we were each lost in our thoughts.
Hugh Benson, having organized his share of the documents, asked, “We’ve said pretty much everything we needed to, and I’ve heard what I needed to hear. Where should we put the gods?”