1891 (2)

Kleio returned to the Asel mansion, exhausted as the sky was brightening with the dawn.

‘Wow, really. It was crazy like I was back in Seoul. Drinking, dancing, and playing until the first light… Is that the upper-class swag?’

After throwing his dinner attire on the floor like a snake shedding its skin, Kleio buried himself in bed, throwing his shoes and socks out a second later.

“Ugh.”

Behemoth dove into him, also drunk from the champagne they had. Kleio struggled under the cat crushing him, and then scratched at his chin.

“No, no. Teacher…”

“What?”

“You ate a lot of delicious food today, huh?”

“It’s true. The prestige of the royal dinner wasn’t overstated. I’m very satisfied.”

Behemoth, who had become more talkative, waved his tail as he praised the food.

“Good thing. If so, answer me a question about morality. What exactly is Melchior’s identity?”

Behemoth repeatedly yawned as he responded sincerely.

“What is his identity… Isn’t it human? His ether level is normal, but his sensitivity is bizarrely explosive, and there are two weird, unique skills.”

“Yes, you can recognize that. By the way, can you also tell the limitations of the unique skill?”

“The great cat is the great cat. Of course, his charm of meownyangnyang is a passive skill, but the flow was tied to the other one.”

“…Hey, meow… What? Is that the skill’s name?”

He thought there was another muse’s name hidden in it, but meownyangnyang…? Did his ears go bad because he was tired? Behemoth struck Kleio with his tail.

“Meownyangnyang!”

“Mr. Moth, can’t you speak in the trivial human language, not the high language of cats?”

“I’m speaking in human words! What can’t you understand?!”

Behemoth continued to groan as Kleio couldn’t understand what he was saying. It was strange. No matter how much they tried, Kleio couldn’t hear the name of the muse who modified charm. He asked if he could write it, but the characters Behemoth drew with his paws couldn’t be decoded by Kleio either. The impatient cat and energy-less man were fighting in vain. In the darkroom, Promise began to shine like some alarm.

[Bound Item: Clio’s Promise

-Due to insufficient narrative intervention, not all functions of Understanding can be used.

Missing speech can only be fully understood if the necessary and sufficient value of the narrative intervention is achieved.]

‘Ah-oh! Fuck it! This narrative intervention!’

With a long sigh, Kleio spread out completely on the bed. Behemoth collapsed over him a moment later.

‘…Okay. Things can’t be so easy. Even if the level of narrative intervention exceeded 30%, it’s still not enough.’

Kleio, tired out even more after he got angry, quickly calmed down and scratched Behemoth.

“You can’t hear, you’re not listening, so let’s move on. Then, what do you mean about his other unique skill?”

“Most unique skills don’t have an infinite number of activations. It had already been used up, and it was necessary to meet certain conditions. Those conditions are unknown even to me.”

It seemed that Kleio’s prediction was correct. The crown prince had likely prepared for the limited situation of his skill.

“Mr. Moth is great. Is there anything else to be known from your great insight?’

“Anything special?”

“Melchior isn’t actually from some other different dimension…”

“The prince is human. Are you bullying him?”

“He’s human. Like me? Like Arthur? Cel and Isiel?”

He was an insidious character and entity deeply connected with the world. He had to be human, but Kleio’s heart wasn’t convinced.

“What’s the point of your question? Humans are humans.”

“He hasn’t been protected by the daughters of the goddess Mnemosyne…?”

“The goddess doesn’t exercise power in that way.”

“Then, how does she?”

“Woohoo! Woh! Oh!”

Behemoth’s grumpy voice could only be heard as the sound of a beast. Moreover, as the cat’s preaching continued, Promise’s messages began to overlap. Eventually, golden sparks splattered out, and Kleio reflexively moved his hand from Behemoth.

[Bound Item: Clio’s Promise

―The use of the function is restricted due to an insufficient level of narrative intervention.]

The ring trembled abnormally.

“Let’s stop talking about that. So, was there anything strange about the prince? Anything like being a different person like in my case?”

“None. His body and soul are the same. Why do you want to treat him as non-human? Because it seems like you can’t win?”

“I can’t say no to that, but… well, Behemoth, you don’t have much. You talked about the eye of truth boasting the power before the world was divided into nine, but there wasn’t much.”

“You! Even if I say I don’t know, how could you blame this cat?”

Kleio was beaten by his thick paws.

“Ugh!”

“Now, sleep!”

Behemoth rolled off Kleio’s side and soon fell asleep with a loud snore. Kleio also closed his eyes, but despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t fall asleep. With his eyes closed, he continued to think.

The dinner hall. Cel picked up a champagne coupe and sipped at the wine with Behemoth. It was a special product made with only Glycine grapes, made with a little sweetness and with a strong aroma. It was a product of the 20th century made without blending the grapes. In the kingdom of Albion, only wine made from the Glycine grapes were called Blanc de Blanc.

‘It tastes like a Chardonnay… It’s the taste of the 20th century that I knew, but it’s only 1891 now.’

It was both infinitely similar and different from his original world.

‘This is a strange world.’

When he closed his eyes, he remembered the music in the royal atrium, the foreign words and people’s gossiping, twins’ laughter, Arthur’s silly jokes, Melchior’s voice, and Aslan’s tension. His thoughts soon escaped the city, crossing the river and going beyond the school, into the plains and mountain ranges moving away behind a train window.

The Albion kingdom of the Dernier continent. Here, no plague that blackened potatoes swept the continent. The industrialized farmland produced abundant products, and the food crop across the continent was always good. In this world where famine didn’t exist, even the poorest people wouldn’t starve to death or freeze.

‘People live quite a long time without penicillin and blood transfusions, and they can’t die or be crippled easily because there’s healing magic…’

Even the terrorism of Carolinger’s dictator Victoire Morrow didn’t cause a wave of death like could be seen from dictators in Jungjin’s original world.

‘Because I’m a modern man… Comparing Melchior, Aslan, Hitler, and Stalin is a little awkward. Even those two princes can’t slaughter or purge millions.’

The fundamental differences between the two worlds stemmed from the existence of magic. The civilization here laid out the foundation for industrialization with ether instead of coal. Despite the fact that industry was developing, the river was clean and the air still transparent. The trade here didn’t start with swords or the Bible, and the people of this world didn’t trade humans of different skin colors as commodities. No new continents had been discovered, and the countries in the continent of Meridis, to the south of Dernier, were seen as equal trading partners.

‘Though the way the magic is activated is different, etheric sensitive people are born at a similar rate all over the world. That fills the skill gap between countries.’

It was a world that seemed to compensate for the sins committed by humanity. Knights and wizards had superior abilities so that they could rule the world through violence, but this was a world thoroughly bound by human laws and regulations, as well as honor and the glory of duty.

‘In the real world, humans were a race that achieved modernity by killing people without a great power like ether.’

In some ways, this place was sweet, like a fairy tale world, with a shadow of the suffering that the whole of humanity had to suffer. Jungjin could see the author’s shadow lurking under the structure. Just as writers who had gone through war had a remnant of that life draped over their works even when they wrote fantasy, this world felt as if it were created by an author who survived a century of violence, now intentionally excluding certain elements.

‘Sometimes the unwritten parts speak more of the author’s intent than the written parts.’

It was difficult to think that a person who wrote such a utopian project was Jungjin’s age.

‘…If not a colleague, are you a professor? But none of the professors were old enough to participate in the second world war or the Korean war.’

His thoughts of the author pulled him into a deep labyrinth. Before he could reflect on the new hypothesis, sleep fell onto Kleio like an avalanche, bringing the long night to an end.

It was January 1st, 1891.

***

A new year’s party followed after the dinner party. Kleio, who participated in a banquet at the Capital Merchant Association and a charity banquet hosted by the Defense Force with Dione, was forced to imitate a polite young businessman. Despite Dione’s struggling, Kleio’s dance skills had only marginally improved, and he was still constantly plagued by her scolding. Kleio was ready to make up his mind that he would never go to the ball again. Of course, there were some achievements from his hard work. No, if there had been no results, he would’ve collapsed.

‘I knew Duke Cruel wasn’t supporting Aslan, but the queen. Surprisingly, it’s awkward between the two.’

It was an excellent decision to attend the Capital Merchant Association’s new year’s party. It was a long-established organization boasting a 500-year history as a trade union.

‘They have the most up-to-date information on where the money is going.’

Kleio’s Perception was used to the fullest to collect all the information being exchanged in the ballroom.

‘In last year’s opera season, when Aslan was gone for military training or something, Juleika also went to the lake palace to recuperate?’

The queen’s position of Duchess of Lake Nineveh originally belonged to Leonid the First’s Queen Isolt and wasn’t just an honorary position. The duchess ruled over the nine islands floating on the lake, including Lake Nineveh and the palace built on the main island.

The day after attending that party, Kleio bought a map and spread it on his desk. Lake Nineveh was located in the upper reaches of the Klotto River and was an enormous lake that contained run-off from melting ice from the Pintos mountains. The city of Pesseln, where Geheim had been kidnapped, and the lake was only 40 kilometers away in a straight line.

‘This is really suspicious.’

Kleio drew a red line between the two spots.

‘I’ll have to organize all this and send it to Fran sooner or later.’