Chapter 491

My vision was beginning to blur. If I’m being honest, this wasn’t the first time I’d experienced something like this. But this was different from those moments when, like a teenager, I’d teetered between a certain rebellious streak, a crooked sort of curiosity, and a strange, fundamental fear, trying to figure out what pebble had been thrown into the surface of the world and created such an alien ripple.

The elder I had never met before, presumably Duke Orsini, was standing in the archives of Monterotondo on April 12, 1898, reciting passages from The Name of the Rose, a book published in 1980 in another world, without getting a single word wrong. His bloodshot eyes and the way he rattled off those lines were downright terrifying. And confusing.

I was caught in a maelstrom of chaos. Even with Elias standing right beside me, it felt as though he were a hundred million light-years away. I obviously wasn’t omniscient, so I had no idea how any of this worked. But judging from everything I’d experienced, this world and the world I had lived in originated from the same root.

Honestly, after everything I’d been through by now, that much was almost obvious. The fact that I was having a thought as basic as “the Earth is round” meant I clearly wasn’t in my right mind. I was going in circles in the face of something that made no sense.

If the many-worlds interpretation was true, then this world must have once been identical to the world I had lived in, before branching off at some point and diverging in a different direction. And if I applied Gabriele’s theistic perspective, then among those worlds, this would be a world whose Chronos had received God’s gaze. And I still didn’t believe there could be an omniscient being.

Thoughts were surging from every corner of my brain, filling my mind in an instant.

It was 1898, and technological development here was, on average, somewhere around the mid-20th century. Science was different. Depending on the field, it ranged from the 20th to the 21st century, sometimes even surpassing them. That kind of early development wasn’t strange at all.

Technology had its own flow. In a world that shared the same roots as mine, it wasn’t particularly strange for inventions similar to those I knew to appear. After all, whether it was the 19th, 20th, or 21st century, how many ideas had emerged almost simultaneously in the academic world?

Using the scientific facts established in the present as a foundation, stacked one on top of another like Tetris, primitive desires that were often not even recognized as demand would sometimes call forth inventions as their supply. Humans, after all, grew out of the soil of the world. It was only natural for similar results to emerge from the soil of the same era and society.

But what the elder had said wasn’t something that could have emerged independently. It was the exact same passage. Not a single word was different. Works of art obviously had their own trends, currents, and schools of thought, and could never be completely detached from their era. But unlike inventions, they were based on individuals rather than formulas. If a person wasn’t born, it was only natural that their work wouldn’t exist either.

Even if Aristarchus’s heliocentric theory had gone unaccepted in his time, it would eventually be accepted in the age of Copernicus¹. In much the same way, even if Bell had never existed, some form of long-distance communication device would probably have been invented eventually.

But for The Name of the Rose to exist when its author had never been born made no sense. I had never heard the ridiculous claim that Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose, who was born in 1932 and died in 2016, was alive in 1898.

And even if someone had been born with exactly the same genetic sequence as him, someone born in 1832 and dying in 1916, that person in this era still couldn’t have written the exact same sentences as the real Umberto Eco.

I didn’t even have to go that far. Eco in 1980 could have written The Name of the Rose, but Eco in 1970 or Eco in 1990 could not have written the exact same work. An actor playing a role today couldn’t become the same actor playing the same role ten years later. If I wrote down tomorrow in my diary a thought that occurred to me today, the sentence would be different from the one I would have written today…

It was only then that I realized that not even a few seconds had passed. A barrage of thoughts was pounding against my head. The panic was not unfounded. I had to face it. The elder before me knew something that did not exist in this world. He knew a book that existed in the world ‘I’ had lived in.

The elder’s hair was graying. He should have been well into his hundreds, and with the wrinkles on his face and his emaciated body, he looked as though he had aged at least another thirty years beyond that. Yet his eyes burned like those of a young adult in his prime as he stared intently at Elias and me. I instinctively realized that, unlike Daniel or the elderly lying in hospital beds, he was thinking with remarkable clarity.

Even as my whole body trembled, I stared into the elder’s eyes and summoned his status window, just as I had with Matteo. He had the name Narke had told me, and he really was Duke Orsini. He possessed a Level 10 ability called ‘Concentration,’ but judging from the name of the ability, it didn’t seem to have much to do with knowing The Name of the Rose. But the fact that it was Level 10 alone was enough to make me wary. My mouth moved before I could think.

“What are you talking about?”

The duke didn’t answer. He merely stared at us, as if he believed that someone among us would recognize the lines he had recited. I pushed Elias, who was making a thoroughly bewildered face, behind me and asked, “Are those words you came up with yourself?”

I couldn’t just ask whatever came to mind. Not with Elias beside me. And to keep this person from getting any clues about me, I had to do my best to pretend I didn’t know what he was talking about while still asking the right questions. But the duke coldly repeated the same nonsense.

“I was told that someone who knows the world from before Babel would come.”

The mask, tricorn hat, and cloak I was wearing now had all been prepared so we could openly break into Duke Orsini’s room. I had made Elias wear them for the same reason. Yet who would have thought the duke himself would come looking for us? I never expected that we would end up wearing these masks to protect us from the duke’s insane ramblings. He spoke clearly.

“Finally, the stone broke, and you came.”

He was talking about the Pythia of Delphi.

If so, then the duke must have received an oracle from the Pythia of Delphi saying, ‘On the day the heirloom breaks, someone who knows the world before the Tower of Babel will come to the archives of the Montereotondo residence.’

I shook my head and asked, “…You have lost your mind. Who could possibly know the world before the Tower of Babel fell? Was there really a time in history when the entire world spoke a single language? If you mean the speech of primitive humans from before civilization, then I suppose they could understand each other, but even that is—”

The duke’s face twisted, the veins standing out in his neck.

“You are not a Christian, then. How can someone use divine power yet have no faith?!”

“That doesn’t make any sense. What exactly is this ‘world before Babel’? Who could possibly know such a thing?”

Elias spoke up.

“Anyone who knew about the world before the Tower of Babel would have to know the languages of that era, I suppose. Unfortunately, there is no one like that among us… Ah, or is that nonsense meant as a metaphor? Even if you mean that knowing every language in this age would be the same as ‘knowing the world before the Tower of Babel fell,’ there is still no one in the world who knows every language spoken in this age, sir.”

Elias shrugged, deliberately suppressing his confusion and maintaining his usual laid-back composure. Then he stepped forward and gave a crooked smile. I could see his expression through the opening in his mask.

“More importantly, we are here from the Secretariat of State. We will need to retrieve the letters we have sent you.”

The elder spoke sternly.

“You are not from the Secretariat of State.”

“And what if we aren’t? We still need to retrieve those letters.”

Elias took another step forward. But the duke’s earlier harsh tone had completely disappeared. It was as if he had become a different person. Just like when he first spoke to us about the world before Babel, his voice was hollow. He was trying to enlighten us, as though we were the ones speaking nonsense.

“Why do you say there is no one who knows every language?”

“Sir, realistically, do you think the human brain can do that? Even if someone had the ability, I would learn maybe five languages and then quit because it got boring. There are countless languages across all those continents, along with countless dialects. How could a human being possibly learn them all?”

Even Elias, who could imitate countless German dialects, was saying this.

…He was right. At the same time, I felt a sense of vertigo as though my head were boiling from the inside. The duke corrected us once again.

“But knowing every language in the world is possible.”

“It’s impossible. Who says it is?”

“God!”

He shouted, throwing his hand into the air.

“God told me that today, here on this very land, someone who knows the world before Babel would come! He said that on that day, the prophecy would be taken away!”

Elias stared at him with his mouth hanging open, his expression practically screaming that he had never seen a lunatic like this before.

The duke believed the oracle from the Pythia of Delphi was a revelation from the Christian God. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. The Senate, Christian to the very core, would regard it as a revelation from God, not as an oracle from ancient Greece.

I whispered, desperately trying to hold on to the strength that was slowly draining away.

“Then did God tell you that strange passage, too?”

“You are the ones who speak those words. Do both of you know of the world before Babel? Or is it only one of you? Someone among you knows how to speak those words!”

The duke’s thunderous shout pierced my eardrums. Elias looked thoroughly horrified, his mouth twisting as he shook his head in disbelief.

As much as I hated to admit it, the elder was right. The prophecy was right. I could recite the passage from beginning to end right now. The duke didn’t merely know Umberto Eco’s work. He had been looking for me.

Not even a trace of warmth reached my mask. The blood in my entire body seemed to turn cold and pool at my feet. How had the Pythia of Delphi known about a novel published in 1980 in the world I came from? How could something from this world know about the world I had lived in? Was the Pythia of Delphi something that had come into existence naturally? Had someone else received a prophecy that I would come to this world? Narke, perhaps?

If a prophecy had been given, then surely countless things were meant to come from it. If the duke telling me this passage was simply how things were meant to unfold, then what was I supposed to understand from his words?

According to the duke, the fact that ‘I know how to speak those words’ meant that I was Salvatore. The jumble of languages the duke had spoken was what the monk Salvatore said when he first appeared in The Name of the Rose. The narrator described Salvatore’s speech as sounding like the language of Adam spoken by humanity from the time of Creation until Babel, or like a primitive language from the day after the Tower of Babel fell.

The elder seemed to be using ‘someone who knows the world before Babel’ to mean someone of supreme stature. But the Salvatore I knew was no exalted or great figure. He was merely a somewhat eccentric monk who had wandered from place to place.

‘If I’m the one who said those words, does that mean Bernard Gui will kill me?’ That was what I wanted to ask.

Salvatore is captured by Bernard Gui, the inquisitor sent by the Pope. I couldn’t help thinking of him. In the movie, Salvatore is burned at the stake by Bernard Gui, and in the novel, it was never revealed whether he lived or died.

The duke was quoting Umberto Eco’s actual words, not the movie, so there was no reason to take the movie into consideration. And yet, even knowing that Eco’s long work had to be condensed and altered into a two-hour film meant to be shown in theaters, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Salvatore’s death in the movie was some kind of official seal confirming that Eco’s Salvatore, too, was destined to come close to death. As if it were telling me that I, too, was fated to be burned at the stake.

I had no reason to believe Narke would finish me off. I was listening to this person’s words as if I were half dreaming, and I thought he had to be at least half mad with fanaticism himself. But right now, I had to grab even the rope thrown by a lunatic…

At the same time, I felt my mind clearing. The most important thing was staying safe. I grabbed Elias by the wrist and spoke firmly to the elder waiting for us to make our move.

“There is no one among us. You’ve got the wrong people.”

I recited the warp point coordinates and rubbed my finger against the inside of Elias’s wrist, but nothing happened. Of course. We couldn’t move from inside this room. Spatial magic had been laid over the room, changing the coordinate system and preventing us from moving. Would it work outside? There was a chance the elder had blocked everything before coming here, but I had to try. Tightening my grip around my staff, I said, “Come out, Your Grace.”

BOOM—!

A burst of light came at us. I swung my staff, knocking aside the divine power, and charged at the duke. Even after pushing the light away, my whole body prickled from the divine power that had flown past me from behind. Elias let out a groan, and the blue mana surging up from behind vanished into nothing.

The duke was strong despite his age. I had expected as much after seeing the numbers on his status window. He was skilled enough to cast magic without uttering a spell, which meant we couldn’t tell what kind of magic he was using. That made it much harder to intercept or counter his spells.

I brought a hand to my ear to tell Narke what was happening. Before I could even tap the artifact, I heard the notification chime.

— [Lukas.]

― If we confess our sins.

At my shout, divine power burst forth, following the arc of my staff. Narke continued.

― [You don’t have to tell me what happened. But the future where I arrive there isn’t good. That person doesn’t welcome Insight, and he knows I can use it. He might set the place on fire…]

Narke’s voice came through in intermittent, muffled breaks. He was speaking while swallowing. I had a feeling the blood running down from his nose was the reason. He couldn’t use Insight because he hadn’t looked into the duke’s eyes. He must have been relying entirely on Precognition. There was no guarantee that Precognition would be right, so I wanted to tell him to come help us, but I couldn’t. If a fire broke out in this place, which was made almost entirely of wood, there would be no escaping death.

— [So…]

― He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness!

KRAAANG―!

As I shouted the spell, I slammed into the bookshelves behind me. I heard impacts from elsewhere, too. Elias’s blue mana broke through the divine power before scattering apart. The duke’s mana didn’t stop even under the barrage of divine power I unleashed. In that case, for now, the best thing to do was split his attention and hold the elder back through sheer physical strength. The moment I reached that conclusion and swung my staff again, the elder’s voice rang out from the sky.

— I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind!

The word ‘Concentration’ clung to my eardrums². The shout seeped into me. I felt the world come to a stop. There was nothing. It was as if I could see the outlines of microorganisms drifting through the air. At that moment, I became certain that I was in the 21st century. My head felt like it was splitting apart. As though someone had sliced open my scalp with a knife and cleaved my brain in two. My skull had disappeared. For a moment, it felt as though my brain itself had turned into cold sweat and was flowing away.

I thought I could see a single peak jutting upward from the graph on a hospital examination chart, stabbing into my eyes. Right now, he is seeing Karaağaç Station in his mind. Carrying luggage in his hands. Piercing through the darkness, the headlights of the train—of the Simplon-Orient-Express—rush forward.

Traces of memory that begin in the hippocampus are gradually redistributed into the dispersed circuits of the neocortex as time passes. During this process, many details are intentionally lost. Forgetting is not a defect, but a function of the system. When too many details are preserved, thought instead—

The influence language has on a nation’s customs is so self-evident, yet the concept of the Übermensch³ has always been misused, though as you know, it was never a concept that could coexist with our history—or with humanity. These things are precisely—

The fluctuations of the vacuum are not the absence of a void, but rather resemble minute fractures in spacetime that have yet to flatten out. At the Planck scale⁴, regions touching one another change shape between curvature and uncertainty, while the world we call continuous—

Our philosophy, rather than being a natural lineage, is a form of the mind that attempts to bind different modes of thought together under a single identity, and the nature that governs the universe unquestionably exists beside us.

If you kept pounding away at someone like that, even the gatekeeper of Hell would lose his mind.

Chaos has finally produced a masterpiece. If the latter is true, then the inferior exists for the sake of the superior, while the superior exists for one another.

I had to come to my senses, but I couldn’t. The bombardment of thoughts kept pounding against my head. The electrical and chemical activity of my brain had spent a lifetime separating me from the world, and now it traveled down along my jaw and spine, crushing everything in its path.

Perhaps. No. It was certain.

Translator Note

1. Aristarchus of Samos first proposed that the Earth orbits the Sun in the 3rd century BCE, and Nicolaus Copernicus revived and mathematically detailed this same sun-centered model nearly 1,800 years later. ↩︎
2. The Korean version of the bible verse contains the word 집중 (‘concentration’ or ‘focus’), which is repeated in the following sentence. English Bible translations do not use the word ‘concentration’ here. I use the NIV (New International Version) for biblical quotations, which renders 집중 as ‘applied my mind to,’ so the repetition are unfortunately lost in English. ↩︎
3. TheÜbermensch (German for ‘Overman’ or ‘Superman’) is a philosophical concept introduced by Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is an ideal state of human potential, representing a person who transcends traditional religious and societal norms to create their own personal values and meaning in life. ↩︎
4. The Planck scale is the absolute limit in physics where quantum mechanics, relativity, and gravity all intersect, marking the smallest possible boundaries of our universe. ↩︎