Chapter 530

“Why?”

I asked Leo, who was standing there with a deeply shocked look on his face. When he didn’t answer, I asked again.

“Why do you look like that?”

“The monocles were your idea, weren’t they? You said the spectacles were inconvenient because you had to take them off and put them back on whenever you wanted to check what an object actually looked like…”

“Yeah.”

I was the one who suggested them. But why was he suddenly bringing that up? Who didn’t know that I was the one who had chosen the monocles? I tried to remember whether I had missed something he’d said and asked, “What did you just say?”

Leo shrugged.

“I said there’s no way out. We have to find one. And I wanted to ask…”

He looked around, his face puzzled.

“Where are we? Are we really in the place I remember? I definitely came here alone, but you’re here too, Your Excellency.”

Before he had even finished speaking, my face began to twist.

Ah.

The moment I realized what was happening, my hands moved first. Before my memory could ‘disappear’—was I sure about that?—I searched through my pockets. My fingertips groped through empty air, catching the rough texture of cotton. Hurry. I repeated the same word like a mantra as I rummaged through every pocket. My hand caught on a metallic object with a clip inside my jacket. The fountain pen that was never there when I needed it, but always seemed to turn up when I didn’t, was in my hand. It was a prop for the performance. I had thought I might be able to use it when I needed to use the ‘insurance.’

I tilted my head, holding it up, and muttered, “I have a pen.”

“Why did you take it out?”

“Who knows… Hurry. We’re getting close to the time we have to return, so we need to move!”

I grabbed Leo’s arm and ran. When we reached the end of the road, I turned around.

“There’s no lever on Road Five either. Let’s go back and try Six.”

Leo nodded and ran with me. I looked around the square and thought.

Unless all the dioceses and spatial magic were connected radially, there had to be an exit somewhere. A lever. Still, there was a possibility there wasn’t one, and for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to think that possibility was very likely. If this was a training ground, wouldn’t someone have to leave it eventually? They could just warp out. Fine. But if the system had been designed to move people using levers—a method that wasn’t constrained by coordinate systems—wouldn’t it be far more likely that they would use the same method to return? The fact that they had gone to the trouble of installing levers in the first place suggested that maintaining or establishing the technique through warping alone was difficult, didn’t it?

The chain of the spectacles felt heavy. I pushed the slipping glasses back up and looked at the granite of the fountain before speaking to Leonard.

“There’s no lever visible from the outside. Let’s number the roads clockwise and go to Number One.”

Leonard looked at my face in confusion.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You said we had to take Road 6. And from what I can tell, we should be taking 7.”

Why had his way of speaking suddenly changed like this? I stared at him in disbelief for a moment, then shook my head.

“You must have finished the numbering already. On what grounds are you saying we should enter through 7, not even 8?”

“Formal speech? Yes, we already came through 6. Haven’t we gone through most of the roads already? You said we didn’t have much time, so we should check them quickly, and with these glasses, those things you call levers stand out.”

At Leonard’s words, I found it strange and my expression hardened slightly.

“That never happened. How exactly are you remembering things?”

No. Something was wrong. I was the one who was wrong. This wasn’t just a problem with Leonard. No—maybe something was wrong with him, too.

Then Leonard leaned closer to me and said, “Why do you look so serious?”

I instinctively realized it―he had started talking about something different from what I remembered. There was nothing wrong with my ‘perception.’ The only problem was memory.

The order of my memories was being rearranged.

Something that had just happened felt as though it had happened the day before yesterday, while something that had happened yesterday felt like it had just happened. Everything remained in my memory, but retrieving it by index was no longer working properly.

Memory was continuous. Memories were also grouped by place. But more vaguely, they were grouped by time. There was some kind of binding agent attached to them, a mechanism that made it possible to accept the absurd events of a dream as though they made perfect sense despite the gaps between one time and another.

I had been here yesterday, and I had been here the day before yesterday too.

No. The memory that was being designated as the most recent one was the only one that felt real. I had definitely been relieved that I had just returned home until a moment ago. And I had had a goal, vague though it was. Its proper place in the sequence had clearly been much earlier, yet the goal of that event was here.

Things dismissed as the past fell into a state where I could remember them and yet could not remember them.

There was a mechanism of homeostasis at the boundary between consciousness―and unconsciousness.

Today, for the first time, I realized how important order was to memory.

“Fountain pen.”

Was it there? Please.

I rummaged through my pockets. My fingers found nothing. Then the rough texture of cotton. Hurry.

I repeated the same words like a chant as I emptied every pocket I had. My fingers caught on a metallic object with a clip inside my jacket.

I pulled out the fountain pen and was about to write on the document when I bit my lip.

If I used the document here, I wouldn’t have anything left to use if a problem arose after we got out. And I had even less time to think!

Before I could finish the thought, my choice narrowed down to one.

I tore off my gloves and wrote on the back of my hand.

My memory is all jumbled, that’s all I can think of right now, so that’s all I can write, because―

I frowned and lowered my gaze to where I felt the pain. I was holding a fountain pen in my right hand, and in my left… There was ink smeared across the back of my left hand. The nib of the fountain pen had scratched my skin, leaving the back of my hand red.

My memories are all jumbled? Mine?

Thoroughly bewildered, I looked around. I had no idea what the hell had happened just now, at a time when we couldn’t afford to waste even a second. We were standing still in the square. I spoke to Leo.

“My memory is all jumbled.”

It was my handwriting. A chill ran through me as I muttered. I put a hand to my head and narrowed my eyes.

“Is that true? I don’t know…”

What had I been doing earlier? I was looking for a way out. Ah, I’d almost made it all the way around!

Where is this? It’s a maze. A maze made to look like a village, a training ground, a replica of reality like Mimesis. The seams that had been covered in black mist were coming apart.

Leo looked at the back of my hand and said worriedly, “Why did you hurt your hand?”

Right. Why was it here?

The answer was obvious. I didn’t even need to think about it. Seeing that I was here with Leo, I grabbed his arm and asked, “That means the me from earlier was that desperate. Your Highness, this is my first time seeing this place. We need to get out of here. Where are we supposed to go?”

Leonard replied with a strange look on his face.

“You said we had to go to number six.”

Number six?

No. We’d already been to number six.

“I think we should go to number seven, Your Highness.”

Then I pressed the fountain pen to the back of my hand.

“We’re already disagreeing.”

Between me and me.

I quickly wrote on the back of my hand.

Write everything down.

There was something else I needed to write, too. The nib dug into my skin.

“Memory jumbled. Write everything down.”

I stared at the cluster of words in confusion.

Writing on the back of my hand? I hadn’t done that since graduating high school.

I frowned and asked, “Why…?”

Leo, who had been watching me with a cool, clear gaze, calmly asked, “What did you do yesterday?”

“I was in Italy… I was, but why? And why are you speaking so formally?”

Leo took out a pocketknife, cut across the back of his hand, then snatched my pen and quickly wrote on his own hand.

“No, you returned home. We’re on an operation now, sir. Our memories are being altered. Before the main operation, we came to Pleroma’s Bamberg…”

Leonard stopped speaking.

As though his mind had suddenly been cleared, he stared blankly into the air.

I understood what was happening. I finished the words he couldn’t.

“We entered the Archdiocese of Bamberg.”

Leonard tilted his head, looking as though he couldn’t understand why I was stating something so obvious.

Then he answered.

“Yes. We’ve come to the residential district of the capital. There were a lot of people here just a moment ago, but they’ve all disappeared.”

“No. This isn’t the time to talk. We have to go. Somewhere. Anywhere.”

I scribbled down everything I needed to know, everything I had managed to grasp, even if only by instinct, across the back of my hand. Blood mixed with ink. Then I honed my mana to a sharp edge, briefly gave it physical form, and stabbed the back of my hand with it. Then I drew it across. If I wanted the pain to linger, it was better to make a long, shallow cut than stab deeply. Blood welled up. I couldn’t leave my blood scattered around here. What, was I insane? I licked it away and gauged the pain. This should be enough to keep going…

I raised my hand at the pain. The densely written words across the back of my hand left me bewildered.

Memory wirr. Alles notieren. Op. Eure Hoheit…

Why? What is this? What did I shorten everything to? Operation, in the middle of an operation? Since when? ‘Memory wirr’—what kind of hybrid language was that? Was I in such a hurry that I wrote ‘memory’ instead of Erinnerungen and ended up with this mess?

Beneath it were words pressed into my skin hard enough to draw blood—NICHT ZWEIFELN.

The capital letters made me catch my breath. Was I really emphasizing ‘DO NOT DOUBT’ this much?

All right. I wouldn’t doubt it. My writing was correct. The handwriting, the wounds, all of it.

My eyes naturally followed the words to where one last message had been written.

Hurry.

I grabbed Leonard.

“Let’s go. To number seven.”

Time kept shifting again and again—I had no idea what this time was dependent on. My mind? My memories? Reality? Or something else entirely? I could only guess!—so I had to speak and think quickly.

The speed of speech would eventually tire itself out trying to catch up with the speed of thought, and then lose everything. Words, drawings, gestures—nothing could keep up with thought. Thought alone kept repeating explosive melting even within an infinite number of moments in a fraction of an instant, and when the mind perceived every last nuance and contradictory precision of those vague thoughts, it was already in the fourth dimension, while the three-dimensional body stood in its way.

As you know, the fuses in the brain melt and snap one after another.

All I could do was stare blankly ahead. All humans had always been like this. A thought completed in the briefest of instants could only be expressed through an eternity of words, and before that could happen, the brain might fail to withstand the load and reset itself, leaving you unable to say anything at all.

I had to never miss an opportunity. What languages did Leonard know? Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, English—ah, I started speaking in English, very quickly—

Very, very slowly.

“Just now, I went to the other bishops’ offices with a quill. I remember that, up until then, there wasn’t much confusion in my memory…”

Or at least, that was what I remembered. Could I trust what I knew up to this point? A desperate question came to mind, but I’m sorry—this wasn’t exactly the right time to be asking it. Think rationally. There had been a simple pattern to the path we had taken so far. It was laid out in an obvious way, because this was a space belonging solely to Pleroma, and every ornament used as a lever within it had a pattern designed for people’s convenience and efficiency. Therefore, what I remembered so far—at least the information itself—

“My memory.”

Leonard picked up where I left off. I spoke without realizing I was speaking, and he understood everything. He spoke very quickly in British English.

“Even if there were a problem, it would be minor. And we should distinguish between memory and information. The information we’ve obtained so far should not be significantly compromised. I’m thinking the same thing.”

Only then did I realize that, for a moment, I had forgotten whether I’d been speaking in American or British English, and because it wasn’t speech but slow information, I had no memory of it. Leonard, however, didn’t seem to give it much thought. He was merely being faithful to his native pronunciation, and since Germans generally spoke English with a German accent anyway, perhaps it didn’t matter how I spoke.

Meanwhile, he continued speaking independently of me.

“If there is no distortion in our vision and we are seeing things as they truly are. If our memories are being reversed in the same way they are now, then even if we were alone, we should have noticed something was wrong. Even in a situation like this, our sense of purpose remains clear. But whenever we came to our senses, even for a moment, we would realize that the information didn’t line up. Einsiedel said the Archbishop of Bamberg and the Bishop of Eichstätt were users of mental abilities. That they could interfere with the mind.”

“The Archbishop of Bamberg can insert memories.”

“That’s it.”

Leonard stated it flatly. Then he fell silent and looked at the scenery, only to spot my hand and stare in horror.

“What did you do to your hand…?”

No. Listen carefully. I desperately grabbed onto whatever I could pull out of my thoughts and said, “Manipulating memories is the Archbishop of Bamberg’s Special Ability. And the Bishop of Eichstätt, the Archbishop’s younger sibling, also has a similar mental-type ability. Forget the family connection for now. They’ve advanced tremendously over the past twelve years. From what I can tell, they’ve figured out how to manifest their Special Ability through spells. If they have an ability like this, there’s no reason to hold back. What if they’ve been applying it across the entire Archdiocese of Bamberg at a reduced intensity? What if that’s how they’ve been encouraging the goodwill and loyalty of the faithful?”

Or what if the same Bamberg ‘ecclesiastical province’—the four northern dioceses—shared it…? We had no time to be standing around here. We had to get outside and put some kind of contingency plan in place, even if we had to do it in a hurry. We had already pushed every supply chain to its absolute limit for the operation, so this was the right time. No. This wasn’t the time to be thinking about that. We couldn’t afford to waste even a single word. It was a waste of time! How could we break this? That was what I needed to be thinking about. How could we get back?

“Special Ability? Then how far does it extend?”

Leonard asked in response to what I had said. I refused to answer.

“It doesn’t matter. We need to get out first. Let’s retrace our steps in reverse order. Let’s go backward from Eight to One. Sometimes the method that looks like it will take the longest is the fastest way there.”

Leonard agreed without changing his expression.

“All right. Let’s go.”

Go? I checked the pain on the back of my hand, frowned, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about… but this isn’t the time to ask. Fine. Let’s do it.”

“I’ll ask for help from outside before I forget.”

He said that, but even as time passed, he didn’t send out a message. He looked down at the back of his own hand, realized what was happening, and let out a sigh. In the meantime, I sent a simple signal outside. Rescue wouldn’t come this far in, but I needed the archives, and I needed information that could only be obtained from the other levers outside. I updated the information on the back of my hand. I had used up my fingers too, and now the writing was creeping onto my wrist.

As Leonard entered Road Eight, he asked, “Sir. If this is something created through mana, could we not break it with divine power?”

Good. It seemed the confusion in his memories had given him a great deal of trouble, yet somehow the conversation had made it this far. I placed my hand over Leonard’s core and forcefully pushed divine power into him. After a while, he told me what effect it had.

“All right. The divine power remaining in my body seems to make it last for a while. If you have the strength to spare, please keep sending divine power into me.”

“You don’t need to ask for something so obvious,” I said.

Leonard suddenly said, “You’re unable to keep using divine power because your memory keeps getting interrupted. We also need a countermeasure you can use on yourself.”

“What? No, more importantly…”

I looked down at the back of my hand, which had grown hot, as though I’d scratched it somewhere.

“Ah.”

What an absurd ability. I can’t keep using divine power, huh? Right. Divine power. I quickly wrote the words onto the back of my hand. Leonard asked, “What if we spread divine power throughout the field?”

“That’s a little dangerous. We can’t let them know we’re here. If you mean removing the field’s ambient mana entirely, that’s dangerous. If they’ve set up some kind of sensor, it’ll only be a matter of time before they come here.” In fact, even using it on Leonard meant taking a risk.

“Then use it on yourself as well.”

“That’s difficult. From what I can tell, the mana keeps being supplied, so the purification doesn’t seem to last long. Self-purification uses too much divine power, so I can’t keep forcing it through like that. Instead, if I purify the air around us and block the ambient mana from outside, it would look as though I’d used a purification spell on myself, and it should work as well… But if this memory magic isn’t being spread from somewhere and is instead an inherent property of the field itself, it might be even harder. Still, shall we try?”

I wrapped my entire body, except for my feet, in a barrier made of divine power. In that state, I remained perfectly fine for quite some time. Is it really complete? Will this method work? Covering my feet as well would probably be more effective, but if they’ve built a security system to detect divine power, the worst possible situation would unfold. I can’t carelessly take that risk. If we’re discovered, everything is over. Even the peace of this entire country. Aside from the one remaining hope of Retry, there would be no chance to recover.

Europe’s political situation would plunge straight into a storm, and Germany would be shipwrecked. The Papal See would regain its former glory. In Western Europe, the French ‘pseudo’ empire would have free rein.

I couldn’t afford to be careless. Seeing the end of the residential area, I said, “Much better. They’re not on Road 8. Let’s go to 7.”

Hmm. The weather is nice.

I looked down the street lined with cozy houses shining beneath the sunlight. So this must be the residential area for laypeople in the Archdiocese of Bamberg. The buildings were ordinary and familiar, the sort that all looked more or less alike no matter where you went, making one neighborhood feel just like any other.

I raised my stinging hand.

Damn it.

When I didn’t follow, Leonard turned back to look at me. He was saying something to me.

Beeeep—

Along with the ringing in my ears growing louder, I felt a pain in my abdomen.

Abdominal pain? No, it wasn’t my organs. My muscles were prickling. I frowned and rubbed my side.

The colors of the world began to change strangely.

I quietly muttered, “Too loud.”

The area just above my temples was stinging. I swallowed once before asking, “Your Highness, can you hear me? The sound is rather loud.”

“I can’t hear it.”

He listened to the empty air for a moment before continuing.

“It shouldn’t be possible for me not to hear what you can, unless… could the time difference be taking effect?”

“That can’t be it. The world does seem a little brighter, though…”

I muttered as I clutched my increasingly painful side. There was a faint sweetness in my mouth. Had I just eaten something? No. I still remembered everything, so there was no way a new memory could have slipped in—

That was when Leonard’s face changed, as though he had realized something.

“Divine power. Wait. The divine power you had wrapped around your body just wore off, so you lost your memories again. I didn’t. You should wrap yourself in divine power, at least.”

Leonard said this as he removed his monocle and slipped it into his pocket.

“My own divine power has also diminished, perhaps for the same reason. The world looks a little blue to me as well. What about you?”

Before answering, I pressed my fingers between my brows. When I grabbed hold of the wall, my mouth tasted bitter. Leonard stopped mid-sentence.

“Wait, we’ve been in this residential area for too long… Ah.”

The fact that he called it a residential area meant that there was another error in Leonard’s memories. He slowly closed and opened his eyes, then raised the back of his hand. After assessing the situation, he said, “It’s an ability. There seems to be another problem. My vision is blue, and I’m hearing ringing in my ears.”

Something like muscle pain strangely stopped, only to return again and again, making me frown. Something like that couldn’t have appeared out of nowhere.

Leonard’s expression turned serious for a moment before he began speaking. His cold, rapid-fire analysis sounded perfectly coherent, but every word seemed to spill out toward the other side instead. Horrified by the sensations that came rushing in as his voice grew louder, I leaned against the wall. When I sank down and tilted my body to the side, he caught me.

“Are you all right—”

“Stop.”

Feeling a headache coming on, I said firmly once more, “Don’t speak.”

Leonard’s mouth stopped. He realized that something was wrong with the situation, and his expression hardened. Strangely, he stared into the empty air as though he were looking at something he wasn’t supposed to see, then began waving a hand in front of his eyes. In the sudden silence, I felt the pain in my side disappear.

My strength gave out, and my head hit the ground. Once I understood what was happening, I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Ah…”

Damn it.

Why was I lying down? At a moment this urgent of all times. I sprang to my feet.

There was a bitter taste in my mouth. Ah.

I looked at the world and marveled. It was bright yet dark, like the first light before dawn, and here and there, red mingled with the purple as a violet wind rippled through the world.