All Today 4

"When I came down, you and those girls were unconscious in separate corners. What happened?"

"I'd like to know that myself."

Dan replied to Freya.

And then...

Deep underground, in the innermost and dampest ritual chamber.

The corpses of Shadows littered the floor. The prince's finest Diablo soldiers had already cleared the area and secured everything inside.

Dan entered the chamber, where a large Diablo soldier resembling a stag beetle approached to deliver its report.

"We've seized their black magic chamber and captured one of them, Your Highness. We also found this on its person during the search."

The enormous demon handed something over for the little young man to examine.

It was...

The exact same type of cube that had exploded in front of him earlier, although it now appeared to be completely unusable.

Dan took it into his hand.

Just then, Valencia emerged from the room where the ritual materials were stored, carrying her firearm.

"Your Highness... You need to see this..."

Dan followed her inside...

And his eyes widened in shock.

The moment he saw the storage room, he was so astonished that he couldn't even take another step.

Among the animal skins that had been flayed while their owners were still alive and jars containing pickled internal organs, Dan discovered a large collection of amber specimens with organisms preserved inside them.

There were so many that it was immediately obvious they must have spent an enormous amount of time collecting them to accumulate such a quantity.

But the most shocking discovery was...

A particularly large piece of amber in the middle of the room.

It looked as though the flattened body of a human had been trapped inside it.

But...

On closer inspection...

It wasn't human.

It was some kind of organism with a human-like appearance.

It had two arms and two legs, but its body resembled that of a spiny, armored creature. It stood no taller than 150 centimeters, with dragonfly-like eyes and tiny, densely packed spikes running along its arms and legs, resembling the teeth of a saw.

"...What is this..."

The first thought that entered his mind...

The Diablo people?

Nora and Rafinya came in afterward, having managed to get past the Diablo soldiers who had tried to keep them out.

They too froze...

Just as astonished as he was.

Rrrrgh!

Valencia dragged in a man they had captured.

He had black hair, a tattoo beneath his eye, and was dressed like a bounty hunter.

But his eyes couldn't lie...

Those glowing purple eyes.

It was a Shadow.

Thud!

Valencia kicked his bound body down onto the floor, then pressed her knee against his neck while pointing her firearm at his temple.

This was an interaction between two different species, observed by only two humans.

The man raised his head, his eyes devoid of emotion.

He looked at Dan, who already knew that this wasn't a human either.

"Like it? What we've stolen from you?"

"Quite interesting."

"I'm not asking twice."

Dan dropped the cube in front of him.

"What is it?"

But the creature didn't answer.

Instead, it said something that made the prince recoil.

"You've experienced it, haven't you? The world millions of years ago."

Dan's eyebrows knitted together.

He stared unblinkingly at the Shadow, his hand gripping the cube.

"Magic that lower lifeforms could never hope to understand. We have uncovered the secrets of nature and the universe, the origins of our kind... and the origins of you."

It turned its head toward the amber specimen before looking back at Fury.

"I can hardly wait for the day when we finally become you... the perfect lifeform."

"You'll go extinct before you ever get to see that day."

"You can never destroy us. Whether it's another hundred years, a thousand years, or even ten thousand years from now, we will return. We will never disappear. We have already become part of this planet's ecosystem."

"Valencia."

"Yes, sir."

The moment he finished speaking, her firearm discharged with a deafening bang that echoed throughout the chamber.

Brain matter and blood splattered across the floor.

The metallic smell of blood filled the air, while fragments of bone stuck to Dan's shoes.

He wiped them off, picked up the cube, stood up, and handed it to one of his subordinates.

"Find out what this thing is used for."

"Understood, sir."

Outside

(The sounds of insects in the forest played in the background.)

A fire had been lit, and a camp had been established in the forest.

Nora Ophilis sat beside Dan.

He pointed at Nora's boots.

"Not a single trace of mud on them. Physically, none of us went anywhere. We simply fell asleep right where we were."

"But we were all inside the same dream?"

That was the part that was difficult to explain.

"Do you have any idea what kind of magic that was?"

"I've never encountered anything like it before, Mr. Fury."

She replied.

"The closest thing I'm familiar with is sleep-inducing magic. This world has never had anything like abstract magic before."

After she finished speaking, Valencia and several Diablo soldiers emerged to report to Prince Fury.

"Your Highness."

She brought over a magical grimoire written in runic script.

When it was opened, they discovered an illustration of the mysterious cube, surrounded by such densely packed runic characters that hardly any of the yellowish paper beneath could be seen.

"Nora..."

He called for her assistance.

His student accepted the page of runes and began deciphering it, drawing upon her exceptional magical aptitude.

Runes functioned like a universal pictographic language. Each individual symbol represented an image, while different combinations of symbols conveyed the physical phenomena that would occur when the corresponding magic was activated.

"These are advanced runes, Mr. Fury. It's a very old language. You'd normally need at least a doctoral-level student to understand them... But I should be able to read them."

"Can you decipher them?"

"You're lucky I'm talented."

Princess Nora was the only one capable of sitting down and deciphering the runes for him.

Meanwhile, Rafinya was still downstairs with Freya, standing in front of the amber specimen and staring at the remains of the 'Diablo-like organism.'

Just as her fingertips were about to touch the piece of amber—

"Don't touch it."

Freya spoke up, making Rafinya stop.

"We don't know what it is."

"Isn't it one of the Diablo?"

"You think something that ugly could be one of us?"

Freya's remark made the young woman pause.

The organism preserved inside the amber... wasn't one of the Diablo?

"Then what do you think it is?"

Rafinya asked.

Freya remained silent for a brief moment before answering.

"It could be an imitation body that the Shadows created to resemble us."

Back upstairs, Princess Nora was sketching the translations of the runes onto a sheet of her own paper.

Fire, Annihilation, Earth, Blood, Dust, Time, Death.

"These are the meanings conveyed by the runes."

She showed the translations to Fury.

"I honestly can't find any connection between them."

Even an expert like the princess couldn't understand what they meant.

The young man sat staring at those words while simultaneously turning the cube over in his hands.

"Dust... Time... Death..."

"Have you figured something out, Mr. Fury?"

"I think I can make a reasonable guess about what it is..."

He stopped rolling the cube between his fingers.

"They created a magical artifact capable of projecting images of the world from millions of years ago."

"The question is, why?"

"They want our bodies."

That was the purpose Prince Fury had strongly believed in from the very beginning.

"They want to become us. They created this thing to look back at our origins. It's a pair of glasses designed to observe the evolution of our species."

"If that's really the case... then this thing..."

"Although I still don't know exactly how to operate it..."

Dan continued.

"I almost saw it... I saw the tail of some kind of animal."

"What kind of animal, Mr. Fury?"

"I didn't get a good look before that blinding light appeared. But I'm certain... it must have been the common ancestor of all of us."

At that very moment, Freya and the others brought the amber specimens up from the underground chamber.

The young man stood up and issued an order.

"Summon Thomasin. I want to know exactly what this thing is."

Both Nora and Dan rose from beside the campfire.

Rafinya turned to ask him.

"Mr. Fury, what are you going to do with this?"

She was referring to the other cube, the one that had originally appeared to be nothing more than a shell.

"Take it back to the laboratory as well."

"Nobody can read runes with greater expertise than the people of Velmount. If you want to recreate this device and use it again, I think you'll need their expertise."

It was almost as though Nora had read his mind.

And she had.

Dan turned to answer her.

"I have absolutely no intention of letting Velmount know about this. It's far too dangerous for us."

"Is that a political consideration?"

"I simply want to avoid getting involved with Velmount as much as possible."

He handed the cube over to Freya and Valencia.

"I'll be staying in Millwall for a while. Anyone who wants to return can do so. I'll see you all in Artheris."

Clarify the cube’s two different conditionsFix the conflicting names for Fury