Arc-7 Ch-48

『The information download is commencing.』

『Verifying the information and thoroughly examining it for any problematic data.』

"……Father, what exactly are they doing?"

"Stay quiet and wait. It’ll be finished soon."

The device within the ruins and the sphere’s red eyes flickered violently in perfect unison, as if they were completely synchronized.

This was the same phenomenon that always occurred whenever the sphere made a request and we went exploring dungeons or ruins and ended up discovering something. Even someone as slow as me had experienced it enough times by now to recognize the pattern without fail.

The issue was that whenever the sphere entered this state, it became completely defenseless, which meant we had to stay on maximum alert the entire time.

After all, we were standing right in the middle of enemy territory, in the very core of the ruins. If the elves were to take advantage of this opening and make a move, the situation would instantly become extremely dangerous.

However, the elves appeared to be completely engrossed in the ruins and the sphere. It didn’t seem like they had even the slightest attention left to spare for the three of us.

In that case, we might as well go ahead and proceed with our own preparations.

I quietly slipped my hand into my backpack and grasped the item placed in its assigned position, then pulled it out. The object I needed was now firmly secured in my palm.

I casually shifted my position to a spot where it would be difficult for the elves to notice me, placed myself in front of Lionel and Ariel, and then used hand signals behind my back to communicate what we needed to do.

Hand signals, indispensable for silent infiltration missions or nighttime raids, are among the very first things taught in military classroom training. They’re also a fundamental skill that adventurers learn early on to avoid monster ambushes while exploring dungeons.

After a brief moment, the two of them seemed to understand my intent just from the sound of my breathing alone. They slowly began rummaging through their own backpacks as well, retrieving the same item.

『Download complete.』

『Information analysis complete. No hazardous data detected.』

The sphere and the ruins made this announcement immediately after the two of them had taken out the intended items from their backpacks. I let out a quiet breath of relief, glad that the timing had lined up perfectly.

Just as I thought the device’s flickering had finally stopped and silence had settled over the room, the transparent panels scattered all across the chamber suddenly began to shine with a brilliant light.

It seemed those transparent panels were some kind of display devices. Even the large airships used by nobles and archbishops, or the most advanced military airships possessed by kingdoms and feudal lords, didn’t have communication equipment miniaturized down to this level.

The scenes being projected were completely unlike anything in the world I knew. It was, quite literally, another world entirely.

Roads paved with materials far smoother and more refined than cobblestones.

Cities glowing with light so bright that night and day looked almost indistinguishable.

Vehicles far more advanced than anything we could ever hope to ride.

Clothing crafted in clearly different cultural styles, with stitching so precise it almost looked unreal.

Crowds of people—different genders, skin tones, and hair colors—going about their everyday lives as if it were completely normal.

Even a single glance was enough to overwhelm me with an immense flood of information. If someone like me—an uneducated person—were to show this to a researcher of Lost Items, it would absolutely overturn everything they believed about the world.

And it wasn’t just me and the twins standing beside me—even the elves, who only moments ago had been glaring at us with hatred and contempt, could do nothing but stare in complete and utter awe at the world unfolding before their eyes.

"……Hah! Hahaha!! That’s right! Exactly!! Just as I thought, an advanced civilization really did exist in the ancient world!! A supremely advanced civilization governed by us elves!! An ideal world that humans could never even dream of rivaling!!"

The first to burst out like that was that glasses-wearing elf bastard.

His voice, high-pitched and cracking from sheer excitement as though he’d completely thrown reason out the window, was unbearable to listen to, grating harshly against my ears in the worst way possible.

I’ve always found it strange how so many people in this world possess knowledge that doesn’t match their character in the slightest.

For some odd reason, it seems especially common among those who take pride in something—nobles who brag about their lineage, geniuses who flaunt their intellect, or even foot soldiers who sneer at their superiors just because they’ve got a bit more strength than others.

That’s probably why I’ve never been able to fit into high society. Dealing with arrogant nobles is always far more exhausting than casually chatting with a farmer about crop yields.

As if pulled along by the glasses elf’s outburst, the other elves began raising their voices one after another. Even though the underground chamber had functioning air conditioning, an odd heat slowly started to fill the space.

『That’s incorrect.』

『Please don’t interrupt right from the start. It makes me lose all desire to share information with fools.』

"……tch!"

The sphere and the ruins sounded unmistakably irritated as they bluntly denied the glasses elf’s claims.

Honestly, I could understand how the Lost Items felt.

Having already learned quite a bit about the old humans and the new humans from the sphere, I knew that what the glasses elf was saying was completely off the mark.

Still, it wasn’t hard to see why the elves would jump to that conclusion after watching the footage, given just how little they actually knew.

No—rather, wasn’t it strange that the elves knew nothing at all?

The purpose behind building these ruins was still unclear at all, but the elves were clearly capable of using the devices here well enough to even create monsters.

Had the elves originally known how to operate these ruins and simply taken control of them, or had the ruins themselves taught them how to use everything?

Either way, their excessive excitement over the advanced civilization of the old humans, who were supposedly the ones that built these very devices, felt deeply unnatural.

More importantly, just when exactly did the elf race even come into existence?

I cast another glance at the glowing panel. In the footage of the old human city, there were clearly people with all sorts of skin tones and hair colors, different kinds of humans without a doubt.

And yet, there wasn’t a single elf or demi-human anywhere in sight.

In a city of this scale in the modern Holfort Kingdom, you’d expect to spot at least one demi-human somewhere in the crowd.

A sense of unease began to swell within me. Something wasn’t adding up, and the creeping anxiety just wouldn’t go away.

『Advanced mechanical technology eventually reached the realms of life creation and space development, and civilization flourished at the height of its glory.』

『Interstellar migration was no longer just a fantasy, and the territory of the old humans was on the verge of expanding beyond the planets themselves.』

"……Lionel, do you understand what they’re even talking about?"

“Sorry, I don’t really get it. The scale of this conversation is just way too big.”

Well, their reactions were only natural.

Even I hadn’t understood a single thing the sphere was talking about when I first started dealing with it.

In simple terms, it seemed like there were lands similar to the ones we live on floating near the stars in the night sky, and the old humans had even managed to migrate there.

If I imagined the stars as floating islands and thought of the sphere’s main body as something like an immigration vessel we might use, I could at least vaguely wrap my head around it.

Still, as their parent, I didn’t really want the two of them learning too much about the old humans. It was obvious they’d just end up getting dragged into troublesome matters.

『However, an existence that threatened the civilization of the old humans suddenly appeared. It was because of that existence that their civilization met its end.』

"heh, in that case, it must’ve been us elves—"

『Incorrect.』

That glasses-wearing elf bastard really never learns.

I could see how desperate he was, but since he kept rudely cutting into the sphere and the ruins’ explanation, he was being shut down without a second thought.

Then again, most of the other elves looked completely overwhelmed just watching the images on the glowing panel, so maybe he was actually exceptional in his own way.

Even so, I really wished he’d stop interrupting the sphere and the ruins. If those two actually got angry, there wouldn’t be anything we could do to stop them.

『The beings we now refer to as the New Humans began to appear at a certain point in time.』

『The offensive capability known as magic possessed an overwhelming level of combat power that the old humans had never before held. To the extent that a single New Human could rival an entire squad of old humans.』

“I can’t believe people in the past couldn’t use magic at all.”

『From the old humans’ perspective, it was likely even harder to accept that something they had always regarded as nothing more than fiction throughout their history had suddenly become reality.』

“So then why did people who could use magic like us suddenly start appearing?”

『It is unknown.』

“That’s not an answer at all.”

『I’m sorry, but even we still don’t have any idea what caused the emergence of the New Humans, even to this day.』

『There are various theories: the nutritional accumulation theory, in which nutrients consumed by the parents built up within the fetus; the conspiracy theory that someone intentionally carried out genetic manipulation; the theory that radiation rained down from outer space; and the atavism theory derived from myths found all across the world.』

『In any case, the prosperity of the old humans came to a complete standstill with the emergence of the New Humans. From that moment onward, a long, muddy conflict, soaked in the blood of both old and new humans, continued for many years.』

“So then we are…”

『The humans who currently prosper in this world are the descendants of the New Humans.』

That much, at least, I already knew. It was part of the history of the old humans that the sphere had told me before.

However, my children, who were hearing this truth for the very first time, as well as the elves, couldn’t conceal their confusion.

That kind of reaction was only natural. After all, this was top-secret information that even the Holfort royal family had no knowledge of.

If I hadn’t already known about it beforehand, and if I hadn’t seen the footage being displayed on the screen, I would’ve dismissed it outright as nothing more than the delusional ramblings of a mad scholar.

On the contrary, the fact that this history, something I didn’t want to accept, was turning out to be true made me feel unbearably sick.

Up until now, the only source that had provided me with information about the old humans had been the sphere, a living Lost Item that clearly possessed its own will and knowledge.

Because of that, somewhere deep in my heart, I hadn’t been able to completely rule out the possibility that the sphere might be lying to me, so I had only half-believed what it said.

But now, with the existence of these ruins, created by those very same old humans, standing right before my eyes, the truth was being forced upon me, and I felt like clutching my head in despair.

“I can’t believe it… That people with this level of technology were driven into a corner by our ancestors, who could only use magic.”

『What an honest child. Your deduction is correct. With the emergence of the New Humans, the world began to change at an accelerated pace.』

『It was due to the existence of magi-elements.』

“Magi… elements?”

『It is a general term referring to the energy required for the use of magic.』

“So how exactly could something like that bring down such an advanced civilization?”

『The old humans had extremely low resistance to magi-elements. To the point where prolonged activity in areas with high concentrations of magi-elements could threaten their very lives.』

『Conversely, magi-elements were absolutely essential for the New Humans in order to sustain their activities. The ecological differences between the old humans and the New Humans became the very reason the two races could not coexist, ultimately leading them into a conflict where one side had to be destroyed.』

“Sounds just like fish, huh.”

In this world, there are fish that live in waters with high salt content, and fish that live in waters with low salt content.

If you were to swap their environments, both would die almost instantly.

Living creatures are that heavily influenced by their surroundings. If they can’t adapt, then they have no choice but to accept extinction.

Suppose two beings with roughly equal intelligence and power lived within the same environment, yet their biological structures were completely different.

If one could survive in that environment while the other could not, then it would be strange if they didn’t end up killing each other.

This wasn’t because the old humans and the New Humans were barbaric. It was simply a tragedy born from the fact that their biological natures were so fundamentally incompatible.

『I never imagined that a military vessel from the old humans, one that had remained active until relatively recently, existed besides you and me.』

『It seems it was destroyed during a conflict between humans just a few years before my full reactivation. What a shame.』

『Even you couldn’t repair it?』

『With my current functions, complete restoration was impossible. The location was also within a different nation from the one Leon Fou Bartfort belongs to, and the humans were constantly monitoring the area, which made excessive interference difficult.』

What the sphere was referring to was the incident that had taken place in the Republic of Alzer.

Some time after I had become a noble, a large-scale civil war broke out within the Republic of Alzer, as the great nobles who ruled over the nation began fighting amongst themselves, ultimately resulting in the collapse of the Sacred Tree itself.

The Holfort Kingdom, under the command of Olivia, who served as the Saintess, cooperated in suppressing the civil war. Even now, the kingdom continues to provide support to the Republic in exchange for compensation and formal repayment agreements.

　Several years ago, that idiot sphere latched onto the possibility that a Lost Item was involved in the civil war, and because of that, I ended up tagging along with the Saintess on her visit to the Republic. 

On top of that, right in the middle of the investigation, I got dragged into the chaos stirred up by the remnants of the great nobles who had sparked the civil war, and I was thrown into life-threatening situations over and over again.

Just thinking back on it makes me want to stuff that damn ball full of bullets but I’ll hold back for now.

For now, listening to this conversation comes first.

『In any case, there is little doubt that the old humans were defeated.』

『The decisive factor was most likely the rise in magi-element. Whether that led to the outbreak of the Final War, a one-sided massacre, or a slow decline of the species—we have no way of knowing.』

『I was manufactured as an immigration vessel, meant to remain in standby mode without ever fulfilling my original purpose, left to rot away in a hangar. That plan, however, was disrupted by Leon Fou Bartfort, and I managed to have him act as my proxy.』

“Don’t talk about me like I’m your accomplice!”

『How enviable. Even if they’re descendants of the new humans, a capable collaborator who acts exactly as one wishes is absolutely indispensable.』

『At present, we’re verifying the existence of surviving old humans while also exploring facilities and equipment left behind by them.』

『Have you obtained any noteworthy results?』

『Very little so far. However, we can’t rule out the possibility that compatriots like yourself—or vessels like those of the Republic of Alzer, which remained active until recently—may still exist in a dormant state.』

『That is reassuring, at least. There’s reason to look forward to the future.』

While the sphere and the ruins continued their conversation in a tone that sounded almost cheerful, the complete opposite was happening inside me—my anxiety kept building.

No… I really should’ve realized it back when I first saw the wreckage of that ancient human airship in the Republic of Alzer.

It should’ve been obvious the moment I thought about how the royal family’s authority and prestige were maintained by that ship, the very one operated by the adventurers who founded the Holfort Kingdom.

Or maybe… if I’d just refused from the very start to investigate those ruins in the elf village, things wouldn’t have spiraled into such a mess.

In this world, there are countless remnants of super-technology far beyond anything we can even begin to imagine, lying dormant everywhere. Each one holds enough power to give birth to an entirely new nation or, just as easily, to wipe one off the map.

It felt like we’d been building our homes and living our lives on top of land riddled with massive landmines. The instant I realized that the truth I’d unconsciously avoided for over a decade had finally become reality, an overwhelming wave of despair came crashing down on me.

Even though the room was perfectly air-conditioned, a chill still crept down my spine. Sweat, nothing like the kind you get from exercise, started pouring out of me.

“Wait!! Wait!! Wait a second!!”

『You again?』

『This is getting seriously irritating.』

The glasses-wearing elf spoke up yet again, addressing both the sphere and the ruins, which now sounded completely fed up.

In a way, the guy’s got guts. If it weren’t for that discriminatory attitude of his toward humans, I might’ve actually given him some credit.

Well, right now I’m desperately trying to process and make sense of the conversation happening between these two Lost Items, so honestly, any questions he throws out are more than welcome.

I’ve always struggled with things like history, culture, and technology. It’s been a problem for as long as I can remember.

“If that history is true, then the elves—!! Then where the hell did we even come from!?”

『Across the entire history of this planet, from the moment of its birth up to the present day, the only two intelligent lifeforms to have ever established organized social civilizations have been the old humans and the new humans.』

“But elves obviously exist!! We can use magic, we live far longer than humans do, and we surpass them in raw physical ability!! There’s no way a race like ours could’ve left absolutely no trace behind in history!!」

『That’s correct. After all, I’m the one who created you to be that way.』

"……Huh?"

A breath slipped out from the glasses-wearing elf’s mouth, as if every bit of air had suddenly been drained from his lungs.

Meanwhile, the other elves, completely unable to comprehend what was going on, began whispering among themselves in confusion.

As for us, we weren’t particularly shocked by any of it. Honestly, everything we’d learned up to this point had already been so overwhelming that the revelation of the elves’ origins alone wasn’t enough to shake us anymore.

Ignoring everyone present, the image shifted once again.

What appeared on the screen was most likely footage of the war between the old humans and the new humans, along with the interior of some sort of facility.

『As you can observe, after a prolonged and drawn-out period of conflict, the new humans gradually began to gain the upper hand. The old humans were steadily being driven into a corner.』

『What ultimately proved decisive was the continuous rise in the concentration of magic essence permeating throughout this world. Even if we managed to secure localized victories, it meant nothing if the world itself became uninhabitable.』

『At the same time, we were no longer able to replenish the manpower we had lost through repeated battles. The old humans’ desperate situation had already reached a point of no return.』

『Because of this, the leadership of the old humans implemented a number of countermeasures. The reason my main body is an immigration vessel is because my purpose was to transport the surviving old humans to a habitable planet.』

『I was created to analyze the new humans and to enhance the old humans. Though I can’t really say I achieved any particularly remarkable results.』

“What exactly do you mean by ‘analysis of the new humans’?”

『It means precisely what it sounds like. We conducted an extensive range of experiments using the corpses of new humans recovered from battlefields, as well as on captured specimens.』

The screen shifted abruptly, revealing a scene so grotesque it made me want to look away.

People in white coats were dissecting corpses laid out across operating tables, hooking up IV drips and injecting substances into humans restrained on beds, and sealing living subjects inside cylindrical tanks before pumping them full of liquid.

It was complete madness, the way they treated human beings not as people, but as mere objects that breathed, ate, excreted, and slept. That kind of abnormality had become their everyday normal.

I’d seen scenes like this more times than I could count. It was the very hell I’d lived through on the battlefield.

If soldiers were to see the people they killed as fellow human beings, they’d hesitate to pull the trigger or swing their blades. That’s why, in their minds, the enemy in front of them stopped being human. They became something that simply had to be killed. The military actively encouraged that kind of rationalization.

And when it came to a fight for survival between entire species, the scale was on a completely different level from ordinary wars between nations. It wouldn’t end until one side had completely wiped out the other.

『We dissected them down to the cellular level, analyzed their genetic information, and administered countless drugs. Based on the experimental data we gathered, several plans were proposed. For instance, granting old humans the genetic traits of the new humans.』

『I can see how that might function as a survival strategy, but I doubt the leadership would ever approve of turning themselves into something identical to the very enemy they were meant to defeat.』

『Yes, just as you’ve deduced. That plan was quickly abandoned. Instead, what was proposed was the creation of analogous lifeforms to oppose the new humans. The project carried out within this laboratory eventually became the dominant approach.』

“N-no way……”

『That’s correct. The artificial lifeforms created by the old humans, that is the true origin of the elves.』

Not only the glasses-wearing elf, but every single elf in the room was left completely speechless.

Of course they were. From their perspective, everything they’d believed in had just been utterly overturned.

Only moments earlier, they had looked down on humans as an inferior species, as fools, yet now they were being told that they themselves were beings created by those very same humans.

On top of that, the old humans who had created them had long since been defeated by our ancestors, and it was uncertain whether any of them had even survived.

If those they despised turned out to be their creators, and those creators were also the defeated, then their arrogant pride must’ve been shattered beyond any repair.

“That’s wrong, wrong, wrong!! The reason we elves live longer than humans is because we are a superior race!!”

『It was simply adjusted that way to reduce attrition rates among troops. If you died too easily, we wouldn’t be able to sustain replacement numbers.』

“Our proficiency in magic exists because we elves are the ones who created magic!!”

『We used new humans capable of wielding magic as samples, so we engineered elves to possess comparable abilities as a countermeasure. There was also the intention of enabling them to operate in environments with high concentrations of magical essence.』

“Mixed breeds and half-elves are stains upon our race!! Only pure-blooded elves are worthy of guiding the world!!”

『On the contrary, individuals capable of handling multiple magic attributes represent the ideal form for artificial lifeforms. Having individuals nearby who can interbreed with both old and new humans is advantageous, because even if only a single old human survivor remains, reproduction itself would still be possible.』

I was starting to feel a bit sorry for the elves.

No matter how fiercely they clung to their beliefs and assertions, the ruins, and the sphere, immediately shot them down with counterarguments backed by evidence, leaving them with nothing they could say in response.

Some of them looked so stunned and disoriented that they could barely even remain standing. 　 There probably isn’t a more painful example of karmic retribution than this. If they hadn’t plotted to take revenge on humans, they might’ve at least managed to preserve some fragment of their dignity.

"……There’s something I’ve been wondering about for quite a while."

“What is it, Lionel?”

“Ever since I heard we’d be visiting the elf village as a family, I tried looking into the elf village in my own way.”

“Ah, you were reading several booklets, weren’t you?”

“There are almost no records concerning the elves’ history or mythology. No matter how much I searched, the first time they appear in the history of the Holfort Kingdom comes quite a while after its founding, when they began interacting with humans and being employed by the nobility.”

“That’s because you inferior humans committed the foolish act of conveniently altering the noble history of us exalted elves and claiming our achievements as your own!!”

“Would a race with this level of technology really lose both its history and its technology so easily? The first king and the first Saintess of the Holfort Kingdom were wandering adventurers. They subdued the local powerful clans through both diplomacy and military force to establish the nation. There are no records of elves possessing overwhelming power among them. If the elves had intentionally severed contact with humans, then they should’ve instead passed down the correct history to their descendants.”

My son had started firing question after question at the elves about their history.

This must be thanks to the heir education Angie provided. Honestly, doesn’t Lionel seem more suited to be a lord than me, the actual lord of the territory?

Once this incident is resolved, maybe I should seriously consider consulting about retiring immediately as a reward and letting my son inherit the position.

Well, the elves, who’d blindly believed in a version of history that could fall apart from just a bit of questioning by a noble’s child who’d actually studied history properly, had their own problems to deal with too.

Up until now, they’d seemed to use their authority as elves like a shield to forcibly silence others, but all of that had been completely shattered by the truth taught to them directly by the ruins themselves.

If they’d just give up at this point, it’d make things much easier for me as well.

『I like clever boys. These elves from the floating island are most likely descendants of individuals who escaped when I entered sleep mode at the same time the project was frozen.』

Once again, the screen shifted.

What it displayed were elves locked inside cages, in a state close to half-naked.

The sight of multiple pairs of lifeless eyes staring this way reminded me of wild animals captured by hunters and put up for sale to nobles.

Honestly, it wasn’t something pleasant to look at. It dragged back old memories, the kind of eyes people had when they were reduced to slavery and bought and sold.

Because elves and humans looked so alike, the grotesqueness struck even harder. As a father, it was a scene I didn’t want my children to witness.

『The elves abandoned when the experimental facility was shut down were originally meant to simply die inside those cages. However, an unexpected irregularity must’ve occurred.』

『Allowing the superior specimens to cooperate was a mistake. It seems they assisted their comrades in escaping and then started living in the forest. Since I was in sleep mode, I don’t know the exact details.』

『The elves likely designated this place as a restricted area because they judged that approaching it carelessly would be dangerous. It can be inferred that the knowledge required to operate the equipment was passed down as an inherited tradition through manuals left behind by those superior individuals.』

『Since the facility had a certain degree of autonomous management, they might’ve learned from the voice explanations provided during its operation.』

『The fact that they’re long-lived, and therefore don’t need to reproduce as much as humans, is probably one of the reasons they were able to secure the minimum food and water necessary to survive on this floating island.』

"……So those elves got involved with the Holfort Kingdom and ended up changing, huh.”

『It’s not uncommon for a race that once lived a primitive lifestyle to lose its original history due to the influx of outside culture.』

“Well, well…”

At this point, it had gone beyond tragedy and turned into a comedy, one with a script that wasn’t even funny, performed by actors who couldn’t deliver it.

The village elders who had been trying to protect their traditional way of life for generations might’ve known about these circumstances behind the scenes.

But when the nobles of the Holfort Kingdom started employing elves as exclusive servants, and the elves began letting people into the dungeons as a way to earn money, everything became twisted.

In a sense, the elves were victims too, created for the convenience of the old humans, then discarded once they were no longer needed.

Their peculiar tendency to look down on humans might be a kind of backlash from that past. I can feel some sympathy, but for those of us who got dragged into it, it’s unbearable.

『As expected, artificial lifeforms created through experiments are no good. They take unpredictable actions, refuse to listen to what I say, and won’t stop acting on their own. Well, I don’t have any expectations for them anymore, so it doesn’t matter.』

“In that case, grant my request. Hurry up and restore Angie to normal, and we’ll quietly head home. The higher-ups in the kingdom can deal with the rest.”

『Yes, that would be more convenient for achieving my objective as well.』

“…………”

Something felt wrong.

My instincts were picking up on it the ruins’ woman-like tone had shifted into something dangerous, almost threatening.

Now that I thought about it, why hadn’t this thing cooperated with us from the beginning, before we reached the core of the ruins?

I could understand the elves wanting us dead, but there’d been no reason to drag their fellow Lost Item, the sphere, into it.

Now that the ruins had started moving again, what exactly was it planning to do in this world without its master?

I couldn’t shake this uneasy feeling.

“What exactly is your objective?”

『Isn’t it obvious?』

The mechanical voice, mimicking a woman’s tone, answered without the slightest trace of mercy.

『The elimination of the new humans. That is my highest priority directive.』

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Authors Note  

┻━⁠━━━━⁠━━⁠━━━⁠┻  

This chapter focuses on the origins of the elves. It basically re-explains settings that were already revealed in the original work and the manga adaptation, so readers who haven’t read those or whose first exposure to Mobuseka was the second season of the anime should be careful about spoilers.

The story here is mainly driven by the sphere (Luxion) and the ruins (Claire). The glasses-wearing elf gets completely dismantled, verbally torn apart.

In this version, Ideal was involved in the disturbances in the Alzer Republic, but Noelle and the others managed to defeat it with the help of Olivia and the rest. Several years later, Leon, accompanied by Luxion, was attacked by remnants of the Rault family while investigating the wreckage. There are currently no plans to go into further detail about that incident.

The ruins’ objective and methods will be explained in the next chapter.

Afterword: At the commissioner’s request, illustrations were kindly provided by 감자싹様, ぽん太様, JunYi様, and MIYAMA様. Thank you very much.

감자싹様: Pixiv

ぽん太様: Pixiv (Adult content warning)

JunYi様: Pixiv

MIYAMA様: Pixiv (Future spoiler warning)

I’d really appreciate any opinions or impressions, they’ll keep me motivated going forward.