The Crown Prince In Hiding

”Don’t walk so close to me.”

”But you told me to follow you, didn’t you?”

”Follow from at least one body-length away. If you disappear from the edge of my vision even for a moment, I’ll hang you.”

”How the hell am I supposed to position myself?”

Choke.

”Urk!”

The magnificent white stone castle was almost ridiculously beautiful. Statues of war heroes and kings stood tall, their imposing figures radiating authority.

”Is that your king?”

Yildiz pointed.

”Only the King of Luminus and the forces protecting him wear lion armor.”

”The previous king.”

”Ah... right. The new king only ascended the throne recently. How long has it been? Four years, right?”

”Why are you showing off?”

”I just wanted to impress you...”

”Idiot.”

Yildiz fell silent, looking dejected for a moment before recovering.

”Show me around your hometown.”

”I’m not here to give anyone a tour.”

”Aaaaah!”

”Guards!!!”

”Heyyy, whoa, whoa! I get it! I’ll behave!”

Newcastle City Library

It had no special name like the Sheffield Library in Artheris. The reason was simple: it was the only library in the city, so there was no need to give it a distinct name.

Luminus had possessed a written language for thousands of years. The CIS religion upheld the dissemination of knowledge to the ignorant, so libraries containing accumulated knowledge, city histories, records of wars, and especially copies of the scriptures received substantial funding from the central government every year.

The white, spiral-shaped library twisted upward toward the sky. Its interior was ten times larger than the Sheffield Library, and Luminus citizens could enter for free.

Yildiz pulled a book from one of the stands. The magical inscriptions transformed into a narration of the story of—

”The epic of a man who traveled the seas for more than ten years just to return home?”

He let out an ’Ooh~’ from his throat.

”Human stories are fascinating.”

”It’s a tale from a thousand years ago. There’s no credibility to it. Put it down.”

”If it’s fun, that’s all that matters.”

”Then I suppose 108 Ways to Sew Cotton must be incredibly entertaining too.”

Rafinya picked up the book beside it.

”They have everything?”

”Almost everything.”

She spoke while scanning the shelves with her eyes. Eventually, after about twenty minutes, she finally found something she thought might be useful.

She climbed down from the tall ladder with a Chronicle of Luminus’s Exploration of the World.

Behind her, Yildiz craned his neck with interest.

Rafinya slowly turned the yellowed, brittle parchment pages of the thousand-year-old document, passed down from the first generation of Luminus’s exploration fleet.

Luminus Calendar - 987 Years Before the Prophet’s Death

Compared against geological time, a thousand years ago was not particularly distant from the present. After skimming through the contents, it was possible to roughly guess what countries some of the lands depicted there might have been.

At that time, Zentinel had yet to unite, while Velmount and Mathema did not even exist.

If they encountered snow, it could probably be inferred that the land might have been Snowhaven.

The slender fingers of the young duelist traced the ancient captain’s winding handwritten script. Her sharp eyes narrowed as she read the words recorded on the page.

Day 14 of the fourth month. Our exploration fleet cut through the thick fog and dropped anchor along the pitch-black shore of the Demon Island.

This land is truly a nightmare. It is unbearably hot and teeming with mindless monsters. The beast that emerged from the rocky cliffs was a ’giant spider’ with eight legs, its body encased in armor as hard as ironstone... Its roar trembled all the way down to our bones.

My crew and I explored the coastline and the black-magic rainforest for three full weeks. All we found were ’monstrous beasts’ of horrifying forms: giant lizards with sharp spines, venomous birds with iron thorns, and monstrous sea creatures with thousands of thick tentacles...

Those that inhabit Diablo Island are ’mindless beasts’ that live solely by the instinct to kill.

They are scattered throughout the island, but strangely enough, ordinary animals such as deer, wild boars, bison, and leopards also live alongside these thorn-covered monsters, as though they were imitating one another.

I recommend avoiding this twisted island. Given the dense forests and the danger posed by the monsters, it is not worth risking our lives to explore it in search of valuable minerals.

These monsters do not cross the sea, so it would be best to leave this island to the will of God.

Only He knows what lies deep below.

She looked at the illustrations accompanying the chronicle—ink sketches depicting bizarre and grotesque monsters. Some resembled giant spiders fused with mussels, while others were beastly creatures dragging their fangs along the ground...

Rafinya’s slender fingers turned through the ancient parchment pages, moving forward through the passage of time. The early records of maritime expeditions went by until she reached the ”Chronicle of the Coastal Purge” the period of history that was relatively closest to the present.

It was a time when the Kingdom of Luminus faced a monster crisis from Diablo, when beasts swam across the ocean and washed ashore, rampaging along the coastlines of human lands.

When the soldiers of Luminus sailed to Diablo Island to eliminate the monsters attempting to cross the sea into their territory, the ink from this era remained dark and clear. The brushstrokes and wax seals of the High Knights’ Council were still well preserved.

It was a record of battle that the knights of later generations recounted with pride.

Luminus Calendar - 2000 Years After the Prophet’s Death

The number of monstrous beasts from Diablo Island has begun to increase until they overflow the land. Driven by their instinctive hunger, they attempt to swim across the ocean and come ashore along our southern border. Giant iron-armored monsters, poisonous reptiles, and thousands of amphibious beasts have inflicted severe damage upon the coastal port cities.

The Knights’ Council therefore resolved to establish the ’Holy Purge Fleet,’ sending forces to directly invade Diablo Island in order to survey the island and sever their breeding cycle at its source...

The fleet captain and knight commander of that era recorded a detailed report summarizing their exploration of the monsters’ nests:

We dispatched a brave reconnaissance unit that fought its way into the heart of Diablo Island’s rainforest and limestone mountains for a full three months, slaughtering tens of thousands of beasts and displaying their heads impaled upon the tips of spears.

This island contains nothing but beasts driven by primitive instinct, fighting among themselves for shelter in crevices and dark caves. Diablo is no different from an ownerless hellscape inhabited solely by low-level monsters.

The mission was a complete success. Every last one of them was killed.

From this day forward, no more beasts will invade our world.

End of record.

”....”

Rafinya’s face remained completely expressionless.

She slowly closed the chronicle and returned to her position with her hands clasped together. Her expression looked troubled.

Seeing this, Sauce asked,

”What happened?”

Rafinya remained silent for a while before slowly speaking.

”...It’s not there.”

”What’s not there?”

Rafinya tilted her head up to look at him.

”Not a single sentence says that Diablo had a human-like form.”

From two thousand years ago all the way to one hundred years ago,

there was no Demon King, no stone castle, no organized army, no written language, and no civilization of any kind.

There wasn’t a single living creature with a humanoid structure.

If there had been one, it would have been written down. There was no way people a thousand years ago would have overlooked something like that.

Yildiz’s eyes widened.

If the natural process of evolution required millions—or even hundreds of thousands—of years to transform a four-legged animal into an intelligent, bipedal creature... then how had Prince Fury... Yildiz... and the demons of the present day come into existence?

”Mr.Fury once said that Diablo never kept records, so he didn’t know who ruled before the previous Demon King. That made us assume that the Diablo of that time must have been humanoid like you... able to speak, like you all are... but this...”

There was no Diablo with a humanoid form like this.

Ten centuries... or merely a thousand years on the timescale of the world.

It was impossible for those iron-shelled monstrous beasts to have evolved into humanoid demons with brains, language, and culture in such a short period of time.