The Crown Prince In Hiding

The Newcastle Border

”Must be pretty boring, huh~ Having to patrol the border like this.”

”Who has time to spare like you?”

”I work in shifts, you know.”

”I don’t want to waste any more brainpower on this.”

”By the way, I ran into something strange on my way here.”

”What did you find?”

”About 20 kilometers away, in the 16-o’clock direction, there’s what looks like some kind of construction site. But I’ve got a feeling something strange is going on.”

He pointed in the direction.

”There’s a group of villagers, more than ten of them, crowding around to look at something. No idea what it is.”

”Looking at what? What’s going on?”

”No idea.”

”What?! ”

”I’m reporting this to a border patrol officer, aren’t I? Don’t you need to investigate?”

”Why didn’t you tell me sooner, you idiot!”

”A knight shouldn’t speak to a civilian like that.”

Rafinya hurried toward the location Yildiz had mentioned.

When she arrived with Yildiz at the checkpoint in the Newcastle mountain range, she found that everything was exactly as he had described. However, far more villagers had gathered around than Yildiz had reported.

She hurriedly pushed her way through the crowd alongside two other border patrol knights.

The foreman, who knew Rafinya just as every Newcastle resident did, stepped aside to let the general’s daughter see what lay before them.

It was a construction site where workers had been blasting apart rock formations and clearing the area to build a steel fortress under orders from the central authorities.

But all work had now come to a standstill.

”Lady Rafinya.”

”What happened?”

”Well... after we blasted that rock outcrop around five this morning... we... um...”

The foreman realized that explaining it verbally would be difficult. It would be better to let her see it for herself.

When the foreman stepped aside, the scene revealed itself.

A gigantic, snow-white boulder had been split in half by the explosion.

But buried inside it were the remains of some kind of organism.

It resembled the skeleton of a colossal creature, yet it was embedded seamlessly within the rock strata, as though millions of years had fused it with the mountain until the two had become indistinguishable. The most clearly visible parts were several enormous, solid plates overlapping one another in a row, resembling armor that extended along the creature’s head and torso.

At the front, a bizarre structure protruded in multiple layers, resembling an enormous jaw assembled from solid bone plates. The tips bore traces of numerous sharp teeth arranged irregularly, each one large enough to make the workers standing nearby instinctively step back.

Even more astonishing was its surface.

Although the passage of time had eroded it until its color had darkened, almost blending into the surrounding rock, certain sections had somehow retained an unbelievable level of detail. The joints between the individual plates remained clearly visible, while their curves and raised ridges flowed naturally into one another, as though this were not merely a remnant abandoned inside a mountain, but once belonged to a living creature that had moved and breathed.

Some workers began debating whether it was the remains of a sea monster, while others believed it might simply be an unusually shaped rock formation.

But nobody could explain why something resembling a creature from the ocean floor had ended up buried so deep within the rock at this construction site.

Looking toward the stretch of cliff that had yet to be blasted, they could see a section of the same structure disappearing into the mountain, as though what they had discovered was only a small fragment of a gigantic body, with much more still buried beneath the rock.

The machinery had fallen silent.

All that remained was the wind blowing through the rubble and the stillness of the workers staring at something that should never have been there.

Rafinya stood stunned...

The only person she could think of in this situation was not the commander of the border patrol.

It was the one person who needed to come and examine this thing, together with his entire team.

Two Days Later: Anfield

Rafinya’s urgent letter arrived in Dan Burn’s hands, leaving him wide-eyed and unable to sit still.

He passed his student’s letter to Casca so she could read it.

The very first thing he said to her that day was:

”We need to get there. Right now. Before those people do something stupid to it.”

”I’m not at all confident that Luminus will allow the professors to enter the site...”

Casca’s words were like a tug on his sleeve, bringing him back to his senses.

Dan fell silent for a brief moment before turning back.

”Get Thomasin and the others here. Right now.”

.

.

On a new morning when heavy rain was pouring down, Senior Thomasin Mayfield was summoned at the crack of dawn. She arrived with her backpack and belongings in a disheveled state, her hair a mess and her face untouched by makeup.

She ran after the carriage as it began to depart, paying no attention to the people on the road, then leaped aboard, grabbing the carriage door with one hand.

Someone inside reached out and pulled her in.

When the door closed, the sound of the pouring rain was shut out. She shook the water from her hair.

Inside sat Dan Burn and Princess Nora Ophilis.

”Is this really true, Your Highness?!”

Dan handed her Rafinya’s letter to read. In it, Rafinya had described the specimen in as much detail as she possibly could.

Senior Thomasin put on her glasses. After reading for a short while, her eyes widened.

”Now you understand why we have to hurry.”

With Princess Nora’s help in securing the use of her personal carriage, they were able to make the journey from Artheris to Newcastle in just two hours, arriving in the morning.

By then, the gigantic boulder had been sitting there for nearly a week, coinciding almost exactly with the approaching end of Rafinya’s military internship.

However, the authorities had yet to issue any orders about what to do with the discovery. At least, not yet.

This made Rafinya somewhat anxious, because she knew perfectly well that under normal circumstances, if the authorities saw no value in ancient animal remains buried inside a rock, they would simply order the workers to resume their work as usual.

In other words, this boulder would be blasted apart all the same.

”The issue isn’t just this one boulder.”

Yildiz spoke up.

”The real question is, how can we be sure this is the only boulder containing the remains of an ancient creature?”

Rafinya turned to look at the hundreds of other gigantic boulders stacked in rows, waiting to be destroyed to make way for the border fortress.

What if some of those other boulders contained ancient remains, too?

But could they really stop the workers? They weren’t Luminus authorities with the power to freeze the entire project.

The longer they halted the work, the more time they lost. And lost time meant money wasted for nothing, all in exchange for excavating ancient remains that served no practical purpose.

This was especially troublesome given that Luminus was currently watching the resurgence of evolutionary theory, a theory that had come back to haunt them after a hundred years.

”Looks like they’re here.”

Yildiz, who had been standing with his arms folded, turned and spotted a fast-moving carriage that had just arrived.

Rafinya immediately recognized it as belonging to Nora Ophilis.

She could see the people rushing out in a hurry: first, Senior Thomasin, followed by Dan, and finally Nora, who had disguised herself as an ordinary commoner by tying up her hair.

Naturally, the moment they arrived, they were stopped.

The border knights raised their spears to block their path, firmly declaring that entry was prohibited.

”This is Luminus territory. Outsiders are not permitted to enter.”

If they had been ordinary commoners, they would have had no choice but to turn around and leave with their heads hanging.

However—

”They’re my friends.”

”Lady Rafinya?”

Dressed in her blue-and-white trainee knight uniform, Rafinya grabbed the guard’s spear and pushed it aside.

”I called them here.”

”Are you sure that’s appropriate?”

Rafinya wasn’t going to repeat herself a second time. When the guard realized that the daughter of the Saint Pauli family was invoking her privilege to grant them a special exception, he reluctantly stepped aside.

”This way, Lord Fury.”

Rafinya led them toward the boulder.

Yildiz had already vanished into the wind. He was probably avoiding Prince Fury to escape a serious punishment, though he was likely keeping an eye on things somewhere nearby.

”Here it is, Lord Fury.”

”My God...”

Thomasin stood with her mouth agape, stunned by the remarkable completeness of the specimen.

Her fingers traced the sharp ridges of the stone, feeling the texture of its scales, preserved almost perfectly, untouched by the passage of time.

Seeing it with his own eyes left Dan stunned as well. This specimen appeared to be some kind of fish, one of truly enormous size.

At first, he had assumed it must be one of the giant fish from the age of colossal creatures.

Then Thomasin said something that left him bewildered.

”I can hardly believe it... This is a creature from one of the earliest eras of life...”

Dunkleosteus