435 - Leonardo's Perspective - Camille and Jasper 1
...I feel like it's about time I got in touch with Jean-Jacques.
Sheltered by the Divine King, it seems more than a month had passed without me realizing. Even since Camille hid us in the cave connected to the Tower of Dawn, over a week had passed. Tina was still acting strange as ever, but she'd stopped staring at me with those probing eyes. In her own way, with whatever parts of her seemed to be missing, she must have accepted that I'm her brother. She clung to me, pulling my hand wherever she went. At this rate, even if a forced march was out of the question, it seemed she wouldn't resist moving along with me.
Several more days passed. I'd thought about grabbing a soldier to ask them to relay a message to Camille, but I soon realized there was no need. I'd been told I could go anywhere in the cave, and if there was somewhere I wanted to go, I could just ask the imps loitering around my feet. There was no need for me to bother involving people as intermediaries.
...It seems there are differences among the spirits too.
I can't say for certain, but it seems the spirits in this cave can be divided into three types. The intelligent ones that seize any opportunity to demand my name, the ones that act preemptively at the slightest hint of me wanting to do something, and finally the ones that are simply noticeably larger than the other spirits - three types. As for the large ones, it's safe to consider them higher-ranked existences than the other spirits. They gave orders to the smaller spirits around them, and the spirits obeyed readily.
There's no visible difference between spirits that demand a name and those that don't. Though I'm grateful that whenever I'm about to carelessly ask something of them, they always check first whether I'll give them my name. With humans, if someone deliberately demanded compensation afterward in a way that's hard to refuse, it would be troublesome - but apparently with spirits, in such cases it's possible to just say "that was something you (the spirit) did on your own" and skip the thanks. That's what the Divine King had taught me. He must have foreseen that I'd end up surrounded by spirits like this. The advice was so perfectly accurate that I couldn't make sense of it otherwise.
...I wonder why some spirits occasionally call Camille 'Camilo'?
Maybe it's simply because the names are similar, and the differences between human names don't matter much to spirits. When I observed carefully, there was a bias in which spirits called Camille 'Camilo'. All the large spirits called Camille 'Camilo', about half of the name-demanding spirits called him 'Camilo', and the spirits that acted before being asked - like the imps - called Camille 'Camille'.
...No, wait. Isn't the very fact that they distinguish Camille by name strange in itself?
Humans each have names. The spirits seem to understand that, but they don't distinguish individual humans by name. Even when they want my name, they just want the name. None of the spirits have ever actually called me by my name.
...Truly, they're beings completely different from humans.
They say that in the age of myth, humans and spirits interacted normally as neighbors. I wonder if beings with such different sensibilities could really have gotten along. Such doubts arise, but the Divine King was on earth during the age of myth. The Divine King's mission was to mediate between humans and spirits, so things probably worked out well enough. The Divine King knew the nature of spirits well enough to easily explain to me how to deal with them. I don't think the Divine King alone could arbitrate all disputes between humans and spirits, but he was able to convey each side's thinking to the other. There must have been disputes that could be settled between humans and spirits alone, without the Divine King's mediation.
...I never thought the day would come when even I would meet the Divine King.
Unlike Tina, I'm not a Spirit's Favored Child. It had never occurred to me that I, of all people, would have an opportunity to meet the Divine King, who had hidden himself away in the spirit world. And not only did I see the Divine King's form - I was also taught directly by the Divine King how to interact with spirits. You'd have to go back to the age of myth to find a human besides Tina who'd experienced this.
...Actually, Tina was the only human since the age of myth to have encountered the Divine King.
By the coincidence of fulfilling my promise to Tina, even I ended up facing the Divine King. If the number of humans encountering the Divine King keeps increasing like this, the day when the Divine King returns to earth - like in the age of myth - might be near.
"Is this it?"
--Camille, this room.
The room I stepped into, guided by an imp, felt cooler than the other rooms. Rather than a vague impression, it was distinctly chilly. Since the other rooms maintained a comfortable temperature, the coldness of this room was probably deliberately arranged using some mechanism.
"It stinky. Smells bad."
Noticing the strange smell in the room, Tina pinched her nose with the hand not holding mine. She only said "stinky," but what filled the room was a faint deathly odor. A rotting smell.
"...Want to wait by the door, Tina?"
"No."
Since there was a deathly smell, it would be better not to let Tina go deeper into the room. I told her to stay at the entrance, but Tina disliked being away from me more than the rotting smell. She let go of her nose and grabbed my arm with both hands instead. At this point there was no way she'd listen to me, so I had no choice but to let her do as she pleased. At least in case we came across something that needed to be hidden from her, all I could do was make her grab onto my back instead of my arm.
"So they still had this."
With Tina stuck to my back, I advanced toward the center of the room. The only things that could be called contents in the room were an examination table in the center and some large mechanism beside it. In shape, it looked like the top of a treadle sewing machine. I didn't know what the mechanism was for, but several glowing panels similar to the ones in the small room leading to the Tower of Dawn were attached to it. And whether the mechanism had been used or was scheduled to be used, Jasper's corpse - already beginning to rot - was laid out on the examination table.
...He'd said something about burying it along with the entrusted item, hadn't he?
The fact that he hadn't been buried yet felt a bit unnatural. If it had been a near-fatal wound, it wouldn't be strange for the body to still be unburied as a result of attempted treatment, but Jasper had already been dead when he was being carried in the carriage. I couldn't understand the point of keeping a corpse for over a week.
...Is this one of those things? Like how he used my injury for some experiment - did he use Jasper's body for something, or plan to use it?
It was entirely possible for Camille, who seemed easygoing but was surprisingly shrewd. If there was material available for the experiments he wanted, he'd probably use it even if it was an acquaintance's corpse. I've only known Camille for a short time, but I think he's the kind of person who might do something like this.
"Tina, you shouldn't look."
I sensed Tina stirring behind me, so I turned around and blocked her view. My stopping must have made her curious about what was in the center of the room. Tina, whose eyes were covered, seemed to have been possessed by the contrary switch that sometimes kicked in - which was a problem. She puffed out her cheeks, then grabbed my hand that was blocking her view and pulled it away.
"...Jasper?"
I didn't want to show Tina, who I couldn't predict how she'd react to death, the corpse of someone she knew. But Tina, who couldn't possibly understand my concern, displayed her contrary nature and peeked at the examination table in the center of the room - wanting to see what I'd hidden from her. Tina, who still kept searching for Kalisa - perhaps unable to acknowledge her death even while sensing it - how would she react to Jasper's corpse? Jasper's betrayal had led to Tina being taken to the Zugall Empire and losing Kalisa, but I hadn't received any report from Giselle either that the current Tina had shown any particular reaction to Jasper. I truly couldn't predict how Tina would react to Jasper - to his death.
Tina stared at Jasper's corpse, then deflated her puffed cheeks and wrapped her arms around my waist. She didn't try to approach to confirm his face, but she seemed to recognize him as an acquaintance. With a forlorn expression, she hugged my waist.
"Oh my? Finding this room... you've been wandering around quite a bit, haven't you?"
I'd told the imp to guide me to Camille. But Camille wasn't in the room I'd been led to. It seemed the imp had guided me not to the room where Camille was, but to the room Camille was heading to. It seemed we had arrived at the room before Camille. From behind, Camille entered the room with slow footsteps.
"Didn't you say you'd bury Jasper's body?"
"That's the plan. It's just..."
Since they'd gone through the trouble of obtaining the corpse, he wanted to run some experiments as the ideas came to him, Camille said with a small shrug, not looking particularly apologetic. That he'd done it as a matter of course was exactly the answer I'd expected.
"Even so, I'm not sure using a corpse as an experiment subject is right."
"What's wrong with it? It's right there. It's not like I'm saying I hate corpses, and it's not like I'm creating new corpses either."
If he said he wasn't creating corpses, I couldn't exactly argue with that. Creating a corpse would mean killing someone who was alive. Rather than killing someone living, it was surely better to use a conveniently obtained corpse that was right in front of us. Though from a humanitarian perspective, I had my doubts.
"That said, when it was you it worked properly, so why won't it work this time?"
Whether he was performing some kind of operation, Camille spoke while pressing the glowing panels. According to Camille, the mechanism that had worked as intended when used on me didn't work at all on Jasper. Or rather, to be precise, the mechanism had only worked properly on me, and had never functioned correctly otherwise.
...It only worked on me, and it apparently operated by borrowing the power of spirits - the reason was simple.
It was probably the same reason the spirits acted for me. Because it was used on me, the spirits had lent their power at that time.
This was just my speculation, but if Camille's research was attempting to forcibly draw out the power of spirits, his research would never bear fruit. Camille was trying to repeat in the present era the mistakes humans had made in the age of myth. There was no way the spirits would lend him a hand.
"...What did you do to Leo?"
The arms wrapped around my waist tightened. Tina, who had realized from the conversation that Camille had apparently done something to me, turned a hostile gaze toward Camille. At that gaze, for some reason the imps at my feet cowered. The imps crouched down, holding their heads, then started tugging at Tina's hem as if trying to distract her. Unfortunately, since Tina couldn't see the imps, it had no effect.
...Is there something there?
The imps were pulling at her hem desperately, trying to take her somewhere. When I followed the gaze of the imps that were luring Tina toward the wall - away from the cluttered center of the room - I noticed glass set into the wall. Beyond the thin glass, something even more transparent was embedded.
"...Teo? I feel like your brother called himself Shin..."
"Ah, that was it. Leo was Jin. It's Jin. Not Shin."
It seemed Camille had remembered the name I'd given slightly off. As for Tina, she seemed to have forgotten that I'd told her to call me 'Jin' until we returned to Grenore. Between the two of them having this slightly mismatched conversation it was probably fine, but outside this room, I needed them to properly call me by my alias, 'Jin'.
"What did you do to Jin?"
"I conducted a healing magic experiment on your brother..."
"Magic?!"
Tina latched onto Camille, who was shrugging his shoulders saying the mysterious power wasn't easy to control as he wanted. It seemed Tina was weak to the word 'magic'. Thinking back, I felt like she'd shown some expectation toward Aurelia's nickname of 'Witch of the Valley' too. Wondering if a witch could use magic.
...Back then, Alf and I crushed Tina's expectations together.
We'd shattered the dreams of Tina, whose eyes had been sparkling with hope, telling her that magic didn't exist. Looking back now, I feel like we could have let her dream a little longer, but we were adults who didn't understand a child's dreams, so we crushed Tina's expectations right away. You could say it was just the typical way adults treat dreaming children, but according to Tina, she apparently had a pride in being a grown adult at that time. Even though she was an adult, she'd been sparkling-eyed with anticipation for something, and Alf and I had trampled on it without realizing.
"Grandpa, can you use magic? Are you a mage? Did you use magic on Leo?"
"Grandpa's not a mage, but I'd like to be able to use magic. If you reincarnated in another world, you'd want to use magic too, right?"
"Yeah! I wanna use magic!"
...Tina's guard dropped in an instant.
The word 'magic' was apparently that appealing to Tina. Normally it took time for Tina to talk to someone she'd just met, but now she was latching onto Camille - though she didn't let go of my hand, she released her arms from around my waist. Tina was relatively quick to warm up to elderly people, but the speed at which she dropped her guard around Camille was abnormal. This was probably another effect of the parts missing from the original Tina.
"Yeah, yeah. Magic really is romantic, isn't it. You want to use it, right."
"Did you try to use magic on Jasper too?"
"He's a bit crushed, you see. I thought it might be nice to fix him up a bit before burying him..."
"It's not going as I'd hoped," Camille said, pressing the glowing panels on the mechanism. Tina seemed interested in the mechanism, restlessly looking back and forth between me and it. She wanted to get closer to the mechanism, but didn't want to leave my side.
...This is bad.
Perhaps because Tina had taken an interest in the mechanism, spirits began gathering around Camille. To be precise, around the mechanism. The small old-man spirit wearing a crown of grass that had healed my wounds the other day appeared, looked at Jasper's corpse, and shook its head. It seemed Jasper couldn't be healed even with the spirits' power. When I wondered what they'd do, spirits that seemed to be the same type as the imps appeared, each holding a wooden mallet, and began examining Jasper. This time they didn't shake their heads, so it seemed they could cause some kind of change.
"What's that machine? Isn't it magic?"
"Right now it just looks like a machine, but someday this will become a magic tool."
Camille answered Tina's questions one after another. I felt like he'd said he was a researcher, but it seemed Camille had no intention of keeping his research secret. He seemed to place restrictions on guns, but he answered Tina's questions freely. More likely than not, he thought she wouldn't understand even if he explained. I could hear it too, but I don't think I could understand even half of what he was saying.
...A mineral that can draw out the power of spirits, huh.
It was the first I'd heard of it, but it seemed a mineral that could draw out the power of spirits had been discovered in the Zugall Empire. Apparently, all mechanisms that borrowed the power of spirits - like spirit lamps - used this mineral.
...Is that what's embedded in that wall?
The transparent thing behind the glass set into the wall must be it. Some of the imps were hopping up and down beneath the glass-embedded wall, trying to show it to me and Tina.
[Author's Note]
I couldn't write as much as I planned, but I'm out of time.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.