437 - Leonardo's Perspective - Camille and Jasper 3
"Why did Jasper's childhood friend die?"
"Almel? I think Almel... was killed because she could read Japanese."
Of course they probably didn't intend to kill her from the start. As far as I can tell, Almel's death was death by exhaustion from torture. No one would deliberately try to kill a precious reincarnator who can read Japanese, someone who might not appear again for who knows how long. Unless they were an utter fool.
...Well, I suppose it was because they were that very fool that they tortured her until she died of exhaustion.
Thinking of Tina right after she was taken from the Imperial capital, if she had remained captive in the Imperial capital like that, she would have met the same fate in the near future. In the Zugall Empire, where it's considered natural for those above to exploit those below, the Emperor who sits at the very top of those above could never make use of lower-ranked people in a way that lets them thrive. They've always kept them down and exploited them. They wouldn't even have the simple wisdom to stop short of killing. They'd never even think there was a need for it. Because in all their lives before that, they never had to consider it.
"The Zugall Empire still has the research materials left behind by the reincarnator Camilo. The Emperor ordered Almel to read them, and she refused. That's why she was killed, I think."
"...She should have just read the research materials or something."
Tina tilts her head, as if to say if she was going to be killed anyway, she could have just read a single book. Camille gives a wry smile. His unexpected reaction catches me off guard, considering he'd use even an acquaintance's corpse for experiments if he saw an opening. It seems even Camille doesn't want to touch the reincarnator Camilo's research materials.
...The reincarnator Camilo's research materials, huh. I wonder what's written in them?
Whatever's written there, it's probably not something that saves lives like Saint Yuuta Hiraga's work. The reincarnator Camilo is infamous as the man who brought weapons called 'guns' to the small nation that became the Zugall Empire, and burned half the Erath continent in war. I couldn't imagine the possibility that this Camilo had left behind anything useful to people.
"I'll show you Camilo's research materials later. If you look through them once, you'll understand why Almel refused to read them."
Camille seems to know the contents of the reincarnator Camilo's research materials. Even if he hasn't reported to the Emperor, Camille should be able to read Japanese as well. If he had the opportunity to see the research materials, he should have been able to read them.
"...By the way, why are you two in this room? I've received reports that you've been looking into various rooms, but by my calculations, it should have taken you another five days to reach this area."
It seems word had reached Camille that Tina was walking around the cave searching for Kalisa. Since our exploration depended on Tina's stamina, even traveling throughout the cave, it would have normally taken another five days to reach this room. The reason we came to this room today was because of the imps' guidance. Since it wasn't left to Tina's own feet, it must have thrown off Camille's calculations.
"We were looking for you to discuss contacting the outside."
"Ah, so that's it. It's amazing that you managed to find me while searching for me."
Apparently he usually shuts himself away in a room deeper in the cave, or moves from room to room. They say you can't easily catch Camille just by asking the soldiers guarding the cave where he is.
...Spirit guidance is amazing.
As a result of asking the imp for guidance, not only did we catch Camille, we succeeded in getting ahead of where he was headed. I look down at the imp at my feet with gratitude and respect, and it puffs out its chest proudly.
"It's a little difficult to send word out from this cave. Actually, it's possible to send word from here, but it takes a while to get a reply. After all, the former Emperor decreed that not just stopping by this cave, but even approaching without permission is treason."
According to the former Emperor and current Emperor Edeltroute's orders, the number of people who can approach this cave is limited. Considering that, sending word outside should be difficult in itself, but Camille says that part is easy. The only problem, it seems, is that it takes time for a reply to arrive.
"...If that's the case, then doesn't hiding us go against the Emperor's orders?"
Me and Tina, citizens of the Kingdom of Ivizia, are being hidden in a place where even one's own countrymen are charged with treason for approaching without permission. If the Emperor finds out, there's no way it'll end peacefully.
"Not only am I letting people in without permission, Edel has even forbidden me from leaving this cave myself. It's too late to worry about that now."
Apparently even when he went out to pick me up, Camille didn't get permission from the Emperor. The soldiers in the cave were originally stationed to keep watch on Camille, but it seems they've been completely captivated by the convenient and comfortable life within the facility. They've been won over by Camille who guarantees their life in the cave, and apparently reports full of falsehoods are being submitted to the Emperor. According to the reports that reach the Emperor, Camille is always confined within the cave, and any requests for capricious outings are all recorded as rejected. On paper, it seems Camille's last outing was recorded as the day he picked up Jasper.
...Is that really okay, Imperial soldiers?
Despite being soldiers of a neighboring country, their disloyalty to their duties makes me worry. Then again, the Zugall Empire is a place where even borders can be crossed with bribes. If we're talking about too little too late, it probably is. As a nation, the Zugall Empire can no longer maintain its facade. If even one trigger occurs, the nation called the Zugall Empire will collapse sooner or later.
...That said.
The old man called Camille seems to be living quite freely while being kept by the Zugall Empire as a reincarnator. Deceiving even the Emperor, given abundant research funds and a comfortable research facility, living freely every day.
...Is this what it would look like if Tina used her position as a reincarnator?
In Camille's case, he was expected to make guns. In Tina's case, she's expected to revive the lost secret arts of Saint Yuuta Hiraga. Tina says she doesn't have any significant knowledge and can only read Japanese, but the very fact that she can read Japanese has value in itself. If Tina had approached Christoph with some purpose like Camille did, she would have received treatment similar to Camille's. Abundant funds and space would have been given as Tina wished. In return, what the Kingdom of Ivizia would receive are the prescriptions of Saint Yuuta Hiraga translated from Japanese. Even though Tina didn't wish for it herself, she already has one detached palace and a budget to live there. Tina seems to have been diligently translating Japanese even after returning to the city of Grenore, but Camille wouldn't do that. He claims to have learned from his predecessor Camilo's mistakes. He reports his research results just enough, but he probably doesn't release information that would make him disposable. Camille, who hides us in a research facility overflowing with secrets but is easygoing enough to leave us unchecked, surprisingly has a tenacious side. He probably has that part well in hand.
"Hmm? It still won't move. I thought maybe with you here, it might work..."
He's talking about how the mitten with metal plates moved as expected when he treated me. Even apart from that, it seems the mechanisms powered by spirit crystals, as Camille calls them, move wherever I go. The idea that Camille's creations move near me isn't entirely off the mark.
...Well, it's the spirits that are actually moving them, though.
When Tina showed interest, the spirits gathered around the mechanisms and looked at my face as if asking whether they should move them. Each time I answered in my mind that they didn't need to move, so the mechanism set up around Jasper's corpse remained still. The imp holding a wooden mallet looked dissatisfied, but when I pointed out the spirit crystal, its dissatisfaction subsided. According to Camille's explanation, it's a mineral that can draw out spirit power, but judging from the spirits' reactions, it's probably not just that. The spirits, who try to please me and pretend indifference toward Camille, seemed to show a different reaction to the spirit crystal.
"Can't be helped. I suppose it's time to really bury him."
"Jasper's funeral?"
"Can't do anything that grand here in the cave."
Camille says he'll just move to another location and hold a service together with something else he's keeping, then steps away from the mechanism and walks to the wall. There seems to be another mechanism by the wall, and when Camille presses a glowing panel, something that looks like an arm extends from the ceiling.
"Is this magic...?"
"This is just ordinary electricity. Since I can't draw out spirit power stably yet, I've got electricity running through it as a supplement."
I can tell Tina's interest wanes the moment she hears 'electricity.' Her face, which had been looking up at the mechanism with excitement, droops and buries itself into my side. She's completely lost interest in the arm extending from the ceiling. All the while, the mechanism's arm kept working. It moved Jasper's corpse into a large box that also emerged from the ceiling, then once it seemed to return to the ceiling, it moved along the ceiling to the wall.
"...I can't tell the difference between spirit power and electricity."
As far as I can see, I can't tell the difference. Both the spirit lamp and the ceiling mechanism just look like tools moving without human hands. The spirit lamp apparently uses a spirit crystal with spirit power to light up, but even with my eyes that can now see spirits, I couldn't see the spirits doing anything.
"Electricity is electricity. Japan had it too, so it's not magic."
Tina explains in a half-pouty tone. Since she already knows about the technology called 'electricity,' it seems she doesn't get the thrill of it feeling like magic.
"...Where does this electricity come from?"
"Mainly hydroelectric power using the river that flows deep in the cave, I think?"
Apparently there's also a little wind power using the blizzards near the summit, and some solar power. I'm guessing the 'electri' part of 'electricity' is the 'denki' part, but listening to Tina and Camille talk, I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
"...Who is that?"
Tina asks who it is, but I somehow understand. In the box that came out from beyond the wall when the ceiling mechanism moved, a young girl's corpse was contained. If it's the 'something else' he's keeping that he took out to bury together with Jasper, there's no one else it could be.
"This is Almel."
I watch as the corpse of the girl Camille calls Almel is transferred by the mechanism's arm to lie beside Jasper's corpse. Jasper and Almel were supposed to be childhood friends, but seeing them laid out like this, they look like parent and child. Jasper was of Tina's parents' generation, while Almel, who was a child at the time, was sold to the Zugall Empire and died of exhaustion from torture shortly after. Since the two died at different times, it's only natural their bodies are different sizes. Jasper's body continued to grow after Almel's death and became an adult.
Almel's remains survived thanks to Camille's preservative treatment, I imagine. The limbs visible from beneath her clothing, while their shape was preserved, had already mummified. Judging from the unnatural dent in the sleeve covering her arm, it seems the arm is no longer attached to the body. The red hair on her head looks as unchanged as when she was alive, but that's probably a wig. When it shifted during the transfer from the box, Camille carefully adjusted it.
"...Well then, I'm thinking I'll move to another location and cremate the two of them."
Camille invites us to see them off, saying he can't do anything as formal as a funeral, and Tina raises her hand to participate. Tina has a complicated expression regarding Jasper, but she seems to have enough feeling to pray for his peaceful rest. As for me, I have mixed feelings, but if Tina wants to do it, I'll go along with it. I think letting her do what she wants is best right now.
We load the boxes containing Jasper and Almel onto a cart with wheels that Camille says runs on electricity, and move through the cave. The place he chose for cremating the two bodies was a space with a small room leading to the Tower of Dawn. This room was a high-ceilinged space, but it wasn't suited for burning things. When I look at Camille wondering what he intends to do, he presses a glowing panel on the wall.
"The ceiling..."
I thought Camille pressed a glowing panel on the wall. But it seems that was some kind of operation after all. Eight lights run across the ceiling, and then the ceiling begins to open from the center, turning into an open space exposed to the outside.
"Oh? That's rare. It's clear outside."
Looking up at the open sky through the opened ceiling, Camille tilts his head. When I went outside with Tina before, it was also clear around the Tower of Dawn, but according to Camille, clear weather is rare. Apparently the area near the summit of the Erath mountain range is constantly blizzard-like.
"Weather aside, what is that mechanism?"
Knowing Camille's personality, I had some idea, but I couldn't help pointing it out. He said he was moving the boxes with Jasper and the others' bodies to cremate them, so I followed him, but there was no firewood prepared. What was there was a ceiling that opened with a mechanism, and a large mass that seemed to be some other big mechanism. Seeing this, I realize that even the act of cremation itself is just another experiment for Camille.
"I think flame-type magic is really the basics, you know."
I wanted to point out "the basics of what," but Tina reacted to the word 'magic' that came up again. It's safe to say Tina's guard against Camille is completely gone now. Drawn by the word magic, Tina cheerfully approaches Camille and his mechanism.
"What kind of magic are you using?"
"If this machine works, we're scheduled to see a Fireball."
"Fireball! The most basic of the basic of fire magic!"
Tina raises both hands in delight, but is that really okay? I don't know what kind of 'magic' Fireball is, but at the very least, using corpses in an experiment isn't something you'd call cremation. When everything gets linked to experimentation like this, I feel a kind of exasperation bordering on respect for Camille's slightly-off passion.
...I hope it succeeds.
Maybe it can't be helped that I thought this, half in exasperation. I can't forgive what Jasper did to Tina, but Jasper was probably a version of me. A version of the future I would have walked if I hadn't been able to get Tina back, and if when I did, Tina was already a corpse. Thinking about it this way, I wonder how much pain it must have been for Jasper to watch Tina, who's from the same Mey village as Almel and is also a Japanese reincarnator, being raised by me even after her identity as a reincarnator was known. If Almel's value as a reincarnator had been properly understood and handled, Tina's current life would have been exactly what Almel should have had. Protected and cherished by everyone, never in a million years waiting for death by exhaustion after torture.
"It's okay, I'll burn it for you."
At the words I hear suddenly, I turn my gaze to the mechanism aimed at the box containing the bodies. There, I see a spirit I haven't seen before in this cave, holding its hand over the area where the spirit crystal is embedded.
"Oh? Did it move?"
The mechanism lights up for just an instant. When Tina looks up in surprise at the mechanism that glowed with a soft light, the tip of the mechanism aimed at the box shines brightly, and a beam of light extends from it for a moment before flames erupt on the box containing the bodies.
"...As I thought, it seems to work properly when you're around."
"It's probably your imagination."
As the coffin begins to burn with flickering flames, Tina, frightened by the fire, returns to behind my back. Camille looks between the mechanism and my face, tilting his head. I deny the idea that the mechanism works properly when I'm nearby, pointing out that the mechanism in the previous room didn't move. But I hear the spirits around me calling me a "liar," so the mechanism probably really did move because I was there. More precisely, because the spirits gathered around me moved it.
...Still, why do the spirits lend me a hand?
I understand spirits helping the Spirit's Favored Child. I also understand them obeying the Divine King's orders. But them doing things for me feels somehow unnatural.
"The spirit crystal is properly in place, so why didn't it work earlier, I wonder?"
Saying how strange, how odd, Camille opens a lid attached to the mechanism. Beneath the lid, there are many glowing panels, so it must not have been a lid but a cover to prevent misoperation.
"Sukiyaki! Urya!"
It felt like an instant. Tina, who should have been hiding behind my back, suddenly darts out and pokes the spirit crystal Camille was touching with her finger. Since I'd heard it was a mineral, I thought a poke with a finger wouldn't do anything. But the spirit crystal Tina poked turns white for an instant, and the next moment it shatters into pieces and vanishes as light.
"What!?"
The reason I didn't shout "What's going on?" was probably because I saw Camille's face first. Camille, whose spirit crystal was broken right in front of him by Tina, stood frozen with his mouth hanging open as if his jaw had come unhinged. And as for the surrounding spirits, they looked like they were applauding Tina's rampage, with even those who hadn't shown themselves before appearing and dancing wildly around.
"...Tina? What did you just do?"
I can understand Camille being dumbfounded, but the spirits being this happy is strange. Grabbing the shoulder of Tina, who's proudly puffing out her chest after destroying the spirit crystal, I peer into her face. She seems completely uninterested in what she's done and is looking up at Camille, not me.
"This is small. There's more, right? Where's the big one?"
To Tina, who declares with a smile that she'll destroy them all, the stunned Camille seems to come back to his senses. He says he can't tell her where they are, they're important things he can't have broken.
"That won't do. The Divine King asked me to destroy the 'Spirit's Thrones', you know."
I hurriedly cover Tina's mouth as she declares he shouldn't hide them but bring out every last one. From Tina's words and actions, various things start to connect for me.
The mineral Camille calls spirit crystal seems to have been what Tina calls the 'Spirit's Throne.' It's completely different in size and shape from what I heard from Tina, but Camille must have carved it down somehow to make it small. I've heard from Tina that the Divine King's remains are contained within. There's nothing more to it. Regardless of whether he was aware of it or not, Camille was carving up the Divine King's body and drawing out spirit power. It's no wonder the spirits hate him, and there's no way they'd cooperate with his experiments.
Gramps Camille is at maximum blasphemy. As for Jasper, I think this is about the end for him.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.