Walwiss thought the commotion inside the magical tower would settle down, but on the contrary, it grew worse as time passed by. The number of people arguing for him to step down from his position increased. One of them was an attendee at the tower’s most critical meetings while others were skilled mages who came from lesser but still elite families. The magical tower was now completely divided into two fractions. There were still many people who supported Walwiss, but the size of their opposing force wasn’t negligible.
As the opposing force grew bigger, attacks against Walwiss grew stronger and harsher. Even the meetings intended to resolve the confusion were filled with shouting.
“That’s the current situation,” Orland said to Zich. The wrinkles on his forehead indicated that he was also suffering.
As he listened, Zich’s expression also didn’t look pleased. “It’s strange. Even if they are the ones who brought this conspiracy upon themselves, the attacks made against the master of the magical tower have gone overboard. At this point, it doesn’t seem like they have anything to gain.”
‘That’s what I’m saying!’ Orland shouted inside his mind. Currently, he wanted to grab Zich’s collars and shake him.
Orland was the one who created the current situation, but he had also simply followed Zich’s advice—he believed Zich’s words that the future would change according to Zich’s evidence.
‘What kind of evidence is that, damn it!” At this point, Orland was dying to know what ‘this evidence’ was. If it wasn’t for the deaths of his collaborators— the robed figures and Zich’s title as a Karuwiman Honorary Knight, Orland would have abandoned this plan altogether long ago. Yet, Orland couldn’t sever his connection with Zich.
He saw Zich lost in deep thought. As Zich’s lips twitched, Orland ground his teeth as if he was swallowing back the curses rising from his throat. Zich didn’t say it out loud, but his mouth shape was mentioning ‘the evidence’ again.
‘I don’t know what it is, but I can’t let him doubt his evidence.’
“Perhaps…” Orland started to speak, and Zich stared at him.
“Do you know what their intentions are?” Zich asked.
“I have my guesses.” Orland racked through his head to come up with a likely reason.
Zich’s eyes shone as he looked at him. “You really are amazing. I guess it was no accident that you gained a seat at the tower’s highest meetings at such a young age.” Zich sounded very impressed. However, his inner thoughts couldn’t have been any more different.
‘Yes, tell me your thoughts,’ Zich thought. Although Zich had something in mind, the future that he told Orland was nothing more than what he came up with on a whim. The story could sound unreasonable or unlikely, but Zich didn’t worry at all.
‘He is going to fill the holes in my story himself.’ Zich chuckled inside his mind as he imagined Orland sweating bullets to come up with a plausible reasoning.
On the other hand, Orland didn’t know Zich’s thoughts, and he felt a bit better. The Karuwiman’s Honorary Knight thought of him highly—this could help him now or even in the future. Orland said in a friendly tone, “I think there might be a self-coup.”
“A self-coup?”
“Yes. I think my father is planning to find all the people who are disloyal to him. After the incident, people who sympathized with the opposing forces began to come forward.”
“Even those who are not part of the conspiracy?”
“Yes, although my father is an impressive figure as the master of the magical tower, before this incident, he never did anything that could incite public criticism. Well, no matter what the situation is, I suppose there are people who are always dissatisfied.”
“I suppose he’s trying to weed those people out.”
“He might also be planning to mix some other families and mages from different groups. If more of them disappear, the power and authority of the master of the magical tower will grow stronger.”
“Then, the last stage must be…”
“Yes, a self-coup.” Although Orlando had come up with this explanation in a hurry, he was satisfied with his response. He was able to form a plausible scheme by using one of the plans he had in mind for chasing away Walwiss and adding a reason to it.
“Hmm, it’s certainly possible.”
‘Okay, I will go with the self-coup,’ Zich thought. As if he was picking fish from a market, Zich changed the direction of his scheme by the flow of the conversation. It was completely ridiculous, but fortunately or unfortunately, no one realized Zich’s thinking—not even Orland who was in front of him.
“Since it’s better the more evidence we have, I will continue to investigate the group collaborating with my father. I might be able to retrieve another cryptic message.”
‘So send me lots, alrighty?’ Zich thought. Like Zich wanted, Orland thought he should send more secret codes to his collaborators to increase the validity of his self-coup theory.
“Yes, thanks to you knowing how to decipher the code. But I didn’t think you’d also know how to read it, Mr. Dwayne.”
“I also didn’t think I would suddenly see a code I recognized.”
Orland had ended up teaching Zich the code. Of course, he didn’t tell Zich everything; he simply said that it was at a level where he could decipher it if given the time. Although what they each wanted was completely different, that explanation was enough for both Orland and Zich.
“You said it was some writing from an ancient empire, right?”
“Yes. I have quite an interest in languages. I didn’t think the research I did as a hobby would help me now.” Orland felt a bit anxious, wondering if he should’ve told Zich the code that he learned from the robed figures; but he quickly shook his head and thought, ‘It’s those guys who failed their missions and died anyways.’
Orland completely pushed the fault onto the robed figures.
“However, since I’m still researching them, I haven’t decoded all the letters. It can’t be helped that I need more time.” Orland didn’t plan to teach Zich all the codes. He felt no need to, and it was also better for him to gain the upper hand.
Zich didn’t seem very interested in the codes, but he didn’t leave the responsibility of decoding the codes to just Orland. “One of my companions, Lyla, is also researching the codes. Sir, she’s also very impressed by your knowledge.”
“It’s a bit embarrassing. I will work harder to be more helpful to my talented junior.”
Even though this conversation seemed like they were both being considerate of each other, their real intentions were completely different.
‘Since Lyla is also researching the codes, don’t try to be smart and give me fake information about the codes.’ This was Zich’s intention.
Since Orland didn’t know Zich’s dark thoughts, he was obviously unable to realize Zich’s real reason for mentioning Lyla. However, it was enough to make him more cautious.
‘I won’t be able to clumsily manipulate the codes to my advantage.’ Like this, Orland’s thoughts moved precisely according to Zich’s plans.
“But it really is fortunate. Sir, I was able to receive such big help from you. To be honest, I was very doubtful whether or not you would cooperate with me to investigate the master of the magical tower. He is your father after all.”
“I will do my best to help you out, but I hope you don’t misunderstand.” Orland said with a tense voice, “I still believe my father, and even if my father’s crimes are revealed, I will not stop believing my father. I also won’t waver in my belief.”
Orland was reenacting the scene of a kind son who loved his father deeply and had a very steadfast but sad trust in a close family member. Orland’s expression also looked very determined.
Zich nodded his head and mocked Orland in his mind. ‘Yeah, sure, Whatever.’
* * *
As soon as Zich returned to his lodging, he passed several notes to Lyla who was fervently scribbling something while sitting on a desk with all kinds of documents, papers, and books stacked all over the place.
“These are the codes I got today.”
“Thanks.” Lyla took the notes and put down the paper she was writing on.
“How’s it going?”
“It’s going much better than when I had no clues to work with.” Lyla put down her pen and stretched her arms. She straightened up her body and turned her chair.
Zich asked, “You’re planning to rest?”
“A bit. My body feels stiff because I’ve been writing and sitting all day. My eyes are also getting tired.” She turned her shoulders and pressed down the sides of her eyes.
“Take it easy. The codes are not an urgent matter, and we’re getting more clues now.”
“I am taking it easy. I don’t have anything to do for a while anyway. In the first place, I came to Sunewick to see if there was anything that could help me decipher these letters.”
‘Oh yeah, that was the reason why we came here.’ They had originally come to Sunewick to find information about the letters used by the Clowon Empire. ‘Since so many things happened, I completely forgot about the reason why we came here.’
In a way, Lyla was the only one who had been faithful to the original purpose of coming to this city. Then Lyla asked, “Is your plan going well?”
“Yep. We’ll reach the climax soon. When that time comes, Orland is going to climb to the highest peak and then….” Zich lifted his hand high up in the air and quickly slammed it down. “He will come crashing down.”
“…Please try to give the least damage as possible to the other people.”
“Don’t worry. I’ve engraved that deep into my mind.”
However, Zich’s smiling face didn’t seem so trustworthy.
“Ah, but this obviously doesn’t include bad guys, right?” He seemed even more untrustworthy because he said things like this. Lyla held her head and nodded. Even though his actions seemed untrustworthy, he really didn’t hurt innocent people, so Lyla trusted him. Of course, if people did wrong and became Zich’s target, Zich was merciless to them.
Lyla seemed to have taken enough of a break as she turned her chair back to decode again.
“Have you made any progress?”
“Somewhat. If I had just a few more clues, I’d be able to make faster progress.”
“You don’t have to worry about them. I’ll continue to bring you more in the future.” As long as Orland continued to send more codes to his accomplices, Zich would be able to bring more clues to Lyla.
“That’s fine then.” Lyla waved her hand as if to tell Zich to leave, but Zich leaned closer and watched Lyla continue her work. Lyla didn’t say anything either.
“That’s the tablet you got from the ancient ruins in Violuwin, right?”
“Yeah. I think this one will have the most useful pieces of information. However, I don’t know if it’ll be that helpful. I need to be lucky. Since I lacked paper, I didn’t copy all the letters written on the tablet. I didn’t know which sections were important, so I skipped a couple of lines.” Lyla wasn’t expecting much. In the first place, the amount of letters she copied was only a small fraction of the total amount of writings written on the tablets.
‘I should definitely revisit that place later.’ Lyla needed to somehow persuade Zich to go back to Violuwin’s ruins again.
“Yeah, work hard.” Zich seemed to have lost interest as he left Lyla’s room.
Lyla waved her hand without even looking up and went back to work again. It seemed as if her efforts weren’t in vain, because Lyla was soon able to interpret one line. However, it was just one line, and Lyla didn’t know what it meant.
‘I also could have interpreted it wrong.’ Was it a line about banning or preventing some kind of event?
However, Lyla stopped thinking more about this. Since she received clues to decode the ancient writings of the Clowon Empire, she had overextended herself and her mind and body were exhausted.
‘Should I rest a bit?’
Lyla stopped working and blew out the candlelight. But before the light completely disappeared, the candlelight used all its remaining strength to dimly light up the line that Lyla had interpreted.
[You must never use too much of it.]