Editor 98

1891 (2)

When Kleio returned to the Asser mansion, completely exhausted, it was already late into the dawn, the sky beginning to brighten.

‘Wow, seriously. There were a lot of old folks there, but everyone’s stamina is insane. They’re not even college freshmen who just turned twenty, but if this was Seoul, they’d have drunk and danced until the first subway. Is that upper-class swag? I must have peasants for ancestors. I couldn’t do that even if I was told to.’

Kleio, shedding his dinner jacket, waistcoat, tie, and braces like a snake shedding its skin, threw them all on the floor, then finally tossed his shoes and socks aside and buried himself in the bed.

Thud!

“Ugh.”

Behemoth dived and jumped onto Kleio.

Dark fur scattered all over the white sheets. Having drunk several more glasses of punch and champagne throughout the night, he seemed drunk as well.

Crushed under the purring Behemoth, who was lying belly up, Kleio scratched under the cat’s chin and spoke.

“Motta, Motnim. Mr. Mot.”

“What.”

“You ate a lot of tasty things today, didn’t you? Hm?”

“That’s right. The royal banquet’s reputation was no lie. This noble cat is very satisfied.”

Behemoth, who became more talkative, even with his words slurred from alcohol, chattered about how the butter-sautéed tongue sole meunière that came after the lobster was fantastic, and how the lemon and butter aroma lingering on the plate was indescribably good, all while wagging his tail.

“I’m glad, venerable teacher. Then, for the sake of duty, please answer me. What exactly is Melchior?”

Behemoth, curled up in a strange posture, kept yawning and gave a half-hearted answer.

“What do you mean, what is he? He’s human, isn’t he? His ether level is average, but his sensitivity is explosively bizarre, and he has two types of strange stigmata.”

“Right, our Motnim can originally tell the types of stigmata. Then, can you also know the restrictions of the stigmata?”

“Ahem, I am the great wise cat. Of course. ‘The Allure of Meow-Meow’ is a passive skill, but ‘Insight Structure’ had its flow bound.”

“…Hey, what is ‘The Allure of Meow-Meow’? Is the skill really called that?”

‘I thought another muse’s name would be hidden in □□□, but Meow-Meow? Am I so tired my ears are malfunctioning?’

Lost in anguish, Kleio was thumped by Behemoth’s tail.

“Meow-Meow!”

“Mr. Mot, instead of high feline language, can you speak in lowly human words?”

“I already am speaking in human words! Why can’t you understand!”

As Kleio failed to understand his words, Behemoth meowed louder and louder.

It was strange.

No matter how many times he tried, Kleio couldn’t hear the muse’s name that modified ‘allure.’

He asked if Behemoth could write it out, but the characters Behemoth drew with his front paw were indecipherable to Kleio. They just looked like random cat paw strikes.

While the impatient cat and the powerless human struggled through the night—

Suddenly, the promise ring on Kleio’s hand glowed in the dark room. It seemed like some kind of alarm.

<Bound Item: Clio’s Promise

—Due to insufficient narrative intervention, you cannot use all functions of .

Missing words can only be fully understood when the necessary and sufficient level of narrative intervention is acquired.>

‘Damn! Of all times, fuck! That damn narrative intervention level!’

Letting out a long sigh, Kleio sprawled out on the bed.

Unable to control his temper, Behemoth scratched at the pillowcase and then flopped on top of Kleio, panting.

‘…Right. Things were never going to go that easily. Even with narrative intervention over 30%, this is all I get. If I’d asked Mot before, I wouldn’t have gotten anything.’

Too tired to even be angry, Kleio calmed down and gently scratched between Behemoth’s brows.

“If I can’t hear it, I can’t hear it. Let’s move on. So what does it mean that ‘Insight Structure’ was bound?”

“Most unique skills don’t have unlimited activations. All of his have already been used up, so now they require certain conditions to be met. Even I, the great one, do not know what those conditions are.”

Apparently, Kleio’s guess had been correct.

The crown prince, despite having such terrifying skills, seemed to live so earnestly—he might have been preparing for the skill’s limitations.

“Mr. Mot, you are great indeed. With that great insight, is there anything else unusual you could tell me?”

“Unusual?”

“Like, Melchior isn’t actually human, or he’s from another dimension, or at least a magical beast or something.”

“Why are you talking nonsense when you haven’t even been drinking? The crown prince is human. Only among humans do kings and crown princes arise.”

“Human, huh. Like me? Like Arthur? Or like Chell or Isiel?”

Possessed people, those deeply involved with the world’s fate, regular characters.

All three types would be people, but that wasn’t what Kleio meant.

“What exactly is your point? Human is human.”

“If not, maybe he’s been blessed by the daughters of Mnemosyne…”

“God does not exercise power in that way.”

“Then how does God exercise power?”

“WEOOOOOONG! WUNGNYAAAK! MWEOOK! MYAK!”

Behemoth’s usually clear, mischievous voice now sounded only like animal noises, which made Kleio feel bad.

Moreover, as the cat’s lecture continued, the promise ring’s messages overlapped in his mind.

It wasn’t just the light that dazzled his eyes; his finger, encircled by the ring, started to tingle like static electricity.

Finally, a golden spark jumped. Kleio reflexively pulled his hand away from Behemoth’s body.

<Bound Item: Clio’s Promise

—Function use restricted due to insufficient narrative intervention.>

The ring trembled as if sobbing.

This was the first time he’d seen such a strange reaction since acquiring it.

If anything, it made Kleio want to dig into this point even more.

“Let’s stop talking about gods. Then, was there anything strange about the crown prince? Like he became a different person after I nearly drowned?”

“There isn’t. He was born with that body and soul and came to be as he is. Do you want to treat him as something other than human just because you think you can’t beat him? Hmph, so timid.”

“I can’t deny that… But really, Mot, you’re not much help either. You boasted that the ‘Eye of Truth’ was a power from before the world split into nine, but you can’t even give me a clear answer.”

“You brat! If you can’t understand when I tell you, it’s your fault for being lacking. How dare you blame this wise cat!”

Whack!

Struck by a thick paw, Kleio buried his head deep into the pillow.

“Ugh!”

“Enough nonsense, go to sleep now!”

Rolling down to Kleio’s side, Behemoth curled his huge body and soon began to snore.

Kleio closed his eyes as well, but exhaustion kept him so wired he couldn’t fall asleep.

At first, he’d brushed off the alienness as just part of being in a fantasy world, but now it revealed itself anew beneath his eyelids.

The banquet hall.

Chell picked up a champagne coupe and, with Behemoth, sniffed the freshly uncorked Liognes Blanc de Blanc.

Chell, showing off, explained it was a special make, not very sweet, with strong aroma, made only from Glycine grapes.

Blanc de Blanc, champagne made only from Chardonnay grapes without blending, was a product of the 20th century, when grape harvests became stable.

In the Kingdom of Albion, wine made only from Glycine grapes was called Blanc de Blanc.

‘And Glycine grapes tasted almost the same as Chardonnay. Mucatel was Pinot Meunier… The champagne here isn’t sweet, in the 19th-century style. It tastes like the 20th-century one I knew. But it’s only 1891 now.’

Everything was like that.

Endlessly similar to the original world, yet endlessly different.

‘This is a strange world.’

When he closed his eyes, he recalled the singing echoing in the royal central hall, the foreign words, people’s whispers, the twins’ laughter, Arthur’s silly jokes, Melchior’s voice, and Aslan’s taut presence.

His thoughts soon left the palace, crossed rivers, passed schools, and expanded across the plains and mountains receding behind the train’s window.

The Kingdom of Albion on the Dernier continent.

Here, a blight that blackened potatoes never swept the continent. Industrialized farms produced abundant crops, and as far as records went, the whole continent’s harvests were always good.

In a world with no generation that suffered famine, even the very poor didn’t starve on the street or freeze to death in the workhouse.

‘Even without penicillin and blood transfusions, people live quite long here and don’t die or become disabled so easily. Because there’s healing magic…’

Even the reign of terror of Carolingian dictator Victor Moreau did not cause death on the scale of the ‘Great Revolution’ Jeongjin knew.

‘I’m too much of a modern person… It feels awkward to compare Melchior or Aslan to Hitler or Stalin. Even those two princes couldn’t massacre or purge millions.’

The fundamental difference between the world Jeongjin was born in and the two worlds he was reborn as ‘Kleio’ came from the existence of magic.

A civilization based on ether instead of coal for industrialization was too alien. Industry was developed, but the rivers were clean and the air still clear.

Here, trade did not begin with the sword and the Bible, and people of different skin colors were not traded as commodities.

The new continent was never discovered, and the nations of the Meredies continent south of Dernier were simply equal trade partners.

‘Even if the weapons or the method of using magic are different, ether responders seem to be born at similar rates worldwide. That bridges the technological gaps between countries.’

This world seemed to compensate for the sins humanity had committed.

Knights and magicians, possessing superior abilities, could have ruled by violence, yet the world was thoroughly bound by human law and rules, or by the glory of honor and duty.

‘In the real world, humans achieved modernity by killing many of their own kind even without borrowing a power like ether.’

With its strange verisimilitude, yet fairy-tale kindness in some parts, this was a world where the total suffering humanity had to endure was less.

‘Jeongjin’ saw the author’s shadow beneath this structure.

Just as writers who experienced world wars cast the shadow of their lives over their fantasy works, this world felt as if it had been created under an order where the author, having lived through the age of violence, had intentionally excluded certain elements.

‘Sometimes, what is omitted speaks the author’s intent more powerfully than what is written.’

It was hard to believe that someone of ‘Jeongjin’s’ own generation could have planned such a utopian project.

‘…If not a peer, is it a professor? But even among the professors, there was no one old enough to have fought in WWII or the Korean War.’

His speculation about the author fell into a deeper maze. Before he could revisit a new hypothesis, an avalanche of sleep swept over Kleio.

At last, the long night was ending.

It was January 1st, 1891.

---

After the banquet, the New Year’s gatherings continued.

Attending the Capital Merchants’ Guild banquet and the charity banquet hosted by the Capital Defense Force with Dione, Kleio was exhausted again pretending to be a young businessman.

Despite Dione’s efforts, Kleio’s dancing hardly improved, so he suffered her scolding and rebuke all night.

Kleio firmly resolved never to attend another ball.

Of course, the hard work paid off.

No, if he’d worked that hard and gotten nothing, it would have been disheartening.

‘I found out that Duke Cruel actually supports not Aslan himself but strongly supports Queen Zuleika. Surprisingly, the two are rather distant.’

Attending the Capital Merchants’ Guild New Year’s banquet was an excellent choice. Though called a merchants’ guild, it was really a kind of economic federation, a venerable organization boasting 500 years of history.

‘The latest information is always where the money is, that’s an eternal law.’

If there are Yeouido stock market rumors in the real world, here in the Beatus autonomous district of the west bank where the stock exchange is located, there was a short bulletin circulating among industry people.

Kleio, making good use of , gathered every bit of information from the ballroom.

‘At the end of last year’s opera season, when Aslan was away for military training or whatever, Zuleika also happened to go to the Lake Palace for convalescence at just the right time?’

The title of Duchess of Lake Nineveh, given to the queen, originally belonged to Queen Isolde, wife of Leonid I, and it was not merely an honorary title.

The Duchess of Lake Nineveh governed Lake Nineveh, the nine islands floating on it, and the palace built on the main island as her fief.

The day after returning from the New Year’s banquet, Kleio bought a map of the Dernier continent and spread it out on his bedroom desk.

Lake Nineveh was located upstream of the Clotho River, a deep and vast lake formed by glacial melt from the Pintos Mountains.

Fesselrn, the city where Geheim was kidnapped, and Lake Nineveh were only 40 km apart in a straight line.

‘This is really suspicious.’

Looking at the map of the Dernier continent before him, Kleio couldn’t help but draw a mental red line.

‘I’d better organize all this information soon and send it to Fran.’