Chapter 113

“Grrr!”

When I went to inform them of the test results, Falone held his head and collapsed face-first onto the desk.

Luano, who had been leaning against the wall and gnawing on dried meat, stared somewhat distantly at the papers still spread across the table, like a gambler reading the flow of the situation.

Countless combinations of magic circles were written there, carved with the traces of their intellectual adventure.

“Perhaps this magic circle itself is fundamentally wrong after all?”

Scratching his head roughly, Falone pointed to a sheet of paper pasted on the wall.

“This part is especially suspicious!”

Falone sharply struck one corner of the magic circle.

The magic circles carved into existing magic stones were combinations of several kinds of basic magic circles.

What Falone indicated was one such thing that could be called a basic magic circle, and Gerario had also been doubtful about it.

“It certainly is suspicious. It is also strange that this does not appear in existing magic stones currently in actual use.”

“But every copy of a large-scale magic circle that we can obtain always includes this basic magic circle. I cannot think of it as meaningless, but at this point, I can only think that this is the reason large-scale magic circles do not activate!”

“But we also tested versions that omitted it, and those did not work either.”

At my words, Falone collapsed face-first onto the desk again.

“I do not understand! It is a mystery!”

As if it were a student made to stand in front of a blackboard after being accused of misbehaving, one magic circle was being hung out to dry.

It was an extremely simple magic circle, and I did not think anyone could have copied it incorrectly.

The strange thing was that even when tested by itself, it performed no function at all, and Gerario, Kururu, and Cole all said that it made no sense as a magic circle.

In that case, the possibility that came to mind was that it was a deliberately concealed part meant to prevent dangerous large-scale magic circles from activating.

What kind of magic circle would fit here? A known one, or an unknown one?

Whichever it was, a darkness far too vast to solve by brute force spread out before us.

Beside Falone, who was groaning and writhing, Zezel resumed cleaning the room while curling his large body up small, as if to say, “Good grief.”

The place where they gathered was a small mansion prepared for them.

Originally, it had been meant as a place where the four of them could gather, but they had completely stopped going back to their own homes and apparently lived here now.

For now, there did not seem to be any trouble arising from their communal life, so perhaps it was fine to leave things as they were.

It seemed Zezel handled cleaning, Luano managed money matters such as shopping, and Alan was in charge of repairing the house and maintaining the furniture.

Surprisingly, Falone apparently handled the cooking, so he probably liked making things to begin with.

“But speaking of meaningless, I’m curious about this one too.”

What Luano indicated with a jerk of his chin was a sheet of paper posted on another wall.

Unlike the magic circles, it was packed full of strings of characters.

“The characters that are always in the magic circles?”

“According to the magic stone craftsmen, magic works even without this, but when delivering magic stones to the empire, they’re always told to include it, right?”

“Apparently so. I think it’s probably like a charm or prayer. Since the principles behind magic circle construction seem to have been lost, they may be afraid to change anything now.”

If the principles had been lost, then changing something might make it impossible to return to the original state.

That was why procedures being inherited blindly had happened now and then in my previous world too.

The example I knew was pickled pufferfish that had been detoxified.

Apparently, no one understood why the pufferfish was detoxified, but if they followed the procedure, it became detoxified, so not a single step of the processing method could be changed, and they could not even update the equipment.

“This old man says it’s a cipher from the ancient empire era.”

At the end of Luano’s gaze, Falone had collapsed face-first onto the desk, and he answered while remaining in that posture.

“I merely said that such a theory existed. Of course, many people have attempted to decipher it, but none have solved it. I think it is meaningless decoration!”

“Does it not resemble existing writing?”

“It does not. The number of character types does not match either. It is a child’s prank!”

The fact that he answered immediately meant he had likely attempted to decipher it before.

The way he spoke ill of it had to be because he was frustrated that he had failed to solve it.

“A cipher, huh…”

I thought that I had not considered it that way while looking at the character strings written on the paper.

I had simply thought they were letters lost over the course of history.

“Actually, do letters from the ancient empire era still remain?”

When we discovered the secret of synthetic magic stones, our guess had been that the past empire had destroyed itself through magic it had made too powerful. Just the other day, when I studied various things to receive the delegation from Roran, the general historical understanding had been something like that too.

If the ancient letters that were the answer had been lost, this would become a cipher that could never be solved again.

“Indeed. They remain, mainly in documents managed by the church.”

Perhaps his mood had improved after shouting for a while, because Falone raised his body from the desk.

“The great library at the church’s headquarters has a large collection of documents, and it is full of fascinating knowledge.”

“You’re talking as if you’ve seen it yourself.”

At Luano’s teasing, Falone shrugged.

“I have seen it, after all. I heard that there were secret arts of astrology there, so I ingratiated myself with a book restoration craftsman, falsified my status, and slipped inside. Since it was a place rarely entered by people, I was able to stay for quite a long time… but in the end, I was found out and nearly hanged.”

As Falone spoke while stroking his thin neck with his own hand, Luano looked exasperated.

“However, I have heard that even the church has not succeeded in deciphering these letters. There is even a legend that it was impossible even for sages versed in letters from all times and places.”

“The language of demons.”

“Huh?”

At Zezel’s muttered words, all four gazes gathered on him.

Contrary to his rugged appearance, the timid Zezel shrank back at the unexpectedly strong reaction from those around him.

“Mm… There is something like a legend passed down among us.”

“Sounds interesting.”

When Luano urged him to continue, Zezel spoke with a little hesitation.

“I heard it from companions who work in mines. In old, terrifyingly old magic stone mines, these letters are sometimes carved there.”

“In magic stone mines?”

“Yes. A fellow who lost his way in an endless ore deposit finally becomes a monster from the mine’s miasma. With the faint reason left to him, he seeks help, but his body has already become a monster. Eventually, while even that remaining reason is turning into a monster, what he finally manages to carve into the wall is the language of monsters… or so it goes…”

The content was enough to make even the usually noisy Falone fall silent.

It was probably a sad legend passed down only among beastfolk who were forced to work like slaves in magic stone mines, never appearing in the human world.

Or perhaps it was filled with resentment toward the humans who confined them inside the mines.

“It is a legend. There is… no certainty.”

Zezel rounded his back and resumed cleaning.

The one who suddenly opened his mouth was Alan, who had been quiet until then.

“If so, does that mean the ones who developed magic circles were beastfolk?”

I was startled, and everyone present felt the same.

“Impossible.”

Falone said that without thinking because everyone knew the relationship between magic and beastfolk.

In the past, beastfolk had ruled humans with their overwhelming physical strength.

However, because humans received magic from God, that position had been reversed.

“Perhaps those who once worked in the magic stone mines were not us, but humans.”

The tone of Zezel, who always spoke without much confidence, was a little stronger.

When it came to this sort of history, there were probably parts of him that could not remain entirely calm.

“It may not be impossible.”

Luano said with a serious face, then looked at me.

“After all, what we have here is someone who returned from the mine.”

If a corpse was left in a mine, a new soul might dwell in it and bring it back to life.

Moreover, such people might even become magicians, and Iiria, who had been a decorative lord, had expected that Kengo and I might be magicians.

Even if everything had begun with humans meeting God in the deepest depths of a magic stone mine and becoming magicians, I would not be surprised at all.

That was what I thought, but something felt strange.

No, that was right. It actually was strange.

If that was the case, what had humans been doing in magic stone mines before receiving magic from God?

“There may still be secrets in the world that we do not know.”

Falone said as he stroked his chin beard, and I deeply agreed.

“However, much of history lies in darkness. The ancient empire was destroyed twice, even three times. Now, only documents that luckily escaped disaster remain.”

“Can’t you use your stargazing to find out what happened in the past, old man?”

Luano asked that in a somewhat teasing, but also slightly serious, tone.

“If one masters astrology, one can point out whether there was a solar eclipse five hundred years ago and whether there will be a solar eclipse five hundred years from now in the same way. Then perhaps past history and the future too… or so I think, but I have yet to reach that secret art.”

“It might just be a signature, surprisingly.”

Luano smiled wickedly.

“A signature? What do you mean?”

“A commemoration saying, ‘I’m the one who made this magic circle.’ Gamblers usually die penniless in the end, but because of that, there are plenty of people who gamble purely to carve their names into legend.”

“Oh, so a signature…”

If that were the case, I could understand why it was treated as an unsolved cipher.

Because there was no meaning to it in the first place.

“But even if that explains why common character strings are seen… what about the parts that are absurdly long?”

“A collaboration.”

At Luano’s immediate answer, everyone looked at one another.

“Indeed, the larger the magic circle becomes, the more the mysterious character strings increase. So many people pooled their wisdom, then.”

“Though I say this myself, if they’re names, it’s strange that some appear an absurd number of times while the others don’t overlap much. When you write them out, there’s clearly a bias in the frequency of the characters that appear.”

“Th-The ones that appear many times might be the masters of something like workshops. The long character strings might be a list of influential members of a school.”

Alan the bricklayer pointed that out.

“That certainly sounds likely. Hmm. If so, if only even one record of that school remained.”

As they began loudly discussing it, something suddenly caught in my mind.

It was the phrase “frequency of the characters.”

“Falone-san, about this possibly being a cipher.”

“Mm?”

“Have you done frequency analysis?”

I felt as though I heard a blank sound.

“What?”

“Frequency analysis.”

Language had statistical characteristics.

Because of that, no matter how complicated one made the procedures of substituting letters, rearranging them, and so on in an attempt to create a cipher, if the characteristics of the language were not consciously destroyed, even after encryption, it could sometimes statistically show the same characteristics as the original language.

“There is something called Zipf’s law.”

I was not especially smart, so I could never prove the Pythagorean theorem from scratch on my own like Falone and the others.

However, thanks to living in an information society, I at least had fragments of knowledge I had picked up here and there.

“Alan-san, you’re good at counting things, right?”

“Well…”

Alan had arranged bricks all day and counted their number so much that his master had suspected he might be possessed by a demon.

“Could you count every character that appears here, then arrange them in descending order?”

“I can, but…”

“And Falone-san.”

“Mm?”

“Can you somehow prepare something with a lot of writing in ancient imperial letters?”

“That is simple. I have a copy of a holy text from the ancient empire era.”

“Why do you have something like that?”

At Luano’s retort, Falone shrugged.

“I have often been pursued by inquisitions. It is a charm. I tell them that I am studying the ancient church and doing nothing suspicious, then I say, ‘Look at this,’ and take out that holy text. Clergy are generally ignorant, but once someone is at the level of an inquisitor, they can at least read set prayers even in ancient letters. Then, if I insist that I am a solitary theologian, I can surprisingly force my way through. It is a standard tactic for people like us.”

Saying that, he puffed out his chest and laughed loudly.

Bluffing and confusing others was probably effective in this world, where the circulation of information was limited.

“Then please count the characters in that ancient imperial text the same way and arrange them in descending order.”

When I said that much, they were indeed clever.

All four of them looked at me with faces as though they had been caught off guard.

“Surely not…?”

“Yes, that’s exactly it. Language has almost universal characteristics. If the characteristics of the ciphertext resemble those, then we’ve hit the jackpot.”

For the characters to correspond perfectly one-to-one, a huge amount of plaintext and ciphertext, as well as luck, would probably be necessary, but if there was a certain amount, it would be more than enough as a clue. After that, we could match characters with similar appearance frequencies one by one and eliminate contradictions.

However, of course, there was also a sufficient possibility that this was merely a signature, and if it had been made to counter frequency analysis in the first place, deciphering it would be impossible.

Since I did not want to get their hopes up too much, I warned them about that, but they were already no longer listening.

Then, four days later, on a windy midnight.

Falone, looking haggard from lack of sleep, yet with only his eyes glittering like a vampire’s, came to the magic stone workshop.

And the live-in boy who came out to respond let out a scream like tearing silk.