“To be honest, the Emperor is nothing but a coward hiding in the palace. Currently, our biggest enemy is Marquis Pryde.”

As the man called Belliran calmly replied, the woman sitting next to him also muttered with a gloomy face.

“That man is unusually strong, and also cruel. ……As if he’s not human.”

So they were investigating Ioan.

When he said he ‘managed’ the 3rd district, did he mean these people?

Delphine was increasingly realizing how significant it was that she had come here.

“His unknown past, his inhuman strength. There’s something strange about Marquis Pryde.”

The Belliran man concluded.

“We’re investigating that. For the liberation of the barrier. Does that answer your question?”

Delphine nodded, then hesitated for a moment whether to tell them about Ioan being a commoner.

But she wasn’t sure yet if they were trustworthy enough for her to divulge everything she knew.

They probably felt the same way.

“We asked the first question, so now it’s the lady’s turn to ask.”

The Belliran man asked, staring at Delphine as if examining her.

“You must have felt something strange to come all the way here, right?”

He added in a cold tone.

“……About the man who cut your father’s throat?”

This is the last question.

What should I ask?

To get closer to the truth…

“There’s one thing in common with the corpses that he, or they, killed. The eyes are missing.”

“For example, was there anything unusual about the eyes of the severed head?”

After hesitating for a moment, Delphine finally spoke.

“……The eyes.”

Delphine didn’t miss the slight flinch of both the man and woman called Lin.

“I want to know about the eyes. How they’re related to the recent murders in the capital, and why Glasscock’s eyes disappeared.”

“……As expected. You’re sharper than you look.”

This time too, the Belliran man smiled with satisfaction.

Delphine felt that this man was testing her through this Q&A.

“As it happens, this is related to my second question. ……Then shall I finish asking first?”

“What are you……”

He suddenly put his hand in his pocket and threw something at her without hesitation.

Delphine caught the flying object in an almost reflexive motion.

When she opened her hand with a bewildered face, she saw a clear, transparent crystal.

It was the same crystal that was attached to what they called a ‘radio’.

“What are you trying to……”

Just as she was about to shout in anger.

A flash of multicolored light burst from the crystal she touched.

The once transparent crystal now held a soft light inside, like an opal.

It was as if the light that had just burst out was trapped inside the clear crystal.

The smile that had been on the blonde man’s face disappeared completely.

The man, seized by what might have been joy or shock, muttered as he looked at the glowing crystal in her hand.

“I guess there is a God after all.”

Was it her imagination that she saw a strange sense of victory flash across his eyes at that moment?

The other two, who had been sitting with confident attitudes, also looked quite surprised.

“……I can’t believe it was true. When I heard Belly’s words, I was skeptical.”

“What’s going on? How did the Fosum charge automatically? By what principle? Belly? Lin?”

The blonde man who was asked the question muttered with a face full of strange joy.

“That’s what we need to find out from now on……”

Why are they all reacting like this?

“I still haven’t received an answer to my question.”

As Delphine handed back the crystal he had thrown, muttering with a displeased face, the Belliran man quickly smiled.

“Ah, I apologize, my lady. But could you understand if it was a process to answer your question?”

“But what do the eyes have to do with this crystal?”

Without answering, the man pulled out a black crystal from his other pocket.

Except for the different color, it was surprisingly similar in shape to the one in Delphine’s hand.

“Is that……”

“It was difficult to obtain. I don’t know how many of our agents were sacrificed to get this one piece.”

The man answered in a heavy voice and placed the two crystals side by side on the wooden table.

“First, I should explain about Fosum.”

“Fosum, is it……”

Delphine said, looking at the transparent crystal the man had picked up.

“Is that what you call the thing commonly attached to items said to be from the Northern Continent?”

Last time, when she visited the clinic in the 2nd district, there was a crystal like this attached to an object there too.

Then too, when her hand touched it, the object suddenly emitted light.

So had she unknowingly ‘charged’ it then too?

“Oh? You’ve already figured out that much?”

Belly’s eyes lit up with interest.

“Then the explanation will be much easier.”

But Delphine still looked dubious.

“So is it really from the Northern Continent? But that place is clearly……”

“A place where barbarians live, that’s what the Imperial family explains.”

Belly’s eyes, which had been smiling, suddenly turned cold.

On the other hand, Delphine frowned deeply as if trying to guess something.

An object not used by anyone on this peninsula.

It emits light just by touching it, and transmits the voice of someone far away.

It’s almost like…

“Magic, is it?”

The smile on Belly’s lips deepened.

“……That’s right. You really are beyond imagination, my lady.”

He calmly explained, holding up the transparent crystal.

“Of course, we don’t know much about magic either. The lineage of magic in this empire was cut off three hundred years ago with the witch hunts.”

“……”

“However, this is what we’ve found out so far. Two things are needed to use magic.”

“Fosum and magic formula.”

At that moment, Lin, who had been sitting quietly until now, suddenly spoke.

“To be more precise, Fosum is just a vessel, and what’s important is some kind of energy inside it.”

The man muttered, examining the flickering light inside the Fosum that Delphine had charged.

“……Something we still can’t identify.”

“You don’t know what it is?”

To Delphine’s puzzled question, this time the Belliran man answered.

“That’s right. According to Northern Continent literature, we only know that the power is called ‘Aurum’……”

“If it’s Aurum……”

It meant “dawn light” in ancient language.

The man called Lin took out a small, square gray object from his pocket.

It was an object with a round hole in the center, just the right size for a Poxum to fit in.

Like all the Northern Continent items Delphine had seen so far.

“This is what the Northern Continent people call a ‘lighter’.”

“Lighter…?”

“It’s an object that replaces matches. Of course, until now, we couldn’t use it easily because charged Poxum was very rare, but…”

The man inserted the Poxum that Delphine had just charged into the hole of the object with a click.

Then, when he pressed open the lid of the object with his thumb, surprisingly, a small candle flame popped up above it.

“All items from the Northern Continent have incredibly complex and delicate magic formulas engraved inside them.”

The man called Lin continued his explanation in a calm tone.

“It operates on the principle of driving objects engraved with magic formulas using the energy called Aurum charged in the Poxum.”

Delphine nodded as if she understood.

“That’s right, that’s it. When that power is all used up, the Poxum can’t perform any function.”

Then the man called Veli exclaimed as if pleased.

“That’s why we’re using the charged Poxum secretly smuggled from the Northern Continent very sparingly.”

Only then did Delphine realize why they had reacted so intensely just now.

If such a precious item was recharged as soon as it touched her hand, it’s indeed something to be surprised about.

“But why…?”

Delphine mumbled with a confused expression.

“What is this Aurum energy that drives magic, and why does the Poxum automatically charge when it touches my hand…?”

“That, we don’t know yet either…”

Veli muttered, looking at Delphine with a strange sense of elation on his face.

“We’ll have to find out from now on… Without fail.”

Delphine frowned and rubbed her temple.

Her head was in chaos.

She felt like her brain was about to overload due to the unfamiliar truths and confusing information that had come rushing in one after another.

However, she must not forget the original purpose for which she had undertaken this dangerous outing.

She came here to find out Ioan’s identity.

Delphine, who had barely regained her composure, slowly parted her lips.

“…Then what about that black crystal? What is it?”

Finally, after a long introduction, it was the main point.

As Delphine asked, Veli picked up the black crystal in his other hand.

“The container called Poxum is the same, but what’s inside is not Aurum.”

“But how can you be sure?”

Delphine asked with a questioning face.

“Couldn’t it just be a different color?”

“Aurum is literally pure energy, and it can’t exert any power on its own.”

The man explained with a serious face, holding the two crystals in both hands.

“However, the power contained in this ‘black crystal’ can exert magic-like power by itself.”

“Without a single magic formula.”

The man called Lin added with a rather serious face.

“And inside that central barrier, there’s a force using these ‘black crystals’ containing this unknown power.”