It didn't take long to organize the interrogation results.
The capital's fall. The First Imperial Prince's death. The mage scramble over the Moon's Signal.
All three were big news, but only the first would change our immediate course.
If the capital was swarming with undead, charging straight in would be foolish. If the enemy were human, we could push through with momentum. But undead don't feel fear.
When I reported to Father, he thought the same.
"Make camp nearby."
With those words, our policy was set.
After making camp, the decryption work proceeded smoothly.
We assigned ten of our mages to the three captured mages.
For reference, all ten were combat mages.
Whether in magical reflexes, muscle mass, or body count, they surpassed the prisoner mages.
Eight men, two women. I deliberately chose intimidating-looking ones.
The mage trio was trembling in the corner...
"I'll introduce one more person."
The tent entrance opened and Duke Sylvester stepped inside.
"He will be participating in the decryption work with you."
Three pairs of eyes turned toward the entrance simultaneously.
The oldest one reacted first.
"That person couldn't be..."
"It's Duke Sylvester."
The youngest answered before the question was even finished.
They were asking and answering their own questions, but this wasn't the atmosphere to point that out.
What filled their faces now was awe.
"This can't be..."
"A pleasure to meet you, young friends."
"Your Excellency, is it truly you?"
"Why are you here, no, why are you with Krustein..."
"Because I've sworn loyalty to Sir Adrian here."
It was a casual remark, but this was tremendous news.
"H-how could that be..."
By their common sense, this made no sense.
Even swearing loyalty to Walther Von Krustein, a fellow duke, would be absurd, but to me, Walther's son?
The oldest one glanced at me and whispered quietly.
"You fool. He must be in the same situation as us."
"Ah..."
There seemed to be some misunderstanding.
From the perspective of prisoner mages, they apparently interpreted Duke Sylvester as also being captured for some reason and having no choice but to obey Krustein.
There was no need to correct that misunderstanding. This was actually more convenient.
Cooperation through shared identity is more useful than obedience through fear.
"I'll tell you what we've discovered so far."
Duke Sylvester nodded leisurely and received their chatter.
"You said you focused on ancient language comparison?"
"Yes, that's right!"
"An interesting approach. However, it seems somewhat lacking, so I'll fill in those gaps."
The atmosphere definitely changed.
Fear was pushed aside by scholarly enthusiasm. It was an instinctive shift.
Just as a hungry person's face changes when given food, a scholar's expression changes when given a research topic. Same principle.
When Duke Sylvester asked several ancient language questions, the youngest answered, the oldest supplemented, and even the one with the bloodstain on his forehead joined in.
Our other mages mostly watched.
I also stepped back to observe.
The decision to bring Duke Sylvester was correct.
Jab quietly slipped out of the tent.
With a torturer's instinct, he seemed to have read that his role was over.
Celine was the same. She unfolded her arms from beside me and let out a long yawn.
"Older brother, this looks like it'll take forever."
"Once scholars start talking, they never stop."
"Ah, oppa. Now that I think about it, Elizabeth said she has something to tell you."
"Tell her I'm busy now. I'll see her later."
"Okay."
Celine left the tent, flipping the entrance cloth aside.
A stream of cold air from outside entered briefly before closing again.
Duke Sylvester re-verified the ancient language records line by line.
Not only what the prisoner mages had compared, but also the rest they hadn't gotten to. The number of ancient languages in Duke Sylvester's head was on a different level from theirs.
This man was truly a walking library.
He compared one by one, overlapped them, flipped them, rotated them.
The three mages were overwhelmed by Duke Sylvester's work speed and could barely keep up with transcribing.
Our mages?
They ate snacks and chatted with me. These people were closer to warriors than scholars anyway, just with staffs instead of swords as weapons.
And then the conclusion came.
"This is definitely not a language of this world."
Duke Sylvester declared.
The shoulders of all three mages dropped simultaneously.
"I thought there'd be hope if Your Excellency came..."
"It wasn't lack of knowledge but the direction itself that was wrong."
He was right. Even comparing every language existing in this world, the match rate would be zero.
Of course. That wasn't from this world.
I looked down at the letters on the parchment the mages had spread out.
Strange symbols.
Unfamiliar characters mixing curves and straight lines.
To them, it would be an indecipherable alien code.
But there was a sense of déjà vu tickling the back of my head.
I'd definitely seen this before.
Where?
When?
I had no memory. But my eyes remembered.
I'd seen it. Definitely.
The three mages looked up.
"Right now?"
"You've worked hard, so go eat."
And I took out paper and wrote orders directly to the ten combat mages.
"Whatever else, these friends worked hard, so feed them something good. Don't give them weird stuff just because they're prisoners. Of course, you also worked hard monitoring them."
"Yes, sir!"
The intimidating faces all bowed their heads and left the tent.
After confirming they'd all left, I also confirmed the soundproofing device was on.
"Now let's get to our work."
I took out the military treatise.
Not the main text but the appendix. The pages at the very back of the book, completely unrelated to strategy or tactics.
What my past self had left behind just in case, just in the slightest chance.
<In case, just in case, of contact with that world, I leave the most commonly used language from there. This is called 'English.'>
Below that, unfamiliar symbols were written in rows.
A form that resembled no characters from this world, yet strangely organized.
The moment Duke Sylvester saw it, he stopped.
"You left this behind."
His tone was closer to awe than admiration.
"Characters from that world... To record such things in advance, truly my liege's foresight is endless."
"My past self did this. You should praise that side."
My past self who predicted even a future of lost memories and left that world's language as an appendix.
An impressive fellow. I had to acknowledge it.
But the more impressive he was, the more shabby my current self became.
Anyway, there was no time to indulge in sentiment.
I transcribed the Moon's Signal onto parchment and placed the appendix's characters side by side.
But...
"This is all?"
"Too few."
The number of basic alphabets written in my appendix was 26 uppercase and 26 lowercase, totaling 52, but the number of characters written there... even at a glance, was more than 52.
Duke Sylvester began counting the symbols in the signal.
"At least 500 types or more."
52 and 500.
There was no need to even compare.
Of course, just in case, I tried overlapping them.
The result was as expected.
No, beyond expected.
Zero match rate.
"Does that world also have multiple scripts?"
"Just as this world has many languages including ancient ones, there's no reason that side would have only one."
"That's true."
I spoke calmly, but inside I wasn't.
"The possibility of a message coming in our language..."
"None. Since you said there was only that one language."
The insurance my past self left was exactly one.
The most commonly used language. The highest probability.
It was a rational choice, not a wrong judgment.
But it didn't match.
Being rational and being correct are different matters—I was painfully confirming that now.
"I'm a bit tired now."
Duke Sylvester didn't ask further.
**
I walked from the research tent to my private tent.
The private tent was visible from afar. It was particularly splendid among the tents. Well-guarded too, and there was only one tent more splendid than this, with no other tent similarly guarded.
"You're working hard."
"Loyalty!"
After brief greetings with the guard knights...
When I entered the private tent, Elizabeth was sitting there.
As my personal maid, this wasn't strange.
"I conveyed that I had something to say, but you're late."
"I had some work. So what is it?"
She looked me over once.
"Really, you're so young yet what's the rush..."
She must have seen a face soaked in fatigue.
I knew I had dark circles under my eyes.
"You don't need to know."
"You still have no interest in me."
I didn't answer.
As if expecting that silence, Elizabeth bowed her head slightly, then opened her mouth in a different tone.
"The head maid came looking for you."
My heart skipped a beat.
"What? Lise?"
"Yes."
Lise.
A name I had no memory of. But letters carved into every annotation of the military treatise.
The girl my past self relied on most. And the Progenitor Dragon, Krustein.
"What did she say?"
"She left this and went."
What Elizabeth took from her bosom were several books.
Neither old nor new. With traces of someone reading them again and again.
I took them.
My fingertips trembled slightly. I knew I couldn't hide it, but it didn't matter.
The writing on the cover.
<Adrian and Lise's Korean Dictionary>