After-Story Chapter 36: Souma Goes to Yumuen (Part 7)

Rows of characters floated up on the Lunar Inscription one after another.

I stared at them, my eyes opening wide in surprise. I couldn’t help but be captivated by the sight of familiar and unfamiliar characters lined up together.

“Hey, Souma. Are you okay?”

Liscia called out to me, perhaps suspicious of how I had completely frozen up. I came back to my senses and nodded.

“Ah, yeah. I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“So, can you understand what’s written on this inscription?”

“No, not completely.”

“Huh?! Didn’t you say you could read it?”

“Well, I can read it. But I can’t completely understand the meaning.”

I pointed at the characters on the surface of the inscription.

“There are four languages written here, but none of them are from my country. It might be hard for you to understand, Liscia, since you use the Common Continental Tongue… Let’s see. For you, it’s like the language the Seadians use.”

“Then… only you or Tomoe would understand it,” Liscia nodded convincingly.

There were four languages on the Lunar Inscription. Two were clearly English and Chinese. Of the remaining two, one was… probably Spanish. There was the word “El.” If I recall, the original title of El Cóndor Pasa, which feels like the song when you think of South American music, was exactly that.

I had no idea what the last one was. The squiggly characters looked Indian or Arabic to me… Hmm? Wait a minute. English, Chinese, and Spanish are all languages with large populations. Spanish is used in many South American nations. If so, the unreadable one might be characters from India, which also has a huge population.

There might have actually been other languages, but since the bottom part of the Spanish section had crumbled away (it was probably broken off), only these four were displayed. Scratching my head vigorously, I pointed to the alphabet on the Lunar Inscription.

“The most readable part for me is this text here (English)… but I wasn’t very good at it. I studied desperately for entrance exams, but I haven’t touched it in about ten years, so I’ve forgotten the grammar and vocabulary.”

“So, that means you can’t decipher it either?”

“…No, since it’s written alongside this language (Chinese), I think I can understand the general meaning. Even if the spoken languages are different, the characters used (Kanji) are mostly the same. These characters are originally ideograms, so if I take my time comparing them, I think I can decipher it quite accurately.”

“Ideo… ooh… I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”

Aisha was holding her head. Aisha was the best in the Kingdom of Friedonia when it came to martial prowess, but she was definitely weak in this area. However, Liscia also said, “I don’t know what an ‘ideogram’ is either.”

The Common Continental Tongue uses phonograms, so they likely weren’t familiar with the concept. I gave a rough explanation—”It means things like pictures turned into characters”—and then looked at Souji.

“Will this thing answer if I ask it a question?”

“Yeah. They say if a priest touches the inscription, recites a holy chant, and focuses their mind while touching it, the Moon Goddess Lunaria will bestow wisdom upon them… I don’t know if it’s true, though.”

“Your Grace… that is a remark unworthy of an Archbishop.”

Mary held her forehead and shook her head in exasperation. Even after becoming the top of the Lunarian Orthodoxy, Souji’s worldly nature hadn’t changed. As long as Mary supported him, I didn’t think he’d mess up… but I sympathized with her struggle.

“You aren’t thinking, ‘Look who’s talking,’ are you?” Liscia said, giving me a flat look.

I really wish she would stop reading my mind so naturally. I cleared my throat to change the mood.

“Anyway, can I try it once? I don’t know the chant, though.”

“Sure. It’s just us here, do as you like.”

“Roger. Well then.”

I touched the inscription and asked a fundamental question first.

“What is the Lunar Inscription? Please tell me as concisely as possible.”

When I asked that, characters immediately appeared on the inscription.

【Record the past and predict the future】 【記錄過去，預測未來】

“Ah, this is easy to understand. It seems it’s something that ‘records the past and predicts the future.'”

“Hmph. So the way our priests used it wasn’t entirely wrong, then,” Souji said with his arms crossed.

Well, they did seem to predict things like the rise of Fuuga or the necessity of contact with the Seadians in the north.

“By the way, what is the accuracy rate of the predictions?”

When I asked that, 【75%】 appeared.

Hmm… that’s subtle. Thinking that it misses 25% of the time makes it feel like it misses quite often. It’s a little lower than the probability of getting hit by a One-Hit KO move in Pokemon, but still, those hit when they hit. Though I doubt it’s as crazy as the Super Robot games from the WinkySoft era where “100% hit rate doesn’t necessarily mean it hits 100% of the time” or “even a 10% hit rate hits 100% of the time.”

When I explained to everyone that the predictions would be correct with a probability of a little over seventy percent, Liscia tilted her head.

“Knowing that, are you going to use it, Souma?”

“Hmm… I don’t want to be swayed by a future that has a chance of being wrong. It might be fine to use it for fortune-telling, like today’s lucky color, though.”

“Asking something this heavily guarded just for that is a bit much…”

Yeah, I agree. A half-baked future prediction feels like a recipe for tragedy. If a dark future is predicted, trying to overturn it might just lead you straight into the trap… that seems possible. Like a certain Dark Lord from a galactic war. I feel like it’s better for one’s mental health not to know the future. Therefore…

“If I use it, maybe it would be when I want to know about the past?”

“The past… you mean? Is there something you want to know?”

When Aisha asked, I nodded.

“Well, I might want to know a little about the world I was in before… which would be a world in the past from the perspective of this one.”

The first things that popped into my head were the endings of manga that had been running for a long time in my previous world(One Piece). What was the treasure that connects people? Who is the boss of the Black Organization (Detective Conan)? No, actually, just hearing the answer would be kind of unpleasant. I wouldn’t be able to feel the drama leading up to it. As for other things I want to know… Ah.

“…Would it be alright if I asked something incredibly personal?”

“? What do you want to know?”

“I wonder what happened to my house and stuff before I was transferred.”

I asked while touching the Lunar Inscription.

“I want you to tell me what happened to my house and my grandpa and grandma’s grave in the world I used to be in after I was summoned to this world.”

When I asked that, a long string of text surfaced on the inscription. Since it wasn’t a question that could be answered in a single word, it was quite a long passage. It would be difficult to translate this accurately, but I tried to pick out the words I could recognize. Then…

“‘Tatsuya,’ ‘Yoshiaki’… there’s ‘Yashiro’ too… Those are the names of my friends from the world I used to be in. And ‘Iikanji’… that’s our family temple where Grandpa was a parishioner. Grandpa and Grandma’s grave is there too…!? There are the characters for ‘Perpetual Memorial Service.’ ‘Iikanji Tatsuaki’… I’m pretty sure I had a classmate with that name.”

I picked out other kanji I understood and tried to deduce the content… It seemed that after I was gone, the Iikanji Temple, which was our family temple, cleaned up my uninhabited home. And my two friends apparently asked our classmate, Iikanji Tatsuaki, to manage my family’s grave as a perpetual memorial. It seems I was thought to have been ‘spirited away.’ Perhaps a part of my house vanished along with me.

(…I see. Those guys protected the grave for me.)

Before I knew it, tears were running down my cheeks. Feeling the connection to the other side, an indescribable emotion overflowed in my chest. I have no regrets about being summoned to this world. Being able to come here, I was able to gain a family. But my connections to the other world still existed properly, and they continued even after I was gone.

Being made to realize that… the tears that naturally flowed wouldn’t stop.

“Souma.” “Your Majesty.”

Liscia and Aisha gently embraced me from both sides. Feeling their warmth, my facial muscles finally caught up with my tears. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, and I think my face was probably all scrunchy. Pressing my hand over my eyes, I had a good cry. While I cried, Liscia and Aisha stayed close to me in silence the whole time.

…After a while, my feelings finally calmed down. My eyes might be red, but I felt refreshed inside. I turned around and expressed my gratitude to Souji and Mary.

“Thank you. I’m glad I was able to come here today.”

“Yeah. I don’t really get it, but if your doubts have cleared, then I guess the Archbishop has saved face.”

“You took care of Anne for us. Please come to see her anytime.”

Seeing them smile, I looked at the Lunar Inscription one more time.

“Ah, right. Just one last thing.”

Placing my hand on the inscription, I asked about a “certain thing.” When I requested a concise answer to that question, the next words to float up on the inscription were:

【No good】 【不好】 【No es bueno】 【अच्छा नहीं】

…It seems that’s a no-go. In that case…

(So the path I need to explore isn’t North, but “Up,” huh?)

A difficult problem had been presented. But it wasn’t something I should—or could—do anything about immediately. It was a task to be tackled slowly, taking plenty of time. That was why I felt a little relieved that I had found something I wanted to do after retiring as King.