"How the hell can you understand this?" Izel asked in a shocked voice as she stared at me as though I were someone she had never seen before.
I looked at the stunned expression on her beautiful face, but I didn’t understand where this reaction was coming from...
Not just her, but the others as well.
So I simply asked,
"What?"
She raised her hand and pointed at the wall.
More specifically, at the writing spread across it.
"I mean this."
I frowned as I stared at the letters...
They were so ordinary and natural that I could understand and translate them directly, just like the many languages I knew.
It felt completely normal.
So I didn’t understand what the problem was.
I looked at the wall for a few more moments before my eyes finally widened in realization.
The writing didn’t resemble anything I had ever seen in my life.
It was similar to ancient runes, but more orderly and fluid in its structure.
More importantly, I understood it perfectly.
It felt far too natural...
So natural that I hadn’t even noticed the difference earlier while I was immersed in that ancient history.
Ellen stepped forward and walked past me toward the first mural I had seen, her eyes fixed on the writing as her voice echoed through the hall, confused and full of curiosity.
"I still don’t fully understand what you were talking about just now regarding Aetherion and humanity, but what I do know is that there are many languages in our world. Each one is different from the others... Some are widespread, while others are incredibly rare."
"But this..."
She touched the wall gently.
"It has barely been found in two places. It was so rare that no scientist or historian has ever managed to decipher it."
She turned around to face me, her crimson eyes staring directly into mine.
"And yet you’re standing here reading it as though you’re speaking our common language without any obstacles."
She fell silent for a moment before continuing.
"Caius... could you please explain this?"
Her tone was calm and polite.
I looked past her at the writing once more, then at the beautiful mural for a few moments before answering honestly.
"I don’t know."
For several moments, no one spoke.
Then Leona asked,
"You really don’t know?"
Her tone didn’t sound doubtful...
It seemed she merely wanted confirmation.
I nodded without looking at her.
"How can you know an ancient language and not know how? ... Do you have another ability or something?" Izel asked.
My eyes remained on Arcadia as I answered once again.
"No. I don’t have any other abilities."
Kyle approached from behind, his suspicious voice reaching my ears.
"Now that I think about it, you love boasting about being a commoner... yet you’re fluent in many languages across this world."
He paused briefly.
"And honestly, more fluent than the princess."
He pointed toward Izel.
"Even she, a noble, can’t do that."
Izel nodded before realizing he wasn’t complimenting her.
"Hey..."
I continued staring at the beautiful mural while their words echoed around me as though they were cornering a fugitive criminal or something similar.
But I didn’t care.
My mind was occupied with everything I had just learned...
Things that had never once been mentioned in the game.
A game...?
I think it’s finally time to completely erase that idea from my head.
"Caius..."
Elliot called out, waiting for an answer.
I waited a few moments before replying.
"Are these things really important right now?"
"When I say I don’t know, I genuinely mean it. If I didn’t want to answer, I wouldn’t have answered from the beginning."
I gestured toward the murals on the curved walls.
"And after everything you’ve just heard, you’re focusing on me instead? Isn’t that a little ridiculous?"
Everyone fell silent.
Their gazes remained fixed on me until Leona rubbed the back of her neck and answered.
"Actually, we didn’t fully understand what you were saying."
I turned toward her.
"Sometimes you mixed words from another language into your speech instead of speaking entirely in ours, which made a lot of what you said incomprehensible to us."
Ellen looked at me calmly.
"Well, I understand that you don’t know... but could you explain what you were talking about just now?"
She added respectfully at the end, as though afraid I might refuse.
I looked at them one by one, seeing the confusion and curiosity written across their faces.
Then I closed my eyes and sighed.
"Haaa... fine."
At the very least, that helped stop my chaotic thoughts for a moment.
This was truly a complete mess for me.
And so many new questions had appeared.
Some of them I had guesses for.
Some of them I didn’t.
And some of them I was afraid of learning the answers to.
I opened my eyes toward the first mural and began speaking, translating and summarizing what was written for the others.
"This is Arcadia, which once existed in Aetherion... there may not be any trace of it left now."
I couldn’t help feeling sad as I said that.
"Back then, humanity wasn’t this weak. We were one of the strongest races in the universe... until the Devourer appeared..."
I repeated what I had read and summarized it according to my understanding while everyone listened in silence and reverence without interrupting me until I finished.
Everyone remained silent for several minutes.
My eyes drifted toward the endless stretch of skeletons before me, realizing that this wasn’t supposed to happen, according to what had been written on those walls.
The monsters weren’t supposed to pour through the rifts.
And perhaps the rifts weren’t even supposed to open in the first place.
And when it said that peace would not last as long as that thing existed...
I knew exactly what that part meant.
I unconsciously clenched my jaw.
I truly didn’t understand any of this anymore.
"Haaaa... it’s hard to believe." Leona’s soft sigh echoed through the hall.
Izel raised her hand and twirled a strand of hair around her fingers.
"I don’t completely understand it, but how can any of this be real? The Devourer, humanity, Aetherion, and the First Ones... all of it sounds far too fantastical."
She paused briefly.
"Maybe not the Devourer, since we’ve encountered traces of that before, but everything else..."
"But it also makes sense, even if it’s missing many explanations," Kyle added.
Ellen raised her uninjured hand and rubbed her forehead as though everything I had said had given her a headache.
"This is a lot. It’ll take time to fully process."
Elliot nodded as he placed a hand on his chin in deep thought.
"And despite all this, there are still many things that remain strange and unknown."
I closed my eyes and pushed all my current thoughts aside, along with that irritating feeling...
Or at least I tried to.
I’d have a better opportunity to sit down and think later.
Not with all this chaos and everyone talking around me.
I looked toward the distant area beneath the mural of Arcadia.
"We need to find a way out of here."