Soon, the old city of the southern island was fully suppressed and secured. With the dimming sky in the distance, the army set up their provisional camp in the ruined city and proceeded to take their rest.
“Whew! Well, that was a rampage and a half,” said Raid with an incredibly refreshed smile. “I had to hold back a bit around the city, but everywhere else was fair game. What a blast!”
Eluria puffed up her cheeks in discontent. “No fair, Raid. I only got to float around a bit. I wanted to let loose too.” It seemed like she’d been terribly bored throughout the operation.
“But you carved out a deep-sea trench and did all sorts of stuff during the preparation phase, right? Then you must be a little tired... And isn’t it better to run wild when you’re fully rested?”
“You...may be right,” Eluria relented.
“For this stage, we needed to isolate this western archipelago from the central continent, and we still need to fully suppress the archipelago and set up our base here... But we should have a lot more wiggle room after that. Do you wanna let loose then?”
Eluria’s eyes sparkled. “I do... I want to blast a mountain or two.”
“Considering the size of the trench you made, I think you’ve already blasted thousands of mountains worth of rocks...”
“But that was all underwater. It doesn’t feel as good as making a mountain go boom.”
“Oh, I getcha. I felt really refreshed after stomping out that volcano way back when.”
“I remember that very well. I’ve always wanted to try that too.”
Raid and Eluria’s conversation progressed with a frighteningly cozy tone. Meanwhile, Millis and Wisel stared at the two with identical winces.
“Wisel, do you hear this? They’re talking about blasting mountains with such happy expressions on their faces.”
“I hear them loud and clear. How about we talk about blasting our fatigue away, Ms. Millis?”
Millis groaned, looking terribly exhausted. “I knew I was safe because Ms. Alicia and Mr. Galleon were around—not to mention an entire army of first-class magicians—but it was still so terrifying to see all those Offspring up close. If only I didn’t have to keep an eye on Valtos...”
“Well, I was fortunate enough not to have been around any Offspring—or even combat, for that matter, since I’m part of the logistical support squad—but I was absolutely swamped with repair work. A bunch of magic devices went haywire because of all the polluted mana, and we needed to get them up and running by the end of the day to secure our base...”
Although the two hadn’t participated in the battle, they’d still fulfilled their tasks to the best of their abilities. In particular, Wisel—as the deputy head of the technicians’ division—had already been working day in and day out preparing all the magic devices for this operation. Add all the repair work he had done today, and it was clear how much more stressful his work was than simple labor. As for Millis, it was easy to imagine that she had simply tired herself out from screaming as usual.
Besides their work, however, there was something of interest happening between these two.
“Whoa!” Millis stumbled forward. “It sure is hard to walk with all the rubble around here...”
“In that case, I should walk on the outside. The path should be clearer near the middle.”
“Wowie, Wisel, you’ve earned another point!”
Wisel squinted. “I’ve been meaning to ask—what is that point system you’ve been mentioning for a while now?”
“Er... A point card for love and courage?”
“Hmm. Sounds like you’ll start striving for world peace the moment it’s full.”
“Heck yeah! That sounds like a plan!” Millis cheered, smiling brightly.
Wisel responded with a chuckle. “Really now? I’m not entirely sure what your criteria is, but I’m looking forward to it. Good luck.”
Eyes narrowed, Raid leaned over and whispered to Eluria, “Did something happen between those two?”
“Mm. A bunch of somethings,” she replied.
“Judging from your vague response, I must be better off not asking.”
“Sharp as always, Raid.”
“Well, I’ve heard my subordinates talk about this kinda stuff before, so I had a hunch.”
“Me too. I always just watched over them from the sidelines.”
“That’s definitely the best move until they come to us directly for advice.”
“Mm-hmm. Let’s deploy the same strategy for these two,” Eluria decided, eagerly bobbing her head with sparkling eyes. From that alone, Raid could guess that she had been watching over these two for a good while now.
In any case, at the moment there was something more curious than Millis and Wisel’s relationship. The goal of this operation had not been to simply recover Celios—it was to establish a base of operations from which they could collect the remaining volumes of the Sage’s Codex.
Finally, they had gotten one step closer to that goal.
“So this is the volume stored in Celios, huh?”
In the heart of Old Celios, a box was enshrined upon a platform. The box itself had been weathered through the passage of time, but its contents—the stack of papers filled with what looked like scribbles—were as good as new.
“I’ve already confirmed the contents based on the custody records that Sir Valtos showed me,” said Wisel. “Unless the records are inaccurate, this should be all the pages stored here.”
Raid hummed. “What about the wooden box beside it? Is this also part of the package?”
“Yes. According to the records, this was also left behind by the Sage.”
Raid took the small wooden cube and observed it closely. “This...doesn’t seem like a box, though.”
“I did a preliminary check with my magic devices,” Wisel said. “Its parts can rotate, but there doesn’t seem to be anything inside. It’s treated with the same preservation magic as the Codex, but the designs on its sides—the flowers and trees—don’t seem to be magical patterns.”
“All right... But the fact that it was preserved and passed down must mean that it’s relevant in some way.” With a hum, Raid studied the patterns carved onto the sides of the strange box.
Eluria leaned in for a closer look. “Oh... Isn’t that a Ribik’s cube?”
“A what...?”
“You can rotate the parts to shuffle the patterns on each side, and the goal is to piece the pictures back together. It’s a puzzle toy that we elves always played with.” To demonstrate, Eluria rotated the parts and jumbled up the patterns.
Millis hummed, intrigued. “You shuffled it so randomly... Can you really piece it back together?”
“Mm-hmm. It’s not too hard if you know the steps, so we used it as an educational toy for kids. When I was young, I always tried to figure out how to piece it back together with the least number of moves.”
“Er... I’m sure you were the only one who played with it that way.”
“Mm. I remember my excitement when I discovered that twenty was the maximum number of moves needed to solve any combination.” Eluria’s eyes sparkled as she reminisced about her elven childhood.
Meanwhile, Raid held his chin in thought. He’d never heard of a Ribik’s cube. There had to be some sort of meaning behind it since it had been preserved just like the Codex itself. Considering the fact that Eluria of the First World had invented magic from the Sage’s Codex...
“This Ribik’s cube is the key to all the ciphers,” Raid concluded. He turned to Wisel and asked, “Do you have a duplicate of the Sage’s Codex from the capital?”
“Of course. I’ve got multiple ready—use them freely.”
“Thanks.” Raid nodded. “Eluria, I’m going to divide one of the pages like a Ribik’s cube—six sides with nine pieces each. Can you solve it by grouping all the pieces with words that start with the same letters?”
Eluria hummed. “Which letters?”
“R, C, J, V, B, and N. I want you to tell me the shortest combination that would group those words together.”
“I don’t know if I can do it with words instead of patterns...but I’ll give it a shot.”
With smooth strokes, Raid divided one of the duplicate pages into six sides with nine pieces each, then handed it to Eluria. She folded it up into a cube, then studied it for a while.
“I think...these twenty moves should do the trick.” She jotted down the order, then proceeded to swap the words around accordingly.
Finally, a new passage revealed itself to them:
“‘Efficient Mana Application and Basic Formulae,’” Wisel read aloud, brow furrowed. “Isn’t this the same thing you deciphered back in the capital, Raid?”
“It is. I deciphered it by restructuring the passage following rules and regularities in the passage’s first letters and words... Turns out it matches up perfectly with Eluria’s process and answer.”
What they had unearthed from the cipher was information on magic. Most likely, the rest of the pages were decipherable in the same way, and this must have been how Eluria of the First World had gained knowledge of magic. Humans would never think of using a Ribik’s cube, but an elf like Eluria had been well practiced with it from a young age. She might have discovered it by pure coincidence or noticed something was off as she studied it like she would a puzzle.
Given the elves’ history of persecution, nobody would have thought to use one of their toys to decipher the Sage’s Codex. Even Raid hadn’t thought of it until Eluria mentioned the Ribik’s cube. But this was the cipher that the author—the Sage himself—had incorporated into this Codex. Raid could have only managed to decipher it halfway at best—but with Eluria by his side, they would be able to dig into the deepest depths of this mystery.
“Jeez... What cautious and roundabout measures,” Raid muttered, feeling exasperated with his otherworld self. He took an empty sheet of paper and copied a passage onto it. “Eluria, could you do the same thing with this one?”
“Okay.” Eluria got to work and repeated the earlier procedure.
What she was working on now was a passage Raid had already attempted to decipher through various means but ultimately given up on. Back in the capital, he had concluded that he needed the entire Codex to make sense of this passage, but it turned out that he would’ve failed to decipher it even if he’d had the complete Codex in his hands. After all, he knew absolutely nothing about the true cipher—the Ribik’s cube.
“Here it is—the shortest combination.”
Raid accepted Eluria’s notes and read out the newly formed passage: “‘You did well to make it this far, Hero Raid Freeden.’”
They were the words left to him by his otherworld self—the man known to all as Sage Raid Freeden.