Several days later, once the resurrection had mostly been dealt with, Zenjirou and Aura were in the midst of one of their usual discussions in the inner palace living room. What they would discuss here was completely classified. They had wanted to be even more careful than usual, ensuring that everyone was away from them. However, a private meeting excluding even the maids who were allowed to remain at their side for the entire time they were within the inner palace would leak and draw attention. Thus, they had waited until the most trustworthy of the maids were on living room duty. It was a natural precaution to take now that time reversal—Capua’s most secret spell—had resurrected a human.
They had started by exchanging information, questioned anything that seemed amiss, spoken of each other’s doubts, and continued until both were satisfied. At that point, Aura heaved a sigh, letting her shoulders rise and fall.
“I see. So you did not meet either Commander Yan or the revived priest in Logfort?” she clarified.
“I didn’t,” Zenjirou answered seriously. “I waited in another room and pretended to be absent.”
That night, he had been hiding within the building in Logfort since he had sent the mercenary to Capua, and had still been there when Aura sent both of them back. It would have been preferable for him to see them to gather information, but unfortunately he was nowhere near as confident in his acting abilities as his wife was. He’d decided that it was less of a risk to avoid the possible information leak than to see them directly, even if it did strike him as odd.
Aura couldn’t help but agree. “Indeed, there was a reasonable chance they could have spotted our plan if you’d met them then.”
They did not want anyone to know that his resurrection had been planned rather than happening by chance. It would potentially see their spell’s capabilities misunderstood, and above all else, it would be clear they had some goal in mind for the priest. If the two men knew that Capua was using them to sow discord on the Northern Continent, their goodwill towards the royal family would likely sour.
Zenjirou had decided the Northerners would be able to tell the whole thing had been planned if he interacted with them, and he was likely correct. He wasn’t as skilled as Aura at controlling his expressions, and the period between the resurrection and the meeting would have allowed both men to regain their calm. While one was a priest and the other a mercenary, and they therefore had different positions in society, both were intelligent and logical men—both insightful enough to have doubts caused by Zenjirou’s clumsy acting.
“Fortunately, it seems the two of them have left Uppasala without being spotted. At least as far as those working in the building and around the port, no one has mentioned seeing them.” While Zenjirou’s information gathering abilities weren’t exactly high, his conclusion was unlikely to be wrong.
Moving without being noticed was one of the mercenary’s specialties, especially considering his extensive experience. The priest was also far lighter on his feet than you would expect from either of his titles. He would be able to avoid dragging the mercenary down, at least. They had likely avoided people seeing them during the night and boarded a suitable ship out of the country.
At that point, Zenjirou moved to get confirmation of what he’d been thinking this whole time. “Hey, Aura?”
“What is it?”
“If things go as we’re expecting, are we going to be able to hide time reversal bringing someone back to life?”
Aura considered it for a while before giving a conditional affirmative. “Likely so, yes. Rumors will spread, but that is already the case. If the priest keeps his word, they should remain only that.”
In that respect, Aura was taking a rather optimistic view. While part of that was due to what she had seen of the kind of man the priest was and had some faith in his behavior, more of it was due to the lack of benefit to him. A “miraculous resurrection” was much more advantageous to him. If he had been revived due to lineal magic from the Southern Continent, it would be the family that was impressive, and there would be no mystique to it.
“That sounds right. So what about our records? The main things that come to mind are recording everything and then making sure only the royal family can view those records, or leaving no record at all if we’re prioritizing secrecy. I guess it has to be one or the other.”
Even Zenjirou knew that a half measure would be the worst choice. Ambiguous information would lead to distortions in expectations and hopes in future generations. “A person without mana can be resurrected through time reversal” could become “a person can be resurrected through time reversal.”
Aura had to agree on that front. “Indeed, we have to commit fully to whichever path we decide on. Much of the secret information for royalty is passed down verbally, but that easily grows distorted.”
Verbal communications were far more secure than written records, but written records were by far the better choice for passing down exact information. While the resurrection needed to remain secret, the exact circumstances around the possibility were just as important.
“Yeah. Honestly, it seems like it’d be way worse for the vague possibility of resurrection to leak than the truth about how specific the circumstances we need are.”
“Quite so. However, the fact is that it must remain as unknown as possible at large,” she said, nodding along before having a sudden thought. “I know—we can have you record it.”
“Me?” Zenjirou asked, confused. He knew nothing about keeping information hidden, but when Aura continued her explanation, he had to agree it made sense.
“Yes. You can record such information on your computer and leave no physical record. Additionally, if you use your own language rather than the local one, it should be all the harder for it to leak.”
“I see, that works,” he had to admit.
Information in the computer needed power to be read back. Even if it could be read without it, keeping it in Japanese would make it harder to understand.
Either way, they intended to pass the computer and generator down to their children. The generator was one thing, but using the computer to a reasonable degree required knowledge of Japanese. In other words, their children would need a decent level of proficiency in reading and writing in the language. Considering that, leaving the information in Japanese was perfect.
“The problem will be losing the information stored within it when we rewind it. There are limits to the amount of external storage I’ve got, so choosing the specific information we need to pass on will be the issue.”
“Hm, then perhaps we can allow the level of secrecy to decrease and you can record it on drake parchment, still in Japanese?”
“That’d probably be the best bet. It’d mean we need to not print out the dictionary I’m making, though.”
He was using his free time on plans for the request from Utgard. His current step was digitizing all the documents the royal family had on space-time magic. He had also been typing up a list of equivalent words between the two languages before then. It was only the very beginning stages of creating a dictionary. No one other than Zenjirou could do it, and it seemed too vast for him to finish within his lifetime.
The document was certainly not worthy of being called a proper dictionary, created solely by Zenjirou with his own knowledge, but there was still a big difference between having it and not. If he recorded the secret information in Japanese on drake parchment, then he would need to keep the dictionary out of sight as much as possible.