At the edge of the Knights’ Arena, tucked away in a hidden private box with an exceptional view, sat two men.
Archbishop Lucien and King Louis XI, the two most powerful men in the Kingdom of Lorraine, had witnessed the entirety of the duel—a battle filled with twists, turns, and dramatic upheavals.
In this private space, they had shed the heavy masks of religious and royal authority.
They looked less like the leaders of a nation and more like the two young men who had studied together at the same monastery many years ago: Albert Morel and Louis Durand.
They had once glimpsed the truth of the world together, and they had both been scarred by that truth.
“Albert,” Louis spoke first.
He poured himself half a glass of crimson wine, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. His tone carried not a hint of tension.
“The ‘God’s Messenger’ you found and the ‘Kingdom Hero’ I discovered are truly a pair of peerless geniuses. Not bad, not bad at all. This play was indeed worth the trouble of sneaking out of the Royal Palace.”
Despite the Capital having just narrowly escaped a city-wide catastrophe, the King showed no lingering fear.
Much like his two children, he possessed a leisurely air, as if he were merely an entertained spectator.
“Louis,” Archbishop Albert’s gaze remained fixed out the window. The commotion in the center of the arena was gradually subsiding.
His voice was as stern as ever. “You’ve dumped the affairs of the state onto your children and locked yourself in the Royal Palace day after day. Just what have you been busy with?”
He paused, his words carrying the scolding tone of an old friend.
“Looking at your relaxed state, you seem far more idle than an Archbishop like me.”
“It’s a secret.” Louis turned his head, flashing his old friend a familiar, slightly mischievous smile.
“You know the rules. If you want to know, you’ll have to trade one of the Church’s secrets for it.”
“You were once a member of the Inner Circle. Is there any secret of the Church that you don’t already know?”
Albert frowned slightly. “You even found out about the ‘God’s Messenger,’ didn’t you?”
“No, no, no. I’m not talking about that.” Louis shook his head, gently swirling his wine.
His smile turned mysterious. “But as you said, I might understand what this ‘God’s Messenger’ wants to do even better than you do.”
Albert’s gaze sharpened. “Have you planted people within his revolutionary Organization?”
“Who knows?” Louis shrugged noncommittally. “I am the King, after all. In this Capital Lucien, very little can truly be hidden from my eyes.”
Albert looked back out the window, watching the direction where Allen and Marianne were urgently escorting the unconscious Livia. His voice grew low.
“Yes, you know everything. You know exactly how many atrocities those nobles have committed behind everyone’s backs, yet you never tried to set things right. Louis, you weren’t like this when you were young. Back then, you couldn’t stand even a grain of sand in your eye. Your heart was full of fire.”
The smile faded from Louis’s face, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion. He downed the wine in one gulp.
“Aren’t you the same, Albert? You pretend to be a merciful religious leader, but I know that a fire more fanatical than anyone’s burns in your heart. You are more autocratic than anyone to your very core. You tried to reform that bloated, massive Church, but how easy could that be? Just like me, we are both facing problems that seem to have no solution.”
Albert’s eyes turned profound, as if peering into the distant past and future.
“Politics and time eventually turn friends into enemies and enemies into friends. It is as simple as the wind changing direction. Wanting to change this world… has never been an easy task.”
“However,” Louis changed the subject, donning that inscrutable smile once more, “since ‘she’ has arrived, even if this world instinctively resists change, it is destined to move into the next stage, isn’t it?”
Albert remained silent for a long moment before slowly revealing a startling fact. “The Nirvana Project… has been activated.”
“Is that so?” Louis did not seem surprised. He looked up at the clearing sky outside.
His gaze seemed to pierce through the clouds, reaching into the depths of the universe that no ordinary man could touch.
“As I thought. In the end, you still chose to walk the most dangerous path.”
He pointed a finger toward the sky.
“You used that Ancient Legacy… the weapon that once heavily damaged the ‘Star Listener.’ I am curious—it can still be used?”
Albert nodded, a complex expression crossing his face.
“Its lifespan has long since passed its limit. Theoretically, it should have become a pile of scrap metal centuries ago. But as you saw, it is as reliable as ever. We can only choose to believe that the Lord allows it to continue protecting us.”
“But…” Louis’s brow furrowed slightly.
“Aren’t you afraid that doing this will attract the attention of the entity that has destroyed human civilization countless times?”
“He is called the ‘Observer,'” Albert said solemnly. “The God’s Messenger… has already had contact with him.”
“…It seems we’ve been discovered after all.” To Albert’s surprise, Louis showed a look of relief.
He let out a long breath, as if a boulder that had pressed on his heart for decades had finally been lifted.
“Haven’t you always been curious about what I’ve been tinkering with while locked in the palace?”
“Albert, my old friend, I can tell you now.”
Knowing that the gears of humanity’s fate had been forcibly turned by an irresistible force, this “Mad King” who had reigned for decades finally decided to reveal his deepest trump card to his only friend.
Time had flown by. Decades had passed in the blink of an eye, and neither of them was the hot-blooded youth they once were.
The ones who created a new era would never be the old.
It was time to hand the future and the power of choice over to the young.
……
After listening to Louis’s massive and shocking plan, even Albert, whose heart was as steady as a rock, fell into a long silence.
“You knew about the future… even back then?”
“I told you, I can see fragments of the future. It is both a curse in our bloodline and a legacy left by our ancestors.”
Louis’s voice was calm, yet tinged with a faint bitterness.
“Unfortunately, no one was willing to believe my words back then. You were no exception, Albert.”
“That is true.” Albert let out a long sigh.
“Who would have thought that the final collapse of human civilization would be witnessed by our generation?”
He paused, reciting a passage from the Holy Scripture.
“I will deliver them into the hands of their enemies and into the hands of those who seek their lives. Louis, you will bring down heavenly fire to burn this land. Your sins are destined to keep you from the Lord’s Paradise.”
“My soul never belonged to me from the beginning, so there is no point in talking about rest.”
Louis’s gaze drifted through the window toward Charles and Charlotte in the special VIP seats.
“The only thing I worry about is my children. I don’t want them to repeat my mistakes. Unfortunately, this curse in our blood is destined to accompany them for the rest of their lives.”
Albert had served God all his life. He had no wife or children, but he had raised countless children in the Church’s orphanages.
He understood Louis’s hidden, unspoken fatherly love better than anyone.
The Royal Family was still the Royal Family.
As the supreme secular rulers, they were destined to struggle for the simple domestic joys of a normal family.
Moreover, the Durand family had carried heavy, unknown secrets for 1,000 years.
“Louis,” Albert couldn’t help but say, “The last time you met your children was many years ago. You’ve been avoiding them. They are… excellent and strong. But you made them lose their mother. Do you really intend to make them lose their father as well? Whether as a King or as a father, you are a failure.”
“I know.” Louis admitted it frankly without a hint of defense.
He looked into the distance, his voice heavy and sorrowful.
“This thousand-year-old holy kingdom is not holy, and our neighbor’s empire is hardly an empire. We keep our compatriots penned in with lies and ignorance, thinking we can make humanity endure. But in the face of the apocalypse, all of this has been proven meaningless.”
“I know that God’s Messenger is trying to save everything in his own way. The Newspaper, the Printing Press, and that child of the Dawn… these things that transcend the era are all part of his grand blueprint.”
“But… Albert, you must understand that humanity has experienced eras of highly developed technological civilizations before, yet we still moved toward destruction. I don’t know if he can truly lead humanity to win this war against the gods this time. He might not fully understand yet just how sturdy the chains bound around this world are, nor does he know… that the thing truly difficult to defeat is human nature itself.”
“Weakness and ignorance have never been the biggest obstacles to survival,” Louis’s voice dropped low. “Arrogance is. He… is perhaps the most arrogant person in this world. After all, he is a God’s Messenger. He possesses power we cannot imagine. He may never be able to understand the cowardice, selfishness, and limitations of us mortals.”
Faced with Louis’s doubt, a strange smile appeared on Albert’s face.
He didn’t directly refute him or continue the debate. Instead, as if suddenly remembering an old story, he asked in a casual, conversational tone, “Louis, do you still remember the ancient records we read together back then?”
“We read countless records. Which one are you talking about?” Louis was confused by the sudden change in topic.
“The ones regarding rocket engines,” Albert prompted.
Louis blinked, and then he smiled as well.
“Of course I remember. Back when I was a member of the Inner Circle, the ancient technical legacies had almost become black boxes that no one could decipher. We spent several months just barely understanding the principles of a rocket engine.”
“Then, do you remember?” Albert guided him. “To navigate efficiently in the near-vacuum of space, what is the most critical component of a rocket engine called?”
“A De Laval Nozzle…” Louis answered almost subconsciously. But then, it was as if a bolt of lightning had struck him.
He froze, his pupils shrinking slightly. “Wait! De Laval Nozzle… the Laval House?! Could it be…”
He looked at Albert in disbelief, his eyes filled with shock and realization.
“No wonder… the God’s Messenger descended as a Young Master of the Laval House… Is this… Is this the revelation she gave us?”
“Do you remember the contents of those records?” Albert seemed to turn back into the young priest who yearned for truth, his eyes flashing with fanatical light.
“Everything in this world, in the eyes of the Messenger, is nothing more than gas stored in a combustion chamber at high temperature and pressure. What he wants to do is ignite everything from humanity’s past and present—the suffering, the conflicts, the sins, and the glory—in the most efficient way, turning it into the surging thrust that propels civilization forward!”
“Humanity is destined to soar. The God’s Messenger will complete the mission of leading humanity back to the stars, no matter the cost.”
Louis murmured under his breath, as if chewing on the startling metaphor. “I… I understand. Forward, forward, forward at any cost! That is what she wanted to tell us through the name ‘Laval.'”
“Yes.” Albert let out a long, emotional sigh.
.”The commentary of the Holy Scripture includes an admonition from an ancient philosopher: ‘Those who promise to build a Heaven on Earth for us eventually bring not heaven, but hell.’ The current beneficiaries—those decadent nobles—often quote this to negate the resistance and attempts of any idealist.”
“However, they have misinterpreted the original meaning of those words. That phrase was actually a refutation of History Determinism.”
“In a past cycle of civilization, some philosophers believed that history followed objective laws that did not change based on human will, eventually leading to a certain, perfect ultimate stage. Based on this, they believed that humans could draw a perfect social blueprint using reason, and then realize this Ideal State once and for all through the concentration of absolute power and the total transformation of society.”
“But that philosopher pointed out that the growth of human knowledge itself is unpredictable, and knowledge, in turn, influences the course of history. Therefore, the future of history is fundamentally unknowable. Anyone who claims to have mastered the total laws of history and can design a perfect social blueprint based on them has committed the sin of arrogance. They have elevated their own limited reason to the position of ‘God.'”
“But…”
Albert looked at Louis. Their gazes met, their minds in sync.
Louis voiced the earth-shattering conclusion for him, his voice raspier than usual.
“But… God truly exists.”
“Therefore, the Heaven on Earth he wants to build will certainly be completed. Even the suffering and sacrifice along the way are merely necessary costs.”
Albert stood up, taking one last look at the Capital as it gradually regained order outside.
This conversation, destined never to be recorded in any history book, ended with his faint sigh.
“Sacrifice is the cornerstone of human civilization.”
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