“Impossible!”

The moment he heard those words, an almost instinctive denial burst from Karl’s lips, an attempt to defend everything he knew to be true.

“She—Countess Sierra Seaserpent—died trying to stop the Demon God!”

“That is indeed the account known to the public.”

Rose readily nodded, then added in a quiet voice,

“But as you know yourself, Lord Karl, fabricating the truth is not particularly difficult.”

“...!”

Perhaps because he had fabricated the truth himself, Karl could only twist his face, unable to bring himself to deny her words. Watching him, Rose calmly recounted what had happened.

When the Demon God that had devastated Europe extended its claws toward the British Empire, Countess Sierra, the Blue Dragon Princess of that time, could hardly have stood idly by. House Seaserpent had protected the British Empire then as well, and the survival of London, their home territory, was important enough to determine the rise or fall of the Blue Dragon Clan.

But the Demon God of that time had been a literally godlike being, one even Limon had only defeated after a desperate battle. Worse, it had returned from death itself and grown stronger as it laid waste to countless European cities.

The Blue Dragon Clan could not stop such a Demon God alone. Even if they appealed to the Seven Dragons Society, no one would risk their own clan’s survival to help. In that impossible predicament, there was only one group that could lend Sierra its strength—at least in London at the time.

“The witches of the twenty-seven magical lineages stepped forward to stop the Demon God... because Countess Sierra had persuaded them from the outset?”

“That is correct.”

The Blue Dragon Clan and the twenty-seven magical lineages had originally been sworn enemies. Their enmity ran as deep as that between Limon and the Seven Dragons Society. After all, it was the Blue Dragon Clan’s founder, the Righteous Blue Dragon Lord of Virtue, who had defeated the Ladies of the Lake at the end of the Silver Age.

But faced with Sierra’s heartfelt persuasion and their common enemy, the Demon God, the twenty-seven magical lineages had finally set aside their ancient grudge and joined forces with the Blue Dragon Clan. They had decided to use one means to stop the Demon God: the Great Barrier of London. That most powerful magic of the Silver Age, which had allowed the Ladies of the Lake to contend with the Righteous Blue Dragon Lord of Virtue for years, was their sole hope of stopping it.

It was thanks to the Blue Dragon Clan’s strength that the witches of the twenty-seven magical lineages had managed to gather no fewer than nine magical artifacts on par with divine relics. Yet there was something even the clan’s power and wealth could not obtain: the price of the magic.

Things might have been different in the Silver Age, when gods still remained on earth. But in the Age of Heroes, when even meeting a god in person had become difficult outside Jerusalem, they had no way to pay the price of the Great Barrier of London.

“Even offering all the ‘payment’ the twenty-seven magical lineages had accumulated over more than a thousand years was not enough to erect the Great Barrier.”

“And so, as you said, Lord Karl, they had no choice but to make up the difference through human sacrifice.”

“Of course, sacrificing the people in the name of protecting them is both a contradiction and a sin.”

“Fortunately, however, there was someone in London at the time who could pay the price of the Great Barrier without committing that contradiction or that sin.”

Rose paused briefly and looked straight into Karl’s pallid face.

“Someone who could resolve everything with her own life alone, without forcing anyone else to sacrifice theirs.”

Perhaps the words were too unimaginable to take in. Karl stood frozen like a statue, and only after a long while did he speak in a choked voice.

“So... Countess Sierra sacrificed herself? To complete the Great Barrier of London without sacrificing the citizens?”

“That is correct.”

“Nonsense! What person in power would ever do something so absurd?” Karl shouted desperately.

“Certainly, someone in power like you would never do it, even if it killed him.”

Limon gave a faint chuckle and agreed—with one qualification.

“Not unless they were a princess of the Blue Dragon Clan.”

“...”

A ruler who regarded even fellow human beings as mere tools for maintaining power would never sacrifice anything for others. But the Blue Dragon Clan, who might care for people like pets yet never used them as tools, would willingly give their lives for their people. Karl could not bring himself to deny Limon’s mocking words. As a British man himself, he knew all too well what the Blue Dragon Clan was like.

And so Karl shifted the focus of his criticism.

“You expect me to believe a single life could pay the price of such outrageous magic? How does that make any sense?”

“It makes perfect sense.”

Cir brushed aside Karl’s objection in a languid voice.

“That is what a princess of the Seven Dragons Society is.”

In this age, when gods had become figures from musty old myths and spirits had been reduced to antiquated tools, how could the value of a princess’s life compare with that of an ordinary human? She inherited the noblest bloodline in the world, one that had carried on the pure blood essence of dragons for nearly a thousand years. Watching Cir say this so nonchalantly, Karl clenched his teeth.

“... Then what about all the people who have disappeared during the Misty hours?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Don’t play innocent! If they weren’t sacrificed to the Great Barrier of London, where did all those missing people go?”

Karl’s beard trembled. But the moment Limon spoke in an indifferent tone, he could only freeze.

“This world or the next, I imagine.”

“... What?”

“Look, you keep arguing on the assumption that ‘people disappear because of the Misty hours.’ Have you actually verified that?”

Karl stared blankly at Limon’s casually tossed question.

“Verified it?”

“I mean whether those disappearances really happened because of the Misty hours.”

“What are you saying? That’s obvious!”

Karl furrowed his brow. To the British, especially Londoners, that was simply common knowledge. Watching him, Limon twisted his lips.

“Is it? Then do you know how many people go missing on an average day in a city of ten million like London?”

“In London, five or six people a day...”

“No, not London. I mean other major cities.”

“...”

Of course he did not know. He had spent half his life researching magic skills and searching for a way to eliminate the Misty hours, but he had never taken any interest in ordinary statistical surveys. Even what little he knew came from a cursory investigation intended to find a weakness he could exploit against Rose.

Limon, on the other hand, had once been a PAB agent. He supplied the answer himself without needing to think about it.

“In cities with populations over ten million, dozens of people go missing every day on average.”

“In places with good public safety, most are simply people who have run away from home. In places with poor public safety, on the other hand, crimes such as human trafficking are the main cause.”

“Compared to other places, doesn’t London seem to have rather few missing people? Especially for a place with fog that eats people?”

“... What are you trying to say?”

“Well, it’s simple.”

Looking at Karl’s rigid expression, Limon let out a faint, incredulous chuckle.

“The claim that people disappear during the Misty hours is itself a fabricated rumor.”

The Great Barrier of London was, first and foremost, magic meant to protect people. Although it was an artificially created pseudo-afterlife, for that very reason it drew in only the souls of the dead. It had never possessed any effect that made the living disappear. As Limon explained this calmly, Karl’s hands shook.

“... A fabricated... rumor?”

“Yes.”

“You’re saying all the disappearances up to now had nothing to do with the fog, and the Misty hours were simply blamed for everything?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Absurd! Who would spread such a rumor, and what could they possibly gain from it?”

Karl shouted accusingly, veins standing out on his forehead. As a Londoner who had spent his entire life seeing and hearing terrifying stories about the Misty hours, he could only hear Limon’s words as outrageous nonsense.

“We did.”

“It was us.”

“What?”

Yet Rose and Cir refuted what he knew to be true with utter composure.

“I mean that creating the horror stories about people disappearing during the Misty hours was the joint work of House Seaserpent and the twenty-seven magical lineages.”

It felt as though he had been struck in the back of the head by a mace. No—not a mace. It felt as though he had taken a direct hit from a missile. It would take an impact of that magnitude to leave the head of a Monarch-class player like him ringing this badly.

“Why? No, why would you?”

“Because that was both the price of maintaining the Great Barrier of London and the compensation for the twenty-seven magical lineages.”

“Compensation?”

As he asked blankly, seemingly unable to believe this was real, Rose calmly explained.

“Compared with its incarnation in the Silver Age, the Great Barrier of London erected during the Demon God War was unstable and incomplete.”

“Naturally. Even the Ladies of the Lake had barely managed to complete it with a god’s help. We had only just managed a partial reconstruction using every workaround available.”

“Furthermore, in the process, the twenty-seven magical lineages expended all the ‘mystery’ they had accumulated over more than a thousand years as payment.”

“So we needed to replenish that ‘fate’ somehow.”

“Both to maintain the Great Barrier of London in preparation for whatever threat might come next...”

“And to ensure the twenty-seven magical lineages could continue to exist.”

Listening to Rose and Cir speak in turn, Karl looked bewildered. Until moments ago, he had felt shock and disbelief at hearing something so unexpected. Now he was beset by doubts and questions.

“Fate? Mystery? What are you talking about?”

Watching Karl fail to conceal his confusion, as though confronted with some difficult puzzle, Cir gave an incredulous little chuckle, as if she had expected precisely this.

“I expected as much... You insolent brat. You have a profound misconception about magic.”

“What have I misconceived?”

“I am talking about how you act as though you know everything about magic when you know nothing at all.”

Cir’s lips held a sneer. It was ludicrous that he had believed ‘merely’ tens of thousands of lives would suffice to pay the price of the Great Barrier of London in the first place.

Then again, perhaps it could not be helped. Though Karl had been born in the Age of Heroes, he was a man whose prime had come in the Iron Age. He was a Monarch far too accustomed to the logic of players, who used skills without paying any price and valued even human lives by converting them into levels and numbers. And so the Witch of Origins, who had lived since the Silver Age, mocked him.

“The price of magic you keep going on about has nothing to do with worldly prices or values.”

Magic was the power to deceive the order of the world. By analogy, a priest’s magic was a legal crime that the police turned a blind eye to. A black mage’s magic was a heinous crime punishable by death whenever the culprit was caught. And a witch’s magic could be called a gray-area crime that exploited loopholes in the law to escape judgment.

The important thing was that violating the order of the world required paying a corresponding price, just as a criminal paid a fine or bail. But the order of the world did not accept money. It accepted only three things.

“What matters is ‘causality,’ the scales of the world’s order; ‘fate,’ the weights on those scales; and ‘mystery,’ which is used to cheat their markings.”

That was why witches and mages operated Magic Halls. Priests had gods pay their fines, and black mages shifted the blame onto others entirely. But for witches to use magic, they had to gather ‘causality,’ ‘fate,’ and ‘mystery,’ just as one paid costly lawyers’ fees at a trial. Or they could consume objects imbued with those things.

That was also why they had to be mystics and secretive by nature. The more secrets they concealed and the more mysteriously they behaved, the better they could evade the gaze of the world’s order, allowing them to use more powerful magic at a comparatively small price.

For example...

“Isn’t it amusing? The contradiction that the fear and sense of mystery surrounding this mist have been the very force protecting people all this time.”

Cir wore a knowing smile. Looking at her, Karl twisted his face.

“The mist... has been protecting people?”

“That is correct,” Rose calmly agreed.

The ghosts of London that appeared during the Misty hours never harmed people. If anything, the opposite was true. They were more like sentries who guided the lost, barred the way of those about to commit crimes, and warned people of danger. Unless the Great Barrier exerted its true power, that was all they could do.

Yet even that had afforded London considerable protection. The very reason Edward, one of the Liberation Brigade’s ghosts, had been unable to act freely was that the shadow monsters he summoned were restrained by the Misty hours.

“Of course, the Misty hours aren’t all-powerful. They can’t prevent every accident or disappearance caused by carelessness, or crimes someone is determined to commit.”

Having personally taken part in the Demon God War, and knowing the Blue Dragon Clan’s nature and magic all too well, Limon had seen through the truth of the Great Barrier of London from the very beginning without needing anyone to explain it. He casually added,

“And your daughter was one of those cases.”

Wei Ling’s investigation had revealed to him that Karl had lost his daughter during the Misty hours, and he had continued scrutinizing the information afterward. That was why Limon could say with certainty that children often went missing even without some grand magic like the Misty hours being involved. Those children would eventually either live elsewhere or die. And so, even if Karl eliminated the Misty hours, his daughter would never come back.

Having spoken in a flat voice devoid of emotion, Limon looked at Karl’s stunned face and languidly concluded,

“In the end, you were just one of those ordinary parents who wanted to shift the blame for losing his daughter onto someone else.”