Chapter 3
The shadow mage known as Green Crow.
He had specialized in destroying only the empire's key strategic locations.
His alias had been written beneath the magical composite sketch.
At the time, Jake's memories had been too vague for him to recognize the face.
But now that he was seeing Judas in person, there was no doubt.
Even though the age was different, Judas's face was identical to the magical sketch.
Jake had always wondered how Green Crow had managed to attack only strategic locations unknown to outsiders.
Now he finally understood.
Judas had been an infiltrator inside the empire from the very beginning.
Still, Jake had no intention of exposing him.
Their lives could end at any moment.
Now that Jake had learned one of the imperial family's greatest secrets, there was almost no chance he would be allowed to leave safely.
Spy or not, he needed allies.
As Jake's finger moved, Judas sent another Message spell.
-You figured it out too, right? Once we finish these reports, they'll probably bury us somewhere in one of the Imperial Palace's secret passages.
It was one of the rumors whispered around the Imperial Capital.
Whenever a secret struggle took place inside the imperial family, inconvenient people were supposedly buried quietly inside the palace's hidden passages.
Until yesterday, Jake had not really believed those rumors.
Now that he possessed memories of the future, however, he knew Judas's joke would become reality.
"This isn't how you write it. You need to include the exact time, location, and names involved."
Jake spoke to William while wiggling his finger again.
Judas continued enthusiastically through Message.
-First, I'll tell you what I know. The magic circle we experienced yesterday seems to be a type of replication magic circle. It duplicates an object's mana structure and copies it into a virtual space made of mana. Normally, the purpose of that spell is to analyze the structure of an object so that...
Like the mage he was, Judas began excitedly explaining the magic circles beneath the Imperial Palace.
At one point, he ran low on mana and the Message spell cut off.
At other times, the overwhelming amount of magical explanation nearly made Jake lose track of what he was doing.
Still, Jake eventually heard the entire explanation.
-Do you understand?
Jake wiggled his finger again.
The explanation had been incredibly long.
Fortunately, Jake's years of accumulated experience allowed him to roughly understand what had happened.
The ancient magic circle beneath the Imperial Palace was a replication circle on an absurd scale.
Over several decades, it gathered enormous amounts of mana from across the continent.
Then it used that mana to replicate the entire world.
Inside a pocket dimension made entirely of mana, the copied world experienced time thousands or even tens of thousands of times faster than the real world.
The crown prince and the three boys had entered that world.
So had the empire.
So had every living creature on the planet.
They had all continued living inside the copied world.
After the three boys died in that world, the experiences they had accumulated there were copied back into their original minds.
So basically, it created a virtual reality identical to the real world using mana. Then we experienced the future through it. The crown prince and the three of us were basically there to gather information from that world.
Whenever a new emperor ascended the throne, the empire used the ruins to create an emperor who knew the future.
Those emperors then used their future knowledge to guide the empire.
Naturally, emperors who knew the future became known as Omniscient Emperors.
And naturally, the continent had little choice but to fall under the empire's domination.
A curse escaped Jake before he could stop himself.
"Damn it! Is this the Matri—?!"
As someone who remembered his previous life on Earth, the sudden appearance of something resembling virtual reality was simply absurd.
To think the lifetime he had lived had been nothing more than a virtual experience.
Jake now understood, deep in his bones, the confusion of a movie protagonist who suddenly discovered the truth about reality.
-Get a grip!
Fortunately, Judas's Message spell snapped Jake back to his senses.
"Ah, sorry. I got a little worked up."
The people who had been startled by Jake's distorted expression returned to their own work.
William, however, mistakenly assumed Jake had been angry at him.
"Tch. So I'm bad at writing. You don't have to get that angry about it."
William was not actually the reason.
But Jake had no better excuse.
So he simply allowed the misunderstanding to continue.
"Just focus a little more."
After talking together for so long, the three boys had naturally started speaking casually to one another.
Of course, two of them were thinking about completely different things internally.
Still, from the outside, they looked like three ordinary boys talking.
As they continued organizing the events from the illusion, or rather the future, Jake and Judas secretly communicated.
Judas continued using Message.
Jake wrote short replies on paper and then scribbled over them with his pen to erase them.
While the two secretly exchanged information, the sun eventually set.
The three boys managed to record roughly four or five years' worth of future events.
Stories involving mages.
Events involving knight orders and wars.
And other major incidents.
Naturally, Jake, who had been a scribe, remembered and recorded the largest number of events.
I think I've hidden about half of what I know...
Jake knew perfectly well what was happening.
There was no chance he would honestly write everything down.
Judas had clearly hidden things as well.
William, meanwhile, had enthusiastically recorded everything he remembered.
The only problem was that he did not remember very much.
"Tomorrow, finish everything up to ten years into the future."
After reviewing the reports, the mage gave one final instruction and left the tower.
The knight and soldiers followed him.
But the moment they left, another knight and group of soldiers entered.
They were the night shift.
So they're going to watch us properly even at night.
After returning to his room under the escort of a soldier, Jake sat on the bed and reviewed everything that had happened that day.
At least we probably have four or five days.
If they recorded roughly five years per day, it would take more than five days to reach the point when Jake had died.
Of course, something could go wrong before then.
Still, it gave him a rough timeline.
The fact that they're watching us this closely means there's almost no chance they'll let us leave alive once the work is finished.
It was twenty-four-hour surveillance.
And the secret they had learned was one of the foundations of the empire.
