The Crown Prince In Hiding

The Polaroid film Dan had taken with his camera was being pasted into his personal notebook.

Thomasin and Princess Nora looked at each other without anyone daring to speak first, because Dan was concentrating intensely on copying all the data from Specimen NO.1 onto sheets of paper with the utmost seriousness.

...and what was important before parting with Professor Pi'erre was...

He had already agreed on a date for traveling to Mathema.

"50 million years..."

Dan spoke, counting on his fingers, calculating.

"1,000,000 cycles..."

He looked up at Nora.

"The entire story of the complete history of the Ophilis family—from the first generation to the present—must repeat cyclically 1 million times to be equivalent to the duration of its transformation."

"You Dan, you're really using my family to measure time, aren't you..."

"I'm trying to interpret that timespan as physically as I possibly can... It's... it's insane."

"A sense of time, you see, junior Dan."

"A sense of time? What do you mean by that?"

Nora asked Thomasin.

"If I tell you to sit here for 20 minutes, would you feel it's a long time?"

"Not really. It's manageable."

"And if it were 1 hour?"

"That's bearable."

"And if it were 1 year?"

"That's impossible."

"And 1 million years?"

"Even more impossible."

"But with your sense of time, would you feel that 1 million years has less impact on you than 1 year, wouldn't you?"

Nora began to see the point; she was beginning to get it.

Thomasin pointed at her own temple.

"Because the human brain cannot grasp the sense of scale of time at the level of millions of years, it becomes difficult to grasp the overall picture of evolution, you see?"

"There must be a way to visualize the timeline of this though..."

"There is, there is a way."

Dan looked up immediately.

"What way, senior?"

"That way is..."

To interpret the timeline as the "length" of an object.

Just as Thomasin was about to demonstrate this in the middle of the arena of the Artheris Institute.

A large thick rope was laid stretching from one end of the colosseum to the other end.

"If this rope, which is as long as the colosseum, is the 50 million years, then... the duration of human existence, you see... is about this size."

And what she picked up to place at the end of the rope...

Compared to the entire timespan of the evolution of whales as a rope stretching across 1 soccer field, the existence of mankind was equivalent to only about 2 rulers placed end to end.

And if we talk about the Ophilis family that ruled Snowhaven for an age of human lifetimes,

They were equivalent to only a student ID card—not the long side of the student ID card, but the thickness of the student ID card.

All the great history of the family, warfare and bloodshed, the founding of nations, glory, failure, prosperity, betrayal and broken faith, sacrifice, blood, tears, steel... everything of the ancestors that Nora knew.

All of that was only equivalent to the thickness of a student ID card compared to 1 soccer field.

When she truly saw and understood the sense of scale,

Princess Nora stood still just like Dan...

Nora: "... Oh God..."

Dan himself stood still looking at that rope.

And then he spoke.

"Senior Thomasin..."

"Yes?"

"I once read that Snowhaven is an area where one of the earliest intact bone fossils in the world were discovered because the cold helped preserve the condition, right?"

"It's not just that."

She said,

Fossils can be found all over the world, because hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth's plates were not arranged as they are on the current map.

But the places where complete remains can be found have Snowhaven, where the cold helps preserve the condition.

Zentinel, which has a triangular geographic feature of river deltas and valleys.

Luminus also has some areas, although they quite restrict us from digging.

But still,

there is 1 more place on this earth that still has no fossil collection data, but there is an estimation that it probably must have complete fossils buried there, especially fossils of ancient sea creatures.

That is the island DIABLO.

Dan's eyes widened.

"Professor Pi'erre and his colleagues once analyzed that Diablo might be an island that just emerged from the seawater not long ago."

"How long ago is 'not long ago'?"

"About 10-20 million years ago, you see."

Dan put down his pen, folded his hands and leaned in, staring as if he were about to devour Thomasin.

Nora, turning her face away, thought to herself, What now...

"... Really?"

An island that emerged from the seawater approximately 10-20 million years ago is considered an important accumulation site for fossils. If the island was formed by the uplift of the earth's crust, most of the land would be sedimentary rock from the original seafloor. This allows us to find remains of marine life, such as ancient shark teeth, whales, or giant shells that were well buried in layers of sediment before being pushed above the water surface.

"That means... Diablo might be... a place where there are many traces of them, right?"

"It's possible."

TA shrugged,

"But we all know well enough that no one can set foot in there. So it's only a hypothesis, you see."

"And if it were really like that, would there be a way to prove it?"

"There is a way to prove it, yes."

Evidence confirming that the island was lifted up from the sea floor is the discovery of sedimentary rock and ancient sea remains, such as shells or coral embedded within the rock at high elevations, as well as the appearance of raised beaches—which have the characteristic of being flat areas or sea cliffs with notches from wave erosion in the past that are now many meters above the actual sea level. Furthermore, there are also geological traces such as ripple marks on stone slabs, and the characteristic of curved or twisted stone layers from the compression of the earth's crust, which these traces are nature's written records indicating that the area in question was once an ocean floor before being pushed up by enormous pressure to the surface.

"If we find all of this at Diablo... then we can confirm it right away, can't we?"

"Yes. But how would you know this? Because there's no way we can go in there—"

"Senior Thomasin."

startled

".... What?"

"If we could prove it was real... and let's say we could get in... would Professor Pi'erre's team go in?"

"Huh...? What... what do you mean...?"

"If the people of Diablo let you in to excavate... would you go?"

Nora: (You Mr.Fury...)

"It would be nice, but..."

Thomasin waved her hand and gave a dry smile.

"We'd probably be dead before we even rowed close enough."

Dan fell silent... Nora watched him but did nothing.

"But speaking of the people of Diablo, I do think their biology is quite interesting."

She said.

"They don't look like demons, but rather like some kind of creature whose evolution has made it develop mechanisms that converge into resemblance with humans... 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, standing with a straight spine even if only partially. They're quite fascinating."

She continued,

"But that's just it, you see. We can't study them anyway. We all know that."

She gave a dry laugh in her throat, but had to stop because... Dan wasn't laughing along. Instead,

he was staring at her intently, not with anger, but staring as if he were thinking something. As if a million thoughts were being processed.

But he didn't say anything until they parted.

"You don't seem very excited, Mr.Fury."

Nora walked carrying her satchel for him while Dan was flipping through the set of Polaroid photos he had taken of Specimen no.1.

"You still don't understand? She showed us the rope and everything."

"It's not that. I mean you."

"You don't understand me."

"But you seemed to be discussing whales off to the side, don't you, Mr.Fury?"

"Oh..."

Dan looked up and made an 'ah' sound.

"... that thing is pretty incredible, because..."

"Because...?"

"One of my soldiers is a whale. So it's hard to believe that its ancestors were the size of a puppy."

"Really?"

Nora's eyes widened.

"He's the largest Diablo we have."

"Bigger than Valencia too?"

"He's a good soldier."

Dan and Nora continued walking, with Nora continuing to ask questions.

"Mr.Fury... you're not thinking of taking the professors into Diablo, are you?"

"Well, it's not like I can't do it, right?"

"But even if you let them in, do you think they'd dare go into your house, Mr.Fury?"

".... You're right."

Dan made a troubled expression, scratching his head.

"I got too excited..."

"More than a little."

Nora walked Dan to the entrance of the Academy.

"If you're going to take them into Diablo, you might have to play something big or create various situations... or you could just tell them who you are and what you're doing here and be done with it."

"Huh? Wait, what's that latter thing? Where can that be done?"

"It can be done. You've already done it with Rafinya, haven't you? Even though you said you wouldn't take anyone in."

Dan turned back with a look of shock on his face.

And when he looked at Nora... he saw her staring at him with the coldest gaze...

At this point, Dan recognized it immediately.

Nora was still angry that he had taken Rafinya in, even though he had promised her that he wouldn't take anyone and that he preferred Nora over anyone.

"What if I told 20 more people? What then?"

"Nora..."

Dan walked towards the tall princess.

"I have no excuse other than to admit that I broke the promise I gave to you..."

Dan sighed long.

"I understand that you're not satisfied because someone else has come to take away this privilege. But doing it this way is still better than letting Rafinya go without knowing what she might do. Keeping her close is better, isn't it?"

"You just please yourself, that's all."

Nora crossed her arms and turned her face away.

"When you were little, you probably never shared your snacks with your younger siblings, did you?"

"And is that wrong? When there's something good, everyone wants to keep it all to themselves."

The image of Everton overlapped... Nora must have learned quite a bit from Everton. He saw it. And in Fury's view, it wasn't wrong... but

"Casca is a person of Luminus. If she thought like you, she would probably be furious with me as blazing fire because some princess showed up in the circle... and not even a princess from our own country at that."

When hit with the counter-reasoning, Nora had nothing to argue back with.

Dan took the satchel back and put it on his shoulder.

"But I admit my broken promise. So is there anything I can do to make up for this mistake?"

Nora paused for a moment.

"Mr.Fury, I know that no matter what, you'll treat me and Rafinya equally... but"

"Teach me 1 thing that you will never teach Rafinya... will you?"

Nora didn't ask for power, authority, or anything like that.

She asked for one thing that Fury had experienced and encountered. A lesson born from Fury's mistakes or his own realization. A weakness, a flaw that he would never share with anyone or tell anyone about... even Casca, his wife.

But he had to tell Nora.

"And you know I'll have it?"

"I do. It's written all over your eyes."

"How do you know so well, you little girl? I could still lie to you."

"You won't."

"There is... I won't tell you at the cottage though."

"Then let's go play tennis together one day."

Just the two of us. No one else can interfere.

"Wait, that's asking too much already."

"Kings don't break their word, do they, Mr.Fury?"

"Let it be a little less."

"You teach me yourself."

"Is it your younger brother who taught you?"

Nora's mouth curved upward.

"Maybe it was?"