How to Survive as the Second Son of a Mage Family - Chapter 467

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

“Well….”

Who wouldn’t welcome St. Mark’s arrival?

I stroked my chin and slowly looked around. Narke was also deep in thought. We were seriously contemplating a question that could be considered a leap of logic more earnestly than ever before. But Elias’s words were worth such consideration, and I had just witnessed him reach into the world of ‘some philosopher’ whose name he didn’t mention, with just one aphorism, even in a situation where he recited only a single line… It was force majeure. I had no choice but to think with all my might. I moved my gaze to look at the lion statue and golden mosaics as I spoke.

“Heretics within Venice, some Christians of Alexandria, Marco himself who is the Patriarch of Alexandria, and….”

I reached out and pointed to one of the columns standing firm in the plaza, to the figure standing on top of a crocodile.

“Theodorius of Amaseia.”

Then Elias furrowed his eyebrows sharply and snapped his fingers loudly. The sound of clapping followed. Embarrassed by his overacting, I grabbed his hands to press them down as I spoke.

“You said earlier that you felt wronged looking at Theodorius of Amaseia. Plus, the fact that you just called him an ‘existence’ bothers me. If you think from Theodorius’s perspective, he was the sole patron saint of this city, but because of a big shot’s appearance, he was pushed to a corner of the plaza, so he couldn’t welcome St. Mark coming to Venice.”

“It’s nice that we understand each other quickly. I really like you guys.”

Elias pulled his chair closer with a moved expression and gently rested his head on my shoulder. Since he had grabbed my hand, I looked at him without much thought, and at that moment, Elias bit my hand.

“…?!”

I shook my caught hand as hard as I could to pull it out and shouted.

“Won’t you let go?!”

“Mmph.”

“No, I like it, but why are you biting?”

Then Elias put down his glove and patted the opposite shoulder, answering in a calm tone.

“I’m so satisfied that I can’t contain my joy. I’m truly happy that we understand each other.”

“You speak so logically, but why do you act like this.”

“That’s…. Should I explain?”

“Yeah.”

Whether my answer was firm, Elias obediently opened his mouth without complaint.

“It’s like this. When I was young, I raised a chick and loved it so much I couldn’t stand it. So I bit it once and it made me feel at peace. Maybe I came to my senses because I had to spit out the down that got in my mouth…. But it was a precious experience.”

“….”

Narke, who had been smiling while rolling his eyes, tilted his head with a face that said ‘what kind of nonsense is this.’ Elias rested his head on my shoulder again with a face that said ‘what more are you waiting for when I’m done talking.’

“That’s how it is.”

“That’s how it is my ass…. That was a chicken and I’m your human friend.”

Fortunately, that chick didn’t die from Elias’s bite and grew up well to become a chicken. I already knew that it had briefly served as Elias’s real friend in his childhood. Just looking at the name Elias gave the chicken showed that, but thinking about it makes me chuckle, so it’s better not to think about it further. I know that in times without any distinction or separation, nature can also become a true friend, but for now, I had no choice but to say this.

Elias, with his cheek pressed against my shoulder blade—or perhaps lost in memories—mumbled his answer.

“That chicken was… equally my irreplaceable friend. At least until then.”

Then Narke said playfully with a smile.

“Lucas, he keeps doing this because you accept it~”

“That’s… probably true.”

I knew that, but thinking about it, I quite liked it. Still, when I tell him not to do it, he doesn’t do it again—though it seems certain he’ll do it again soon—. It was just absurd, not that I felt bad about it, and if I seriously told Elias I disliked it, he would truly never show his quirks in front of me again from that moment on, so I didn’t want to firmly stop him. If Elias were to act refined in front of me now, that would be shocking in its own way. Since Elias’s eyes lit up, I pushed him away and said.

“I figured out what kind of person you were from when you talked about opening wine corks with your teeth. I’m just glad you didn’t bite off the necks of the second exam team members that day.”

Instead, you almost bit off my head in Trier much later. Looking back, you must have been quite upset. Everything doesn’t happen suddenly. It happens with warning signs, but the problem is that by the time you notice after putting the puzzle pieces together, it’s already too late. I was gradually noticing that he expressed his trivial joys or disappointments to comfortable people through primitive actions, and while I’d never heard of a friend who bites off close friends’ heads, if it’s a human with such peculiar thinking, they’re bound to be abnormal in other aspects too, so I could understand. But crucially, Elias didn’t do this to Leo. In the end, to Elias, I was a different type of friend from Leo. What kind of different friend was I, exactly? I patted Elias’s shoulder and detached him. Then I heard an answer from Elias.

“I’m happy beyond words. That’s all.”

“….”

“After talking so much, if we don’t understand each other, I’d really go crazy. I chew over and rewind dozens, hundreds of times wondering how much I need to flatten my thoughts to communicate with the other person. Again and again, one more time.”

I looked at him silently. This was similar to what I felt before entering the cathedral earlier. Light from the water surface beyond where Elias sat stabbed at my eyes. Elias took a sip of tea and continued as usual.

“People scold me saying they can only understand my situation if I speak properly, but… I always spoke. They just lacked the ability to understand themselves and let all my statements flow by. Then they babble strange things like people who never heard anything or get angry instead. Hurry up and tell us why you act like this… they say. It’s not that I don’t know how to speak, I clearly spoke but those people couldn’t understand, yet they suddenly boast that they know all my thoughts and say it’s my fault without understanding anything I said. It’s like seeing a fragment of shadow cast in a cave and being confident they know its essence.”

It’s not that I don’t know how to speak… At those words, we felt the air settle heavily around us. I understood what kind of self-doubt his involuntary invisible life had led him to. He was talking about the process by which the world’s people made him into a madman. Elias was being made that way by the Emperor even before he decided to abandon imperial elegance himself, and if he hadn’t lived as the current Elias, a non-existent mental illness would have sentenced him to life imprisonment. Hamlet may have pretended to be mad to delay death, but Elias fought not to become mad. But no one knows. Except for us.

Elias was telling such a story. I quietly murmured.

“You’re right. I think so too.”

“Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Elias asked playfully, resting his chin on his hand. Instead of answering, I slowly closed and opened my eyes and nodded. Then Elias turned his gaze elsewhere, straightened his posture, and murmured.

“That’s why I like friends like you who have the ability to accept things as they are. Even if there are losses, our worlds are in similar positions, or we have many intersections, so we can understand each other with minimal loss.”

“Are we resonating?”

“Right, that’s it. We’re resonating with each other. Like currents meeting in the Adriatic Sea.”

I smiled at Elias’s metaphor and said as if talking to myself.

“I feel this every time, but I don’t know how I met you guys.”

“….”

Narke said nothing. Since Elias seemed embarrassed and tried to bite my hand again, I hit his mouth and pulled my hand away. Now the time for drowsy conversation under the sunlight had passed.

“So, explain about Theodorius and the culprit. What’s their relationship?”

“Right, that. Narke, I need your information now. Was the Papal Secretariat of State always the Secretariat of State from the beginning?”

“Hmm….”

Narke looked at his watch and slowly began to speak.

“The Secretariat of State is an old department. There are differences depending on what you consider its predecessor, but what’s certain is that it started as a secretarial office. It handled most documents related to the Pope and the Papal States, like papal letters and encyclicals.”

At the word secretary, Elias snapped his fingers. Since secretary means secretary, it was worthy of being called the predecessor of the Secretariat of State.

“Then during Leo X’s time, they established a new secretarial office to handle correspondence with diplomatic envoys. It was called Secretarius Intimus, and the secretary there also assisted the Cardinal in charge of state affairs. Initially, it wasn’t such a high position, but over time, bishops mostly took this role, and by Innocent X’s time, they selected from among cardinals.”

Interest gleamed in Elias’s eyes. Seeing such Elias, Narke smiled and continued.

“Why did that happen? Because during Julius III’s time, they seated an unqualified person as a nephew cardinal, so they needed someone to actually handle the state affairs that the nephew cardinal was supposed to manage. From then on, the secretary had to have the ability to intervene in state affairs.”

“Nephew cardinal.”

Elias pointed at Narke. Nephew cardinal refers to a cardinal who is the Pope’s relative. This person could truly be called the Pope’s real secretary, right-hand man, and political advisor. Historically, they were responsible for governing the Papal States. Among the famous cardinals of the Farnese family, there were nephew cardinals, and many popes became pope after serving as nephew cardinals. However, since it’s a position that no longer exists, there’s no one who can be called a nephew cardinal now.

But by this point, don’t you start to get a sense of it? I bit the inside of my lips slightly at a sudden thought. My neck was getting increasingly cold. Narke, understanding whatever Elias said as referring to such a person in his family, smiled and continued.

“Anyway, once they raised the position, they had to keep it that way, right? Much later, the secretary directly became a cardinal. Eventually, under Innocent XII, they abolished the nephew cardinal position and transferred the nephew cardinal’s authority to Secretarius Intimus, the Secretariat of State. Ah, how should I explain this. Since you’re German, you can think of it this way. Picture in your mind how the scales between papal and imperial power moved over the past thousand years. Thanks to that, the Secretariat of State we know took shape at the Council of Trent and became clearer under Innocent XII.”

“….”

The three of us sat around the round table, looking into each other’s eyes and only tilting the corners of our mouths. Although the sun overhead was warming the water surface, the tea had already cooled and we only had the task of leaving our seats. Narke checked his watch once more and whispered.

“And Elias thinks the answer is here.”

* * *

When considering the principle of economy, it’s proper not to think of overly complex hypotheses.

However, if we can only obtain information about the Secretariat of State from the word ‘St. Mark,’ there’s no way to narrow down the suspects, so we must consider that the cipher contains various meanings. Therefore, we accept Elias’s proposed hypothesis elimination method, the combination of ‘St. Mark’ and ‘negation.’

Now it was time to find related actual cases in the Papal States, but when we asked the simple question about the history of the Secretariat of State, clues immediately emerged, which meant we weren’t heading toward a very complex hypothesis. Far from complex, it was rather simple. Since Ainsiedel had actively utilized the fact that we had a Farnese person on our side from the beginning, we couldn’t dismiss Elias’s hypothesis as complex.

Once again, Elias pierced the very center of the target with just one attempt. At a speed so flexible and fast it made my whole body shiver.

So now we had to find the Venice alley where we first arrived. I walked quickly, holding a map and looking around. In this city, whenever you can walk a bit, water appears, and then more water appears. Since we decided to split up and arrive at that place at different times to avoid suspicion, it was even more problematic.

Just when I was thinking I wanted to throw off my robe because it was getting hot, I heard the sound of finger snapping. I turned my head toward where the sound came from. Elias and an unfamiliar human stood together at that spot. I approached the human who was about a span and a half shorter than me.

“How’s the plan? Are you ready?”

“Hmm. Well. I don’t know where to start.”

“…We have to go to Rome from now on and you don’t know?”

“Right.”

Narke was smiling faintly, but beyond that was an emotion I couldn’t recognize. Maybe it felt more distant because I was looking down at a complete stranger’s face. Narke looked up at both of us and asked quietly.

“Are you guys ready?”

“Yes.”

Elias answered immediately. I hesitated, unable to predict how the future would unfold, then nodded.

“Yeah.”

Then Narke let go of the dress hem he was holding. The bottom hem and the black lace above it began to get wet with water. Even though it must be an illusion, it seemed so real that I had to make an effort not to grab his clothes to help. Narke whispered to both of us.

“Prepare the silver I gave you earlier. Don’t use it all, just insert some. It’s a place overflowing with renowned mages, so you can’t let your guard down for a moment.”

After finishing preparations, Narke extended his hand to me. I accepted his hand like Elias had done earlier and said.

“This is crazy.”

“It’s crazy.”

Narke also held hands with Elias and lifted his right heel. His purplish-blue eyes fixed on the bricks. Beyond the stone wall of the old house, beyond Venice, as if looking out over all of southern Italy, he stood with eyes that seemed to read beyond space and time. Soon the dress moved. With the sound of heels striking water, the small-bodied human disappeared before our eyes.

―”To think we have to find the Judas hidden in the papal family.”

A thin robe layered over a cassock slides toward me. My gaze is no longer below. I can see the back of a tall esper priest. Unlike before, he turned his head with an expressionless face, and when our eyes met, he rotated his hand half a turn and let it go.

―”I’m thinking now that maybe I shouldn’t have brought you guys along.”

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————