Lucian handed the stone slab to Ranni and asked,
"Do you have any way to remove the seal on it?"
Ranni shot him a glare.
"That was left behind by the man who did forsake both my mother and myself."
"Thinkest thou, in earnest, that I should be so well acquainted with him?"
Despite saying so, she still took the stone slab and tried her hand at it.
Unfortunately, the result didn't change in the slightest. The seal remained firm, impossible to undo.
Lucian shook his head.
Asking Ranni, a sorceress—to undo a seal left behind by Radagon was, in truth, a mismatch of specialties to begin with.
Ranni, however, stared at the stone slab with a growing sense of unease.
She didn't remember her father being this strong.
Even if she wasn't well-versed in Golden Order incantations, it shouldn't have been impossible for her to break through it.With a sufficient gap in power, even brute force should have worked.
In Ranni's memories, Radagon as he was in her childhood had been a fairly upright figure.
But ever since he abandoned her mother and ran off to Marika—living off her status and becoming Elden Lord, Ranni's impression of him had been reduced to nothing but a contemptible pretty-boy of a father.
Later on, she even realized that when he married her mother in the first place, that, too, could be considered "marrying up."
After all, her mother was the ruler of the Academy of Raya Lucaria and Queen of the Carian Royal Family—a monarch capable of standing against the Erdtree itself.
At the time, Radagon had merely been a hero of the Erdtree's faction. In both status and power, the two had been completely mismatched.
That only cemented the image further.
And yet now, the reality before her was this: Ranni had no way to unravel the seal Radagon had left behind. She was utterly at a loss.
Although the body she currently inhabited was not her demigod flesh and possessed almost no combat power, her soul and memories were fully intact.
Could it be that… her father had always been hiding something?—
Seeing Ranni frowning helplessly at the stone slab, Lucian gave a small shake of his head.
It seemed there really was no way to open it.
"…It doesn't really matter if we can't break the seal," Lucian said slowly. "I've already gotten quite a bit of information from it."
Ranni leaned closer to him again, staring at the stone slab that was sealed so tightly, yet revealing nothing at all.
She looked up at Lucian with a doubtful expression.
This kind of deduction wasn't her strong suit, otherwise she wouldn't have relied so heavily on old Iji as her strategist.
"What hast thou discerned?" she asked.
Lucian ran his finger lightly across the surface of the stone slab, piecing together the clues he had.
After reorganizing everything in his mind, he explained,
"The timing of when this seal was placed."
"Even though we can't see its contents, the fact that this was stored in the Grand Library, and sealed by Radagon…"
"…means that at the time, Radagon was still staying at the Academy, and your mother hadn't yet lost her heart."
"You also said earlier that the hidden compartment itself was sealed by your mother."
"So this stone slab was worked on and concealed by the two of them, one after the other."
"In other words, the history buried here must date back to the period when the Golden Order and the Carian Royal Family were still on good terms."
"Most likely, it's a scandal of the Golden Order, or possibly a secret shared by both the Golden Order and the Carian Royal Family."
Ranni followed Lucian's line of thought step by step, and quickly realized that his reasoning made sense.
Lucian then looked at her and asked,
"Ranni, did you know that the center of the Lands Between wasn't always a sea, but once a continent?"
Ranni shook her head.
"Had aught of that sort once existed, and thereafter been lost, I should without fail have marked its passing."
"Thus must it have come to pass ere I was born."
"And seeing that even a slab of stone such as this was sealed away with such care, I deem those who held the truth were likewise put to silence—by other means."
Lucian thought of the prohibitions Radagon had placed on the sorcery professors and felt that it was exactly the kind of thing Radagon would do.
As he pondered further, a sudden wave of pain surged through his head, making him clutch it reflexively.
They'd separated a bit too quickly earlier, his injuries hadn't fully healed yet.
Seeing this, Ranni guessed it was lingering aftereffects from before, and placed her palm against Lucian's forehead.
Cold magic gathered once more in his mind, forming the image of a dark moon that gently soothed the damage to his soul.
Lucian cast her a grateful look, but Ranni turned her head away, deliberately avoiding his gaze.
After a moment's thought, she turned back to him and said,
"If the measure of time be truly as thou hast said, then this thread of inquiry is like cut off once more."
"My two brothers may yet hold some knowing, yet the men they now are may no longer be reached."
"The span of demigods' lives is exceeding long; betwixt myself and my brothers lie hundreds of years."
"Within such a breadth of time, overmuch may have come to pass."
"And for this very cause is time itself so vexing a thing to reckon within the Lands Between."
At that, Lucian couldn't help but ask,
"Speaking of which, I've always been curious—just how many years did the Shattering War actually last?"
Ranni replied calmly,
"Though I passed the greater part of that age in slumber, the War of the Shattering endured for no less than a thousand years."
Lucian clicked his tongue.
His first reaction wasn't shock at a war lasting a millennium, but at Ranni's age.
Ranni shot Lucian a sidelong glance, with the vague feeling that he was thinking about something rude again.
Lucian immediately abandoned that line of thought.
Alright, age wasn't the issue.
The lifespans of demigods were simply that long. There was really nothing to be surprised about.
As Ranni had said, when time stretched on for so long, it truly became impossible to pin things down clearly.
But now that they had at least determined this was likely a piece of dirty laundry belonging to the Golden Order, the list of people who could be questioned had narrowed considerably.
Lucian muttered quietly to himself, organizing his thoughts out loud.
Ranni was standing very close to him, and heard every word clearly.
"Radagon himself represents information that the Golden Order wanted sealed away…"
"If even Radagon was involved, then there's no point hoping to get answers from anyone else of the Golden Order."
"The Crucible Knights are loyal, but far too upright in that loyalty. They'd never betray their former master, no chance they'd speak."
"As for Caria and the Academy of Raya Lucaria…"
Hearing this, Ranni shook her head at Lucian.
Lucian understood immediately and let out a sigh.
Queen Rennala had clearly played a role in sealing this matter as well. The old figures of the Academy and the Carian Royal Family certainly wouldn't talk either.
That left only one possible source.
The Ancient King.
Since Radagon had not yet returned to become the second Elden Lord of the Erdtree, that meant this had occurred during the era when Godfrey was still present in the Lands Between.
Once they returned from the Academy, he'd need to go ask the ancient king as soon as possible.
Ranni spoke again, there was something she couldn't quite understand.
"Then if my mother and father did seek to veil this history, wherefore leave this slab of stone behind at all?"
"To have shattered it outright would have posed them little difficulty."
Lucian had considered this as well. He already had a tentative answer in mind.
He looked at Ranni thoughtfully, so intently that it made her feel a little uncomfortable.
"Most likely… Radagon intended for you to be the one to uncover it."
"The condition to break this seal exists in the Lands Between only for you, or your mother."
Ranni frowned, unable to understand why that would be the case.
Lucian, however, became increasingly convinced of this guess, even though he couldn't explain it to her.
There was no helping it, some things came purely from a player's perspective, with no concrete evidence in hand.
He couldn't very well tell Ranni outright that Radagon was Marika.
Although Radagon was a faithful hound of the Golden Order, he might not have been that way from the very beginning.
The Erdtree, the Two Fingers, and the Elden Beast could all have influenced, or even controlled him for their own purposes.
To the outside world, and even to his own children like Ranni, Radagon was merely a consort king, someone few truly respected.
But he was Marika's other half. Neither his power nor his status was ever so simple.
If this was a disgrace the Golden Order sought to conceal—and if it wasn't Radagon who committed it, then the culprit could only have been Marika herself.
The information on this stone slab might well have been Radagon's contingency, a weapon left behind to one day oppose Marika.
Their relationship had grown increasingly strained over the long ages of rule, even turning openly hostile, while neither side could completely dominate the other.
Perhaps the act of sealing it was forced by surveillance from certain entities, compelling him to make a show of erasing this history.
"…If that's the case, then this scandal might be even more explosive than I imagined."
Lucian could no longer suppress his curiosity. This was major, buried truth of the Golden Order.
He took his leave of Ranni, stone slab in hand, and teleported straight back to Stormveil to seek out the ancient king.
Standing before the ashes of the ancient king, Lucian began to commune with him.
"Ancient King, what was the sea at the center of the Lands Between, long ago?"
"There was land there once, wasn't there?"
"I want to know what truly happened in the Lands Between. If you know, then tell me everything."
The ancient king's spirit fell silent for a long while before finally replying.
'There is little meaning in speaking of it now, for that place has already been erased from the Lands Between.'
'Still… if you wish to hear it, then treat it as nothing more than a story.'
As the ancient king recalled that distant age, he began to speak.
'In the past, the Erdtree embraced all things. That was the brief Age of Abundance.'
'The Erdtree of that era was not as it is now. A pitch-black Shadow Tree clung to it, growing alongside it.'
'In those days, droplets of abundance flowed down from the Erdtree.'
'It was an age in which even enemies would admire the Erdtree.'
'But such prosperity was fleeting. The age of abundance vanished in an instant.'
'All of it began with one of Marika's children—Messmer.'
'He led an army in a surprise assault on Belurat, the tower settlement where the Hornsent dwelled. Nearly all of the Hornsent were slaughtered.'
'And that serpent—Messmer, seized the Shadow Tree that produced the sacred droplets, cutting it away along with vast tracts of land, severing them from the Lands Between.'
'This is why gladiators in the colosseums of the Golden Order wore serpent-themed arms and armor—people longed to see the snake that betrayed the Erdtree wounded.'
'From then on, this event was deemed a taboo of the Erdtree—forbidden to spread, forbidden even to mention.'
The ancient king let out a strange chuckle.
'But even this story… is false.'
'As one who witnessed it firsthand, I can tell you—this was not the truth…'