"Lardus’s son."
The former chief of the Puppet clan, Lucilius, stated the fact with conviction.
"Lardus?" Lordtoss tilted his head.
"A young man like you wouldn't know," Lucilius said. "He was an outlaw who sowed the seeds of conflict with humanity long ago."
"He was a childhood friend of Doneicia," Sion added. "She’s the one my half-brother Kleydos married when he joined the Jest clan."
The history was becoming tangled.
"Let me see if I have this straight," Jin said, trying to organize the relationships. "Sion’s half-brother Kleydos married Doneicia of the Jest clan, and Lardus was Doneicia’s childhood friend?"
"Exactly," Sion confirmed. "In other words, Lardus is about thirty years older than me, but he’s roughly part of the same generation."
That meant he was also a contemporary of Lucilius, who was Sion’s peer.
"And he has a son?" Jin asked, turning back to Lucilius.
"Yes. After you liberated us from the curse of the Failures four centuries ago, Lardus returned to our lands once. At that time..."
Lucilius recounted the events of the past. Some of the younger guests knew the stories only vaguely, while others were hearing the details for the first time.
"Now that you mention it, I think I’ve heard something about that," Lordtoss murmured.
Even for someone of his age, the knowledge was distant. However, most present knew enough history to grasp the weight of the revelation.
According to Lucilius, Lardus had returned roughly three hundred years ago and stayed in the Puppet clan territory for about a month. The Jest clan had been nearly wiped out by a localized Ether Stampede triggered by the Negadolls—the "Failures"—and had eventually been absorbed into other clans until they vanished as a distinct entity. It stood to reason that Lardus would seek out the Puppet clan, as their territory was the easiest to reach from the Lauren Continent.
"I rarely spoke with him myself, so I'm afraid I don't know the specifics of his visit," Lucilius admitted.
Lardus had been a rogue, and he hadn't exactly been on friendly terms with his own people.
Jin suddenly had a thought. "...Wait, is it possible Lardus still has an Agujha implanted in his brain?"
The Agujha were the control needles the Negadolls had used to brainwash the Northern People.
"No, Father," Reiko interjected. "I believe the members of the radical faction back then did not have Agujha implanted."
"Ah, that’s right. I forgot. Then I guess that’s a dead end..."
Regardless of the needles, Lardus's motives remained an enigma.
"So, he mentioned having a son during that visit?" Jin asked.
Lucilius nodded. "He did. I didn't speak to him directly, but I overheard him telling my father. My father might have known more, but..."
Lucilius’s father was long gone.
"If Lardus were still alive today, he would be around five hundred and fifty," Lucilius continued. "However, if he’s been living outside the Nord Federation all this time, he likely hasn't..."
The Northern People naturally lived much longer than humans. Even four hundred years ago, their lifespan was five times that of a human. Improved environments, medical advancements, and better hygiene had pushed that further toward six hundred years. Humans, too, were living longer—often reaching over a hundred—provided their environment was healthy. Jin suspected the presence of free ether helped prevent cellular decay. After all, magi-type materials barely deteriorated at all in high ether concentrations.
"If Lardus did have a child, how old do you think they would be now?" Jin asked.
"Let me see... Based on when he visited three centuries ago and his age at the time, I’d guess the child was born around the year 3460. That’s just my speculation, of course."
To Jin, who had almost no data, even speculation from someone of that era felt like a solid lead.
"Reiko, what about Golbart Marukitasu?"
"He enrolled at Avalon in 3740, Father."
"Which would make him about two hundred and eighty," Jin calculated. "In human terms, he’d be in his mid-fifties."
"Yes. There are records suggesting he was already past middle age at the time."
"Hmm..."
The pieces were starting to fit. The theory that Golbart was Lardus’s son was looking more plausible by the second.
"By the way," Jin asked, "was Lardus capable of using Divieniunschiavo?"
"He was, Father," Reiko answered. "Do you remember the Quinta unit who pursued him after he fled from Earl Walter's estate four hundred years ago?"
"Right! That was during the magical consumption fever incident."
"Yes. At that time, Deneb 30 was struck by the Divieniunschiavo spell."
Deneb 30 had been immune, however, thanks to countermeasures designed to resist the Unifilar’s Master-Slave Magic.
"I remember now. So the son likely learned it from the father."
"It seems Lardus was active in the shadows in ways we never realized," Lucilius said, his brow furrowed as he listened to Jin and Reiko.
"He seems to have spent his life sowing the seeds of discord—no, the seeds of war—between our people and humanity," Belialus added grimly.
"If Golbart Marukitasu is Lardus’s child, then it’s highly probable that Guillermo Marukitasu is the same man," Jin concluded.
Given the lifespan of the Northern People, the timeline aligned perfectly.
"But why?" Jin asked, genuinely baffled. "Why hate material civilization so much?"
"I don't understand it either," Belialus agreed. "In the past, we were cared for by your predecessor, Adriana Barbora Tsetse-sama, and then by you, Jin-sama. It makes no sense for the Northern People to despise the benefits of engineering."
"I completely agree," another guest added.
"It’s totally illogical," Jikarato pointed out. "Our very bodies are physical matter. His entire ideology is a contradiction."
"Exactly," Sion said. "Is that what they call a double standard?"
"The reason for his philosophy is still a mystery," Jin said.
Laojun had scoured the records of Avalon, and while Golbart was a student there, he hadn't shown any signs of radicalism—at least not publicly.
"Wait, I just remembered something else strange," Jin said.
"What is it?"
"Four hundred years ago, after the Negadoll crisis, we tried to find Lardus using a magi-radar. We never found a trace of him."
They had Lardus’s mana signature from a dagger Deneb 30 had recovered. At the time, they had assumed he was dead. But since he had appeared at the Puppet clan territory years later, that assumption was clearly wrong. So why hadn't the radar found him?
"That magi-radar finds mana, right?" Sion asked.
"It does."
A few murmurs of "amazing" and "typical of the Meister" rippled through the room, but Jin focused on Sion.
"Then there are only two possibilities," she said. "Either he was in a place that blocked mana, or he was blocking it himself."
"That’s logical," Jin agreed.
"But places that can completely shield mana are rare, aren't they?"
"They are."
"This is just a guess, but wouldn't a shielded area actually stand out? Like an invisible box sitting in the middle of an open field?"
"I see your point," Jin said.
If someone was hiding in a "dead zone" on the radar, that dead zone itself would be suspicious.
"Laojun would have found a stationary shielded area eventually," Sion continued. "Unless..."
"Unless the shielded area was moving," Jin finished for her.
"Exactly. It might not have been a building, but a vehicle. Something that never stayed in one place long enough to be pinned down."
"That makes sense." Jin nodded, impressed by the deduction.
"If it was moving, it must have been a carriage or..."
"Or a ship," Sion suggested.
A new lead had emerged. Yet, despite the mounting evidence, the true nature of Golbart Marukitasu remained shrouded in mystery.