I sifted through the museum’s inventory.
The Duke seriously lacked the heart to throw anything away. The backroom was a literal mountain of trash.
"What's with all this paperwork?"
Paper hadn't seen the light of day in the Imperial core for centuries. It was still used out in the sticks, though—my own Marquis House used it, and even the Officer Academy used it for things like bulletin board notices. In an educational facility packed with bratty teenagers, paper resulted in less financial damage when things got broken. Replacing a smashed display was a real gut punch to the budget. After all, we were the type of students who didn't stop even after being punched.
Repairing them was a nightmare, too. Even if you tried to output general-use products with a Shaping Printer, they hit you with usage fees. And they were expensive. Most rural planets stuck with paper for the same reason. It was just more convenient.
I called it "paper," but it was technically a synthetic cellulose resin biodegradable sheet... but let’s not get bogged down in the technicalities. I didn't know the full science behind it myself.
Regardless, I started flipping through the documents half out of curiosity. If I turned up any dirt, I figured I’d save it for blackmail later. House Mistral really got under my skin, and I was the type to always settle a score for a humiliation.
As I read, however, I found nothing but mundane inventory logs.
How boring!
I began to leaf through them rapidly, skipping ahead until a set of documents from five hundred years ago caught my eye.
"These are in great shape."
I’d thought it was paper at first, but it was actually a recording sheet made from mineral slats with laser engravings. It was a non-weathering material treated with a protective coating. Since the information was physically carved into the material, it was designed for long-term preservation. Usually, you’d find these sandwiched between glass in a display case.
Actually, wait... what happened to the actual paper documents?
Secrets were rarely recorded on these types of sheets. They were usually reserved for victory commemorations or significant historical milestones.
Let's see what we have here. A historical event from five hundred years ago was probably just some Jester going on a rampage. I didn't have high expectations.
LP LP -> LK HP
"It's the freaking Shun Goku Satsu!"
Are you kidding me? I’ll kill you!
And look, there was even a joystick here! You actually think I can't pull off the command input?! I’ll kill you!
"Fine, you're on!"
I punched in the command for the Shun Goku Satsu.
With a heavy, mechanical rumble, the bookshelf began to slide. A door appeared behind it, hissed, and slid open automatically.
Holy crap...
"Claire, respond. I’ve found a hidden room."
"This is Claire. A hidden room?"
"I don't know what it is yet. I'm heading in."
"Wait, I'll bring the Imperial Guard."
A moment later, Claire arrived with the mohawk-sporting veteran from the Imperial Guard.
"So this is the hidden door... what exactly was the Duke hiding?"
"Probably a long list of insults about my family..." I muttered.
"It might be dangerous further in. Let's go together," Claire said.
The looks on their faces were painfully honest. 'I'm going to do something stupid, so they need to monitor me,' their expressions screamed. Claire, in particular, seemed to have developed a strange sense of duty, as if thinking, 'I have to be the one to watch him.'
The terrifying part was that they weren't wrong.
The three of us stepped inside, with the veteran taking point.
"No tripwires. No pressure plates. It doesn't appear to be trapped. Come in."
Inside sat an ancient information terminal. It looked like a workstation and was quite massive.
"An ancient terminal," Claire noted.
"I’ll try to boot it up."
When the screen flickered to life, an OS that gave me a heavy sense of déjà vu appeared.
"It's the same OS as my Jester-exclusive machine..."
However, this was a workstation build. It was designed for document processing and spreadsheets, so the interface was much simpler. I opened the document directory. It was packed with a massive number of saved diaries.
"Why would they keep something this old?" Claire asked, but I had no immediate answer.
"Maybe they just couldn't bring themselves to throw it away?" I guessed.
"Lord Groom, that is far too much of a stretch," the veteran countered. "Would they truly go through the effort of building a hidden room just for that?"
"But look, there's no point in keeping—wait, hold on. 'We, House Mistral, narrowly achieved victory in the battle against the Zork'—wait a damn minute!"
"Why are they using the name 'Zork'?" Claire asked, leaning in. "That name was only decided the other day! When was this written?"
"Five hundred years ago..."
I let a dark, nasty grin spread across my face.
"So the Duke’s house knew about them all along...?"
"Leo, keep reading," Claire urged.
"On it, Mama. 'The biological weapon Jester achieved brilliant combat results. However, that was the problem. Even though they were created to be incapable of procreating, they bore children. Children between Jesters cannot be permitted. We must exterminate them!'"
"This is a total smoking gun! Why the hell didn't they dispose of this along with the terminal?!"
"I see," the veteran mused. "So the Duke kept it because he simply couldn't throw it away..."
"My mother is the same way," Claire sighed. "She won't throw away old pots even if the handles have fallen off. She just says, 'It's still usable!'"
It seemed the Mistral family’s hoarding habits had inadvertently preserved the evidence of a conspiracy.
"So, in short," the veteran said, stroking his chin, "five hundred years ago, the Jesters fought the Zork. But those who feared the Jesters concocted a rebellion as a pretext to slaughter them all... is that the gist of it?"
He was surprisingly nonchalant for someone who had just uncovered a massive historical conspiracy.
"Isn't that a bit of a leap?" I asked. "Besides, knowing too much about this feels like it's going to lead to trouble..."
"No matter how sensational it is, it's an event from five hundred years ago. Knowing it now changes nothing."
"You've got some serious guts, old man!"
"I'll forward a message to Her Highness," he continued. "Even so... shouldn't they have known how to fight the Zork back then?"
I read further into the documents.
[Operation of Beam Weaponry]
I had a very bad feeling about this.
[Beam weaponry is effective against the Zork]
"Ah! So that's what happened! They believed this and stocked the city with nothing but beam weapons, but the enemy had adapted ages ago!"
They were idiots. Absolute, total idiots. Of course the enemy would develop countermeasures! Even I would have done that!
"So that's how the Crab-type, with its resistance to beam weapons, was born..."
"It seems I have quite a few things I want to ask the Duke," the veteran said, cracking his knuckles.
I wondered if the reason they’d targeted our house was... No, that was probably overthinking it.
I transmitted the data to the destroyer. By the time the transfer was complete, we had met up with Melissa and the others, who had finished their repairs.
"Ahahaha! It broke! I guess I’m just not as good as you, Captain!"
Melissa was as bright and cheerful as ever. In this increasingly grim and unsettling situation, her energy was like a breath of fresh air.
"Captain, let's play games today too! Come on, boot it up!"
Great. I was going to get trashed again.