Volume 5 Chapter 27 The Greatest Enemy Is The Crt And Analog Signal. Seriously, The Text Is Really Blurry!
Randy bursts out of the principal's office, striding down the hallway while urging Liz to keep up. For tall Randy, his long strides make Liz, who's of average height, feel like she's almost jogging. With Randy acting so out of character, Liz raises an eyebrow and asks, "Where are you going?"
But Randy can't really say "where." To be exact, he doesn't even know where she is. Still, among all the vibes around, he finally spots her familiar pink hair walking down the hallway.
"Miss Catherine──."
Catherine jumps a bit at Randy's call and turns around with a soft, cat-like voice, saying, "What is it?"
"...Are you still doing that?"
"Oh, it's you."
They both show a moment of exasperation, and then Randy shoves the earlier paper in Catherine's face.
"...What's this? Roman letters?"
"Just as I thought..."
With Catherine furrowing her brows and Randy nodding, he realizes that the principal wrote this without caring about sentence structure, and it's in Roman letters.
It's no wonder Ellie and Lucius couldn't decode it. After all, it's a system that expresses the ancient Japanese language using the alphabet.
Plus, it's made even more confusing with weird breaks that look like words.
But with the breaks gone, Randy thinks about the regular vowels and the possibility of it being Roman letters. He wanted to confirm this idea with Catherine, who used to be Japanese too.
Just like Randy, Catherine recognizes it as Roman letters. Now, all they have to do is convert it into something readable.
"Got a minute? Help me turn this into kana."
Catherine shrugs and says, "I guess I have to," pointing to a nearby bench.
The two settle down there, each converting it into kana and then checking for any mistakes afterward.
"This is hard to read. Who wrote this?"
"The principal."
"...It's super easy to read."
"You..."
Catherine looked away from Randy's intense gaze, but her hand kept moving the pen without stopping.
After a while of both of them scribbling away...
"I somehow did it..."
"Me too..."
With serious expressions, they both spoke at the same time...
""Resurrection spell.""
Then, both of them put their hands on the floor, lamenting their struggles.
"Resurrection...?"
Liz, furrowing her brows, picked up a paper that Catherine had dropped. What was written there was...
'mawakououkasonneawosotokifuzosasonokefuyofuiamakouatakounukoukurokohononotsumerosonukokekerasazehorukaheshinensodayasikakuyonayofurakotsukifukeshinotetotenfuhokeroienaayusetaoheyamifunuhorehehorekeo'
It was a mysterious string of altered characters.
By the way, Randy had the exact same mysterious string.
For now, the two of them, who had been feeling down, started checking their papers to see if there were any mistakes.
"...Surprising. Your handwriting is nice."
"Of course."
Randy snorted, insisting to Catherine that writing in hiragana neatly is essential.
"Listen. If you don't write it accurately, you'll be the one 'crying next time'."
"...Huh?"
Catherine frowned and looked at Liz for help, but Liz just shook her head, not understanding anything either.
"And don't let your friends write it. It'll end up in a fight because they can't read it. Plus, they'll spill juice on the spell paper without a care. So don't bring juice either."
"What are you talking about?"
"The Resurrection spell."
Randy nodded vigorously, emphasizing, "And don't use the back of flyers either."
"Because your mom will throw it away."
Completely left out, Liz, Catherine, and Leon were ignored as Randy continued, "You need a special notebook..."
"Sorry, but I'm part of the 'adventure book' starter generation."
With a sigh, Catherine said that, and Randy's eyes changed at the mention of "adventure book."
"Don't ever drop the cassette. And don't borrow it from friends. My brother's 'adventure book'──."
Randy's passionate speech started up again, and Catherine said to Leon, "Hey, listen to him," while she and Liz took a small step back, using Leon as a shield.
"...Randy, what's going on?"
"He probably triggered some trauma."
Catherine shrugged, but she had only heard about the legendary stories from the Showa era. This was her first time witnessing the deep trauma of someone who actually lived through it.
"Let's just leave him be and check this out."
"Yeah, sounds good."
While Randy kept going on about, "Alright, listen up. The 'adventure book' is──" Liz and Catherine were busy comparing 2 sheets of paper to make sure the strings of text matched up for a while...
"I still don't get it."
As Liz sighed in disappointment, she was right; all they figured out was the generation gap between Randy and Catherine, and everything else was back to square one.
By the time they finished checking the strings, Randy had spilled all his trauma, and Leon, looking troubled, had joined a satisfied Randy and the others.
"Normally, you'd think it's a code."
Randy looked down at the paper and repeated, "Normally, you'd think..." The original world was a game, and the developer (the creator god) had a quirky sense of humor. Considering that, it's possible that it could just be a meaningless string of characters.
If that's the case, spending more time on this mysterious string would be pointless.
That inner conflict was clear on Randy's face, and Liz looked between the paper and Randy with a disappointed expression.
"Is it possible it means nothing?"
"Can't really say──."
Randy was hesitant, but his gut was telling him something.
This string has to mean something.
A giant door for teleportation.
A mysterious spell cast on it.
The altered mural.
If any of those have meaning, then this string must have meaning too.
(Repeating doors... a dungeon that spirals on)
If the difficulty increases every time they go through a door, then the dungeon itself is already a huge trap. In other words, if they don't open the door the right way, the dungeon will just keep repeating endlessly.
Something they want to hide that badly.
Something they want to keep away from.
He can't tell which one it is. But there's no doubt that this string of characters is some kind of hint, that's what Randy's gut is saying.
"A bunch of random characters... a code... there must be a key somewhere."
Randy looked down at the paper again and slowly started reading the string.
"mawakooukasoneawosotokifuzou──!"
Noticing something, Randy said, "Liz, give me a memo," while still looking down at the paper, extending his hand toward Liz.
"Did you figure something out?"
Catherine peered in and Randy replied, "I don't know... but──" as he compared the 'spell' with the memo they had read at the very beginning.
(Just as I thought... all the corresponding words are──)
After confirming those, Randy looked around at the people passing by and said, "So this is it."
"Should we borrow a nearby empty classroom then?"
The 4 of them moved to the classroom Liz pointed at, sitting in front and behind the long desks arranged in steps, spreading out the 'spell' and the memo on the table.
"This one, and this... and this too──."
Randy picked out the words indicated by the kanji and runes from the memo, circling them in the 'spell.' Then, he rewrote all the circled words in kanji.
'Mawako ō (King) kasone a wo so toki (time) fu zo sa no kefuyo fu imakou takaunkou kuroko (black) en (flame) no tsumeroso nukoke kekerasa ze horukae shin'en (abyss) no sodayashikaku yona yofu (dusk) kongetsu (moon) fukeshi no teto tenfukokero ie (house) nayuuse ta wo e yami (darkness) funu horehe horeke wo wa'
Catherine and Liz stared at the completed sentence, exchanging glances before looking back down at it.
"...Still a mystery."
"What does 'mawako king' even mean?"
Both of them shot puzzled looks at Randy, but he remained silent, glaring at the text.
He thought the words represented by the kanji and runes were the key to cracking the code, but in the end, the mysterious string didn't change.
(I feel like I'm almost there...)
It seems like just one more step is needed, but he can't find any more keys. While Randy's brain was working overtime, Catherine spoke to Liz.
"By the way, you can read ancient languages, huh?"
"Yeah. Ellie teaches me some, but I'm studying it too."
Smiling Liz pulled out the gojūon chart. It was something they made together when Randy sent it to Aaron.
"Nostalgic. It's the gojūon chart!"
Randy's attention was suddenly drawn to their conversation.
(Gojūon chart──)
His focus landed on the hiragana chart Liz was holding, and his eyes widened.
"The gojūon, 'in order'!"
Randy shouted suddenly, making Catherine and Liz jump, and even Leon, who had been dozing off, stood up in surprise.
"...Did you figure it out?"
Randy was so focused he didn't even hear Liz's words, searching for something that might be the key in the text.
"Found it... this is the key──."
Randy circled 2 words: 'kuroko no honō' (black flame) and 'kurayami no tsuki' (dark moon).
"The fact that nouns come after means 'kuroko' (black) and 'kurayami' (dark) are adjectives."
"So, originally it would be 'kuroi' (black) and 'kurai' (dark), right?"
"Maybe..."
Muttering, Randy borrowed the gojūon chart from Liz and started replacing 'ko' with 'i' to revert the other words.
"'nuyai ō'... What the heck is that?"
Randy slumped his shoulders, scratching his head, and refocused on what seemed to be the key words.
"Black flame... dark moon... black, dark── black flame! Dark moon!"
Clapping his hands, Randy tried again, replacing 'nuyai' with 'furuki.'
"Furuki ō──" (old king).
Everyone exchanged glances at that word. Then, with Randy, Liz, and Catherine, the 3 of them worked together to revert the remaining hiragana.
What they came up with, neatly divided for reading, was...
'The old king seals the thing into the axis of lost time.
The time stained by the black flame, shining in the abyss, sinks.
The one with the qualification gathers the light of the heavens in the shadow of the dark.
If you search for it, the door to darkness will open.'
Facing that string of text, the 3 looked at each other.
"Furuki ō means──." (old king)
"Ushinawareshi toki no jiku." (the axis of lost time)
"What's the dark door?"
As a result of their decoding, a mysterious poem appeared, but they didn't understand the details for now. However, Randy and Liz had one thing in mind.
"This is about that guy, right..."
"I don't know. I can't even tell if it was sealed or if he was sealed away──."
Liz shakes her head, but it's clear from her expression that Ellie is also confused. Catherine, who doesn't get it──well, Leon doesn't either──seems unable to say anything like "What's going on?" in front of Randy and the others, so she just stays quiet, comparing the two with her eyes.
──Eclipse Altar
The words Catherine said that day kept echoing in the heads of the 3 of them.
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