abcnovels
Chapter 61 – Human? (7)
Chapter 61 – Human? (7)
Chapter 61 – Human? (7)
[Translator – Night]
[Proofreader – Gun]
Chapter 61 – Human? (7)
“Explanation?”
This isn’t a battle.
“Does that mean you’ve come to talk?”
“For now, yes.”
Adamanth said this as he looked at Elene.
“I knew you were a mischievous princess, but this is a bit much.”
“…Adamanth. Even you have come to stop me.”
Adamanth Lagesh.
The kingdom’s chief magician.
Lutein Kingdom’s only superhuman-level strongman.
[TL/N: Superhumans are also transcendents.]
Adamanth shook his head.
“I didn’t come to stop you. I came to explain. It seems the knights were too ignorant to speak sensibly.”
“If explanations don’t work, you’ll stop me, won’t you?”
“That’s true.”
Elene bit her lip.
“Right. The King of the Denian Kingdom’s possible Declaration of Humanity. That’s frightening, isn’t it? For you to come, it must be urgent.”
“No. That doesn’t matter.”
Adamanth spoke calmly in response to Elene’s words.
Elene was momentarily taken aback.
“What?”
“I know he can make the Declaration of Humanity, but that’s not the important part. I came here because you, the princess, tried to cross into another country without notifying the royal family.”
Adamanth sighed.
“You are the noble first princess of the Lutein Kingdom. The weight of your blood is never light. If you cross into another country without permission, it becomes a diplomatic issue.”
He pressed his forehead as if it was troublesome.
“If you talk to His Majesty and officially move, I won’t stop you, but you can’t act like this. You need to realize your position a bit more.”
“…….”
It made sense.
A very ordinary point.
That’s why it was strange.
Adamanth spoke.
“Princess. What exactly are you dissatisfied with?”
“Dissatisfied? What am I dissatisfied with?”
Elene’s eyes flickered with anger.
“You all aren’t the ones I know! You’ve all changed! At some point, you became something that doesn’t know death!”
“Yes.”
Adamanth nodded.
His overly calm demeanor made Elene, who was about to explode in anger, hesitate.
“I know as well. That we’ve changed in some way.”
“Really…!”
She glared at the bound knight.
The knight flinched.
“No! It’s not true! I don’t know anything!”
“Farman’s words aren’t lies. He really doesn’t know. Not just him, but probably everyone in the royal family doesn’t know.”
Adamanth lightly waved his staff.
“It seems this conversation will get tiresome, so let’s put him to sleep.”
“Ah….”
Farman bowed his head.
As Elene watched in momentary puzzlement, her eyes widened as something came to mind.
“Adamanth. Could it be you…”
“If there were such a spell, I’d like to learn it too. Only the Master of the Magic Tower might know, but it’s impossible for someone like me.”
Adamanth tapped the ground with the end of his staff as if to summarize his words.
“Your and Aaron’s suspicions are correct. We’ve changed. But we haven’t turned into the kind of monsters you think. We’re still human.”
“What nonsense! How can something that doesn’t die be human!”
“That point has merit. This is quite a strange situation, making it difficult to explain.”
After pondering for a moment, Adamanth spoke.
“Ten years ago, the princess didn’t even reach my waist, but now you’ve grown so beautifully. It’s nothing short of a divine miracle.”
“I don’t need flattery.”
“It’s not that. Do you know how you grew and developed?”
Elene frowned.
“…What do you mean?”
“Human growth is highly complex and systematic. A body that starts off small and wrinkled gradually grows over time. It’s a miracle so amazing it’s called divine. But no one questions or finds it strange.”
Hair grows day by day.
So do nails.
The skin loses its elasticity.
Height increases.
But no one questions or finds it strange.
“As a child, you marked your height on the castle wall every day. You were delighted as you grew taller. But you never questioned or feared that fact. It’s the same for us. We just changed that way.”
“…What nonsense are you talking about?”
“That’s probably what it sounds like. How should I explain this?”
Adamanth scratched his head as if troubled.
Ketal, who had been listening quietly, spoke up.
“So, one day you suddenly became humans who don’t know the concept of death and regenerate, like how you grow taller and your nails and hair grow every day.”
“…For a barbarian, you sure think quickly.”
Adamanth looked at Ketal with a slightly surprised expression.
“To be precise, it’s not regeneration. It’s more like returning to the original state.”
“But even so, isn’t it too big of a change to compare with growing taller? If someone grew a head taller overnight, everyone would find it strange.”
They do not die.
Even if they die, they regenerate.
And they didn’t even question this fact.
Adamanth gave a wry smile.
“I’m not denying it. It’s strange not to realize it. If I hadn’t reached the realm of the superhuman, I would have been like Farman.”
“So you’re admitting it! You’re not human!”
“No. We are human.”
Adamanth responded firmly to Elene’s words.
His so resolute attitude left Elene momentarily speechless.
“I am aware that we have changed. But at the same time, I am certain that I am human.”
He placed his hand on his chest.
“I am Adamanth Lagesh. The teacher who taught the princess the history of the world and the pride of the royal family. I am myself. I am not some imitation.”
Adamanth chuckled.
“To begin with, if someone could perfectly imitate me, wouldn’t that be even more surprising? If such an entity existed, they wouldn’t bother imitating me—they could just destroy the kingdom.”
“…….”
That was undeniable.
A monster capable of mimicking even a superhuman-level strongman?
That would imply surpassing superhumans.
If so, they wouldn’t need to converse but would just take over the royal family.
“…So, you all changed suddenly. But you’re saying you’re still human. You want me to understand that?”
Even so, believing it was another matter.
Adamanth scratched his head.
“I also find it funny, but that’s the situation. From our perspective, it’s just that the princess suddenly became strange. That’s all.”
Adamanth was the only one who realized the oddity.
[Translator – Night]
[Proofreader – Gun]
The others still didn’t recognize the anomaly and believed themselves to be ordinary humans.
From the perspective of the people in the royal castle, it wasn’t about deceiving her—it genuinely seemed that Elene had developed a delusion.
Elene’s face contorted.
“Princess, how about returning now?”
Adamanth calmly tried to persuade Elene.
“We are not monsters. We are just a bit unusual, but we are human. We can live normally and carry on our lives as usual.”
“…Don’t be ridiculous. In the end, you are monsters. Humans who cannot die? Do you think such things can exist? I don’t want to live among monsters like you.”
Elene gritted her teeth.
Adamanth sighed as if he found it troublesome.
“Monsters, you say. That’s not entirely wrong. Humans usually fear death.”
“You understand well. I….”
“But princess, do you know this?”
Adamanth smiled faintly.
“The moment you realized what we are, you became very stressed and fearful of us. Perhaps because of that stress, you ate a lot. To the point where it became a problem. I asked the chef at the time, and apparently, you ate about seven meals and thirteen desserts a day on average. You always loved to eat since you were young.”
“Quite the glutton.”
Ketal muttered.
Elene’s face turned bright red.
“Wh-what does that have to do with anything now!”
“The amount you ate would turn any ordinary person into a pig within a month. You ate like that for a whole year. Yet, you remained beautiful and kept your perfect figure.”
Their gazes turned to Elene.
Adamanth quietly asked.
“What do you think about that?”
“What about it?”
Elene looked puzzled, as if he was asking something obvious.
“What’s the problem?”
Adamanth let out a faint laugh at her attitude.
Instead of answering, he looked at Aaron.
“Aaron, the same goes for you. As I recall, you were diagnosed with an incurable disease about two years ago. A disease that allowed you to live but required frequent check-ups. Yet, you haven’t seen a doctor even once in the past year. And you seem perfectly fine.”
“Wh-what does that have to do with anything.”
Aaron was the same.
Adamanth looked at Ketal.
“Do you understand, barbarian?”
“This is fascinating.”
“K-Ketal?”
Elene looked at Ketal in confusion.
Ketal was looking at her with a strange expression.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Elene, after we met and you became afraid of me, you refused to eat my food. You sustained yourself on dried jerky. If I remember correctly….”
Ketal brought his fingers together, indicating a small size.
“For three days, you ate just this one piece.”
“Yes. So I was very hungry.”
“If you eat that little, hunger won’t be your only problem. You’ll develop other issues.”
They walked continuously every day, except for very brief breaks.
Even a well-trained man would struggle with such a relentless march.
A piece of jerky the size of a palm couldn’t possibly provide enough nutrition to sustain someone for three days.
“But you had no problems.”
Even if she struggled, she never stopped walking.
It wasn’t something that could be done on sheer willpower alone.
“What, what?”
At first, he didn’t think much of it.
He figured it was okay since this was a fantasy world.
After all, some of his companions had survived for a month eating nothing but ice after being isolated in the wilderness.
But listening to Adamanth’s story, it seemed that wasn’t the case.
Elene’s eyes filled with confusion.
“I am.”
“A human.”
“…”
Elene fell silent.
Those were the words Farman had been saying all along.
“It doesn’t make sense for only the two of you to remain unaffected after devouring the entire royal castle.”
Adamanth smiled bitterly.
“You call us monsters? You are the same. Only the form is different.”
* * *
The princess tried to protest.
‘No, I am human. I am not a monster like you. What about me is strange?’
But every time she tried to say those words, she remembered what she had said to Farman.
It was exactly the same.
What had she said?
She had ignored all of Farman’s words while pressing a sword to his neck, insisting that she was human.
Only then did she realize.
Her belief held no value or meaning.
“…Ah.”
A sound like something breaking echoed.
She hung her head.
Aaron did the same.
Seeing that the conversation had come to an end, Adamanth looked at Elene with sympathetic eyes.
“Don’t worry. You are not a monster. You are human, just like me. Return to the castle and calm yourself.”
As he approached the princess, someone blocked his path.
It was Ketal.
Adamanth frowned.
“I thought you were smart, but in the end, you’re just a barbarian. It seems you didn’t understand the conversation.”
“I understood. It’s like the Ship of Theseus.”
“Hmm?”
“Is that a paradox unknown here?”
Ketal began to explain.
Long ago, there was a ship of Theseus that led a war to victory.
The people of that country treasured the ship.
But eventually, the wooden ship rotted and decayed.
So they replaced the deck, changed the sails, and repainted it.
As time passed, every part of the ship was replaced.
Could it still be called the Ship of Theseus?
Adamanth’s eyes showed surprise after hearing the explanation.
“…Did you come up with that? It’s a different approach from the homunculus dilemma. It’s a new concept.”
“Homunculus, huh.”
Is there something like that?
Ketal laughed.
‘This world never ceases to amaze me.’
Ketal realized.
The kingdom of Lutein was a massive Ship of Theseus.
[Translator – Night]
[Proofreader – Gun]