Before long, the conference room fell quiet again.
Storm Border wouldn't immediately resume its usual bustle. The meeting had been short, but what was said required time to sink in.
"What are you thinking about, Romani?"
Shiomi looked over at Romani, who had taken a seat at random.
"A lot of things. If this crisis called the Bleaching of Humanity is really the result of Marisbury's actions… then maybe I never truly understood the man who called me his friend."
Romani noticed Fou had wandered into the conference room at some point and hadn't followed Mash and the others out. He picked him up on the spot, absentmindedly stroking his fur as he spoke.
"It's not that you didn't understand him. It's that he chose to keep things from you," Shiomi said quietly. "Even with friends they recognize, people still hold secrets. I'm no different."
"That's fair." Romani gave a small smile. "You didn't stay behind just to comfort me out of friendship, did you? I'm fine, really. Just… surprised."
"That's good." Shiomi leaned back against the doorway. "With everyone there earlier, it wasn't convenient to ask. Is there anything about Marisbury that left a strong impression on you?"
"A strong impression?" Romani thought for a moment. "It's hard to say. That man was always calm. Whether it was when Mash lost control after summoning Galahad as a catalyst, or anything else—he never lost his composure."
"As a Magus, he was flawless in that regard."
You could see that same steadiness in Kirschtaria's demeanor.
"If you put it that way, the old Director really was a bit dull," Shiomi said with a faintly nostalgic look. "Even at the very end of the Holy Grail War, when he used Sakura as a hostage to negotiate with Morgan and me—demanding that I withdraw with my family from a war that only had one Servant left—he didn't show a trace of personal emotion."
One wrong word then, and it could have ended in mutual destruction.
Yet Marisbury hadn't seemed nervous at all. Even if he couldn't win and had died there, he wouldn't have considered it something to regret.
"Haha…" Romani laughed awkwardly.
During that Holy Grail War, Marisbury had asked him to use Clairvoyance to confirm the identities of the participants. As the King of Magecraft, Solomon had felt an unexpected flicker of interest when he saw Shiomi—so much so that he'd taken the initiative to approach Gilgamesh and request his assistance, just to create an opportunity to face Shiomi and Morgan alone.
He'd had no desires at all, yet in that moment, an unwarranted competitive impulse had arisen.
"Speaking of the end of that Holy Grail War…" Romani began, only to pause mid-sentence, lost in thought.
Fou tilted his head at him and let out a questioning chirp.
"Remember something?" Shiomi asked.
"No… something else came to mind." Romani looked up. "After the negotiations, when we touched the manifested Holy Grail and were deciding how to use it, Marisbury made a joke to Solomon. He said there was just one last step left—use a Command Spell to make Solomon commit suicide."
Even now, he instinctively spoke of Solomon and himself as two completely separate beings, his tone that of an observer recounting someone else's story.
"Oh?" Shiomi raised an eyebrow.
He didn't need to ask what happened next. Even if a Command Spell had no real effect on Solomon, Solomon would have accepted it willingly and taken his own life.
Because the humans of that era longed to grow, and Solomon had no reason to stand in their way.
Just as he had in life, he would simply do what needed to be done.
"Of course, he immediately brushed that idea aside and said he'd just gotten carried away. Looking back now, we were probably only one step away from completing what Chaldea needed," Romani continued. "You already know most of this. But maybe the thrill of victory hadn't faded yet, because he went on to explain why he was so determined to see Chaldea through."
"Why?" Shiomi gestured lightly for him to continue. He was listening.
"Why did the Age of Gods come to an end? Why has the foundation of Human Order been so unstable since the start of the Common Era? It was because of those questions that he wanted to use Rayshift to unravel the truth and find the cause," Romani said. "To preserve Human Order, Chaldeas had to be activated. And once it was, 'Sheba' wouldn't just observe the future—it could also receive light from the past."
"Preserve… Human Order," Shiomi murmured. "If I remember correctly, the Animusphere 'Grand Order' was about maintaining Human Order."
"That should be right." Romani nodded.
"If that's the case, then I can at least understand why Marisbury acted so… unsightly." Shiomi didn't soften the word. "To secure the Holy Grail, he was willing to play the part of a defeated villain and use someone else's child as a bargaining chip. Being bound by a 'Grand Order' can't be easy for a Magus."
"It might sound strange coming from me," Romani said quietly, "but Marisbury did have the kind of instability unique to Magi. In simpler terms… he lacked a conventional moral compass."
He didn't really want to pass judgment on the dead—especially someone who had sincerely called him a friend.
"You could already see it in what happened with Mash. Otherwise, Marie wouldn't have suffered the way she did back then," Shiomi said with a small wave of his hand, making it clear he didn't want to dwell on it either.
"But…" Romani continued, "the passion he kept buried inside, and the love he held for humanity—it was real. Unshakably so."
"Love… for humanity?" Shiomi's expression turned complicated.
Romani realized how that might sound and fell silent for a moment. "…During the Holy Grail War, Solomon already knew Marisbury only had about ten years left to live. Even if he wanted to become one of the Evils of Humanity, that's not something you can do so easily. You'd need at least your level for that, wouldn't you?"
"Who knows." Shiomi sat down. "If the 'Grand Order' passed down through Magus lineages since before the Common Era was meant to preserve Human Order, then what drove Marisbury—or rather, what drove Chaldeas—to bring about the Bleaching of Humanity?"
"That's the part we still can't answer," Romani said. "If the planet was fated to become this blank white world a hundred years after 2015, then what Goetia did starts to make a twisted kind of sense. If humanity was going to go extinct anyway, then starting over from scratch might have seemed like the only option."
For the sake of a better future, he had turned his fangs on the peace of the present—willing to sacrifice all of humanity now in order to create a brand-new human history.
Just thinking about it left Romani with a bitter knot in his chest.
"If only I'd asked him a few more questions when he showed up…"