Under his watchful eye, Jeanne stepped into the chamber—a room clearly dedicated to housing archived files and documents—and struck up a conversation with the titan of a man.
"Back at the fork in the hall, we split up to search both paths. Looks like Skadi's luck ran out; she was actually hoping to come over and lend you a hand."
Jeanne shrugged with a flash of lighthearted regret, eyeing Ulpianus curiously as he tore through the shelves and file cabinets. Her curiosity flared as she watched him hunt through the mess. "So, you didn't come here just to clean out members of The Deep Sea Church?"
Judging by his actions, Jeanne got the sense that he didn't care all that much about the cultists themselves. He had broken into this secret lair primarily to unearth specific answers he sought.
"I have no interest in interfering in the internal affairs of foreign nations," Ulpianus replied without pausing his hands, rapidly sorting through papers and files. "Though to be precise, eliminating these absurd fools is merely a secondary objective."
His voice faltered slightly, followed by a quiet, self-deprecating scoff. "Though to some extent, I—and perhaps my entire race—am not so different from them. We are both rather absurd existences."
Jeanne wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, scratching her head in slight confusion. She bent down and picked up a few discarded documents off the floor to skim them over. Yet as soon as her eyes landed on the pages, she uncovered a rather pressing obstacle—
She couldn't read a single line of what was written! For someone whose mind stalled out on advanced mathematics, high-level marine biological theory was a complete blind spot. Then again, if she were being honest with herself, her intellectual blind spots were fairly numerous.
Even so, amidst the dense technical jargon, certain elements remained clear enough for her to grasp. Every single file scattered around them detailed experimental logs and research reports on the artificial cultivation of Seaborn.
These people are bizarre. Is being human really that terrible? Jeanne thought, sighing internally as she surveyed the mountain of data. How many lives had been sacrificed to produce a paper trail this massive? A sudden urge to set the whole pile ablaze flared up within her.
"What exactly are you looking for?" Jeanne asked, watching Ulpianus discard papers at an increasing speed. Loose sheets floated through the air like falling snow, scattered across the stone chamber.
"I don't know the specifics," Ulpianus confessed while using his weapon to pry open another heavy vault door. "I simply harbor deep doubts about our past operations. I came here to see if these cultists possessed the answers I need."
"Is that so?" Jeanne shrugged. Spotting an unopened metal safe nearby, she drew her sword, sliced through the lock, and began sifting through its contents.
"Then I'll help you look. Maybe I'll run into something that looks out of place."
Refusing to just stand idly by, Jeanne methodically searched through the internal compartment. It contained a bundle of private correspondence. Guided by intuition, she pulled a random letter from the pile, and as her eyes scanned the text, her pupils shrank into tight points.
"Captain... I think you need to take a look at this." Jeanne's voice turned grave, carrying an unnerving weight as if she had uncovered something utterly unbelievable.
"What is it? We may have time on our hands, but we shouldn't waste it..." Ulpianus sounded mildly irritated at the disruption, yet despite his sharp tone, he stepped over to stand beside Jeanne and examined the letter she held out.
It was official correspondence written by Aegirian authorities, addressed directly to the leaders of The Deep Sea Church.
That was precisely what triggered Jeanne's alarm. Why would Aegir—a realm that isolated itself from the surface world—be engaged in direct, secretive communication with a cult of lunatics who worshiped their mortal enemies, the Seaborn?
Jeanne couldn't fathom the politics behind it, but she knew one thing for certain: such a connection was forged for no benevolent cause. They were conspiring toward something sinister behind closed doors.
Yet a crucial question remained—when had these two factions aligned with one another?
Jeanne wasn't the only one harboring that question. Beside her, Ulpianus fell into a rigid, stony silence.
He understood the implications far better than Jeanne ever could. The words in that letter shattered his previous assumptions, exposing a faint, terrifying tip of an iceberg—a shadow that had hung over his head and the heads of his comrades for years!
He snatched the letter from Jeanne's grip, reading every word before frantically digging through the remaining bundle of mail. As he tore through document after document, his restraint finally snapped, and he slammed a fist straight into the stone wall, shattering the masonry into dust.
"How... could this be?! What did they treat us as?!"
Jeanne could hear the raw, burning rage in his voice, a fury hot enough to reduce everything around them to ashes.
Yet Ulpianus offered no explanation regarding the specifics. He handed the documents over to Jeanne, his mind a turbulent storm as he turned back to search the remaining archives.
Jeanne looked down at the papers in her hands, her brow furrowing as she deciphered the truth. The leadership of The Deep Sea Church, working alongside corrupt figures high within Aegir, was actively plotting to engineer another world-ending crisis—another Great Silence!
And the core catalyst required to initiate their apocalyptic scheme was none other than Skadi—or more precisely, whichever Abyssal Hunter had struck down the ancient deity of the deep.
"They're trying to use the Seaborn to destroy the entire world?! Are they insane? What do those Aegirians stand to gain from this? Do they honestly believe the Seaborn will show mercy to Aegir?!"
Jeanne struggled to comprehend the logic of madness. Plotting for power or political ambition was one thing, but orchestrating total extinction defied all reason.
Still, while the logic eluded her, she wasn't entirely surprised by the existence of such monsters. Fanatics bent on bringing about the end of days could surface in any era. Why, if she herself ever suffered a complete loss of sanity, she possessed the firepower to become a world-ending threat too.
"I don't know their full motives," Ulpianus said, his voice cold and heavy. "But one thing is certain: high-ranking officials in Aegir are deeply involved in this operation. It seems my warnings to Skadi were far too optimistic. She shouldn't even be staying in Iberia!"
His mood was thoroughly ruined. To discover that your former comrades—and the very cause you sacrificed everything to protect—were nothing more than pawns in someone else's grand betrayal was a blow few could endure.
This was treason of the highest order. It betrayed the Abyssal Hunters who had surrendered their human lives to guard Aegir; it betrayed the citizens who had succumbed to madness; and it betrayed those Hunters who had been forced to end the lives of their own corrupted brothers-in-arms.
Had he not feared sparking an immediate catastrophe, Ulpianus would have marched straight back to the submerged cities of Aegir, slammed these documents into the faces of those high officials, and demanded answers in front of the entire nation.
Yet he knew he couldn't afford to act recklessly. If he returned now, the government would simply brand him a mad, degenerate Abyssal Hunter, using their military forces to put him down before he could utter a word.
"Do not speak a word of this to Skadi," Ulpianus instructed, his first concern returning to the subordinate caught in the eye of the storm. "Knowing this truth will bring her no peace. It might even drive her to act rashly and make a fatal mistake."
"I understand," Jeanne agreed, nodding solemnly. "However, I'm taking a set of these records with me. We won't spread panic publicly, but certain key figures need to be made aware of what's coming."
Jeanne looked at the papers, a dark shadow falling over her thoughts. If these conspirators were actively advancing their plans, then the world was running out of time.