"What is it, Cleria?"
"{My cousin is coming to see Igor! Bye!}"
*Duuuuuuuuu…*
"..."
Shuri had a change of heart. She hated devils.
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|DxD|- Chapter 50- Diehauser's Confirmation
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Hours Prior, Belial Estate, Underworld
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Deep in the recesses of the clan manor, a secret room with no door existed. Inside, scrolls and scattered parchments littered the floor. Books, both modern and ancient, crowded the only available table. Pages were left open, each depicting different languages with some dating back centuries.
Glowing light orbs on the ceiling illuminated a polished well-groomed man seated behind the desk. His eyes were narrowed with intent focus on the ancient codex he held in his hands.
For five years, Diehauser had not stopped trying to figure out what Igor was. It was a challenge for him, especially four years ago when Shuri stated Igor's secret included the gods.
All these books and old parchments contained records, legends, and eyewitness accounts of great figures, artifacts, and lineages that threatened gods.
The world had no lack of mysterious existences. Most were killed or went into hiding. Some existences were imprisoned or silenced whenever they were deemed a threat to godly rule. In his bid to find Igor's true identity, he did not hesitate to personally scour the worlds and allowed himself to accept even the most bogus of possibilities.
He once believed Igor was perhaps a dryad or a descendant of one. Dryads were a godly threat, requiring that swaths of land be destroyed just to kill them. Their existence and bond to the world was a direct threat to gods of fertility, rain, storms, and more gods related to weather and agriculture. Their existence caused an avalanche effect towards other gods such as those of war and rage.
Dryads made the land rich and plentiful. The most powerful dryads could span entire countries with forests for timber and fields for crops. Their widespread influence was a direct affront to gods, which saw the dryad population extinct today.
Diehauser was never one to truly believe the word 'extinct'. Though unlikely, it would be acceptable if Igor were a dryad spawn. But over the years he visited the boy, it only became more and more apparent he was a human through and through, especially as Igor entered his teenage years.
The loss of the dryad path only opened a new one. Over the years, he paid close attention to Igor's lifeforce and with it, began investigating long-lived humans. Medical records—both human and supernaturally gathered, experiences, and milestones in life, and so on. He was looking for any figure who emulated Igor's abnormal lifeforce patterns and cell division.
He went as far as gathering data on Vasco Strada, publicly acknowledged as one of the strongest humans in history. The church kept a very tight leash on their strongest exorcist, but decades of intelligence probing by interested parties meant basic intelligence still leaked. And combined with some covert observations during the Scramble, while Vasco was a monster at his peak, he didn't have the same abnormality as Igor. At least as far as reports stated.
All of this left Diehauser craving the answer to Igor's true lineage. And after eliminating all possibilities, one remained. He wasn't sure, but he suspected it since almost two years ago.
Today, he was going through an old codex made from the bark of a fig tree. It was an ancient document dating over two thousand years ago. The parchment contained an eyewitness account from the old Mayan civilization in the Americas. Acquiring this codex was very difficult. It was something modern humans themselves did not discover, and it had survived the destruction brought by the Inquisition.
The language was obscure and the preservation of this parchment was not complete, but simple reconstruction magic revealed the words.
'And there she was. Hair radiant like the sun. Shimmering eyes deeper than the ocean. The great lady who saved our home.'
"Again. Golden hair and blue eyes."
Diehauser muttered to himself. He only managed to obtain this codex just recently through very difficult channels. He did not need a painting to know this woman was most likely an Ariyan. This codex wasn't the only supporting evidence.
Spread on his desk was a picture of a cave painting taken from a rural dwelling in Africa. It was a very crude painting of a stick figure fighting a giant beast. The image was crooked and erosion was not kind, but it was enough to see key features typically denote descent. And again, it was golden hair and blue eyes.
It was not hard to figure. Ariyans were somewhat active in the millennia before the common era. Then they stopped somewhere in the centuries leading to 0 AD. Despite frequent searches, he found nothing afterwards despite pulling every string.
"Then again, it was hard enough finding these three."
Diehauser carefully rolled the codex and put it away. It was important he made copies of this evidence for storage and redundancy.
There was an open scroll hovering before him. It depicted an image of Sujata, a pious young woman who offered a bowl of milk rice to Buddha. Most paintings only showed the two of them. Yet there was a secret one that had another woman standing behind Sujata. And again, it was a woman with yellow hair. And if his assumption proved right, this woman had blue eyes too.
"There's roughly two thousand years between these records and the Scramble. Someone wanted the Ariyans gone."
The woman in the Mayan record revived a forest and was worshiped by the Mayans. The man in the cave painting was presumably also worshipped as a great warrior. The golden woman before Buddha might be the reason he decisively chose to end his fasting and comprehend the Middle Way of Buddhism.
"The gods do not want to be contested."
It was just like the dryads. Gods are unforgiving when it comes to receiving prayers and worship. It is not impossible for the gods to strong-arm the Ariyans into complete seclusion, then finish the job two millennia later once they could bring the whole world against them.
"Sigh…"
Diehauser smiled helplessly. He was stumbling into a very dangerous conspiracy. The worst part? It only seemed more tantalising with each theory his mind cooked.
"Combining Shuri's words, Igor's vitality, the Ariyan's long lives, and the gods' suppression, it is not too far-fetched to believe Igor may be a surviving Ariyan, or at least his family tree has an Ariyan."
Diehauser momentarily paused there. Would Ariyans procreate with normal humans? He wasn't sure.
"Regardless, I am seventy percent sure Igor has ties to the lineage of Ariya."
It was a calm conclusion, but not one he quickly accepted. He could wait another thirty or forty years to verify his theory. As long as Igor reached fifty, it would be far easier to compare his lifeforce to other humans. But, that wouldn't be as interesting.
"Let's go visit our little suspect. Perhaps he might give me the proof I need."
Diehauser stood up. With a snap of his fingers, every single shred of paper and material vanished in a blink. No matter how secure this room was, he would dare not leave such crucial evidence for unfortunate discovery.
He pondered just asking Igor if he were an Ariyan. Igor was far too young to lie. But where would the fun in that be? Getting answers in such an easy way would be an affront to his efforts. No. He had a much more interesting verification, one that might even help Igor as well.
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Chapter 50
END