It was almost two in the afternoon.

"Did you say Dreamweaver?"

Ethan stared at Leon, who had just called the man standing beside Dr. Anise by that name.

As someone who had been educated about the Calamities after being taken in by the palace, Ethan had known about each one of them. It was around that time he had first taken a genuine interest in history, because the spells from those eras were far more powerful than anything from the current one.

Leon looked at him and the others.

"It is not hard to guess."

"Is it?" Cyan was the one who said this. "How can you be certain that person is him—"

"He is right though." Lillian said. She looked at the painting. "It was the very same person. The one who helped the Doctor build this place. The one who had a hand in the creation of the Akashic Record."

"No way." Cyan muttered, his eyes shifting toward the man with brown hair and green eyes.

’This is one of the Five Calamities?’

The thought lingered in his mind.

For the people of this era, the Five Calamities were considered literal gods. They had shaped nations, held power capable of redrawing the geographical map of the world, had cathedrals built in their names, and followers dedicated to preserving their legacy.

Cyan and Ethan’s reactions were valid.

Ethan looked at the elven girl.

"You said he and the Doctor were in that kind of relationship. Is that really true?"

She nodded.

"Not just in a relationship. They were married. And they had a child together."

"...Wait, seriously?" Cyan almost choked.

This was next level lore for both of them. The idea that a literal Calamity had a wife and a family was something neither of them had ever considered possible.

’Wait, does that mean the others might have family too?’ Cyan’s curiosity was growing with every passing thought.

He shook his head, dismissing all the wild thoughts. He just could not picture children of Calamities running around out in the open.

That being said...

"Where is their child? Is he or she in this city?" Ethan asked, staring at the elven girl with green hair and emerald eyes standing right before the painting.

"..."

Leon said nothing, and neither did Lillian.

"Leon, was it?" Lillian looked at Leon, changing the topic. "You did not seem surprised like the others. Most outsiders who hear about him either freeze up completely or simply refuse to believe any of it. But you seemed to already be aware of him."

She raised her eyebrows after she was finished.

"Oh... Is that so? I actually read about it before." Leon replied.

Truth be told, nothing about Dreamweaver’s relationship with the Doctor had ever been mentioned in any historical record. That was precisely why it had come as a shock to Ethan and Cyan.

Though at this point, both of them had already thought about how Leon could have known this. Because they knew who his sister was.

Of course a Calamity Head would have access to history that never made it into public records.

"Studied about them, you say..." Lillian tilted her head at him. "So that means you know about the other Calamities too?"

Leon nodded.

"Only the basics. Although I am certain I know more than your average folk."

"Interesting..." The elven girl rubbed her chin. A brilliant smile appeared on her face. "In that case, I would like you to share a little about Lady Auriala."

"Lady Auriala?" Unlike the others, Cyan had never taken much interest in history, so she was unaware.

"She means the Everbright," Ethan said. "Auriala was her name before she obtained the Calamity rank."

As they were talking, Leon glanced at the time once more.

Acting too deliberately in the very first loop would be dangerous. Ethan and Cyan would start to grow suspicious. It was better to simply observe this loop and act accordingly in the next one.

This had not been his actual plan from the start. He had changed it completely after meeting Irene Adler.

She was an uncertainty in this deadlocked state.

"Cough...! Keep it down please."

Someone coughed. Loud enough for all four of them to hear.

It was one of the guards.

Lillian turned toward him and gave a polite bow before gesturing to the others toward the next spot.

"Miss Lillian," Ethan spoke up. "What can you tell me about the golden crystal pillar here?"

The elven girl kept walking but glanced back slightly.

"I am getting to that. Have some patience. You need to understand the history before any of that will make sense."

There were still several portraits left along the wall, each one telling a different part of the same story.

Leon however already knew all the lore surrounding Evana. Listening to it again served no purpose. He would rather put that energy toward something else.

’Should I just go ahead?’

"Now, about this painting..."

As Lillian explained each portrait one by one to Ethan and Cyan, Leon moved several steps ahead on his own, glancing at the remaining portraits quickly for anything worth noting.

In one painting, the Doctor, Dreamweaver, and the others in matching white lab coats were standing in front of something that resembled a giant nuclear reactor.

Moving further along, he could see the city beginning to take shape across the portraits. Labs and housing structures are appearing one by one.

In the next portrait the buildings were occupied. Humans and other races going about their lives inside them.

The quality of the portraits had noticeably improved as well. The detail had become significantly finer, almost appearing to be lifelike.

He stopped briefly in front of a painting that had turned holographic, displaying a three dimensional image of a pyramid shaped dome half under construction.

"This was the starting phase it seems..."

This was where they had started testing their creation in their own city. The Akashic Record itself.

Dr. Anish Bluemoon and her team had not invented it from nothing. What they built was a reconstruction. A reverse engineered approximation of something that already existed at a higher level of reality, even beyond reality to be fair.

Anish had understood pieces of the original concept and built a functional copy using the most advanced technology available to them.

But as a copy it was extraordinary.

It could store the entirety of Evana’s data, automate the city’s systems, and run predictive calculations about the city’s future using a Super Intelligent Neuromorphic Quantum Computer.

It was just never the real thing.

Leon walked further, watching the city grow larger with each portrait he passed. Every member of Dr. Anish’s team aged across the frames, and eventually began to be replaced by younger faces one by one.

From the looks of it the portraits were roughly two to three years apart from each other.

"Looks insane," Leon muttered. The level of detail here was far beyond anything represented in the game.

As he moved to the next hologram the image became crystal clear. The figures inside it were moving.

"Oh."

Dr. Anise was sitting on a chair now, Dreamweaver standing to her right and the others gathered behind her. She was smiling brightly with one hand resting on her belly.

Leon briefly glanced back toward Lillian.

The princess was a spitting image of her mother.

The people in the projection moved around her, laughing quietly, gathered close to her.

It was a wholesome thing to look at.

But Leon did not smile at all. He had been staring at Dreamweaver the entire time. Unlike the others in the portrait, Dreamweaver did not appear happy in the slightest.

Leaving it, Leon walked toward the last three portraits.

The first one had the Doctor in healthy condition, but with a saddened expression, a child in her arms, and her laboratory team around her. But no sign of the child’s father anywhere.

This projection appeared to be about ten years apart from the previous one.

Leon did not need to guess what had happened in those ten years.

This must have been where she learned about his true nature.

The projection moved like a video. The others in it were gathered around the baby, each taking turns, laughing and fussing over her. It was clear the child was deeply loved by everyone around her.

"...this one is cute." Leon let out a quiet laugh without meaning to.

The baby had been born an elf, with a literal Calamity’s blood running inside her.

Still smiling, Leon moved on to the next portrait.

"Huh...?"

His feet stopped and his smile dropped before he could fully process what he was looking at.

There were three faces in the portrait. Standing next to each other like old friends.

The one in the middle was Dr. Anise in her lab coat, wearing that same saddened expression from earlier. The one to her left was Irene Adler, smiling as usual. And the one on the far right, wearing a forced smile, the one Leon had his eyes fixed on, was a woman with crimson eyes and white hair. She was holding the same sword currently attached to Leon’s belt.

Lumina Elizabeth Dare. The Swordmaiden with a shattered past.

Leon subconsciously clenched his chest as a piercing pain shot through it at electrifying speed.

"..."

’Why is she here?’ Rumi was the one who broke the silence. ’Going by your memories, I do not think she was ever meant to be here.’

Lumina Elizabeth Dare was someone whose history was obscure even in the archives of the world. No one knew where she had gone after the war ended.

It was Leon who had found her corpse inside that shabby little house, alone and deep within the woods.

And now here she was. In this frame. In Evana.

Which meant only one thing.

"She was in Evana before she moved to that forest."