'300 years.'
Priest Roberta thought.
How could a human maintain their youth for so long?
She pondered while driving the horse to find Lord Ulrich. She wondered what to ask first. Despite hearing many stories about Ulrich, it was difficult to judge what kind of person he was.
All she was sure of was his appearance. If he were three hundred years old, he would be an old man shivering in the cold wind. But when she actually faced him, she was speechless.
The man who identified himself as Ulrich looked no less than twenty, and at most, no more than twenty-five. He was tall with broad shoulders, and his eyes and hair were as black as ink.
Is there a three-hundred-year-old man inside this appearance?
"······."
The rumors that he was a vampire, a child of a fairy, or mixed with dwarf blood were all nonsense. He was fine in the sunlight to be a vampire, and he was too tall to be a dwarf.
Among the half-elves, that is, the Gallua, there are rarely those with blunt ears, so that was the most likely possibility, but from the beginning, the assumption of being a half-elf was not correct. He's too young. I'd rather believe he's a pure-blooded elf with blunt ears.
That was what she thought when she faced him. The fleeting thought did not find an answer. Therefore, the words she uttered after much deliberation were the topic that many people before her had thrown at him.
"Who are you?"
Ulrich smiled.
"You look cold. Let's talk over tea."
He told the crowd waiting for the sacrament that he would postpone it for a while. Then the crowd dispersed, and an old man offered to prepare a place and led the two to a tent.
As they went inside, the heat warmed her body. There was a stove in the middle of the tent, and a steel pipe was used as a chimney to let the fumes escape outside.
Ulrich opened the lid of the teapot on the stove and checked inside.
"The scent is quite strong, would you be okay with it?"
"Yes? Ah, I'm fine."
He filled a teacup with tea and handed it to Roberta. She was about to drink it right away, thinking, 'Well, how strong can the scent be?' but she flinched at the pungent scent. Her eyes welled up even after taking a small sip.
"Ugh... what is this?"
"The people here call it Songhwa tea."
"It tastes completely different."
"It's collected from a mutant."
Unlike her, he sipped the tea indifferently.
"You must have seen the flock of sheep outside."
The image of a cow with sheep's wool on its head came to her mind.
"Think of this Songhwa tea in the same way. It's made from the pollen of pine trees that have grown under the influence of the Ice Peninsula, which humans call the Demon Realm. It's hard to say it tastes good, but it's best to get used to the taste since this is the only tea tree that grows naturally. You'll be sick of eating it in the future, even if you don't want to."
"Is that so?"
She looked at the half-remaining tea and shuddered. She was already sick of it.
"It's a barren place. You can't be picky about what you eat."
"It looks better than I heard."
What did everyone say?
They said there was no Demon Realm like this. There are more monsters than people, and the freezing cold continues throughout the year. But the reality was different.
The weather is bearable if you wear layers of clothes, and the monsters are being raised as livestock? It wasn't at the level of making a fuss about it being a Demon Realm, that was her thought.
"It's not like that now."
"Are you saying it wasn't like this before?"
"Haven't you heard the story? It is said that Ditmarschen also has snow all year round. Usually, it falls and stops like dew, so it doesn't pile up on the ground, but every few years, it piles up as tall as a person, so there comes a time when you can't even find grass to feed the livestock, let alone farm."
He raised his hand higher than his head.
"It's only been a few years since the weather has been this good. The temperature is rising regardless of the season. It seems like a sign that the Little Ice Age is coming to an end, but I think it's too early to be sure."
Roberta tilted her head at the word Ice Age.
"Well, the fairies also call this era the Little Ice Age."
Ulrich poured another cup of tea and sat on the floor. Sitting on the floor was common here, so there were no chairs. A carpet was laid on the floor, but Roberta, who was not used to sitting on the floor, sat awkwardly cross-legged.
"You probably know how to divide eras."
"We divide it into eras from the rise and fall of the Empire."
"That's right. That's the most common way humans divide history, and this era is the third. This means that humans have established three empires so far, and it also means that two empires have collapsed."
"What about the term Little Ice Age?"
"The temperature started to drop around the end of the second era. At the time, I was with the fairies, and we called it that because it was similar to the Ice Age we had encountered in the distant past, but unlike then, there was no rapid drop in temperature."
Roberta took her eyes off the teacup and stared at the lord. A face that was too young, a face that showed no traces of time, a face that looked younger than her, was talking about past experiences, and the past was 1,400 years ago.
This era, the third era, has been around for about 1,400 years.
"You are—"
"You've been calling me that since earlier, call me by my name, Roberta."
She flinched.
"Do you know me?"
"I often contact Alonso. Marcellus, I received a hint that that child would ask him for a recommendation. Then the only person Alonso would send would be you."
Marcellus was the name of the head of the clergy, the Public Church, which humans commonly call the Pantheon. Leaving aside the fact that he called the Pope, whose name even the king of a great country would not dare to call in private, an old man who had lived for a hundred years a child, he said.
"I'm curious. No, you must be suspicious. Who is the person in front of me, how can he be so young, and so on. Right?"
She nodded.
"What did Alonso say about me?"
"He didn't tell me anything."
"I see."
"But the rumors said that the lord was a three-hundred-year-old half-elf, and the records in the temple said that he came as a son-in-law three hundred years ago."
Three hundred years, he muttered to himself.
"It's been a long time. I didn't think I'd be here this long. I knew it, but I didn't realize that so much time had passed. Because it's a place where change is slow. It feels like it's stopped."
He looked down at the teacup and was lost in thought for a long time before waking up.
"Okay. First, to answer about the half-elf, I am not a half-elf."
"Are you even human?"
"I'm human. It's hard to believe, but."
He added that he was a pure human.
"The word pure is a strange word. However, if we define pure as not having dwarves or fairies mixed in among our ancestors, then I can be said to be the purest human."
"How can that be? That's—"
"Impossible? Suppose humans were born before they lived mixed with other races. I was born a long time ago. So long ago that the records I left under the name Ulrich are only fleeting."
"······."
She inadvertently let out a hollow laugh at the absurd claim.
"Your expression is worth seeing."
She was about to answer that it was a lie, but he spoke first.
"You must be thinking that I'm exaggerating."
"I would have believed you if you had just said that aging was slow."
"Why?"
"Because there is such a thing as common sense in the world."
"Common sense... that's a vague word."
Ulrich gestured as if to tell him to continue talking.
"According to the scriptures, humans were rejected and unable to live intertwined with other races even after receiving fire as a gift from Ganymea and building a civilization. It is said that they mixed blood only after establishing the first human empire. Do you know when that was?"
"If I say I don't know, it's like I'm lying."
"Many records have been lost in the midst of the chaos, so it is not specified when that was, but it was a past that fairies have gone through for several generations. Lord Ulrich, what you said is absurd."
He nodded.
"It must sound like that."
Humans get old, and even other races die someday, that's common sense. There have been countless people who have pursued immortality. None of them achieved their goals and met their end.
It is true that Ulrich showed mysterious actions.
It was against Roberta's common sense that he had his name on the heavenly list even though he had not been ordained as a priest, and that the Pope and the bishop treated him specially.
But that was not enough to make her believe everything Ulrich said. She only judged that there was something not absurd, something she did not know.
'It might not be him. It could be a stand-in or something.'
She watched his every move.
"But the truth is the truth."
He emptied his teacup and said.
"I don't lie if I don't speak. Because it's annoying. Think about it. If I really lived a long life, how many people would be like you? How many times do you think I've repeated the same words?"
"Well, that can't be evidence."
"That's right. But I have no intention of persuading you, Roberta. It may sound offensive, but you are not a person worthy enough for me to lie. And I don't have to reveal everything. I just answered because you asked."
Roberta almost let out another hollow laugh, but barely managed to hold it in. And she wondered what to say. She opened her mouth to throw words, then repeated closing it.
"Then tell me about those days. You lived in the distant past, and that distant past was the first era? You must have the history that scholars are so desperately looking for in your head. Isn't that right?"
He shook his head at the sarcastic tone.
"That would be difficult."
"Why?"
"Because it's so old that my memories are not intact. Aren't you the same? Do you remember your childhood experiences clearly? Even yesterday's memories scatter and fly away like smoke if you don't recall them, so what about memories that are even older?"
"But don't you remember a few things?"
"Well, there are such memories. The problem is that most of them are not reliable. Some memories come to mind clearly, but these are broken like fragments, so they are mixed with dreams or imagination. Someone said that memories are transformed into memories because of oblivion. I will not speak because I cannot distinguish whether the memories that have been transformed into memories are true or false."
Roberta clicked her tongue inwardly, saying that his words were fluent.
'He's avoiding it because it's a bluff.'
She wouldn't get the answer she wanted even if she continued the conversation. The other person was making claims that were difficult for her to accept, and there was no evidence to support the claims. She couldn't force him to spit out the truth by yelling at him.
'Did Alonso know? That I would experience this situation.'
She believed that he would.
He was the person who had previously been appointed as the head priest. Unlike his friendly impression, he was a cold-hearted person inside, so he rose to the position of bishop. There was no way such a person could not have predicted this situation. It was suspicious from the moment he sent her without telling her anything.
"It's not always good to think for a long time."
Ulrich said, tilting the teapot over the empty teacup. When only a few drops fell because it was empty, he put the teapot down and got up from his seat.
"Just accept it at times like that. Don't think too much. Sometimes, if you stop worrying and watch the situation flow, the answer will be found on its own."
Did the person who turned her head upside down say that? Roberta frowned slightly and shook her head, wondering if he was teasing her.
"The person before me must have heard the same thing."
"Yes."
"Did you say that to Alonso too?"
Ulrich nodded, and Roberta sighed.
"I don't know why Alonso sent me."
"Is that so? I think I know."
"What do you mean?"
"Haven't you heard that you look like Alonso?"
The two made eye contact. He was watching. He was looking at her, and at the same time, he was looking at someone inside her.
'Alonso.'
Her intuition said.
"I said a little while ago. That change is slow, that it seems to have stopped. It's because it's a world decorated like an artificial garden. To protect the way I was when I came to this land. That way, I'll be tied to this land."