Adventures in the Cardinal World After 1000 Years

Prologue (Chapter IV) - The Decennial Meeting (Part II)

The Great One's Return Chapter IV – The Decennial Meeting (Part II)

After Diablo's unnecessarily grandiose introduction I walked into the now silent conference room and was almost immediately captivated by its beauty. The room was large, almost the size of a ballroom you'd see if you went into the parts of the Western Nations that had remained semi-feudal, and innately decorated. While the rest of Clubhouse Jura had a more sleek and modern look, with the walls and ceilings being varying shades of grey and natural lighting being used to the maximum resulting in a more calming, subdued atmosphere, this specific conference room was decorated to be ornate and timeless. The wallpaper was a rich cream color, with small accents of gold showing the heraldic symbols of Tempest and of Veldora, depicted with a dignity he almost never showed 99.9 % of the time. The ceiling was domed in a method similar to baroque architecture and the room was well lit throughout by the warm light of two massive ornate chandeliers hanging in the center exactly a third and two-thirds of the rooms length. These were composed of an innumerable amount of illumination-magic imbued crystals, fashioned to look like slimes, resting on gold and silver pedestals. The crown molding along the short horizontal transition from the domed sections was a relief which appeared to show one of the great battle's of Tempest's history.

["Hey Ciel, isn't that a depiction of when Benimaru crushed Clayman's army in Orbis?"]

["Indeed, master."]

The depiction of a horned warrior cutting Charybdis in half with a flaming sword and then vaporizing it with a massive ball of flame had given it away.

I then turned my attention to the continuous painting adorning most of the walls. It was various scenes of Tempest's development melded together. On the left hand side, numerous scenes showed the growth of Tempest in chronological order, from its simple beginning of a single run-down goblin village to Rimuru's landscape immediately before the last Tenma war. On the right, scenes of the great battles of the same period were depicted in a similar manner, starting with a depiction of my fight with Ifrit in slime-form while riding on Ranga, to the defeat of the original Geld, to my evolution to a demon lord, and finally showing the great victories against the Eastern Empire. This all culminated in the back wall, a depiction of the Great Tenma war with the earliest events being depicted alternatively to the left and right and at the very center, that which was the first thing you saw when entering room: My ultimate triumph's against Yuuki and Ivarage.

I was completely stunned. But, it wasn't due to its incredible beauty or how much of a fortune a continuous painting spanning the perimeter of such a large room must have cost; it was due to how accurate it was. Tempest's official history didn't include a number of the events depicted in the paintings. The level of destruction Ifrit had caused through Shizue was not even known except by a small handful of individuals and was never talked about by any of them, and furthermore, in the official history books Youm and his merry band were the one's to defeat the Orc Lord, with the small monster village, of what would become Rimuru's aid. This untruth had been purposely upheld as fact as the defeat of a Demon Lord by an ancestor had provided a great deal of legitimacy for Youm's dynasty; they were descended from a powerful, heroic champion after all. This was one event among many for which the historical truth and the actual happenings were forced to diverge due to convenience, but in this painting everything I saw was completely accurate. From the larger happenings of who really defeated the Orc Lord, to the smaller details of how Raphael had changed my eye color and taken on a slightly different form for Shion and the other's revival ceremony, and it even accurately depicted the tears that streamed down Shizue's face as she lost control over Ifrit's power. Whoever commissioned it had spent a massive amount of time and effort just to research the correct order of events, and as it was done specifically to my tastes. I couldn't help, but to be touched.