The Memory Room.
It was a place that recreated the scenes recorded by the Successive Heads and Jewel.
It would recreate the mansion, the garden, battlefields, and various other settings, showing me the memories of the Successive Heads one after another.
Jewel had recorded even the surprising origins of House Walt and what the Successive Heads had been thinking when they acted. It had kept on recording, without pause.
In that Memory Room, I had been running for my life around the mansion's garden. Using various Skills simultaneously—Speed, Map, Search, Field, Limit Burst—I kept dodging the rain of magic pouring down on me.
Tearing through the lawn of the mansion's garden was a downpour of violet lightning from the sky.
There was a statue of a woman standing in the garden, and perched on the statue's shoulders with his legs dangling, casting magic without a care in the world, was me in boy form—Rael.
"Th-this guy!"
I rolled across the ground, scrambled to my feet, and broke into a run. When magic collided with the ground behind me and erupted in an explosion, the shockwave made it impossible to run properly.
The only reason I was running away was that every attack I launched was dealt with without issue.
"See? We've only just started. And yet you've already taken three mortal wounds... Looks like I'll have to take my body back after all."
Seeing my own childhood face grinning like that pissed even me off. I spread my left hand, conjured flames, and cast a spell.
Sweeping my arm upward toward Rael, a fire projectile shot toward him.
"Fire Bullet!"
My magic—nothing more than a nuisance, really—was being fine-tuned by the second generation's Skill, Select, to ensure it would score a direct hit on Rael.
Seeing that, Rael sighed and swung his Saber, cleaving the fire projectile in two.
"You're way too obvious about aiming for vitals. If you're going to do that, you should land the hit faster. Or else—Select."
As Rael murmured that, violet lightning rained down from the sky toward me. I quickly identified the spot where the magic would land and ran a route to dodge it—.
"Damn it! I've been herded!"
"You're pretty slow to catch on. Well, you would've been beat up even if you'd held your ground back there, but in a real fight that'd be fatal."
Lyle shifted toward the spot I'd retreated to, thrusting her saber at me. I deflected it with my katana and launched a kick in the same motion.
Lyle landed on top of my extended leg, looked at me with a smirk, and kicked upward. The boy's heel connected with my chin, sending my gaze skyward before I crumpled to the ground.
"W-Why did you use Skills..."
I swayed as I tried to stand, but my legs were trembling too badly to hold me. Lyle fought differently from any of the Successive Heads and could use every single Skill at her disposal.
"We're the same, you and me. I'm you, and you're me. The Jewel will let you use Skills too. I should mention, though—I'm actually worse with Skills than any of the Successive Heads. I just know how to use them well."
Lyle crouched in front of me, watching as I failed to get up, and smiled.
"You've got these incredible Skills, but you can't use them properly, can you? It's not about proficiency. Skill proficiency will naturally be lower than the person who originally manifested them. The key is knowing the right timing for each one, and actually using them well."
When I forced myself to try standing, Lyle swept my legs out from under me and sent me rolling.
"That's enough for today. Next, go to the Fifth Generation's room."
I stared up at the familiar sky from my memories and felt the frustration of being unable to even defeat a child like this.
The Round Table Room.
When I stepped inside, the Third Generation was grinning at Mireia.
"Even with those proud eyes of yours, you mistook me for a copy. You really are a scatterbrain, Mireia."
Mireia glared at the Third Generation with an unpleasant expression as he held his hand over his mouth and laughed—*puke-ke-ke-ke*.
A pistol was clenched in her hand, and the faint smell of gunpowder hung in the Round Table Room.
I looked at the Fifth Generation, who was seated at the Round Table.
"What happened here?"
The Fifth Generation seemed uninterested, but she had clearly been watching everything unfold. She gave me a polite explanation.
"The Third Generation provoked Mireia. Well, she'd started barking orders at them out of nowhere, so maybe that angered her, or maybe he just wanted to tease her... She aimed a gun at the Third Generation, but it turned out the target was a phantom—a beautiful miss."
When I heard that the Third Generation had provoked Mireia, I watched the two of them, thinking it was rare that even kindred spirits could fight among themselves. I ignored the Seventh Generation, who sat in their chair looking dejected.
The Third Generation said with a chuckle:
"Mireia, Mireia. You were bragging about those mystic eyes of yours, but maybe that was on purpose? Did you miss on purpose? You don't have to hold back just because I'm your great-grandpa. Look—I'm right here. Go on, take a shot."
Mireia aimed her left hand—the one that had appeared to hold nothing—at the Third Generation, who stood with both arms spread wide. And when she did, a pistol was already gripped in it, fired without hesitation—
"Tch!"
—the Third Generation distorted and vanished from the spot where the bullet had struck, a grin still twisting across his face as he disappeared before our eyes.
"AHAHAHA, over here! Come on, there's no need to get so angry."
The righteous general who bore the name of House Walt as Banseim—who had spread that name to the surrounding nations and was a hero of Remurant—appeared to be toying with Mireia.
Mireia fired shot after shot, tossing guns aside one after another as she dashed around the Round Table chamber, and the Third Generation's laughter echoed through the room.
A stray bullet hit the Seventh Generation.
"Ow!"
The Fifth Generation saw that, sighed, then jumped down from the Round Table and beckoned me over.
"Lyle, it's noisy in here—come with me for a bit."
I was led by the Fifth Generation, heading toward the Fifth Generation's memory room.
Earlier.
In the Fifth Generation's room, we had witnessed events involving May as well as problems between family members.
The seemingly composed Fifth Generation sighed, then snapped their fingers and changed the surrounding scenery. The grey landscape shifted to show the interior of the Walt family estate, gradually gaining color.
There stood a petite woman, tenderly cradling a baby in her arms.
The Fourth Generation—Marks, who was significantly older—gazed upon the scene with a smile.
"My lord, it's a boy! A boy!"
As if overjoyed at having given birth to a boy, the woman wore a radiant smile. Given the Fourth Generation's memory of her standing with hands on her hips and shooting down his every suggestion, the sight was surprisingly unexpected.
"Oh, with this, House Walt is secure at last."
Marks looked pleased, but the woman—his wife—her expression shifted.
"What are you talking about? You never know what might happen in this world. This little one needs brothers and sisters too. Right, Fredericks? When you have siblings to support you, you'll treasure them, won't you?"
Marks gave a wry smile.
"In the end, you went with my suggestion—Fredericks. I'm happy."
The woman blushed slightly.
"Th-that's... I'm naming the next one! Fredericks, what kind of names would you like for your little brother or sister?"
The wife pressed her cheek against the baby. Marks watched on with a smile.
"Right. Father passed away young, too. Normally, I would have had a younger brother or sister lined up, but..."
The Third Generation was House Walt's sole battle casualty. He had turned the tide of a desperate situation, but the price he paid was his life.
The Fifth Generation watched the scene.
"I can't quite figure out what Mireia wants me to see. There are plenty of things I'd rather not see, but if I keep refusing, she'll make me stay here forever. I'm glad I got to see how May grew up, but staying like this indefinitely is a bit much."
With that, the Fifth Generation explained the scene. It was drawn from the Fourth Generation's memories and preserved within the Jewel, and it was unmistakably the moment of the Fifth Generation's birth.
At this point, the Fifth Generation couldn't have ended up as an only child. After all, both Marks and his wife were already planning for the next one.
He had assumed their marriage must be terrible, given how frightened the Fourth Generation seemed—but that wasn't the case at all.
If that was so, then the cause must have been the "accident" the Fourth Generation had mentioned.
As the Fifth Generation gazed at the warm domestic scene, he spoke. Around them, the maids smiled warmly at the woman's joy. Outside the door, the knights clenched their fists in celebration.
Watching it all unfold, he said—
"Lyle. How does this scene look to you? Abnormal? Or normal?"
Those were his words.
"...That's not normal, is it? Everyone around looks happy, and the Fourth Generation and his wife both seem overjoyed."
The Fifth Generation looked a little weary.
"That's right. Back in your time, you could afford to see it that way. We were still a baronial house then. The Third Generation's achievements had just raised us to peerage — we'd barely become proper nobles. House Walt was a rising family brimming with momentum. That's probably why. Scenes like this were rare."
What he explained to me was the nature of nobles.
"Do you know? A noble's marriage is a bond between houses."
"I do. Well... I think I do."
Hearing my answer, the Fifth Generation smiled with a trace of sadness.
"Should I be glad you don't know, or angry about it? ...It might be my fault, actually. Feinz sought a warm household and failed — because he crammed family love and noble duty into the same space. Brode seemed to handle it well, but he ended up shouldering all the consequences back onto House Walt."
The Sixth Generation had proposed to the woman he loved. But at the same time, much like the Fifth Generation, he'd taken concubines to produce more heirs — and that enraged his wife.
The Fifth Generation revealed a side of the Sixth Generation I'd never known.
"That boy didn't need to imitate me. Whatever you do, there are benefits and drawbacks. I was the one who expanded the family — he shouldn't have needed to worry about it anymore... But right after taking his wife, he immediately set up concubines. I agonized over it. I was so concerned about what the woman I'd met through an arranged marriage would think, and that boy just went ahead and did it like it was the most natural thing in the world."
Watching the Fifth Generation clutch his head, I thought it must have been truly difficult back then. In fact, the Fifth Generation seemed to harbor some grievances toward the Sixth Generation as well.
If you ask me, wasn't it the result of having witnessed the Fifth Generation's own example? The Third Generation had once said you tend to become what you despise.
The scene shifted. There stood the young, bewildered Sixth Generation — Feinz — facing a woman who looked every bit the golden-haired, blue-eyed noble daughter, at a complete loss. Even the aged Frederiks was holding his head in his hands.
The Fifth Generation watched a woman — hair disheveled, hurling and smashing anything within reach. Seen in isolation, the woman looked absolutely terrible.
But—
"This girl was a Court Noble's daughter. She married into House Walt, a family of Landed Nobility, because the Sixth Generation had confessed his love with passionate fervor. So she came to the manor and tried her best in her own way. There must have been times she wanted to cry in a foreign environment, but she held it in... And then this fellow, bold as you please—"
The surrounding visions began to move again. Feinz dodged a hurtling vase.
"W-What's wrong with having concubines! At House Walt's scale, that's the least—"
The woman screamed.
"You said you'd love only me! I believed you! And yet... and yet!"
The decorative plate she hurled struck Feinz dead-on, but there was no room for sympathy.
The Fifth Generation heaved a sigh.
"...Later, to help us all come to terms with it, I sat down and talked things through with my wife. Turns out she'd been bracing herself for this from the day she was born into a noble family — bearing a child for a man she didn't love. I can't speak from experience, but I imagine that's agonizing. Still, she said being confessed to and married felt like a dream. The world she came from and the world here were completely different, but she tried to endure it all for the sake of that confession and Feinz's love. What's normal here is often considered abnormal in Central, after all. And after all that effort, what Feinz went and did was introduce other women to her."
I was genuinely surprised — he was actually defending his son.
Then the Fifth Generation looked at the crying woman with golden hair and blue eyes and spoke.
"Laiel. As she says, noble marriages are about forging bonds between houses. You have children, you carry on the family line — love has nothing to do with it. That's the norm. Some couples, once they've produced heirs, even keep separate lovers — nobody bats an eye. House Walt, being upstarts, didn't understand any of that, for better or worse. Mom... my mother did have a bit of a fairy-tale streak about her, that's just a fact. So maybe she was yearning for a warm, loving family."
The Fifth Generation called his mother "Mom," but never addressed the Fourth Generation as "Dad." His mother must have forced that on him.
"So House Walt is abnormal?"
When I said that, the Fifth Generation laughed.
"Abnormal — that much I can say for certain. The family precept passed down since the First Generation? That was nothing but a joke told at a drinking party."
I gave a wry smile.
"Yeah... you're right."
And then the Fifth Generation smiled sadly.
"...Same here. My wife just wanted one man and a warm household. But Feinz went and threw it all away. She even said he could bring in concubines if no children were being born, and still..."
The Fifth Generation, it turned out, had actually been envious of the Sixth Generation. And as the surrounding scenery grayed and faded away, a new scene came into view.
"Fifth Generation! Teach me how to maintain a harem! What should I do if factions start forming?!"
"Don't interfere thoughtlessly! Think of it as a bomb with a lit fuse — touch it the wrong way and it blows up! Got it? Every day is a bomb on the verge of detonation. Stay vigilant at all times. Play dumb while keeping your composure. But even then..."
"...it's still going to blow up. So don't try to prevent the explosion — learn to make it blow up in your favor. A harem is a bomb that could go off at any moment, and remember: it will go off. I myself only kept things together publicly about twice..."