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Last Embryo Volume 4 Chapter 6 Part 4

Translator: DarkHeartedAlchemist

Knowing that he, the self-proclaimed ultimate hedonist has lost the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to read some of those top-secret, off-limits to anyone books himself, Izayoi felt shocked beyond belief. Having no one but himself and his decision to leave the Outer World in favor of living in Little Garden to blame for this, he mournfully covered his face with one hand and continued his conversation with Homura while talking to him through the gaps between his fingers.

「A .  .  . Are you fucking serious? Now I just feel like I have made the biggest mistake of my entire goddamn life, and this is not something that the great Sakamaki Izayoi would admit light-heartedly, I will have you know. That is positively one of the most shocking news that I have heard in the last few years. To think that when I was still in the Outer World a few years ago I had so much free time on my hands that I literally did not know what to do with it but I never even caught wind of this? Now I just feel like a total idiot, and part of me wishes that it had never heard that from you. So I guess you can congratulate yourself, because even if it was not intentional, you really got me good and screwed me over, Homura.」

「Thanks, but all I did was just telling you what I myself learned only a few hours ago. So if you want someone to throw your complaints at, then you can do so with Suzuka when she gets back here. After all, she was the one who discovered that fact first.」

「Oh yeah, you can be sure as hell that I am going to do that. But thinking about it now, I guess it should not come as a surprise that she is the one who dug such an amazing piece of information out. After all, she always had a real knack for information gathering, and I do not think anyone else in existence can beat her when it comes to that. However, as a penalty for keeping that information from me, maybe I should have a punishment game with her with house cleaning at stake, huh? That should teach her not to withhold any kind of information from her amazing Big Brother!」

Homura simply shook his head with a「What kind of punishment game is that?」comment, but he knew that when Izayoi was spouting things like that, he would be dead serious on going through with it, which only shown how personally offended he felt about not being informed about the records from the Vatican’s secret archives being accessible to the public. Izayoi felt miserable about it now, and he knew that he was going to regret missing a big chance like that until the end of his life. Sighing dejectedly, he took out the map of the continent and tha Game’s Geass Roll and spread them both on a nearby table.

「Moving on, can you tell me exactly what part of the Game’s Victory Conditions Suzuka was feeling off about?」

「If I remember correctly, she said that something seemed wrong about the words written on the map that was added to the Geass Roll during the explanation of the rules. I cannot remember exactly what she said word to word, because she was already in quite a hurry when she was explaining things to me, but it was probably something along the lines of the text on the map not matching with the descriptions from Plato’s stone tablet because, and I quote: 「In Plato’s original text the 「Heracles’ Stone Pillars」were not pillars at all!」end quote.」

「Huh?!」

All of a sudden, Izayoi let out a surprised voice. But not surprised in a sense that he did not understand what Suzuka’s words meant. It was quite the other way around, actually. He was surprised exactly because he understood what she was talking about.

「No, that is not what this is about at all! What was it called again? 「Heracles’s Stone Pillars」? In that case they have to refer to the 「Pillars of Heracles」which were said to be situated at the end of the world, as it was described in the folklore of {The Twelve Labors of Heracles}. So they are so famous that they even got embedded into the Atlantis’s setting, huh?」

It would definitely made sense if「Heracles’s Stone Pillars」here and 「Pillars of Heracles」from the Outer World were actually one and the same thing, because that would make them one of the key locations for the successful clear of this Gift Game. After all, in one of his works dedicated to Atlantis, Plato did state that the Lost Continent of Atlantis was located 「Beyond the 「Pillars of Heracles」」.

In terms of its Outer World location, 「Pillars of Heracles」 were located at the Strait of Gibraltar, which acted as the gateway leading to the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Greek mythology it was considered to be 「the end of the world」 as the citizens of Greece knew it.

「That would certainly be a nice explanation, but try to consider the following for a minute, Big Bro Iza. If you are right with your hypothesis about the 「Pillars of Heracles」, then would that not mean that the original position of this continent would be completely wrong? I mean, according to all of the currently known sources, The Lost Continent of Atlantis should have been located somewhere in the Mediterranean, right?」

「Hou? That is some great deduction, my dear Watson.」

「Please do not ever call me that again. Also, It was not deduction at all, but rather a result of the geological research that I have conducted. While we were on the Island of Crete, I took a sample of its soil to have it investigated for the presence of pathogens. According to the results that came up, the soil of Crete matched the geology of the waters near Greece almost perfectly. So if we take the result of that research as any indication, then that would mean that the probability that Atlantis was not 「Beyond」or 「Outside」 of the Mediterranean, but rather 「inside of the Mediterranean」would be pretty high.」

Homura was talking about all of it while shaking the flask filled with soil that he grabbed from the nearby shelf in the middle of his speech. He used to hate Tokuteru for every stunt he was always pulling out on them, but right now he was pretty grateful to him . . . yeah, right, there is no way in hell that this is ever happening. No matter what, he is going to get that five hundred thousand yen back from him, even if would ruin him financially as a result.

「. . . . . . . . . . I see. If we assume that continents could really exist in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, then that would really mean that the fact that the 「Pillars of Heracles」 are located on the Strait of Gibraltar, which was considered to be the end of the world by the ancient Greeks would certainly be inconsistent with Plato’s writings. But then, what about that 「「Pillars of Heracles」 not being actual pillars」 bit? What do you think about that?」

That was what surprised Izayoi the most. The fact that Suzuka said that apparently 「「Heracles’ Stone Pillars」were not pillars at all!」. When Izayoi was summoned to Little Garden for the first time three years ago, he learned that the place where he initially landed was on the East Side of Little Garden, which was also apparently called its 「end of the world」. When he inquired about that with Kuro Usagi, she told him that it was not always like that and that Little Garden was originally a much larger place, but it all changed when supposedly 「A certain being stole one of the axis – the pillars – that supported the world of Little Garden. Based on that information, Izayoi inferred that this pillar she was talking about – called Axis Mundi – was actually one of the 「Pillars of Heracles」and that the entire world of Little Garden must have been connected to The Lost Continent of Atlantis in some way. That theory of his was further enhanced by the fact that while Little Garden looked kind of small when you looked at it from the outside, but once you entered inside of it, it became evident that its real scale was much larger, and by 「much larger」 he meant like by several tens of digits.