Chapter 101: This Time For Sure

Lately, besides studying ancient Greek and working to crack the seal on the Sphinx Lamp, Richard had been using his spare moments to turn over a single question.

What determined the value of intelligence at the round table?

He turned it over during his ten-minute breaks between classes, revisited it on the bumpy twenty-minute bus rides to and from school, and examined it again in the few minutes he lay flat in bed waiting for his [Sleep] skill to kick in.

On the first day, he listed seven or eight candidate dimensions: scarcity, timeliness, operability, depth of relevance, exclusivity, credibility, and risk level.

Over the next few days, he grouped and merged them, trimming away the overlap.

By Friday, sitting on the school bus, he had arrived at a rough but working conclusion.

Value = Scarcity × Verifiability.

Why had his move with the Haldane model commanded instant, serious attention from everyone at the table?

The model itself was hardly obscure.

He could read about it in the Imperial Capital University Library, which meant the members of the round table had almost certainly heard of it.

What was genuinely scarce was having read the original text, knowing how to apply its framework to their immediate context, and deriving a conclusion that could be tested.

Only when those steps came together did the intelligence carry real weight.

And his conclusion—that the annual rate of increase had crossed the warning threshold—was verifiable.

Once Prometheus returned, a glance through his sealing ledgers would be enough to confirm or disprove the claim.

A testable prediction carried far more weight than an endless fog of cryptic hints.

He breathed onto the cool glass of the bus window and traced Scarcity × Verifiable into the fog.

He left the words there without wiping them away; no one around him knew what he was thinking anyway.

After school that afternoon, he jogged home to train his [walking] skill.

Passing the roasted chestnut cart at the corner of Grafton Street, he bought a penny's worth, cradling the warm bag and peeling them as he walked.

Peeling chestnuts was ideal work for thinking.

It kept his hands and eyes occupied, leaving his mind entirely free to work.

He began filling in the middle tier of his mental list.

Category One: active evil creature locations in the Northern Industrial Zone.

He had a firsthand local advantage in Briston.

Mr. Hutton reinforced the basement seal at Greenwood School once a year; Richard could find a way to extract some internal data from the old teacher.

There was also the collective nightmare incident at Manchester's Number Seven Textile Mill, which he could ask Grey and Warren about.

The factory owners and mine operators all had their own industrial associations and chamber of commerce circles, full of insider intelligence.

The circle at the Theogony Salon was unlikely to travel up to the Northern Industrial Zone to scout locations in person.

Geographic distance provided scarcity, and the Northern Industrial Zone was broad enough that he didn't have to worry about anyone using the information to trace his location.

Category Two: specific identification markers for priest inscriptions from the Black Soil River Basin.

He had pried open the oil lamp's seal himself. Through that process, he had gained practical, firsthand experience with the inscription's turning points, the structural differences between angled and curved strokes, and the actual progression curve of stress fatigue.

That kind of technical detail was nowhere to be found in published literature.

But scarcity also carried risk.

He paused over a half-peeled chestnut.

"I've pried open a priest inscription seal" would need to be reframed.

Something like, "I've read several documented case studies on the aging of inscription seals," shifting the subject away from himself and posing as nothing more than a well-read intermediary.

Category Three: selling knowledge related to supernatural items through Clement's channels.

This was still in the accumulation phase; he needed to handle a few more transactions before he could establish a reliable sample size.

When the time came, even if he didn't sell the supernatural items themselves, he could sell intelligence about them, along with whatever insights he gleaned from their inscriptions.

Category Four: purely Scholar-oriented theoretical models.

After finishing the book on the Haldane model, he had already drafted several pages of proposed revisions.

But he knew those revisions wouldn't carry enough weight if he presented them now.

[Learning] Lv.2 allowed him to follow the model and spot where several of the book's derivations were rough.

It still wasn't enough for him to independently derive a revised formula rigorous enough to convince the table.

That would have to wait.

Wait until he pushed [Learning] to Lv.3, until he unlocked [Speculation].

Wait until he genuinely possessed the ability to deduce new conclusions beyond published theory.

Besides, a purely theoretical model wouldn't hold much immediate value for those three; they all appeared to be field-oriented Practitioners.

Yet theoretical modeling on the Scholar path was tied directly to Spell Formula derivation.

A solid theoretical foundation was what allowed a Practitioner to rapidly master new Spell Formulas—and eventually modify or create their own. That was the true value of theoretical models.

He made a mental note: Category Four was a long-term project.

Categories One and Three could be accumulated in passing; he simply needed to keep an eye out in his daily routine.

Category Two required him to search for more examples of inscription seals similar to the lamp's, compiling his findings into an anonymous notebook to keep himself completely detached from the source.

Speaking of which, he wondered if the Spell Formula inside the Gargoyle could be traded once he deciphered it.

Once he cracked it, he could ask Mr. Hutton or his aunt about its value.

If it turned out to be a general-purpose Spell Formula, he could consider putting it on the market himself.

By the time he reached that thought, he had peeled the last chestnut and tossed the shells into a roadside bin.

When he got home, Evelyn and their mother were sitting on the living room rug, sorting balls of yarn.

"Brother, why didn't you bring me any chestnuts?" His sister had caught the scent of roasted charcoal on his clothes.

"Next time for sure."

"Every time you say 'next time for sure,' it never happens."

Richard took off his coat, hung it behind the door, pulled the paper bag of peeled chestnuts from his pocket, and handed it over.

"Then this time for sure."

Evelyn snatched the bag, but frowned as soon as she felt it.

"They're cold."

"If you don't want them cold, give them back."

"I didn't say I didn't want them."

She clutched the bag to her chest and bolted for the kitchen.

His mother looked up at him, smiled without saying a word, and went back to winding her yarn.

...

At nine-thirty on Saturday morning, Richard headed out.

Evelyn had already re-ironed his tailored shirt.

She had steamed his tie with a damp cloth and meticulously snipped away every loose thread and lint pill with scissors.

"You look like a proper gentleman now."

Evelyn gave her satisfied verdict after knotting his tie.

Richard walked north along the high street, passing under the railway viaduct before entering Highfield Road.

The shift in the neighborhood was immediate.

Terraced townhouses gave way to detached residences set behind gardens, and the bare locust trees along the pavement were replaced by neatly trimmed yews.

Number 24 stood on the right side of the street: a red-brick house with black iron gates and a pair of stone spheres capping the gateposts.

The roses in the garden had already finished blooming; their pruned branches were tied back neatly, waiting for spring.

Richard rang the bell.

A maid in a black dress answered the door, wearing a white lace cap and a tightly knotted apron.

"May I ask who you are?"

"Richard Williams, the tutor recommended by the Classical Society. I have a ten o'clock appointment with Miss Dawn."

"Please come in."

The maid stepped aside and showed him into the entrance hall.

"Please wait a moment while I inform the family." She led him into a small sitting room off the hall, furnished with a sofa and tea table.

A tea service and several pieces of gingerbread were already laid out on the table.

Richard sat down to wait, taking in the room.

The sitting room furniture was walnut—nowhere near the scale of Ashford House, but solid, well-made pieces.

Several hardcovers sat on the bookshelf with gold lettering stamped on their spines, mostly travel essays and memoirs.

An upright piano stood in the corner with its fallboard open, a book of sheet music resting on the keys.

The Dawn Family's wealth appeared roughly on par with the Warren Family's, perhaps slightly higher in certain respects.

A family like this would naturally expect far more from a private tutor than an ordinary household would.

Two minutes later, the door opened.

A young woman in her early twenties walked in, taller than Evelyn.

Her dark hair was gathered into a low chignon without any ornament.

She wore a high-collared dress as plain and austere as if she had just stepped out of a convent.

Yet the way she appraised him reminded Richard of a bank manager reviewing a loan application.

"Mr. Williams?"

"Yes, Miss Dawn." Richard stood up.

"Please have a seat." Charlotte sat in the opposite chair, smoothing her skirt.

She poured a cup of tea and passed it across the table.

"I saw your name and marks in the letter from the Classical Society.

Second place in the Cicero Cup, Greenwood School, recommended by Mr. Holland."

"Yes."

"An impressive record." Her tone was flat, revealing nothing of whether she meant it as genuine praise or customary politeness.

"However, I should be clear about one thing first. A recommendation proves academic standing, not teaching ability."

"I understand completely," Richard said.

Charlotte lifted her teacup and took a sip.

"My younger brother, Tom, is twelve. He is preparing for next year's public school entrance examinations, and Latin is his weakest subject."

She set the teacup back on its saucer with a faint clink of porcelain.

"We have had three tutors before you, and none lacked credentials.

The first was a graduate of the Royal Academy in the Imperial Capital. The second taught Latin at a grammar school for eight years. The third was a retired public school master."

She sounded faintly exasperated. "Of the three, the longest lasted six weeks. The shortest lasted two days."

Richard took a sip of his tea, waiting for her to continue.

"The problem is Tom." Charlotte's phrasing was diplomatic.

"He is a bright boy, but he is not inclined to apply his intelligence to his lessons."

"May I meet him first?"

Charlotte glanced at him, evidently surprised he would ask so soon.

"Of course."

She stood, walked to the door, and pulled the bell rope on the wall.

About a minute later, the sound of dragging footsteps echoed from the end of the hall.

The door pushed open, and a head poked through the gap.

The boy had the same light brown eyes as his sister, but his expression carried an entirely different temper.

Charlotte's eyes belonged to a banker reviewing loan applications; Tom's belonged to someone calculating how to swipe coins from the till.

"Tom, this is your new tutor, Mr. Williams."

"Another one," Tom muttered, pushing the door open and slouching in.

He wore a sailor shirt with his trouser legs rolled to the calves, walking barefoot across the carpet.

His right hand was tucked behind his back, concealing something.

The boy circled halfway around Richard, eyeing him from head to toe. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen."

"You're only four years older than me?"

"Yes."

Tom sat in the chair opposite Richard and dropped whatever he had been hiding onto his knees.

It was a Slingshot.

"The last teacher was in his sixties, and he had less hair than my grandfather."

He plucked at the Slingshot's rubber band. "His lessons sounded like church prayers. I fell asleep and he just kept droning on until he drooled on himself."

"Tom!" Charlotte glared at him.

The boy hunched his shoulders, but the impish grin on his face didn't fade at all.

Richard sized up the boy sitting across from him.

Slouching posture, too much talk, a clear aggressive streak—he was actively testing the newcomer's boundaries.

Laying the Slingshot across his knees in plain sight was a deliberate provocation, a warning that he wouldn't be an easy target.

Walking barefoot on the carpet was another: a studied display of disrespect in front of a tutor, refusing to play by the rules of a formal meeting.