Chapter 249: Changeling

The Basic Academics course was universal. Both classes shared the same lecture hall, and the material was largely identical.

What truly separated the students were the hours outside the basic curriculum, restricted entirely to the special class:

Private small-group tutorials, Q&A sessions, and an "Additional Topic" that outsiders couldn't even name in full.

The first class was taught by an associate professor named Croft. Richard entered the lecture hall early.

Croft arrived exactly on time.

The middle-aged man was so gaunt his face had lost its shape, his cheekbones jutting high above eyes sunk deeply into their sockets.

He was lean like a Hunter, but a Hunter's leanness was like cured meat—wiry but packed with dense muscle that could fill out their frame the moment they used blood ignition.

This man was nothing but a skeleton.

The moment he walked through the door, his gaze swept across the room.

When his eyes found Richard, they stopped.

"Williams," he called out. "I hear you were 'carried' in."

The classroom fell silent. The surrounding students turned toward Richard in unison.

"Today, I want to see," Croft's mouth turned down at the corners, "just what kind of person is standing beneath Professor Mortimer's banner."

Richard sat motionless and did not reply.

Croft turned, picked up a book from the podium, and slapped it open on the desk.

"Thucydides," he announced. "History of the Peloponnesian War."

He tapped a page with his fingertip.

"This passage is Cleon's speech from the Mytilenian Debate. Clauses nested within clauses; a single sentence drags on for more than half a page."

Richard recognized the passage.

It was the most syntactically tangled section in the entire book, practically designed to torture readers.

"Translate it aloud into Albion on the spot."

Croft began calling names.

"Once translated, translate it back into Ancient Greek."

The first person called was an elegantly dressed scion of a noble family.

He stood up and managed the opening, but choked on the third clause.

Try as he might, he couldn't recall the conjugation for an irregular verb.

His face turned deep red, left humiliated in front of the entire class.

The second student called also stumbled on a conjugation.

Croft said nothing. He turned his gaze to Richard.

"Williams. Your turn."

Richard stood.

[Erudition] locked the entire original text into his mind, right down to the printing flaws.

He looked at the page, and what surfaced in his mind's eye was a block of text whose structure he had already completely dismantled.

[Speculation] peeled back the layers for him, isolating the load-bearing main clause.

Cleon's speech was a maze, tangled in layer upon layer of concessive and conditional clauses.

But the core of it was actually a single sentence: the Athenians could not show mercy to rebellious allies.

Once he grasped this main stem, all the tangled subordinate clauses naturally fell into their proper places.

Richard began to speak.

The Albion translation flowed from his lips, steady and precise.

Where the syntax twisted, he rebuilt it using Albion logic without losing a shred of the original meaning.

When he reached the most treacherous irregular verbs, he didn't stumble in the slightest.

After finishing the Albion translation, he immediately translated it back into Ancient Greek.

His [Breathing] skill gave him a precise vocal instrument, enunciating every syllable with absolute clarity.

His [Learning] skill granted him an understanding of every Greek word that went far beyond rote memorization.

When he translated the passage back, he even faithfully reproduced Cleon's trademark aggressive tone.

The classroom was dead quiet.

The two noble scions who had choked earlier looked somewhat ill.

Croft stood behind the podium, stared at Richard for a moment, and let out a snort.

"Not bad."

The oral translation in the first large lecture was only the beginning.

Basic Academics was a large course, with over a hundred people sitting in a tiered lecture hall.

But aside from the main lectures, there was another kind of small-group class.

An instructor took on fewer than ten students at a time, seating them around a table to question and test them face-to-face. Anyone with a shaky foundation was exposed immediately.

Over the next two days of small classes, Croft hauled out the thirty-odd students of the special class and grilled them one by one.

He wouldn't have had the time for this in a lecture hall of over a hundred, but a small class group only had seven or eight people.

He had plenty of time to hunt for every student's shortcomings—especially Richard's.

In History, he threw out Tacitus's most obscure passage, ordering Richard to analyze the political leanings hidden beneath the narrative.

Richard answered methodically, clearly dissecting Tacitus's style of seeming neutrality while cutting to the bone with every stroke.

For Foundations of Epigraphy, he brought out a rubbing that mixed writing systems from three different eras and told Richard to date it.

Relying on his experience with the Whitcom Boundary Stone, combined with his aunt's intensive tutoring, Richard peeled back the three overlapping layers of inscriptions one by one.

Rhetoric, textual criticism... subject after subject was pressed onto Richard.

The other top students each had their strengths, and each had their fatal flaws.

One possessed beautiful rhetoric, but floundered the moment he touched grammar.

Another had a solid foundation in textual criticism, able to determine which came first from the minute discrepancies between two manuscripts, but simply couldn't read reams of history; a long narrative gave him an instant headache.

Richard was different.

Croft tested him subject by subject, back and forth, only to find that this student was a wall without a single crack.

His Latin was in a league of its own; no one in the room could match him.

The rest of his subjects weren't quite top-tier, but not a single one was weak.

He could handle everything thrown at him, and no major faults could be picked out anywhere.

This "comprehensiveness" shocked Croft far more than being top-tier in any single subject.

A person's energy was limited.

To rank first in Latin already required pouring in countless days and nights.

Yet on top of the time poured into Latin, this student was somehow just as proficient in history, epigraphy, rhetoric, and textual criticism.

A flawless balance with no shortcomings could only come from one of two things.

Either it was foundational training that began at five or six years old and was maintained without interruption for over a decade.

Montagu was exactly that kind of person.

Or, it was some kind of "talent" that Croft couldn't understand.

According to his student profile, Richard was the child of an engineer's family in Briston.

A year ago, he was still sickly and ranked at the bottom of his class.

The foundational training theory obviously didn't hold up.

That left only the alternative.

Unable to make sense of it, Croft's expression grew even tighter, and his hazing grew even harsher.

The other students in his cohort watched this, their thoughts varied.

Some sympathized with Richard for being targeted by such a harsh instructor, hauled out every day to be used as a punching bag.

Yet beneath their sympathy, they all understood one thing.

An associate professor taking the time to make things difficult for you was, in itself, a sign that he valued you.

As for the noble scions he apathetically left out to dry, he couldn't even be bothered to spare them a second glance.

Once, during a break between classes, Phillips sidled up to Richard.

"Old Croft has taken a liking to you."

He handed over half a pastry he had swiped from somewhere.

"Taken a liking to me?" Richard took the pastry. "He tries to find fault with me every single day."

"Trying to find fault with you is exactly how he shows he's taken a liking to you."

Phillips lowered his voice.

"Look at him, does he ever pay attention to me? He just glanced at the textual criticism homework I handed in and tossed it aside. He couldn't even be bothered to mark it up."

"Your homework..." Richard trailed off, speechless.

"What about my homework?"

"Half of it was copied from last year's examples, wasn't it?"

Phillips shoved the other half of the pastry into his own mouth, mumbling indistinctly.

"...At least I copied it very carefully."

By Thursday, the schedule listed a class called "Advanced Topics in Classical Languages."

"Advanced Topics in Classical Languages" was open to everyone, and interested students from the regular classes came to audit it.

Croft finished teaching the public half of the session and put down his chalk.

"Students from the regular classes." He swept his gaze over the few auditing heads in the back row.

"Today's Advanced Topic ends here. You may leave."

The regular students looked somewhat confused.

But since they were just auditing anyway, they didn't dare ask questions when told to leave. They packed up their things and headed out.

The door closed.

Everyone left in the classroom possessed an ether circuit.

Richard sat up straight.

So this was how the "Additional Topic" Pendleton had mentioned was taught.

Croft waited until the door was shut tight, then set up a soundproofing Spell Formula.

He wrote a single word on the blackboard: changeling.

"Today, we cover this."

Richard perked up.

"Most of you probably heard this sort of story when you were children."

Croft began.

"A perfectly normal child takes a walk near the edge of the forest, and comes back changed.

"They still have the same face, roughly the same height, but the parents can't shake the feeling that something isn't right with the child."

"Fae, or you can call them elves if you prefer."

He continued explaining:

"They abduct human children and hide them deep in the forest.

"Then, they transform into the child's likeness, return to the human world, and live with the child's parents."

"What about the real child who was abducted?" someone asked.

Croft let out a sinister chuckle.

"The child abducted into the forest becomes one of the fae."

"Forever wandering the woods in the guise of a seven-year-old child."

"They are elves, and they are children who will never grow up."

Listening to this, a chill crept into Richard's heart.

"The replaced child will forever remain at the age they were when they were swapped."

Croft's voice was dry and cold.

"Their physical appearance stops growing, and bit by bit, they forget their original language, their name, their background.

"Once they've forgotten everything cleanly, they become one of the fae.

"They learn all the abilities of a changeling and become a true changeling themselves."

The classroom was unnervingly quiet.

"As for the changeling that took the child's place and infiltrated the human household..."

Croft paced two steps.

"It has to perfectly imitate the life of the one it replaced, keeping its true identity hidden absolutely tight."

"This task carries immense pressure."

"The imposter must live in constant fear every single day, terrified of being exposed.

"Some pretend for so long that, bearing the weight of guilt, they break down all on their own."

"Their abilities are very weak." Croft set the chalk down.

"They can barely change shapes and play a few little tricks.

"Once they thoroughly become 'human,' all other spells aside from shapeshifting slowly vanish.

"Therefore, once their identity is exposed, they meet a miserable end."

Croft paused here.

"Old women have told these stories for centuries."

"When you heard them as children, you only took them as ghost stories meant to scare you."

"Now that you've entered this level."

He tapped the word on the blackboard. "It's time you took a look inside."

"The way things like changelings succeed is by making you 'think' they are your child."

Croft's expression grew serious.

"As long as you call the changeling 'my child,' it legitimately holds the position of your child, eating your food, drinking your water, and slowly hollowing that family out from the inside."

"But the day you see through it and change its definition, calling it a 'filthy imposter'..."

Croft tossed the chalk stub into the wastebasket next to the podium.

"Those little shapeshifting tricks of its won't be able to protect it for a second, and its fate will be terribly grim."

Sitting below, a wave of turmoil surged in Richard's heart.

The dismissal bell rang, and Croft canceled the soundproofing Spell Formula.

"That's it for today."