Chapter 307: [Inner Awakening]

Isabella hadn't said much.

"Let's not talk about the front lines anymore."

She lifted the bottle of wine.

The moment Sophia saw the alcohol, she immediately covered her glass.

"Mentor, I'm not drinking."

"Why aren't you drinking?" Price teased.

Sophia kept her hand over her glass. "Last time I passed out after one cup in front of Richard. It was completely humiliating. I've learned my lesson."

"You still remember last time?" Clara joked, a rare occurrence for her.

"How could I not?" Sophia's face flushed.

"I heard later that Richard had to carry me home."

"You were sleep-talking while he carried you, too," Clara chimed in, rubbing salt in the wound.

"Stop, stop! Don't say another word!" Sophia buried her face in her arms.

Price burst into laughter.

"Then who's drinking this wine today?"

"I will." Clara picked up her glass and downed it in one gulp.

His aunt, meanwhile, was already thoroughly drunk.

Her face flushed, she muttered to herself.

"A while back... this girl, Sophia, didn't send a telegram for a whole week."

"A whole week." Isabella clenched her fist. "Not a single word."

"Mentor..." Sophia looked up.

"During those days, I couldn't write a single word of my thesis."

Isabella was slightly slurring her words.

"Normally, you all just make me mad. You give me such headaches. But if one of you really went missing without a word..."

She didn't finish the sentence.

"Mentor, I made it back in one piece, didn't I?" Sophia's eyes reddened again.

"It's good that you're back." Isabella took another sip.

Then she suddenly added, out of nowhere, "Next time you try to save money on a telegram and write 'minor injuries' when something actually happened... I'll dock your research stipend."

"Mentor, you're drunk," Clara said softly.

"I'm not drunk," Isabella insisted.

"I'm perfectly sober. I can still teach you about irregular conjugations in ancient Greek..."

"Here it comes," Price whispered to Richard. "The moment Mentor has too much to drink, she starts talking about conjugations."

Amused but helpless, Richard quietly swapped his aunt's wine for a cup of citron tea.

The conversation meandered around the table before eventually circling back to Mons.

The academic community had been embroiled in fierce debates lately, and the graduate students present had all heard the rumors.

The table instantly grew lively. Angels, St. George, bowmen, light, miracles.

Everyone had a different take on the same event.

Holding her glass, Isabella watched her students argue back and forth across the table.

As the argument went on, the table split into different camps.

"I say we destroy it," Price said, tossing his knife and fork aside. "It's eating people. What else is there to debate?"

"Eating people?" Thomson gripped a book. "It saved thousands of soldiers! How can you just say we should destroy it?"

"It eats people." Price frowned.

"If it eats people, why keep it around?"

"How do you know it eats people?" Thomson asked.

Price was stumped.

The reports only detailed how it saved people.

They made no mention of it eating anyone.

Sophia set her glass down.

"It eats people. That much is true."

Everyone at the table turned to look at her.

"Those soldiers who were saved..." Sophia's voice dropped. "I met a few of them in the rear."

"One of them told me something."

"What?"

"He said..." Sophia mimicked the soldier's tone, which had been filled with terror.

"'Those bowmen... they aimed their arrows at me.'"

Richard hadn't chimed in.

He just sat there, slowly eating the food on his plate as he listened to the table bicker.

Everyone wanted to define the angel as something they could grasp and control.

Price defined it as a 'monster that must be destroyed.'

Clara defined it as a 'weapon that could be used.'

Thomson defined it as a 'miracle that saves lives.'

Sophia, meanwhile, just wanted to avoid thinking about it at all.

Richard didn't try to figure out who was right.

Everything he had been turning over in his mind recently—in the Compilation Group, in Room 314, and alone in his own room—collided with the chaotic clash of ideas at the table.

In that instant, he suddenly saw right through the hidden layers beneath every word spoken.

[Speculation Lv.2, progress 100%.]

Richard invested a point into it.

[Speculation Lv.2 → Lv.3.]

The change happened silently.

He didn't feel any smarter than he had a moment ago.

It was just that the critical eye in his mind stopped looking outward and turned inward instead.

It illuminated his own string of thoughts and all the judgments he thought he had figured out but were actually still a layer short.

[Inner Awakening] firmly took root at this very moment.

Richard suddenly felt that the hidden motives beneath every word washing over the table had been laid bare.

Desire, fear, rationality, hesitation... all of it was crystal clear.

"You're all wrong."

Richard put down his knife and fork.

Everyone at the table fell silent.

"Senior Thomson said it was a miracle." Richard looked at him. "You're half right."

"It really did block the pursuers and save those soldiers. The army chaplain wasn't wrong about that."

"But it was those thousands of soldiers who created it themselves."

Thomson opened his mouth to speak but stopped.

"They saved themselves," Richard concluded. "They created an angel on their own."

The table remained quiet.

"Senior Price said it needs to be destroyed." Richard turned to him. "Actually, there's no need."

"Why?"

"Because it's already destroying itself."

"Senior Clara said it should be controlled and used as a weapon." Richard turned to her. "That won't work either."

"Why won't it work?" Clara raised an eyebrow.

Richard looked at her.

"Because it saves people and eats them in the exact same way.

"It saves a soldier because that soldier believes in it.

"Every time it saves them, it scrapes away a sliver of their faith. Scrape away enough, and the person is hollowed out.

"A hollowed-out person can no longer believe. They find even thinking to be exhausting."

Richard paused for a moment.

"It is eating itself.

"With fewer people believing in it, it will hollow itself out as well.

"It was at its strongest the exact moment it was believed into existence... The prayers and faith of tens of thousands of people fed it completely full.

"But from that very moment, it was doomed.

"The more people it saves, the more it eats. And the more it eats, the fewer people are left to believe in it."

No one at the table responded.

"So what you're arguing about..." Richard continued, "is an issue that will resolve itself.

"All we can do is refuse to give it a name or a legend, and heal the soldiers it saved.

"It will fade away day by day, becoming an idle rumor that no one brings up, until it becomes nothing at all."

Of course, all of this assumed that the Virtuoso hadn't taken the entity away.

But that piece of intelligence wasn't suitable to share here.

Clara hadn't said much until now.

But at this moment, she offered the most crucial conclusion.

"Richard is right."

"When a thing reaches the absolute peak of its strength, that is precisely when it collapses."

The table remained silent for a beat.

Then, applause broke out.

Price clapped the loudest. Thomson joined in, tossing his book aside entirely.

Clara, Sophia, and even his drunk aunt applauded him. The only one not clapping was Richard himself.

The sudden applause made Richard flush slightly.

Isabella sprawled across the table, her eyes still a bit unfocused.

"...You kid."

She picked up the 'wine' that Richard had swapped for citron tea and took a sip.

"When Scholars argue, they're mostly arguing about who is right. One says 'I'm right,' the other says 'you're wrong,' and they yell until they're red in the face."

"In the end, it all just boils down to pride."

She looked at Richard.

"But you didn't completely refute either side. You incorporated both of them.

"One wanted to kill it, the other wanted to use it, and you merged both ideas into one."

She set her cup down.

"Now that is a debate."

Isabella looked thoroughly gratified.

"Perfect timing, too. The October Debate Week is coming up."

"Debate Week?" Price perked up.

Richard remembered his aunt mentioning this after the Cicero Cup.

"This year's Debate Week," Isabella said, her words slowing down, "is going to be different from previous years."

"How so?"

"With the war going on, the debate topics will likely change."

She didn't elaborate. Her flushed face dropped back onto the table.

"...I'm sleepy," his aunt muttered. "You guys... just eat."