Chapter 457: Covered Fire Village

In the afternoon, there were only two people in the research room.

A rubbing lay spread out on the table. Richard was stuck on the middle layer, as usual.

"Senior Sister, I can't date this," he said, setting down his pen.

"The script matches two different eras. I could make a solid case comparing it to either one."

Clara leaned over, turned the rubbing around, and pushed it in front of him.

"Don't look at the letters just yet."

"Then what should I look at?"

"Look at the strokes." She lightly tapped the air above the paper with the tip of her pencil.

"Which side did the chisel strike from?"

Richard looked down, his train of thought suddenly untangling.

"From right to left."

"And so?"

"So the person who carved it was left-handed," Richard said, his words coming faster.

"The workshops after Romanization used an assembly-line process. The apprentices uniformly carved from left to right, guiding the chisel with their right hands."

"This section is a family craft, different from what came out of the workshops."

"Then it doesn't belong to the middle layer. It was added during that middle era."

Clara tucked her pencil behind her ear.

"Correct."

The door was pushed open at that moment.

Isabella walked in carrying a stack of official documents and dropped them onto the table by the window.

"You two continue. I'll grade these."

She sat down and took out a red pen.

By the time she reached the third document, her red pen had stopped moving.

By the fifth, she simply pushed the stack aside, rested her chin in her hands, and watched them openly.

Clara was explaining the next spot.

Isabella couldn't hold back anymore.

"Let me explain this one!"

She walked over and snatched the rubbing away.

"There are three transmission paths for the late variants of the Alexandrian School in the sealology of the Western Continent. Memorize the second one first.

"The second path absorbed the cursive habits of Carolingian minuscule along the way, so when you date it, you must first rule out the batch of pseudo-Carolingian copies.

"The criterion for identifying the forgeries lies in the trailing edge of the letter 'a's second stroke..."

She lectured for several straight minutes without pausing for breath.

When she finally looked up, Richard's expression was entirely serious.

"...Did you understand?"

"I understood every single word."

"So what did you understand?"

"...That I need to rule out a batch of copies first."

Isabella's mouth twitched.

Clara gently pulled the rubbing back and drew an emphasis line under that row with her pencil.

"You only need to remember that the people of the Carolingian dynasty wrote so others could read. The scriptoria prioritized speed and neatness."

"Then why is there an extra chisel mark here?" Richard asked.

"Because the person carving it was afraid of leaving something out."

Richard's eyes lit up.

"He was adding a meaning he knew, but others didn't."

"Correct."

The research room fell silent for two seconds.

Isabella turned around, walked back to the window, sat down, and picked her red pen back up.

She pulled out a blank piece of paper and wrote a line at the top: "Pedagogy: Observation Record."

Clara glanced over from her side but said nothing.

Isabella wrote very seriously, finally drawing a conclusion at the bottom of the page.

"Conclusion: Clara explains it more clearly than I do."

After writing that, she stared at the line for quite a while.

Then she folded the paper into a small triangle and stuffed it into an empty sugar jar.

"Clara," she said suddenly.

"Advisor?"

"What exactly is wrong with how I explain things?"

Clara hesitated.

Isabella raised a hand, looking somewhat defeated.

"Just say it. It's not like I'm going to dock your research stipend."

"...You assume the other person already has the prerequisite knowledge."

Clara spoke very slowly.

"When you were explaining the second transmission path, your premise was that he already knew the first one."

"He didn't know the first one."

Isabella opened her mouth, not knowing how to reply.

At that moment, something moved at the crack of the door.

A head of long, pale golden hair poked halfway in, then quickly shrank back.

"Sophia," Clara called out.

The door was pushed open.

Sophia came in holding a stack of proofs, smiling incredibly naturally.

"I was just passing by to drop off these proofs."

She placed the proofs on the table but didn't leave, craning her neck toward the rubbing.

Clara gave her a look.

"Have a seat. You can listen in."

Sophia plopped into a chair and rolled up her sleeves.

"I'm definitely going to figure this out today."

Clara picked the most basic part and explained it to her.

Sophia nodded.

"Understood."

"Then explain it."

Sophia opened her mouth, then stopped.

"...My brain understands it, but my mouth can't say it."

Clara explained it again, phrasing it differently.

This time, Sophia nodded even harder.

"I really get it this time!"

"Then do this next part yourself."

Sophia gripped her pen and poked two holes in the paper.

Clara sighed beside her.

The sigh was very light, but Sophia instantly snapped her head up.

"You sighed!"

"I did not."

"You absolutely sighed!" Sophia slammed the pen down.

"When you explain things to Richard, you don't sigh."

"When you talk to him, your voice is so slow and soft it's like you're coaxing a child."

"But when it comes to me, it's just a stiff, 'I covered this last semester.'"

"We really did cover this last semester," Clara said, rubbing her forehead.

"You're playing favorites!"

"I am not playing favorites."

Clara put the rubbing away, delivering the final blow: "You're just dumb."

The research room fell silent for a moment.

"Clara!"

Sophia slumped onto the table and buried her face in her arms.

"Advisor, did you hear that?"

Isabella was beside the window, covering her mouth to hide a smile.

"I heard it."

"Aren't you going to do something about it?"

"What is there to do?" his aunt said, setting down her cup.

Sophia lifted half her face from her arms.

"...You guys are all in it together."

...

The next afternoon, the door to the research room was pushed open once again.

The moment the white-haired giant stepped inside, half the light in the room was blocked out.

"Professor." Clara stood up.

"Farfield, step out for a moment."

Clara packed away the collation in her hands, walked to the door, and glanced back.

Richard gave her a nod.

The door clicked shut.

MacFie sat down in the chair opposite him.

"Did you bring the IOU?"

Richard took the blank piece of parchment from his inner pocket. The thorn-entwined seal in the corner remained exactly the same.

"It's time to cash it in for the first time," MacFie said.

"Now?"

"Now."

"Where are we going?"

"The northernmost part of the Highlands."

The white-haired giant pulled something from his breast pocket and set it on the table.

It was a palm-sized grayish-green stone, carved with a few very shallow lines.

"This is a boundary stone. From Covered Fire Village."

He flipped the stone over.

"Before dark, the women of the household must cover up the peat fire."

"They divide the embers into three piles, cover them with ash, and recite a short prayer."

"Once the prayer is finished, the fire sleeps. At dawn the next day, they sweep the ash aside, and it springs back to life on its own."

"If a household's fire fails to last the night, then that lineage is considered broken."

"There is a sealing array on the high ground outside the village there. Twelve standing stones."

Richard immediately picked up on the number.

"Twelve stones. Whitcom had the exact same number."

The white-haired giant looked at him.

"Yes. The array at Whitcom had pre-Roman Celtic as the foundation, Romanization in the middle, and Medieval Church Latin layered on top."

"The one at Covered Fire Village has a structure following almost the exact same route."

"Someone added to it after 1814, using the private script of the local Hunters."

Richard silently committed this detail to memory.

"The ones guarding the array this spring were two local Hunter families."

"The two sons from one of the families died across the sea this year."

"The elder of their household failed to survive last winter."

"So that family has no one left this year."

"What about the other family?"

"The other family moved away a century ago."

Richard asked no further questions.

"The routine reinforcement is in April every year," MacFie continued.

"And now May is almost over."

MacFie smiled, but there was no warmth in it.

"The seal maintenance budget for the Northern Greater Region was slashed in half this year. The half that was cut was entirely reallocated to Flanders."

He stood up, and the chair groaned in relief.

"Catherine is going too."

...

Their departure was set for May 23rd.

On the evening of the 21st, Professor MacFie booked a table at an unassuming restaurant in the western part of the city.

When Richard arrived, Catherine was already there.

"Where is the professor?"

Catherine flipped open her notebook and wrote a line.

"In the kitchen."

"What's he doing in the kitchen?"

She wrote another line.

"He said he wanted to check the heat."

Richard set his canvas bag down by his feet.

An extremely loud voice rang out from the kitchen. It was MacFie arguing with someone over something.

After arguing for about three minutes, the white-haired giant ducked through the curtain, looking entirely displeased.

"The cook here refuses to roast a whole one. Muttered something about wartime rationing. It's not like I'm not paying him."

MacFie sat down at the table.

"He even said that if he gave it to me, there wouldn't be any left for the other customers."

Catherine wrote in her notebook: "So what did you say?"

"I told him the other customers couldn't eat that much anyway."

Richard thought the reasoning was fairly sound. With two massive eaters sitting at this table, a single sheep might not even be enough.

The first thing served was a massive basin of mutton soup. MacFie stuck the ladle in and gave it a stir.

"It's a Highlands rule. Before a long journey, you have to treat people to a meal."

He served the first bowl to Catherine, the second to Richard, and only took the third for himself.

His own bowl held as much as the first two combined.

"Eating this meal is to let the hearth remember you."

"Once it remembers, if anything happens to you while you're out, it'll stay lit for you on your way back."

Richard understood.

"So this meal..."

"Is to let the hearth recognize the three of us."

MacFie set his bowl down.

"I don't have a fire pit in the Imperial Capital, so I can only borrow the one here."

"This place's hearth has been burning for forty years. It's old enough."

Catherine wrote a line in her notebook and held it up.

"Do you have to repay it if you borrow it?"

"Yes."

"How?"

The white-haired giant tapped his finger against the table.

"Pay the bill when we finish, and wipe the bowls clean."

"Then tell the cook: 'Thank you for your fire.'"

Catherine looked at the words, then set her notebook down.

The second dish was smoked leg of mutton.

When it was served, Catherine's eyes widened.

It was the entire leg. The waiter who brought the platter in had to support it with both hands.

MacFie picked up a knife and gave the first slice to Catherine.

"The meat by the shoulder blade is the most tender. The youngest eats first."

Catherine picked the meat up with her fork.

She was in a good mood today, so she ate a bit faster than usual.

Then she looked up and realized the leg of mutton on the table was already missing a third of its meat.

She shifted her gaze. MacFie was sitting on her left, and Richard was on her right.

Neither of them was speaking. They were just eating with their heads down.

The sound of their knives and forks cutting the meat fell with a steady, rhythmic beat.

"Professor, slow down a bit."

MacFie glanced at the page without even lifting his head.

"If I slow down, it'll get cold."

Catherine shifted her gaze to the other side.

Richard was in the middle of slicing a massive chunk of mutton in half.

He wasn't eating fast, but he took bite after bite without ever stopping.

Catherine scribbled a line in her notebook and held it up.

"You ate lunch today, didn't you?"

"I did."

"What did you eat?"

"Three portions from the cafeteria. They just default to giving me three now."

The third dish brought out was roast chicken. Two of them, in fact.

The cook brought them out personally, his expression incredibly complicated.

He set the platter down but remained standing by the table.

"Sir."

"What is it?"

"Are you... just three people?"

"Just three."

The cook's gaze lingered on the mutton leg on the table, which was now nothing but bone.

"Then... then I'll go see if we have anything else."

Catherine wrote a very long line in her notebook.

"We don't leave until the day after tomorrow. If you eat this much today, won't you still have to eat tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow, I'll eat tomorrow's share."

Catherine flipped her notebook open again. When she held it up this time, she used both hands.

"Are you two really not going to burst your stomachs?"

Richard swallowed the mouthful of food he was chewing.

"I won't... I've eaten a lot since I was little."

Catherine shifted her eyes toward MacFie.

The white-haired giant wiped his hands on a napkin.

"My constitution is a bit special. Ever since I was twelve, I haven't been able to walk if I don't eat five meals a day."

"When I left home at fifteen, it was a two-day walk to the nearest town."

"Halfway there, I collapsed on the side of the road, and a passing cart driver picked me up."

MacFie let out a small laugh.

"He gave me two loaves of bread. When I finished them, I told him it wasn't enough."

"So he gave me the whole sack."

"He told me, 'Kid, eating like that, you're either going to die early, or you're going to go far.'"

"Looking back now, I suppose I went pretty far."

The white-haired giant pushed the two chicken carcasses to the side.

"Very few in the Moon Hunting Tradition ever reach Major Adept, because they simply can't endure it."

He spread his palm open.

It was covered in calluses, with old scars layered over even older scars.

"I can endure it because I can replenish what I lose."

Catherine wrote that sentence down in the margins of her notebook.

Then she looked up at Richard.

"And you?"

Richard dipped the last piece of bread into the soup.

"I can replenish what I lose, too."

They kept eating until nine o'clock that night.

When the cook brought out the final dish—a plate of stewed beef tripe—his face was completely devoid of expression.

Halfway through that final plate of tripe, Richard sensed a change.

In his interface, the progress bar for the [eating] trait had been stuck at Lv.3 for a very long time.

Over the past two years, he had eaten large quantities of food, and an incredible variety of it.

From the boiled potatoes in Slag Alley to the roast goose at the Ashford Residence, from canned goods to the tough, limited-edition beef in the cafeteria.

The progress had been steadily climbing, but very slowly.

Tonight's meal finally pushed it to the peak.

[eating Lv.3, Progress 100%.]

[eating Lv.3 → Lv.4.]

The change came very softly.

The [Filtration] from Lv.3 had given him a sieve.

During that patrol in Port Folkestone, he drank the water in the tent area for two days. While everyone else suffered from diarrhea for days, he was completely fine.

Now, that sieve was changing.

He drew his Spirit Vision inward and watched as the nutrients split into two separate paths.

One flowed into his main vessels, while the other was pushed to his extremities, seeping out bit by bit through his capillary network.

It had reached Lv4. Next, he would need to start thinking about advancing to Lv5.

Richard pushed the plate of tripe toward the center of the table.

"Professor, I have a question."

"Can anyone eat the things from beyond the veil?"