Chapter 513: A Mere Librarian

Richard leaned down to sniff. He smelled mud turned up by a plow after rain, mixed with a faint metallic tang of rust.

The young accompanying clerk shrank back. The other two military officers exchanged a glance, neither reaching out.

The old professor remained perfectly still.

Richard weighed his words. "Professor, is this a Spell Formula?"

"No."

Mortimer pushed his reading glasses up his nose.

"Spell Formulas have structures. Rituals require venues."

"Mine is merely an ether application technique used by Scholars."

"It uses the historical traces and reverberations of a specific location to grant a certain boost to the user. Only a Major Adept Scholar can perform it."

The young clerk swallowed hard and whispered a question in Franc.

The lieutenant translated for him. "He's asking if this sand... is Milan."

"Not yet."

Mortimer spread his hand out.

"All four of you, come over and touch it."

None of the three officers moved first. Richard pressed his finger against the sand. The surface was icy cold.

The lieutenant finally reached his hand out.

The moment his fingertip touched down, the sand on the northern edge of the plain sank, forming rows of trenches.

The lieutenant jerked his hand back, and the trenches stopped forming.

"...Apologies."

"No need to apologize." Mortimer didn't even look. "The sand is merely reflecting your impression of Milan."

The young clerk reached out as well, his face deathly pale.

A bell tower rose from the eastern side of the plain.

"...My mother's family is from there," the clerk said.

When the third officer's finger touched down, a pile of crates sprouted from the sand.

:

He chuckled. "That would be a military supply depot. I specialize in managing those."

When it was Richard's turn, he fed his own thoughts into the sand.

The plain inverted itself. Railway tracks pierced through from north to south, and then the bastions of a fortress spread outward, complete with a moat.

Beneath the bastions lay a ring of even older city walls, and further down sat dozens of conical wooden palisades encircled by sharpened stakes.

It perfectly captured both the classical and modern periods of Milan.

The lieutenant's throat suddenly seemed dry. "...Professor, this gentleman is a student?"

"My student." Mortimer wiped his reading glasses and perched them back on the bridge of his nose.

He reached out and smoothed the sand flat.

Only the plain remained on the table, along with a bare plateau right in the center.

"Look here."

Mortimer's fingertip tapped on that plateau.

"The name of this city was originally Mediolanum."

"Meaning?"

"A place right in the middle of a plain, literally named 'Middle'—would you call that deliberate?"

He swept his hand toward the north, and the white line of the mountain ridge lit up briefly.

"Cross over to the north and there are mountains; to the south is a river, to the east is the sea, and to the west are more mountains.

It sits right in the center. No matter who goes where, they have to pass through here.

That is why the Romans stationed troops here, the Germanic tribes wintered here, and the Spaniards and Austrians took turns collecting taxes here."

"Collected tolls for two thousand years," the lieutenant chimed in from the side.

"Right, collected for two thousand years." Mortimer retracted his hand. "But I want to talk about something else."

He extended his index finger and tapped right in the middle of the plateau.

The outline of a small square room emerged on the sand, with two chairs inside.

"In the year 313 of the New Calendar, Constantine and Licinius signed the Edict of Milan here, lifting the restrictions on preaching. From then on, the Church officially stepped out from the underground and onto the main stage."

The old professor put his hand down.

:

"Once the Edict of Milan was penned, the religious dynamics of the entire Western Continent were completely redefined.

Before that, believing in the wrong god would cost you your life. After that, it became a matter put to paper, bound by clauses and articles."

"That event was the first great feat achieved on the land of Milan."

A great feat. Richard understood why the professor had specifically recounted it.

He thought again of the condition that had been hanging on his panel for half a year.

[Independently restore the complete operational logic of a lost Spell Formula.]

"Professor, what documents are we going to copy this trip?"

Mortimer fished that piece of paper out of his pocket again and spread it out between them.

Under the column for Milan, over a dozen lines were crammed together, including quite a few incomplete manuscripts from undetermined eras.

The train began its descent, the wheels clattering against the tracks in a tighter rhythm than before.

The young clerk suddenly raised his hand, asking in broken Albion Language, "Professor, the sand... when will you put it away?"

Mortimer swept his hand across the table.

The sand dissipated without a single grain left behind.

...

Milan was much hotter than the Imperial Capital, and also much drier.

Coming out of the station, the first thing Richard noticed was the blue patch of sky above—a vast improvement over the soot-choked heavens of the Imperial Capital.

It wasn't just a difference in industry; the climate itself was simply much cleaner.

The carriage traveled down the avenue toward the city proper. The buildings on both sides of the street were painted yellow.

Numerous pedestrians sat in the arcades beneath the buildings, each nursing a cup of coffee. Some held croissants.

A tram clanged its way down the center of the street, its exterior plastered with propaganda posters for war bonds.

The cathedral abruptly sprang into view at the end of the street. Richard craned his neck for a better look.

The cathedral was unreasonably white, with hundreds of spires poking holes in the sky one after another. A holy statue crowned every single one.

"Professor, how old is this cathedral?"

Professor Mortimer lifted his eyelids.

:

"This? It's been over five hundred years, I suppose.

But actually, the front facade was only finished twenty years ago. These kinds of cathedrals are never truly finished."

They were staying at a hostel arranged by the committee. Upon dropping off his luggage, Professor Mortimer immediately shucked off his coat.

"The meeting doesn't start until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. As for today, go out and wander around on your own."

"Are you going, Professor?"

The old man snorted a laugh and just took off his shoes.

"Spare my old bones. I've sat on a train for thirty hours, and I'll likely sleep right through till dark."

He covered his face with his hat, using it as a sleep mask.

"Don't stay in here... you'll disturb my sleep. Go see what's different here compared to the Imperial Capital."

By this point, his voice beneath the hat was already beginning to slur.

"Note down whatever you see, and tell this old man about it at dinner."

Richard, on the other hand, was full of energy. Being his first time abroad, he possessed a boundless sense of novelty.

The first thing he did upon leaving was look for a place to report in. It was a habit by now.

In the Empire, when he followed Mr. Hutton on a trip to Whitcom, they first had to visit the Branch Office in town.

Going to the Western Suburbs Mining Area, Wentworth had slapped an apprentice inspector's commission on the desk.

Even on that night in the Black Trench, everyone who arrived after the rusted Bell chimed had announced their names, their lineages, and whose coin they were taking.

Rosters, public accounts, reimbursements, being on the books—this was how a formalized organization functioned.

Following this habit, he went to the city hall first, where a clerk very politely led him to the sanitation department.

The gentleman in the sanitation department examined his Auxiliary Investigating Scholar credentials and actually asked if he was here to register cholera outbreaks.

Then he visited the police station, where the duty officer listened sympathetically before telling him he needed to ask a priest for this kind of matter.

"Which priest?"

"Which parish do you live in?"

Richard couldn't answer, and he slowly began to realize what was going on.

This country was only officially founded in 1861.

Before that, the peninsula had consisted of over a dozen autonomous cities, duchies, kingdoms, and papal states, a state of affairs that had persisted for eight hundred years.

:

Left with no choice, he could only resume window shopping.

On the street north of the cathedral, shops stood wall-to-wall. The goods in the windows were more abundant than in the Imperial Capital, and the prices were steeper.

He walked past two streets before stopping at the entrance of a spice shop on the corner.

He had found out about this place by asking Sophia before leaving. It was said that while the shop owner's goods were expensive, he hadn't sold a single fake or defective product in decades of business.

As soon as he pushed the door open, the scents hit him: pepper, cinnamon, and saffron.

The prices were indeed terrifyingly high, but Richard still bought half an ounce.

To make use of the seeds Demeter had given him, he needed a physical reference; otherwise, it would just be building castles in the air.

If he took this back to study, he might just be able to replicate a batch of saffron.

When the time came, besides giving some to his sister and Grey, he might even be able to make a little pocket money on the side.

After Richard paid and bagged the purchase, the owner pinched a single thread between his fingers and dipped it into a bowl of clean water on the counter. The water instantly turned yellow.

The shop owner's Franc was fluent. "If it doesn't turn yellow, or if the yellow has a red tint, then someone mixed something else into it."

On the way back, Richard passed by a flower market.

The flower stalls were full of chrysanthemums, white and yellow piled into small mountains.

A woman carried away a massive bouquet, her arms unable to fully wrap around it. She left a trail of fallen petals in her wake after just a dozen steps.

Standing at the intersection, Richard saw a continuous stream of people carrying flowers down the road heading toward the cemetery.

He calculated the dates in his head. October 30th was Halloween.

It was already the last week of October, and in a few more nights, it would be the night for the dead.

Richard shoved a hand into his inner pocket; the piece of antler was still there.

The Twelve Nights of Yule, the three Ember Days, All Saints', Walburg—among all these, the importance of Halloween was extremely high.

The wind swept in from the north, carrying the chill of the mountains.

There was nothing in the sky; the clouds pressed very low, and not even a single cry of a wild goose could be heard.

At dusk, Richard ate his first proper meal of the trip beneath an arcade.

The floor was paved with mosaics. The piece right in the center depicted a bull.

The waiter led him to a seat further inside. Given the menu, he simply pointed at the two best-drawn pictures.

The first dish brought out was a plate of yellow rice. Richard took a spoonful, and the rich aroma instantly flooded his nose.

:

"Zaffan (saffron)," the waiter introduced.

Richard realized in a flash, committing the scent to memory.

The second plate held a piece of golden-fried meat, bone included, that was larger than the plate itself.

He finished both dishes all by himself.

The waiter stood two steps away, a very subtle expression on his face.

Richard pointed at his plate, then pointed at the menu.

"Another portion."

The waiter raised an eyebrow.

When the second portion was served, he finished that too.

This time, the waiter didn't walk away. He stood nearby, watching him eat.

Halfway through, the waiter turned and went into the kitchen, returning with the cook in tow.

The cook was a fat man, his apron covered in grease.

He looked across the table at Richard and rattled off a long string of words.

Richard didn't understand a single word.

He fished out the piece of paper his aunt had given him, scanned down to the second-to-last line, and read it aloud.

"Please give me a cup of tea, no sugar."

The cook froze.

The waiter froze as well.

After three seconds, the fat cook slapped his thigh and burst out laughing, shouting a line toward the kitchen as he laughed.

Stifling a laugh, the waiter tried very hard to explain in the Albion Language.

"Sir, we have no tea here."

"...Then coffee?"

"We have coffee, but no more sugar."

Richard sat there holding his aunt's paper, suddenly realizing why they had laughed.

When that cup of coffee was brought out, sure enough, there wasn't a single grain of sugar.

:

He took a sip and frowned at the bitterness.

The cook watched his expression from the side, nodded in deep satisfaction, and turned back to the kitchen.

As the sun slanted westward, Richard arrived at St. Ambrose Church.

The church was low and built of red brick, fronted by a perfectly square courtyard enclosed by cloisters on all four sides.

Carved into the capitals of the cloister columns were various monsters, vines, and a person blowing a horn.

The carvings were irregular; the craftsman obviously cared more about finishing the job than refining its appearance.

It was very dim inside the church.

The pillar stood in the left aisle, a little taller than a man. Its shaft was completely smooth, and a bronze snake coiled at its top.

The snake's head was raised, its jaws half-open.

Richard stopped in front of the pillar, and his panel reacted.

There were already three people there.

An old woman, a mother, and the child cradled in the mother's arms.

The old woman reached out to stroke the pillar, pressing a hand to her own forehead afterward.

The mother lifted the child higher, letting the kid's small hands reach the pillar as well.

The child touched it and began to giggle.

After they left, Richard pressed his Still Water against it.

The moment he touched it, he nearly stumbled back half a step.

The ether was terrifyingly thick, only slightly less dense than the Fire Worship Temple Pillar in Donner's backyard.

But when he actually saw the pillar's ether structure, Richard frowned.

The snake's casting method, alloy ratio, scale pattern, and the seam running along its belly proved it was an Oriental casting.

It was roughly a thousand years old, and the craftsman who made it likely had no idea what he was doing.

Yet the thousand years of ether caked onto it told a completely different ancient legend: this was the bronze serpent Moses had erected in the wilderness.

Richard stood in front of that pillar for a long time.

A forgery had been believed in by millions for a millennium: legend claimed that on the day the world ended, the snake on the pillar would hiss and return to the Valley of Jehoshaphat.

Richard raised an eyebrow and stealthily began skimming the accumulated ether off the pillar's exterior, exactly as he had done with the Fire Worship Temple Pillar.

The points on his panel also began to slowly rise.

...

After Richard left, the hat remained on Mortimer's face for about four more minutes.

Then he abruptly rolled over, pulled the hat off, and sat up.

Outside the window, the mid-afternoon sunlight was so bright it looked glaringly white.

The old man sat on the edge of the bed for a while before going to open his trunk.

He hung that dusty gray coat back onto its hook.

He pulled another dark, short coat from the very bottom of the trunk and shook it open. A strong scent of camphor billowed out, making him sneeze.

The last time this coat went out was for an old colleague's funeral.

He draped the coat over his shoulders, walked over to the mirror on the wardrobe, and muttered to the person in the mirror.

"Little Richard, I'm heading out for a bit too."

Then again, if he had actually said that to the boy...

He figured the kid would put down whatever he was holding, stand up straight, and look over with that gaze he probably didn't even realize he had—like slowly pressing down the surface of a body of water—and ask: 'Professor, where are you going?'

Next would be: 'What are you going to do?'

And right after that would come the big one: 'Professor, how certain are you?'

Mortimer plopped his hat back on his head. He was going to visit a Master; in truth, he had no certainty at all.

"...Never mind."

Pinned at the very bottom of his luggage was a tin box and a stack of papers bound by twine.

The tin box was empty, waiting to be filled with ash.

That stack of papers was something he had begun saving ever since his advancement to Minor Adept.

Mortimer had advanced to Minor Adept at thirty-two, which was considered quite late.

No one had expected him to become the only Major Adept among his peers, nor that he would live to this day, over a century later.

He shoved the two ritual items into his briefcase and headed out onto the street.

A tram passed down the center of the street, while a paperboy stood beneath the arcade shouting about the Battles of the Isonzo.

Heading north from the flower market, the stream of people carrying chrysanthemums was unending.

Mortimer leaned on his cane, walking very slowly.

He turned south into a narrow alley. At the end of the alley was an inconspicuous storefront.

The Ambrosian Library.

Three hundred years ago, a cardinal had opened up his personal collection, allowing anyone who could read to come in and browse. It was one of the earliest public libraries on the Western Continent.

Mortimer handed over that letter from the committee.

After reading it, the librarian looked up, his expression changing instantly. He asked in somewhat broken Franc which room he wanted.

"North-facing, the smaller the better. Preferably one no one uses."

The room given to him was at the very end of the second floor, with a brass plate nailed to the wall reading: lnz (Silence).

Once the door closed, even the faint sound of stone carving outside vanished.

Mortimer first placed on the floor the copper basin he had borrowed from the hostel kitchen.

He had put down a two-lira deposit at the front desk just for this basin.

Then he untied the twine. Among the eleven transcribed notebooks was the very first declaration manuscript he had written during his advancement to Minor Adept.

He had never shown these to anyone; they were completely full of errors.

Some of them were later revised into theses and had made their way into the archives, resting neatly on the shelves.

He had kept these flawed original versions, never throwing away a single page.

But this year, he had pushed these original versions stack by stack onto the desk by the window, making an eighteen-year-old kid copy them out one by one.

The kid copied fast, and neater than a fair-copy clerk.

Occasionally he would look up and ask why, and without waiting for an answer, he'd lower his head and keep writing.

Mortimer crouched in front of the copper basin and flipped open the first notebook.

The paper was brittle, crumbling into dust the moment he tore it.

It took two strikes to light the match.

By the time the third notebook burned, the room was already filled with paper ash.

He recited names as he burned them. These names belonged entirely to Major Adept Scholars who had failed their advancement to Virtuoso over the past millennium.

He wasn't qualified to address a Master directly by name, so he could only use this opportunistic method to attract the other party's attention.

One hundred and sixty-three names; not a single one could be omitted.

By the time he reached the fifties, his voice began to grow hoarse.

Around the eightieth name, the fire reached the final notebook.

By the hundred and sixty-third name, the little fire in the copper basin extinguished itself.

Mortimer poured the ashes out onto the table, flattening them with his palm into the shape of a single page, and then wrote down his own name.

After writing it, he sat down, placing both hands on his knees.

Blood trickled from his nose, dripping onto that page of ash and soaking into it.

And then, there was nothing. The room was so quiet he could hear someone pushing a cart of books past the second-floor hallway.

A quarter of an hour, half an hour...

Mortimer folded his handkerchief and tucked it away. Looking at the ash page on the table, he suddenly felt completely relaxed all over.

This was fine too. When he went back, he could tell the kid he had slept the entire afternoon away and his back was sore.

If anyone asked later whether there was still a path upward in the Classical Records Tradition, he could simply push his reading glasses up his nose and say he was too old to climb the stairs.

Thinking of this, he even felt a little embarrassed.

Mortimer reached for his briefcase.

He turned his head, only to find someone standing right behind his elbow.