I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

Footsteps stopped in the aisle next to his table.

After a moment of silence, something was placed gently on the tabletop.

A long, slender object entered his peripheral vision.

Richard looked up.

Lillian was standing before his table, a book in her hands.

Their eyes met for a brief moment.

Richard shifted his gaze to the top right corner of his desk.

It was a handmade bookmark, crafted from heavy watercolor paper, with a laurel branch drawn on its surface.

In classical literature, the laurel has many layers of meaning.

Peace, victory, Wisdom... which specific meaning one takes depends on the context.

But to be given such a laurel bookmark after the end of the Cicero Cup, the context was already quite clear.

'She must have started making this bookmark as soon as the Cicero Cup results were announced.'

The ink lines on the paper were completely dry, and the faint wash of watercolor was still visible at the edges of the laurel leaves.

'This was something made with time and care.'

Richard looked up, preparing to thank her.

"This doesn't mean anything special."

Lillian spoke quickly, cutting him off before he could start.

"It's just... you did very well in the Cicero Cup. I thought someone should say congratulations."

The girl stood her ground, her long hair hiding the slight flush of her earlobes.

She spotted the introductory textbook for Ancient Greek Text on the table and changed the subject. "You're studying Ancient Greek Text?"

"Yes." Richard carefully tucked the laurel bookmark into the flyleaf. "I just started."

Lillian's fingertips brushed unconsciously against the spine of the book she was holding.

"The pronunciation for this letter... this book doesn't teach it correctly."

Richard paused, taken aback.

"This textbook teaches the restored pronunciation of the Attic dialect—the one from around Athens..."

She silently mouthed a demonstration.

"But everyone uses the modern pronunciation now. If you read it the way the book says, it might not go over well during oral recitations in the future."

Richard took out his pencil and quickly jotted it down in his notebook.

"I need it for my studies." He didn't elaborate on why he needed to learn it.

'It appeared in the Gargoyle's Inscription. I can't avoid it.'

Lillian hesitated for a moment, then pulled a folded piece of paper from the book she held. It contained two pages of dense, handwritten notes.

"Here. This should be useful."

Richard nodded and tucked the paper into his notebook.

"Thanks. I'll give it back after I've copied it."

"No rush," she said. "I don't need it anymore."

Richard didn't press further. He had a feeling that if he asked one more question, she would close up like a clam.

He changed tack.

"So what are you reading now?" He gestured with his chin toward the book in Lillian's arms.

The girl glanced down, only then seeming to realize she was still holding a book.

She turned the book around so the cover faced Richard.

It was *A Guide to the Medicinal Plants of the Albion Islands (Third Revised Edition)*. The cover featured a hand-drawn illustration of a foxglove.

"...You like plants?"

"Mhm." Her voice was a little brighter than before. "I draw them myself, too."

"Drawing plants?"

"Anatomical illustrations." Her fingertips brushed against the book's spine again.

"Drawing a plant layer by layer, from the root to the pistil, and labeling each part with its Latin scientific name."

Richard raised an eyebrow.

Botanical anatomical illustration wasn't a common hobby for a girl of her age.

Baking, watercolor florals, piano... those were the extracurriculars most high schools designed for girls.

Botanical dissection was scientific illustration, a field belonging to the naturalists of old.

"Why draw that?"

"...They're beautiful." She thought for a moment, then added, "And they don't move."

"Can I see your drawings sometime?"

"Okay."

And so they ended up sitting at the table together.

Lillian had only planned to drop off the gift and leave; she hadn't expected to sit down.

She sat diagonally across from Richard, the open textbook lying between them.

Richard recalled what Mr. Hutton had told him earlier and began to chat in a deliberately casual tone.

"Actually, I've been thinking about something lately."

"Oh...?" Lillian looked up from her botanical guide, regarding him with some confusion.

"It's about all this stuff."

Richard pointed to the textbook, then to his own notebook.

"As I study it, sometimes I get a very strange feeling."

"What kind of feeling?" The girl closed her book.

"It's like there's something separating the world described by every classical author—Cicero, Virgil, Pindar—from the world we live in now."

He said this while staring at an illustration of the Parthenon Temple in the textbook, not looking at Lillian.

"They wrote about the age of gods, about fate, about exploring the world... and it doesn't seem at all like how we write fiction today."

"It's as if they weren't making things up, but describing things they had actually seen."

"..." Lillian said nothing.

"And then you start to wonder... if the things they saw might still be around today, but our generation just doesn't know how to see them."

After saying this, Richard deliberately paused.

The third floor of the library was quiet.

Outside, the sky was a dull gray. The rain hadn't started, but there was a dampness in the air that suggested it could fall at any moment.

The girl's fingers rested on the corner of a page, unmoving.

Her head was bowed, her gaze fixed on the cover of the botanical guide, but she clearly wasn't looking at the foxglove.

"That 'something' you mentioned... what do you think it is?" Lillian asked in return.

'That question was a response in itself.'

'If she had no idea what I was talking about, the normal reaction would be confusion, or maybe a few polite platitudes before changing the subject.'

'But she wasn't confused, and she didn't change the subject.'

'She was pressing for more.'

"I'm not sure." Richard's answer was deliberately vague.

"Maybe it's a kind of... membrane? Something that separates the world we can see from the one we can't."

He used a very ambiguous term.

They were discussing secrets in a room where a third party could be present, speaking entirely in code and metaphor.

Lillian's fingertip scraped lightly against the edge of the page.

"A membrane?"

"Mhm."

"Have you read anything about it in the books on the third floor?"

When she said that, Richard's heart skipped half a beat.

Mr. Hutton had said that Lillian had spent more time with those books than he had.

"I've read a little." Richard nodded, not denying it.

"Appendix C?"

The words were spoken so lightly, as if she were asking if the cafeteria was serving tomato and oxtail soup today.

"Yes," Richard said.

Lillian nodded. She, too, had confirmed something.

They were like two people who had been fumbling their way down the same dark alley for a long time, only to suddenly meet at a corner and discover the other was also holding a Candle.

"How much have you deciphered?" Richard asked.

"All of it."

Richard was a little surprised.

Mr. Hutton had said Lillian spent over half a year on the third-floor books, painstakingly poring over passages he himself had skipped, word by word.

'Over half a year to decipher all twenty-six books.'

'That was indeed much slower than him, but considering she didn't have the support of the [Scholarship] Skill and had to chew through it all on her own, her speed was already astonishing.'

"You read all twenty-six books, deciphered Appendix C... but you stopped there."

Lillian's head bowed even lower.

Richard maintained the rhythm of a casual chat.

"After finishing those books, the logical next step would be to go deeper."

"But you didn't move forward."

He looked at Lillian. "Why is that?"

A library window wasn't shut completely, and a cold draft snuck through the crack, rustling the corner of the notebook on the table.

Lillian's expression didn't change much.

But her posture did. She leaned back against her chair, her shoulders pulled back, and her arms crossed over her chest.

It was a defensive posture.

"I think that was enough," she said.

"Enough?"

"Enough to understand what the other side of this world is like."

Her wording was very careful.

"Understanding and participating are two different things."

"I can know there's something in there, but I don't need to go see it for myself."

Richard didn't immediately argue.

He mentally compared Lillian's words with what Philips had said in the Imperial University Library.

Philips had stood at the mouth of the cave, peeked inside, judged the risk-reward ratio to be unfavorable, and turned away.

He had a privileged family background, a respectable future, and more than enough reason to stay in a safe place.

His decision not to move forward was an active choice, a trade-off.

But Lillian seemed different.

Richard decided to probe a little further.

"You're right. Understanding and participating are indeed two different things."

He started by agreeing with her, but then his tone shifted.

"I've been reading some books lately, and the authors compare working in that... field... to diving."

"The shallow waters are near the coast. Sunlight reaches the seabed, the water is clear, and you can see exactly what's beneath your feet."

"Most divers spend their whole lives in the shallows. It's safe enough, and interesting enough."

"Dive deeper, and the water begins to darken. The sunlight can't penetrate, and you can only rely on the headlamp you brought with you."

"You can only see as far as your light shines. If the light goes out, you see nothing at all."

"And even deeper..."

"That's enough."

Lillian cut him off.

The girl took a few deep breaths before she calmed down.

"I'm sorry."

"I... don't really like talking about these things right now."

Richard nodded and didn't press her any further.

"It's getting late." Lillian glanced at the sky outside.

The clouds were lower than before; the rain was probably about to fall.

"I should go. I still have a Latin translation assignment to finish."

'It wasn't a very convincing excuse.'

'With her skill in Latin, a translation assignment probably wouldn't take her long at all.'

But Richard didn't call her out on it.

"Alright."

Lillian stood up and hugged the botanical guide to her chest again.

She stood by the table, hesitating.

"That bookmark..."

"It's beautiful. I'll take good care of it."

"Mhm."

She turned and walked toward the stairwell.

"Richard."

"Yes?"

"That metaphor you used just now, about diving."

"The one about the shallow and deep waters?"

"Yes."

She stood in the aisle between the bookshelves, her profile obscured by the gloomy daylight.

"How deep are you planning to dive?"

"I'm still just learning to swim. I need a floatie even in the shallow end."

Richard deliberately made a joke.

"I'll decide on all that once I don't need the floatie anymore."

"Pfft..." The girl chuckled at the odd metaphor. "Well then, good luck with that."

Lillian waved at him and quickly disappeared around the corner of the stairs.

Richard glanced out the window. The clouds pressed down overhead, but the rain still hadn't fallen.

* * *

For the next few days, he devoted his days entirely to the Ancient Greek Language and his regular coursework, while his nights were reserved for the Sphinx Oil Lamp.

His daytime progress was smooth.

By the third day, he had committed the alphabet of the Ancient Greek Language to memory, and on the fourth day, he began to tackle noun declensions.

Richard copied the dual number declension table into his notebook on a separate sheet, circling several high-frequency word endings with a red pen that had appeared on Mr. Hutton's new reference chart.

His work at night was more mentally taxing.

He had analyzed the Seal on the Oil Lamp long ago.

A circle encompassing a triangle, with short lines extending from the triangle's three sides—a Priest's Inscription Seal from the Black Earth River Basin.

The designer was a professional. Every symbol was in its correct position, and the curvature of the short lines was consistent with the writing conventions of the mid-stream Priest's Inscription.

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