Chapter 252: Sweet Aftertaste

For the next two days, the dormitory building stayed brightly lit.

The vast majority of the thirty or so students in the special class were buried in their work.

Some would push their plates aside in the cafeteria mid-meal, pulling those pages from their pockets to review.

Others did not even leave the classroom during breaks, leaning over their desks to chew through their share of the material.

There were a few exceptions, and Phillips was one of them.

When Richard passed his dorm room on Thursday night, the door was ajar.

He pushed it open and found Phillips leaning against his pillows, reading a newly borrowed novel.

The study materials sat at the foot of the bed, weighed down by an empty teapot.

"...Did you actually do it?" Richard asked.

"I flipped through them," Phillips said, keeping his eyes on his book. "I flipped through them very carefully."

"Flipping through them is not the same as doing them."

"I know."

Phillips closed the book and looked up at Richard.

"I've thought about everything you said."

"Those old guys went through a lot of trouble to tailor a set of questions for everyone. They didn't do it because they were bored."

"They're watching to see who will patch their own shortcomings, and who will just flip through the questions and toss them aside."

"If you understand that, why aren't you doing them?" Richard raised an eyebrow.

"Because I really don't want to."

Phillips set the novel down next to his pillow.

"Hear me out." He raised a hand toward Richard.

"I'm not bad at textual criticism, my rhetoric is passable, and my other subjects are only average."

"If I sat down and earnestly finished the questions they assigned me, I'd probably get sixty or seventy percent right."

"As for the remaining thirty percent, I know exactly where my flaws lie. I'm well aware of them."

"But what difference does it make if I do them?"

Phillips glanced at the ceiling.

"If I finish them, my shortcomings will indeed be patched up a little. But will that little bit of improvement be enough to take me from 'above average' to 'excellent'?"

"Probably not."

"Exactly." He covered his forehead with his hand.

"Richard, I'm not you. You want to be at the very top in everything. You don't want to leave any cracks. You're Aeneas rowing through the storm. You have the skill, and you have the drive."

"I don't. All I want in this life is to comfortably scrape by as a lecturer and peacefully read the books I want to read."

"Do you really think that's enough?"

"Are you asking if this is all I want out of life?" Phillips smiled slightly.

"Richard, do you know why Ovid's Metamorphoses is so good?"

Richard looked at him.

"Because everyone in it changes."

Phillips sounded completely serious.

"Some turn into laurel trees, some into stones, and some into constellations."

"Transformation is not the end point. Transformation is a way of living."

"The laurel tree does not need to envy the constellation, and the stone does not need to envy the river."

"They each exist as they are."

He lay back on his bed and reopened his novel.

"I know myself. I'll never reach the highest tier in this lifetime, but at least I'm living comfortably."

"I appreciate you worrying about me. I do. But this isn't a favor you can do for me."

Richard stood at the door, watching him.

"...Then at least finish those two textual criticism questions."

Phillips paused as he went to turn a page.

"Alright," he drawled. "I'll do the two textual criticism questions. Give me some time to think about the rest."

Richard knew that "think about the rest" was basically synonymous with "not going to do them," but he couldn't push the issue any further.

He closed the door behind him and left.

Out in the corridor, the lights in the girls' dormitory opposite were still on.

He caught a glimpse of a shadow cast against a window.

Edith had fallen asleep leaning over her desk, a thick stack of reference materials piled high beside her.

The girl worked even harder than Richard. He guessed she hadn't gotten a single full night of sleep through the entire summer seminar.

Richard returned to his own room, flipped the light on, and went back to chewing through his aunt's four sets of materials.

He had already finished the first three; the latter four were the main event.

By two in the morning, he hit a complete wall.

He took every reference table, document, and text he had...

And called up every relevant page stored within [Erudition] to cross-reference them.

He was still falling short.

What he lacked was a type of linguistic intuition and instinct that he hadn't yet built up.

This kind of instinct couldn't be developed just by reading books.

It required time. It required soaking in a specific field for years, even decades.

Soaking until those rules transformed from things that needed to be looked up into things that rolled right off the tongue.

His aunt had steeped herself in that field for over a decade.

She had that instinct, but Richard didn't.

That was why she had given him this exact problem—to show him just how far away he still was from reaching that level.

Richard set his fountain pen down.

Averaging all seven sets together, his accuracy was roughly between sixty-five and seventy percent.

That was the result of him giving it his absolute all.

..................

When Friday arrived, Croft entered the classroom.

There was no box for collecting assignments on the podium, nor was there a red pen for grading.

Croft brought out a fresh stack of kraft paper envelopes.

"The standard answers." He dropped the stack onto the edge of the desk.

"One copy per person. Your names are on them. Come get them yourselves."

"Take them back and compare them against your own work."

He pulled a piece of chalk from his lecture folder and wrote the topic for today's main class on the blackboard.

"I'm not collecting them, and I'm not grading them. As long as you know where you stand, that's enough."

Then he started the lecture, acting as if nothing had happened.

Richard brought the envelope with his name on it back to his seat.

He planned to look over it in detail once he returned to his dorm.

He glanced toward the back of the classroom.

Edith was pressing her copy of the standard answers under her textbook, her gaze heavy.

Phillips was absent; Richard figured he had stayed up late reading novels and overslept.

Halfway through the major lecture, the classroom door was pushed open a crack from the outside.

Phillips slipped in with his teapot and found an empty seat in the very back row.

..................

The afternoon classes ended early.

Richard had just packed his bag and was about to leave the classroom when Pendleton turned the corner from the end of the corridor.

"Williams." Pendleton waved at him.

"Associate Professor Croft asked you to go to his office. Remember to bring those supplementary materials."

Richard slung his bag over his shoulder and followed him to the door of the small room at the end of the corridor.

Pendleton knocked three times.

"Enter," Croft's voice called out from inside.

Richard pushed the door open and walked in.

There were already people inside.

Croft sat behind the desk, his tin canister and several enamel mugs set out in front of him.

Sitting on the other side of the desk was Edith Carter.

The girl was quiet, her hands folded over her knees and her back perfectly straight.

Seeing Richard enter, she gave a slight nod.

Richard nodded back and took a seat in the empty chair beside her.

Croft was just about to get up to boil some water when the door was knocked on again.

"Enter."

The door opened, and Isabella walked in first.

Behind her followed another person—the associate professor from the School of Engineering.

Richard remembered his surname was Greer. He had a full beard trimmed to look like a thicket, and his shoulders were broad enough to nearly fill the doorframe.

The moment Associate Professor Greer walked in, he took up nearly half the space in the tiny room.

He offered Croft a gruff greeting.

"Old Croft, this room of yours is way too small."

He tossed his coat over the back of a chair. "It's a struggle just to turn around."

"Sit." Croft dragged two folding chairs out from behind the bookshelf. "Don't complain."

Isabella sat in the chair by the window, her gaze sweeping over Richard and Edith without a word.

Greer pulled his folding chair open and sat down with a creak. The folding chair let out a pained groan.

"Did this chair join the faculty the same year you did?" Greer patted the seat. "I'm afraid it might be older than me."

"It's two years older than you."

Croft shook some tea leaves from his tin canister into the mugs.

"I'm not drinking your tea." Greer waved his hand the moment he saw the canister. "I had a cup last time, and it was so bitter it took me a week to recover."

"Not being used to it just means you have no taste." Croft handed the mugs to the two students.

Edith accepted hers with both hands and offered her thanks.

Richard took his as well. He took a sip and immediately furrowed his brow; it really was bitter enough to make a person question their life.

Isabella pulled a thermos from her handbag.

She unscrewed the lid, and a faint, sweet aroma drifted from the mouth of the cup—likely honey citron tea.

"You aren't drinking my tea either?" Croft glanced at her.

"Your tea matches your personality perfectly. It's so bitter it makes people want to keep their distance."

Isabella took a sip of her citron tea, her brow relaxing.

Croft gave a snort.

"Alright." Croft picked up his own mug, sweeping his gaze over the two students.

"I didn't call you two here today for idle chatter."

Croft turned his eyes toward Edith.

"Carter."

The girl sat up even straighter.

"Here."

"How many of the material sets you received did you finish?"

"I finished all of them," Edith said softly. "But there are two sets I did poorly on."

"Take them out and let us have a look."

What followed was a private tutoring session focused solely on the two of them.

Once the explanations were mostly finished, Croft finally spoke up again.

"The situation for you two is about the same."

"You did what needed to be done, and you marked the areas you couldn't manage."

"But we aren't just here today to talk about how you performed."

He cast a glance toward Greer.

Greer cleared his throat.

"You've been attending my classes these past few days. You've heard the segments on industrial accidents and new types of weak points."

Edith and Richard both nodded.

"Those are the surface-level issues. Today, we're going to tell you something a layer deeper."

"This whole matter of war." Greer crossed his thick arms over his chest.

"The newspapers bring it up every day. They've been bringing it up for two months now."

"Most of you students probably think war is a matter for Hunters, a matter for the military, and that it has nothing to do with Scholars."

Edith said nothing, and Richard remained silent.

"But what you don't know," Greer's voice dropped low, "is that even before the war breaks out, the Scholars are the first ones busy."

"Busy with what?" Richard asked.

"Seals." Greer held up a thick finger.

"Once an all-out war begins on the Old Continent, the death density will spike dramatically in a very short period."

"What does a spike mean? It means the weak points will deteriorate at an accelerated rate, and all the original seal maintenance cycles will be rendered invalid."

"Some seals that originally only needed reinforcing once a year might require reinforcing twice every six months once the fighting starts."

"But there are only so many Scholars and Secret practitioners in the entire Empire capable of maintaining those seals."

Croft took over.

"What Greer is talking about is the big picture."

"Bringing it down specifically to the two of you."

He tapped his fingertips against the desk.

"Once the war starts, all university preparatory and undergraduate programs will have to downsize. Money and manpower will be diverted to the front lines, and the quota for those who can remain in the academy to pursue their studies will be compressed to an absolute minimum."

"Who stays and who doesn't will depend entirely on your performance."

Isabella added a comment.

"For those who stay, it won't be as simple as just continuing to study. The ones who remain will have to study while simultaneously taking on work for the academy system."

"A lot of tasks used to be handled by associate professors and lecturers."

"In the future, I fear that won't be enough. We'll need the undergraduates and postgraduates to step up and fill the gaps."

Richard listened in silence.

Greer continued speaking.

"That batch of supplementary materials handed out a couple of days ago wasn't just put together at random."

"The direction of every question was designed to simulate the kind of tasks you might have to take over in the future."

"Alright." Croft picked up his mug.

"The seminar's final assessment is coming up soon. You can weigh for yourselves how you want to walk the path ahead."

Greer was the first to stand.

The heavily bearded man grabbed his coat.

"Old Croft, use half as many leaves next time you brew tea, and I might just be able to stomach it."

"If you want weak tea, go to a teahouse outside." Croft waved him off.

"There's only one level of strength in this room."

Greer let out a loud laugh, gave the two students a nod, and strode out the door.

With him gone, the room instantly felt twice as spacious.

Isabella stood as well, screwed the lid onto her thermos tight, and pushed the door open to leave.

Edith was the last to stand. She gave Croft a slight bow before turning and walking out the door.

That left only Richard and Croft in the room.

Croft poured himself another cup of bitter tea.

"Sit. Finish drinking before you go."

Richard sat back down.

The two sat face-to-face, neither speaking first.

Outside the window, the old sycamore trees rustled softly in the twilight.

Croft took a sip of tea.

"I'll tell you something, just so you don't think I'm deliberately targeting you."

Richard lifted his gaze.

"My family ran a grocery store in a small town up north. You could barely even call us small business owners."

Croft spoke slowly.

"My family supported me all the way through university by relying on the savings my father spent his whole life accumulating."

"The year I was accepted into Imperial Capital University, the little bit of capital the store had was pretty much gone."

Richard listened without making a sound.

"The later part of my studies was incredibly hard."

Croft gave a small smile.

"My father wanted me to study law. He thought it was the most promising field. But when I was later tested and found to have magic circuits, I changed my mind on my own and transferred to the Department of Classics."

"My father didn't speak to me for three whole years because of that."

Richard looked at him.

"During my postgraduate studies, I learned under two mentors."

Croft went on.

"The first was an old pedant who taught history. I suffered under him until I graduated with my doctorate. The second was a Minor Adept who taught Inscriptiology. I had already crossed the Practitioner threshold by then, and I followed him because I wanted to take things a step further."

"I was stuck outside the threshold of Minor Adept for seven years."

"Seven years?"

"Seven years." Croft took another sip of his bitter tea.

"I failed the oath ceremony on my first try, and only passed on the second."

Richard looked at the man's graying hair.

A failure on the first oath, according to what his aunt had told him later, meant a portion of one's soul would be wasted entirely through the signature artifact.

It was an absolute devastation of one's fundamental vitality.

"By all standard rules, I never should have been able to keep going."

Croft gripped his mug. "After that first failure, I couldn't even get out of bed for two whole years."

"My mentor caught me when I fell."

"How did he catch you?" Richard asked hurriedly, thinking of his mother's situation.

"He used his own reserves to patch up my half-crippled Signature."

"That was the only way I could stand up for a second attempt."

"...Where is your mentor now?"

"He passed away," Croft said, his tone perfectly flat.

"He signed off on the residual debt for me that time, and he never recovered from it. He didn't hold out until the year I was promoted to associate professor."

A few footsteps echoed out in the corridor outside, then faded away.

Richard gripped his half-finished mug of bitter tea, saying nothing.

"I didn't have anyone to lift me up."

Croft stared at Richard.

"After my mentor passed, I held on by myself, suffering my way up to associate professor in the Department of Classics. The doors leading any higher are permanently closed to me."

"In the academy, the field of folklore is considered the most unrefined."

His gaze drifted toward the sycamore trees outside the window.

"I teach folklore because none of the other subjects will let me teach them."

Hearing this, Richard finally understood why Croft had been the one teaching all the classes during the first week.

"I've been teaching for over a decade." Croft shook his head.

"Leading seminars every year. Teaching prep courses every year. I've had quite a few students pass through my hands, and nearly half of them were the children of prestigious families who were recommended in."

"I have no interest in those young lords and ladies."

He took a sip of tea.

"Because whether they turn out good or bad, someone will always be there to catch them in the future."

"If they study well, someone paves the way for them. If they study poorly, someone still paves the way for them."

"But when I see students who work very hard and have potential..." Croft stared directly at him. "I'll try to help them in my own way."

So that was why he had picked on him during the first week, and why he had called him and Edith in for this private tutoring session.

"Williams." Croft set his teacup down.

"I've seen all of your ability and your hard work over these past few days. You truly deserve the position you're in, and you're worthy of the people behind you who have been lifting you up."

"Keep pushing forward. Perhaps your starting point is my ceiling."

Richard nodded and finished the rest of the bitter tea in his mug.

It really was bitter.

But beneath the bitterness, an incredibly faint, sweet aftertaste rose up.