Chapter 253: Two Professors

On Monday morning of the third week, every student who hadn't yet left was summoned to the lecture hall.

Several associate professors and lecturers had turned up to audit the class, along with a few middle-aged men in formal wear Richard didn't quite recognize.

They all wore identical badges pinned to their chests: an owl encircled by laurel branches. It was the emblem of the Classical Society.

Pendleton had already come in once to swap out the cushion on the main lecturer's chair yet again.

Richard knew what that meant. Someone from higher up was visiting today.

He was right.

The heavy oak doors at the back of the lecture hall swung open, and Pendleton stepped in first.

He turned sideways to hold the door as wide as it would go. Without making a sound, he shot a glance at the Classical Society members near the podium.

The first person across the threshold was Professor Mortimer.

The old man still wore that severely outdated black woolen suit, the head of his walking stick worn black from use.

Leaning on his cane with one hand and holding a chipped teacup in the other, he slowly shuffled toward the podium.

A couple of tea leaves floated in the cup; the liquid was so weak it barely held any color.

Richard was sitting dead center in the front row.

Before coming in, he had been slightly confused. Seating in these large lectures was always first-come, first-served.

He had arrived neither early nor late, so how had he landed the absolute best seat in the house? Now he knew.

The man who followed Professor Mortimer through the door made the air in the entire lecture hall feel impossibly heavy.

He was also an old man with a full head of white hair, but no one would notice his age first.

He stood two full heads taller than the hunched Professor Mortimer. His dark gray suit was impeccably tailored, but it couldn't hide his burly, imposing physique.

Richard's breathing slowed.

Both professors kept their aether completely contained.

An ordinary person sitting in this hall would probably just think two rather intimidating old gentlemen had walked in.

But Richard was in the front row, right up close.

He could sense those two unreasonably massive reservoirs of aether. Their surfaces were perfectly still, without a single ripple, but the sheer volume underneath couldn't hide from him.

The Silver Ring resting against his chest remained quiet and didn't turn cold... The two professors harbored no ill intent.

Pendleton stepped up to the podium to begin the introductions.

"Gentlemen," he said, clearing his throat. "Today, two distinguished elders have taken time to give you a lecture."

"I'm sure you all recognize Professor Mortimer."

"And this other gentleman." Pendleton turned sideways and gestured toward the white-haired giant.

"This is Professor Hector MacFie."

A faint murmur rippled through the hall.

Richard thought of Structure and Evolution of Ancient Gaelic Script. The name printed on the title page was his.

That book had been compiled twenty years ago, and to this day, it sat on the desk of every freshman in the Imperial Capital's Department of Classics.

A copy of it was included in the stack of supplementary materials his aunt had sent him.

He had assumed anyone capable of writing a book like that would be a hunched-over old pedant like Professor Mortimer, buried in dusty papers all year round.

The man standing before him looked exactly like a foreman fresh out of a Highland quarry.

A thought crossed Richard's mind.

MacFie... MacPhee.

The Highland girl he had done his winter fieldwork with in Whitcom, Maggie MacPhee.

Put the two surnames side by side, and they differed by a single sound.

Those old families of the Gaelic Highlands had branched out extensively over the centuries.

It was entirely possible that there was some unbreakable ancestral tie between this professor and Maggie.

Richard pushed the thought aside. Now wasn't the time to ponder that.

Professor MacFie walked to the center of the podium.

"Thank you all."

His voice caught everyone by surprise.

He spoke with the flawless, polished pronunciation of an old aristocrat. There wasn't a trace of a Highland accent.

Only someone who had stood at a lectern for decades could cultivate that cadence.

He had the build of a blacksmith and the voice of a poet.

"I truly shouldn't have come here today."

MacFie folded his large hands in front of him.

"You are all here to study. Inviting an old man who researches antique inscriptions to talk about long-dead scripts is a terrible bore."

"But this old fogey Mortimer insisted I come."

He jutted his chin toward the man beside him.

The old professor was holding his teacup, taking a slow, unhurried sip.

Hearing this, he moved the cup away from his lips.

"MacFie," Professor Mortimer said sluggishly. "Your tea has gone cold."

"...That's your tea." MacFie gave him a look.

"Oh." Mortimer looked down at the cup in his hand. "Then I must have misremembered."

A few students in the audience tried their best to hold back their laughter.

Professor MacFie didn't use any lecture notes.

He picked up a piece of chalk and drew a few vertical lines on the blackboard.

Then he added short, slanted strokes on either side of the vertical lines. They varied in length but were arranged neatly.

"Do any of you recognize this?"

No one in the audience answered.

Montagu, sitting on the other side of the room, furrowed his brow slightly. He seemed to recognize it but wasn't entirely sure.

"Branch-carved script," MacFie named it.

"The oldest form of writing in the Gaelic Highlands, carved into Boundary Stones, tombstones, and the standing stones beside holy wells.

A single central stem, with short strokes on either side. The number and direction of the strokes determine the different letters."

"A thousand years ago, the druids of the Highlands used it to record events, forge covenants, and carve names.

Then the Romans came and brought their Latin alphabet.

Later the monasteries came, bringing their saints.

Layer upon layer was superimposed over it, burying the branch-carved script beneath."

He set the chalk down and dusted off his hands.

"The first three chapters of Structure and Evolution, which you all have, are entirely about how to peel back those layers one by one."

As Richard listened, he thought of the twelve Boundary Stones in Whitcom.

The pre-Roman Celtic foundation, the Romanized square lettering, and the medieval Church Latin—they had been layered on top of each other exactly like that.

"Today, I will not be talking about how to peel them back," MacFie said, suddenly shifting gears. "The methods for that are all in the book. You can read them yourselves."

"I'm going to talk about something that isn't written in the book."

He paced two steps toward the edge of the podium. The sheer weight of his body made the floorboards creak slightly.

"Have you ever wondered why the ancients would carve the same name twice?"

"One copy carved from the bottom up, and the other carved from the top down."

MacFie's large hands gestured in the air, indicating the two opposite directions.

"Placed together, the directions oppose each other, but the meaning interlocks."

"These ancient true names could only be written, never spoken."

The lecture hall fell completely silent.

"The ancients had no way to destroy those things, so they used writing to lock them inside a prison—a prison with two opposing doors that could never be closed."

Professor Mortimer hadn't made a sound this whole time, simply cradling his cup of weak tea.

At this point, he spoke up in his sluggish drawl.

"MacFie, you've only told half the story."

MacFie looked over at him. "Oh?"

"You only talked about how the ancients 'locked' them."

Mortimer set his teacup down on the podium.

"You didn't mention how later generations 'open' them."

He raised a trembling hand and made a vague sweeping gesture toward the audience.

"In our line of work, what we do is 'read.'"

"The ancients locked things inside writing. But after hundreds or thousands of years, the locks loosen, the words erode, and the ink fades."

The old man's voice was dry and raspy.

"So then it falls to scholars like us to sit down and read it out, word by word."

"Have any of you ever considered what happens when you take something that has been locked away for a thousand years and read it aloud again?"

No one in the hall made a sound.

Professor Mortimer's gaze fell on the dead center of the front row.

"Front row, dead center. You there, young man." Mortimer pretended not to recognize Richard. "What is your name?"

Richard stood up. It seemed there was no avoiding this.

"Professor, my name is Richard Williams."

"Little Richard." Mortimer smiled at him.

"Why don't you tell us—what happens when you take something that has been locked away for a thousand years and read it aloud again?"

Richard steadied his nerves.

"The act of reading in itself carries weight."

"The person reading thinks they are 'looking in,' but the thing behind the door uses that very same glance to 'look back out.'"

Richard paused to think, carefully organizing his next sentence.

"So the very first thing we students need to learn is knowing which doors we shouldn't push open, and which ones we shouldn't look through."

Professor Mortimer picked up his teacup, took a sip, and said nothing.

It was Professor MacFie whose dormant eyes locked onto Richard.

"You have read the Boundary Stones," MacFie stated with absolute certainty.

"Those words of yours... only someone who has personally peeled back a seal could say them."

Richard neither denied nor confirmed it.

"I followed a guide and completed a fieldwork assignment once."

"Where?"

"Whitcom."

MacFie nodded and didn't press the matter further.

He turned back to the blackboard and lectured for over an hour.

He talked about how to deduce the original forms of eroded letters in branch-carved script from their surviving strokes;

how monastic scribes had rewritten "Daughter of the Underground" into "Demon of the Crypt";

and how a single line of text on a standing stone beside a Highland holy well had been altered three times by people from three different eras, leaving half of it utterly indecipherable to this day.

As he spoke of these things, his terrifying aura receded.

All that remained on the lectern was a gentle and refined old scholar, warming up texts that had been dead for over a millennium, sentence by sentence.

But Richard was in the front row, right up close.

For a split second or two, he caught glimpses of something else.

When a scholar spoke of dead writing, they ought to be filled with patience and lament.

But what was seeping out of this man had absolutely nothing to do with lament.

As the lecture drew to a close, MacFie set down his chalk.

"All of you will read many things in the future."

"Some you will be able to decipher. Others, you won't fully comprehend even if you read them for a lifetime."

"I will only leave you with one piece of advice... Do not force your way through passages you cannot decipher.

Put them aside for now, and wait until your Rank increases before you look at them again."

"Studying is a matter that cannot be rushed."

Professor Mortimer chimed in from the side.

"My old friend here is right."

"If you can't read it, put it aside. I've lived to a ripe old age, and the things I've put aside unread would pile up higher than these old bones of mine."

"But I'm in no rush." He took a sip of his tea.

"Read slowly. By the very end, any monster or demon will just be an essay that can be edited and erased."

"Do any of you have questions?" MacFie swept his gaze over the audience.

From the front row to the very back, no one made a sound.

With two Major Adepts standing at the podium, even these scions of noble families—who fancied themselves born above the clouds—hardly dared to lift their heads.

After a long stretch of silence, someone in the back row raised their hand.

It was Phillips.

Richard turned his head. Watching the guy stand up, he suddenly had a bad feeling.

"Professor MacFie." Even in front of the two professors, Phillips still maintained his usual lazy demeanor.

"I have a question that has nothing to do with inscriptions, but I've been holding it in for quite a while."

MacFie looked over at him. "Speak."

"I've heard there's a type of peated whisky from the Highlands, aged in sherry casks, whose taste is absolutely unparalleled."

Phillips flashed a thumbs up.

"Since you're a Highlander, Professor, could you give me a pointer? Which distillery is the most authentic?"

A dead silence fell over the lecture hall.

Montagu let out a sigh, and Richard pinched the bridge of his nose.

Several children from prominent families turned around and glared at the reckless fool.

On the podium, Professor MacFie's chiseled, stone-like face remained taut for two seconds.

Then a booming laugh rolled out of his chest, so loud it made the podium tremble.

"Good lad," he said, pointing at Phillips.

"I've been rambling about dead texts all morning. Finally, a living person asks a living question."

"There's a distillery on the Isle of Islay, west of the Highlands."

MacFie reined in his laughter and genuinely began giving a recommendation.

"Thoroughly peated, steeped deep in the sea breeze, and aged twelve years.

Once you're done with your exams, you can go buy a bottle and try it yourself... but don't go right now.

If you go now, you won't need to bother finishing this course."

Phillips flashed a grin and sat back down.

Beside him, Professor Mortimer sluggishly added a comment.

"MacFie, you're abusing your platform."

"How exactly am I abusing anything?"

"You just used that boy's question to give your own family's distillery free advertising."

The entire hall burst into laughter.

As the laughter subsided, the lecture came to an end.

Pendleton stepped forward and announced that class was dismissed for the day.

"However, the two professors are willing to keep a few students behind to answer questions privately."

He then called out their names: "Mr. Williams, Mr. Montagu, Miss Blackwood."