Chapter 454: Professor, Become a Virtuoso!

That afternoon, on the third floor of the Petrie Building.

When Richard entered the room, Mortimer was clipping newspapers.

The stack of papers beside him was already piled higher than his teacup. The clippings were spread across his lap, arranged in order.

"Professor."

The old professor didn't even lift his head. "You're here. Start with the stack beneath the windowsill today."

Richard sat down by the window and set out his inkwell.

After copying for about twenty minutes, he finally looked up.

"What are you cutting out?"

"A joke collection."

Richard did not reply and lowered his head to continue copying.

This stack consisted of old volumes from the Classical Records Tradition.

He worked his way to the fourth book, a blue cloth-bound volume stamped with a line of large gold-foiled letters: Record of Historical Great Deeds: Classical Records Volume.

His interest immediately piqued, Richard turned the pages one by one.

The first entry was a third-century scribe who had spent his life collating forty-seven manuscript copies of a sacred text.

The second was a ninth-century abbot who had reordered fragments scattered across countless nations.

The third, the fourth... He flipped all the way to the final page.

The final entry was dated 1773. Everything after that year was blank.

Richard turned the page over. The back was also blank.

He carefully weighed his words, deciding to ease into his question by starting with the most unserious topic possible.

"Professor."

"Hmm."

Richard spoke with deep sincerity.

"If you ever become a Virtuoso one day, we students will be able to walk sideways through the Empire."

Mortimer didn't look up.

"Crabs walk sideways."

"What's wrong with crabs?"

"Crabs end up getting steamed."

Richard had felt stifled copying all afternoon, but this suddenly lifted his spirits.

"Professor, let me give you a feasibility report."

"A what?"

"An advancement feasibility report."

Mortimer took off his reading glasses, a hint of interest surfacing on his face.

"Speak."

"First, your network," Richard said, ticking them off on his fingers.

"Professor McPhee is an old friend of yours. The old president of the Royal Anthropological Society has ties with you. And the one on Stroma Island shares the same lineage as Professor McPhee.

By my count, you know two Virtuosos. Though, of course, I suspect you know more than just two."

"Then there is your book collection." He glanced at the three stacks by the windowsill.

"This whole room is full of books. I've been copying for so long, yet you always have an endless supply of new ones. You have everything the department's reference room lacks."

"In terms of Rank and seniority, you're a Major Adept and a full professor. You have the highest standing in the department. Even the school board directors have to pour your tea first."

"Oh, right," Richard added after a thought. "You even manage to fish straight from the water veins at the bottom of the canal."

Mortimer slid his reading glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.

"Are you done?"

"I'm done."

"Then I will break it down for you point by point." The old professor picked up his cup of pale, colorless tea.

"The connections belong to other people."

"The books belong to dead people."

"And my Virtuoso friends..." He snorted. "They just come to freeload off my tea."

"Last time, old MacFie sat in that chair and drank half a tin of my good tea. When he left, all he said was, 'Your tea is decent.'"

"And every fish I've brought back was bought from someone else." Mortimer set his teacup down.

"Every time I go, I just sit alone by the canal all afternoon, then buy two sea bass on my way back."

Richard was momentarily stunned.

"...Bought?"

"From the old fishmonger by the river. Four pence each," Mortimer said without a shred of shame.

"When I carried them back past the department office, Pendleton asked me where I caught them. I told him downstream of lock number three."

"And he believed it?"

"He even asked me what bait I used."

Richard laughed so hard his shoulders shook.

Once he recovered, he picked the blue cloth-bound volume back up, flipped to the last page, and slid it toward the center of the table.

"Professor, what I really wanted to ask about was this."

The scissors stopped. Mortimer looked down at the blank page.

"You beat around the bush all that time just to ask me this?"

"I was afraid that if I asked directly, you would just say you were too old."

"I am indeed too old."

The old professor rested the scissors on his lap.

"But I can talk a little about it today."

"You read it in On Ascension Within the Veil. A Virtuoso is someone who walks a tradition to its very end, someone who touches that boundary stone."

"The number of Virtuosos is limited," Mortimer said.

He reached out, pulled the blue cloth-bound volume over, and turned it to the final entry.

"In 1773, this old gentleman compiled a book that is still in use today.

That Alexandrian School reference chart in your hand—if you trace it back five editions, its first edition was his work."

"He succeeded?"

"He did. The last one to do so in the Classical Records Tradition thus far."

"And after that?"

"One hundred and forty years followed." The old professor closed the volume.

"The Tradition has produced many fine Scholars, a batch of Major Adepts, and three people who completely recompiled that master catalog.

"Yet not a single Virtuoso among them. All they did was recompile."

Mortimer pushed the volume back.

"Correcting errors, supplementing new discoveries, streamlining the formatting... In academia, that is called a contribution. Within the Tradition, it means nothing at all."

Richard looked down at the closed volume.

"Then where do new Virtuoso positions come from?"

Mortimer folded his hands in his lap.

"The first way is when the veil itself changes."

"When things that never existed before appear—new weak points, evil creatures, new ways to die. That has been very rare over the last few centuries."

He paused.

"But it has been happening more and more over the last decade."

"The other way is for a person to walk where no one has ever gone before.

"West of the central mountain range on the New Continent. The Deep Realm. The poles.

"Many walk in, few walk out. Those few who walk out accomplish great deeds no one else has ever done."

Richard thought of the scientific expeditions to the New Continent and the poles. Despite offering no obvious returns, they were fully backed by the major world powers. Now, it all made sense.

"And you... you never considered it?"

Mortimer unclasped his hands and spread them flat upon his lap.

They were withered like skeletal claws. On the inner side of the second joint of his right index finger was a thick callus, worn from decades of gripping a pen.

"I did. I thought about it when I was thirty."

He pulled his hands back and picked up his teacup once more.

"Little Richard, let me tell you something."

"Go ahead."

"My housekeeper has a grandson. He's six years old this year," the old professor said.

"The boy calls me great-grandpa. Last month, he came to my house, and I showed him my manuscript from 1432. He asked me why it was covered in bugs."

Richard stayed silent.

"I have to go see the dentist every Wednesday afternoon," Mortimer continued.

"The third tooth on the bottom right. The dentist said it couldn't be saved. I told him to leave it anyway.

"He said keeping it would hurt. I said let it hurt."

He paused.

"And... I still remember what shoes my Mentor was wearing the day he died."

Richard looked up.

"Black lace-ups, with a scratch across the toe of the right shoe.

"He had still been revising a manuscript that afternoon. He made it to the fourth page before the pen slipped from his hand."

The room remained quiet for a long time.

"In all our lives of studying, we Scholars do only one thing—we remember things."

"We remember what others cannot, what they refuse to, and what no one else thinks is worth remembering."

"If, just to take a step forward..." He slammed the teacup heavily onto its saucer.

"I have to first forget everything I've remembered."

"Then what would be the point of going up?"

Richard sat there, unmoving.

He thought back to what his aunt had said in Room 314 about the two choices that follow a Virtuoso's advancement.

At the time, he had thought of it as a 'technical path.'

Now he understood that for some people, it was never about the path at all.

"That is one aspect. There is another..." The old professor took the Record of Historical Great Deeds from beside him and flipped back to the very last page.

"The Classical Records Tradition is not listed among the five major traditions."

"But it has existed for just as long as any of them. Wherever there is writing, there are people copying books. Where there are people copying books, there are people collating them. And where there are people collating books, there are people arguing."

"So within this field, our predecessors have already erected every monument that can be erected."

"Manuscript collation, cipher systems, encryption schools, calligraphic dating, the etymology of ritual languages..."

"I thought about it at thirty. By forty, I had figured it out."

"Figured out what?"

"That there was no place left for me."

He set the book on the table and pushed it back to Richard.

Richard looked down at the page he was halfway through copying. Suddenly, he set his pen down.

"How much do you know about what happened on the night of April 30th?"

Mortimer looked up.

"The things published in the newspapers?"

"The newspapers printed 'Enemy forces deploy asphyxiating gases in violation of civilized norms.' They ran it for three days before swapping it out for equestrian competitions."

"Then which incident are you talking about?"

"The newly advanced one who used poison gas."

Mortimer's hand froze holding his teacup.

Richard said, "The moment he opened the valves, tens of thousands of people coughed up everything in their lungs at the exact same time."

"People a hundred years ago couldn't do something like that."

He looked up. "A hundred years ago, there were no seamless steel cylinders."

"There were no railways capable of transporting six thousand cylinders from the Rhine to Flanders in three days. There were no weather stations capable of simultaneously calculating wind speed and settling rates across an eight-kilometer front."

Mortimer placed his teacup on the edge of the table.

"Professor, let me ask a stupid question."

"Ask."

"What would it have taken in the past to make tens of thousands of people do the exact same thing at the exact same time?"

Mortimer thought for a moment before speaking.

"It would take a war. Or a plague."

"What does it take now?"

The old professor opened his mouth but did not answer immediately.

Richard answered for him.

"A newspaper."

Richard reached out and pointed out the window.

In the distance, several factory smokestacks were belching ash into the sky.

"Railways, telegraphs, phonographs, photography, newspapers, assembly lines..."

"Professor, these are creating unprecedented 'ways to die.'"

It was in this precise moment that a light switched on in Richard's mind.

For over a year, Speculation had initially provided him with a side lamp. He could see at a glance which part of another's thesis was the load-bearing pillar and which part was mere decorative fluff pasted over the cracks.

Later, the lamp of Lv.3 was drawn back from the outside world and turned upon himself.

Every new thought that poked its head out was immediately flipped over, revealing its hidden underside to him.

Today, that lamp took the mental table he had always used to lay things out side-by-side for comparison—and stood it upright.

All the scattered fragments he had accumulated over the past year hung themselves in their proper places.

Once they were hung, lines naturally grew between them.

The lines connected one by one, fast and precise. And when they finished connecting, they formed a complete skeleton.

[Speculation Lv.3, progress 100%.]

[Speculation Lv.3 → Lv.4.]

Richard looked up. His gaze crossed the desk and fell upon the stack of newspaper clippings resting on the old professor's lap.

In his eyes, that stack stood upright:

Four family members of a chemist in the Durham District perished; ruled as neurasthenia.

Gas explosion in the North District; thirty-nine dead.

Every mirror in a town south of Ypres shattered overnight; residents claimed it was caused by tremors.

Swarms of rats migrating south along a certain railway sector; railway bureau issued advisories.

A second lieutenant in a rear field hospital had his shaving mirror explode in his hands; no injuries.

Everything was pressed precisely in chronological order without a single error.

Richard continued speaking his deduction aloud.

"Industry and modernization are forging new ways to die, and they are forging new ways to spread them."

"Therefore... they are also forging new vacant seats for great deeds."

"The forest of monuments for the old traditions is already full, but the new foundations have just been poured."

Mortimer sat in his old armchair, completely motionless.

The old professor raised a hand, uncharacteristically speaking a harsh word.

"This view of yours—do not ever speak of it again in the department."

Richard's grip on his pen tightened.

"Is it because..."

"Because you are too right."

The old professor lifted his teacup and drained it in a single gulp.

"When someone says the wrong thing, people will laugh at him."

"When someone says the right thing, people will find a way to remember him."

Richard lowered his head and finished copying the page.

When he was done, he blew on the ink and closed the volume.

Mortimer spoke again.

"Little Richard, let me ask you something else."

"Go ahead."

"What is the most difficult thing for a Virtuoso after they advance?"

Richard thought back to what his aunt had told him in Room 314.

"Anchors?"

"Correct." Mortimer folded his hands on his lap.

"If your Anchors are too few, you will not be able to return once you go down. If your Anchors are too concentrated, others can snuff them all out in a single stroke."

"But what if... a person has a thousand Anchors?"

Richard's breathing slowed.

"Some of those Anchors are at the coroner's office in Briston. Some are on the pastures of Whitcom. Some are at an herbal apothecary in Manchester. And some are working as porters at a rural funeral parlor."

"Most of them will never finish their apprenticeships in their entire lives. They just run small businesses for people in their own little towns. They see guests off, collect souls for the dead, and help keep an eye on the family well."

"They do not even know they are Anchors."

Mortimer pulled his hands back from his lap.

"Who could drag that down?"

"Who could even count them all?"

Richard sat behind the desk by the window. He did not speak for a long time.

The old professor suddenly nudged his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose, peering at him over the rims.

"That person has spent decades casting a wide net and taking in apprentices like this. Do you really think she's just doing it out of the goodness of her heart?"

"For those who have walked to the very peak of this profession—if you are still trying to distinguish between their sincerity and their scheming... then you will never truly understand them."

He stood up and pulled his dusty old overcoat off the back of the chair.

"Finished copying?"

"Finished."

Mortimer jammed his hat crookedly onto his head. "Then let's go. Head back early today."

Richard screwed the cap tightly back onto his inkwell and followed him toward the door.

Just as they reached the door, the old professor suddenly stopped.

"Right."

Mortimer spoke unhurriedly, "For next week's copying tasks, I'll take off one stack for you."

Richard was slightly surprised. "Why?"

"Because you reminded me of something this afternoon."

"Of what?"

The old professor pushed the door open.

The wind from the corridor swept in, blowing the sycamore fluff from the desk all over the floor.

"When I was forty and finally figured out there was no place for me, I was actually relieved."

"And after feeling that relief, I never looked in that direction again."

He pulled the brim of his hat down lower.

"What you said today made me take one more look. It brought back the feeling of when I was young."