Chapter 93: Probatio Arrangements

Wednesday's sky was a uniform gray. A seamless layer of clouds stretched from the east end of Briston to the west, so flat it was impossible to tell where it was thick or thin.

Richard sat in the classroom through the final period of the morning, then packed his textbooks into his bag.

He had traced the four sets of inscriptions from the Gargoyle's base twice over. He could barely make out the structure of the first two, but the final two remained completely incomprehensible.

He had scoured his entire reservoir of knowledge, but those two sets of symbols didn't match any known substitution rules.

If he just kept grinding away blindly, his efficiency would be despairingly low.

Moreover, the regular gatherings of the Theogony Salon meant he needed to find a way to supplement his knowledge of higher-tier occultism.

He needed new tools, a new direction—a new key.

Mr. Hutton wasn't going to just hand that key over.

It had always been this way: he was waiting for the student to knock on his door.

So, he would go knock.

At lunch, Warren ordered him a steak and cream soup, as usual.

Richard ate quickly, cutting the steak into neat pieces and chewing them down one after another.

Warren gnawed on a chicken leg across the table, grease on the corner of his mouth. "You're eating fast today."

"I have plans this afternoon."

"What plans?"

"I'm going to see Mr. Hutton."

Warren paused mid-chew.

At Greenwood, students rarely sought Mr. Hutton out on their own initiative.

It wasn't that the old gentleman was unapproachable. His lectures were humorous, and he occasionally chatted with students in the hallways about the weather or sports.

But everyone faintly sensed that this amiable old teacher was different from the rest of the faculty.

There was an unwritten rule at Greenwood: at the beginning and middle of every month, Mr. Hutton would miss two days of class.

The academic affairs office would clear those days on the schedule in advance and have other teachers cover his shifts.

The principal never asked why, and the department heads certainly never pressed the issue.

If any other teacher missed two days without providing a reason, the dean would have been furious that very day.

But Mr. Hutton was the exception.

He had taught at Greenwood for decades. The school had gone through two principals, and neither had ever touched his schedule.

Aside from that, there was another detail few people noticed.

Greenwood's faculty offices were divided into two types: large open-plan spaces with a dozen desks pushed together, and small, private offices.

There were only five private offices. They belonged to the principal, the department heads, and Mr. Hutton.

Why would a history teacher with no administrative duties merit the same level of office space as the principal and the department heads?

Before becoming Mr. Hutton's "official student," Richard had never paid attention to these details either.

Looking back now, the answer wasn't hard to guess.

After lunch, he walked down the first-floor corridor of the teaching building toward the east wing.

Mr. Hutton's office was at the corner at the end of the hall, marked by an inconspicuous brass plaque on the door.

The door was ajar, and the faint scent of tobacco drifted out.

Richard rapped twice on the doorframe.

"Come in."

The voice wasn't loud, but before he even pushed the door wider, he smelled fresh black tea.

He paused for a moment after stepping inside.

Mr. Hutton sat behind his desk, flipping through a lesson plan with his left hand while his right rested on the tabletop.

Neither hand was free; his left held the papers, and his right index finger pinned down a line of notes.

"Take a seat."

Richard sat down, his eyes habitually sweeping the room.

Whenever Mr. Hutton had kept him after class before, they had always talked in the classroom. This was his first time in the man's office.

It wasn't large—less than half the size of a classroom.

An old map hung by the window. Unlike the map of the New Continent's coastline in the classroom, this one depicted a panoramic view of the entire Western Continent.

The old gentleman pushed his lesson plan aside, clearing space on his desk.

"You've come to see me because you're stuck on whatever you're working on, am I right?"

"Yes." Richard didn't beat around the bush.

He pulled his notebook from his bag, flipped to a specific page, and slid it in front of Mr. Hutton.

Several sets of symbols were traced on the paper, scattered across the ruled lines.

These were fragments he had extracted from the Gargoyle's base inscriptions.

He had deliberately scrambled their order and mixed in a few other symbols he'd copied from the Imperial Capital University Library as camouflage.

It looked like a random collection of obscure characters an inquisitive student had scraped together from various sources, making their specific origins untraceable.

"I recently came across some inscribed symbols. I can make out the structure of the earlier ones, but a few sets completely fail to match any known systems."

He tapped the scrambled symbols with the tip of his pencil.

Mr. Hutton looked down and scanned the page.

Even though the symbols had been broken apart, jumbled, and mixed with distractions, the curvature of the strokes and their sharp angles still carried the distinct aura of their original medium.

These characters weren't copied from a book; they were traced directly from a physical artifact.

There was a subtle difference between printed inscriptions and those chiseled into an object's surface.

The former were standardized by typesetting, while the latter retained the slight deviations left by the craftsman's chisel.

Mr. Hutton had likely spotted this distinction.

But he didn't ask where the symbols came from, nor did he pry into why a middle-school student possessed tracings of artifact inscriptions.

"These sets here." His finger tapped the target symbols Richard had scattered on the page. "They aren't from a Western Continent system."

"I figured they weren't."

"Your deduction is correct."

Mr. Hutton pushed his chair back half a step and pulled a folded sheet of paper from the second shelf of the bookcase behind him.

The paper was thin, with deep creases. When unfolded, it was about the size of two standard letter sheets.

It was densely packed with symbols and their corresponding vocabulary. The handwriting was finer and tighter than on the cipher key he had provided last time.

"Take this." He slid the paper across the desk.

Richard opened it and took a quick glance. This reference sheet covered a completely different symbol system.

The previous sheet had handled code substitutions for Latin, while this one corresponded to an entirely different language.

"Ancient Greek?" He recognized a few of the letters.

"Correct." Mr. Hutton leaned back in his chair.

"These symbols you've stumbled upon belong to an encryption system based on Ancient Greek.

"Specifically, it's the terminology of the Alexandrian School, developed from alchemical texts dating back to the Ptolemaic era."

He picked up his tea and took a sip.

"This system is far more complex, and its encryption goes much deeper."

The old gentleman didn't ask why Richard was suddenly interested in artifact inscriptions, nor did he ask which artifact the symbols came from.

He simply placed a lamp by the roadside at the right moment. What it illuminated depended entirely on the traveler.

Richard rubbed his fingers against the paper.

Multiple clues converged in his mind.

The raw materials he'd gathered from the Imperial Capital University Library, and the final two sets of inscriptions on the Gargoyle... Both locks used the same key.

But then again, there was a catch.

"Sir, my foundation in Ancient Greek is practically zero.

"Right now, this reference sheet is no different to me than a scrap of paper covered in gibberish."

"Not entirely a scrap of paper." The old gentleman's white eyebrows twitched. "At the very least, you now know what you need to learn next."

Richard folded the sheet back up and tucked it into his notebook.

Mr. Hutton flicked the corner of his lesson plan.

"Ancient Greek grammar is far more complex than Latin. Verb conjugations, noun declensions, the middle voice... Just grasping the basic framework will keep you busy for a while."

"But you pick up languages much faster than most. In half a month to three weeks, you should reach the threshold where you can begin attempting translations."

Half a month. Richard did the math in his head.

It was currently mid-November, and the Christmas holidays were at the end of December.

If he hurried, he could probably build a foundational understanding of Ancient Greek before the break.

Mr. Hutton held his teacup, shifting his gaze from Richard to the dreary gray sky outside the window.

"Speaking of the Christmas holidays."

His tone tightened slightly, shifting away from their casual rhythm.

"I've arranged a winter break internship for you."

"What kind of internship?"

"One related to the core duties of a Scholar." Mr. Hutton didn't elaborate further.

"We'll discuss the details after Christmas. You'll receive a notice when the time comes."

He turned his teacup in his hands.

"If you perform well during this internship, it can count as your probatio."

A probatio.

One of the three conditions for a Newcomer to advance to a Practitioner.

"You should prepare yourself mentally. You won't be alone on this internship."

Richard sat up a little straighter.

"I'll be contacting a few colleagues I know. There will be Hunters, as well as Secret practitioners."

Mr. Hutton drew a small circle on the desk with his finger.

"They've operated in the northern region for years. They are experienced and reliable.

"When the time comes, we will work together to complete a few tasks. Consider it your first glimpse of the sights behind the veil."

He gave Richard a pointed look.

"You've been at Greenwood for a long time, and everything you've encountered so far has been on paper—documents on bookshelves, symbols in inscriptions, derivations in notebooks.

"But no matter how much you read, there will always be a barrier."

"The world behind the veil cannot be fully understood just by reading.

"There are some things you must see with your own eyes, touch with your own hands, and experience for yourself before you can truly grasp what they are."

"Additionally," he added, "you'll also get to meet some other Newcomers from the northern region."

"Other Newcomers?" Richard was a little surprised.

"You didn't think you were the only young person in the entire northern part of the Empire walking this path, did you?"

Mr. Hutton's white eyebrows twitched.

"Briston, Sheffield, Leeds, Newcastle... Every year, quite a few talented young people emerge from the major cities in the northern industrial zone.

"Some are discovered by guides, like you. Others come from family inheritances, and some just stumble into it blindly."

"Most of them don't know each other. They walk their own paths and have their own guides.

"But every so often, there are occasions for them to meet and put faces to names."

He turned a page of his lesson plan.

"This winter internship is one of those occasions."

"A few Newcomers gather together, do some practical work under experienced seniors, and get a chance to see how far their peers have progressed."

Richard nodded, choosing not to press for more details.

Since Mr. Hutton had already said they would discuss the details later, asking now wouldn't get him anywhere.

Admittedly, the old gentleman had said "there won't be any major problems."

But there was a massive difference between "there won't be any major problems" and being "completely devoid of danger."

This meant that while the internship wouldn't exceed a Newcomer's capabilities, it definitely wasn't going to be as simple as flipping through books in a classroom.

There would be practical encounters, practical operations, and perhaps even practical... confrontation?

Richard took a mental inventory of his current equipment and abilities.

The Fog Wall Spell could only confuse ordinary people, and the lesson he'd learned last time on Central Avenue was still fresh in his mind.

He hadn't yet bought his probationary inspector's sidearm. Even if he had, his total shooting practice amounted to very little, leaving him far short of proficiency.

He had decoded less than half of the Spell Formula on the Gargoyle, leaving him miles away from actually casting it.

If he really ran into unexpected situations during the winter internship, the tools at his disposal were pitifully few.

Mr. Hutton had told him to just bring his brain and his eyes.

But Richard suspected that bringing just his brain and his eyes wouldn't be nearly enough.

He needed to accelerate his firearms training.

And he had to speed up his progress on the Gargoyle's Spell Formula, too.