I Loaded the Occult Panel

The next morning, Richard was dropped off at the gates of Imperial Capital University.

He had only skirted the perimeter during his library visit last year, not daring to venture deeper.

This year was different. He could walk into the buildings openly.

The Imperial Capital University campus was a different world from Greenwood in Briston.

Greenwood was a high school in an industrial city; its red brick buildings and athletic fields radiated pure pragmatism.

Imperial Capital University was a centuries-old institution of pale gray stone buildings, ivy-covered walls, clock towers, cloisters, and fountains.

As he walked through the campus, Richard quietly spread his Concealed Spirit Vision outward.

The ether concentration here was exceptionally high.

He had vaguely sensed it during his library visit last year. Minor ether nodes were everywhere—far more than on Flower Moon Street—but he hadn’t been able to see them clearly.

Now that he had unlocked [Perception], raised it to Lv.2, and learned Spirit Vision, he could see them with perfect clarity.These nodes were scattered everywhere: some beneath the foundations of old buildings, some drifting in the water veins of the fountains, and others coiled around the roots of centuries-old trees.

The entire campus was built directly over a highly active ether zone.

For centuries, generations of scholars had read, studied, and conducted research here.

A Rank advancement required a ”declaration.” It meant projecting one’s voice beyond the veil in a location rich with active ether.

The grounds of Imperial Capital University served as the perfect ”declaration” site for Scholars.

Following the address his aunt had given him, Richard found the Petrie Building.

A stone tablet by the entrance detailed the origin of the building’s name.

Richard leaned in for a look.

”The Petrie Building. Erected in memory of Professor William Petrie.”

A line of smaller text below summarized the professor’s life.

William Petrie had been a tenured professor in the Department of History at the Royal Academy.

He dedicated his life to studying the ancient civilizations of the Black Soil River Basin. As one of the Empire’s founding figures of Black Soil River Studies, he spent most of his years there conducting archaeological excavations.

Richard pushed the door open and went inside.

A row of oil portraits hung along the wall, ending with a few camera photographs.

They depicted the outstanding professors of the Department of Classics throughout its history. Most of them wore stern expressions.

In the final photograph, he spotted Professor Mortimer’s wrinkled old face.

Old Mortimer wasn’t scowling. He stared at the camera with half-open eyes, looking as if he hadn’t fully woken up.

Richard walked further down the corridor, passing several offices. Most of their doors stood ajar.

He glanced inside; every single room was overflowing with books and documents.

Open files and heavily annotated manuscripts were scattered everywhere—on desks, chairs, and windowsills.

Inside one office, two middle-aged men in glasses were arguing until they were red in the face.

Richard quickened his pace and hurried past.

The daily life of a Scholar was quite different from what he had imagined.

When they started arguing, it was rowdier than a vegetable market.

Soon, he found Room 314. The nameplate on the door read: ”Associate Professor Isabella Ashford.”

He knocked.

”Come in,” a somewhat familiar young woman’s voice called from inside.

Richard pushed the door open and saw a tall, light-blonde girl organizing files.

”Richard!” A bright smile bloomed on Sophia’s face the moment she saw him.

”You’re finally here. The professor has been talking about you for days. Come on in, she’s in the inner office.”

The inner office was even messier than the outer one.

Isabella sat behind her desk, looking down at a manuscript. The stack of documents on her desk was taller than any he had seen in the corridor.

”You’re here.” She set the manuscript aside. ”Was the trip smooth?”

”It was.”

”Take a seat.”

The chair had been piled high with books, but Sophia deftly scooped them up to clear a spot.

”Where is Clara?” Isabella asked.

”In the archives room,” Sophia replied. ”She said the replica of the Alexandrian School manuscript arrived, so she went to fetch it.”

Richard examined his aunt’s office.

Aside from the mountains of literature, several academic journals lay open on her desk.

The margins of the journals were densely packed with his aunt’s handwritten notes.

The topmost journal was open to a page near the middle.

Richard’s gaze swept over it. A line of text had been heavily circled in red ink, with a comment scrawled beside it: ”This person is swapping concepts again.”

It seemed his aunt’s academic temperament was cut from the same cloth as the bickering Scholars in the hallway.

Isabella noticed her nephew’s gaze.

She snapped the journal shut and slid another document from the corner of her desk into a drawer.

From the corner of his eye, Richard caught the header of the document.

It was an internal notice bearing the crest of the Department of Classics.

She hid it too quickly, but he managed to glimpse a few words: ”Department of Classics... School of Theology... Black Soil River... Document Ownership...”

The drawer clicked shut.

”What are you looking at?”

”Nothing.” Richard averted his eyes. ”You just have a lot of things on your desk.”

Isabella gave him a sharp look.

”There are some things you shouldn’t look closely at, especially those bearing the department’s crest.”

”...Understood.”

She fell silent for a moment. Perhaps figuring that Richard was bound to find out sooner or later, she spoke again.

”The department has recently been fighting with the School of Theology over a set of materials.”

”What materials?”

”The batch of antiquities shipped back from the Black Soil River Basin.”

Richard’s heart skipped a beat. It was those antiquities again.

”The museum is hosting a grand exhibition next month. You probably heard about it on your way here.”

Isabella explained:

”The items on display are meant for the public. The truly important pieces won’t be exhibited.

A selection of artifacts bears priestly inscriptions from the Black Soil River Basin, which no one has been able to fully decipher yet.

The Department of Classics wants the research rights, arguing that it falls under the purview of classical studies;

the School of Theology wants them too, reasoning that the priestly system of the Black Soil River Basin involves religious rituals.”

Richard understood.

On the surface, this was merely a dispute between two academic departments over the ownership of research materials.

On a deeper level, those inscribed artifacts were all supernatural items.

Whoever won the research rights would also gain the privilege to use those supernatural items.

”Aunt Isabella,” Richard asked tentatively.

”You mentioned on the phone that there would be a practical assignment in the latter half of my studies?”

”Yes.”

”And the location...”

”Is right there at the museum,” Isabella answered crisply.

”Don’t get ahead of yourself. Your studies haven’t even begun yet.

When it comes time for the practical work, I’ll explain everything clearly.

Right now, you only have one thing to worry about.”

”What is it?”

”Making it into the top twenty.”

She pushed the manuscript on her desk toward him.

”Your remedial lessons start today.”

The tutoring began with an Ancient Greek past exam paper.

Isabella started by giving Richard a prompt, instructing him to translate a passage of Thucydides into the Albion language.

Thanks to his foundation in [Erudition] and [Learning], Richard completed the translation fairly quickly.

Isabella took his draft and read it from start to finish.

She said nothing when she finished, simply handing him a second question.

The second task dealt with conjugations for several highly obscure, irregular verbs.

Richard answered them with relative ease.

”Two of these are wrong,” Isabella said, tapping them with her red pen.

”You can’t rely on cleverness alone for Ancient Greek irregular conjugations. You have to memorize them.”

”Understood.”

”Greenwood gave you a decent foundation.

You don’t need to worry too much about Latin, but your Ancient Greek is relatively average. We’ll focus heavily on it over the next few weeks.”

Richard nodded.

After an entire morning of tutoring, Isabella’s attitude remained unreadable.

She posed questions, Richard answered, she graded them, and then assigned more.

She maintained a cold expression, meticulously picking out every single error.

Richard felt a bit insecure. He had worked incredibly hard over the past few months and thought he had made significant progress.

But staring at his aunt’s icy face, he couldn’t detect the slightest hint of satisfaction or disappointment.

They studied until noon, at which point Sophia returned from the cafeteria with four lunches.

Clara also came back from the archives.

Clara was the same as always—extremely polite and a woman of few words.

”Richard, it’s been a while,” she said, nodding at him.

”Senior Clara.”

The four of them ate lunch together in the office.

Sophia chattered nonstop, vividly narrating all the gossip floating around Imperial Capital University.

She talked about which associate professor had formed a grudge with whom, which graduate student’s thesis had been rejected by their advisor, and how arrogant the School of Theology crowd had been lately.

Clara kept her head down as she ate, occasionally chiming in with a brief word of agreement.

Isabella ate her meal while flipping through the drafts Richard had translated that morning.

Once she finished eating, Isabella pushed her plate away.

”Did you bring your probatio text?”

Richard pulled a manuscript from his bag and handed over his independent translation of the twelve sets of Boundary Stone inscriptions.

Isabella took it and read it very slowly.

Sophia tactfully stopped talking and joined Clara in clearing away the dishes—doing these chores was practically what graduate students were for.

Richard sat in his chair, watching his aunt turn the pages one by one.

When Isabella reached the section on the twelfth set, she slowed down even more.

The office was so quiet that the ticking of the wall clock was plainly audible.

Richard’s palms grew a little sweaty.

After finishing the twelfth set, she flipped back and reread everything from the seventh to the eleventh set.

Then she closed the manuscript, picked up her cold cup of tea, and took a sip.

”Did you come up with this interpretation of ’Return’ on your own?”

”I did.”

”Did anyone guide you?”

”You gave me a little direction over the phone, Aunt Isabella, but I worked out the central argument for this section myself.”

”Mr. Hutton didn’t step in?”

”Mr. Hutton said he wouldn’t guide my probatio text. He only taught me the fundamentals.”

Isabella set her tea down and looked at Richard.

Richard couldn’t read any joy or anger on his aunt’s face; it remained entirely cold.

Sophia returned from washing the dishes and winked at him.

Richard felt a bit confused.

Isabella stayed silent for a long time before finally speaking.

”...It’s decent.”

”Analyzing the trigger for ’Return’ from the angle of ’veil attenuation’ is a novel approach.

Traditional interpretations all treat ’Return’ as a door welded shut, with all research focusing on ’how to weld it even tighter.’

You reversed it, proposing that ’instead of welding it shut, it’s better to consume it.’”

”The argument holds up well, and I can’t find any major flaws in the other aspects either,” she concluded.

A heavy weight lifted from Richard’s chest.

He could hear it—his aunt was actually praising him.

Albeit in an extremely restrained manner, keeping a straight face and treating her words like gold.

Sophia was stifling a laugh nearby.

Clara also looked up and cast a glance at Richard.

Isabella looked at the giggling Sophia, then back at Richard.

She picked up the manuscript again and tucked it into her drawer.

”I’ll hold onto this draft for now. There are a few minor issues I’ll mark later for you to correct yourself.”

She put her stern facade back on.

”A strong argument isn’t enough; the reasoning process needs to be more solid. You made leaps in logic in a few places.”

”...Understood.”

Richard knew well that these ”leaps in logic” were the result of [Reasoning].

The deductive steps produced by [Reasoning] couldn’t be recorded on paper.

What his mind could cross in a single bound required him to build a proper staircase for the reader when put on paper.

They spent another two hours tutoring in the afternoon.

When the sun began to sink in the west, Isabella put down her pen.

”That’s all for today.”

Richard stood up and packed his bag.

Isabella watched him pack before suddenly speaking up.

”Don’t be in a rush to head back. I’m taking you somewhere.”

Sophia’s eyes lit up at her words.

”Professor, are we going to that place?”

”Yes.”

Richard looked at his aunt.

Isabella was already gathering her belongings.

With her back turned to Richard, she stacked the journals on her desk.

”Your probatio text passed muster. I tested your foundational knowledge this morning, and it shows you haven’t been slacking.”

Her voice remained flat. ”Consider this... a reward.”

His aunt was treating him to a meal to reward his hard work.

Yet she delivered the words so stiffly, as though she were being forced into it.

Sophia silently mouthed a phrase off to the side.

”The professor is just stubborn.”