I Loaded the Occult Panel

The school year began on August 20th.

Richard took an Ashford family carriage to the town surrounding Imperial Capital University.

The place had already changed since his summer session in June.

There was a noticeable shortage of men on the streets.

Some had been drafted, while those with connections had been quietly sent away by their families.

Most who remained were either too young or too frail to move.

The notice board in the center of town used to display lecture schedules, dormitory assignments, and reading lists.

Now, a Wartime Student Status Management Notice was plastered squarely over the top.

Recruitment posters were pasted all the way up to the university gates.

They featured a young man with his chest puffed out, anchored by a single line of text: ”Home before Christmas.”Richard walked through the gates, feeling a hard-to-place unease.

But once he stepped into the Petrie Building, home to the Department of Classics, he found that some things remained completely unshaken.

Martial law might control the factories and the railways, but it could not reach in here.

The Department of Classics, the School of Theology, the School of Engineering—these key departments linked to the mystical side had not suspended operations. If anything, they were busier than before the war.

Just as Richard walked down the corridor toward the department office, he encountered two lecturers arguing until they were red in the face.

”This course cannot be suspended!” a skinny lecturer in round spectacles shouted, slicing his hand through the air.

”Rhetoric is the foundation. If the foundation isn’t solid, anything you build on top of it will collapse!”

”Foundation?” The other, plumper lecturer slammed a stack of handouts onto the windowsill.

”People are dying on the front lines every single day! And you’re talking to me about foundations? The higher-ups don’t want people who can recite Cicero!”

The two traded barbs back and forth, fiercely debating whether a specific course should be suspended to free up personnel for the front lines.

The war had already seeped into this centuries-old university.

Richard gave them a passing glance and kept walking.

”Williams!”

A voice called out from the far end of the corridor. It was Pendleton.

”Perfect timing,” Pendleton said, hurrying over. ”The department has been run off its feet lately.”

”Because of the front lines?” Richard asked.

”The front lines need seals, and they need them urgently.”

The man scanned the corridor to ensure no one was eavesdropping before lowering his voice.

”The Department of Classics’ traditional curriculum is too tedious. It takes at least four or five years to train a student to set up a seal independently.”

”The front lines can’t wait that long.”

”So the department is planning to compile a ’crash course’ version.” Pendleton shook his head.

”They want to strip the curriculum down to its bare bones, keeping only the absolute essentials, so even half-trained amateurs can follow instructions and throw up a crude emergency seal.”

”Are they already teaching it?”

”Not yet.” Pendleton waved a hand.

”It’s just in the discussion phase. Compiling a new textbook is incredibly difficult, and several of the older professors are arguing so bitterly that no one can convince anyone else.”

”If it’s stripped down too much, the seals won’t hold. And if they aren’t stable, setting one up might be even more dangerous than having no seal at all.”

”But the higher-ups are pressing hard. Word was leaked in advance just to mentally prepare everyone.”

He let out a sigh.

”Even if they do push it onto the curriculum, it won’t be until after this semester at the earliest.”

He left it at that and led Richard off to complete his enrollment paperwork.

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

For now, the preparatory class at Imperial Capital University still followed the old curriculum, its schedule packed to the brim.

The mornings were dedicated to general courses for all preparatory students.

Foundational languages, close reading of original texts, prose writing, historiography, and historical dating.

The regular and special classes took these subjects together.

The first period was Latin prose writing.

The lecturer wrote a passage of the Albion Language on the blackboard and demanded the students translate it on the spot into Latin fitting Cicero’s style.

Richard had a solid foundation, so the writing came easily.

Next was the sight translation of Ancient Greek.

The lecturer flipped to a random passage from Thucydides or Homer and made them translate it immediately, forbidding any prior preparation.

Richard found this slightly more taxing than Latin.

But with his baseline knowledge, augmented by the [Learning] and [Speculation] bonuses, his translation remained steady.

In the afternoon, the special class was separated from the handful of regular students.

An invisible glass wall descended between them.

The regular students headed down another corridor to attend their classes.

Those in the special class were led into a windowless classroom on the east side of the Petrie Building.

The door to this classroom was inlaid with silver thread.

It only opened if someone pressed a specific spot on the doorframe.

All four walls were carved with inscriptions that suppressed the ether field of the room to an extremely low level.

The lecturer explained this was to prevent anything discussed inside from leaking out.

The first afternoon class was Inscriptiology.

The lecturer hauled in a stack of rubbings, spread them out on the podium, and had the students date them on the spot.

”Dating isn’t just about sticking a year onto an antique.”

The lecturer handed the rubbings out one by one.

”The era in which a seal was constructed determines how it will age and which pivot points will loosen first.

If you miscalculate the era, any maintenance you attempt later might just shatter the whole thing.”

Taking one of the rubbings, Richard thought of the twelve Boundary Stones back in Whitcom.

The second class was Ritual Language.

”Go leaf through the publicly published missals.”

The lecturer slammed a thick copy of the Glossary of State Church Liturgical Terms onto the desk.

”All of these words were originally plucked from various lineages of sealing, exorcism, and Sleep-Return Rituals.”

”The Church wrapped them in the skins of saints and passed them down for centuries, but their true substance hasn’t changed.”

He wrote a line of Latin on the blackboard.

”’In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.’ This phrase sounds like a prayer.

But its true framework is the ’threefold confirmation’ from the Sleep-Return Ritual.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit correspond to the three anchors in the judgment decree.”

The third class was an Introduction to Veil Dynamics.

The textbook was Haldane’s Introduction to Veil Dynamics, which Richard had long since memorized backward and forward.

The lecturer’s material, however, went far deeper than the book.

”The book covers peacetime models, which are already somewhat outdated.”

”There used to be two arguing factions, but there’s no need for debate anymore.”

The lecturer closed the book and began tracing curves on the blackboard.

”Once the war broke out, the weak points scattered across the Old Continent expanded much faster than the models predicted.

With so many casualties, the aura of death compounded upon itself, fattening up the weak points one after another.”

”By the time you go out into the field, every seal maintenance manual you carry will have to be updated.”

Throughout the first week of classes, the ”crash course” schedule never materialized.

The lecturers simply seemed a little more absentminded during class.

Richard’s gaze settled on the other end of the aisle.

Catherine sat there, her red hair hanging loose as she lowered her head to study a rubbing.

Richard had been keeping a close eye on her lately, but he hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

Catherine was still just Catherine.

Aloof, decisive, and highly efficient—no different from how she had been during the summer session.

She handled the aristocratic scions with perfect restraint, showing not a hint of any restless drive to ”even the score.”

Richard discreetly shifted his gaze away, focusing back on the inscription in his hands.

During the break, Montagu sought out Richard.

”Williams.”

The blond young man sat down in the empty seat beside him.

”Montagu.”

They skipped the pleasantries.

After a month of the summer session and those two nights at the museum, they considered themselves fairly well acquainted.

Montagu kept his voice low. ”The fighting on the front lines is getting fiercer.”

”My family... lost two people as well.”

Richard looked over at him.

”Which generation?”

”An uncle, and a cousin. Both were Hunters. They couldn’t even retrieve the bodies.”

Montagu didn’t show much sorrow as he said it.

”If a family like mine is feeding bodies into the grinder,” he stared straight ahead, ”it goes without saying for the rest.”

Richard didn’t reply.

”The department is changing things, too.” Montagu shifted the topic.

”Changing things?”

”Wartime Scholars. I hear they’re pushing for early graduation.”

”Is that already finalized?” Richard asked.

”Not yet.” Montagu shook his head. ”Just like that crash course schedule, it’s just rumors being deliberately leaked.”

”But rumors are never leaked for nothing. When they’re this specific, it’s only a matter of time.”

”A compressed timeframe.” Richard frowned. ”Then how do these Scholars build a proper foundation?”

”They don’t.” Montagu was blunt. ”The higher-ups don’t care about that. They just want numbers.

They’ll squeeze as many usable Scholars out of the university as they possibly can.

Whether these squeezed-out Scholars have solid foundations, or whether they survive their very first field assignment...”

Richard understood completely. Those sent out with insufficient foundations would likely never come back.

They were feeding crop after crop of students into a maw that could never be filled.

The class bell rang.

Montagu stood up and straightened his collar.

”During the summer session, I said we’d chat when we had the time.”

He nodded at Richard. ”We’re classmates from now on. We’ll have plenty of time.”

Montagu returned to his seat to prepare for the next class.

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

The preparatory class frequently had group assignments.

Deciphering, textual criticism, and picking out the load-bearing pillars from stacks of old papers.

The lecturers divided the class into groups of two or three to work together.

Richard’s group happened to include Edith.

She had a solid foundation and a strong work ethic.

Whenever an inscription was handed down, she transcribed it more meticulously than anyone else.

After working together on a few assignments, the two were fairly well acquainted.

Today, halfway through a double palimpsest problem, Edith set down her pen.

”Williams.” Her voice was very soft.

”Yes?”

”I ran into her on the street again recently,” Edith said.

”Ran into who?”

”Lillian. The girl who chatted with me at the museum on the day of the Black Soil River exhibition.”

Richard’s pen paused.

”What about her?” Richard asked.

Edith frowned.

”She still spoke just as softly, slow and gentle, just like before. Very easy to talk to.”

”But those eyes...”

”I talked to her about birds, about those plants we discussed last time. She answered me, and very politely, too.”

”But the way she looked at me... it was like looking at a specimen.”

Edith lowered her head.

”Whatever she looked at, there was no warmth left in her gaze.”

”I can’t really explain it.” She shook her head.

”I just got the feeling she was completely different from how she was at the museum.”

”You were her middle school classmate. Do you know what happened to her?”

Edith looked up.

”I don’t know,” was all Richard could reply.

The girl pursed her lips and buried her head back into the assignment.

Outside the window, the leaves on the old plane trees below the Petrie Building were beginning to turn yellow.

Autumn was approaching.