I loaded the Mysticism panel.

At the end of August, Mortimer met with his closest friend, the old president of the Royal Anthropological Society.

The other person and Mortimer's mentor were from the same class, so there was a personal connection between them.

Nevertheless, he still produced a document.

The document states that all of my private collection of books, manuscripts, annotated copies, and unarchived drafts shall, from the date of my death, unconditionally become the property of the Archives of the Royal Anthropological Institute, without valuation, without conditions, and without objection from any heir.

The old chairman finished reading the document and hummed in agreement.

"Mortimer, I thought you were planning to take this step ten years from now."

Ten years later, Mortimer probably calculated the day when this body would age and die.

Holding a promotion ceremony before death, hoping to take advantage of the ceremony's effect to briefly see what the view above looks like, is something many highly skilled individuals do.

Of course, there has not been a single successful promotion so far.

Even if one truly accomplishes a great feat, an aging and decaying body and mind cannot support a full promotion.

"Mortimer, let me tell you some news first."

"Please speak."

"That master is not in any specific place."

As the old chairman spoke, the scrolls in the room swayed gently.

"You people always think that the master sitting at the top should have a palace, a well, and a wilderness."

Some have it, but this person doesn't have classical texts or traditions.

"That person's anchor point is everywhere there are still people reading."

Mortimer was about to say something when the other person's next words startled him.

"You've probably seen this several times in your life."

"...What?"

"You borrowed a 1432 manuscript from the third floor of the Imperial Capital University Library. The person behind the counter told you, 'This copy is not available for loan.'"

"You were stopped in Dublin and told that your note was missing a signature;"

While you were searching for the Abyss Tradition's catalogues on the third basement level of Prague, someone turned up the lights for you.

"He may be wherever someone is turning the pages of a book."

Mortimer sat there, unable to utter a word for a long time.

:

He couldn't remember how many people he had talked to or what he had said in the library.

The old chairman continued speaking.

"Since it can exist anywhere, it also means it might not exist anywhere."

"However, I share the same tradition as Him, so I can give you a general direction."

He picked up the pen again and wrote down a location.

"You have a 30% chance of encountering him at the Ambrosian Library in Milan during the last week of October."

If Richard were here, he would probably have a strong sense of déjà vu: this is similar to the idea of ​​catching rare Pokémon at a fixed location.

Mortimer certainly didn't know what Pokémon were, but he was equally impressed.

Why Milan?

"Because that library was one of the first to open its doors to all literate people."

The scrolls floated slowly, forming a model of the library.

"There's another reason, you can think of it yourself."

"……war."

"Yes, they're digging trenches a hundred miles to the north, and moving boxes into cellars to the south. People all over the Apennine Peninsula are transporting paper over the mountains."

"When the paper moves, it is more likely to be bumped into."

Mortimer stood up and pushed the document over.

"President, there's still a 70% chance..."

"Don't worry, there won't be any danger."

At most, you could sit in that room all day, and nothing would happen.

It was because of these hints that Mortimer immediately realized what was going on.

He didn't notice when the administrator came in, or whether the door or the floor made any noise.

The man had his head drooping, was in his forties, of medium height, and had a pencil tucked behind his ear.

No different from any other tired librarian.

He looked at the room full of smoke, stretched out his hand, and fanned himself dramatically twice.

"Sir, why are you burning paper money in the reading room?"

:

Mortimer remained frozen in his chair.

"That cigarette..." The man raised his chin and gestured towards the ceiling.

"...They've already slipped out through the crack in the door. The hallway is full of them now, and people downstairs think there's a fire."

Mortimer sat in that chair, looking at the man, unable to utter a single word.

The scenario he once envisioned was as follows:

The entire room was overturned by ether, and the curtain was torn in the middle.

What object will the master use to speak, uttering a sentence he doesn't understand but that will keep him awake for the rest of his life?

He was even prepared to straighten his back, adjust his reading glasses, and nonchalantly say at that moment:

My name is Mortimer. I am well-versed in classical texts and traditions. I have taught at the Imperial University for a century, and I am ready to embark on my path.

Now… the librarian looked at the pile of ashes with disgust and pointed with a pencil at the name written in blood.

Go to Must Search

"Oh, Mortimer, you're ranked twenty-seventh in the list of contemporary great scholars."

Mortimer waited for the other person's next words.

The man tucked the pencil back behind his ear.

"When I came up here, I was thinking: which graduate student is smoking a pipe again?"

"It turned out to be a 120-year-old gentleman who burned his own manuscripts in my reading room."

Mortimer couldn't help but correct him: "He's one hundred and twenty-three years old."

The administrator looked up.

It was during this conversation that He truly saw Mortimer for the first time.

"...One hundred and twenty-three years old. Sorry, I have a bad memory."

He was clearly lying, and had no intention of pretending at all.

"Come with me."

The administrator turned and left, and Mortimer picked up the copper basin and followed behind.

The staircase is located at the deepest part of the building, so narrow that two people cannot walk side by side.

The further down the shelf you go, the older the books become.

:

The man walked and talked, but his words were all incoherent and rambling.

"...Be careful, the stone on the eleventh level is loose."

"Three college students came last week, saying they wanted to see Dante's handwriting."

There is no Dante's own handwriting in this world. I explained this to them for a long time, but they didn't believe me and said I was hiding something.

Mortimer followed behind, carrying the copper basin, and suddenly felt like laughing.

He counted the steps as he walked this stretch of road.

When he reached the third floor, he tried it once.

Just once.

He subtly focused his inspiration and lightly touched the back of the person in front of him.

After pasting it up, he read a card with three lines written in pencil:

Author unknown.

Number of volumes: 1.

Note: This document is for library use only.

Mortimer withdrew his inspiration.

I've met quite a few experts, and one of them came when the wind stopped blowing across the entire street;

When the other person arrived, the room was filled with papers that flew up and then fell back to their original positions.

He was standing to the side at the time, and although he admired the master's power, he didn't find it particularly remarkable.

It's only natural that such a colossal object, crammed into a very small room, would cause the material layers to crack and creak.

The curtain didn't move at all throughout the journey today.

Because this was originally its house.

No, this one is not just "here".

The former president once said: That person's anchor point is wherever there are still people reading.

Since it's all... in the rural parish reading room where I was a child, there was only three rows of shelves, and there was that old man who would doze off by the window and not get angry when I woke him up.

Is it Him?

Mortimer felt a sudden softness on the step he was going down.

:

The person in front turned around.

The lantern shone up, making that face look rather comical.

"Sir, you just read me."

Mortimer's fingers dug white marks into the rim of the copper basin.

"……yes."

"What did you read out?"

"A card."

The man switched the lamp to his other hand and nodded with satisfaction.

"Yes, I am a card."

He turned around and continued walking.

At the end of the fourth floor was a counter, and behind the counter were bookshelves that stretched into the darkness, with no end in sight.

The administrator hung the lantern on the hook, went around behind the counter, bent down and took out a thick book from under the counter, flipping through more than a dozen pages with a rustling sound.

"...This is it, entry twenty-seven, Mortimer."

"Entered into the register: 1817".

In 1817, shortly after graduating, he was kicked from his teaching assistant position into the field team, where he spent three months with his mentor eating frozen bread in the Northumberland wilderness.

At that time, the entire empire was still grappling with the debts incurred after Waterloo.

The grain law is published in the newspapers every day, and people on the streets are cursing Parliament every day.

He remembered the cold winter of that year as a story.

He later learned that it was because a volcano in the south had exploded two years earlier, and the entire Northern Hemisphere had no summer.

That summer there was no sun, the crops rotted in the fields, and the parish cemetery couldn't be dug up.

The administrator read the next line.

"Promoted to Junior Proficiency: 1824, age 32, relatively late among his contemporaries."

Mortimer didn't argue; it was indeed too late. The first person in that batch to be promoted had been promoted several years earlier than him.

"Advanced to the Great Mastery: 1861".

In 1861, at the age of 69, the capital began preparations for the construction of its first subway.

:

He remembered that after leaving the ceremony, he saw a group of people gathered around the newly installed gas streetlights, discussing the matter.

Mortimer was thinking at the time: the world has become faster.

In the fifty-four years that followed, the world itself told him that the changes had only just begun.

That person isn't finished yet.

"Those who have entered this tradition through this person..."

His fingertips slid down.

"Great Mastery, Part One."

"Minor proficiency, level six."

"Practitioners, number twenty-nine."

Return status: Good.

Overdue: None.

Damaged: One volume, 1893.

In 1893, his most outstanding student was to be promoted to expert.

A dense fog rolled in at sea, and the combined efforts of various parties to disrupt the operation ultimately failed.

Mortimer could only stand by and do nothing.

"In recognition of your contributions to this tradition..."

Just as Mortimer was about to say something, the person continued reading.

"Don't rush, there's also an even more important anchor point statistics table."

The administrator said, "I'll read it to you."

"Need not……"

"I'll read it."

He began to recite.

"Mentor: Irwin Harrow, cancelled in 1844."

Mortimer closed his eyes.

There were eleven graduate students in the same cohort.

:

The man's fingertips slid down one square at a time.

"All were cancelled in 1839...1891."

When Mortimer arrived in 1891, the old senior had already been cleaned up, his face covered with a white cloth.

He lifted the cloth to take a look, then covered it back up.

That day, he came out of someone else's house and went out onto the street. Looking around, he suddenly realized that he didn't recognize anyone on the street.

"Relatives".

"Brother One, cancelled in 1856."

"Sister One, cancelled in 1861."

"...no offspring."

"This column has not been updated since 1893."

The administrator frowned, looking somewhat troubled:

"Sir, all your relatives, friends, and teachers have passed away."

"There are only a few students left."

He turned another half page down the booklet.

Mortimer looked down.

It was found to be shorter than the column above, with fewer than ten in total.

The last name, Mo, is still new.

Richard Williams, January 25, 1915.

Yes, he only truly accepted the other person after that kid was willing to take such a risk for his grandfather.

The administrator finally handed the pencil and paper to Mortimer.

"Alright, write down what you've come here for."

This is the tradition of classical texts, which holds that everything should be recorded in a bibliography and readily available for reference.

Mortimer wrote and crossed out on this sheet.

I want to take a step up... but it's too soft.

Is there still room for this tradition...? This completely hands over the initiative to the other party.

:

Am I qualified or not...? He didn't even put down his pen.

The pencil twirled halfway in his hand.

The administrator watched him scribble, turning the entire front of the paper black with lines, his face expressionless.

Mortimer used the clean space on his back to state his position directly: I am applying for a promotion.

The man took it, lightly marked a checkmark on it with a pencil, without the slightest hesitation.

"Whether you succeed in getting promoted or not, do your best to train your students."

The administrator raised the light a little higher, illuminating the densely packed bookshelves.

"Books need to be read continuously, otherwise they are just a pile of paper."

After leaving the library, Mortimer returned to the hostel and sat down, spreading the newspapers he had bought during the day on his lap.

When I was halfway through reading it, there was a knock on the door downstairs.

The footsteps quickly stopped at the door.

"professor."

"You're back?"

"I'm back."

Mortimer folded the newspaper and placed it on the windowsill.

"Where did you go this afternoon?"

Richard entered the room, sat down opposite him, and recounted the events of the afternoon.

"I've been looking for a place to register the whole way."

"City Hall, police station, I even considered going to the guild's office."

When I'm on field assignments in Beijing, the first thing I always do is report for duty.

Go to the branch office, submit the documents, get a number, and someone will take care of you if anything goes wrong. You can also get reimbursed when you get back.

"Not here."

"No," the old professor nodded.

Why?

"Because there isn't a center here that lasts long enough."

:

Mortimer stretched out his hand and drew a circle in the air.

"The Empire has been doing the same thing for 260 years, from Cromwell to today."

The middle class is arguing fiercely, but the upper echelons are always the same group of people.

Therefore, the mystical side would become procedurally structured like this: separate offices, headquarters, staffing, public accounts, and routine losses.

"The Apennine Peninsula here has seen countless rulers over the past eight hundred years."

"Today it is the Duchy of Milan, tomorrow it will be the Viceroy of Spain."

Later it was the Austrians, and then Napoleon.

Finally, they fought a four-year war and established a country, which happened fifty-four years ago.

"Where would you report for duty in a place like this?"

Richard himself knew this, but what he didn't understand was:

"So what do people here rely on to maintain stability? They can't possibly have no order or rules at all, can they?"

Mortimer adjusted his reading glasses.

"You mentioned the spice shop you went to today, where the shopkeeper dipped his finger in water to show you whether the saffron was yellow or not."

"Yes."

Why would he show it to you?

Richard thought about it.

"...Because I'm from out of town, if he acts like he's doing business honestly in front of me, I might ruin the store's reputation..."

He suddenly realized that he knew this store had a good reputation because of his senior, Sophia.

"Yes." The old professor was pleased with his student's comprehension.

"He showed it to you because that signboard is worth more than half an ounce of saffron."

"Order here is business reputation."

"Companies, pharmacies, watchmakers, glassmakers, papermakers... these shops have been operating for three hundred years."

Father passed it on to son, son to grandson; the country changed six times, but the shop remained the same.

Richard then brought up the serpent pillar of St. Ambrose Church.

"Professor, that pillar just stands there in the side corridor, anyone can walk over and touch it."

:

Mortimer nodded.

"What you're asking is: why is this item just left there, allowing people to touch it freely?"

"Yes."

"If it were in the capital, it would be in the innermost part of the museum's closed storage room now. Moving it would require the signature of a vice minister, and after that, two professors would have to sign it."

"Yes."

Mortimer spread his hands on his knees.

"Because the people here consider it a sacred object."

"Sacred objects are different."

It will be locked up, while the sacred object will be left exposed, because its purpose is to be touched.

"You mean...?"

"The old lady touched it, probably because her son was in the Isonzo River."

The mother lifted the child up because she wanted the child to live until next winter.

"That pillar was made possible by this faith and prayer."

Richard stood up and walked to the window.

The Roman stone that was inlaid on the base of the building across the street is still there, but it is almost invisible in the twilight.

He suddenly turned around.

"Professor, this afternoon you..."

Mortimer picked up the glass and took a sip of the water, which had long since cooled.

"I slept all afternoon, and my back is sore."

Richard stood by the window and watched him for a while.

"Then you should be at the meeting tomorrow, don't be late."

"I'm never late for meetings. It's always the people in their forties who are late; they think they have plenty of time."

After finishing his speech, the old professor took another big gulp of water, seemingly very thirsty.

Richard smiled and turned to go back to his room. They were staying in a suite with a living room and two private rooms.

"Little Richard."

:

"Um?"

Mortimer took off his reading glasses and slowly wiped them with his sleeve.

"I have a question for you."

"Please ask."

"Why are you going up there?"

Richard answered with a hint of hesitation: "So that those who remember me can live well."

Mortimer put his reading glasses back on.

"……OK."

He put the cup back on the windowsill.

"Then you should go to bed early too, there's a meeting at ten tomorrow."

………………

At night, Richard sat down at the table in his room.

He first wrapped the half ounce of saffron in oil paper and put it away to take back with him later.

For Evelyn, saffron was a luxury she dared not even ask about.

Richard brought up the control panel.

Available points: 1.61 → 2.13

There were seven or eight people going in and out of the church, and he stood in front of that pillar, pretending to read the inscription on the pillar.

In fact, he was indeed studying the casting method, alloy ratio, and the direction of the snake's scales.

0.52 points isn't much; it's equivalent to an ordinary item, less than the hermit's 1,100-year-old stone bowl.

But this was a freebie, and it even cleaned away a layer of grime from the pillar.

Speaking of which, I wonder if there are still any more opportunities like this to accumulate points in the open air.

You can ask the professor later; it's perfectly natural for scholars to study street statues and relics.

Richard was somewhat glad that he had chosen the path of a scholar; otherwise, it would seem strange for a hunter to spend his days collecting antiques and searching for historical sites for "research."

In the morning, Richard read the title aloud.

"Western Continent Academic Mutual Assistance Committee - Wartime Rare Original Material Preservation Case - Apennines-Albion Joint Working Conference (Third Round - Milan)..."

:

Halfway through reciting, I could only take another breath and continue.

Mortimer glanced at him.

"Stop reading it."

"Professor, I want to memorize it."

"Why would you carry it?"

"What if someone asks me what I'm doing..."

"Just say you were copying books." The old professor slammed his cane on the ground.

"This reason will remain valid for at least another ten years."

Richard was a little confused as to why it was ten years.

The meeting was held in a long hall on the second floor of the Brera Palace.

A group of people in the clouds were painted on the ceiling. The artist was clearly more concerned about the clouds not looking good, as all the people's feet were hidden behind the clouds, making it look like they had no feet at all.

The long table was covered with dark green velvet, with eleven people seated at the head table, and two rows of hard chairs arranged along the wall for the audience.

Richard's seat was in the last row, near the door.

Besides the item about "making copies of the originals and sending them to the cellar in the Helvetii Mountains," there were two other items on the agenda.

First, how should the responsibility for maintaining the weak points along the Alps-Isonzo line be divided?

Richard had heard the name Isonzo more than twenty times from the newsboy.

The banks of the river were dug with trenches, and the dead were so numerous that even the newspapers were too lazy to count them.

Another, more detailed point: how to determine the translation style of "The Battlefield Crash Course Seal Manual".

The chief speaker for the Apennines was Professor Tagliafero, whose white hair was neatly combed back. He spoke with his hands folded on the table, which remained motionless throughout.

His opening remarks lasted forty minutes.

Richard was taking notes for the first ten minutes, but by the twelfth minute he realized that all he had written down were phrases like "Since the founding of this organization," "Thanks to everyone," and "At this difficult time"...

He quickly put down his pen.

Then Richard started counting the footless people on the ceiling. When he got to twenty-nine, he got the count mixed up and had to start over.

In the 40th minute, Tagliafero lifted his hand off the table.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is now adjourned. Please have some coffee."

:

The entire hall immediately came alive.

The sound of chairs being pushed back was continuous, louder than all the noise from the previous forty minutes combined.

Richard stood at the outermost edge of the crowd, holding a small white porcelain cup with a human figure on it.

The black liquid in the cup was thick; he took a sip and his eyes stung.

"nza h." someone nearby said.

Richard turned around and saw a young man about his age, slightly overweight, with black hair, holding a stack of papers in his arms.

"...No sugar added."

The man repeated it very slowly in Latin, afraid the boy wouldn't understand.

The news from yesterday afternoon has already spread. It seems that the people of Italy are just as good at gossiping as people from other countries.

"We're out of sugar," Richard replied in Latin.

The man paused for a moment, then laughed so hard that the whole stack of papers in his hand trembled.

"Luca di Valle".

He freed one hand.

"...a scribe in the secretariat."

Richard Williams.

"I know." Luca gestured toward the head table.

"The list says 'one accompanying recorder,' and I'm the one copying the list here. I almost misspelled your last name."

Richard reached out and shook hands with him.

Luca is twenty years old this year, and has been signing his name for less than a year, following the tradition of classical texts.

He spoke these things in the local language, starting quickly, but when he saw that Richard was having difficulty understanding, he started speaking one word at a time.

The two could actually communicate in Latin or French, but that would be unfamiliar to Luca.

"We'll mix things up," Richard said understandingly.

When the meeting ended at lunchtime, Mortimer came out of the long hall and threw a stack of papers into Richard's arms.

"Professor, this is..."

"After the meeting, transcribe, archive, compile a terminology list, and create an index."

:

"The index should be arranged in the alphabet of the Apennine language, not the alphabet of our empire. This copy should ultimately remain in their cabinet."

Richard held the stack of papers, with Luca on either side of him.

Across the corridor, the two young men exchanged a glance and nodded to each other.

Then he bent down and copied the book.

After copying for a while, Richard looked up and noticed that the green light across the street was still on.

He tore off a corner of a piece of paper, wrote a line, folded it into a triangle, held it in his hand, walked out, and flicked it across the corridor onto the table opposite.

The corner of the paper spun around on Luca's manuscript and came to a stop.

Luca opened it and saw that it was written in Latin:

"ta ha m?" (What time are you going to sleep after copying this?)

He lowered his head, wrote a line, folded it, and it bounced back.

"m hata fnt." (After copying the paper, go to sleep.)

On the first night, Richard returned to the hostel and worked until 2 a.m.

The Apennine part was something I had to learn by brute force.

He recognizes word roots and can guess about 80% of the meaning from them, and the remaining 20% ​​can be deduced from the context.

[Knowledge & General Knowledge] On a summer afternoon, I opened my eyes for the first time behind the seventh shelf in the museum's ancient book section.

That stack of twenty-nine palm leaves, with nineteen different symbols and three high-frequency symbols, took him only ten minutes to go from not understanding them to being able to read them.

He changed the way he read it, first setting up the Latin declension table.

He had memorized the six squares and five declensions by heart at the Greenwood lunch table.

Then came Ancient Greek, the handwritten notes that Lillian handed him on the second floor of the library.

There's also French; he'd been practicing speaking it with the three French officers in the train carriage for the past two days.

And those medieval church Latin commentaries, the copies of which my aunt sent him last year.

Thousands of old documents lined up there and snapped together on their own.

Apennine is a language that evolved from Latin.

When he finally understood this, the whole stack of papers looked completely different to him.

Richard picked up the third page again.

:

This time he didn't guess; he read it all the way through.

In the morning, Mortimer inspected the finished product but didn't offer any evaluation; he simply spread a piece of paper between the two of them.

He pulled it out once on the train; it was the committee's list of documents that needed to be preserved.

The first few lines all contain names and titles: a private collection of books from a certain family, a collection of poems from a certain monastery, a fourteenth-century medical prescription.

The following lines, however, state that the date is undetermined, the author is unknown, and the manuscript is incomplete.

"Let's get down to business today. I'll take you to the Ambrosian Library to see some rare books."

Richard folded the paper and put it into his inner bag.

As I received it, my fingertips touched the antler-tipped token.

It had gotten cold this morning and was shivering.

Outside the window, the clock struck nine.

There were more people on the street carrying chrysanthemums than yesterday. The day after tomorrow is November 1st, and Halloween is tomorrow night.

The hunter has extended an invitation for a wild hunt.

: