Do ratmen dream of the sacred tree of spirits?

Chapter 109 Side Story: Victor's Sacred Tree and Dream

"This is----"

So many yellow leaves, so many branches!

What a huge tree! Is it just one tree, or a whole forest?

Little Victor watched it curiously, silently, and gradually, the scene before him began to distort—shatter—

wake up.

"Little Victor, I am your new private tutor. My name is Zere Andrei." Bishop Andrei smiled as he looked at the child in front of him. In his spiritual vision, the little guy's spiritual talent was very high.

"Oh, hello, I'm Viktor Zaitsev." Viktor wasn't interested in the middle-aged man his father had invited.

"I am a doctoral supervisor at the First University of the Holy Kingdom, and my main research area is ————"

"Stop, stop, stop! I'm not interested in any of this. Let's get to class!" Victor pouted. His father never played with him and only saw him a few times a year. He just kept him from him. Now that he was seven years old, his father wrote to him, telling him not to go to grammar school for the time being, and instead hired a tutor for him.

Andrei wasn't angry; he smiled and said, "Little Viktor, what kind of knowledge would you like to learn?"

"Swordsmanship, of course! Horse riding! Combat! I want to be an excellent knight like my father!"

"I want to be like the paladins in the storybooks, destroying enemies and helping the weak! Kill!" Victor jumped up from his chair and said excitedly.

“These are not my strengths,” Andrei shook his head. “I am a second-level bishop of the Church of the God of Death, I cannot—”

"So what can you do? What do you want to teach me?" Victor interrupted Andrei, feeling somewhat disappointed. Since he was three years old, his mother had been telling him stories of great knights by his bedside, and he had always dreamed of becoming one of them.

"Hmm—at this age, you can start learning Common Elvish and read classic literary works—"

"No! That's too boring! Then teach me magic, knights need magic too." Common Elvish, classical literature—these things piled up on several bookshelves in the family library, but Victor was too lazy to even look at them.

"Haha, little Victor, this is exactly what I'm good at. No problem, I can teach you clairvoyance today."

"Your sexual awareness is excellent; I can teach you clairvoyance directly through guided techniques."

At the age of eight, Victor finally obeyed his father's orders and went to study at the First Grammar School of the Temple of Eternal Rest.

"What boring classes—" Victor disliked those general education courses; they were too easy, he could understand them after reading them once. Sometimes he would go to the library to read or play alone in the open space. Even when he encountered those rigid teachers who insisted he attend class, Victor would choose to challenge them in class, constantly interrupting them and asking tricky questions.

He only took the magic courses seriously and was also quite interested in the bookkeeping courses. Every day when he came home, Bishop Andrei would be waiting for him at home to "make up for his mistakes".

"Good evening, little Victor. How's your learning of Common Elvish coming along?"

"Good evening, Professor Ze Ruo! Well, it's alright. I've mastered all the material in the textbook this semester." After a year of getting to know each other, Victor was impressed by Andrei's profound knowledge and powerful magical abilities, and he was willing to give this teacher his respect.

"But teacher, isn't the Spirit Realm's language just something you memorize by force and use as a spell when casting first-tier fireballs? Why do we need to learn it?"

"It will be very useful in the future. If you can get a doctorate in the spirit world, there are many documents and descriptions of spell structures that require the language of spirits. Moreover, the language of spirits is a language that can resonate with the spirit world. Learning it will help you practice spells."

"No! Professor Ze Ruo, I don't want to study for a PhD in the Spirit World, I want to be a knight!"

"Today I'm giving you an assignment: use a dictionary to translate the 'Commandments of the Church of the God of Death' into Common Elvish on your own."

"Yes, teacher."

After Victor returned to his room, he asked his personal servant to bring him a copy of "The Commandments of the Church of the God of Death" and a general Elvish dictionary. "Teacher Zero must think I've read this book, but I haven't even turned a single page," Victor thought.

"After a person dies, their spirit returns to the spirit world, their body returns to dust, but their deeds live on forever."

The words on the title page piqued Victor's interest slightly: "The Fifth Commandment: Honest Records."

Death is the final record.

Those who commit perjury, falsify documents, or conceal the truth are tantamount to blaspheming the god of death.

Victor recalled a rule in chivalric tales that one should not lie, and this commandment was quite chivalrous.

"Death is not punishment, but grace." Victor pondered for a long time but couldn't understand how death could be a grace.

Oh—the knights in the story all died on the battlefield, leaving behind a glorious name; that's "grace"! He didn't find this commandment unpleasant to hear.

While doing his translation assignment, Victor developed some interest in the booklet.

That night, Victor lay in bed, the words of the Commandments replaying in his mind, comparing them with the chivalric code. A knight must be honest; the Commandments dictate honesty. A knight must be courageous; the Commandments say not to fear death. A knight must protect the weak; the Commandments say to treat others kindly.

He rolled over, thinking it over and over, and realized that the two things weren't so far apart. He had always wanted to be a knight, but he was still young, and his father wouldn't allow him to become one right now. Perhaps he could become a priest of the Church of the God of Death first.

"Very good—Victor, this is truly a brilliant idea. I believe your idea has the potential to change the entire Holy Kingdom—"

Bishop Andrei looked with satisfaction at the draft paper Victor handed him, "The Construction Principles and Practical Path of a Spiritual Remote Information Processing System." "Teacher," he said, "thank you for your praise, but this is far from enough. I need your help, and the Holy Kingdom's highest spiritual research institute's assistance. Some of my inspiration comes from a previous study of a material world short-range communication technique. I hope that even those who aren't messengers can conduct remote communication, and even those in the preparatory stage or non-supernatural beings can. This will definitely solve many problems and ultimately make life more convenient—"

However, the turbulence in the spirit world is really difficult to solve, and the magical nodes built in the shallow spirit world are prone to deviation in the spirit world.

I was thinking about whether I could use "anchor points" to fix them in place, and at the same time build a magical structure in the material world to connect with the shallow spirit world —