I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

The results of the first round were announced during the lunch break.

The bulletin board was posted on the stone wall of the chapel’s side aisle, drawing an impenetrable crowd.

Richard didn’t try to push through the throng; Mr. Holland squeezed his way in, read the rankings, and came back to report them.

When the balding, middle-aged man emerged from the crowd, his shirt collar was askew.

”Fourth.”

He said, straightening his collar, his tone a mixture of relief and a slight tinge of disappointment.

”The top three are Montague, Catherine, and Philips.”

It was what Richard had expected. Compared to the foundation built by those who’d had one-on-one elite tutoring since childhood, a gap truly did exist.

The precision of his pronunciation, his experience with pacing, the maturity of his overall stage presence... He was behind on every count.

”But,” Mr. Holland suddenly smiled, ”in the rhetorical comprehension category, you received the highest score of anyone here.”

He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket:

”Of the six judges, four gave you a perfect score, and two gave you a nine.”

”You were the only one in the whole competition who crushed everyone else in rhetorical comprehension.”

He waved the paper in front of Richard, his voice filled with unconcealable pride:

”Montague got an eight-point-five in that category, Catherine an eight-point-three. You got a nine-point-seven.”

Lady Gran walked over from the side:

”This means the judges believe your understanding of Cicero runs deeper than that of the other contestants.”

”Indeed,” Mr. Holland said, folding the paper and stuffing it back into his pocket. ”He didn’t just memorize the words. He thoroughly understood them.”

Lady Gran looked at Richard. ”How are your preparations for this afternoon’s impromptu speech?”

”Still thinking about it.”

”As long as you have a plan, you’ll be fine.”

”But seriously, the way you handled the crescendo of those six ’nihil’s was excellent.

I’ve been teaching for over a decade, and it’s the first time I’ve heard anyone in this kind of competition manage the breathing and rhythm for a parallel structure to such a degree.”

Mr. West, who had been standing silently to the side, finally spoke up. ”Fourth place. There’s still a chance in the second round.”

Brief, pragmatic. He only ever said what was necessary, not a single word more.

In the distance, Palmer and Hutchinson leaned against a wall, gnawing on sandwiches.

Palmer’s score was likely near the bottom of the ranks—he had only recited two paragraphs before leaving the stage—but his face showed no trace of dejection.

”Hutchinson, what’s your rank?”

”Ninth from the bottom.”

”Then how far from the bottom am I?”

”Third from the bottom.”

”There are two people who did worse than me?” Palmer perked up. ”Who are they?”

”One got on stage and forgot to speak, and the other pronounced Villas as Virgil.”

”Whoa, so many slackers here. At least I recited two paragraphs. I’m calling that a win.”

Richard wolfed down the sandwich and milk Mr. Holland had brought him, then walked over to a side aisle, found a stone bench, and sat down.

Once the bread and ham were in his stomach, his digestion seemed to kick into a higher gear.

His mind stayed clear, free of the usual post-lunch grogginess.

He went over the first round’s score breakdown in his mind again.

The highest score for rhetorical comprehension in the competition—it proved the judges acknowledged the depth of his understanding of the speech.

On stage, he wasn’t merely reciting; he was channeling the words of Cicero.

The emotional impact of every single accusation hit its mark perfectly.

The first round was a test of fundamentals, and he was lacking in raw ability.

The second round would be a test of improvisation and depth of expression—two things he happened to have in spades.

......

At two in the afternoon, the second round began.

As the host stepped up to the lectern to announce the topic, Richard and the other contestants each received a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.

”The topic for the second round: ’Where are the borders of civilization?’”

The moment the host finished speaking, the RUSTLE of pencils on paper immediately sprang up from all corners.

The contestants scattered to prepare. Some hunched over stone benches, writing furiously, while others leaned against walls with their eyes closed, organizing their thoughts.

Montague sat at the base of a stone pillar, his right leg crossed over his left, his pencil gliding smoothly across the paper.

His posture was exactly the same as it had been before the first round: relaxed and composed, as if he were writing a letter home.

He would occasionally glance up at the murals on the vaulted ceiling as he wrote, the tip of his pencil never ceasing its movement.

Richard knew very well what lay behind that composure.

’The borders of civilization’ was probably not a new topic for someone like Montague.

Catherine was crouched in a corner, her red hair hanging over her paper. She wrote quickly, occasionally scratching out a line and rewriting it.

She pressed down so hard that the pencil nearly tore through the paper. Her writing was fast and fierce.

The Highlander temper was plain to see on the page.

Philips held a teacup in one hand while sketching an outline on the paper with the other.

’He can always get his hands on tea. That’s a talent in itself.’

Richard spread the paper on his knee and wrote down an opening with his pencil.

After writing the first sentence, he stopped.

He spun the pencil between his fingers a couple of times.

’This isn’t right.’

The opening he’d written was a standard entry point from political science: ”Since ancient times, the distinction between civilization and barbarism has been a product of the discourse of power.”

There was nothing wrong with that opening. It was logically sound, but it would almost certainly overlap with the ideas of the other contestants.

Colonialism, cultural conflict, legal systems... these were angles everyone would think of. They were far too cliché.

Montague would use the most elegant language to explore this angle to its fullest, while Catherine would use the most pointed attacks to drive the point home where it hurt most.

If he competed with them on the same track, he stood no chance of winning.

To win, he had to find a different track.

He crumpled the paper into a ball and shoved it into his pants pocket.

Simon, who was nearby, saw him crumple the paper and asked in surprise, ”You’re not going to write it down?”

”I’m writing it in my head.”

”You’re really something,” Simon muttered, then lowered his head and continued to write furiously.

Richard leaned against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

The words Mr. Hutton had said during his first class began to replay automatically in his mind.

’Instruments don’t lie, but their range of measurement is limited.’

Rooms, walls, pipes.

The passage he’d read while deciphering Appendix C came to mind: If the visible world were a house, then the world behind the Curtain would be the pipes and conduits running through the walls.

The two memories collided, and a framework began to form in his mind.

He didn’t need to write a draft. He had been preparing these words for a long time.

To be precise, ever since he’d first heard these concepts in Mr. Hutton’s class, these words had been slowly taking root in his mind.

When the fifteen minutes of preparation time were up, the contestants began taking the stage in reverse order of their first-round rankings.

The lower-ranked went first, the higher-ranked last.

But it wasn’t strictly reverse order; the sequence for those with similar rankings was sometimes shuffled. Richard was ”lucky” enough to draw the final slot.

The performances of the first dozen or so speakers were a mixed bag.

Some chose the angle of colonialism, some approached it from the perspective of legal systems, some discussed cultural conflict, and one even spoke about the impact of the railway and the telegraph on the spread of civilization.

The quality of the speeches varied, but most of them revolved around the domain of political science.

When Palmer took the stage, he opened with, ”The border of civilization is the limit of my ability to memorize Latin.”

A wave of laughter rolled through the audience, and even the professors on the judging panel couldn’t help but crack a smile.

Then, Palmer gave a perfectly serious two-minute speech on the impact of industrialization on traditional communities. His wording was plain, but his points were rather interesting.

Although his Latin was atrocious, his command of the Albion Language was actually not bad at all.

As he left the stage, he even bowed toward the judging panel. ”Gratias vobis ago.”

His pronunciation was finally correct for once.