I Loaded the Occult Panel

The results for the first round were posted during the lunch break.

A massive crowd mobbed the bulletin board on the stone wall of the chapel’s side corridor.

Richard didn’t bother joining the crush. Mr. Holland squeezed in to check the board and brought back his ranking.

When the bald, middle-aged man finally pushed his way back out, his shirt collar was askew.

”Fourth.”

He adjusted his collar, his tone a mix of relief and a slight tinge of disappointment.

”The top three are Montagu, Catherine, and Phillips.”

This was exactly what Richard had expected. Compared to competitors who had been drilled through one-on-one elite education since childhood, a fundamental gap remained.

Standard pronunciation, pacing experience, overall maturity in stage presence—he fell a few points short in every category.

”But,” Mr. Holland said, suddenly breaking into a smile. ”For rhetorical comprehension, you scored the highest out of everyone.”He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket.

”Out of six judges, four gave you a perfect score, and two gave you a nine.”

”You’re the only one here whose rhetorical comprehension completely crushed the rest of the field.”

He waved the paper in front of Richard, unable to hide his pride.

”Montagu averaged an 8.5 in that category, Catherine an 8.3, and you got a 9.7.”

Ms. Grant walked over to join them.

”This means the judges believe your depth of understanding of Cicero exceeds that of the other competitors.”

”Indeed.” Mr. Holland folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket. ”He didn’t just memorize the text; he completely understood it.”

Ms. Grant looked at Richard. ”How is your preparation for the afternoon’s free speech coming along?”

”I’m still thinking.”

”Just make sure you have something in mind.”

”Honestly, though, you handled that progression of six ’nihils’ incredibly well. I’ve taught students for over a decade, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone maintain the Breathing rhythm of a parallel structure to that extent in such a setting.”

Mr. West, who had been standing silently nearby, finally spoke up. ”Fourth place. You still have a chance in the second round.”

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

Palmer and Hutchinson were leaning against the wall further down the corridor, gnawing on sandwiches.

Palmer’s score was likely near the bottom. He had only managed to recite two paragraphs before stepping down, yet his face showed zero frustration.

”Hutchinson, what rank did you get?”

”Ninth from the bottom.”

”Then where am I from the bottom?”

”Third from the bottom.”

”There are two worse than me?” Palmer perked up. ”Which two?”

”One went up and forgot to open his mouth, and the other read Verres as Virgil.”

”Hah, so many slackers. I at least got through two paragraphs. I win, I win.”

Richard finished the sandwich and milk Mr. Holland had brought him, then walked further down the corridor to sit on a stone bench.

Once the bread and ham settled in his stomach, his body’s digestive efficiency clearly kicked into high gear.

His mind remained sharp, free from the usual post-lunch drowsiness.

He ran through his first-round category scores in his head again.

The highest rhetorical comprehension score in the competition. This proved the judges recognized his depth of understanding regarding the speech.

On stage, he hadn’t merely been reciting; he had been actively relaying Cicero’s words.

Every emotional emphasis in the accusation had landed perfectly on the mark.

The first round tested foundational skill, and he fell short in pure, hard capability.

The second round tested improvisation and depth of expression, which were exactly what he lacked the least.

...

At two in the afternoon, the second round began.

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

”The second round theme: ’Where is the boundary of civilization?’”

The moment the host finished reading the topic, the scratching of pencils on paper erupted from every corner.

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

Montagu sat beneath a stone pillar, his right leg crossed over his left, his pencil moving fluidly across the paper.

His posture was exactly the same as before he took the stage in the first round—relaxed and composed, as if he were writing a letter home.

He occasionally glanced up at the murals on the dome, his pencil never once stopping.

Richard knew very well what lay behind this composure.

”The Boundary of Civilization” probably wasn’t a novel topic to Montagu.

Catherine crouched in a corner, her red hair drooping over her paper. She wrote rapidly, occasionally crossing out a line to rewrite it.

She pressed down with such force that her pencil nearly tore the paper, her handwriting fast and fierce.

The Highlander’s temper was plainly visible on the page.

Phillips held a teacup in one hand while drafting an outline on the paper with the other.

He could always manage to get his hands on some tea. That, too, was a talent.

Richard spread the paper over his knee and jotted down an opening with his pencil.

After finishing the first sentence, he stopped.

He twirled the pencil between his fingers twice.

This wasn’t right.

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

There was nothing wrong with this opening. It was logically sound, but it would almost certainly clash with the approaches of the other contestants.

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

Montagu would use the most elegant phrasing to push this angle to its absolute limit, while Catherine would use the sharpest rhetoric to pierce right into its most painful core.

Competing against them in the same lane, he had no chance of winning.

To win, he had to change lanes.

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

Simon, sitting nearby, looked somewhat surprised to see him crumple the paper. ”You’re done writing?”

”I’m writing in my head.”

”You’re really something.” Simon lowered his head and went back to scribbling.

Richard leaned against the stone wall and closed his eyes.

The words Mr. Hutton had spoken during his first class began playing on an automatic loop in his mind.

”Instruments do not lie, but their measurement range is limited.”

The room, the walls, the plumbing.

The passage he had read while deciphering Appendix C: If the visible world were compared to a house, then the world behind the veil was the plumbing hidden inside its walls.

As the two memories collided, a framework took shape in his mind.

He didn’t need to draft a script. He had been preparing this speech for a long time.

More accurately, ever since he had first heard those concepts in Mr. Hutton’s class, this speech had been slowly growing in his mind.

After the fifteen-minute preparation period ended, the contestants took the stage in reverse order of their first-round rankings.

Those ranked lower spoke first, while those ranked higher spoke later.

But it wasn’t strictly in reverse order; contestants with similar rankings were occasionally shuffled, and Richard was ”lucky” enough to draw the very last spot.

The performances of the dozen or so people ahead of him were uneven.

One chose a colonialist angle, another approached it through the legal system, a third discussed cultural conflicts, and one even talked about the impact of railways and telegraphs on the spread of civilization.

The quality varied, but most of their arguments circled around the realm of political science.

When Palmer took the stage, he said, ”The boundary of civilization is the absolute limit of my Latin memorization.”

Laughter broke out across the audience, and even the professors at the judges’ table couldn’t hold it in.

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

Although his Latin was atrociously bad, his ability to express himself in the Albion Language was actually quite good.

Before stepping down, he bowed to the judges’ table. ”Gratias vobis ago.” (Thank you all.)

For once, his pronunciation was correct.