I Loaded the Occult Panel

Richard held them in suspense for a moment.

”The committee met for three full hours this morning, and they did finally reach a decision.”

Luca paused with a forkful of potato halfway to his mouth, waiting for the rest.

”What did they decide?”

”They decided to keep meeting this afternoon.”

The dining hall fell silent. Richard’s dry joke seemed to have rendered everyone speechless.

The copyist from Naples sat at the far end of the table, mopping up the sauce on his plate with a piece of bread.

”Ah, that’s just how it is. Officials from Rome are all like this.

”Meetings in the morning, meetings in the afternoon, and when they get back to the hotel at night, they have to write meeting reports. I’m not surprised at all.”

The copyist from Genoa widened his eyes.”Aren’t you from Naples? How do you know what Romans are like?”

”I studied at a university in Rome for a year.

”Romans have this quirk: they love casting these four letters onto public property.”

The copyist from Naples used the sauce to trace out SPQR—the abbreviation for the Roman Senate and People—on his plate.

”The fountains over there, the streetlights, the municipal garbage trucks, even the sewer manhole covers all have SPQR.

”If you just casually look down while walking the streets of Rome, you’ll find you’re stepping on the Roman Senate and People.”

Hearing this, the tall copyist slowly asked a question.

”So when you were studying in Rome, did you ever spit on the manhole covers of the Roman Senate and People?”

The Neapolitan stopped wiping his plate.

He fell silent for quite a while before painfully admitting, ”Once.”

The entire table leaned in toward him.

”I’d had a little to drink that day. The moment I spat, I regretted it.

”Think about it. Beneath that manhole cover lay Caesar, Augustus, Diocletian... a great Empire that spanned a full millennium.

”I went back to my dorm and rinsed my mouth three times before lying down in bed. I kept feeling like Emperor Trajan was watching me from the ceiling.”

”And then what?”

”And then, in the second semester, I was expelled and sent back to Naples.”

The tall copyist nodded. ”Do you all see? This is the retribution the Roman Senate hands out to the disrespectful!”

The whole table collapsed in laughter.

Luca slapped the table, gasping for breath, while the Genoese copyist laughed and swiftly moved his wine glass a little further away.

Richard laughed along with them for a while before settling down.

Indeed, in the historical textbook illustrations at Greenwood School, the eagles of the Roman Legion bore this abbreviation. Moreover, the rubbings of the Triumphal Arch kept in the reference room of Imperial Capital University also had SPQR carved dead center on the lintel.

The Roman Senate represented by these four letters had been dissolved 1,500 years ago, yet the abbreviation had survived to this day, woven into every aspect of the city of Rome.

He then remembered the AUF that Professor Tagliaferro had mentioned at yesterday’s meeting.

The next morning, the committee resumed its meeting.

The moment Professor Tagliaferro, acting as the representative for the Scholars, sat down, he opened a small wooden box and displayed its contents to the delegates.

Inside the wooden box rested a small piece of white marble, no larger than a thumb, carved into the shape of a human nose.

In his usual steady tone, the professor delivered some far from optimistic news.

”Gentlemen, three days ago, the committee attempted to transport a workshop document.

”We had just retrieved a scroll of records from 1402 from the Cathedral workshop’s archives and sent it to Palazzo Brera.”

”That very night, the nose of a saint’s statue on the south spire of the Cathedral fell off.

”Look, this is the very nose that fell from that statue.”

As soon as he said this, the atmosphere in the room took a sharp nosedive.

A saint’s statue losing its nose, and at such a coincidental time.

Placed in the context of the mystical side, this was an omen of disaster.

There was an extra person at today’s meeting, an old foreman who had worked his entire life in the Cathedral workshop, specifically invited by Professor Tagliaferro.

The old foreman spoke up at this moment, his voice rough and gravelly.

”The saint’s statue that lost its nose was carved in 1403.”

The official from Rome coughed. He had already been in Milan for a month, and the exhaustion on his face deepened with each passing day.

”Professor, Mr. Foreman, I understand how you all feel.

”However, speaking from a scientific standpoint, marble suffers frost damage, develops cracks, and then breaks off...”

”It’s early November. It isn’t time for frost in Milan yet,” the old foreman scoffed.

”That saint’s statue has stood on the spire for five hundred years. It didn’t lose its nose through five hundred winters, yet it just so happens to fall off this November.”

The official opened his mouth and managed to squeeze out a single sentence: ”...Perhaps it was just tired.”

Professor Tagliaferro rested the marble nose in the palm of his hand.

”Milan Cathedral has been under construction from 1386 to the present day; these items must remain on the construction site.”

”But the construction site is right at the foot of the Cathedral, and the Austro-Hungarian airships have already flown as far as Verona.”

The meeting dissolved back into noisy arguments.

Richard propped his head up, thoroughly bored.

After resting his chin on his hand and listening for forty minutes, he finally understood the two conclusions of this quarrel:

The records couldn’t be moved, yet they also couldn’t stay.

In the front row, Professor Mortimer checked his watch and silently passed back a folded slip of paper.

Richard opened it. Inside was the old professor’s crooked pencil handwriting:

”If you’re hungry, go eat lunch first. The people arguing will just keep arguing this afternoon anyway.”

In the end, Professor Mortimer and Richard slipped out early to grab lunch.

After lunch, Richard headed straight to the Ambrosian Library.

The old man, as usual, had his chessboard set up under the pillar in the courtyard.

Richard borrowed a yearbook from the Milan Cathedral workshop, preparing to read it off to the side.

A skinny, withered hand pinned him down.

”What were you all arguing about this morning? Even the street sweepers outside are asking if a fight broke out in Palazzo Brera.”

Richard briefly recounted the morning’s events.

The old man listened while staring at his chessboard.

”According to your committee, those precious records will age and rot the moment they leave Milan.”

”Yes, the local professors explicitly stated this rule at the meeting.”

The old gentleman asked, ”You should be able to recite the rules of this library by heart now, shouldn’t you?”

Richard thought the old man was just messing with him again and casually replied, ”As long as the books are in the reading area, they fall under your jurisdiction. But the street outside the library’s main doors doesn’t count as the reading area.”

The old gentleman nodded. ”The library’s reading area has a boundary, so of course the Cathedral’s construction site has a boundary too. Have you ever thought about exactly where the Cathedral’s construction site ends?”

Richard was taken aback. ”The Cathedral’s construction site... should end at the edge of the Cathedral Square.”

The old gentleman frowned, snatched the yearbook back from Richard’s hand, and flipped to a page near the very front.

”Milan Cathedral has been under construction for five hundred years. Did you think the stones used to build it fell from the sky?”

The yearbook was opened to a page containing a copy of a charter, issued by the Lord of Milan in October 1387.

It stated that the Lord of Milan had granted an entire marble mountain named Mount Candoglia, located in the Toce river valley north of Lake Maggiore, to the Cathedral workshop.

Workers quarried stone from Mount Candoglia and loaded the stone onto boats, and the boats sailed down the Toce River into the Ticino River at the outlet of Lake Maggiore.

They then turned into the Grand Canal, drifting all the way to the south of the city of Milan, before finally docking at a small, specially excavated pier right behind the Cathedral.

The final sentence of the charter stated clearly: ’Mount Candoglia and the entire waterway for transporting the stones belong entirely to the workshop.’

Richard instantly understood his meaning. ”Sir, according to the wording of the charter, the entire waterway from Mount Candoglia to the south of Milan counts as the Cathedral’s construction site?”

”The small pier behind the Cathedral was filled in sixty years ago and turned into a street.

”But the workshop still hasn’t sold Mount Candoglia to this day.”

Everything suddenly clicked into place for Richard: to move the records out of the city of Milan, they merely had to follow the waterway detailed in the charter.

He stood up and turned to leave.

From behind him, the old man reminded, ”Return the book before two o’clock.”

Richard turned back, snapped the yearbook shut, and shoved it back into the old man’s hands. ”I’ve already finished reading it.”

Holding the yearbook, the old man watched Richard jog all the way across the courtyard.

At two o’clock in the afternoon, the committee resumed its meeting at Palazzo Brera.

Richard wrote out the charter from memory onto a piece of paper from start to finish and asked Professor Mortimer to pass it to Professor Tagliaferro.

After Professor Tagliaferro read the charter, his dozing, disinterested old face instantly turned serious. ”Old foreman.”

The old foreman stood up from his chair by the door. ”Professor, your orders?”

”Are there any empty stone caverns left in Mount Candoglia?”

”Yes. Even the workshop itself has nearly forgotten about a few of the deepest tunnels in the mountain.”

”Old tunnels don’t freeze in the winter and don’t leak water in the summer. They couldn’t be more perfect for storing the ledgers.”

The long hall instantly grew lively. The official stood up, his voice carrying genuine apology.

”Gentlemen, I would very much like to help as well. However, according to Rome’s regulations, before requesting a transfer, the items must first be registered in the National Catalog of Artistic and Historical Property.”

The long hall fell silent once more. Sitting in the front row, Professor Mortimer sighed, pulled a small pair of scissors from his pocket, and began clipping his nails.

On the third day, the committee did not meet. The official said he needed to send a telegram to Rome to request instructions.

Richard sat in the courtyard of the Ambrosian Library, copying receipts from the 1620s.

When he grew tired of copying, he flipped a card over and continued the story he had started a few days ago:

There was a small village by the Gaulish seaside, and in the village lived a fat man with immense strength.

This time, he wrote about the fat man tearing down the palisades of a Roman camp for the first time. Standing amidst a floor scattered with helmets, the fat man scratched his head and muttered, ”These Romans are crazy.”

He casually translated this insult into the Apennine language and wrote it on the side:

Sono pazzi questi romani.

SPQR, exactly matching the abbreviation for the Roman Senate and People on the sewer manhole covers.

Richard stared at the first letters of these four words for a while, unable to hold it back, and burst out laughing.

Luca leaned over from the next table. ”What are you laughing at all by yourself?”

Richard pushed the card over.

Luca read it once, didn’t quite process it, and then looked at it again with the others.

In less than a minute, it had been passed around and read by half the copyists in the courtyard.

At the opposite table, the tall copyist pushed up his glasses. ”Put this way, it turns out the ancient Roman manhole covers were insulting their own people!”

After reading it, the Neapolitan finally vented the pent-up frustration he had been holding in for years.

He slapped his thigh. ”I knew it! I wasn’t wrong to spit!”

”Then getting expelled and coming back doesn’t count as retribution,” the tall copyist said.

”It doesn’t count! They were the ones who were crazy!”

Unable to contain his excitement, he dashed over to the small blackboard by the pillar in a few strides. He grabbed a piece of chalk, and right below ”No Loud Noises in the Reading Area,” he wrote four massive letters: SPQR.

”Sono...”

”Pazzi...”

”Questi...”

The people in the courtyard couldn’t hold it back anymore and yelled out: ”Romani!”

Laughter exploded.

Right then, footsteps sounded from the direction of the archway.

The official, clutching his briefcase, appeared to have come to the library to look up some records.

All the laughter in the courtyard ceased instantly.

Richard watched the tall copyist’s face go from red to pale, while Luca buried his head in his manuscript.

The Neapolitan clamped both hands tightly over his mouth, standing face-to-face with the official, the four massive letters right behind him.

The official’s gaze swept over the row of copyists and landed on the blackboard.

He stared at it for a long time.

Then, he turned around and looked at the young men filling the courtyard, his eyes slowly reddening.

”Gentlemen, I have been in Milan for a full month, and every day I listen to the Milanese complain about Rome.

”In the morning, the hotel concierge complains about Rome; at noon, the restaurant owner complains about Rome; and when I return after evening meetings, even the shoe-shine boys know to hurl an insult or two at Rome.”

He sniffled.

”But just now, outside the door, I heard you all shouting ’Romani’ together.

”Today is the very first time I’ve seen anyone in Milan write the ’Senate and People of Rome’ on a blackboard.”

Not a single person dared to make a sound.

”Thank you... thank you for remembering that we share common ancestors!”

Not a single copyist in the courtyard dared to reply, but the official solemnly bowed to the Neapolitan.

The Neapolitan, his hands still clamped over his mouth, hastily returned the bow.

The official walked to the entrance of the reading room and turned back around. ”I will include this incident in tonight’s report.”

The door closed behind him. The courtyard remained silent for only three seconds.

”He said he’s going to put it in the report,” the Genoese said, his voice drifting.

”The report will be sent back to Rome,” the tall copyist added.

The Neapolitan finally lowered his hands from his mouth, his gaze blank. ”Rome will know that in Milan, there’s a group of young men who... especially love Rome.”

Luca was the first to lose it, collapsing headfirst onto the table and squeezing a strange yelp through the cracks of his fingers.

Under the pillar, the old gentleman stood up. ”No loud noises in the reading area.”

Then he picked up an eraser and wiped the letters SPQR completely clean.

After erasing them, his beard twitched a couple of times before he clasped his hands behind his back and returned to his chessboard.

In the afternoon, the official came out of the reading room, looking thoroughly displeased.

He stood in the corridor with a cup of coffee, but after being glared at by the old gentleman from across the courtyard, he had no choice but to carry his coffee outside the library’s front doors.

The morning of November 7th.

On the pier in the south of Milan, over a hundred packed wooden crates were piled high.

The old foreman held an old brush, applying as much force to each stroke as if he were carving marks into stone.

The freshly painted letters A, U, and F on the wooden crates gave off a faint glow on the water surface of Richard’s Perception. The color somewhat resembled the fire in the brazier in Donner’s backyard.

A large crowd had gathered on the pier: stonemasons from the workshop, guards from the archives, copyists from Palazzo Brera, and a group of children from some unknown block who had run over to watch the spectacle.

Upon seeing the letters on the wooden crates, the children began shouting loudly, ”AUF! AUF! Free of charge! Free of charge!”

The official, dressed in a black formal suit, signed his name in the ’Recipient’ column on the handover slip.

The photographer sent by Palazzo Brera set up a tripod and took a group photo of everyone on the pier.

Over a dozen packhorses were tethered along the towpath by the shore.

A coachman hollered, the towline slowly went taut, and the packhorses pulled the first barge away from the pier.

For five hundred years, the stones on the canal had always drifted downstream from Mount Candoglia to Milan; today, the precious records were heading upstream against the current, making the journey all the way back to Mount Candoglia.

Professor Tagliaferro looked down at the paper on his lap; the handwriting was still black and shiny, not having faded in the slightest.

Meanwhile, Professor Mortimer had been returning to the hostel later and later in recent days.

In the evening, the old professor sat down at the dining table, snipping pieces of a baguette into a creamy soup.

”Little Richard, this is the first time I haven’t been able to find someone I’m looking for.”

Professor Mortimer shook his head.

”Among the people I know, there are those who murder without blinking, those who have hidden from me for thirty years, and those who still send me dreams after they’re dead. Not a single one of them has ever eluded me.”

Richard poured the old professor a cup of tea.

He took a sip and, uncharacteristically, did not complain that the tea was too weak.

With the committee’s business concluded, it disbanded. During his remaining two days in Milan, Richard spent every day in the Ambrosian Library compiling indexes.

When he grew tired of compiling, Richard began writing a new story on the back of a card.

In this new story, set in the Toce river valley in 1387, an eleven-year-old son of a quarry worker followed the first boatload of stones down the mountain.

On the pier in the south of Milan, the quarry worker’s son saw the empty plot of land prepared for the construction of the Cathedral for the first time.

Richard planned to name the new story The Pillars of the Earth.

He wrote up to the year 1400, when the workshop invited a master architect from Franc to establish the proportions for the spires.

The old Lombard stonemasons refused to accept this, and the two sides argued in a meeting for three days.

The Franc slapped the table and declared: Skill without learning is worth nothing.

The Lombards slapped the table in return: Learning without skill is worth nothing.

He had read these two quotes in the yearbook—they were from the minutes of a 1400 meeting, in black and white, copied without changing a single word.

The old man reached out from over Richard’s shoulder and snatched the card away. ”The reading area...”

Richard preempted him and finished the sentence for him: ”...forbids writing content unrelated to transcription. I’ve already memorized your rules.”

Today was Richard and Professor Mortimer’s final day in Milan, and he was using this somewhat unique method to bid farewell to the librarian.

The old man stood and read the card to the end. This time, he handed it back to him.

”Did that Franc win in the end?”

”Historically, he lost and was chased away by the workshop.”

”Then let him win once in your story. Those who lost in history ought to win at least once in a book.”

The old man suddenly asked, out of nowhere:

”That story you promised Mr. Matthew from the New Continent—how much of it have you written?”

Richard froze in mid-air, halfway through a stretch.

He slowly turned his head. The old man stood by the table, twirling that copper button between his fingers.

Richard promising Matthew that story in his dorm at Imperial Capital University was something that had happened in early June.

The only people present had been Matthew, who had walked out of the wall, and himself. At most, Matthew might have told Madam Marie afterward.

And there was one more thing he only realized at this exact moment.

For the past two weeks, the old man had been speaking to him entirely in authentic Albion Language with an Imperial Capital accent, speaking it more standardly than the broadcasters on the radio.

Yet, not a single person in the entire courtyard had found it strange.

”...I’m sorry, I haven’t written a single word,” Richard heard his own voice say.

”Oh, is that so.” The librarian slipped the copper button back into his pocket.

”Then come with me.”

He turned and walked toward the deepest part of the library. Richard had no choice but to stand up and follow him.

The staircase was too narrow for two people to walk side by side. The further down they went, the older the books on the shelves became, and the dimmer the lights grew.

They didn’t stop at the third level; the stairs continued downward.

At the end of the fourth level sat a counter.

Standing at the foot of the stairs, Richard recalled the person the old professor had described back at the hostel:

In his forties, of average height, with a pencil tucked behind his ear, who had led him down to the fourth level.

The librarian walked around to the back of the counter, bent over, and pulled out a stack of papers from underneath. A number was written in pencil on the top right corner of each sheet.

Richard looked down at the top sheet. It was his own handwriting.

”A gentleman returned from a faraway place, stood at the station for a long time, and found he didn’t recognize...”

The writing stopped here and had been crossed out.

That was what he had written in the hostel on a night during his first week in Milan. After writing it, he had crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.

The second sheet: ”That winter, the snow at the Mouth of the Underworld River...”

Crossed out.

Richard flipped through them one by one until he reached the oldest sheet. He had written it in his dorm at Imperial Capital University in early July, tearing it in half immediately after.

”There’s a bookshelf in your dorm. Any place with a bookshelf falls under my jurisdiction.”

The librarian stated it matter-of-factly.

He had collected a total of twenty-three scrapped drafts. Stamped at the bottom of each sheet was a tiny red seal that read, ”To be continued.”

Standing in front of the counter, Richard finally understood his predicament.

Matthew, the Virtuoso of the New Continent, was waiting for Richard to send a postcard every Christmas and a volume of the Collection of Strange Tales every two months; and the Master of the Classical Records Tradition standing before him had salvaged every story opening that Richard had thrown away.

What had he done to deserve two such prominent figures hounding him for manuscript drafts at the same time?

The librarian pulled two more cards from beneath the counter. One was Asterix the Gaul, and the other was The Pillars of the Earth.

”How do you plan to publish these two?”

”I plan to hire someone to draw them as comic strips, panel by panel.”

”Those who can read will read the words, and those who can’t will look at the pictures.”

The librarian nodded. ”That young man who drew The Prudent Gentlemen for you—his line work is far too rough. I can recommend a few better candidates.”

He bent down and pulled out various samples from under the counter.

The first was a stack of thin paper with very fine latitude and longitude lines printed along the edges.

”Pulkovo, a Major Adept of the Classical Records Tradition. He excels at drafting.”

Richard flipped it open. Drawn on the paper was a cat jumping down from a windowsill, in a total of four panels.

The drawing was excellent; every single one of the cat’s whiskers was perfectly clear.

However, in the first panel, before the cat had even leaped, a very faint dashed line traced outward from beneath its paws, following a perfect parabola all the way down to the rug in the fourth panel.

Next to the landing spot was a line of small text: Margin of error: less than a single grain of rice.

Richard flipped to the fourth panel; the cat landed exactly where that grain of rice would be.

”The cats drawn by Mr. Pulkovo are not suitable for comic strips.”

”Why not?”

”The reader knows exactly where the cat will land just by looking at the first panel, so there’s no suspense for the next three panels.”

The librarian said nothing and pushed the second piece of artwork in front of Richard.

”The person who drew this lives in Leiden. Star Map Tradition. Also a Major Adept.”

It was a portrait depicting a city councilor.

After taking a couple more looks, Richard noticed that several moles on the councilor’s face connected into lines on their own, forming a small star map.

He slightly opened his Spirit Vision and was able to read from the star map the exact year, day, minute, and second the councilor had been born.

Reading further, Richard read the date the councilor would die, and he hurriedly flipped the portrait over.

”...What happened to this councilor later?”

”He resigned the very day he saw the painting and moved to the countryside to grow tulips. He lived eleven years longer than the date of death calculated on the portrait.”

The third item felt a bit heavy in his hand; it was a copperplate engraving.

The paper of the engraving was warm, almost hot to the touch.

”The person who made this engraving follows the Hearth Fire Tradition, a Minor Adept who specializes in etching copperplates.”

Every line in the drawing was burned into the paper, deeply enough to feel the grooves.

Richard asked, ”How many prints can one copperplate make?”

”One copperplate can only make three prints.”

”What happens if you print a fourth one?”

”When you print the fourth one, the copperplate will melt on its own.”

Then it wouldn’t be a comic strip at all. The librarian realized this himself and silently put the sample back.

The fourth item was a sheet of parchment, bordered with gold leaf.

”This was drawn by a Major Adept of the Solar Tradition. His ancestors specialized in painting for churches and royal courts.”

The painting showed a group of people haggling at a market. A halo floated above everyone’s head, and even the baker who shortchanged his customers looked infinitely kind and benevolent.

The librarian narrated slowly:

”They once accepted a commission to paint a tax collector.

”The tax collector this painter drew looked exactly like a saint.

”After the painting was handed over, the tax collector walked into a church and had his hands kissed by kneeling believers.”

Richard couldn’t hold it back and laughed out loud.

”At the Turin Observatory, there is also a Major Adept...”

”The one in Turin won’t work,” Richard blurted out.

”Why?”

Richard thought for a moment and picked up the first drawing of the cat jumping from the windowsill.

”Sir, these drawings are all very well made.

”When a cat jumps down from a windowsill, the reader should be worried for the cat right until they turn to the fourth panel.

”When a tax collector appears in a drawing, the reader should want to punch him at first glance.

”If a drawing is too precise, the reader will stop to admire how well the lines are drawn.

”There are weekly newspapers for children here in Milan.”

Richard gave an example.

”The content inside is very interesting. The dialogue bubbles above the characters’ heads have all been removed and replaced with two lines of poetry.”

”Isn’t that a good thing for children? They can acquire knowledge while reading the pictorials,” the librarian asked, somewhat puzzled.

”No, to children, it will only feel boring, and as a result, they’ll stop buying the weekly paper.”

Richard shook his head.

”The most important point of a pictorial is to allow people to understand the content directly, to shove the information straight into the reader’s brain. Any superfluous thinking is useless effort.”

”My friends can accomplish this.”

The old gentleman fell silent and put the samples away under the counter.

”Alright, then let your friends give it a try.”

He pulled out a blank card and wrote a line of text on it.

”The drawings do not need to be too refined, but they must let people understand what the characters are doing in them. —L.”

Richard’s words had been archived as a famous quote from the author.

Of course, the person in question did not see this.

”Thank you for the stories. As a reward for letting me read them in advance, you may pick any one book in the library to borrow and take away.”

The Iliad flashed through Richard’s mind instantly—specifically, the fragmented illustrated pages. Da Vinci’s manuscript seemed like a good choice too.

He then remembered a certain unlock condition that was stuck on his panel.

[Speculation Lv.4, Progress 96%.]

[Morphostructuring Unlock Condition: Independently reconstruct the complete operational logic of a lost Spell Formula.]