I Loaded the Mysticism Panel

Copying by hand had its limits.

Fortunately, the physical improvements from having three "Body" Skills active at once had started to show over the past few days.

Deeper sleep had elevated his brain’s daytime performance, the most direct manifestation being his memory.

The memory enhancement provided by Scholarship, combined with the improved blood flow to his brain from his better physical condition, created a significant cumulative effect.

He would memorize what he couldn’t copy, jotting down keywords in his notebook to reconstruct and organize everything later when he returned to Brighton.

When his wrist began to ache from writing, he lifted his head and glanced out the window.

The sun had passed its zenith and shifted considerably to the west.

It was probably a little past one in the afternoon.

He put down his pen, rubbed his wrist, and walked to the window to rest his eyes.

Outside, two old men were sitting on a bench playing chess, taking a long time with each move.

Two cups of tea sat beside the chessboard, the steam long gone, but neither man reached for them.

As he turned back from the window, he noticed someone new in the reading area on the first floor.

The person was sitting near a south-facing window with a porcelain cup and a plate of biscuits in front of them.

The signs in the library clearly stated, "No Food or Drink."

The old lady at the librarian’s counter glanced at the person, frowned, but said nothing.

Richard recognized the man’s profile.

Philips, the one from Harrow School, fourth place in the Cicero Cup.

Also, the one who could always get his hands on some tea.

He was currently leaning back into a plush leather sofa, holding a teacup in his right hand and flipping through a book with his left, looking as relaxed as if he were in his own living room.

In contrast, Richard had been hunched over on the second floor all morning, his cuffs smudged with pencil dust and his hair likely a mess.

If someone were to see the two of them at the entrance, they would probably think one was an ascetic scholar and the other a gentleman on vacation.

Which, in fact, was the truth.

Richard returned to the second floor and continued his work.

After another two hours of copying, his notebook was more than half full.

As he got up to swap books at the shelf, he ran into Philips heading up the stairs at the landing.

Richard stepped aside to let him pass.

Philips paused on the stairs, recognizing him.

"Williams?"

There was a hint of surprise in his voice, but not much, as if it wouldn’t be too strange to run into anyone anywhere.

"Philips." Richard nodded.

"You came here to read too?"

"Yes."

Philips glanced at the worn-out old book in his hand, then at the pencil smudges on his cuffs.

"You’ve... been here since this morning?"

"Since a little after seven."

Philips looked down at his pocket watch.

"It’s three-thirty now."

"Yes."

The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, like a cat watching another cat dig in the dirt in the rain, not understanding why it would work so hard.

"Have you had lunch?"

"Forgot."

This time, Philips’s smile was more noticeable.

"There’s hot water on the first floor, and you can borrow a cup from the old lady at the counter. I brought the biscuits myself, if you don’t mind..."

"Thanks, no need."

"Alright, then."

Philips continued up the stairs with his teacup, his steps slow and nearly silent.

Richard could tell from his demeanor that Philips probably wasn’t there to search for hidden passages or encrypted inscriptions.

Someone who brought tea and biscuits to a library to leisurely flip through a book and someone who toiled from dawn till dusk, hands covered in pencil dust, were on completely different wavelengths.

Still, Richard was genuinely curious about what Philips was reading.

...

Another hour or so passed.

Richard finished copying the key passages and closed his notebook.

His wrist was just too sore. If he kept writing, his handwriting would become illegible, making it hard to decipher later.

He stood up and stretched, his joints popping a few times.

At the far end of a row of bookshelves, Philips was leaning against a windowsill.

His teacup rested on the sill, a book open on his lap, his posture almost unchanged from an hour ago.

As Richard walked past, he couldn’t help but glance at the contents of the book.

It was Latin, arranged in verse, the left margin of each line uneven—the rhythmic line breaks of hexameter.

Virgil’s *The Aeneid*—the same Ancient Roman epic Montague had quoted at the Cicero Cup.

Philips must have noticed his gaze, as he looked up.

"You recognize it?"

"It’s by Virgil. Of course I’ve read it," Richard said.

"Mm." Philips slid his thumb across the page.

"The part Montague recited on stage was really just the most superficial layer."

He flipped back several dozen pages and pointed to a passage.

"The most brilliant part of *The Aeneid* isn’t the line, ’to spare the conquered and war down the proud’."

"Then where is it?" Richard asked.

Philips turned to Book Six. "Have you read Book Six?"

"I’ve read the entire thing."

"Then you should remember that Aeneas meets his father, Anchises, in the Netherworld."

"Yes, Anchises waits for him in the blessed fields of the Netherworld."

"Correct." Philips picked up the teacup from the windowsill and took a sip.

There was no steam rising from the tea; it had likely been cold for a long time, but his expression didn’t change as he drank.

"Before Aeneas descended into the Netherworld, the priestess Sibyl said something to him."

Philips didn’t flip to the page, reciting it from memory:

"The descent to the Netherworld is easy; the gate of the Netherworld stands open day and night."

His Latin pronunciation was slightly more relaxed than it had been during the Cicero Cup, closer to a conversational rhythm.

Richard raised an eyebrow and finished the quote:

"But to return to the Mortal World, that is the true difficulty, that is the real trial."

"Easy to go down, hard to come back up." Philips nodded, closing the book and resting it on his lap.

"I’ve always felt that this is the true core of the entire epic."

On the lawn outside, the two old men still hadn’t finished their game of chess.

"That line Montague quoted, ’to spare the conquered and war down the proud,’ was what Anchises told Aeneas in the Netherworld when describing Rome’s future mission."

"Empire, conquest, glory—a very grand narrative."

He paused.

"But before all that, Aeneas had to descend into the Netherworld.

And even before that, he lost Troy, he lost his father, he lost the woman he loved."

"Only after experiencing all of that did he earn the right to hear his father speak those words about the future in the Netherworld."

Philips stroked the spine of the book with his thumb, as if caressing a worn but beloved object he couldn’t bear to part with.

"Most people who read *The Aeneid* only remember the glorious prophecies that come later."

"But those prophecies aren’t what made Aeneas into Aeneas."

Richard leaned against the bookshelf, his hands in his pockets.

As Philips spoke, his expression was completely different from when he had given his speech at the Cicero Cup.

During the competition, Philips had been like a cup of perfectly temperate tea—not too hot, not too cold, and leaving no impression after you drank it.

But now, Philips had put his cup down. He was no longer concerned with temperature or taste, and he was saying what he truly wanted to say.