True Word

The worn beast hide still lay on the desk in the Library.

Its theft was bound to stir up a bloody storm. Well, since Lu PingAn would not be the one bearing it, it did not matter.

He held the beast hide in one hand, drank the freshly delivered milk tea in the other—a wolf-milk specialty—and even gave the attentive "service worker" a small tip.

"Here, take it."

As he spoke, Lu PingAn crossed his legs and gave a little wave.

"...Get lost. When I took your country's national language college entrance exam, you weren't even born yet."

Big Cat glared back at him irritably, but she still came over and sat down.

She took the beast hide and began to study and consult it closely. There was a limit to how much Lu PingAn could decipher on his own in such a short time.

If Big Cat could use her experience to go through it with him and point out certain characteristics and origins, Lu PingAn's efficiency and results would both improve considerably.

The worn beast hide was covered in strange, bloodstained writing. Even though every character carried a great many implied meanings, the "information" it could contain was limited. Its "knowledge," however, might not be.

"This is Van Rot Scale Writing, a native script highly suited for cryptography. The meaning of each individual character is not important. This is a prayer to some high-level existence. What matters is the 'meaning' embedded in it by its writer—or, you could call it contamination."

No matter how hard one scrutinized these few words, there was not much content to them. Yet if they were "decompressed," more "knowledge" could be obtained.

Clearly, this was extremely dangerous work. It could very well draw the attention of the existence behind the Scale Writing.

If