Surrounded by Beautiful Girls

"It's not a note. It's study material," Richard corrected him.

"Study material?" Mason put a piece of potato in his mouth. "How many words have you two exchanged? In total?"

"Before today, probably... fewer than ten."

"You've exchanged fewer than ten words, and she copied out study material for you?"

"It means she's helpful."

Mason rolled his eyes and turned to Warren. "Do you believe him?"

Warren cut his steak into small pieces and said leisurely, "I choose to believe Williams."

"But you believe that a girl might have a crush on him, too." Warren speared a piece of meat and put it in his mouth. "Those two things aren't mutually exclusive."

Gray ate quietly beside them. Her fork scraped lightly against her plate.

"What are you talking about?" Her tone was no different from usual.

"The painful life of Williams, surrounded by beautiful girls," Mason said with a grin.

"Oh." Gray replied coolly, cutting into her steak with a little more force than before.

Hugh sat on Richard's other side and hadn't joined the discussion at all.

He stuffed a piece of bread into his mouth, brushed the crumbs off his clothes, and said softly,

"Richard, you really are one of a kind."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"A month ago, you were practically invisible in class. Now you're at the center of all the gossip. Did we skip a few chapters?"

"You should be happy. Now that I'm famous, you'll benefit from my fame, too."

"How am I benefiting? No beautiful girls are giving me notes."

"Maybe they will."

"Don't try to comfort me." Hugh drained his hot tea in one gulp, with the reckless bravado of someone who had given up hope.

At the other end of the dining hall, Lillian sat in her usual seat by the window.

Her meal was still the standard fare of thin soup and bread. She ate with her head lowered, never looking toward the tables in the middle.

But the girl's ears were perked up.

Mason hadn't done a very good job of keeping his voice down when he'd said, "surrounded by beautiful girls."

Lillian set her spoon down by the edge of her bowl, her lips pressed tightly together.

The note she'd given him was study material. Her intentions had been perfectly simple.

Mr. West's advice on the day of the trial lecture had been right. She'd happened to find a relevant passage in her references, so she'd thought she'd pass it along to a classmate.

After all, Richard was taking part in the Cicero Cup. It was only right for her to help.

That was all.

That was all it was.

She stirred the soup in her bowl vigorously. This time, it was still hot.

The days went by, one after another.

He went to class during the day, tutored at lunch, and spent whatever free time he had in the library.

At night, he did his homework and deciphered new books. Before bed, he practiced the Breathing Technique for fifteen minutes.

The numbers on his panel were the most faithful measure of his progress.

[Breathing] Lv.2 Experience: 40/500

[Scholarship] Lv.1 Experience: 199/200

His Breathing Technique was steadily advancing thanks to the practice bonus, and Scholarship was nearly at its ceiling.

During geography class on Friday morning, Richard sat in the classroom listening to the teacher explain the ocean currents along the eastern coast of the Albion Empire.

He could now run two mental processes at once with ease:

One followed the teacher's lecture, automatically mapping the names and directions of the currents onto the coastline map he'd memorized earlier;

The other quietly processed, in the background, the contents of another text he'd decoded the night before.

That book discussed the classification of mineral mediums. It had no direct connection to the Breathing Technique, but it helped him understand how supernatural objects were sealed.

The circle inside a triangle on the base of the Sphinx Oil Lamp, with short lines extending from the triangle's sides, closely matched a standard sealing symbol described in the book.

Knowledge built bridges between ideas in his mind, and the bridges kept growing wider.

The panel updated.

[Scholarship] Lv.2 Experience: 0/500

The change was quieter than when his Breathing Technique had leveled up.

There was no warmth, no trembling in his chest.

But when Scholarship reached Lv.2, he felt as if someone had adjusted the contrast in his brain.

The names of the ocean currents the teacher wrote on the blackboard seemed clearer, and he could process information faster.

Whenever a concept came in, related knowledge from the past automatically surfaced and fell into place, with the connections between old and new highlighted.

If Lv.1 was like upgrading a dial-up search engine to broadband, Lv.2 was like upgrading broadband to fiber-optic.

He could absorb basic knowledge in multiple languages and fields of study even faster.

His comprehension had improved, too. It still wasn't as effective as Reasoning, but at least he wouldn't hit a wall so quickly when tackling something difficult.

The most immediate benefit was that he'd be able to decipher coded texts faster.

What had taken him three days before could now be done in a single night.

When the bell rang, Richard closed his textbook, already planning what he'd do that evening.

That night, after the whole family had gone to bed, Richard switched on his desk lamp and got to work.

As usual, he left the window open a crack. The cold air slipped in, lifting the corners of the papers on his desk.

Another book he'd taken from the third-floor bookshelf lay open in front of him.

It was the third candidate he'd picked out. He hadn't had time to examine it closely before.

With Mr. Holland's From Temple to Podium as a reference, the experience and knowledge he'd gained from his first two attempts, and the boost from Scholarship Lv.2, he made much faster progress this time.

He'd already gotten the hang of the substitution patterns for religious terms, and the path to tracing a word's origins had grown shorter and shorter.

In the past, he'd needed to spend ages looking up an obscure root in an etymological handbook. Now he could summon it straight from memory.

Two hours later, he'd completely restored the coded passage in the book's appendix.

It contained supplementary information on the Breathing Technique, including answers to several common questions and tips for advanced practice.

One passage caught his attention:

"When a practitioner can consistently sense warmth in the chest while holding their breath, and the warmth lasts longer than the breath-hold itself—that is, it remains during exhalation—

"it means that Aether retention has begun to form a stable micro-circulation. This is the first milestone of the Initiate Breathing Technique."

He thought back to his practice over the past few days.

The warmth in his chest had grown more noticeable with every session, but it still didn't last through the exhalation.

He was still some way from the first milestone, but at least he was heading in the right direction.

Richard folded the translation, locked it in a drawer, and switched off the desk lamp.

He lay in bed for a while, then completed one final set of Breathing Technique exercises. The number jumped up a little.

[Breathing] Lv.2 Experience: 49/500

Lv.3 was getting closer.

On Saturday morning, Richard went out alone.

His excuse was the same as last time: he was going for a walk and looking around.

Evelyn didn't come with him this time. She had to help their mother with the housework.

Before he left, she stopped him on the stairs and reminded him, "Don't touch that old lamp again!"

"I know."

"And don't ride in someone else's car again!"

"...I know."

The wooden sign for Clement Antiques still hung in the same place, down the little alley at the corner of Grafton Street.

There was a splatter of bird droppings on the copper teapot painted on it, probably left by one of the pigeons nearby.

The bell above the door gave a clear chime when he went in. The old man looked up from behind the counter.

When he saw Richard, he said, "Oh," then lowered his head again.

"The lamp's still here."

"I know. I just came to look."

"You can look, but don't touch anything."

Richard went straight to the Sphinx Oil Lamp.

It was still on the shelf, in the same place, and the patina on its surface hadn't changed.

He took the lamp down and sat on a chair beside it.

The panel updated.

[Available Points: 0.11]

He began cupping the lamp in both hands and waited for the number to rise.

0.12... 0.13... The rate was even slower than last time.

Before, it had gone up by around 0.01 per minute. Now, it had taken three minutes to rise by 0.01.

Richard shifted position, resting the lamp on his knees and covering its wings with his palms—the area with the densest patch of dark red patina.

0.14... The wait dragged on again.

Five minutes passed before the number crept up to 0.15.

At this rate, even if he sat here all day, he wouldn't absorb 0.5.

Worse, this was an antiques shop, not his living room.

The old man poked his head out from behind the counter again.

He looked at Richard sitting in the corner with the lamp held tight in both hands, as if he were performing CPR on a copper cat.

"Young man."

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing?"

"Feeling the inscriptions," Richard lied without batting an eye.

"You don't need to hold it to feel the inscriptions." The old man was getting impatient. "Your palms will sweat, and the sweat will speed up the corrosion. The patina on the lamp's wings is already unstable."

"Sorry."

Richard put the lamp back on the shelf.

0.15. He'd only absorbed 0.15.

He did the math in his head.

At the current rate, it would take more than ten visits, each lasting several hours, to absorb everything inside the lamp.

...If he kept handling it like this, he'd polish the thing until it gleamed.

Even setting aside whether the old man would kick him out, the time investment alone wasn't worth it.

He decided to try a different approach.

"Mr. Clement, do you have any other items from the Eastern Continent?"