A Chance

Under the shocked gazes of his grandfather and his teacher Anderson, Kraft took out the badge, the black robe of the Medical School, and the book gifted by the professor, pushing them all onto the tabletop.

He felt this was difficult to explain as well, so he decided to let the physical evidence do the talking.

Ryan stood to the side without a word. He didn't believe Kraft's story about "reading a certain book from his grandfather's collection" for a second, but he didn't want to make things difficult for Kraft either. Having started the conversation, he simply stayed silent and let Kraft handle the rest.

"In short, after I treated a student from the Law School next door, their Professor Calman might have overestimated my abilities and invited me to become a lecturer at the Medical School."

As everyone knows, when a situation is absurd enough and already a done deal, and there are points of contention everywhere, it actually leaves people at a loss as to where to begin questioning it. Old Wood was already stunned by the possibility that his grandson might be a genius; he only knew that a lecturer at Wenden Port Academy was considered a high-level intellectual, but he couldn't distinguish the specific level of expertise involved.

Just as he knew Anderson was a lecturer at the Literature School, but that was limited to knowing Anderson could read and write fluently and had a flashy, elegant handwriting. As for the details of subjects like poetry or history, Old Wood knew absolutely nothing.

Fortunately, Anderson still grasped the main point: "You can also practice medicine?"

He understood his student's level quite well. Of the credit for his fluent reading and writing, he claimed three parts, while the remaining seven were entirely due to Old Wood's stick-based education. To say he had taught himself, well, even the fish in the mountain streams would laugh until they flipped over.

"Ah, yes, it was from that batch of scraps Grandfather bought at a low price last year. I pulled out a stack that was barely bound into a volume and took a look." Kraft's gaze wandered, and he scratched his head to hide his embarrassment.

"How come I didn't know about this? Bring it out and show your teacher." Old Wood did indeed like buying such things, or rather, the minor nobles of this era all had this habit to some extent.

Whether it was to decorate their bookshelves to save face, or because they were occult enthusiasts like Old Wood, they were all loyal customers of this market.

Complete, revised books were simply too expensive, but scattered papers collected through various channels were a different story. These papers might have been books that lacked maintenance for various reasons, or perhaps they were just casual practice writings; the content was incredibly diverse.

There were stories, novels, scholar's notes, poetry albums, and things akin to a medieval version of "I Love Inventions." Once scattered, they were disjointed and lacked beginnings or ends—to say they were mere wrecks of books that had lost their original value would be an understatement.

Those looking to save face would buy them to rebind casually and place them on shelves so they wouldn't be exposed if taken down; meanwhile, occult enthusiasts with limited funds would pan for gold in them, searching for the legacies of predecessors that might be mixed in.

Aside from the occasional serious old book, the bulk of what Old Wood bought and studied with Anderson were these scattered "books." Because they didn't hold much hope and it was purely a hobby, they didn't keep a close watch on these items.

"I don't know. I originally thought they were useless, and later I couldn't find them." Kraft was determined to leave no evidence, but seeing the slightly fiery glares from his grandfather and teacher Anderson, he cowered a bit. "But I did memorize them."

"You memorized them?" Anderson, like Ryan, felt his intelligence had been insulted.

"Yes, I memorized all of it." Given Kraft's current state, combining a random segment of his old textbooks with current monographs was a matter of a single thought. He immediately took the content of his lectures and proceeded to instill everything from anatomy to pathology into Anderson.

Joy, pure joy! As the saying goes, returning home without showing off one's success is like wearing fine silk in the dark. In this world, Kraft had never once recited anything fluently in front of Anderson, and today, he finally got to enjoy the thrill of using his "superpower" in front of his teacher and family.

The ten-minute explanation, ranging from the production of Yellow Fluid in the liver to its concentration and storage in the gallbladder, and then to the relationship between jaundice and liver disease, never faltered. It left Anderson, who came from the Literature School, feeling dizzy and confused, beginning to doubt if there was a problem with his own teaching standards, to the point that he had wasted such a talent over years of education.

When Kraft stopped, still feeling like he had more to say, everyone present had been thoroughly convinced that the Wood Family had produced a medical genius.

"Good! I have no objections. Kraft, hurry back to the Medical School and take up your post." The happiest of all was Old Wood, not just because the family's status had suddenly been elevated, but because he saw that his years of correcting Kraft's path had been remarkably effective.

Once Kraft took over the family, he shouldn't be the type to get a hot head and lead a group of people to the battlefield to seek glory. He could use the Academy to build a network of relationships with the city's great nobles and merchants, allowing the family to develop within the city; this was the best path Old Wood could imagine with his vision.

He was a noble who had fought his way up on the battlefield, but he hadn't tied his vision to the battlefield. His son's death had only confirmed this for him. Such instability was not what Old Wood wanted.

"Really? There's no need to be that rushed, is there? I still want to rest in the castle for a while longer." Kraft wasn't as anxious as his grandfather; he felt he needed some time to be quiet and properly sort out everything that had happened recently.

"That's true. I know the Academy; it's not a matter of a single moment." Anderson picked up the badge to examine it before placing it back on the folded black robe. "It just so happens that I'll write a few letters to some lecturers I used to be close with. Remember to get familiar with them when you arrive at the Academy."

In the following days, Kraft, who had been rushing about on his journey, finally got a chance to rest.

Every morning, he would rise early to pick up the double-handed sword "windmill" technique with Ryan in the castle courtyard, enjoy vegetable soup thickened with milk and ham, and read the professor's Humoral Theory and Human Anatomy in detail.

Beyond the wonderful life of tempering his physique and civilizing his mind, Kraft set aside large chunks of time to lie on the grassy slope of the hillside and think.

Once he calmed down, he finally had the opportunity to ponder everything that had happened recently.

The inexplicable transmigration, the fusion of souls, the indescribable thing in the darkness, the "gift" it left him—a consciousness that had broken through its limits—and the "price" hidden in the deepest depths that he couldn't comprehend.

No, it couldn't be called a "price." He vaguely felt that it was the true "gift."

His situation was like the prisoner in the cave described by Plato in the Republic. He had been trapped his whole life in a cave where he couldn't see the outside world, occasionally having sunlight shine in and project the shadows of objects onto the cave wall.

The prisoner had only ever seen the shadows of objects, so he believed that was the essence of things, the reality of the world.

However, one day, he, the prisoner, was briefly dragged into the outside world for unknown reasons. He saw sights he had never seen in his life—dazzling light, rich colors flowing across the ground and sky, plants, animals, and rocks presented in three-dimensional forms he had never heard of or seen before. His brain, which had only ever known the flat shadows on the rock wall, was completely unable to explain any of it.

Unfortunately, yet fortunately, after this brief moment, the poor man fell back into the cave he was familiar with, carrying a rose that had snagged onto him.

He thought the shadow this rose cast on the cave wall was his precious souvenir, yet he feared the rose itself, simply because he couldn't understand three-dimensional objects at all. Let alone picking it up, even attempting to touch it would leave him bleeding from the thorns.

He would likely never understand what it was, nor would he know if he should try to touch that "reality."

However, he knew that with a mortal's mind, that bonus—his liberated consciousness—was already precious enough. It allowed him to scour every corner of his memory and endowed him with powerful thinking capabilities.

He could use this to become a decent lecturer, an excellent family heir, a very good doctor, a future professor, and a disseminator of knowledge.

At the very least, he currently had a good opportunity to become the person both souls were willing to be.