"This..."
A look of astonishment crossed Roland's face.
Only after a long while did he confirm that this was indeed a peculiar achievement with magical significance.
"Even dross has its uses. The trash in a culture's heritage is wonderful stuff, as long as you aren't the one consuming it..."
In an instant, he realized that he had drawn the connection and grasped the meaning contained within this art!
But when he looked into the origins of this ugly script and discovered that it was a "new achievement" produced by the Orthodox School, his expression turned peculiar.
A short while later, in the library.
Bright lights shone on the spotless floor, casting a gemlike glow. Rows of bookshelves rose several stories high, each like an enormous monument.
Several figures stood chatting in front of the service desk beneath one of the bookshelves.
They were Roland, Skord, Yvonne, and the others who had come there.
"Wh-what are these things?"
Skord was also startled when he first saw the ugly script.
The ugly script Gallo had cobbled together completely destroyed the structural forms of Seris characters. It looked like letters...
No, it looked like pictures assembled from earthworms or dogs' paw prints.
"Hideous, isn't it? Even the handwritten notes Cuihua left during her kidnappings weren't this outrageous!"
Roland laughed as he mocked it.
"The Orthodox crowd came up with this."
"Huh?" Skord clicked his tongue in disbelief.
Yvonne adjusted her glasses and cautioned, "Don't let your guard down. Just like the Ous alphabet phonetic-symbol scheme, this is a foreign intrusion deliberately intended to erode our school's foundations."
Roland said, "You're right. From a linguistic perspective, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions are extremely susceptible to foreign cultural influence. Even Atrelin contains many words from other worlds.
"But as long as a language's foundations are