Inside Roland's residence, in a corner of the southern corridor on the fourth floor of the Orvisto Wizard Tower.
After using the Scholar's Happy Stick once again, Roland let out a long sigh. He slipped out of that heightened mental state, which felt something like flow, and immediately sensed faint pangs of hunger.
That was his brain warning him to replenish its energy.
"Bad call. Looks like even with the Scholar's Happy Stick, I still need to balance work and rest."
Good self-discipline was essential to becoming an excellent mage, so he took a sip of the Magic Brew his teacher had given him and went online to chat.
Ding! Rich and Generous has sent you a new email...
"Little fellow, I never thought you were that sort of person. Oh, fine. I'll make a special exception and indulge you. Nobody else ever gets this chance, you know..."
Attached to the email was a high-resolution photograph.
A woman had lifted her clothes to reveal the definition of her abs.
Gulp! Cough... cough, cough...
Roland nearly sprayed the Magic Brew out of his mouth. He hurriedly swallowed, then broke into a coughing fit.
Heaven knows, I was only running my mouth and flirting a little earlier...
Who knew she'd actually deliver? Ask for a pretty picture, and she really sends one!
To be fair, her abs were not particularly defined. She was not the youthful, athletic type.
But she had a voluptuous, mature beauty. Beneath the magical lighting, her snowy skin took on a classical grace worthy of a world-famous painting, making her all the more alluring.
It even gave the photograph something of the feel of an oil painting.
"Tower Spirit, download and save that!"
Although Roland had seen countless pictures online, mature women with such an elegant, aristocratic allure were still a rare sight.
After fiddling with the controls, he pushed his luck. "Could you..."
"It won't be that easy, you know. Unless... you come visit me once you become a Full Mage!"
Well, there it is. The dagger's finally out from under the map!
Roland had long had a vague suspicion that this woman had an ulterior motive for flirting with him. Sure enough, he had been right.
"Maybe another day, maybe another day."
He hurriedly laughed it off and dodged the subject.
He certainly did not want a banner hanging from the top of the Orvisto Wizard Tower one day.
Someone from this tower flirted online and got his kidneys stolen.
After logging off, Roland headed to the teaching area on the seventh floor as usual to spend some time in the library.
There were, in fact, some intermediate-level and higher mages giving lectures on this floor.
But they were either recording courses or answering specialized questions from various Mage Towers, helping people resolve their problems.
There was no step-by-step instruction here, and the tower's mages could hardly keep repeating the basics over and over, wasting their time and energy.
So he did not attend those lectures. Instead, he continued studying on his own to strengthen his foundations.
He only went to listen at a fixed time each week, when an instructor happened to hold a class on Ancient Elvish.
At noon, Roland went back to eat, rested for a while, then returned to Laboratory 8003.
After greeting the senior students already busy there, he entered the inner room and found that a servant had delivered today's newspapers to the laboratory. He sat down, casually picked up the Arcana Communications Journal from the top of the pile, and began reading.
To his surprise, he discovered that he had made the headlines.
"An article by guest commentator Oksaya."
"Hello, everyone. I am Oksaya, guest commentator for the Arcana Communications Journal. Today, let us take a closer look at a newly published article titled 'A New Practical Script-A Study of Oracle-Bone Characters.'
Those of you who follow news in the arcane community have likely already heard that this paper comes from a young mage named Roland. No, in fact, he cannot even be called a true mage just yet!
Astonishingly, as a mere Apprentice Mage, he has achieved an incredible breakthrough in the study of character creation within Philology. Let us offer him our sincere congratulations!
This study of Oracle-Bone Characters employs a Fictionalist approach that simulates the development of actual history and culture. From the perspective of ancient peoples, it provides a complete, systematic account of the origins, gestation, development, and maturation of a new writing system.
With astonishing ingenuity, it abstracts and simplifies two-dimensional pictures for use as character roots. Across characters, words, phrases, and sentences, whether content words or function words, monosyllabic words occupy a central position in nearly all commonly used vocabulary.
Its variations in tense, word class, number, and grammatical gender differ greatly from those of the many languages familiar to us. It displays the typical traits of an analytic language, with unique and fascinating rules of word formation.
Particularly commendable is the remarkably high efficiency with which these square characters convey information. Their information density, recognition efficiency, and recognition speed are rare among the scripts developed over the years.
However...
I must introduce a 'however' here!
After reading this paper carefully, I discovered that it also has several obvious flaws.
First, the writing system it constructs has muddled grammar. Some inexplicable rules adopted merely for the sake of novelty create confusion in word class, person, and tense. Its meanings are often abstract, making it less than rigorous or reliable.
In other words, this is a language without logic or grammar. How should I put it? Truly a masterpiece befitting an Apprentice Mage-the imaginings of a child genius?
Second, the author was overly hasty in writing the paper and failed to give adequate consideration to various factors, such as specialized terminology in certain fields of magic and the corresponding principles of magical construction.
This is genuinely surprising in today's Magic Network era. The author seems to have become trapped in a narrow fixation, simulating ancient peoples purely for the sake of simulation while entirely ignoring the principles of magical construction. This inevitably casts doubt on the prospects of adapting this script for magic.
Beyond that, it lacks the information encoding and other conditions essential to casting spells through the Magic Network.
Several friends who had the good fortune to read it early and I agree that, in terms of information encoding, these square characters can hardly compare with the alphabetic scripts we commonly use.
Must we really expend several thousand distinct runes to encode them individually and enter them into the Magic Network? When using the Copying Spell to transcribe related text, must we also compile thousands upon thousands of characters and phrases in advance?
This underlying design logic, built around individual characters, exposes the disorder in the author's thinking. The blending of sound, form, and meaning creates confusion among polysemous words, near-synonyms, and synonyms, which will become a major flaw when casting spells...
Nevertheless, this paper still possesses a certain degree of arcane significance. It offers a new perspective on the problem and provides a reference for subsequent studies of writing systems. Perhaps, with its encouragement, we will gradually invent ideographic scripts derived through the progressive simplification of pictographs.
We should assess its strengths and shortcomings objectively and fairly. We also hope that the author, as an Apprentice Mage, will devote himself to his studies rather than chase quick success..."
At this point, Roland could not help spitting in disgust.
"What is wrong with this guy? It's just a review. Why does he have to be so snide?"
For this chapter, I chose to include the full commentary article, roughly a thousand Chinese characters long, rather than give a few lines and gloss over the rest with an ellipsis.
Given readers' habits these days, some may find it too long and not want to read it. That would awkwardly turn all this effort into a thankless task.
That is why I deliberately added a little sweetness in the first half of the chapter, so it would not be dull overall. I also tried to make the commentary itself as substantive as possible.
Some of you may think this chapter is great, while others may dislike it. Feel free to leave some feedback so I have something to go on.
While I'm at it, please send some votes and tips my way.
Before you continue