Pact Scroll

Ace returned to Teacher Peter's home as usual. The moment he stepped inside, he saw Romon chatting cheerfully with Peter, the two of them trading compliments.

"My son has finally come back."

Seeing Ace return, Romon opened his arms and pulled him into a fierce bear hug.

"You've grown quite a bit. Once you're an adult, you'll definitely be taller than your old man."

That evening, Ace returned with his father Romon to their home in the First District.

The villa was spotless, neat, and cozy—the result of Marina bringing people over early that morning to clean and tidy it. When Marina saw Ace, she hugged his head and kissed him again and again.

The family listened as Ace recounted his travels over the past half year, while Ace listened to his parents describe the changes in the estate.

Neat stone-paved roads had been built throughout the estate, along with public latrines and septic tanks. The Residential Area had also been completed. The brewery, flour workshop, printing workshop, textile workshop, and ironworks in the Workshop Area were all thriving. An earthen wall had been raised around the outside of the estate, and they planned to reinforce it with stone the following year.

The grain Plantation Area, grape Plantation Area, olive tree Plantation Area, and vegetable Plantation Area outside the city had all expanded by nearly half again. The Livestock Area now had far more cattle, sheep, and horses. The iron mine's excavation had taken shape, and newly discovered coal had already begun to be used.

The estate had also built a small fishing harbor at the river's mouth, where simple fishing boats could be made to head out to sea and fish.

The independent little kingdom Ace had envisioned had begun to take shape. Delighted, he discussed its future development with his parents until midnight, when the family finally went to sleep.

Several days later, Ace finished organizing the four books—New Medicine, Compendium of Medicinal Materials and Prescriptions (Southern Saria), Common Diseases and Difficult Ailments, and Surgery—and successfully replicated the two Soul Runes, Emotion Suppression and Active Thinking.

Woodblock printing was costly, so Ace first had several people hand-copy three sets, keeping one for himself. He entrusted Teacher Peter with one set to deliver to the Grand Regent and seek his support, distributed another at a scholars' gathering for the scholars to read, and gave the final set to Athena.

In the royal palace, within Athena's palace.

"These are the results of my work over the past half year. These four books on New Medicine are for you."

"Aren't you going to introduce these books to me?" Athena replied with a gentle smile.

"Haha, let me introduce them. This New Medicine is the general outline of my medical approach, a book meant to guide one's thinking. Compendium of Medicinal Materials and Prescriptions is an outline of the prescriptions I've collected and improved, as well as medicinal materials I've personally tested and found effective. It contains 458 prescriptions and 1,203 medicinal materials..."

After Ace introduced all the books, Athena kept nodding in agreement. "Ace, you're right. Old medicine is simply useless at treating illnesses. When Father returns, I'll teach him some knowledge of New Medicine and build a huge hospital in Medimoth City. You'll be the director!"

Watching Athena draw a huge circle with both arms, Ace felt an inexplicable warmth in his heart. "I plan to experiment in my own estate first. There are currently over two thousand people there, so it's perfect for setting up a small hospital. Once I've got that little hospital running properly, I'll come to the city-state and establish a big one."

"You actually have an estate? You never told me. That's too sly! I've never even been there. Once I'm an adult, I'm going to visit your estate." Athena's cheeks suddenly puffed up as she spoke in a muffled voice.

"We're good friends. Your Highness is welcome to visit my estate anytime." Ace suddenly stood straight and solemnly performed an invitation-to-dance bow.

Athena's ruby-like eyes instantly curved into little crescents. "Then it's settled!"

The two chatted about this and that for a while longer. Seeing that Athena was in a good mood, Ace took the opportunity to say, "I'm very curious about that mysterious contract artifact from when we first met. Could you lend it to me for a few days so I can examine it?"

"The Pact Scroll? It's with Uncle Arnold. Don't look at me so pitifully. Fine, I can borrow it for you, but you can only examine it in my palace. You can't take it away."

"No problem!" Ace said excitedly. He was a scholar, and Athena also considered him Hero-class, so this was the perfect opportunity to study magical artifacts under the guise of truth mixed with falsehood.

Half an hour later, Athena handed the Pact Scroll to Ace.

"What exactly do you want to examine?" Athena asked curiously.

"I'm a famous scholar of the city-state. While researching medicine, I discovered that many things can gradually be understood for their properties and put to use. Now that I have Hero-class abilities, I've found that my senses have improved tremendously. I want to perceive magical artifacts up close and see whether I can truly understand them, use them, or even make them myself."

Ace spoke with truth and falsehood intertwined. He knew Athena was sincere, and this explanation was more likely to move her.

"Ace, you really have ideas. I know many powerful heroes, but not a single one has ever thought about such questions. I have plenty of magical artifacts here as well. If you don't mind, you can study them all together."

Ace felt as though a huge pie had fallen from the sky and struck him squarely on the head. Study them—he absolutely had to study them.

But research did not go as smoothly as one might hope. The Pact Scroll's complexity exceeded Ace's imagination. Its extraordinarily complex three-dimensional Soul Rune structure was beyond his ability to parse by more than half; he could only analyze a small portion of it.

Every day, Ace went to the royal palace to study magical artifacts during the day and meditated at night. He set aside one day each week to answer Daina's questions.

Nearly a month passed like this, and Ace finally analyzed more than a dozen new Soul Runes.

The rune structures of many magical artifacts were three-dimensional and exceptionally complex. They possessed an extremely strong magic-gathering effect, making them impossible to fully perceive and thus impossible to fully analyze.

If magical artifacts were described in terms of mysteriousness, then the Blessing Light Orb possessed the highest degree of mystery and could not be analyzed at all. The Pact Scroll and similar artifacts came next, with only small portions that could be analyzed. The Hallucinatory Eye came after that and could be completely analyzed.

Three-dimensional rune structures like that of the Hallucinatory Eye were merely the lowest tier among three-dimensional rune structures—the minimum threshold for intermediate Demonic Beasts or heroes. Above that, there should have been more detailed classifications, but limited by his strength, Ace had no way of knowing.

"Princess Athena, after a month of research, I've gained a great deal. I can sense the mysterious and complex patterns inside magical artifacts, but I still can't understand what they mean. I think that if one day we can understand their meaning and consciously create them, then we'll be able to make magical artifacts."

Ace had researched for a month, so it would not do to claim he had achieved nothing. Thus, he spoke with truth and falsehood mixed together.

"I've also heard that some heroes with exceptionally strong perception have discovered these mysterious patterns. There are even special structures inside the patterns themselves. But these naturally formed mysterious patterns are simply too mysterious for us to understand. Attempts to copy them have basically all failed."

Athena did not have especially high expectations for this. She believed she understood the extraordinary world more deeply than Ace did. Although she thought highly of his potential for research, she did not believe Ace could understand in a month what other heroes had failed to understand in an entire lifetime.

Ace revealed a standard smile. Mathematics in this world had developed far too slowly. Without basic knowledge such as coordinate systems, vectors, the basic axioms of plane geometry, extracting roots among real numbers, pi, and the like, it was nearly impossible to successfully analyze Soul Runes and the Magic Elements that composed them.

Not to mention that some complex Magic Element Compositions required calculus. For heroes, that was basically an impossible height to reach.

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