Chatper 14: Reading in the archive
“Lady Mila, welcome.” Taranese turned my way.
She was talking with Shickehr at the service desk as my classmates and I entered the library.
I smiled in response and joined them.
“What’s with the bag?” Shickehr wondered. “You have brought it multiple times now.”
There goes my stealthy approach.
I had been bringing the parts to the nearby archive over multiple days to make it inconspicuous. Quick in and out. Marianne and Natalie had been moving them downstairs on their own. It should have brought less attention than one big relocation involving a herd of people. And yet, here we were. Someone still noticed.
“I work on a certain research in the archive.” I smiled nonchalantly.
“I am really in awe of your dedication,” Taranese remarked. “I don’t think I have ever heard about any students working on their research during their first year.”
“At this point, I’m merely trying to access the reading material.” I sighed vexed.
“I presume it’s still easier for you in the back archive. Getting proper study guides is quite a challenge.” Taranese glanced at the fully filled carrels. She was actually borrowing her books, so she didn’t have to deal with disgruntled students. “I understand why your duchy invests so much into transcription.”
“Yeah, when it comes to the most common materials, next year there will be much less demand from Ehrenfest. I hope it eases the tensions a bit.” I smiled.
There were still thousands of books and scrolls, so definitely no end in sight for us, but we would at least not clash with others over the most sought study guides.
“The students are nervous because of the approaching end of winter; they will be tense regardless,” Shickehr remarked, crushing my hopes in the process.
“Right, you took Lady Mila up on her offer with transcribing. You must have dealt with the issue as well.” Taranese nodded with a serious voice.
Shickehr’s smile grew tense. It seemed like he wanted to protest against her words. Well, I had been approached mostly by struggling students from the lower-ranked duchies. Taking the crest work from Ehrenfest was kind of a sign of being poor.
“I was already tasked with transcribing material for a classmate from my duchy.” Shickehr shook his head.
“Indeed, we cooperated so that various transcription efforts wouldn’t end up in conflict. And Lord Shickehr has quite readable letters, which I found valuable,” I tried to support him.
As we kept discussing the available study materials, I was able to make use of my past study efforts and recommend a couple of books on magic circles for Taranese. She had mentioned her interest in those. It was actually quite fun to act as an authority on the subject.
Once Natalie showed up, I excused myself and headed to the archive behind the service desk. She took my bag with the last shipment and descended to the underground hall. Marianne showed up soon after us and helped me cross the first barrier. It was time to put the things together.
“This still feels so silly,” Marianne remarked as we were connecting all the tubes into one big line.
“Well, next year, we can ask Lady Rozemyne to dye us another bag. Her mana should bring us comfortably inside.” I shrugged.
“You want to ask an archduke candidate to hold hands with us during every visit?” Marianne grimaced at my suggestion. “While being clothed in a bag?”
“Then back to the long stick.” I smirked.
We connected all the pieces, attached the grabbing tool on one end, and stretched the thread that moved its jaw.
“Now what? The three of us will hold it?” Natalie grimaced at the setup.
“Of course not.” I chuckled.
That would have been indeed silly.
I placed my highbeast on the floor, and expanded it underneath our makeshift pole. Soon, the highbeast wrapped around the pole and lifted it up with its growth. Once the pole was roughly at my knees, I began moving around the highbeast, shaping it into the machine I needed.
Firstly, I wanted to add a protrusion in the back of the highbeast. If a tube was pushed against the protrusion, its path would get altered, causing a rotation by ninety degrees. The hook would lose the support the next tube provided underneath, and the rotated tube would just fell down. Only hanging on the hook.
This way, as the whole pole got pushed bit by bit towards the protrusion, it would neatly flop, one tube at a time.
I began sculpting the protrusion, curving it to the side so it would turn all tubes right behind the shumil. Until suddenly, all the tubes behind the highbeast collapsed on the floor, hanging only on their hooks.
This way, no one behind the shumil gets accidentally hit. I nodded to myself.
A long stick forwards while reaching a tablet, was also a long stick backwards while retrieving a tablet, so it was better to avoid that.
Next, I added a big horizontal gear beside the protrusion, intended to reel the tubes back and forth. In one direction, a long firm pole would move towards the shelves behind the barrier; in reverse, it would move the pole back from the shelves and towards the protrusion, where it would get rotated and fracture into the tubes that only hung on their hooks.
This is where Estelle would come in and power it. I pressed my lips.
“Lady Natalie, if you may, could you produce your highbeast?”
“Do you expect me to shape my highbeast like you?” She was taken aback.
“Not at all. I only need you to pull a rope.” While saying that, I stretched the first rope out of the gear on my shumil’s butt towards the other side of the room, and ended it with a loop.
Natalie seemed a bit shocked by me just pulling a rope out of my highbeast, but she did produce hers as well.
I produced a second rope, which was already rolled up around the gear so I only needed to uncoil it a bit. This one also ended with a loop, which I then threw around Natalie’s highbeast’s head.
It was simple. When Natalie moved forward and pulled her rope, the gear would turn, reeling the pole forward. It would also roll up the second rope on the gear. Then she would return, the loop from the second rope would be attached to her highbeast, and she could move in the opposite direction. Turning the gear in reverse, retreating the pole, with our new shiny tablet.
“Apologies for the crude design. You will have to move back and forth, from one side of the room to the other, always pulling one of these ropes. All just to turn this wheel. But I need my highbeast as simple as possible to keep the strain on me at a minimum.”
Honestly, I would have loved to make just a lever, like when Estelle powered my saw, but we were kind of restricted by space. Natalie’s highbeast had wings, so it was for the best for her to just move back and forth in a straight line.
“This is simple?” Natalie grimaced.
Definitely simpler than a lathe or wagon with a circular saw. I shrugged.
With my new power source secured, I focused on the grabbing tool on the tip of the pole. There was a thread coming out of it. If one pulled it, the sides of the grabbing tool would get closer to each other, securing whatever happened to be in their grasp.
I made a small hoop in the front of my highbeast, and moved the thread through the hoop.
Once done, I pulled the thread, and the jaws on the grabbing tool closed just like during previous tests. When I released the thread, the jaws opened once again.
Since the most important part worked, I began morphing and expanding the main body of the highbeast into shumil form.
Eh, close enough. It was more of a train-shaped shumil, carrying a big pole on its back, with a gear instead of a tail, but hey, as long as it could fly.
I enhanced my vision to see the shelves on the opposite side in greater detail, and with that, we were pretty much set.
“Lady Natalie, please move forward,” I instructed.
As her highbeast pulled the rope, the gear turned, and the pole extended forward.
“Thank you.” I stopped her once the shelf was within the reach of the grabbing tool.
From that point on, I moved my own highbeast. It was rather easy. The shumil flew steadily, able to move in every direction, and following my commands properly. A perfect positioning tool. I picked my chosen tablet up without any issue.
I turned behind me. “Now, please, pull the second rope in the opposite direction.”
Natalie followed my instruction, and the pole began retracting. Sounds of individual tubes tapping against the floor echoed throughout the room. The tablet was heading right into my grasp.
Suddenly, it fell on the floor, only a few centimeters from me.
I gasped from the shock. Even though the tablet didn’t seem to shatter, my mind hadn’t processed that yet and I kept staring at the floor with wide eyes.
“Is it maybe that the tablets cannot move across the barrier?” Marianne mused.
She seemed way more collected than me. Well, she hadn’t just almost destroyed a priceless artifact.
“Maybe.” I finally managed to exhale. “Thankfully, they seem to be from the same material as the building, which makes them quite sturdy,” I added with a weak smile.
Yeah, this is totally fine.
Normally, I would have criticized such waste. Maintaining all those tablets for centuries must have taken so much mana. But at this moment, I was really glad that someone made them with sturdiness in mind.
We kept staring at the tablet on the floor for a few more moments.
Well, the solution is quite easy. I shook my head.
Natalie and I dragged one of the tables behind us and positioned it right in the middle of the barrier. I detached the last tube that held the grabbing tool so I could lift the tablet from the floor and place it on the half of the table behind the barrier.
“What do you think? With the help of our highbeasts, it’s pretty accessible,” I remarked.
“I’m not even going to question what you just did with your highbeast,” Marianne replied with an exasperated look.
Natalie stayed silent.
Eh, whatever. I shrugged and took a better look at the actual content on the tablet.
“Oh…” I uttered. It made me feel a bit dumb to realize that this ancient-looking archive contained text in ancient language. “This might complicate things a little.”
“Do you think all tablets are written in this dialect?” Marianne wondered. “I barely understand a few words.”
“Maybe it goes from the oldest to the newest. We can try taking tablets from different shelves,” I proposed. “I, too, have a hard time reading this; the instructions in the lower paragraph don’t make much sense.”
“You can read this?” Marianne looked at me in shock.
“The bible is written in similar language, and, well, the temple book room contains mostly summaries of past harvests and the bible translations. So unless you are really eager to reread numbers on wheat production in Leisangang from twenty years ago, the bible stories definitely win as a pastime,” I replied jokingly.
And, of course, the prayers functioned as spells, making the bible a magic book. It was quite an easy choice.
“I can’t believe this.” Marianne breathed out with a weak smile.
She seemed quite distraught. Was it really that shocking?
“Let’s just say I can partly read it. Definitely not fully. Lady Rozemyne is the High Bishop. She should be way more capable in this regard.” I shrugged.
Rozemyne had actually read the whole bible, while I could study only the parts available to the public, plus some additional vocabulary supplied by Fran.
I had learned a bit more with the texts here in the library, but after a while, my focus had shifted a bit from ancient texts to ancient circles.
I should have studied more. I sighed.
In retrospect, I had put way too much time into gathering and brewing the past two months. Now, it was catching up with me.
Still, seeing Marianne’s and Natalie’s expressions, it was quite clear that I had the highest qualifications in the room. All thanks to my preparation in the temple. Heh, I knew learning the ancient language would be important.
In the story, Rozemyne had made all those translations for the bible and then Dunkelfelger’s history book; it had obviously been leading to something. And by the looks of it, this archive might have been it.
“So, what now?” Natalie wondered. “We might not be too much help to you.”
She looked a bit abashed. However, when I looked at Marianne, she was clearly in some sort of crisis.
“Marianne, do you want to learn the language beside me?” I asked cautiously.
For a moment, she seemed to bottle up the emotions inside her, until finally, she produced a clearly fake upbeat smile. “Fine, I do not mind at all.”
We retrieved two neighboring tablets so each of us could transcribe one of them. Translation could come later. At least, I was able to get the gist of it. We were copying the necessary preparations for organizing a hunting tournament in honor of Schlagziel, the God of Hunting.
I had thought we would come across some hidden prayer since the text was kind of about a ceremony. But the instructions were more or less about how to set a proper budget, and folk wisdom like: prepare two bottles of wine if you expect to use one. Totally worth all our effort.
Nonetheless, I brought the fruits of our labor to Solange. It was proof that we managed to finally reach the archive.
“It is really nice to know that the archive won’t end up abandoned.” She smiled warmly.
I nodded with a big smile as well. “Though, it seems I will be needing more teaching materials and translated texts to work on my language proficiency. It’s really hard to read these.”
“I might have prepared some already,” Solange remarked as a matter of fact.
She was definitely ready from the last time I had asked about those. I really appreciated her effort.
Now, let’s hope to find more cool magic and less budget advice. I glanced down at the floor.