Chương 72: The Academic Conference — Decoding a Sacred-Tier Syntax

The Grand Lecture Hall of the Solaris Royal Academy seated more than five hundred, built in the steep, tiered style of a Roman amphitheater, carved entirely from white marble. At the center of the podium, a massive magical illusion screen projected a line of Old Elvish, quoted verbatim from chapter twelve of The Elegy of the Nameless Knight:'The sky that day bled a deep, dark red...'

Around the podium, forty white-bearded Grand Scholars in gold-threaded purple velvet robes pounded tables and chairs, arguing until their faces turned red. Canes struck the stone floor in a chorus of academic outrage, shaking the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

"Wrong! Absolutely wrong!" one elderly Academician shouted, holding the book aloft, his beard trembling.

"'Deep red' here isn't a literal color! It's a profound philosophical metaphor for the decay and bloodshed of a rotting feudal system! The author is using the image of the sky to expose the open, bleeding wound of an entire era!"

"Sit down, you senile old fool!" another Arcane Professor snapped, slamming his hand on the table, pointing straight at the screen.

"The inverted grammatical structure of this Old Elvish passage is clearly a magical formula!

'The sky bled' is the exact activation key for the pre-war forbidden art of Blood-Void Space Magic! This is a live combat lesson disguised as literature!" In the darkest corner of the back row, pressed against the cold, damp stone wall. Lucian pulled the brim of his brown wool beret low, wore a pair of dark crystal-lens sunglasses, and buried his face in his hands, head bowed between his knees. His toes curled violently inside his leather boots. His chest tightened in a familiar wave of psychological anguish.

Merciful heavens... Lucian remembered that summer afternoon at age seven with perfect clarity. It had been sweltering hot. He'd snuck three whole plates of Demon-race spicy stir-fried beef behind the servants' backs, then sat down to grind out his vocabulary quota for the day. Mid-sentence, his nose started stinging, and a fat nosebleed dropped straight onto the pristine white parchment, blooming into a messy smear of bright red ink.

Unwilling to waste the twenty-silver sheet of parchment, he'd grabbed his quill, scribbled a jagged line right over the bloodstain, and made up the line "The sky that day bled a deep, dark red" to cover up the mess. A nosebleed from eating too much spicy food. And now, ten years later, forty of an empire's most brilliant minds were spending four straight hours debating whether that nosebleed represented the collapse of feudalism or an ancient forbidden spatial magic.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Excuse me, young man." A bespectacled young scholar sitting in the row ahead of him spun around, notebook in hand, looking at Lucian with intense seriousness.

"You're a Theory student, aren't you? What do you think of this passage? What era's pain do you think the great anonymous sage was expressing through that blood-red sky tearing itself open?" Lucian straightened his back, adjusted his dark sunglasses, and spoke in a flat, dry voice.

"I think... the author probably just had a canker sore. Or a nosebleed from eating too much spicy food." The air around the stone table froze solid. The young scholar stared at Lucian, quill frozen halfway through a stroke. Five elite students sitting in the nearby rows all turned their heads at once, staring at the sunglasses-wearing boy with a mixture of contempt and profound pity. The young scholar shook his head, exasperated, and snapped his notebook shut.

"Shallow. Truly the shallowness of an uneducated commoner. You reduce a great philosophical masterpiece to the crudeness of the mortal body. What a waste that you were ever allowed through the Academy's gates." Lucian leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh, and said nothing further. The only person on this earth who knew the actual truth... was the one being dismissed by the entire room as an ignorant fool. BOOM!

Up on the podium, the Dean of the Academy — an elderly mage with twelve million Combat Power — slammed a gold-inlaid wooden gavel down onto the lectern and made his announcement, voice resonant.

"The council has voted unanimously! The line 'The sky that day bled a deep, dark red' is officially established as a national-tier philosophical thesis! Starting with the next examination cycle, every magic student wishing to graduate must submit a ten-thousand-word essay analyzing its meaning!" Lucian, in the back row, slowly slid off his chair and onto the floor, burying his face in his hands, muttering in utter despair.

"A nosebleed... turned into a ten-thousand-word essay for an entire generation..." In the royal honor box on the mezzanine, Eleanor sat upright in her elegant white ceremonial dress. Her gaze happened to drift toward the dark corner of the back row, catching sight of the small, sunglasses-wearing figure curled up under the desk in mortification. Eleanor raised a white silk-gloved hand to cover the corner of her mouth, curling into a radiant smile, her blue eyes sparkling with delight. Ting.

A dim black Unified System v2. 0 notification appeared before Lucian. [HOST HAS JUST ENDURED AN ACADEMIC-SCALE CRINGE ASSAULT.]'Mental Resistance' stat slightly increased: +1, 200 points! System note: Tolerance for intellectual humiliation has reached Master tier. The Dean of the Academy adjusted his collar and raised a scroll of royal correspondence sealed with red wax, his voice booming across the lecture hall.

"To ensure the absolute accuracy of the national examination, our Academy has officially sent an emergency diplomatic request to Vance Commerce!" The elderly Dean raised his chin high.

"Next week, we've personally invited the anonymous author's Legal Representative to testify before the Sacred Court and defend this thesis in front of the full royal court!" Under his desk, Lucian's eyes went wide, staring up at the ceiling.

"Now they're calling a witness for cross-examination too?!"