Richard opened to the first page.
The foreword was perfectly standard: its academic tone unassailably steady, its footnotes numbered sequentially from 1 to 47, and its citation formatting strictly by the book.
It detailed how agricultural communities in remote regions of the Western Continent organized their labor and sacrificial rites according to meteorological patterns.
It was a perfectly normal ethnographic study, so densely academic it was sleep-inducing.
In his past life, he probably would have categorized the book on a forum as:
"Serious academic literature. No juicy leaks; safe to skip."
But when he reached the third page, a line of small print caught his eye.
The text contained a quoted passage, accompanied by a parenthetical citation:
"See Appendix C; presented in the original text, untranslated."
Every other citation in the main body included a translation, or at the very least, a summary.Only this one provided just a page number, with no explanation whatsoever.
He flipped to Appendix C. Three full pages of nothing but Latin.
It was densely packed with manually typeset lead print, the font a full size smaller than the main text.
The line spacing was severely compressed, cramming a massive amount of content onto the three pages.
His mind began to race:
The cognitive acceleration provided by Learning Lv.1 meant that whenever he encountered an obscure word, the relevant roots, etymologies, and derivatives were instantly dredged from his memory and neatly lined up.
Then there was the intuition he had accumulated from spending years lurking on folklore forums in his past life.
There was a classic thread on one of those forums:
"You think you can't read it because your skills are poor? No, it's because those words were never meant for your eyes."
It discussed how religions and secret societies all over the world used language itself as an encryption tool.
This book contained a cipher. Appendix C was encrypted.
Richard closed the book, retrieved the slip of paper Mr. Hutton had given him from his notebook, and unfolded it.
Unfolded, the thin paper was about the size of his palm.
It was covered in dense handwriting. Written with an extremely fine stylus, the penmanship was neat but the pressure so light that unless he looked closely, it barely resembled writing at all.
At the very top was a small line in the Albion Language:
"This is the only copy. Keep it secure after reading, do not show it to others, and do not lose it."
Below that was a reference table.
The left column contained standard Latin vocabulary, while the right column listed corresponding terms.
Some were obscure archaic Latin words, and others were specialized terms found only in religious texts.
A few he had never seen before at all, leaving him to guess their meaning from their roots.
Beside each pair were minuscule handwritten notes explaining the substitution contexts and applicable rules.
It only covered the substitution patterns for a portion of the core vocabulary; the rest he would have to deduce himself.
Richard closed the book and looked around.
The third floor was still completely empty. The fluorescent tubes hummed, one broken bulb flickering occasionally.
The closest human sounds came from the second floor below, the noise of turning pages and scraping chair legs carrying up through the floorboards.
He shoved the book into his bag, zipped it up, and headed downstairs.
Passing the second floor, he slowed his pace, deliberately circling past the bookshelves and brushing shoulders with a few students checking out books.
With his bag slung casually over one shoulder, he looked no different from any other student borrowing a book during their lunch break.
...
After dinner, Richard helped his mother clear the dishes.
His father was in the living room reading the newspaper, while Evelyn was hunched over the dining table doing her homework, her pen scratching against the paper.
"I'm heading up," he said.
"Finished your homework?" his mother asked, poking her head out of the kitchen.
"Just about. Going up to finish the rest."
His mother hummed in acknowledgment and said nothing more.
Halfway up the stairs, Evelyn called out to him from below.
"Brother, you've been holing up in your room every day lately, and you don't even go out on the weekends. What are you doing in there?"
"Doing homework."
"...Liar."
"Doing a lot of homework."
Evelyn muttered something he couldn't quite hear, probably another remark about him acting weird lately.
He shut his door and drew the curtains.
He flicked on the desk lamp, casting a circle of orange light across the desk.
Richard took the book from his bag, laid it flat on the desk, and turned to Appendix C.
He unfolded the reference table and placed it next to the book, pinning the corners down with a brass paperweight so it wouldn't flutter.
Tearing a few blank sheets from his notebook, he wrote "Original" on the left side of the top page and "Substitution" on the right, and began a word-by-word analysis.
Soon, the sky outside the window turned completely dark. The rustle of his father turning the newspaper in the living room below ceased, and the lights went out.
Richard rubbed his eyes and looked down at his notes.
The blank paper was densely packed with paired terms, the ink smudged in a few places where his hand had brushed against it.
The cipher on the first page was roughly decoded.
He pulled out a clean sheet of paper, transcribed the restored Latin, and translated it line by line into the Albion Language beside it.
The first translated paragraph read:
"If you are reading this, it proves you possess at least a sufficient foundation in classical languages, as well as the intuition to recognize hidden texts."
Richard's pen paused.
"The intersection of these two abilities is exceedingly rare among ordinary people."
"The following content concerns the 'hidden disciplines'."
"If you do not know the meaning of this term, it is advised that you close this book, return it to where you found it, and forget you ever read this."
"If you do know, or if you still choose to continue..."
"Then, welcome."
He set his pen down and immersed himself fully in the work:
"The following is the first fact an initiate must understand: the world does not operate the way you have been taught in classrooms."
"Or rather, what you are taught in classrooms is merely the surface of the truth."
Richard stared at the last line he had copied onto the paper.
His fingers were freezing cold. He didn't know if the temperature had dropped in the night or if it was for some other reason.
The light from the desk lamp washed over the page before him. The freshly written pencil marks gleamed darkly.
Hidden disciplines.
The topics Mr. Hutton had mentioned in class—the priests of the Black Soil River Basin, the temple information network of the Aegean Sea, the redacted conclusions in the colonial archives of the New Continent...
These had all been dancing around a core topic, but he had never explicitly stated what that core was.
Now, someone had stated it plainly. In a Latin cipher, hidden inside the appendix of an obscure academic monograph published decades ago.
Richard folded the translated paper twice, tucked it into his notebook, and locked it in his drawer.
He placed the book inside as well and locked the drawer.
There were still two pages of Appendix C left to decipher, but his brain was already exhausted for the day. Forcing himself to continue would only lead to poor efficiency and a spike in errors.
It could wait until tomorrow.
He switched off the desk lamp and sat in the dark for a moment.
He breathed steadily in and out, the numbers at the edge of his Panel quietly ticking up.
[Breathing] Lv.1 EXP: 159/200
[Learning] Lv.1 EXP: 77/200
He was almost there. He was very much looking forward to what changes upgrading Breathing to Lv.2 would bring.
Richard lay down on his bed, the translated hidden words still playing on a loop in his mind.