Chapter 40
Around a dozen books.
All needed to be read or, rather, memorized.
With a farewell to Elliot, the mage who had already done his favor, Garrett stood by the table, gazing at the stack of thick textbooks before him. He breathed out softly.
He measured them with his hand: around a dozen books, larger than the standard 16-k format of his previous life, piled up from the sturdy oak table to his neck. Leaning forward, his head lowered until his chin rested on the pages.
This thickness...
Well, just a minor thing.
Medical students' textbooks, exercise collections, picture albumsthey wouldn't even stack up to a person's height.
Following Elliot's instructions, Garrett flipped through the pile. The first book, unreadable. The second book, unreadable. The third book, still unreadable...
Boom!
All written in magical script?
So, to learn magic, I have to learn a whole language first?
And it's a mute language...
Hoping against hope, Garrett went through all the books except for "Study of Magical Script." Disheartened, he returned them to the shelf, opened the last book, and reluctantly began wrestling with the magical script.
4500 words in Level Four Vocabulary.
Back then, memorized in a month.
5500 words in Level Six Vocabulary.
Can't remember how long it took. Under the pressure of major courses, cramming was the norm, and passing Level Six seemed relatively easy.
Magical script...
How many words does this dictionary contain?
Garrett never counted, nor did he want to.
The only certainty he had was that "Study of Magical Script" was the thickest among nearly a hundred books on the shelfothers were at most the width of a fist, while this one could be two fists thick.
And now, all this workload is solely mine T_T
Oh well, in online novels, some predecessors had to decrypt magical languages themselves. Comparatively, having ready-made books to copy from is quite fortunate...
Page by page, Garrett copied the words and their corresponding common language meanings beneath their respective starting letters. Surprisingly, copying aided in memory retention. At least after a page, Garrett realized he had memorized what he copied.
Garrett toiled away for half a day, his eyes sore, wrists aching, suspecting the onset of tendonitis. Just as he thought about using a healing spell to soothe his wrists, he encountered his first hurdle:
He ran out of paper.
He had brought five or six sheets, filled both sides densely, and now had no space left...
Where could he get a blank page?
Garrett felt he couldn't do such a thing.
Ask someone for paper?
He didn't dare. Gelman had strictly prohibited copying, and seeking help now would be akin to walking into trouble!
Seek help or plead with Gelman?
Garrett felt he hadnt lived enough and didn't want to be turned into charcoal by a fireball...
After a quick deliberation, he stowed his paper, pen, and ink in his bag and hurried off. The reference books could still be accessed tomorrow; if he didn't return to the city now, the shops would be closed, and there'd be nowhere to buy paper~~~
He dashed back to the city, bursting into his home. Locking the door, he went to the table, moved aside the chair with a broken leg, and shifted the brick supporting its foot, digging a few shovels underneath. Neatly nestled in the earth lay a small money pouch. Garrett took it out and emptied it into his palm, coins clinking.
Two silver coins, seven copper coins.
At the other end of the street, Uncle Simon's bakery sold black bread at one copper coin per loaf. He could manage a day if he ate sparingly.
One silver coin could exchange for ten copper coins. This little pouch was his monthly expenses in his original form.
His salary in the city guard was five silver coins a month. Patrolling in the city meant he could get a meal in the military camp. Calculating, he could save two silver coins a month for other daily expenses.
But for buying paper... this amount might not be enough. Productivity in this foreign world wasn't much better than the Middle Ages; in his impression, during this era, paper and pen were outrageously expensive...
Garrett hesitated, climbed under the bed, pushed aside the book box, and dug out a small box.
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