Chapter 259 - 29: Second Institutional Building
Chapter 259: Chapter 29: Second Institutional Building
"Odin? Odin?"
"Hey, kid, there you are."
Hans was holding a few loaves of bread. The bread was black, made from the powder of snow mountain root.
Snow mountain root. Hans never thought he’d be eating this stuff again.
Hans was one of the soldiers Valentino had given to Robson. He had grown up on the Fengman Clan’s lands, eating snow mountain root since he was a child.
Although the bread in his hands was delicious, Hans craved meat even more—meat dripping with fat. Only that stuff could give him real strength.
Unfortunately, the only chance to feast on meat would be when war broke out.
"Hey, when do you think the Lord will take us to the battlefield?
How many days has it been? Almost thirty, right? We haven’t seen a single Beastman..."
"Isn’t it better to have some peace? I’d rather things stay quiet. All this talk of killing... did you not see our comrades with missing limbs last time we were defending the pass?" The one who replied was Captain Jason.
Hans was about to retort but then noticed Captain Jason holding something. He leaned in closer, curious.
"Old Jason, what’s that?" Hans looked at the paper in Captain Jason’s hand—or rather, it wasn’t paper. It was a piece of animal hide, covered in strange runes.
"You don’t know? The Lord handed these out yesterday. They’re for learning to read. Look, this one is pronounced..."
Seeing Hans’s interest in the phonetic chart, Jason’s enthusiasm grew. He held up the hide, eager to discuss it with him.
"There’s a lot of other stuff too, like arithmetic or something? I can’t remember clearly..."
"Why are we learning this?" Hans took the hide from Captain Jason. The symbols on it just made him dizzy.
"See, this is what I’m talking about. Day in and day out, all you think about is eating. Besides eating, sleeping, and training, do you know how to do anything else?
You didn’t pay any attention to the notice the Lord posted yesterday, did you?
Let me tell you, learning this is a big deal! The Lord has already said that as long as you reach sixth-level military merit, learn to read and do arithmetic, you can retire from the army when you’re old enough and become an official." Hans didn’t need to turn around to know who was speaking so bluntly. It had to be Jack.
Jack had saved Hans’s life back at Thermopylae. Hans had been genuinely moved, but after a solid month of Jack’s foul mouth, that feeling had vanished without a trace.
"An official? What kind of official?" Hans scratched his head. "Official" was a word Hans rarely heard, and when he did, it was usually as the target of a curse.
"Like Grandpa Hanmu from the village. His word was law. He said when to plant the crops, and we planted the crops.
And like those masters from the city who came to collect taxes."
"Those are tax collectors and village chiefs. The Lord’s notice yesterday said that in the future, once we’re in our own territory, anyone who reaches sixth-level military merit can hold certain positions and manage a few households.
Not only that, but if you want to continue serving as an Officer in the future, you’ll need to learn the common tongue and arithmetic," Jack said.
As a member of a fallen noble family, Jack felt that this Lord’s military merit system was the greatest invention in the world.
While it couldn’t make him a noble in a single leap, it allowed him to slowly improve his status.
According to the Lord, a Peasant who reached Third-level Military Merit could pay a fee to become a Half-Free Person, able to own property but still a servant of the Lord. Upon reaching sixth-level military merit, they could become true Free People, eligible to take the examination for officials, and become one after passing.
And officials didn’t just manage worldly affairs; they also received a monthly stipend from their noble lord.
Of course, for someone like Jack, that wasn’t the most important part.
Ever since he was a child, Jack had wanted to restore his family’s noble status. To him, the most important thing about this system was that it set him apart from others.
In Jack’s understanding, becoming an official meant becoming a Household Servant of the Lord. A noble’s Household Servant was higher in status than Free People. ’This is a leap in social class!’
Hans watched Jack and Captain Jason studying so diligently, completely baffled.
....
"I never would have thought you’d come up with something like this." Valentino looked at the phonetic and arithmetic charts in her hands.
The phonetic symbols used simple characters to annotate the continent’s common tongue. It was really just a matter of breaking down some common characters and rearranging them.
The common tongue of this world was rather strange. It was neither pictographic like in Robson’s past life, nor was it cuneiform. It was just a pile of strange runes.
The runes used by Mages were an upgraded version of these runes.
The people of this world believed that the runes of the common tongue were also a type of Magic Runes. Once people understood these runes, they could form associations, allowing them to be recognized and understood.
That’s right. The people of this world considered the ability of cognition itself to be a form of Magic, and that creating new words was akin to creating new Magic, albeit a more convenient kind.
Since it wasn’t a particularly important matter anyway, Robson just went along with it.
These phonetic symbols weren’t created by Robson himself, but by Falan, who had designed them based on memories from his past life. Robson was surprised to learn that Falan was quite the polymath.
"It was all someone else’s work. I don’t have that kind of talent," Robson said calmly, taking a sip of his tea.