41 The Library

The next morning Ethan woke up, got dressed, and found that two of his knights, Wulfram Bescherming, and Oda Tovenaar were standing guard outside of his inn room.

[Last night it was Clovis Shwert and Tassilo Slaan who were standing guard outside my inn room. I suppose that they must have taken shifts guarding me through the night. It does feel weird being guarded constantly though.] Thought Ethan.

"Good morning." Ethan said.

"Good morning, my lord" Wulfram and Oda replied.

"Have either of you eaten breakfast yet?" Ethan asked.

"No, My lord" they said.

"Come on, lets eat. I'll buy you both breakfast." Said Ethan.

They then went down to the first floor of the inn and ate breakfast. While they were eating, the other ten knights of Kastell came in. Ethan paid for all of their breakfasts.

"Where are you planning to go today, my lord?" Asked Clovis.

"I'm planning on going to spend most of the day at the library" Said Ethan.

[It would be really good if I could learn about magic at the library today. Mia didn't teach me any more magic after the delayed spark, so it would be good to learn maybe a couple of attack spells as well as a protection barrier. In addition to magic, I would also like to learn more about the customs and laws of this land. I learned a lot from the Sun Knights, but in the end, I'm still basically a foreigner here, and I will need to start acting like a proper Vorbei nobleman with good etiquette soon. There is a limit to what one can learn in books, but it seems like a good place to start.] Thought Ethan.

Clovis then assigned the knights shifts of times in which the various knights would be expected to guard Ethan so that he would always have two knights with him at all times, with the plan to all meet up for lunch at noon in a specific pub near the library. The knights who were not on their shift guarding Ethan could sleep or pack their belongings in preparation for leaving to Kastell in a couple of days.

As Clovis was figuring out the schedule for knights to guard Ethan, Ethan overheard a couple of people talking near his table.

"Did you hear? Otto Von Geld is dead." Said one person.

"Von Geld? You mean the Minister of the Treasury and head of the Noble's Faction?" Said the second.

"He's not the Minister of the Treasury anymore. He got voted out yesterday morning, and was killed last night." Said the first.

"Killed? As in murdered? How terrifying. Have the authorities caught the culprit?" Said the second.

"Well, they're not exactly looking for a culprit. The city guards ruled his death a suicide and are refusing to investigate any further, claiming that the shock of losing his job was too much for his fragile psyche. It wasn't a suicide though. He got stabbed thirty times in the chest. Between you and me though, the rumor is that the killer is somehow connected to the Von Ritters. The rumor is that Otto Von Geld and Mia Von Ritter had some kind of dispute, and both his losing his job and his being killed were somehow connected to that dispute." Said the first person.

"The Von Ritters like as in the family of Duke Augustus Von Ritter, the one who defeated the Blue Sea-serpent of Calamity in his youth, and currently is one of the most powerful nobles in the kingdom?" Said the second.

"Yes, that family. Keep in mind that this is all just rumors though. There's no solid evidence that the Von Ritter family was the one to kill our kingdon's former Minister of the Treasury. I even heard a competing rumor that the other members of the Noble's Faction were the ones who..." Said the first as the two finished their meal and left, out of Ethan's earshot.

"Well, That should do it for shifts to guard Baron Von Kastell. Any questions anyone?" Said Covis as he finished up the schedules.

Ethan then went to the library with Lo Bogenschütze and Flaubert Werpspies guarding him. He explored the library until he found an old archive room with many old scrolls written in the magicae language in it.

[It looks like this is a good place to learn about magic. These scrolls are interesting. They appear to be made of parchment that is centuries old, so I should handle them delicately. They are clearly written in Magicae, and the letters are intriguing. They are just like the classical Latin alphabet. They have no spaces between words, no capitalization, and no punctuation. I guess that this Magicae language really is pretty comparable to Latin. This scroll doesn't seem to be a spell though, but rather a poem.] Thought Ethan.

It was indeed a poem. It was an epic poem in the magicae language written in dactylic hexameter.

(author's note: dactylic hexameter was a meter of poetry used on Earth in some ancient greek and roman epic poetry which followed the pattern of stress in syllables of ' –⏑⏑| –⏑⏑ | –⏑⏑ | –⏑⏑ | –⏑⏑ | –X' per line, where '–' represents a long syllable, '⏑' represents a short syllable, and 'X' could either be a short or long syllable.)

It seemed to be an epic poem about a battle between some hero named Marcus fighting against a giant red dragon. According to the poem, although the hero had the strength equivalent to a hundred men, he was killed by the dragon after a long fight. Out of respect for the bravery of the hero, the dragon left his body there, and did not eat the corpse. The poem ended with the hero Marcus's kinsmen coming in to the site of the battle and burying his body according to the customs of the Magicae people, and the Dragon leaving the land and going north east, causing calamity wherever it went, earning it the name 'The Red Dragon of Calamity'.

"Wait, is this the same dragon from back in that clearing?!" Ethan accidentally blurted out in English after reaching the end of the poem.

An old man who was also in that archive room was not at all happy to be disturbed and muttered "little foreigner thinks he can disturb others in a quiet room."

Ethan apologized to the old man, and then read more scrolls in the archive room. Several of the other scrolls seemed to be spells. From these, Ethan learned the 'bronze protective barrier' spell, and the 'close range fire attack spell'. Ethan immediately set out on memorizing these two spells. By the time that Ethan was comfortable with his memorization of them, it was already time for lunch.