The Royal Knights Academy’s main library stood as its own facility in the eastern grounds, a building that always reminded me of a chapel minus the stained glass. Inside, it smelled precisely as a library should. Polished wood, aged paper, and the faint scent of ink that someone probably spilled somewhere.

“Welcome to the library, Lady Carine,” a middle-aged attendant said, offering a polite curtsy from behind a large oak desk. “Will you be reading today, or borrowing?”

“Just reading.”

“Of course. Should you wish for some tea, we can have it brought to your table.”

“I appreciate the gesture, but no need.”

The library itself was pretty large, and I paid it a visit in the first week to take a look. If I compared it to our capital estate’s library, it was safe to say it was larger. However, compared to the Royal Library, this was nothing. The library consisted of two main floors, each floor containing many different sections.

Of course, as a Knights’ academy, most of the books here were related to combat, history, codes, and things like that. Normally, I would be excited to spend my time here wasting away with different books, but the reason I didn’t was mostly that most of the books here weren’t all that new to me.

I was mostly speaking about books regarding Talents, the one kind of book I actively seek out. Any title about Talents that I’d spotted, chances were that I’d already skimmed through them during my time at the Royal Library, and on top of that, the collection here wasn’t exactly complete either.

It made sense, though. The majority of the books covered different techniques for various combat styles, the history of random wars, stories of duels, things like that. Books about Talents weren’t exactly their main focus when curating their selection here.

It made me wonder if I should’ve joined a Talent-adjacent academy instead.

But today, my goal wasn’t for the Talent books.

It was for magic.

And although I was doing this mainly to help Ricent, this was also to satisfy my own curiosity. With so many mysteries surrounding me and my Talents, I never had the space of thought available to focus on learning about magic.

And yes, I had all the fundamentals thanks to skimming through some of the books Father had about magic. I even tried applying them for myself, but the fundamentals were clearly not enough. Besides, needing a Magical Talent to cast magic was an immutable fact of this world.

And that was why I was here. To learn deeper about magic and its intricacies. Mainly so that I could help Ricent save face by teaching him all I could, but also to hopefully strengthen my understanding of this world beyond just common sense.

Speaking of which, I was currently standing outside of the arena as Feyt, quietly listening in to the students’ chants and the instructor’s instructions from a distance.

It was currently lunch break, and knowing my visit to the library for the day, I had Leila prepare us a meal in advance, something I had just discovered was an option all this time.

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Thanks to that lunch, I was able to skip eating at the cafeteria and make full use of the limited time of the break. And as a bonus, the both of us got to eat Leila’s cooking again. And yes, I said us, meaning Feyt got a share too.

The reason I gave to Leila was that Feyt had complained to me, AKA Carine, about having a hard time securing food in the cafeteria. Thus, not wanting him to starve to death, I proposed the idea. And lo and behold, Leila appeared in Feyt’s dorm that morning with a lunchbox, courtesy of Lady Carine, AKA me.

Thankfully, no one was around the halls at the time, so there shouldn’t be rumors about a maid popping up in my dorm anytime soon.

With that tangent aside, I went back to my bodies’ respective jobs.

I walked up to the upper floors of the library as Carine and began searching for books about magic.

Meanwhile, I stood with my arms crossed as Feyt, my eyes closed, ears fully immersed in whatever was going on in the arena.

The first thing on the list to understand was… chanting.

When I heard chanting for the first time, which was when the robed man attacked the castle with a fireball, I could understand his chants fully. The chants were rhythmic and hinted at what the spell was about. That same pattern continued when I heard future spells.

However, that pattern only holds true with Feyt’s ears.

Even to this day, I could still hear every chant like my own native tongue.

However, as for Carine… what I heard during the chants was nonsense. Words that don’t connect, syllables that sound foreign. It was utterly incomprehensible.

And that pattern was the true fact of this world.

All the books I had read about magic, which were only the fundamentals, really, all detailed chanting as a means to channel a spell into existence. Never once had they ever mentioned the chanting having any meaning,

So, either I was hallucinating all the words I hear from every chant, or Feyt’s ears were just that special.

But after facing Instructor Cornellia during the practical exam, dots began to connect in my head. Feyt’s ears could truly understand what the chanting means. And using it, I was able to predict Cornellia’s spells.

However, this wasn’t the kind of ability I could just reveal to the world. Judging from the lack of documentation about a chanting’s coherence, like the fact that I’m one soul in two bodies, if I reveal that I could understand chanting, I’d either be labeled a madman or be taken in for “research”.

And so, I decided I would keep this truth to myself, another piece of forbidden knowledge locked away.

But for Ricent, I wouldn’t need to reveal the why. I just needed to use what I knew. If I could decipher the intent behind a spell’s chant, perhaps I could reverse-engineer it and perhaps break it down into steps even he could grasp.

By reading the books as Carine and eavesdropping on the mage class’s lessons as Feyt, I was multitasking my learning in a way no one ever could before. Besides, you know, reading your notebook during a lecture…

As I began my research in earnest, I encountered the first subject that I needed to tackle.

My first task was to crack the code of how a chant was even learned. The dry fundamentals books were useless in that regard, since none of them ever provided a chant for a spell you could try out at home.

Thankfully, the Royal Knights’ Library, for all its gaps, had a win in its books, pun intended. In a corner of the second floor was a section labeled “Applied Spells”. The shelves were a lot more sparse than the shelves about different ways to hold a spear, but they held valuable books. Books that contained actual details about spells.

I skimmed through the spines and began pulling out several promising titles.

And when I finally settled into a quiet corner table, I found myself looking at a stack of mostly books pertaining to fire magic.

Truth is, I didn’t know what kind of Magical Talent Ricent had. I forgot to ask him before he left for his dorm yesterday, and I wouldn’t have the chance to ask until after classes today.

But I had my own reason for choosing fire magic as my starting point. It was the one I was most familiar with, after all.

I began to open the first book on top of the stack, skimming through with my eyes as the pages flew. All the while, I listened to Instructor Cowell’s instructions through the arena walls.

For once, I began to have fun learning again.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep