Ch. 58 - Why Hasn't It Updated Yet?
"A foul wind stirs the murky waves of terror, black clouds like festering sores upon the firmament;
Shadows creep through Greystone's mountain hollow, scales and claws scatter the cold light of the moonlit night.
'By our ancestors' blade, may our homeland remain boundless'!
A silver spear pierces through the dragon's scales, stabbing into the dragon's putrid heart;
Drinking deep the ancient scorching blood, letting the soul soar within its blood!"
The Greystone Tavern, true to its name, was a crude stone building constructed from the grey stone abundantly produced in the Weinberg domain.
The tavern only served black wheat ale chilled in its cellar—more than sufficient for the village drunkards' entertainment.
Geya had wrapped herself tightly in a hood and face covering—
She didn't need these villagers' support, so there was no need to deliberately display her appearance.
Otherwise, not only would she steal the spotlight from her junior Suwen who was performing, but she'd inevitably run into various troubles.
As the sky gradually darkened, the tavern became bustling with voices.
Suwen sat on a stone platform in the very center of the tavern, singing the 'history' of the Weinberg domain—
The gist was that this territory once had a black dragon crawling upon it, and after Weinberg's ancestor slayed the dragon and drank its blood, he gained the black dragon's power.
This was naturally fabricated.
Any literature concerning the concept of 'history' had been forgotten and lost due to the world's curse.
From this, one could conclude—
Any 'history' that could still be passed down orally nowadays was most likely 'false,' fabricated and spread through hearsay after years of accumulated embellishment.
Thanks to the specialized training at the Wandering Song Academy, the 'histories' of every Dragon Sorcerer noble ended up remarkably similar.
For instance, if one went to sing in the domain of a red dragon sorcerer,
One could simply replace words like 'murky' and 'putrid' in the ballad with 'scorching' and 'burning'...
This was to facilitate the poets' 'duty rotation' in exchange for credits—
Every weekend, the academy would dispatch numerous wandering bards to various domains to sing of the local nobility's 'glorious achievements,' ensuring the nobles' 'histories' wouldn't be forgotten by their subjects.
This was also an important reason why Terran nobles were willing to fund the struggling academy.
But as the academy developed, it inevitably veered off course by being too obsequious to the nobility.
So much so that even these templated poems developed certain problems...
Geya simply sat quietly in a corner of the tavern. Her sharp, sensitive ears were enough to clearly hear the villagers' whispered conversations when deeply drunk:
"What does 'foul wind' mean?"
"He probably said 'excited'? When you get excited, the water gets dirty."
"What does 'festering sore' mean?"
"He probably said 'dragon bed'? The water dirtied the bed."
"Then why would it creep through the mountain hollow?"
"If the bed's dirty, wouldn't you have to go outside? Exciting, and no need to wash the sheets!"
"Really, are you being serious? That doesn't sound quite right to me..."
"Hey, I'm a miner who's been to the imperial capital and studied the Terran Refined Speech. Of course I can understand these poets' vocabulary!"
Terran Refined Speech was a newly emerging language belonging exclusively to the empire's upper nobility, distinct from the Common Tongue of commoners.
Its tones and rhythms were more harmonious, its diction more ornate, but it inevitably collided with the Common Tongue's own pronunciations, causing commoners to constantly misunderstand the poems' true meanings.
But the Poet's Academy had no intention of replacing it for now.
Because the noble lords much preferred this refined speech—
"What we must ensure first and foremost is that the noble lords are satisfied!"
"What, you ask if the commoners can't understand, doesn't the poetry lose its purpose?"
"Please, don't talk as if when we used to sing Common Tongue lyrics, it ever had any actual effect!"
These were Instructor Ulasan's exact words, which she hadn't altered one bit.
As the string music gradually faded, Suwen's performance also reached its conclusion.
Warm applause erupted in the tavern.
The Terran Empire explicitly stipulated that 'applause at the conclusion of a performance is respect for wandering bards'—failure to clap incurred a fine.
Suwen took a deep bow to the commoners.
The applause always ignited an incomparable sense of achievement in him, filling him with joy.
Especially when he saw Senior Geya in the corner also applauding his performance—he felt even more delighted.
As expected, Senior Geya never stints on praising me!
So I should have a chance, right?
He ordered two black ales and walked to Geya's table:
"Senior, have you been waiting long?"
Geya shook her head with a smile that always uplifted one's spirits:
"If I can always have junior's singing voice as company, I wouldn't mind waiting however long."
Suwen froze, his cheeks flushing red. Unable to withstand such a 'direct hit,' he coughed lightly to cover his embarrassment:
"Ahem, so did you meet that ridiculous senior? Tang Qi Weinberg."
Among the academy's many poet students, only two types left an impression.
The renowned, and the notorious.
As two students of Dean Ulasan, Geya and Tang Qi seemed to have walked two extremes.
Tang Qi Weinberg's incident—getting thrown out of the mansion after singing a ballad praising a knight's pursuit of love at Old Lord Lassen's estate, where the wife had been having an affair with a knight and Lassen had broken down—was still a topic of relish at the academy to this day.
Geya sighed:
"No. He seems to have been unable to return home."
"You seem somewhat worried?"
"A little."
"You really don't need to pay him so much attention."
It wasn't jealousy; he simply didn't think there was any meaning in expending mental energy on a terrible bard.
"Aren't wandering bards supposed to travel the continent? The gods will protect him."
"Perhaps, but what I'm actually worried about is something else..."
"Would you like to tell me about it?"
"Well—forget it, I'll tell you next time."
Geya shook her head.
She couldn't very well tell an outsider that she was preoccupied with whether there would be new content written on today's Forgotten Monument, could she?
She hadn't seen a new story in two days.
It's not that I care about that foul-mouthed author!
I'm just a bit curious—
After two days, has this wandering bard who's truly journeying across the continent encountered any novel experiences like the 'talking kobold'...
Damn it.
I really want to see it!
Has the author passed out or something!?
Why hasn't it updated yet!?
Seeing Senior Geya so distracted, Suwen finally felt somewhat worried.
An adolescent boy in the throes of first love sees everything through romance-tinted glasses.
The more dejected the girl he likes, the more he thinks she's troubled by matters of the heart.
But if Senior Geya has someone she likes—
That kind of thing, no way!
He hurriedly put on a flattering smile and pushed over the black ale in his hand:
"Then how about we forget our troubles and have a good drink?"
This was such a rare opportunity to be alone together; he didn't want to waste it.
But Geya merely gently pushed away the black ale before her and stood up:
"I'm not drinking today."
"But it's already night. We have to find something to do before returning to the academy tomorrow, right?"
"If junior feels tired, you can rest early tonight.
I've already asked. There'll be an arcane train arriving at the Weinberg domain at ten o'clock. I'll take it to the imperial capital...
Then it's just a two-hour walk at night."
Suwen blinked:
"Such a hurry?"
Geya was preoccupied with that Forgotten Monument, a strange throbbing and premonition in her heart.
She nodded:
"Very urgent!"