ebookland #224 - Saint Shilov, the president of the Royal Seminary
#224 - Saint Shilov, the president of the Royal Seminary
A pebble fell into the moon pool, causing ripples, and several sparks of electricity flashed across the water's surface.
“Gone?”
Squatting on the ground, Horne threw another pebble in, but this time there were no sparks at all.
“It's gone. I was too vigorous when I was scooping out the star-forged gears, and now the moon pool is basically no longer discharging electricity.”
At that moment, in front of the moon pool of the Aether Spire were Horne, squatting, Sylph, sitting, and Jeanne, standing.
After more than four days of being together day and night, adhering to the principle of 'a secretary's job is to handle things,' Horne asked Sylph:
“When is the next conjunction of the stars?”
Sylph opened the star chart in her hand: “This can only be calculated three days before the conjunction, but each conjunction is roughly every fifteen to twenty days.”
“So, late December?”
“Almost. I watch the stars every night before going to bed, and I can't miss it unless it rains.”
“Okay.” Horne stood up and walked behind Sylph. Just as he was about to speak, he noticed that her hair was a bit messily draped over her back.
Horne gathered her long hair behind her neck and tied it into a low ponytail with a hair tie. Sylph's tail straightened, and she frantically pulled the ponytail to her chest.
“Then I'll leave this matter to you. I might not be there that day, so be careful,” Horne said softly.
“Okay, I know.”
Waking up Jeanne, who was almost asleep, Horne pushed Sylph's wheelchair and started walking out. In the courtyard, a small table had already been set.
Many of Sylph's behaviors were learned from the ancient Elven texts, so her lifestyle basically followed the traditions of the Elves.
For example, the afternoon tea party.
In the ancient Elven period, there was still tea, but by the time of the Holy Elven Empire, tea had actually been lost, so they could only drink honey water as tea and eat blood sausage and wheat cakes as snacks.
Pushing Sylph to sit down, Horne seemed to remember something and took out a lacquered leather notebook.
“Sylph, um, I almost forgot, would you like to be the dean of the Royal Theological Seminary of the Papal States?”
“Me, theology?” Sylph widened her eyes after taking a bite of wheat cake. “But I'm the adopted daughter of a vampire, and I don't understand theology.”
“Who says you don't understand? Didn't you design and manufacture a lot of divine machines?”
As Horne, who started out in publicity, always paid great attention to publicity work, the Holy Grandson quickly named the star-forged gear pump—the Rotating Holy Machine—after its invention.
Everything with star-forged gears at its core is not a devil's machine, but a divine machine.
It is not the devil driving the wheel, but the invisible hand of the Holy Father turning the gears.
So great is the Holy Father Bain.
Horne's background and the current situation meant that he had to develop magical science or alchemical science within the theological discourse system.
If he wanted to merge with alchemy, or even magic, as advanced productive forces in the future, he had to first rationalize alchemy.
To construct such a reasonable theological school of thought that could first incorporate relatively harmless alchemy, natural theology was undoubtedly a good reference.
Alchemy is no longer alchemy, but natural divine magic.
However, Horne couldn't build this ideological system alone. He had too many things to do, and he didn't have the knowledge to perfect the system.
Then the well-informed scholar who was proficient in ancient Elven texts and had a wealth of philosophical and cultural knowledge was only Sylph.
“Natural theology, what is that?”
Horne didn't speak, but instead asked, “Have you read the 《Gospel》?”
“I've read it. I've read several annotated versions of the 《Gospel》 you brought. In fact, many parts and logic in it follow from ancient Elven mythology, logic, and philosophy.”
Picking up a small gear from the ground, Horne handed it to Sylph: “What is this?”
“A gear.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“A craftsman made it.”
“You see, when you see a gear on the ground, you naturally think it was made by a craftsman, because a gear cannot appear out of thin air.
When you see a stone, do you think the stone was originally there?”
“You mean the craftsman of the stone is the Holy Father?” Sylph's feet left the ground. Her clever intelligence had been on the high ground, and she understood Horne's idea after only hearing half of what he said. “No, the craftsman of nature is the Holy Father!”
“So smart.” Horne couldn't help but rub Sylph's head, and the wolf girl's tail wagged happily.
“Are you asking us to abandon all transcendent and a priori revelation and infer the existence of the Holy Father solely from reason and logic?” Sylph added, “Then the essence of alchemy is decomposition and synthesis, which in a sense is part of nature……”
“No, no, no, alchemy is alchemy, and natural divine magic is natural divine magic.” Horne held out a finger and shook it back and forth. “The purpose of alchemy is to make gold and achieve immortality, and its essence is for one's own self-interest.
The purpose of natural divine magic is to find the essence of nature by disassembling nature, to prove the existence of the Holy Father, and to provide a better life for the believers.
Ogres and knights are both tall and powerful, so does that mean ogres are knights? You can't calculate it that way.”
After Horne's explanation, Sylph gradually had a rudimentary understanding of this thing wearing a theological skin.
However, Jeanne, who was leaning against the pillar, was almost asleep listening to it.
If Horne was talking about military-related matters, Jeanne could listen with great interest, but she really couldn't listen to this kind of theology and philosophy.
After almost falling again, Jeanne couldn't bear it anymore. She simply stepped forward and interrupted the tea party, saying bluntly: “Brother, I'm going to practice magic. See you at dinner.”
“Okay.” Calling out to Jeanne, Horne gave her a big hug before saying, “Since you're going to practice magic anyway, go clean up the giant spiders in the Wild Spider Forest Sawmill.”
“Okay.”
“Don't forget to bring a few child soldiers and scouts to survey the surrounding terrain.”
“Got it.”
Saying goodbye to Jeanne, who left in a hurry with a red face, Horne sat down next to Sylph as if nothing had happened, smelling of chamomile.
Sylph's tail was tucked under her butt, and her ears were pressed back against her scalp.
“Where were we?”
“We were talking about Carrie.”
“Huh?” Horne stopped raising his cup. “When did we talk about Carrie?”
“Jeanne and I talked about Carrie last night……”
“Cough, cough, cough.” Even though he didn't drink water, Horne interrupted Sylph with a violent cough as if he had choked on water. “In short, are you willing to be the dean of the theological seminary?”
“I refuse. I'm just your secretary, a colleague, not close.” Sylph's cold and icy chanting tone made this coquettish remark sound more like the truth.
“We're not close yet?”
“Then let me ask you, do you know I'm a witch?”
“I know.”
“Then what is my witch magic, do you know?”
“Um……” Horne started sweating. He really forgot. He seemed to have heard someone report it before. Jeanne mentioned it, what was it?
“Who says I don't know? It's manipulating little bugs… definitely not… it's, it's……”
Sylph looked at Horne's sweaty and CPU-running appearance, and suddenly grabbed his hand: “Wrong, I'm a divination witch. My divination is micrometry, I can divine extremely small things.”
“Then what about the Royal Theological Seminary and natural theology?”
“I'm your secretary. It's normal for a secretary to handle some government affairs for you. The dean of the Royal Theological Seminary sounds interesting. I'll take it.”