Sir William Burk was a baronet as had been his father and his father's mother.
In fact, it had been his paternal grandmother who earned the hereditary title through serving as a logistics advisor to General Kran for thirty-five years.
She had used her title to help her children advance their careers, William's father. Unfortunately, that drunkard and his anger issues had almost cost their family the title his grandmother had slaved most of her life away for.
And now, here he was, managing a bunch of harbor officials. Sure, it was the biggest harbor in the Empire, but could it compare to his grandmotheras position?
Even worse, his incompetent subordinate might have just angered the son of a Marquess. Fortunately, that son looked surprisingly laid back. Not that appearances could not deceive. In fact, if the noble were plotting to have them all assassinated for the slight, he would likely be just as relaxed.
“Lord Dean Pelou, in the name of the Palevine Empire I apologize to you and your guardian for my subordinate's incompetence. Please rest assured that her attitude does not reflect the intentions of the Palevine Empire.”
At that, Ferrudion frowned. He was almost finished inspecting the rooms interesting décor and ready to move on.
“This is the opik?” he inquired languidly.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Sensing Ferrudion's impatience, the man decided to move on. Not that he could do much more than apologize, anyways.
“We will need you to confirm a few things before I can issue you a travel permit. Am I correct to assume that you will be heading to the academy?”
“Yes,” Ferrudion and Kalou Dan confirmed almost at once.
“Very good. In that case, they will handle you and your guardians resident status application. We only need the temporary travel permit for foreigners.”
Ferrudion sat and watched as Kalou Dan and Lemme om Apox were asked to place scribbles on several roles of paper. These were different from the scribbles they had used on the ship and he could not read them. But after they wrote their names, he noticed that there was a pattern: unlike the scribbles on his map and in most of Kalou Dan's books, the scribbles did not stand for concepts but for sounds.
He then started looking over Lemme om Apox's shoulder and trying to sound out the scribbles in his head. Some of them seemed spelled wrong and he had to do a lot of inference. Still, when they finished their scribbling, he was almost certain he had them figured out.
“Finally, I need your honorable sisol, Lord Dean Pelou, Lord Dan Kalou.” William Burk said.
Ferrudion watched with interest as Kalou Dan pulled out a stone from underneath his tunic. It was dangling from a chain around his neck, and he could feel the managy inside of it.
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Kalou Dan then pressed the stone against the scroll, and Ferrudion observed as the magical construct embedded in it left the scroll with a copy of itself.
‘Interesting.’
『“What is the purpose of this?”』
Lemme on Apox winced, looked at him, and replied out loud but in I!onian,
“Please use your managy to leave the magic that proves your identity.”
‘Is sisol their word for seal? That construct Kalou Dan used is too faint. Even at that low consumption level, it will run out of managy in less than a century.
‘But I cannot use my godly seal since it could reveal me…’
Ferrudion frowned.
‘And that scroll is too weak to even hold it.’
Ferrudion tried to build an elegant managy construct on the fly:
Firstly, it needed to reflect the concepts most natural to him, so that it could not be imitated. Since he was still a nascent greater god, these were his partial understanding of the concepts his parents had used to reconstruct their souls: iron and salt.
Secondly, it needed to be small and simple, lest it burn away this mortal scroll.
And finally, it needed to last. Ferrudion was unwilling to leave a seal only for it to fade in a century or two.
Sir William Burk looked a little awkward as Ferrudion stared at the paper in front of him. He wondered if the young lord had yet to master the imperial writing system and threw a glance at the lord's assigned guardian. Unfortunately, she seemed content to let the young lord stare, so what could he do?
They sat there in silence for a quarter of an hour when finally, the young lord moved. He carefully touched the scroll in front of him and then withdrew his hand.
“Done.”
Sir William Burk looked at Lemme on Apox for confirmation, but the woman kept silent. Sighing internally, he pulled out the magical slate that allowed for viewing signatures and moved it towards the scroll.
Before he could touch it, it lit up.
《Unknown signature detected.》
《Quantifying… Please wait.》
《Qualifying…… Please wait.》
《Analysis completed.》
》Quantities:
》》Managy level: OOR
》》Min managy density: OOR
》》Max managy density: OOR
》Qualities:
》》Elements: N/A
》》Partial Matches: 0
》》…
Sir William Burk stared at the device and considered that it might be defective. Since the slate would simply not detect managy that was too faint, the only way for a measurement to be out-of-range was for the managy to be too high.
To confirm his suspicions, he moved on to the other scroll and touched Kalou Dan's signature with the slate.
《Unknown signature detected.》
《Quantifying… Please wait.》
《Qualifying…… Please wait.》
《Analysis completed.》
》Quantities:
》》Managy level: 15 Sp
》》Min managy density: 2.37
》》Max managy density: 3.09
》Qualities:
》》Elements: -D-I
》》Partial Matches: 12
》》Partial Match, Baronet Kalou Saha
》》Partial Match, Baron Kalou
》》Partial Match…
Sir William Burk stared at the perfectly ordinary result. The total amount of managy contained was fifteen times the smallest measurable unit. That was not terribly high but not low either.
The density ranged from 2.37 times to 3.09 times the average environmental managy density. Again, a perfectly ordinary result.
The signature was almost omni-elemental, only missing the divine and infernal elements. This was common but a mark of quality nonetheless. Omni-elemental signatures were harder to replicate, after all.
Finally, the device had found several partial matches and displayed them in order of similarity.
This was also to be expected. After all, most families had one master signature and gave their individual members variations thereof. It was simply unfeasible to develop magical signatures for each and every individual.
While Sir William Burk would not have been surprised to see that there were no partial matches for Lord Dean Pelou's signature since their empires had not interacted much, the other results were… unbelievable.
For good measure, he tried a few more times before giving up. The young lord's signature remaining immeasurable.