Editing Dantalian no Shoka:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

Huey and Dalian were taken to Camilla's holiday house within the town.

It was a pleasant building that had a little, yet beautiful garden. There was a large river nearby, which they could admire from the glass veranda where the tea room was.

"Huey and I are childhood friends!" explained Camilla, while delighting in watching Dalian, who was still a little wary of her. "My father works as a trader, you know, so our families have known each other for quite long. Especially Old Wez because he was a patron of us and visited our mansion quite often. That's also how I met Huey."

"......"

Dalian wordlessly turned her gaze towards Huey in order to have him confirm Camilla's statement. He seemed to be a little bothered and sighed.

"That was ages ago! She went to the new continent<!-- America --> for a while."

"New continent?" Dalian slightly raised an eyebrow.

"Yay!" Camilla showed her the thumbs up and nodded over-cheerfully.

Dalian was taken aback and put on a frown. Apparently, she was overwhelmed by Camilla's America-style frankness.

"I was there conducting some of my father's business<!-- No clue how to write this in proper English. -->. I've returned right after the war was over."

"So that's why you're dressed like this?" asked Dalian, apparently having a queer aha moment, while wandering with surveying eyes upon Camilla's clothes from top to bottom.

"Ugh... so it looks strange, after all? But over there it's quite normal..." she explained herself, whispering, while holding up the hems of her skirt with her fingers.

Though not as much as Dalian, her appearance was also quite uncommon.

[[Image:Dantalian no Shoka-vol1-p139.jpg|thumb|Camilla]]

She wore a white blouse with a necktie, and a fedora on her head. Her slightly peculiar yet pretty fair hair was cut at shoulder length and on her feet were tall lace-up boots. The unadorned skirt she wore was fastened with a leather belt so massive one could tuck a gun into it. She looked much more like one of the pioneers of the new continent rather than a daughter of a wealthy man in the capital.

"Come to think of it, why were you in that bookstore anyway, Camilla?" asked Huey suddenly.

Her parents were wealthy and managed several enterprises, hence, it would have been normal for someone in her position to just send a servant or call a bookseller home.

Camilla, however, shook her head casually.

"I wouldn't necessarily bother going myself for normal books, yeah. But you know, since it's about the textbooks I'm going to give to the kids, I wanted to check and select them with care."

Dalian cocked her head.

"Textbooks?"

"I'm voluntarily running a small private school. You see, there are kids that live in poor families and can't afford a governess but still wish for higher education. Well, as soon as they manage to enter some university, they may be awarded a grant, but until then, there's no way around studying on their own. And that's what I'm helping them with," explained Camilla proudly.

Dalian surveyed her with marveled eyes and formulated her thoughts, "...you are one queer woman."

Huey gave a laugh and nodded. "She is. Has always been."

"How rude!" Camilla put her hands on her hips. "To begin with, you're no different, Huey. Have you found ''it'' by now?"

"It...?"

"—the Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian." Camilla flashed a grin. "The private library that goes by the name of the demon that reigns over knowledge and is depicted with books in his hands. The prohibited repository that holds 900,000 and 666 phantom books, of which none ought to exist. You've been searching for that all the time, haven't you?"

"Who knows?" Huey feigned ignorance. While giving Dalian, who was glaring at him with a sidelong glance, a shrug, he added, "Did I ever talk to you about such a thing?"

Camilla got a little huffy and approached his face.

"You can't tell me that you forgot! I've been looking forward to seeing it, you know, since I thought Old Wez could actually possess it."

Huey refrained from answering and instead took a sip of the black tea that had been brought by a maid.

Camilla let out a big, stressed sigh, upon which she immediately contained herself and raised her face. "Right! Now that we're talking about books, I've been meaning to ask you something. Say, are there books that make you brighter?"

"...books that make you brighter?"

"Yeah. Books that raise your intelligence just by reading them."

"Well, I do think there's always something you can gain from reading a book. Be it knowledge, imagination or something else," Huey answered frankly.

However, Camilla shook her head with a surprisingly serious mien. "That's not what I mean! Just by simply reading it, you get as bright as though you were someone completely different. For instance, you suddenly know things you aren't supposed to know or you become able to easily solve the most complex calculations."

"A book that raises your mental faculties...?"

"Mh, yeah. I think that's what it is." Camilla paused to think, but nodded before long. "To tell the truth, I'm talking about Mildred."

"Mildred...? Do you mean the Mildred from the Dewar family?"

Huey struggled to recall the face of a woman he had completely forgotten about, letting his gaze wander in the room.

With a wry smile while watching him do so, she replied, "Yes, that disagreeable witch. Remember? She's running a private school, too, you know. Anyway, a while back, she came accosting me, burning with rivalry, and that's when she told me that she obtained a phantom book that raises the intelligence of her students."

"...a phantom book?" Huey's mien darkened. "Did she say it was a phantom book?"

"Yes. Full of pride, I tell you," said Camilla while twisting her lips. Then however, she seemed a little worried. "But you know, after that, she changed. She suddenly stopped leaving her house... and fearfully said she couldn't handle her students anymore because they got too intelligent..."

"Too intelligent...?" Huey turned around to Dalian, still with a stern expression. "How do you think about it, Dalian?"

"Books that teach learning styles are not rare at all," Dalian ill-humoredly scowled at Camilla. "It's recorded that mnemonic techniques had already been used 2500 years ago in ancient Greece, and many ancient cultures had developed their own ways of rapid calculations to calculate complex problems mentally."

"Simonides' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci#Loci_as_architecture_and_the_.22Memory_Palace.22 memory palace] and Vedic Mathematics, right?" Camilla noted.

Dalian widened her eyes, "Yes. It seems you have done your homework... though you don't look like it."

"Ugh... I don't look like it? What do you mean...?" Camilla sobbed while sloughing her shoulders. "But anyway, it's not related to those things. I've only heard of it myself, too, but apparently not only their knowledge, but also their way of thinking and personality changed completely in just a few days' time..."

"In a few days?" Huey raised an eyebrow.

It was a physical impossibility that by reading a book, the intelligence of a student would rise so abruptly as to frighten the teacher—if it was just a normal book.

If something of that kind had really happened, then they were made to read an abnormal book.

"I see...," Dalian put a frown on her clean face and sighed. "I may have come upon something. It's presumably a real phantom book. The so-called Liber Sapientiae which was written by a nameless latin. To think that such a thing was still out there somewhere..."

After saying this, she kept quiet with a contorted face. Apparently, that phantom book was connected with unpleasant memories.

"A phantom book that lifts one's intelligence without limit, huh. It should be a good idea to collect it as soon as possible."

Huey stood up with a sight. However, Dalian moved no muscle.

"No... just let it be," she said, while adding some sugar to her tea.

Huey countered with a slightly strained voice, "But it's a phantom book! What if it crosses the boundary because someone who doesn't have the qualifications is reading it?"

"The 'Book of Wisdom'... awards its reader perfect knowledge. The reader is able to reign over the people or to destroy the world if he wants to."

Huey was clearly disturbed by Dalian's dreadful statements.

"Then we should get it all the more..."

"Just let it be," ordered Dalian coldly. "The initial issue of the 'Book of Wisdom' is already in the Bibliotheca. I don't need two editions of the same book. If you get on all fours before me, I may even deign to show it to you?"

"I wouldn't go that far for it!" Huey shook his head, irritated.

So far, Camilla had only watched their exchange with confusion, but now she joined their conversation. "Hey, you two. What are you talking about? Phantom books? Bibliotheca? ...it sounds almost as if the Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian really..."

When Camilla asked this evident question, Dalian cowed her with a severe gaze. Then she gave her thumbs up and said, "Yay".

"Yay?"

Camilla twisted her lips bewilderedly upon accidentally responding to Dalian by giving her thumbs up as well.