———Forgot it was Monday, *sweats*—please drop a click, a recommendation, and a Third River ticket while the big shots haven't charged ahead yet, so I can keep hanging on to first place~
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After accepting Lucian's and Rhein's suggestions, Victor produced a very simple piece for Lucian to read—it was a piano primer he had written specifically for his music students. Because it needed to be simple, it contained few ornamental flourishes; when played on a harpsichord, the instrument's shortcomings confined it to merely tolerable. On the current Piano, however, the melody sang with a pure, beautiful quality. It could hardly be called a masterpiece, but it was more than enough to become widely known.
With his soul and mental strength tempered and strengthened through Meditation, Lucian's memory was growing sharper by the day. Despite having only a few days of musical foundation, he completed the initial sight-reading within ten attempts—roughly on par with Lot, Phyllis, and the other nobles who had been steeped in music since childhood. A gratified smile surfaced on Victor's face once more.
"All right, Lucian, go ahead and try playing the melody for the opening section yourself. Don't be nervous—anything that happens on a first attempt is perfectly normal. But do remember to maintain proper fingering. Don't panic and start flailing your fingers around. As long as the fingering is correct, a bit more practice and you'll have this piece down." After explaining the essential fingering points to Lucian, Victor simply had him start playing on the spot—nothing at all like the gradual, step-by-step process of familiarizing oneself with fingering and keys that Lucian imagined a piano tutorial would follow.
Of course, the piece was simple. This kind of direct practice was similar to tackling the introductory portion of a piano tutorial and the hands-on exercise simultaneously. A young child with straightforward thinking and logic might struggle, but for an adult like Lucian, sheer repetition would be enough to adapt.
Lucian placed both hands over the keys as though holding eggs, looked at the Music Score before him, ran through it once in his mind, and then pressed down, beginning to play.
Individual notes emerged one after another, halting and labored. Lucian played with tremendous difficulty. Memorizing the piece had seemed easy enough, but actually performing it was another matter entirely. He clearly remembered which note came next, yet couldn't match it to the right key. Once he found the correct key and tried to direct his finger to press it, he had to recall the fingering all over again—no mistakes allowed, the right finger for each note. And when he finally sorted all that out, his fingers still seemed to move out of sync with each other.
So it went: one note would sound, then a long, agonizing pause before the next, filling the practice room with a staccato performance that resembled a dying man's last words.
Fortunately, Lucian had been trained in the focus required for spellcasting and tempered by exposure to dangerous situations and dead bodies. No matter how slowly he played, he did not panic. He did not rush to cram in notes only to produce wrong notes, muddled notes, or rushed notes—the entire melody, however halting, never devolved into outright noise.
Nearby, Lot, Phyllis, and Herodotus listened with broad smiles, though without a hint of mockery. They all remembered their own first attempts—just as bad, if not worse. To laugh at Lucian would be to laugh at themselves.
The piece was not long, yet a melody that should have taken roughly a minute took Lucian over three full minutes to complete. Only after he finished did he realize his back was slick with cold sweat, his forehead beaded with dense droplets—there had been an uncanny resemblance to the feeling of killing someone with a spell in the sewers.
*Clap, clap, clap.* Victor was the first to applaud, offering comfort and praise: "Lucian, you played very slowly and quite poorly, but among all the ordinary beginners I've seen, you're the only one who managed a first performance without a single wrong note. That composure will help you master piano fingering faster. That said, sometimes playing music requires pouring emotion into it—being too calm isn't always a good thing either."
Rhein, Lot, and the others joined in the applause. They had just witnessed Lucian's very first performance, after all. That said, expecting Lot, Phyllis, and the rest to actually voice any praise for Lucian was out of the question. Noble pride and the arrogance of Arcane Mages kept them from thinking it amounted to anything—especially Herodotus, who openly detested Lucian.
Once Victor finished his remarks, Rhein—a performer equally accomplished on the harpsichord and clavichord—offered a couple of observations, pointing out Lucian's current shortcomings:
"Lucian, your memory is excellent. After a few more rounds of study and practice, you should be able to remember the positions of the keys by heart. I'd estimate that reaching the level of an instinctive response the moment you see a score or hear a piece of music wouldn't take more than a month. However, I noticed your hand coordination is rather poor—meaning the notes you're thinking of can't translate quickly enough into actions by your hands."
"This piece is still very simple. When you encounter music with demanding technique, filled with ornamental flourishes, or pieces requiring complex left-and-right-hand interplay, it'll be far more difficult. And this particular piano has a forte pedal, a sustain pedal, and more—so beyond hand coordination, you'll need to develop your foot coordination as well."
"Of course, this is all a matter of practice. As long as you're willing to work hard, two or three years at the fastest—and no more than ten at the longest—should see you become a competent musician. Whether you'll be truly outstanding depends on whether you have musical talent."
Lucian already knew that mastering an instrument, even under the guidance of a great teacher, required enormous amounts of painstaking effort over a long period of time. Still, hoping to earn his living expenses, spellcasting materials, and magic experiment equipment costs by becoming a musician, he couldn't help feeling a twinge of disappointment. "Mr. Victor, Mr. Rhein—is there no faster way to become a competent musician?"
"Only if you were a true prodigy of music, with an unparalleled understanding of it. In that case, a few months might suffice to master an instrument. Unfortunately, you're not one. So a solid foundation and long, grueling practice are the only path to becoming a competent musician. I certainly don't want to hear people saying that Mr. Victor's music student can't even play the Piano properly." Phyllis, ever quick with a cutting remark, finally couldn't hold back after hearing Lucian's delusion.
Herodotus smiled, waited for Phyllis to finish, and then said with mock benevolence: "Lucian, you must plant both feet firmly on solid ground before you can walk farther and faster."
"That's right, Lucian—you've only just begun your studies. Don't underestimate how difficult learning an instrument is." Lot's feelings toward Lucian were less hostile than those of the other two, so his words came across as genuine advice rather than a jab.
Rhein smiled. "It's good for young people to have ambition and drive. But mastering an instrument requires countless repetitions. Don't be fooled by the fact that I perform well on the violin, harpsichord, clavichord, and harp—that was built up over an enormous stretch of time. *Heh heh.* There is, actually, one method that could let you master an instrument in the shortest time possible: awaken the power of your bloodline and become a knight. With that level of bodily control—of your hands and feet—your coordination would improve dramatically. Combined with your good memory, you could probably become a competent Piano performer in a week or two."
"Of course, how long it would actually take you to awaken your bloodline power—and whether it might end up taking even longer than several years or a decade—is something I couldn't say."