Reiner froze in place, thoughts racing.

The news he had read at the time only reported that Dana's parents had gone to investigate because of a strange magical reaction in the Midgar halfplane, but there was no mention of the rest of the halfplane, and in the article, there were only descriptions of thousands of people killed along with the Christines.

Reiner didn't expect that those thousands of people would already be a small civilization with their own language and script.

He sat down slowly in a chair, full of thoughts.

"Midgar's connection to the main plane has only been three years, and no one would have thought that it would suddenly collapse, so people have no idea of preserving its unique culture and language, except for a few mages who have surveyed it and learned that it is rich in magical mineral resources."

Safros said faintly, no one is to blame, no one could have predicted the collapse of the half-plane, there was no warning.

"At that time, the Magic Society's policy towards this kind of half-plane, which had been connected in the past, but was lost due to the war, and eventually returned to the half-plane, was to gradually communicate, and not forcibly intervene in its society at the beginning, and retain the most complete form of civilization, because it is better to study how civilization was formed."

This is one of the reasons why when the half-plane collapsed, almost all of the people of Midgar did not escape, and almost no documentation survived.

"I'm not a remnant of Midgar, in fact, when I first discovered Midgar, I was just a student in the High School of Magic struggling with my graduation thesis, and my teacher was the person in charge of Midgar's exploration, so I followed me to the half-plane on the edge of civilization."

Safros said a lot, and perhaps over the years, he couldn't find anyone willing to listen to him.

He spoke of the vast desert of Midgar, where during the day the wind swept up the sand and obscured the sky and the sun, and the sand was like the sharpest blade of a knife, carving the great stones into different shapes.

He said that at night, the bright starry sky of Midgar, due to the small scale of civilization, so the night sky here is not polluted by the lights of the city, and the sky is full of stars.

He said that the people of Midgar, the mage who led everyone back then has fallen, and the remaining ordinary people don't know anything about magic at all, so this civilization is a civilization without the influence of magic, people survive in an oasis in the desert, and many retro customs of the ancient magic empire are retained, warm and simple, and the children are wide-eyed, looking curiously at the visiting Saphoros and others.

Of course, he also said something about Serafino's poetry.

His first formal exposure to the language was at a sacrifice.

Before the establishment of the ancient magic empire, there were religions of gods on the continent, but these religions were quickly defeated by the mages, and the gods they believed in were unable to bring any power to themselves, and eventually, the religion died.

But in Midgar, a primitive religion was formed, and they believed in the god of magic, and the image was the mage who first led ordinary people to this plane.

And the poetry of Serafino appeared in the sacrifice.

To this day, Safros remembers hearing the maiden chanting a prayer as the presiding priest and the crowd around him singing in unison, which made him, a mage who had been educated in magic for twenty years, think for the first time that this language might really be the creation of the gods.

"Later, my mentor gave me the task of compiling a dictionary of the Serafino language, which he thought was a fascinating language in itself, even if it was not of archaeological value, and I found myself who was good at many languages."

Outside the window, Safros said, the setting sun dyed the clouds a fiery crimson, the sky changed from pale pink to blue at the other end, and a few stars loomed to announce the arrival of night.

In the office under the sunset, only Reiner and Safros, in a low and slow voice, tell the end of a civilization.

"For the first two years, I stayed in Midgar, interacted with the locals, and basically mastered the general conversation, and then I needed to return to the main plane because of some trivial matters, and I prepared for the next step of the work, and that's when disaster struck."

Safros seemed reluctant to recall, but continued.

"In the northern part of the Midgar Desert, traces of a magical anomaly were found in a mineral deposit, and the Magic Association sent a mage who specializes in the ecology of the half-plane to investigate, but who knew that it was the beginning of the collapse of the half-plane, and everyone in Midgar, including my mentor and other classmates, was annihilated in an instant, leaving me alone."

Sighing again, Safros took out his pipe from his bosom and was about to light it, but remembered that he couldn't smoke in the office, so he silently put it down.

Mentors and friends have all passed away with the collapse of the half-plane, and even the civilization he studied no longer exists.

"Mr. Safros, you've been doing this all these years?"

Reiner asked, he had probably heard that most of the people who could be sent to the distant half of the plane were the best of their peers, and Safros must have been a promising mage back then, but ten years later, he was still the fourth ring, and it was conceivable that he had dedicated this long time to this dictionary.

Why is that?

Understanding Serafino's poetry is not enough to improve the level of magic, nor can it be used to guide the discovery of ruins, and even the most basic communication may not be possible.

Now, ten years later, Safros may be the only person in the world who speaks Serafino, and he may not even be able to find one to talk to.

In Parcival's words, what Safros did was futile and meaningless.

"Hehe, in fact, I don't know why I'm focused on this matter, but in a blink of an eye, so much time has passed."

Safros should not be more than forty years old, but the years have left indelible marks on him, he is as old as an old man in his sixties and seventies, this is still the result of becoming a mid-level mage, and his body has been tempered by magical power.

"I just thought about it, ah, how to express this word, how to translate this sentence, and ten years are gone."

He smiled, and perhaps only Safros knew what was in that smile.

"Some people say that what I study is useless and meaningless."

Safros muttered, as if recalling some of his past experiences.

"But I knew it had to be a dictionary."

The last of the afterglow shone on Safros's face, casting a golden yellow.

Reiner was silent.