Urban System in America-Chapter 116 - 115: Albrecht Dürer

{Author’s Note: If you don’t wanna read his artistic journey, you can directly skip to Chapter 137, just don’t miss Chapter 121.

But of course, I wouldn’t recommend that, especially if you wanna feel a bit artsy or cultural. And if you wanna get a girlfriend, then it’s even more so, just read the info in these Chapters and a girlfriend is basically guaranteed. *finger crossed. *}

----

Suddenly, the room darkened — not with shadows, but with a hush. As if something ancient had stirred.

From the far side of the void, a golden pillar of light descended once more.

But this time, it brought someone else.

—

The light rippled like water before parting.

A door emerged — old, carved in thick oak, covered with intricate glyphs and classical motifs: circles within squares, divine proportions, measurements etched like scripture. The door creaked open.

From its depths stepped a tall man clad in a long, simple robe. His beard was trimmed short, his eyes sharp, deep-set beneath a brow that bore the weight of thought. He carried no brush, no palette — only a folded measuring compass at his waist and a leather-bound sketchbook in one hand.

He looked like a scholar. But he moved like a man of precision. His cane tapped in three-four time, more metronome than support.

"I am Albrecht Dürer," he said in a quiet, accented voice. "Printer, painter, mathematician. I mapped the human body in golden ratios. I studied nature as geometry in motion. And now, I will teach you to see not only with your eyes, but with the mind behind them."

Rex blinked. The name stirred something even from school memories — a Renaissance master. A man who studied both art and science.

Then suddenly he seemed to remember something and immediately stood up with shock.

Albrecht Dürer.

The name rang like iron struck on marble.

He finally remembered where he had heard it before — a whisper in dusty textbooks, a reverent mention in art history videos he never finished. He remembered the meticulous woodcuts, the intricate engravings, the almost mathematical precision of Dürer’s lines. But seeing the man in the flesh — or whatever passed for flesh in this strange realm — was something else entirely.

And when he stopped in front of Rex, Dürer gestured at the canvas he had just painted, his voice both warm and grounded.

"You’ve begun with pain. That’s honest. That’s good."

He nodded at the drawing.

"But now, it’s time to shape what you see. To draw not just from memory — but from mastery."

The system’s voice rang out once more:

[Second Descent Initiated — *Foundations of Form*

Instructor: Albrecht Dürer

Master of Line, Structure, and Precision]

He opened his sketchbook and revealed pages that seemed alive — anatomical studies that breathed, perspective lines that rotated in mid-air, folds of cloth drawn with such clarity that Rex could feel the texture just by looking.

"In this lesson, we begin with proportion. You will learn form, structure, and light — not as decoration, but as truth."

"For if emotion is to be expressed, it must be shaped."

He gestured to the side. The void folded and formed into a room — an atelier of clean white walls, shelves of drawing tools, with anatomical models and classical sculptures, with endless empty pages waiting to be filled, and windows that opened into a dimensionless grey sky.

"You have seen. Now you will construct. You will learn control, measurement, and proportion. Not to cage creativity, but to give it structure — so that when your soul speaks, your hand does not tremble."

He walked toward a large blank sheet pinned to a wall, then drew a single line.

"Line is law," he said. "Understand this, and you can shape the world."

He turned to Rex, eyes sharp, voice firm but not unkind.

Rex nodded.

He came closer again, his eyes scanning the canvas.

He didn’t speak. He didn’t nod. He simply observed — the way a scientist observes a rare phenomenon, not with emotion, but with intent.

Rex shifted under the weight of that gaze.

Then, softly, Dürer set the cane against the void-ground and stepped forward.

"No composition. No proportion. No depth. No hierarchy of shape," he said, voice low but not unkind. "But... truth."

He turned his eyes to Rex. They were sharp. Not cold — just exact.

"And truth," he said, "is rare."

Dürer walked to the side, hands clasped behind his back. His gait was slow, deliberate, almost mechanical — yet there was nothing robotic about him. Each step spoke of discipline, of years spent in pursuit of an ideal not yet reached.

"You began with emotion. That was correct. But emotion without structure is a scream in the dark. Felt, yes. But not remembered."

He paused beside Rex.

"You wish to draw, yes? Then we begin not with the heart... but with the hand."

With that, he raised a finger, and the void shifted — unfolding like a great sketchbook in the wind.

A great sheet unfurled before them — translucent, like vellum caught in moonlight.They brimmed with Vitruvian grids, golden spirals, armature lines. Anatomical studies hung in the air: a human hand in flexion, an eye rendered in precise hatchings, a horse’s leg showing bones, sinew, and balance.

Symbols danced across it: lines, curves, angles, ratios, each one impossibly precise, as if carved by time itself.

"Your task now," he said, "is to learn how to see. Not with the heart. But with the eye of geometry."

Another flick of his wrist, and a long quill appeared in Rex’s hand. It felt strange — lighter than the brush, but sharper somehow, like holding a blade made of thought.

Dürer extended his hand to the canvas, and with a motion so smooth it seemed inevitable, he drew a single line.

Perfect. Straight. Balanced.

Rex stared. It was just a line. But it wasn’t. It *held*. It divided space. It made the blankness not empty, but intentional.

Dürer turned to him again.

"Today, you draw not a soul, but a skeleton."

He raised his cane and with one swift motion, drew a cube in perspective — perfect in its vanishing point alignment, cross-contour lines indicating form, mass, and direction. The cube rotated slowly, revealing itself in space.

"This is where truth begins. Form. Mass. Structure."

Then another line emerged — an orthogonal, receding toward a horizon line marked faintly behind Rex’s canvas.

"Every form begins with a line. Every chaos seeks geometry. Even grief has structure — you simply haven’t learned to see it."

He stepped back, turned towards Rex and spoke.....

(End of Chapter)