I Loaded the Occult Panel

”It’s not a note, it’s study material,” Richard corrected.

”Study material?” Mason popped a piece of potato into his mouth. ”How many words has she said to you? Total?”

”Before today... probably less than ten sentences.”

”You’ve shared ten sentences, and she’s hand-copying study materials for you?”

”It just means she likes helping people.”

Mason rolled his eyes and turned to Warren. ”Do you buy that?”

Warren cut his steak into small pieces and said slowly, ”I choose to believe Williams.”

”You believe my ass—”

”But I also believe a girl could have a crush on him,” Warren added, forking the meat into his mouth. ”The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Grey was eating quietly beside them. Her fork scraped against her plate, letting out a faint screech.”What are you talking about?” Her tone was exactly the same as usual.

”Williams’s painful life surrounded by beautiful girls,” Mason chuckled.

”Oh,” Grey replied coldly. She sliced her steak with a bit more force than before.

Hugh sat on Richard’s other side, having stayed out of the conversation entirely.

He shoved some bread into his mouth, brushed the crumbs off his clothes, and muttered, ”Richard, you’re really something else.”

”What’s wrong?”

”A month ago you were invisible, and now you’re the center of all the gossip. Did the script skip a chapter?”

”You should be glad. Since I’m famous now, you get to bask in the glory.”

”What glory? It’s not like beautiful girls are passing me notes.”

”There will be.”

”Don’t comfort me.” Hugh downed his hot tea in one gulp with the reckless bravado of a man with nothing left to lose.

At the other end of the cafeteria, Lillian sat in her usual spot by the window.

The standard ration of thin soup and bread sat in front of her. She kept her head down as she ate, her gaze never wandering toward the center of the room.

But the girl was listening closely.

Mason hadn’t controlled his volume well when he joked about Richard being ”surrounded by beautiful girls.”

Lillian rested her spoon against the edge of her bowl, her lips pressed tight.

The note she had given him was just study material. Her intentions were completely pure.

Mr. West’s advice on the day of the trial lecture had been right. She had happened to find the corresponding reference passage and simply thought to pass it along to a classmate.

After all, Richard was participating in the Cicero Cup. It was only right for her to offer some help.

That was all.

That was absolutely all.

She stirred the soup in her bowl forcefully. This time, the soup was still hot.

...

The days passed, one by one.

Classes during the day, tutoring at lunch, and any free time in the afternoon spent holed up in the library.

He went home at night to do his homework and decipher the new book, followed by fifteen minutes of breathing method practice right before bed.

The numbers on his panel were the most faithful progress bars.

[Breathing] Lv.2 Experience: 40/500

[Learning] Lv.1 Experience: 199/200

Breathing advanced steadily with the bonus from his practice, and Learning was about to hit its ceiling.

During Friday morning’s geography class, Richard listened to the teacher discuss the distribution of ocean currents along the east coast of the Albion Empire.

His brain could already run two separate threads at once:

One followed the teacher’s lecture, automatically pinning the names and directions of the ocean currents to the coastline map he had memorized earlier;

The other worked in the background, silently digesting the content he had restored from another steganographic text the night before.

That book discussed the classification of mineral mediums. It had no direct relation to the breathing method, but it helped explain the sealing mechanisms of supernatural items.

The circle enclosing a triangle with short lines extending from its sides on the base of the Sphinx Oil Lamp perfectly matched a standard sealing symbol described in the book.

The knowledge built bridges inside his mind, the pathways growing wider and wider.

The panel flashed.

[Learning] Lv.2 Experience: 0/500

The change arrived much more quietly than when Breathing had upgraded.

There was no surge of heat, no vibration in his chest.

But the moment Learning jumped to Lv.2, he felt as if someone had tweaked the contrast settings in his brain.

The names of the ocean currents written on the blackboard became sharper, and his information processing speed quickened.

Whenever a new concept entered, related older knowledge automatically sprang up to align with it, highlighting the connections between the two.

If Lv.1 had been like upgrading a search engine from dial-up to broadband, Lv.2 was swapping that broadband for fiber optics.

His absorption speed for multiple languages and foundational academic knowledge improved yet again.

There was also improvement in depth. Although it still couldn’t compare to the effects of Speculation, at least he wouldn’t hit a wall so quickly when tackling difficult subjects.

The most direct benefit was that his speed in deciphering steganographic texts would increase again.

A workload that previously took three days to complete would now only take a single night.

When the class bell rang, Richard closed his textbook, his plans for the evening already formed.

...

That night, after the rest of his family had gone to sleep, Richard flicked on his desk lamp and got to work.

The window was left open a crack as usual. Cold wind slipped in through the gap, making the corners of the papers on his desk flutter.

Spread open in front of him was another book he had taken from the third-floor bookshelf.

This was the third candidate he had singled out, though he hadn’t had time to scrutinize it before.

With From Sanctuary to Pulpit—the book gifted by Mr. Holland—acting as a reference tool, coupled with the experience from his previous deciphering attempts and the buff from Learning Lv.2, his progress was much faster.

He had familiarized himself with the substitution patterns for religious terminology, and the paths to trace word origins were growing shorter.

Obscure roots that used to require ages of flipping through an etymology manual could now be summoned directly from memory.

Two hours later, all the encrypted passages in the new book’s appendix had been completely restored.

The content was a supplementary explanation of the breathing method, including answers to a few common questions and precautions for advanced practice.

One particular line caught his attention:

”When the practitioner can steadily perceive a warmth in the chest while holding their breath, and the duration of this warmth exceeds the length of the breath-hold itself (i.e., there is still residual warmth upon exhaling)...

”...this indicates that the retention of ether has begun to form a stable Micro-circulation. This is the first milestone of the introductory breathing method.”

He recalled what his practice had felt like over the past few days.

The warmth in his chest had indeed grown more obvious with each session, but it hadn’t yet extended into the exhalation phase.

He was still short of the first milestone, but he was heading in the right direction.

Richard folded his translation drafts, locked them in his drawer, and turned off the desk lamp.

After lying in bed for a while, he performed one final set of breathing method practice. The numbers jumped.

[Breathing] Lv.2 Experience: 49/500

Lv.3 was getting closer.

...

On Saturday morning, Richard headed out alone.

His excuse was the same as last time: going for a walk, just wandering around.

Evelyn didn’t tag along this time; she had to stay home to help their mother with chores.

Before he left, she specifically warned him from the top of the stairs, ”Don’t go touching people’s old lamps anymore!”

”I know.”

”And don’t get into anyone’s cars again, either!”

”...I know.”

In the small alleyway around the corner of Grafton Street, the wooden sign for Clement Antiquities still hung in its usual place.

A splotch of bird droppings had been added to the bronze kettle emblem, likely the work of a nearby pigeon.

The brass bell jingled as he walked through the door. The old man raised his head from behind the counter.

Seeing it was Richard, he gave an ”Oh” and lowered his head again.

”The lamp is still here.”

”I know. I just came to take a look.”

”Looking is fine. No touching.”

Richard made a beeline for the Sphinx Oil Lamp.

The lamp was still on the shelf. Its position hadn’t shifted, and the patina on its surface remained unchanged.

He reached out, took the lamp down, and sat in the chair next to the shelf.

The panel flashed.

[Available Points: 0.11]

He wrapped both hands around the body of the lamp and waited for the number to rise.

0.12... 0.13... The speed was even slower than last time.

Last time it had been about 0.01 per minute, but now, three minutes had passed and it had only gone up by 0.01.

Richard shifted his posture, resting the lamp on his knees. He covered the wing section with his palms, targeting the area where the dark red patina was most concentrated.

0.14... Another long wait.

Five minutes passed before the number crawled to 0.15.

At this rate, he could sit here all day and still not absorb 0.5.

Even worse, this antiquities shop wasn’t his living room.

The old man poked his head out from behind the counter again.

He stared at Richard, who was sitting in the corner clutching the lamp, covering it tightly with both hands as if he were giving CPR to a bronze cat.

”Young man.”

”Hmm?”

”What are you doing?”

”Feeling the inscriptions,” Richard lied without batting an eye.

”You don’t need to cover it with your hands to feel the inscriptions.” The old man was growing a little impatient. ”Your palms will sweat, and the sweat touching the bronze will accelerate the corrosion. The patina on the wings is already unstable.”

”Sorry.”

Richard placed the lamp back onto the shelf.

0.15. He had only absorbed 0.15.

He did some mental math.

To absorb everything inside the lamp at this speed, he would have to visit the shop over a dozen times, staying for several hours each visit.

...Just handling it that much would polish the lamp to a glossy sheen.

Leaving aside whether the old man would kick him out, the time investment alone wasn’t worth it.

He decided to change his approach.

”Mr. Clement, does the shop have any other items from the Eastern Continent?”