I Loaded the Occult Panel

Richard left the house early Saturday morning.

The twelve pounds his grandfather had given him were almost gone, spent on antiques and four second-class train tickets back to Briston.

Today, he was heading to the Briston Central Postal Savings Bank to withdraw his Cicero Cup prize money.

Richard understood banking about as well as he understood advanced mathematics: he knew it existed, but the details were a complete blur.

The original Richard had never held more than five shillings to his name. His father handled all the family’s finances.

His entire concept of withdrawing money boiled down to taking a passbook and an ID to the counter and naming a number.

As for his past life in the modern world... mobile payments had been everywhere by the time he reached high school. In-person banking existed only in hazy childhood memories.

Thirty pounds was a massive sum. He brushed his fingers against the cold iron of the crowbar in his trouser pocket, buttoned his coat tight, and strode toward the savings bank.

The savings bank sat near the eastern end of Central Avenue in Briston. It was an old gray-stone building with a bronze Royal Mail crest set above the lintel.

Acid rain had corroded the bronze to a sickly green, blurring the reliefs along the edges until only the crown in the center remained recognizable.He pushed through the doors and joined the short line at the counter.

It took about half an hour for his turn. He slid his passbook and school-issued identification across the counter.

”Thirty pounds, please.”

The teller was an elderly woman wearing pince-nez glasses.

She flipped through the passbook, glanced up at him, and worked her lips without saying a word.

She pulled a stack of banknotes from beneath the counter, counted them out one by one, and then counted them again.

The thirty pounds went into a brown paper envelope. She folded the flap twice and pushed it across the counter.

”Count it yourself.”

Richard counted the cash right there at the counter. Once he confirmed the amount, he tucked the envelope into his coat’s inner pocket.

Stepping back out the main doors, he turned south onto Central Avenue.

The fastest way home was actually to cut through Hereford Lane behind the bank, take the corridor bridge outside the freight yard, and emerge at the northern end of Grafton Street.

That route was shorter and much quieter. It would shave at least ten minutes off his trip compared to the main road.

But Richard didn’t take it.

With thirty pounds in cash resting against his chest, he had no intention of going anywhere quiet.

Central Avenue was Briston’s busiest thoroughfare. On a Saturday morning, it was packed with pedestrians, and most of the shops lining the street were open.

Coal carts took up half the sidewalk, half a dozen people were lined up at a pie stand, and the brass-buttoned uniform of a patrolman bobbed in and out of the distant crowd.

It was a long detour, but it would keep him surrounded by people from start to finish. It was easily the safest choice.

He pulled the front of his coat tighter, ensuring the envelope wouldn’t slip out of his pocket while he walked.

He deliberately fastened an extra button over the inner pocket—a habit he had picked up from his father.

Whenever Rogers brought his wages home, he would seal the cash tight, tuck it into his innermost layer of clothing, and button everything up securely over it.

Walking right in the middle of the crowd put him somewhat at ease.

He was surrounded by housewives buying daily groceries, peddlers pushing carts, and groups of teenagers loitering in twos and threes.

A bustling street was the best protection he could ask for.

As he walked, he mentally organized his tasks for the rest of the day.

First, he would go home and stash the money. After lunch, he would head out to Clement Antiquities and buy the Sphinx Oil Lamp.

The lamp cost two pounds. Out of the remaining twenty-eight, he needed to set aside money for his mother’s medical care, chip in for the family’s food, and keep a portion for daily expenses. Only whatever was left over would truly be his.

Just as he was doing the math, a brown wallet slipped from the coat pocket of a pedestrian walking diagonally ahead of him, seven or eight steps away.

The wallet hit the sidewalk paving stones with a soft thud.

The man who dropped it was wearing a gray woolen overcoat. He was walking at a brisk pace, completely oblivious to what he had lost.

Richard stopped in his tracks.

The wallet lay right in the middle of the path. The brown leather was worn smooth and shiny, and a folded corner had fallen open, revealing the edges of several banknotes.

”Hey, brother!”

The voice came from his right. A man had spotted the dropped wallet at almost the exact same time he did.

The man was of average height and wore an open work jacket, a grin plastered across his face.

”You saw that too? Guy dropped his wallet!”

The man in the jacket had quick hands, snatching the wallet off the ground in one fluid motion.

He flipped it open and marveled, ”Good lord... there’s a lot of cash in here.”

The man waved the wallet in Richard’s direction. ”That guy is long gone. How about it—a share for the finder?”

Richard stared at the man’s grinning face. He didn’t move.

A few details were off.

First, the wallet had slipped from the pocket at the wrong angle.

Coat side-pockets opened upward. When someone walked normally, the wallet would settle deeper into the pocket, not pop out on its own.

Unless a hand inside the pocket had deliberately pushed it out.

Furthermore, a wallet wasn’t a handkerchief; it had weight. When it slipped out, the coat’s center of gravity would shift, and a normal person would subconsciously touch their pocket.

But the man who dropped it had been walking far too fast.

Second, the man in the work jacket had been standing in a far too convenient spot.

He had been standing just off Richard’s right side—right at the very edge of Richard’s peripheral vision.

And he had spoken up the exact moment the wallet hit the ground, almost as if he had been waiting for it to fall.

Third, when an ordinary passerby found a stranger’s wallet, their normal reaction would be to chase after the owner or shout, ”Sir, you dropped your wallet!”

Instead, this man’s immediate reaction was to flip it open, count the cash, and rope a bystander into splitting it.

Stack those three anomalies together, and the answer floated to the surface.

Back in the eighties and nineties of his previous life, this kind of street scam had been incredibly common.

The routine was simple and direct. Two people worked in tandem. Person A would deliberately ”drop” a wallet in front of a mark. Person B would appear at the right moment and drag the mark into finding the wallet together.

Person B would propose splitting the loot, but doing so would require moving to a spot where no one could see them.

Once they lured the mark into an alley or a secluded corner, Person A would double back.

Either Person A would pretend to be the returning owner and threaten to call the police to extort the mark, or the two of them would simply drop the act and rob the victim.

The man in the gray woolen overcoat who had ”dropped” the wallet was Person A.

And the overly enthusiastic man in the work jacket standing in front of him was Person B.

They were staking out Central Avenue, specifically waiting for people to walk out of the savings bank with visibly bulging pockets.

The next step was to lure him into an alley.

Richard withdrew his hand, his expression unchanged.

”Nothing to do with me,” he said, turning sideways to step around the man in the jacket and keep walking.

The man froze for a second, but his reaction was quick, covering the distance in a few strides to catch up.

”Brother, hold on! This is free money, you don’t want it?”

Richard ignored him and kept walking.

”Hey, what’s wrong with you...”

The man put a hand on Richard’s right arm.

At the exact same time, the man in the gray overcoat doubled back, blocking Richard’s path from the front.

The man in the overcoat was half a head taller than the man in the jacket. He was terribly thin, his cheekbones pressing outward against a thin layer of skin.

Beneath the brim of his hat, the pupils of his eyes were severely dilated. Drool hung from the corner of his mouth.

This was actually an addict.

He had probably taken laudanum, or a similar cheap synthetic painkiller.

”Little brother.” The smell of medicine drifted from his mouth:

”That was my wallet just now. Since this friend here helped pick it up, it’s only fair we all split it together.”

As he spoke, he reached out and placed a hand on Richard’s left shoulder.

Pinning him front and back, the two men tried to muscle Richard toward the mouth of the adjacent alley.

There was a bulge at the jacket man’s belt—he probably had a folding knife or something similar tucked in.

Richard wasn’t sure if the other man actually had a knife on him.

If he shouted, they might panic and stab him right there on the street, which would cost him dearly.

He quietly slipped his left hand into his coat’s side pocket.

There was no time to draw his crowbar, nor could he swing a crowbar around on the main street.

But Ashcore Grass was a different story. The Fog Wall Spell had no visual effects—it didn’t glow, and it didn’t give off smoke.

He rubbed his thumb hard, crushing the Ashcore Grass between his fingers.

The fibers gave a soft crackle as they snapped, the grass flakes scattering into his palm.

A long, steady breath blew over the fragments in his palm.

The ether activated the Ashcore Grass fibers, blasting them apart in perfect silence.