I Loaded the Occult Panel

”It’s fishing.” The figure gripping the reins pulled its dozens of hands back a half-turn at once.

”Fishing for what?”

”For whoever’s in this procession.”

The old Scholar was also on the run:

”It doesn’t know who to look for. It couldn’t even say what it’s trying to find.

It’s just taking advantage of us scattering tonight to reach its hand in and grab whatever it can.”

The Wild Hunt procession had turned into a chaotic mess.

Some pulled back, some dove down, and some began chanting phrases no one but themselves could understand.

In the backyard of 13 Chelsea Road, the person on the rattan chair stopped breathing.

Gerard stepped out from behind a porch pillar and watched the coat draped over his grandson slip silently to the ground.Richard kept his shadow standing in place, his hand already pressed against the mask.

The Mask of the Inverse Envoy could close the door.

Unseen, untouchable, unrecognizable, and undefinable.

But the price was stated clearly: once the door was closed, the original mask could no longer be used.

Without the mask, the Caduceus would also dissipate.

Down below on the eight-kilometer frontline, the verdict had just been established.

The first batch had departed, but swaths of others were still rising from the ground behind them.

He had promised to divert the flow, and he had promised to take the punishment upon himself if he made a mistake.

The Mirror shifted slightly. Richard could feel the other party focusing on his location.

The shadow didn’t have the Silver Ring or the Eagle Hook on it.

To continue reciting the verdict and be illuminated, or to shut up and survive while letting the mission fail—it was a dilemma.

Richard was a greedy person. He wanted it all!

As the mirror turned to face him directly, the shadow lowered its hand from the mask.

The verdict was never something he should have been handling alone anyway.

The power of the verdict lay in the hook, and the hook took the format of that card.

Printed by the Quartermaster Department, everyone on the eight-kilometer frontline had an identical one in their pocket.

Whoever declared that sentence, the hook would fall into their hands.

The recitation he had the shadow complete tonight had already established the format on the other side of the veil.

The shadow raised the Caduceus to its chest and folded the golden wings.

The two golden snake heads turned inward and bit their own tails, and the staff dissolved into a wisp of smoke.

The entire sky darkened a shade in Richard’s eyes.

Down on the eight-kilometer frontline, the battle still raged.

An Algerian sergeant knelt beside a puddle, reciting the names of the dead. After each, he recited the fallen man’s father’s name.

It was a funerary custom from his homeland. Only by declaring the father’s name could the deceased recognize who they were in the underworld.

He recited them one by one. When his voice grew hoarse, he scooped up a handful of water to wet his throat and continued.

Three hundred yards east, a Punjabi soldier held up a borrowed hurricane lamp.

He had begged the lamp off the artillerymen; it was running low on oil.

He held the lamp at the corner of the communication trench, letting every casualty carried out pass beneath its light.

Further east, a Highlands soldier sat on an ammunition crate, singing.

He sang in Gaelic, a tune his grandmother had taught him in the kitchen.

It was the only verse he had ever learned. He started drifting off-key by the third repetition, but he didn’t stop.

Over by brigade headquarters, a military chaplain chanted a litany.

He had recited it for thirty years; he wouldn’t get a single word wrong even with his eyes closed.

In the Willow Stakes sector, a sergeant woke the entire platoon.

He had worked in the mines for years and remembered the rules for underground roll calls better than anything:

When coming back up the shaft, the shift and numbers had to be called out. When a number was called, that person had to answer. Not a single one could be missed; if someone was missing, you had to go back down to find them.

He stood on the fire step and began to call out.

”Third Squad, Number One.”

”Here!”

”Third Squad, Number Two.”

”Here!”

”Third Squad, Number Seven.”

No one answered. It was the number of the boy who had gone to save someone.

At the thought of this, the sergeant’s voice caught in his throat.

”...Here.” He answered for the boy.

He continued calling down the list.

Tucker sat on a sandbag, his Pocket Watch still clenched in his hand.

He heard Number Eleven, heard Number Fourteen, and heard the sergeant answer ”Here” for three more men who wouldn’t be coming back.

”Number Nineteen,” the sergeant called.

Tucker stood up.

”Here!”

No one quite knew what they were doing; they were simply seeing off the people they knew.

On the other side, the Black Earth River Master continued to illuminate the area.

The first thing to appear in the mirror was a sergeant kneeling by a puddle near its old homeland, his lips moving.

It flipped past this scene. The next reflection showed a raised hurricane lamp, with stretchers passing beneath it.

Flipping again, it showed a young man singing off-key.

Flipping again, a chaplain with his eyes closed.

Flipping once more, a sergeant with a miner’s background answering roll call for the dead.

It illuminated the area for a long time but couldn’t find its true target. The reflections were all just other people in the trenches below.

When the mirror screen swept across, Richard actually had no confidence at all.

The description for the Mask of the Inverse Envoy stated clearly that against those of a higher Rank than himself, it could only weaken their effects to a certain extent.

But at the end of the day, it had blocked the scrutiny. The mirror looked for a while, failed to see anything, and finally gave up on its own.

Inner Awakening allowed Richard to quickly understand why the other party had given up so fast.

The Black Earth River Master hadn’t wanted to come; it had been dragged out from the deepest folds of the veil by the lord of the hunt.

How much effort could something put forth when someone else had it by the throat?

The shadow stood in place.

The pack of hounds ran past its feet, not a single one recognizing it.

That small, limping one stretched its nose over, sniffed twice, and detoured around it.

Hundreds of miles away, the coat was draped back over the person on the rattan chair.

Two lines lit up on the interface:

[Walking Lv.3 → Lv.4.]

[Achieved: Independently escaped a high-tier pursuit.]

There was another line beneath it.

[Perception Lv.4]

[Achieved: Independently escaped the lock-on of a high-tier probe.]

Richard leaned back in the rattan chair, his back drenched in sweat, his cold shirt clinging to his skin.

He suddenly felt a strong urge to laugh.

Over by Cloud Ridge, the lord of the hunt had already reacted.

Seeing the mirror screen still sweeping randomly, its expression changed.

”This guy really won’t behave!”

The lord of the hunt reached beneath its ribs and pulled out the first one.

As that bone slipped from between its ribs, all the wind in the sky completely reversed direction.

The gentleman in Dover who had changed his recording paper three times picked up his pen from the desk, then set it back down.

He had given up on trying to explain anything tonight.

”The lord of the hunt is about to make a move.” The old Scholar shrank back.

”They are of the same Rank. Will it be effective?”

”Although they’re of the same Rank, their standing is different now.”

The old Scholar lifted his chin toward the mirror screen.

”Those three syllables belong inside its horn cavity. The slave inside the horn cavity ran out to steal its own family’s chickens.

When the master beats it, that’s called house discipline.”

The bow was drawn, and what it shot out was the sound of hooves.

Tens of thousands of hooves landed in a pathless place at the exact same moment, and the resulting muffled thud was launched from the bow.

Richard spread his Still Water to its absolute limit, watching that muffled thud pierce through the clouds.

Without the grand momentum of the sun and the hearth fire figures, the arrow flew low, clinging to the clouds, and everything parted to the sides on its own wherever it passed.

Thousands of mirrors flipped over in midair, their reflective surfaces facing outward.

But while a mirror could reflect a face and a name, it could not reflect a sound.

That muffled thud shot directly through the thousands of mirrors, leaving nothing behind in its wake.

From Ypres to Dunkirk, every mirror shattered that night.

The one on the barbershop wall cracked;

the standing mirror in the monastery guest room split straight down the middle;

the little round mirror hidden in a young girl’s apron pocket broke into three pieces.

In a field hospital, a second lieutenant holding a shaving mirror raised his hand, only for the mirror to explode with a pop in his palm. The shards nearly sprayed into his eyeballs.

He spent the rest of his life telling people about it, but no one ever believed him.

With a large chunk missing from the mirror screen, a chorus of cheers erupted above the clouds.

”Great archery! Shoot another!” The young man wielding an axe slapped his thigh in the saddle.

”Shut up.”

”The court is already dispersed!”

”Even if it’s dispersed, you’re not allowed to yell at a time like this.”

When the lord of the hunt pulled out the second bone, the darkness began to retreat to the side.

It retreated in a very cunning direction, heading straight toward the seal-bearing Virtuoso to the south.

But that was exactly what the lord of the hunt was waiting for. Yanking the reins, it once again tugged the chain around the Black Earth River Master’s neck.

From his rattan chair, Richard understood. The lord of the hunt was driving that figure.

The third deep red seal was originally aimed at the Bone Flute.

This Virtuoso, who excelled at kicking someone while they were down, was about to drop the seal again, which would completely silence the Gale Virtuoso.

But under the lord of the hunt’s tug on the chain, this seal landed on that patch of darkness.

Thousands of mirrors were pinned down by this single seal.

The moment it pinned them, all the remaining mirrors sixty miles south of Ypres simultaneously ceased to reflect anyone.

The lord of the hunt still didn’t stop; it continued by drawing the third bone from its ribs.

The Black Earth River Master no longer had the luxury for petty tricks. While pinned by the seal, it also had to dodge the arrow toward its rear flank.

On the other side, the Bone Flute picked up its tune again.

The Gale Virtuoso had already used up most of its breath.

Taking advantage of the seal being caught by someone else, it flipped the flute tube over and poured out the sweet, coppery scent inside.

”It spat out the poison.”

”I thought it didn’t have a mouth?”

”It borrowed others’.”

From the coast to inland, hundreds of thousands of people spat at the exact same moment.

Some were bandaging wounds, some were carrying stretchers, and some were kneeling by craters scooping water.

After spitting, they all looked at each other; no one could explain what they had just spat out.

Just then, that cloud of yellow-green poison gas made its move.

It had lain low in the depressions all night, trying to avoid being targeted.

The three Virtuosos fought fiercely overhead while it remained completely still, waiting for its moment.

But now, it could wait no longer.

The Black Earth River Master who wrote the line ”one who causes people to cough out their lungs in a single night” could no longer protect itself, but the words were still hanging there, yet to fall.

What it was doing tonight was the culmination of everything it had accumulated over decades.

It couldn’t allow its ”great enterprise” to be recorded in the ledger as just that one sentence.

The instant the yellow-green poison gas surged up, a pair of scissors came down from behind the veil.

The scissors struck down fast and steady.

Before it even landed, that branch snapped off on its own. The break was clean.

If it were cut off by a Master of the Hearth Fire Tradition, it would be nothing once it fell.

By cutting itself, the brief window before it hit the ground still belonged to it.

Meanwhile, the lord of the hunt raised the horn once more.

This time, it blew a full, sustained note.

The long note carried far across the sky, and the entire endless procession returned from all directions.

Tonight, all wild prey without a master belonged to it.