I Loaded the Occult Panel

Only ten days had passed since Halloween. According to the hunting schedule, the next event would be the Twelve Nights of Yule, which was still over a month away.

”The matter you asked me to handle has been arranged.”

The lord of the hunt’s voice brimmed with the impatience of someone dragged against their will to discuss serious business. He even let out a cough at the end.

Richard replied in his mind, ’About catching the messenger?’

The lord of the hunt answered, ”...Right. I’ll catch them for you in passing. I have other business in the Spirit Realm anyway.”

With that, the connection cut off.

A Virtuoso would never make a special trip to the Spirit Realm just for him. Richard had fully expected this answer.

He still felt a bit uneasy, harboring a nagging feeling that this trip to the Spirit Realm wouldn’t go smoothly.

Back at the inn, his room saw no sunlight during the day and remained perfectly quiet at night.

Two thumps sounded on the floorboards next door; it was Mortimer kicking off his shoes by the bed.The old professor had accompanied him across half the city today. Upon returning, he had only paused for a cup of tea before heading to his own room. Before leaving, he had dropped a single line: ”Tinker with the cursed objects you bought on your own, just don’t set the inn on fire.”

Richard turned up the lamp on the table. Four antiques were lined up across the surface:

a piece of red coral, a Lead Scroll, a Double-Chambered Whistling Vessel, and the Smoking Mirror, which lay face down under a linen cloth.

He picked up the coral branch first, as it required the least effort.

This wasn’t a cursed object, so he could skip the purification process.

As soon as he spread out the Still Water, the coral revealed its true form within the reflection.

The locals called this an eye for an eye. It reminded Richard of his own trait:

[Perception: Reflection]

There were three holes in the coral. At first, he thought they were meant for a string.

But a string only required one hole; three were too many.

He applied the Still Water against the openings and realized they were deliberately left as vulnerabilities.

If an amulet was utterly impenetrable, malice would find no place to bite, bypassing the charm to strike the wearer’s real eyes instead.

The fishermen didn’t understand ether structures. Through generations, they simply knew one thing: you had to leave a place for the other side to bite. He placed the coral back on the table and reexamined the fake profile he had edited using his trait:

[Perception: Reflection]

After some thought, Richard began to patch up the characteristics he outwardly displayed.

His signature artifact needed to make anyone probing him think, ’Oh, is that all?’;

The traces of his altered breathing method had to be exposed so that others would sense it and pity him;

furthermore, the flaws at the nerve endings of his branch circuits had to be concealed more subtly. People would only notice his shortcomings if they looked closely enough, granting them the satisfying illusion of ’I’ve completely figured him out.’

Once he finished the adjustments, Richard pressed his palm over the coral.

Ether flowed into it along the conduction pathways. The purity was average; items from fishing households never prioritized purity anyway.

[Available Points: 2.49... 2.63... 2.78...]

He stopped at 2.91, leaving a sliver of ether inside.

He didn’t plan to sell the coral branch. He would take it back and hang it over his desk as a constant reminder.

Mortimer’s earlier lecture had been spot on: he had been getting a bit too arrogant lately.

Then came the second item: Carthage’s Cursed Clay Tablet. He washed the Still Water over it, but read absolutely nothing.

Frowning, Richard suppressed the fluctuations further, but it still didn’t work.

Lead was the worst conductor of ether.

In their circles, whenever someone wanted to seal something away so it couldn’t be read or leak out, their first instinct was to use lead.

Richard withdrew his hand from outside the salt circle and gathered strength for his ability.

[Unseal]

Aiming his right palm at the Lead Scroll, he forcefully poured ether into it.

The moment the curse emerged, it tried to dissipate.

Richard was fully prepared; he was growing increasingly proficient at this routine.

He expelled a breath of vacuum that landed within the salt circle, sealing the curse tightly inside that pool of dead water.

Then, he applied the Still Water to read it.

The text that surfaced was Latin. Whoever wrote it was literate, but not exceptionally educated. Several words were misspelled, and in one spot, a letter was even written backward:

”Bind the hooves of their horses. Bind the eyes of their charioteer.”

”Bind their hands so they cannot hold the reins.”

The author didn’t seem utterly malicious; not a single line in the curse said, ”Let them die.”

Richard stared at the tiny cluster of the curse trapped within the vacuum.

He raised his hand, spreading his thumb and index finger to frame a square in front of his eyes. With a soft click, a tiny sliver of ether drained from his micro-circulation, and a photograph materialized on the desk.

Richard flipped the photo over. The back displayed a scene from the other side of the veil, where the curse had formed a closed-loop structure.

Seventeen hundred years had passed. The charioteer and the horses had long since turned to dust, and only the foundations of the hippodrome remained, yet the curse within the Lead Scroll was still running.

He decided not to dispose of the curse inside the Carthaginian Lead Scroll for now, keeping it as a sample. The next step was to absorb the points. He pressed his palm over the Lead Scroll.

[Available Points: 2.94... 3.06... 3.18... 3.21.]

Not bad at all. In the past, the cursed objects he purified usually had barely any ether left inside them afterward.

Sitting squarely in the center of the table was the Whistling Vessel from the Andean Plateau—the third cursed object of the night.

Richard first tried to read the Whistling Vessel. As if sensing an external invasion, the vessel began to stir restlessly. A short, hoarse sound squeezed out from the small hole behind the bird’s head.

Richard’s immediate reaction was to smother the Whistling Vessel’s sound. Over the past six months, he had practiced Silence to the point of mastery, able to cast the spell with a mere raise of his hand.

He exhaled a breath of vacuum. The Whistling Vessel instantly fell mute, and all other sounds vanished along with it.

In that exact instant, the entire inn became unnervingly quiet.

The clatter of the landlady washing dishes downstairs disappeared. The dogs in the alley stopped barking. Even the pigeons under the eaves, which usually fluttered about in the night, were now completely still.

Even Mortimer’s long, drawn-out snoring from the room across the hall was cut off abruptly.

Richard hurriedly dispelled the Silence Spell. The backlash sent a wave of dull pain throbbing through his micro-circulation.

The profound quiet had been entirely fabricated by Richard’s breath of vacuum.

The effect of lifting it was instantaneous. The pigeons resumed flapping their wings, and the dog in the alley let out an aggrieved whine.

The snoring from across the hall started up again, even louder than before.

Richard wiped away his sweat, noticing that his hands were still trembling.

He recalled the two chapters from the middle section of Madam Marie’s manuscript: *Three Attitudes Toward Cursed Objects: Coaxing, Deceiving, and Outlasting*. One had to prescribe the right medicine when dealing with cursed objects; forceful suppression would only yield far more terrifying consequences.

He tried his ability once more.

[Unseal]

Ether poured through the pinhole-sized opening into the bird’s belly, slowly squeezing the air inside out bit by bit.

The process took about ten minutes.

The air escaping from the small hole carried the dry cold of the plateau.

Once it was completely empty, he carried the vessel over to the washbasin and poured water into the round chamber on the left.

Filling it slightly more than halfway, he cradled the vessel in both hands and rocked it back and forth.

The water flowed from the left chamber through the short tube to the right, and the bird finally let out a complete, resonant chirp.

That single chirp paved a path across the veil.

A millennium ago, on a certain evening on the Andean Plateau, someone had lifted this very vessel of water to send someone off.

But before they could finish rocking it, their ritual had been interrupted.

A thousand years later, Richard finished the rocking for them. He opened his notebook and jotted down, ”Most cursed objects do not bear malice.”

He placed his palm over the vessel.

[Available Points: 3.22... 3.44... 3.61... 3.83.]

A sacrificial artifact from the Andean Plateau that had never been tampered with yielded a generous amount of ether.

Richard leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t handle the final item, the Smoking Mirror; he had realized as much the moment he got his hands on it.

......

At the breakfast table, Mortimer picked up a croissant and asked casually, ”What were you tinkering with in your room past ten o’clock last night?”

The old professor tore the croissant apart and dipped it into his yogurt.

”...I was sleeping soundly when it suddenly felt like my throat was blocked by something.”

Richard set down his coffee cup.

”I’m sorry, Professor. I’ve already finished dealing with that one, but there’s still one piece I can’t handle...” The old professor chewed on his croissant, offering no critique. ”Fine, bring it down for me to see first.”

Richard went upstairs and brought down the obsidian mirror.

Mortimer lifted only a corner of the linen cloth, stared at it for a moment, and covered it back up.

”I can’t handle this either.”

Richard was somewhat surprised. Even a Major Adept scholar couldn’t handle it?

”What I don’t understand is why you always love digging up these bizarre trinkets...”

The old professor rubbed his hands on the tablecloth with a look of distaste, as if he had touched something filthy.

”The Smoking Mirror’s status in the Aztec pantheon... You know of Apophis from the Black Soil River, right?”

”I do.”

”These two are roughly on the same level. In fact, the Smoking Mirror might even sit a bit higher.”

”Apophis is purely chaos from beginning to end, but the Smoking Mirror is different.”

”He has a name, temples, priests, and a complete set of worship rituals.” For Richard, the Smoking Mirror was exceptionally dangerous, precisely because the path he walked was the Mirror Tradition.

He put the mirror away as the scene from last night resurfaced in his mind.

When he had looked into it, the mirror couldn’t read him at first (Mask of the Inverse Apostle + Perception: Reflection).

So the mirror switched tactics. Inside the reflection appeared a very long dining table set with silverware, and seated behind each setting was someone he recognized.

Evelyn, his parents, Grey, Catherine, Coleman, Montagu, Phillips, Sophia... It was exactly like that dream he had about the results announcement back in May of 1915.

Only this time, there were far more empty chairs.

Yet he gradually noticed something interesting: this mirror also seemed to bully the weak and fear the strong.

It hadn’t dared to place his grandfather or the two professors at the table;

his aunt and Senior Clara, who were Minor Adepts, were seated extremely far back, looking blurry and indistinct.

Or perhaps it wasn’t bullying the weak. Maybe it was simply conserving energy, and projecting a Major Adept cost too much power?

”If it doesn’t reflect you, it will reflect those you care about.”

Mortimer wasn’t the least bit surprised after hearing this. ”The moment you open your mouth to ask whose empty chairs those are, it wins.”

”I suggest you take it to a professional, like Madam Marie.”

”But you won’t be able to see Madam Marie until you return to the Imperial Capital. Didn’t you say you knew that Virtuoso student of hers...”

Richard raised his hand, interrupting helplessly.

”I really could contact Mr. Matthew right now. I have the leaf he gave me.”

Mortimer stared at him. ”Then why don’t you?”

Richard hesitated, looking a bit embarrassed.

”I owe him a story. I promised it to him back in early June, but I haven’t written a single word yet.”

Once the old professor realized what was going on, he laughed so hard that every wrinkle on his face smoothed out.

”You brat... you’re afraid he’s going to press you for the draft, aren’t you?”

”...I really don’t dare see him.”

”And there’s also Mr. Administrator...” ”He’ll only push you even harder,” Mortimer gloated.

Richard pushed the mirror forward.

”Professor, could I ask you to keep this Smoking Mirror safe for me for now?”

Mortimer frowned.

”I can, but I won’t dismantle it for you, nor will I study it for you.”

Richard nodded; he already had a plan in mind.

”Of course. I’ll figure something out myself. After all, I’m the one who wanted to buy it...”

Mortimer took a spool of silver wire from his bag and wrapped the mirror in three thick layers inside and out.

With every loop, he chanted a word in a language Richard couldn’t recognize.

Once he finished wrapping it, he shoved the mirror into his briefcase.

”That’s done.”

”Thank you.” Mortimer patted his bag.

”Tell you what, I’ll set a storage deadline for you just like that administrator.

A year. No, half a year. If you don’t come pick it up in half a year, I’m donating this thing to the Royal Anthropological Institute.”

Richard smiled and nodded.

”Alright.” The old professor retrieved his cane from the back of his chair.

”We have to wait for the goods to be transported here, but waiting around is just sitting idle.”

Mortimer stood up, leaning on his cane.

”There’s a monastery in the nearby mountains. It was built thirteen hundred years ago by an Irish monk who led people over the mountains.”

”I want to go have a look at their library.”

The two of them set off immediately. They took a carriage north from Genoa, traveling along the coast for a stretch before turning inland.

It was mid-November in the Apennines. Leaves that had yet to fall still clung to the mountainsides.

Red and yellow foliage mixed together, heavily scattered across the ground by the pouring rain from the previous night. By the afternoon of the second day, the driver reined in the horses.

”Gentlemen, we have to cross a bridge ahead, but carriages cannot go over it.”

Richard stepped out and looked up, instantly puzzled. The bridge was actually crooked.

What’s more, it hadn’t been built straight to begin with; it wasn’t just crooked because it was about to collapse.

The bridge deck itself was slanted, forcing anyone walking on it to lean slightly to one side.

The stones of the parapet were uneven—some high, some low. The builders had clearly just slapped them together wherever they fit.

’It’s one thing for the towers around the Apennines to be leaning, but how can even the bridges be crooked?’ Richard grumbled internally.

”This bridge...”

The driver explained that it was called a humpback bridge, a local specialty. As he spoke, he casually crossed himself over his chest.

Mortimer strode onto the bridge with his cane, completely unfazed.

Highly experienced and emboldened by his own formidable skills, he turned his head to educate his student walking behind him.

”In these mountains, you’ll find a bridge like this every few dozen miles, and they all share the exact same story.” ”What story?”

”The village needed a bridge but couldn’t build one.

”A saint stepped forward and made a pact with the devil: ’Build me this bridge overnight, and I’ll give you the first living creature that crosses it.’”

Richard followed him onto the bridge. The deck was indeed slanted, demanding careful steps.

”The devil agreed, and it was finished in a single night,”

Mortimer continued.

”When dawn broke, the saint drove a dog across. Furious that he had toiled all night only to get a dog, the devil smashed half the bridge... So you see, that section of stonework over there is newer.”

Richard glanced toward the far side of the river.

Indeed, the three or four yards of stone closest to the opposite bank were much lighter in color, and the masonry style was different.

”Then why is the bridge crooked?”

”Because the devil’s lackeys do sloppy work.”

The driver trailing behind chimed in, ”When you have to finish it in one night, who has the time to care if it’s straight or not?” As Richard reached the highest point of the bridge’s arch, his Inspiration was triggered.

There was a weak point beneath the bridge, but the seal placed over it was absurdly sloppy.

The inscriptions were carved hastily and chaotically, showing no regard for the starting or finishing strokes.

In two distinct spots, it was obvious the carver realized they had made a mistake halfway through and simply abandoned it to start a new stroke right beside it.

The longer Richard looked, the more wrong it felt.

Based on what he had learned in the department... a seal like this wouldn’t even hold for fifty years.

The two men walked off the bridge while the driver watered the horses.

The stream crashed against the bridge piers, churning up frothy white waves.

From the humpback bridge to the monastery was another half-day’s journey through the mountains. With the carriage crawling slowly up the slope, Richard began to study that copy of the Mahabharata.

The moment he lifted the teakwood cover, the scent of a complex spice blend wafted out.

It was a mix of turmeric and a distinct oily smell—the exact same scent that lingered in the storage shed in Grey’s backyard.

He slid out the topmost leaf. The main text was in Sanskrit, carved into the leaf’s surface. A mixture of oil and turmeric had been rubbed into it, bringing the strokes into vivid color.

Another script crawled along the edges of the leaf.

These characters were rounded, their strokes showing almost no discernible start or finish, and the letters practically bled into one another.

It was completely different from the squared, perfectly horizontal and vertical Sanskrit of the main text.

Richard accessed the database of his trait to search and deduce:

[Learning: General Knowledge]

These were likely marginal notes written in a different language by someone later on.

The manuscript had circulated through the tropics for centuries. With every transcription, the scribe had added a few lines to the margins.

The further the manuscript traveled, the more warped the script became.

He compared the marginal notes to the corresponding section in the main text.

The main text spoke of Karna.

This demigod was born with a suit of divine armor and a pair of earrings gifted by his father, the sun god. While wearing them, he was invulnerable to all weapons.

Later, someone came to his door to beg for them. That person was disguised as a Brahmin. According to custom, when a Brahmin asks for something, one cannot refuse.

Karna knew exactly who the other party was, knew why they had come to ask, and knew full well that giving the armor away meant his certain death.

Yet he still carved the armor off his own flesh and handed it over, along with the earrings.

The annotator had scribbled a line of rounded script next to this passage.

Richard deduced for a long time before he could barely decipher the basic meaning.

To his surprise, the line read:

”All that is brought from birth may be begged away.

All that is earned by oneself, no man can take.”

This actually perfectly coincided with the philosophy he had held all along.

The carriage jolted on the slope, and the leaf slipped off his lap.

Richard returned the leaf to its place and continued flipping toward the back.

The contents that followed started getting a bit dull. A massive extended family bickering over who should inherit the throne.

After arguing over the throne, they argued over how to handle marriages. After the marriages, they argued over who got to sit in which seat, who entered the door first, and whose son should call whom by what title.

They argued for dozens of leaves, yet not a single actual fight had broken out.

After flipping through a bit more, Richard couldn’t help but yawn. He slapped the leaves face down onto the teakwood board.

”What is it?” Mortimer opened his eyes.

”The characters in the book just keep arguing. It’s boring.”

”What are they arguing about?”

”About who gets to sit in the seat of honor.”

The old professor hummed in acknowledgment and closed his eyes to resume his nap.

”That’s not much different from our university department meetings.”

Richard chuckled and simply skipped ahead as he flipped.

Soon, he reached the section discussing weapons. At the mention of this, he instantly perked up.

According to the book, the most powerful class of weapons in that realm were known as celestial weapons.

Forged by heaven and earth, each celestial weapon possessed its own temper. Every time a celestial weapon was brought out, it had to be respectfully invoked, and invoking it required reciting a mantra.

Every celestial weapon was paired with two mantras: one to summon it, and one to withdraw it.

Both mantras had to be learned word by word directly from a teacher’s mouth. Trying to learn by watching, pondering behind closed doors, or reciting from copies found in other books would all fail completely.

The text provided an example.

The teacher responsible for teaching mantras in the book was named Drona, and Drona’s son was named Ashwatthama.

Drona taught Ashwatthama how to invoke a celestial weapon called ”Brahma’s Head,” but he never taught him how to withdraw it.

Richard read on. The eighteen-day great war in the story had ended, but Ashwatthama refused to accept defeat. In the dead of night, he unleashed Brahma’s Head.

The demigod battling Ashwatthama was named Arjuna, the son of Indra (also known as Lord of Gods).

Arjuna also released a celestial weapon. The two divine armaments fought to a standstill, and the entire world began to heat up. The book recorded it as: ”All vegetation was scorched to ash, and the creatures of the water floated to the surface.”

Two sages rushed to the battlefield and demanded that both Ashwatthama and Arjuna immediately withdraw their celestial weapons. Arjuna, having learned the mantra for withdrawal, promptly recalled his.

Ashwatthama had never learned the mantra for withdrawal, so he could not pull it back.

The text made it exceptionally clear: once a celestial weapon was unleashed and not withdrawn, it would never stop.

The two sages told Ashwatthama: if he could not withdraw it, he had to designate a target for it to strike.

The target Ashwatthama pointed to was the wombs of all the pregnant women in the Pandava clan.

Reading this, Richard clicked his tongue in wonder, flipping the page back to reread it.

After finishing, a sudden realization dawned on him: for all the Spell Formulas he had learned, it seemed he had only ever been taught how to release them, never how to take them back.

Stone Armor, Moon Nail, Silence, Branch-Cutting Technique—his deeply ingrained mindset had always been that once a spell was cast, he no longer needed to worry about it.

After the blade of the Branch-Cutting Technique fell and severed its target, Richard had never once considered reattaching the severed piece.

The carriage jolted on the slope again.

Mortimer’s hat slipped off his face. The old professor mumbled an incoherent grumble, fumbled for his hat, and pulled it back down over his eyes.

Richard remembered Professor MacFie writing barehanded—when he made a stroke, he didn’t seem to retract it either. If one day a stroke was carved incorrectly, what was to be done about the mistaken cut?

Mortimer lifted his hat just a crack. ”What are you laughing to yourself about now?”

”Nothing, Professor. I just thought of something happy.”

Mortimer replied, ”The last time you smiled the way you are right now was when you came up from the fourth floor of the library.”

The reason behind Richard’s smile lay on his panel.

He called up the unlock conditions that had been hanging on his interface all this time:

[Speculation Lv.5 Advancement Condition: Independently reconstruct the complete operational logic of a lost Spell Formula.]

He repeated the keyword ’complete’ to himself.

Thoroughly reading the target, direction, and intensity of a spell, and then writing it in reverse—wasn’t that exactly what Shadow Inversion did?

Closing his notebook, Richard said to Mortimer, ”Professor, I think I know how to improve my Branch-Cutting Technique.”

The old professor pulled his hat securely back into place. ”Don’t rush to try it out.”

”Why not?” Richard asked. Mortimer replied, ”Because that kid Ashwatthama in the book rushed to try it out, too.”

Richard was left caught between laughter and tears. ”...You were clearly sleeping just now.”

”My ears work best when I’m sleeping.”

Richard snapped the teakwood boards shut, wrapping the red cotton cord around them twice and tying a dead knot.

The red cotton cord and teakwood covers had sat on the fourth floor of the library for over a century, soaking full of ether.

While Richard had been reading just now, the ether had been slowly seeping out, and by now, he had absorbed almost all of it.

[Available Points: 4.46.]

He was nearing five points. Richard brought up his interface:

[Breathing Lv.5, eating Lv.4, sleep Lv.4, walking Lv.4;

Learning Lv.5, Speculation Lv.4, Perception Lv.5;

Spiritual Capacity 50/50, Astral Projection three wisps.]

The unlock condition for Speculation finally had a direction today. As for Lv.7 later on, that required five points.

He couldn’t even guess what a skill reaching Lv.7 would look like.

The Lv.5 traits of Reflection, General Knowledge, and Gushing Spring had already benefited him endlessly. What kind of spectacle would Lv.7 be?

In any case, once he gathered enough for five points this time, he would save them to preview it first. He was genuinely curious about what the Lv.7 traits looked like.

He currently had 4.46. The missing half point could be handled by one or two ordinary supernatural items.

Donner, Mercury, the Ashford House, and the Greek faction;

Plus... his cut from the Nordic faction. Before he realized it, he had accumulated quite a few channels. Scraping together five points wouldn’t be difficult.

He dismissed the panel and folded his hands behind his head.

The carriage rounded a bend, and the valley came into view.

Richard let out a yawn, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep as well.

......

Once Mortimer entered the monastery’s library, he refused to come out. Richard carried his luggage into the guest room for him, but when he went back to look for him, the old professor was already seated at a long table, his nose practically pressed against the parchment.

”Professor, about dinner...”

”Go eat by yourself.”

Richard backed out of the room.

The person leading him downstairs was an elderly monk.

The man was perfectly clean, yet he looked no different from the old men in Briston’s Slag Alley who had spent their entire lives coughing.

However, the incident with the Master of the Classical Records Tradition had left Richard paranoid. He absolutely didn’t dare underestimate anyone who showed up near a library or archives.

The old monk spoke with a heavy mountain accent, making it strenuous for Richard to follow.

”You gentlemen arrived just in time today. All Saints’ Day just passed not long ago, so we boiled some beans.”

”What beans?”

”The beans of the dead. If you are still here tomorrow, sir, you may have a plate as well.”

”I’m not from this parish.” The old monk turned back, a hint of a smile shining in his murky eyes.

”The pot that boils the beans doesn’t ask which parish you belong to.”

Starting early the next morning, the monastery bustled with activity.

Standing in the courtyard, Richard watched as they first went to the fields to harvest the beans.

Just below the slope where the beans were planted lay the crypts, which served as the public cemetery under the Church’s jurisdiction.

Once the harvest was complete, the village women sat by the base of the courtyard’s eastern wall and began shelling them. They pinched the pods open, letting the beans tumble into their aprons.

As they worked, they chatted in a mountain dialect of which Richard couldn’t understand a single word.

By noon, massive cauldrons were set up right in the center of the monastery.

The old monk stood by the pots with his hands tucked into his sleeves. He did nothing but watch.

At three in the afternoon, the villagers lined up to receive their portions. Before partaking, they first had to register.

Richard stood in the line. He had originally thought of this as just a rural festival, joining the queue purely out of politeness.

Ahead of him stood a woodcutter with frostbitten fingers, a mother whose son was at the Isonzo River, and two Serbians who had fled over the snowy mountains. During that great retreat last winter, hundreds of thousands had trekked from Serbia through the snowcapped peaks toward Albania; less than half had survived the journey.

It was Richard’s turn.

He stated his name. Albion surnames were difficult for the people here to spell.

After writing it down, the monk looked up and asked, ”Who are you receiving this for?”

Standing before the table, Richard found himself momentarily speechless.

After a moment, he couldn’t help but ask, ”Can I put down a few more names?”

The monk nodded, and Richard recited a long string of names.

Finished writing, the monk didn’t mind the young man’s greed; he simply pointed toward the cauldrons.

The old monk lifted a wooden ladle from the pot. Everyone formed a line, each holding an empty plate.

As they stepped up and held out their plates, the old monk scooped a spoonful of beans onto them.

Those who had been served would walk to the side, still holding their plates, and pass them to someone else.

They could hand it to anyone—a neighbor beside them, someone they had just met, or even the two Serbians wearing foreign clothes. Only the person who received the passed plate was allowed to eat from it. Richard shuffled forward with his empty plate.

When his turn came, the old monk dipped his wooden ladle into the pot and poured a scoop onto his plate.

The beans were dark brown and boiled to a mush. The broth coating them carried an indescribable scent.

Finished serving, the old monk looked up at him and spoke a phrase in the mountain dialect.

”Accept it. This is not something you earned.”

Holding his plate, Richard turned and handed it to the woodcutter next to him.

The woodcutter stared at the extraordinary young man before him, clearly stunned for a moment, before hurriedly reaching out with both hands to accept it.

He didn’t say thank you upon taking it; he simply carried it over to the base of the wall and sat down.

Just then, someone placed a plate into Richard’s hands.

The one who handed him the plate was the mother whose son was still on the battlefield.

Pushing the plate forward with tears in her eyes, the woman reached out and gently stroked Richard’s cheek as she handed it to him.

Richard looked down at the plate of beans, unsure if he should eat them. In his Spirit Vision, the beans were already manifesting ether.

The land where the beans were planted sat right above the heads of the dead. The bones dissolved into the earth, the earth nourished the beans, the beans were boiled in the pots, and the beans from the pots were passed plate by plate into each other’s hands.

This had formed a complete ritual. It was undoubtedly a product from behind the veil.

”...Hey!”

Someone called out to him from the side.