I Loaded the Occult Panel

Gerard picked up where Isabella left off. ”For centuries, this is how the Blackburn Family has arranged their marriages.”

”A friend of mine handed over the maintenance rights to two hunting grounds just to successfully marry in, all so his descendants could enjoy the resources of a Virtuoso family.”

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”Later, his eldest son was sent to the Blackburn House for special training at the age of ten. For over thirty years, his name has hung on their family tree.”

Isabella curled her lip. ”When the Montagu Family marries into theirs, they negotiate on equal footing.”

”But this is the first I’ve heard of the Blackburns offering such generous terms.”

Gerard simply smiled.

Isabella scanned the terms in the letter again. ”They practically moved half the Blackburn Family over, begging for a marriage alliance with us.”

Richard frowned slightly. ”Why?”

”I was going to ask you,” Isabella said, looking at him.

After Richard’s accident, everyone else had avoided him like the plague. Only the Blackburn Family had stepped right up.

”Because I’m at my cheapest right now?” ”If you were cheap, shouldn’t they be driving the price down?”

Isabella couldn’t make sense of it either. ”Instead, this price has multiplied several times over.”

Gerard tapped his pipe.

”They definitely know that under the General Administration’s orders, families like ours without a Virtuoso holding the fort are having the hardest time.

Of all times, they chose to deliver these terms to our door right now, hitting every single one of our pain points—attendance quotas, warehouses, artisans, and your injuries...”

”They calculated all of this?” Richard looked up.

”We can’t rule out that they genuinely want this marriage alliance, which makes it the hardest to handle.”

Gerard shook his head. ”Your matters are for you to decide. We will support you no matter what.”

Richard nodded and put the envelope away. ”Grandfather, I don’t dislike Viola.”

”After the wedding that day, we could be considered friends, but only friends.”

Gerard looked at Richard for a long time before taking some stationery from a drawer to write.

He spent an exceptionally long time drafting the reply, doing his utmost to express a polite refusal. He first thanked the Earl for his generosity, then expressed gratitude for that night on Flower Moon Street last May, when the Earl had shared a basin of fire from his own goldsmith’s furnace.

Finally, he stated that the child was still young and hadn’t fully recovered, so the Ashford Family dared not accept the proposal at this time.

Not long after the butler sent the letter out, the Earl and his wife arrived.

It was still drizzling that afternoon. When the butler saw the carriage painted with the Blackburn Family crest, he froze for a moment before snapping back to his senses to hold an umbrella for the distinguished guests.

In the centuries the Blackburn Family had been arranging marriages, this was the very first time an Earl and his wife had come calling in person.

Upon entering, Earl Blackburn enthusiastically shook Gerard’s hand.

Behind him, a footman held a basket of greenhouse grapes. They were deep purple-black, with crystal-clear water droplets clinging to them.

”We brought these especially for young Richard. They’re grapes grown in our greenhouse—definitely sweeter than what they sell at Covent Garden.”

As she spoke, the Earl’s wife smiled even sweeter than the grapes she had brought.

She acted as though Richard were a particularly close junior of hers, when in reality, they had only met once at Phillips’s wedding.

Richard rolled his wheelchair over to the fireplace and draped a blanket over his legs.

He hadn’t needed the wheelchair for a long time, but casting himself as an invalid would make the upcoming conversation much easier. Sure enough, the moment the Earl sat down, he asked about Richard’s injuries and mental state.

He asked how many meals he ate a day and if he slept well at night, showering him with concern.

The Earl’s wife put on her gloves, peeled the grapes one by one, and placed them in a small saucer right by Richard’s hand.

This was a treatment the Earl himself had never enjoyed.

”...That night, you came to my study to borrow fire.” After a long stretch of small talk, the Earl finally got to the point.

Richard’s heart skipped a beat. He had almost forgotten that he truly owed the man a favor.

”Of course. Thank you for your generosity,” Richard said.

”After you left, I wrote your name on Viola’s page.” The Earl took a sip of tea.

”At the time, you were the runner-up of the Cicero Cup, first place in Debate Week, and Professor Mortimer’s successor. Everyone was trying to curry favor with you.”

”But the situation is a little different now. Word outside is that you’ve contracted the library sleeping sickness, that you won’t be able to advance for three years, and that Professor Mortimer’s letter of recommendation went to waste.”

”Everyone is keeping their distance from you... We came at a time like this because we want you to know that what the Blackburn Family values is you as a person, not your achievements.”

Richard didn’t bite. The Earl’s words were incredibly sincere, but he completely avoided explaining why they valued him as a person.

The Earl didn’t state the root cause, and Richard didn’t particularly want to ask.

”Our family’s marriages have always been the icing on the cake. This is the first time we’re offering help in someone’s hour of need.”

The Earl’s voice was gentle. ”If you feel those terms aren’t enough, we can add more.”

The Earl’s wife chimed in from the side:

”Viola is my sister’s child, and I’ve watched her grow up since she was little.

She has clever hands. When she was young, she dismantled her grandmother’s music box into a table full of parts, then put it all back together the very next day. And once she did, it played a truer tune than it had before.”

She peeled another grape.

”She’s got a lot in her head, much like you. Put the two of you together and you’d have plenty to talk about. It wouldn’t be dull.”

”Although the child is still in Calais right now, there’s no need to worry.

Once the war is over, we’ll have her toss aside all those hunks of iron and come back to live a steady, quiet life with you.”

Richard looked at the saucer piled high with peeled grapes, and the memory of his meeting with Viola surfaced in his mind. She had stood there with an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, excitedly declaring that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her car.

”Earl, Madam.”

Richard tried to sound as earnest as possible. ”If you offered these terms to any other family, they’d probably wake up laughing in their sleep. I know you both mean this sincerely.

But Viola and I are friends. The night of the wedding, she talked to me about carburetors.

Later, she wrote me a letter saying she’d take me for a spin once I could walk again. I really like having her as a friend.”

”If I accepted this engagement purely for the terms you’re offering...

I feel that would be irresponsible to her... and to the Blackburn Family.”

”So, I am very sorry, but I cannot agree to this.”

The Earl’s wife slowed her peeling, turning her face slightly to look at her husband.

The Earl was still smiling, not showing the slightest hint of anger.

”Your aunt said something similar back in the day,” he noted.

”My father was the Earl then. When he sent her the registry book, she even pointed out the grammatical errors in it.” Isabella gave a heavy snort from the sidelines.

The Earl didn’t feel embarrassed at all. He stood up and put on his hat.

”The terms in the letter were offered by the entire Blackburn Family. Whether it’s next year or ten, twenty years down the line, even if I’m no longer the Earl, they remain valid.”

”If you ever figure things out, or if the Ashford Family runs into any difficulties, you can come to us anytime.”

”My promise won’t change. Patience is the one thing our family never lacks.”

His wife stood up as well, placing the saucer full of peeled grapes into Richard’s hands. ”Eat up, young Richard. These grapes have nothing to do with the marriage.”

She sighed and offered him a smile. ”What a pity.”

The butler held an umbrella for the two of them, seeing them all the way into their carriage.

The light rain was still falling. The carriage sped away from Chelsea Road, splashing up bursts of water.

Gerard stood at the porch, watching the carriage gradually disappear into the veil of rain.

”The Blackburns aren’t afraid to wait, and they can afford to lose. That’s what makes them so difficult to deal with.”

Richard picked up a peeled grape and popped it into his mouth. The juice burst forth, crisp and sweet. It really was sweet, much better than the ones his sister bought at Covent Garden. The Earl’s wife hadn’t lied.

Come to think of it, from the moment that letter arrived right up until the Earl and his wife left today, it seemed no one had asked Viola for her opinion at any point.

She was perfectly fine fixing cars in Calais, yet she had been tossed into a letter and turned into a bargaining chip right alongside the mansion, the annuities, and the attendance quotas.

That night, Richard dug out the last letter Viola had sent him and scribbled a few lines on the back, intending to send it off to Calais:

”Viola, Your family came by today to discuss a marriage, but I turned them down.

I’m only interested in your carburetor. We can chat about it again next time you’re free.

—R.”

Hmm... He thought it over, then sketched a bunch of grapes next to the Ambulance Viola had drawn. ”The grapes were very sweet. Please thank your aunt for me.”

On the afternoon of April 2nd, the Deputy Director came to the Ashford House in person.

Command was preparing to dispatch a Moon Hunting Major Adept to the east coast for a mission.

The airships specifically came on moonless nights, and once there was no moonlight, the evil creatures would become incredibly frenzied. ”If His Lordship goes, then the supernatural item can be removed from the requisition list.”

The study fell silent, leaving only the ticking of the grandfather clock.

Finally, Gerard nodded. ”I will go.”

Before leaving, the Deputy Director offered him a crisp, standard salute.

The moment he was gone, Isabella smashed her teacup against the floor.

”Are you insane? Do you realize you’re sixty-four years old? That coastline stretches for over a hundred miles!”

”I...”

”It’s just a Bone Whistle! Let them use it if they want to! Is it worth risking your life over?”

Gerard’s expression didn’t change. He simply bent down to pick up the shattered porcelain piece by piece.

”I’ve sharpened my blade my whole life. I don’t want it rusting on the wall.”

That night, Richard went over every possible path in his mind.

Virtuoso families were actually incredibly shrewd. The Montagu Family’s eldest grandson had died, the Blackburn Family’s two nephews had died... Every family had someone listed in the newspaper’s casualty reports.

Before, he couldn’t understand it. A family with a Virtuoso holding the fort could summon a Minor Adept in half an hour.

They even had the ability to hire Major Adepts other than their patriarch. How could they just let their family members die on the battlefield?

Now, he understood.

It was all just a show put on for others to see.

’Look, our family doesn’t use privileges. Our people die too.’

The phrase ”special consultation” in the regulations was propped up entirely by these graves.

By comparison, the Ashford House seemed a little greedy.

He had buffed them with Luck, his grandfather constantly patrolled the battlefields, and on top of that, he had previously taught [Moon Nail: Reflection] to the entire Ashford Family.

Add it all up, inside and out, and the massive family hadn’t lost a single member.

It seemed his own connections were completely useless.

At the Virtuoso level, the lord of the hunt, Matthew, and the old guildmaster were all separated from him by at least one layer, if not several. As for the higher Administrator, He didn’t manage worldly affairs at all, only books.

Moreover, the moonless night hunts on the east coast were a standard garrison assignment, not some guaranteed-death crisis.

Not just the Ashford House, but all the other families without a Virtuoso holding the fort had to carry out similar missions.

The only way to break this current predicament was if someone much closer to him became a Virtuoso.

Even if he advanced to Minor Adept tomorrow, it wouldn’t change anything. How could a mere Minor Adept challenge the conscription laws decreed by the Empire?

Richard thought for a moment, then placed the Inkwell his aunt had given him on the nightstand.

The Shadow Ibis had been standing next to a bronze paperweight. The moment the Inkwell was set down, it turned its head.

He pondered, crossing out words and rewriting them over and over, until he was left with just a few lines.

”Uncle, I’m Richard, Margaret’s son.

We met when I was seven, though I don’t know if you still remember.

Recently, great-grandfather’s Bone Whistle ended up on the General Administration’s requisition list. Unwilling to hand it over, Grandfather agreed to go guard the east coast during the moonless nights, and he’ll be leaving in two days. Grandfather is sixty-four this year and still carries old injuries.

In the past two years, the Ashford Family hasn’t lost a single person, which has already drawn the attention of the other families.

I felt you should know.

—Your nephew, Richard.”

On second thought, Richard added a special note at the end of the letter, urging him never to let Grandfather know he was the one who wrote it.

He had barely folded the envelope when the Shadow Ibis finished drinking the rest of the ink in the bottle.

But the ink in that bottle was endless. Once the Shadow Ibis drank it dry, it would immediately draw a bit of ether from Richard to replenish itself.

Having his ether drained so fiercely made his head spin in waves.

The Shadow Ibis tilted its head, wanting to keep drinking.

Richard quickly snatched the bottle away. ”That’s enough. You eat even more than Evelyn.”

The Shadow Ibis shook its head, still looking a little unsatisfied. Before it left, it snapped up a blank sheet of stationery and ate it.

Watching it vanish into the shadows of the nightstand, Richard shook his head in exasperation. After putting the envelope away, he went downstairs to the study.

Sure enough, Gerard wasn’t asleep. He sat there, rhythmically sharpening his blade. The sound was a bit eerie in the dead of night.

”Grandfather, why do you think our family hasn’t lost a single person in the past two years?”

Richard asked out of the blue as he walked in.

”...Probably because our family has good luck.”

Gerard wasn’t completely in the dark; he didn’t even pause his sharpening.

”We definitely have luck,” Richard said, sitting down slowly. ”I took some from the lord of the hunt.”

He went on to recount the events of the night of April 30th last year and the winter solstice this year in detail.

”After January 7th, this luck suddenly moved toward the west of the New Continent.”

Gerard finally stopped sharpening his knife. ”The New Continent?”

”Grandfather, I just want to remind you—if there’s a vicious evil creature you truly can’t hold off, there’s no need to push yourself. Use the luck when you have to.”

”But Vincent and the others are still out there on the front lines...” Gerard furrowed his brow, and the sound of sharpening filled the room once more.

”They have their own luck.” Richard’s tone grew serious. ”You have to swear on Grandmother’s name today!”

Unable to stubbornly refuse him, Gerard sighed and pulled a photograph from his pocket. ”In the name of my wife, Rosemary, if I encounter an evil creature I cannot withstand, I will absolutely not push myself.”

When Richard opened his eyes the next morning, he found himself staring right at the Shadow Ibis on his nightstand.

He had no idea when it had returned.

Seeing Richard wake up, the Shadow Ibis spat out a piece of paper, looking thoroughly disgusted.

It was a half-torn page from a shipping ledger, smelling strongly of whiskey, cigar ash, and river mud.

Scrawled messily on the paper was a single phrase: ”Just wait!”

Not long after dawn, a War Office car had already parked in front of the Ashford House, a solemn crest stamped on its side.

Gerard had changed into a dark gray hunting suit, a hunting knife strapped to his waist and a leather suitcase in his hand, his face solemn.

Richard watched him from afar, raising his right hand and pressing it diagonally downward.

It was a gesture his grandfather had taught him, meaning ”the wind is on your side.” Gerard gave him a slight nod before climbing into the car.

The doors closed, and the car left behind a trail of thick exhaust as it quickly vanished at the end of Chelsea Road.

Evelyn looked at Richard curiously. ”Brother, what did that gesture mean?”

Richard lowered his hand. ”Smooth sailing. Grandfather taught it to me.”

Soon after, Isabella also received her orders. Command was dispatching her to garrison Ypres for three months, and she was to depart on June 15th.

”The seals on the front lines are breaking down incredibly fast. The department is completely out of available hands.”

Isabella was helpless. ”Your spirit... can it fully recover before June?”

Richard wasn’t sure either.

A few days later, Mortimer returned.

”Young Richard, the date is set for April 23rd,” he announced.

Richard was stunned for a moment before he recalled the newspaper announcements. ”That’s the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, isn’t it? And it falls on the Easter holidays. That’s quite a coincidence.”

”Right. That day, the whole country will be reading his plays, performing him, and he’ll be all over the papers.” Mortimer leaned back in his chair and looked out the window.

”A man has been dead for three hundred years, and on this day, his name will still be spoken by everyone in the Empire.”

”If I can stand on a pile of papers that day, the readers cushioning my feet will be the most numerous.”

He recited slowly, his voice so soft he seemed to be murmuring to himself:

”...Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

He slowly opened his eyes and gently tapped Richard’s knee with his walking stick. ”Can you make it that day?”

”I have to!” Richard didn’t hesitate in the slightest. ”Can you walk on your own?”

”I’ll crawl there if I have to!”

”Good!”

The old professor nodded. ”Don’t be late. When the Bard left us three hundred years ago, he didn’t wait for anyone either.”

He rose slowly and hobbled away, hugging the wall with the aid of his walking stick.

Richard looked at that hunched figure with a sense of melancholy. What the old professor had just sung... was the dirge from Cymbeline.

......

Every day, the first thing Lillian did upon waking was press her index finger against her lower lip.

It had been over three months since that night by the lake, yet the warmth had never dissipated.

Every morning, she had to check it like checking a pulse, just to make sure it was still there.

By selling tickets to the Wild Hunt, Loki’s business was booming.

Countless newcomers clutched their receipts, sitting bolt upright on their horses, looking exactly like country bumpkins who had just come to the city. Loki took a twenty-percent cut from the profit of every ticket, a number he had openly established in front of everyone.

Lillian rode her horse up from the back of the line. Reining in, she glanced again at the bunch of rookies around her.

She planned to rest her feet at the Four Seasons Hall.

She was carrying a note from the lord of the hunt in her pocket. The words on it were concise: ”The bearer of this acts on behalf of the lord of the hunt.”

”Those coming in from the back don’t need to report to the head seat. Report your names to me,” she announced.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it landed with precision in everyone’s ears.

The newcomers exchanged looks, none of them saying a word.

The smile never faded from Loki’s face. ”Skadi is so considerate, sharing my chores for me.”

Lillian didn’t reply, simply nudging her horse back to the rear of the line.

Soon enough, thanks to the tacit approval of the lord of the hunt and the secret assistance of the Old Scholar, the new riders began bypassing Loki and coming to Lillian to register.

In the back streets of the Port of Hamburg.

Freyja’s pawnshop was now the actual registry. She knew everyone’s exact circumstances better than anyone—who in this city had hit a dead end, and who was willing to risk their lives for a way out. Freyja wanted to bet on the winner. That sentence was the very foundation upon which the alliance between Skadi, Freyja, and Hela was built.

Because the Honored Envoy had left a note, and combined with Loki’s own issues, the three of them banding together meant they had absolutely nothing to fear from Loki.

Loki had set his cut at twenty percent, but what he actually skimmed was far higher. He had also sold the rumor that ”Skadi has ties to the Honored Envoy” to the brokers in Marseille.

April, the Hall of False Oaths.

The gathering proceeded as usual. Loki still sat at the head seat, endlessly prattling on about ticket prices for the upcoming season.

He spoke with such exuberance that he unconsciously stood up.

There were no candidates or extra personnel tonight, so he openly stated that ticket prices could be doubled because they came with a night of Luck.

Once he finished, Lillian spoke up, ”Loki, what you’ve been selling recently, I know perfectly well.”

The flames of the false fire in the hall seemed to be suddenly sheared by an invisible blade.

Loki’s smile remained. ”I’ve sold so many things recently. Whatever do you mean, Skadi?”

”Marseille.”

No one else spoke; you could hear a pin drop in the hall. The smile on Loki’s face finally faded away.

Freyja stood up, walked over to him, and poured him a brimming cup of wine. ”Head Seat, have a drink to calm your nerves.”

Loki looked down at the cup, picked it up, and downed it in one gulp.

That same month, there was one other thing Lillian hadn’t told anyone.

Ever since the Celtic table was swallowed up, she had been assigned a wisp of raven sight under The Morrigan’s name.

Last December, on Mount Rigi, she had seen that jackdaw in the bell tower of the Our Lady of the Snows chapel.

On the night of March 29th, she pushed the raven’s eye past the Alps.

The jackdaw opened its eyes.

Through those eyes, she swept over the snowy slopes and landed in the sanatorium.

Through the south-facing window, she saw her mother asleep inside, a prayer book resting on the pillow.

On the other side of the veil, her mother’s ankle was wrapped in a rope, and words were carved into it.

She memorized all of this, piece by piece. The next day, she quietly showed it to Freyja.

The moment Freyja saw it, the smile vanished from her face.

”This mark... belongs to Elena Savolova.”

”You know it?”

”Every old pawnshop in the Port of Hamburg knows it.” Freyja flipped the paper over, placing it face down.

”A lot of amber and furs coming from the north carry this mark. No shop dares to take any goods bearing it, because taking it guarantees trouble.”

”The pawnshop owners of my grandfather’s generation would shut their doors for three days straight the moment they saw this mark.”

Freyja looked her up and down. ”Where did you get this?”

Lillian said nothing.

This was a rope belonging to the Scholar path, and the other end was held by an abyssal Major Adept.

”Skadi?”

Freyja raised her voice slightly. Lillian snapped back to reality. ”It’s nothing. I must have drawn it wrong.”

She didn’t mention this to Holloway—not a single word.

This rope was not something she could cut right now. Yanking blindly at it would only pull it tighter.

Meanwhile, on the Ypres front lines, Catherine crouched on the edge of a crater.

If the dead didn’t know where they had died, their death knells couldn’t find the way, and they couldn’t go home.

Once the craters filled with mud and corpses, evil creatures would slowly spawn, and these evil creatures would drag people into the water.

That night, there was movement in Crater Five.

A private was dozing off in the crater when he was suddenly jolted awake by a splashing sound. Opening his eyes, he found the water level rising rapidly.

A hand slowly reached out from the water, followed by a second, and a third...

Every hand was swollen and stark white, the fingernails gone. Some even had dog tags hanging from the wrists.

The private let out a scream as the hands grabbed him, instantly dragging half his body into the water.

Catherine’s eldest uncle, Ewan, was the first to react, throwing himself forward. Slinging his Hunting Rifle over his back, he grabbed the private’s webbing with both hands and heaved backward.

But more and more hands kept reaching out from beneath the water to grab the private.

Ewan cursed, giving a violent tug and forcefully dragging the private’s lower half out of the water.

Duncan charged over as well, taking a deep breath.

Ether surged through his new circuits, flooding into his ruined arm.

He savagely swung his axe down into the water. As the blood-lit axe struck the surface, a plume of white steam rose up.

The hands clutching the private were swiftly severed, black water bubbling constantly from the stumps.

Ewan finally hauled the private all the way up, both of them collapsing into the mud, gasping for breath. ”Not bad, second brother. You’re much stronger than before.”

Duncan didn’t reply, still gripping his axe and staring tensely at the water.

The water level was still rising.

Because he had chopped off those hands, the evil creature in the crater was thoroughly enraged. A dense mass of hands reached out from the depths, clawing at the rim of the crater to drag themselves up.

A few had already crawled over the sandbags and were groping at the feet of the purification squad. Expressionless, Catherine unspooled the Whip in her hand and lashed out. Three hands exploded on the spot, spraying muddy water everywhere.

A flare shot up, and by its light, she read out the names of the dead.

She wrote them down, and Duncan read them aloud.

One by one, the hands sank back down.

They were dead but didn’t know where they had died; this was a debt owed.

Now that the Scales were out, it was time for her to pay it back.

What she was essentially doing was digging open their graves, letting the dead know where they were so they could rise and go home.

By a little past three in the morning, all that was left floating on the water were a few steel helmets, a scrap of rotten sackcloth, and a drowned rat floating belly-up.

The crater was still the same crater, but the evil creature inside had vanished.

Catherine sat between Duncan and Ewan, her fingers completely stained with charcoal ash from writing so furiously.

Duncan suddenly spoke up. ”Girl, what’s the name of the method you just used?”

Catherine hesitated for a moment, then scribbled a sentence in her notebook: ”Tell them where they died.” The two of them leaned over to look and simultaneously burst out laughing. ”What kind of name is that?”

In mid-April, a circular came down from the Highlands Guild. Catherine’s method had been established as the standard procedure for battlefield purification.

Duncan grinned. ”Our peers don’t even know you, yet they’re using your method as the gold standard. This is your pathway to advancing to Minor Adept!”

On the other side in Shoeburyness, Gerard had just arrived and immediately found that the men at the artillery battery weren’t very friendly.

The soldiers had heard that an ”expert on anomalous affairs” was being sent down from Command.

What they got was an old man in tweed with an old knife strapped to his waist, whose legs didn’t even seem to work properly when he stepped out of the car.

The sergeant assigned him a tiny hut that only had a cot. It had originally been used to store sandbags.

Gerard didn’t mind at all. He shoved his leather suitcase under the bed and headed to the seaside alone.

If anything, he was quite pleased.

He had spent all that time sharpening his blade at home with nowhere to use it.

But here, his old bones had finally found their place.

He handled the routine culling of evil creatures quite smoothly the first few days. But the night of April 4th was the darkest of them all, and three airships arrived in the sky.

Beneath the gondolas hung a dense thicket of bell ropes, all drawn together to suspend a massive Bell.

The Bell was covered in moss, its clapper made of a human spine. As it swayed, it let out a booming toll.

This was a cluster-type High-Tier Evil Entity.

It swayed, and it chimed.

The doors to row after row of houses on Canvey Island swung open simultaneously. Figures in pajamas walked out, barefoot and eyes shut, heading straight for the marshes.

The moonlight on Gerard’s body had long since lit up, his ether pushed to its absolute limit.

The bell ropes were targeted by his moonlight, continuously sliced apart by his moon blades, but new ropes quickly dropped down to replace them.

He was long past his prime. Not only was he unable to nail the Bell down, but he also couldn’t stop it from ringing.

After the second toll, the old wound on his left ribs from Whitby tore open. The blood seeping out was half-frozen by the biting wind.

Down below, the little girl at the very front of the procession had already stepped into the mud by the water’s edge.

Gerard slowly bent his knees, dropping to one knee with a hand pressed against his chest. ”Rosemary, this time... I’m using it!” 13 Chelsea Road, third floor.

The chord left behind by [Wild Sleep] vibrated. Richard slowly opened his eyes, the warm current in his chest beginning to surge once more.

[Luck: Credited - Ashford (Ignited)]

This time, it brushed past his grandfather, heading toward the seas further east and south.

By the coast, at Gerard’s garrison post.

A massive ”clang” rang out from beyond the estuary, drawing the attention of everyone at the battery.

A small boat had smashed to pieces against the rocks, and a figure was thrown from within, plunging headfirst into a mud pit.

It took a long while for the figure to climb back up. His face was entirely caked in mud, making his features impossible to discern. He was tangled in seaweed, and a palm-sized octopus clung to his hat.

”Sergeant, another one’s come down!” a young gunner shouted.

He loaded a shell and fired. It grazed the man’s ear and blasted a massive crater just behind him.

The figure cursed loudly in terror, drawing out his words with a New Continent accent.