Chapter 139: Needle Piercing

Richard looked at the six bullets in the Iron Box.

He had looked into the market price for Enchanted Bullets.

A single-ring bullet cost at least two shillings, and they were practically impossible to buy through regular channels.

On the black market, the price doubled.

"How much?"

"The friend price." Old Biggs's round face creased into a smile. "One shilling each. Six for six."

Richard paused.

"Old Biggs, this price—"

"It's already the friend price!" Old Biggs immediately waved him off.

"Don't try to haggle. I have to pay for materials too!"

"I'm not haggling," Richard said with a smile. "I'm saying it's too cheap."

"...Too cheap?" Old Biggs's expression shifted from feigned hardship to genuine exasperation at his honesty.

"You kid." He sighed, scratching the back of his head.

"Everyone else complains I charge too much. You're the only one complaining I charge too little."

"The market price is two shillings each."

"The market is the market. This is the inner-circle price." Old Biggs pushed the Iron Box closer to him.

"My teacher used to say you only turn a profit on Enchanted Bullets when selling to strangers. For our own people, it's just the cost of materials and labor."

"So..."

"So one shilling each covers the materials." Old Biggs rubbed his chin. "I'm waiving the labor."

Richard counted out six shillings from his pouch and set them on the table.

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Old Biggs said. "Next time you come, just remember to bring me more chestnuts."

"Will do."

"The large two-pence bag."

"Of course."

Old Biggs brewed a fresh pot of tea and refilled his cup.

Richard waited for him to take a sip before asking his next question.

"Old Biggs."

"Hmm?"

"About divination and Spirit Vision..."

"For the near future, you'll have to practice on your own."

Old Biggs traced the rim of his cup. "This is as far as I can teach you."

Richard paused in surprise.

Old Biggs set his cup down.

"I've taught you wax reading and stone reading, and you've found the threshold of basic Spirit Vision. Stabilizing a fixed gaze for over fifteen seconds is the mark of a true beginner."

"Anything beyond that..."

Old Biggs scratched his head. "That's as far as I go, myself."

"Astrolabes, crystal balls, tarot cards—I can't teach you things I never learned."

"What about the rest of your lineage..."

"The only ones in my lineage who can teach those are my teacher and my senior sister." Old Biggs shook his head.

"My teacher has her own rules for taking on students. Even back when I was learning, I had to wait in line for her free time."

"And my senior sister has been run off her feet for the past two years."

"Civilian Guild work doesn't keep regular hours. If a job comes up, you have to go."

"Since finishing her apprenticeship, her clientele has steadily spread from the North District all the way to the central districts of the Imperial Capital. The work hasn't let up once."

Richard nodded.

Gerard's words over the phone surfaced in his memory:

"Madam Marie's students are spread far and wide throughout the Civilian Guild. They are deeply rooted and have excellent local connections. Our people have received help from her students more than once."

Mrs. MacNeil was one of them, and likely the busiest of the lot.

"You can meet her once spring arrives, just to get acquainted," Old Biggs said.

"After that, it depends on whether you two get along. If you do, she might be willing to guide you for a stretch;

if you don't, you can treat it as making a new friend."

"Either way works," Richard replied readily. "Just meeting her is a gain."

"Speaking of which..." Old Biggs's tone relaxed.

"What you're practicing now is enough to keep you busy for a while."

He took a sip of tea and continued.

"The way you look at things has changed this past week."

"Changed how?"

"When you do wax reading, you used to have to concentrate for quite a while to get into the right state."

Old Biggs ticked it off on his fingers. "This week, you slip into it the moment you sit down."

"When you do stone reading, you used to hesitate over how to interpret the symbol positions.

This week, you scatter the stones and tell me their meaning with barely a glance."

"You might not feel the change yourself, but watching from the outside, it's quite obvious."

Richard felt a stir of surprise.

Old Biggs's observation skills were far sharper than he usually let on.

"Do you have anything else you want to ask?"

Richard considered it.

"Not for now."

Old Biggs nodded and stood up.

"Then we'll leave it at that."

"Get home before dark, and take it slow on the way."

Richard shouldered his bag and secured the small Iron Box of six Enchanted Bullets into an inner pocket against his ribs.

The gun case sat heavy in his bag, imparting a deep sense of security.

Over the past week, Richard had also visited the combat club's activity room a few times, keeping to his previous schedule.

He went after school, worked out for about an hour, and jogged home.

He had bumped his dumbbells from seven pounds to eight. He kept his sets the same, only slightly increasing the weight.

The initial curiosity from the combat club's regulars slowly morphed into something else.

It took Richard a few days of being there to put his finger on it.

On Tuesday afternoon, he had just finished his second set of dumbbell presses and set the weights back on the floor.

Two older students sat on the other side of the mats—one named Henry, the other Parker.

Henry was a hulking guy with arms thicker than Richard's legs.

Parker was leaner, sporting patchy stubble on his chin.

"...I heard he took second place in the Cicero Cup."

Parker kept his voice down for Henry, but not quite low enough.

"It's just Latin," Henry snorted. "What use is Latin? Can you fight with it?"

"The headmaster even praised him at the morning assembly."

"It's just the headmaster," Henry scoffed.

Richard picked up his water bottle and took a sip, ignoring them.

Fraser was busy wrapping a new student's hands and didn't have time to police their petty behavior.

Richard set the water bottle down and picked up the dumbbells again.

Parker suddenly chuckled. "Hey, Williams."

"Hmm?"

"How heavy are those dumbbells?"

Richard didn't answer. He walked straight over to the rack to swap his weights.

"I'm just asking, Fraser, since when did this place start taking in celebrities?"

"He's here to use the equipment, not to run his mouth," Fraser replied while working a sandbag.

"But this place wasn't meant for students like him, was it?"

Richard finished his presses, set the dumbbells down, and stood up from the mat.

For a bunch of boys routinely crushed academically, the thrill of outperforming a top student in a different arena was obvious.

Richard didn't care. He was here for the equipment, not to make friends.

Fraser finished the new student's wraps and shot a glare in their direction.

Henry's laughter instantly died down.

"Are you jumping in for the final spar or not?" Fraser called out to Henry.

"I'm in!" Henry immediately straightened up.

"Then have you finished your five hundred strikes on the bag today?"

"...Almost."

"Go finish them."

Henry scrambled up from the mat and trudged toward the sandbags, looking deflated.

Parker tactfully stood up and shuffled over to the corner to lift dumbbells.

Fraser walked over and crouched on the mat across from Richard.

He didn't offer any words of comfort, merely pointing a thumb at the dumbbells.

"Maxing out the eight-pounders?"

"Yeah."

"Switch to ten pounds tomorrow."

Richard paused. "That's a bit of a leap."

"Your recovery speed is much faster than normal." Fraser's gaze swept over his arms.

"You trained to failure yesterday, yet you came in today and knocked out three full sets. Your recovery window is abnormally short."

"I eat a lot," Richard replied vaguely.

"It takes more than food." Fraser draped a towel over his shoulder. "Ten pounds. I reckon you can handle it."

He stood up to leave. "Don't take Henry and the others to heart."

"It's fine."

"They're just like that. They do this to all the newcomers."

Fraser rubbed his chin.

"I can't control their mouths, but I can control their hands.

As long as they don't get physical, just let it slide."

"I know."

Fraser nodded and turned away.

......

On Wednesday afternoon, Richard switched to ten-pound dumbbells.

By the eighth rep of his first set, his arms were already shaking.

He set the dumbbells down, rested for a minute, and restarted his Fourfold Breathing.

With the new cycle of breathing, Healing quietly went to work inside him.

The emerging micro-tears in his arms were smoothed away bit by bit.

When he picked up the dumbbells for his second set, the shaking had lessened.

Parker didn't say another word today.

The teenager who had transferred from the military academy arrived.

Richard took his first proper look at him.

He was slightly taller than Richard, with broad shoulders, though not absurdly wide like Fraser's.

He was packed with tight, lean muscle under a gray tank top, and faint, old scars were visible on his arms.

Unlike the chaotic marks of a street fight, these scars looked like they came from repeated lashes—yet the one striking had been incredibly measured, landing every blow in almost the exact same spot.

Richard's gaze lingered on those scars for a second.

Vincent had similar marks on his arms.

The boy didn't speak to anyone. He walked over to the corner and started his warm-up.

His routine included details Richard had never seen before—the specific rotation of the shoulder blades, the opening and closing of the hip joints, the limbering of the ankles.

Every motion was broken down into precise counts and angles. It wasn't a training framework the wild kids in the combat club could have pieced together on their own.

It was the product of systematized training.

Richard finished his three sets of dumbbells for the day, followed by a set of push-ups.

As he packed his things to leave, he brushed past the military school student in the doorway.

The boy gave a curt nod, and Richard returned it.

While he trained at the combat club, his Moon Nail practice advanced simultaneously.

Nemesis had specifically noted in her pamphlet that beginners were best off using old Silver Needles that had seen years of use.

The metal structure of new needles retained stress distortions from forging. When ether was pushed along the needle, it was prone to knotting at certain points.

Knotting caused ether backflow, and backflow shattered the needle.

Richard visited Clement Antique Shop and explained his needs to the old man, who rummaged under the counter and dug out a bundle of twelve antique Silver Needles.

They were leftover stock from a deceased tailor. Their purity was high, and after being tempered by years of use, their internal metal stress was far more uniform than in new needles.

The tip of each needle had been worn down to a rounded point barely visible to the naked eye.

They obviously weren't pure silver, as pure silver was generally too soft. He had tested them and found their silver content perfectly sufficient for conducting ether.

Because they were old, they were two pence cheaper than new ones.

Returning home for his first cast, Richard followed the starting steps outlined in the Moon Nail pamphlet.

The first step was gripping the needle.

He pinched the tail of the needle between his thumb and index finger, pointing the tip outward.

The pamphlet stated that the beginner's grip was the "three-finger pinch."

Thumb, index, and middle fingers pinched the needle, using the palm's muscle groups to absorb the tremors that came with pushing ether through breathing methods.

Only after gaining proficiency would one transition to the "two-finger pinch," and eventually the "single-finger hold."

The highest level required no grip at all, firing the needle entirely through ether alone.

For now, Richard used the most stable grip: the "three-finger pinch."

The second step was drawing the breath.

He closed his eyes and activated Fourfold Breathing, using his heartbeat as a timer.

During the exhalation phase of his third full cycle, the Micro-circulation in his Seat of the Sun began pushing ether toward his right arm.

Next came the most crucial step in the Moon Nail: Needle Piercing.

Forcing the ether through the tail end, pushing it all the way down the needle's central axis to the very tip.

A mote of light condensed at the point.

It was tiny, no larger than a grain of rice, glowing white with a tinge of cyan.

Richard opened his eyes.

He had originally assumed his first attempt at Needle Piercing would only yield a blurry mist. He hadn't expected it to condense directly.

With [Perception] illuminated, his precision in grasping the flow of ether had leveled up.

Now came the actual casting.

He aimed the tip at the target he had set up in advance—a textbook hanging on the wall.

Flicking his wrist forward, he released the Silver Needle. It pierced the book's spine in a short, sharp arc.

Thwack!

Richard walked over to inspect it.

The Silver Needle had sunk about half an inch into the spine. The red thread at the tail twitched twice before coming to a stop.

He stepped up to the wall and pulled the needle out.

Richard brushed his fingertips over the puncture hole. The paper fibers around the edge bore scorch marks.

The pamphlet mentioned that if the target possessed ether, the damage would be massively amplified.

For a first cast, every metric was terrible.

Judging purely by physical lethality, he would have been better off chucking a kitchen knife.

But then again, he had a gun now.

He wasn't a Hunter. No matter what he threw, nothing beat pulling the trigger.

Still, he needed to keep practicing the Moon Nail and master it as quickly as possible. He was very much looking forward to what kind of shadow Spell Formula it would bring once it underwent reversal.

......

Early the next morning, Richard jogged from Slag Alley to school.

He checked his watch at the school gates: twenty-six minutes.

A thin sheen of sweat covered him, but his breathing rhythm remained unbroken.

While he ran, Fourfold Breathing automatically locked into the cadence of his footsteps.

Three beats for inhaling, three beats for exhaling, every footfall landing perfectly on a beat.

He stood on the steps by the school gates for a moment, sinking his consciousness into the Panel.

[Walking Lv.2] Progress: 0%

Sure enough, it was another silent upgrade.

He had already experienced the process of upgrading from Lv.1 to Lv.2. This was his fourth time.

But the changes brought by walking advancing to Lv.2 were a little different.

Richard climbed a long flight of stairs up to his classroom.

Climbing stairs had always been one of the most exhausting things for him. His calves used to ache after just two floors.

But today, he paused and paid attention to his body.

During the climb, Fourfold Breathing had automatically adjusted its rhythm.

Long exhalations reduced the physical strain while delivering more oxygen to his lower limb muscle groups.

He hadn't consciously adjusted his breathing; his body had done it for him.

[Walking Lv.2] had automatically tethered the breathing method to his stride.

Normal walking, jogging, stair climbing, and sprinting would all shift its frequency.

His body independently selected the most suitable breathing cadence based on its load demands.

Hmm... it was like switching from manual to automatic.

Now that his breathing method and gait were linked, ether would automatically cycle faintly within his body during his everyday movements.

The magnitude was minuscule, but it was continuous.

After his last class ended, Richard went back to his homeroom first.

He pulled a few heavy textbooks out of his bag and shoved them into his locker.

He didn't need to bring those to the combat club.

Students were streaming steadily down the hallway toward the school gates.

As he passed the doors of a lower-grade classroom, a little boy was running down the hall waving a slip of paper, asking everyone, "Does 'rosa' mean rose in Latin?"

When the boy stopped to ask him, he looked up and froze for a second.

"You're that guy..."

"I am."

"So does 'rosa' mean rose?"

"It does."

The boy turned and sprinted toward the other end of the hallway, shouting as he ran, "I told you it was! You lose! It's your treat!"

Richard stood where he was, listening to the chorus of protests and jeers echoing from the far end of the hall.

He smiled and continued on his way to the gym.