Chapter 153: The Manifest Layer and the Hidden Section

At dinner, the long table in the inn held a much richer spread than it had for the past few meals.

The seniors and the Newcomers were not seated at separate tables tonight.

All eight of them sat together around the same long table.

Richard took a sip of ginger tea.

The spicy ginger slid down his throat and warmed his stomach.

The landlady brought another dish out of the kitchen.

"My daughter baked an apple pie. Have a taste, everyone."

The pie was drizzled with brandy sauce and studded with raisins, almonds, and dried cherries. Word was there was even a lucky coin hidden inside.

"The usual rules. Everyone gets a slice."

The pie was cut into eight portions. Richard's piece didn't have the coin.

Edmund took his second bite. With a clink, he spat a coin out of his mouth.

"Me?" the young man asked, looking a bit bewildered.

"You're going to have good luck this year." Mrs. MacNeil smiled. "Keep it safe."

Remembering yesterday's ordeal, Edmund looked around and noticed that everyone else wore a knowing expression.

"Thank you all." He silently wiped the coin clean and slipped it into his pocket.

After dinner, Richard went upstairs.

His progress in [Perception] Lv.1 had advanced significantly over the past two days.

Diving into the near-shore twice, along with his use of Spirit Vision during combat, had deepened his perceptual precision each time.

Richard checked his Panel.

[Perception Lv.1] Progress: 77%.

He was still a ways off from Lv.2, but his progress over the last two days exceeded everything he had gained over the previous week.

His proficiency with the [Moon Nail] Spell Formula had also vastly improved.

The formation time had dropped from two seconds down to a second and a half, and he could now execute a two-finger convergence.

Once he compressed the formation time to under a second and achieved a single-finger link, he would be fully proficient with this Spell Formula.

Once proficient, he could activate [Shadow Inversion]. He was somewhat curious: what would a reversed Moon Nail look like?

A standard Moon Nail pinned others. Would a reversed Moon Nail pin himself?

But what use was there in pinning himself?

Richard pondered this as he completed tonight's nourishment. The Sphinx Lamp was growing increasingly hot to the touch.

Spread out on the desk was a simple map he had drawn a few days ago, marking the relative positions of Whitcom and several surrounding main roads.

He put the map away and retrieved a larger, newer fold-out map of the national railway network from his drawer.

He had grabbed the pamphlet at the station on the day they departed.

Using a pencil, Richard located Whitcom Station on the map, then traced the branch line backward, stop by stop.

He tapped his pencil tip against the square marking the transfer station.

Osborne. A textile and timber distribution hub, and a small city with a population under one hundred thousand.

The station was a major hub; branch lines heading north, south, and west all departed from it.

Unlocking conditions for walking Lv.3: A multi-day trek passing through perilous terrain, using no transportation for the entire journey.

Unlocking conditions for sleep Lv.3: Complete one full cycle of deep sleep in an unfamiliar and hostile environment.

The wilderness surrounding Whitcom actually met both conditions.

But he couldn't exactly tell the seniors that he was going out to pick mushrooms, let alone sneak off to spend the night in the wild behind everyone's backs.

Even setting that aside and assuming he had the skill to slip out without alerting anyone...

The area around Whitcom was fundamentally unsuited for camping.

The seal was continually decaying, and the puddle atop that rock was a half-open eye.

Osborne was different.

Its northwest corner featured a stretch of state-owned forest, and further west were low ridges.

There were several shepherd trails in those ridges that had been walked since the eighteenth century. Every summer and autumn, hiking enthusiasts headed out from the city to trek for a day or two.

Mr. Hutton had shown him the Annual Report on Weak Points Within the Empire, and the page for Osborne only bore a single small mark.

The place wasn't too cold, it had a decent population, it lacked any weak points in the veil, and the area outside the city definitely counted as wilderness.

He drew a circle next to Osborne.

The next question was: should he go alone?

The answer was obviously no.

Before coming to this world, he had watched plenty of short videos about the hazardous Aotai trekking route.

Getting lost, spraining an ankle, hypothermia, slipping on mountain trails after a snowstorm, falling asleep alone in the freezing wild and never waking up... any one of those disasters could turn this camping trip into a burden on a search and rescue team.

Neither of the two traits' unlocking conditions stated that he had to complete them alone.

The safest approach would be to join a club and find a guide to lead a group.

This was Osborne's advantage as a city.

It had local hiking clubs. By paying a single activity fee, he could even rent camping gear from them.

A guide would lead the way, and a group of a dozen or so people would follow a familiar route.

Before setting out, he could cast the Runestones once to ask, "Will this journey be safe? What are the road and weather conditions for the next thirty-six hours?"

Just before entering the mountains, he could ask again: "Will anyone among my companions become a source of trouble?"

Divining a few more times would also push up his [Perception] progress bar. Why wouldn't he do it?

Having finalized his plan, he contentedly blew out his kerosene lamp and closed his eyes.

...

The breakfast table the next day was much plainer than it had been for the previous two.

The landlady placed a porcelain bowl in front of everyone. Inside was thickly boiled oatmeal porridge, topped with a floating layer of milk skin.

Beside the porridge rested a small saucer of butter and a spoonful of amber honey. Two dried mint leaves lay sunk at the bottom of the honey jar.

"Starting today, our meals will follow the rules of a sealer."

The landlady set the last bowl down.

"Nothing greasy, strong, alcoholic, or spicy will be served."

"Why?" Theodore held up his spoon.

"Those who perform repairs must keep their tongues clean."

Mrs. MacNeil took a sip of porridge and answered naturally, "If lingering spices remain in your mouth, the incantations you chant will be warped."

"I thought it was because you were afraid we'd get diarrhea," Theodore muttered. Maggie shot him a glare, and he quickly wiped the look off his face.

Mr. Hutton sat at the other end of the table, having already finished half his porridge.

"Once you're done eating..." Mrs. MacNeil set her spoon down and pulled a pencil stub from her apron pocket.

"...gather around this table. I'll go over our schedule for the next few days."

The landlady cleared the bowls away, and the tabletop was wiped clean.

Mrs. MacNeil took a rolled-up document from her satchel and unfurled it in the center of the table.

It was a survey map of Whitcom Mill, bearing a few dark spots from tea stains.

She drew a thin wooden wand from a leather case and tapped its tip lightly against the map.

"Today is already the third day. Before the veil crossing on the fifth night, we have three tasks on our hands."

The wand's tip shifted to the mill's outer wall.

"First, we repair the protective silver strip inscriptions on the mill's outer wall and seal off the obvious seepage points.

"This is our 'fallback task.' No matter what happens later, we must at least reseal the surface layer."

The wand's tip moved inward.

"Second, a documentary investigation of the seal's inner layer.

"The mill was originally a medieval chapel. In the cellar beneath it, there are still several pre-Roman murals and a passage of inscription."

She looked up, sweeping her gaze over the Newcomers.

"The core mechanism of ancient Gaelic seals is naming.

"When a name is forgotten, the seal decays.

"Before they died, the twenty-three workers in 1881 had their shadows eaten by 'She Who Eats Shadows' inside there.

"But the root cause of why the seal began decaying that year was because, starting from King Henry VIII's Great Dissolution, the lineage of people who knew her true name gradually died out."

"Industrial environmental damage wasn't the root cause," Mr. Hutton added from the side.

"Does the True Name Stone need to be recarved?" Edmund asked.

"It does." Mrs. MacNeil nodded.

"There is an original True Name Stone still visible in the cellar, but its inscription has been worn away to mere scattered strokes.

"What we need to do is restore this name as much as possible from the murals and inscription fragments."

"What if we can't restore it?" Richard asked.

"If we can't, we'll use a substitute name."

Mrs. MacNeil tapped her wand against the edge of the map.

"A substitute name is the contingency plan in sealing science. When a true name is completely lost, a sealer can use a sufficiently large set of descriptive phrases to replace it.

"The principle is that the entity is uniquely identified by this set of phrases, thereby granting those phrases an equivalent naming authority to a true name on the sealing layer."

"It sounds like using a long string of synonymous phrases to replace a true name," Theodore said, scratching his head.

"You can understand it that way," Mr. Hutton carefully explained.

"The cost is that the sealing efficiency of a substitute name is thirty to forty percent lower than that of a true name. Furthermore, you have to replace it with a new set every few decades, as synonyms are also worn away by time."

"When she came out back in 1881..."

Maggie pulled her scarf down a bit from her chin. "...were they still using her true name, or a substitute name?"

"They were using a substitute name in 1881,"

Mrs. MacNeil recalled.

"The true name was lost after the Great Dissolution. By 1881, they had been scraping together substitute names for over three hundred years.

"The last few generations of sealers had begun struggling to piece together appropriate phrases; the vocabulary had been almost entirely exhausted by their predecessors.

"The set of substitute names used in 1881 was hastily cobbled together by the Church from within their order, and its efficiency was extremely low."

"That's why the workers were eaten."

The wand's tip moved another inch inward.

"The third task, and the hardest."

She looked up at the four Newcomers.

"The Boundary Stone Array. This layer lies behind the veil.

"On this side in the material world, we lay down silver strips, burn candles, and carve True Name Stones. That is called the manifest layer."

Mr. Hutton took over the explanation. As he spoke, he used the bottom of his teacup to trace a circle on the table, then traced another circle inside it, slightly offset by half an inch.

"The part where it truly takes effect is its corresponding hidden section, which the manifest layer projects behind the veil."

He pointed to the outer circle. "This is the manifest layer, the material world."

He then pointed to the inner circle. "This is the hidden section, behind the veil.

"The two circles should normally be pressed tightly against one another, practically overlapping.

"But as a seal ages, the inner circle will drift inward or to one side.

"Once it drifts away, no matter how much you repair the outer circle, the inner circle can't connect with the force.

"That is why we must descend into the hidden section."

The old man paused slightly, allowing the four Newcomers to digest the information.

"Since that incident in 1881, hardly anyone has repaired the Whitcom seal.

"For the past thirty years, the silver strips of the manifest layer have barely managed to hold on, but the hidden section has mostly come undone."

"Therefore," Mrs. MacNeil added, "we must descend into the hidden section this time and manually retie the knots ourselves."

She retracted her wand.

"Before that, we must first repair the manifest layer.

"If the manifest layer isn't repaired properly, don't expect to come out cleanly once we go inside."

"Understood," Edmund was the first to reply.

"As for today's specific division of labor."

Mrs. MacNeil tucked her wand back into its leather case.

"Edmund and Maggie, you will follow Mr. Hutton to the cellar for the documentary investigation.

"Edmund understands the Church's ritual language, and Maggie understands Gaelic. We will need to utilize both linguistic systems."

"Yes," Edmund nodded.

"Richard and Theodore, you'll come with me to apply silver strips to the outer wall."

"All right."

"The two Hunters went out for a patrol hunt this morning. After they finish clearing a perimeter and return, they will set up patrol lines around the outer edge of our work area."

Mrs. MacNeil closed her leather case.

"Let's move."