Chapter 159: Forging the Blade

Mr. Hutton held a needle-thin red pencil between his right index and middle fingers.

"All four Newcomers, come help."

The four of them remained rooted to their spots, unable to move, but copies of the rubbing automatically transferred to them.

"Edmund."

With a swipe of Mr. Hutton's finger, a glowing segment of medieval inscription flew from the rubbing to Edmund's side.

"You take this segment."

"Maggie." Another segment bearing jagged pre-Roman symbols flew to her side.

"The entire Gaelic system falls to you."

"Yes."

"Theodore." Mr. Hutton's red pencil sketched a rough positional map in midair.

"The battlefield's coordinates every second, the children's movements, the captain's strike points, Sarah's firing lines... record all of it and report to me."

"...Report it to you?" the stable boy's voice trembled.

"No need to analyze it. Just report."

"...Yes."

"Richard."

The final and largest segment went to his own student.

"You will handle the synthesis.

"The moment Edmund and Maggie report their segments, immediately connect the corresponding points.

"Whatever is missing in the middle, pull from your own head."

"...What I have in my head might not be enough," Richard answered honestly.

"Report it whether it is or not."

"Whatever you haven't read, I will treat as a blank; whatever you have, I will use immediately."

"Yes."

Hunters could only kill the children; they could not kill the mother.

Secret practitioners could only suppress the field; they could not suppress the source.

To cut down the mother herself, the inscription written across her on the etheric plane had to be parsed out from beginning to end.

No one else on the battlefield could accomplish this. Only a Scholar could.

This was the work of a Scholar: forging a blade out of knowledge and words.

And to do it fast, he needed help.

"Begin." Mr. Hutton raised his red pencil.

The children shifted beneath the ground. Streaks of gray flowing beneath the 'floor' converged at the outer edge of the True Name Stone's circle, then arched upward.

"Edmund, the glowing text in the southeast. You take it."

"... 'In nomine Sancti Cuthberti—In the name of Saint Cuthbert,'" Edmund immediately reported.

"And after that?"

"'qui custodit limen—the one who guards the threshold.'"

"The Guardian of the Threshold?" Mr. Hutton confirmed.

"Yes."

"Good."

The old scholar swiped his red pencil across the half-moon rubbing.

He plucked "Guardian of the Threshold" from its corresponding position in the medieval inscription and dragged it to the center of the rubbing.

"Maggie."

"Here."

"The segment in the northwest. The pre-Roman one."

Maggie bit her lip.

She kept her Oak Short Staff planted at her station, the ram horn carving at its tip facing downward.

The eighteenth figure had half its head poking out of the 'floor' beneath her feet, pinned in place by her Azure-Green Ring, stuck neither rising nor sinking.

She had to split her focus, keeping half her attention on maintaining the Azure-Green Ring and the other half on reading the text.

"'Sí—That one,'" she called out the first word.

"Mm."

"'a ghoideann—steals,' the second word."

"Mm."

"'scáth na n-óg—the shadow of the young.'"

"'The One Who Steals the Shadows of the Young.' We've read this line already."

"Yes."

"Now, piece it together with the 'Guardian of the Threshold.'"

The old scholar tapped the two segments together in the center of the rubbing.

As they met, a gap appeared in the center of the half-moon rubbing.

The shape of that gap was exactly what Richard needed to fill.

"Richard, connect them."

Richard pushed his focus into the gap at the center of the rubbing.

His [Learning] was pushed to its absolute limit in that second.

He scoured his own mind:

Page 143 of A Comparison of Pre-Roman Inscriptions and Medieval Sealing Terminology from the east wing of the Imperial Capital University Library's third floor;

The fifth line of the second group on the Alexandrian School terminology cross-reference chart Isabella had given him;

The section in Part Two of Appendix C regarding "Ether Circulation Nomenclature";

The detailed annotations on "Sacrificial Scar Inscription Connections" from A Study of Veil Weak Points...

"Between the 'Guardian of the Threshold' and 'The One Who Steals the Shadows of the Young,' the Medieval Church used a transitional incantation: 'qui transit sub umbra—the one who walks beneath the shadows.'"

Richard's brain overloaded for a brief moment before he slowly called it out.

He finally understood why the trait unlocked at Lv.3 for [Learning] was [Erudition].

"'The One Who Walks Beneath the Shadows?'" Mr. Hutton confirmed.

"Yes."

"And the corresponding Gaelic expression from the pre-Roman segment?"

"'Tí faoi scáth—The One Beneath the Shadows.'"

"Good."

The old scholar swiped his red pencil across the half-moon rubbing.

"Guardian of the Threshold," "The One Who Walks Beneath the Shadows," and "The One Who Steals the Shadows of the Young"—the three segments were threaded together by a single line.

Through his Spirit Vision, Richard saw a new line gleaming with a dim gray light appear on the rubbing.

That line was the embryonic form of a Judgment.

"Theodore."

"Here!"

"The position of the second child in the southeast?"

"Four and seven-tenths paces from the outer edge of the True Name Stone. It's moving north," the stable boy stammered.

"Speed?"

"Moving... a little more than a pace per second."

"Which way is it leaning?"

"Westward."

"Good."

Mr. Hutton dragged one end of that dark gray line over to the exact position the second child in the southeast was moving toward.

The line hooked into place.

When the second child reached that spot, it was jerked back by the hanging line.

It wasn't pinned dead in its tracks, but the tug dragged it a half-step off course.

But tonight, a half-step was enough.

"One Judgment stalls one child."

"There are twenty-five segments in total. Our objective is to stall the children with the Judgments.

At the same time, we'll bank the parsed Judgments and use them to read the mother."

At that moment, Richard completely grasped the true framework of tonight's battlefield.

The twenty-five children were both attacks and raw materials.

The more children there were, the more they could read.

The more they read, the more thoroughly the mother would be read.

"Madam," Richard spoke up.

"Hm?" Mrs. MacNeil replied from the center.

"Did you know from the start that the children were materials too?"

"Of course," Mrs. MacNeil answered as if it were obvious. "If I had killed them all, we wouldn't have anything to read tonight."

Richard finally understood the true purpose of the first wave of combat.

Captain Field's axe was never meant to kill the children.

Sarah's Silver-Lead Bullets could only pierce their hearts; they couldn't disperse them.

The role the two Hunters took on was simply to "drag" them down.

To drag the children in place so Mr. Hutton and the four Newcomers could read them segment by segment.

This was the true veil crossing tonight.

Every time a child popped up, Mr. Hutton tore away a segment of the inscription it carried.

"Edmund, the glowing words on the back of the third child in the northeast."

"'in nomine Spiritus Sancti—in the name of the Holy Spirit.'"

"And after that?"

"'qui pacem dat—the one who grants peace.'"

"The Bestower of Peace," Mr. Hutton confirmed. "The Gaelic equivalent? Maggie."

"'an tí a thugann síocháin—the Giver of Peace,'" Maggie reported fluently.

"Your Gaelic is far better than your Latin," Theodore muttered from his station.

"Better than you knowing absolutely nothing," Maggie fired back without taking her eyes off the ground.

"Focus," Mr. Hutton interrupted.

"Yes," the two Newcomers chorused.

"Richard, connect them."

Richard pulled the corresponding transitional inscription from his mind.

This set was harder than the last, because the Medieval Church and the pre-Roman Druids possessed entirely different narratives regarding the concept of "peace."

The Church's peace was the "peace of the Kingdom of Heaven."

His [Learning] dredged up a segment from his memories: the third line of the eleventh group in the early Alexandrian School's bilingual lexicon.

"'pax inter lapides—peace among the stones,'" Richard called out.

"Good." Mr. Hutton's red pencil swiped across the rubbing.

The second Judgment hooked into place.

It hooked outward, snagging the third child in the northeast and violently jerking it to a dead stop.

The parsing accelerated. Richard's mouth was painfully dry, and his Micro-circulation was burning.

The faster he reported, the faster it burned; the faster it burned, the drier his mouth became.

He used [Breathing: Healing] to draw moisture back into his throat.

Wherever his breath flowed, the micro-tears repaired themselves.

"Maggie."

"Here."

"The sixth child in the west."

"I can't read it all," Maggie panted slightly.

"If you can't read it all, just pick out what you can and report."

"'Ash' or 'Salt'... I can't tell which."

"Look at which part of its body is glowing."

"The segment on the shoulder."

"The shoulder segment dictates 'Salt' in the pre-Roman system," Mr. Hutton deduced immediately. "Report it as salt."

"Yes, 'an tí a chuireann salann—the one who scatters salt,'" Maggie reported again.

"Good."

"Edmund, the corresponding transitional word for salt in the medieval system."

"'qui spargit sal—the Sower of Salt.'"

"Richard, connect them."

By this point, Richard's brain had already begun to buzz.

"'sal sub umbra—salt beneath the shadows.'"

"Salt Beneath the Shadows," Mr. Hutton confirmed. "Good."

The sixteenth child had bypassed the captain.

It had slipped through an incredibly narrow gap.

When the captain brought his axe down, it slithered past the back of the blade.

When Sarah raised her Hunting Rifle, it slid right beneath the barrel.

The golden threads spat out by the wolf were busy intercepting another figure pouncing from due north, completely missing it.

It popped half of its head out of the floor and seeped directly into Richard's shadow.

Richard's chest felt incredibly heavy. The next segment of the Judgment caught in his throat.

He looked down. His own shadow had folded into a crease at his feet, and the face of the sixteenth child floated inside that crease.

"Not good."

Mr. Hutton caught it in his peripheral vision. His red pencil paused for a fraction of a second, but he too was rooted to his spot.

In the outer ring, Captain Field's angry roars echoed one after another.

Sarah let out a muffled grunt as something slammed into her shoulder.

Richard wanted to reach for his gun, but his entire body was pinned by a crushing weight.

He gritted his teeth, suddenly struck by an idea.

[Shadow Armor] was the inversion of [Stone Armor].

It added the "weight" of stone to a target's shadow, thereby making the target itself heavier.

But right now, his target was his own shadow.

He couldn't afford to increase the weight of his own shadow; that would only weigh him down further.

He needed to stabilize the shadow. Shadows were intrinsically things of the etheric plane.

The essence of [Breathing: Healing] was using ether as a reparative medium.

What if he pushed that reparative effect down from his chest and applied it to the shadow beneath his feet?

Richard didn't think further.

During the exhalation phase of his third cycle, he inverted the direction of the [Healing] from his chest.

Instead of directing it inward to mend his Micro-circulation, he flipped it outward to repair his shadow.

The breath flowed downward from the Seat of the Sun.

It passed through his abdomen and hips, surging down the ether pathways on the insides of his legs all the way to his ankles.

He forced the breath even further past his ankles, driving it out through the soles of his feet and straight into the shadow beneath him.

The shadow absorbed it, and Richard instantly knew it had worked.

The once-fluid edges of the shadow settled, and the crease was ironed flat by the flow of his breath.

The half-head of the sixteenth child that had already poked out was forcibly sealed back into the shadow from the bottom up by this wisp of reparative medium.

Richard's shadow shifted from a fluid state to a solidified one.

His shadow was now far sturdier than any shadow in the material world.

"Are you alright?" Mr. Hutton asked from the other side.

"I'm fine," Richard replied, panting slightly.

"...Madam, it seems we won't be needing your help after all."

"Then let us continue," Mrs. MacNeil responded from the center.

With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the Moonstone Pendant spirit she had been about to dispatch to "negotiate" at Richard's feet, returning it to its original post.

"Right." Richard quickly finished calling out the Judgment that had gotten stuck. "'The One Who Bestows Shadows Upon Their Own Children.'"

"Excellent." Mr. Hutton's red pencil swiped.

Richard noted silently that the stabilizing effect of [Breathing: Healing] on his shadow seemed stronger than its reparative effect on physical flesh.

This was likely because shadows were inherently entities of the etheric plane.

Repairing the physical body required converting ether from a reparative medium into a form the flesh could absorb, and that conversion process inevitably suffered a loss of efficiency.

A shadow was already an echo on the etheric plane. No conversion was necessary.

He filed this away in his mind.

But there was no time to dwell on it now.

"Richard, connect them."

Richard's brain whirred again, straining to pull up the corresponding Alexandrian School terminology:

"'consolatio sub velo—comfort beneath the veil.'"

Mr. Hutton confirmed, "Good."

As Richard reported it, he glanced toward the outer ring.

The Judgments were nearly assembled. The Scholar's blade was on the verge of being forged.

However, the situation on the battlefield was changing. Sarah had already taken a hit.

A deep bruise marred the Hunter's left shoulder. Ether wounds didn't bleed, but the impact meant that every time she reloaded a bullet, she had to jam her left wrist forcefully against her knee just to keep it steady.

Her target was another mass of figures lunging from the north: three children tangled together, throwing themselves straight toward Edmund's feet.

If that ring of light shattered, Edmund's sector would be lost.

And if Edmund's sector fell, the four corners of the outer ring would be left with a gap. The central formation would have to absorb the weight of that missing corner, tying Mrs. MacNeil's hands even further.

Sarah had to scatter those three children first.

Bang!

She fired another shot.

On the opposite side of the outer ring, Captain Field's roars of anger dissolved into grunts of pain.

Richard shot him a look.

A hand had clamped down on the captain's left thigh, and the fingers were beginning to seep straight into the muscle.

The child was "eating" the captain's shadow.

For a Hunter in an explosive state, the pain was temporarily suppressed.

It hurt, of course, but it wouldn't impair his movements.

Gritting his teeth, the captain swung his axe down on Number Twenty and Number Twenty-One.