Chapter 160: Verdict

"Field," Mrs. MacNeil said from the center.

Through his Spirit Vision, Richard saw the seven silver threads in the center ripple slightly.

Her attention slightly divided, the entire array immediately showed signs of strain.

"Hold the line!" was all she could manage.

The wolf in the silver ring was blocking another cluster of shadows and could not afford to let up.

The emerald bird still perched on the hall's highest beam—if it closed its eyes, the entire array would go blind.

The woman in the ebony comb was weaving the piece in her hands, equally unable to stop.

The robed spirit in the Moonstone Pendant was engaged in a highly draining negotiation; if it stopped halfway, the children would instantly go mad.

The two throats in the Coral Earring were singing a deafening song, tricking the shadows into believing the outer Hunters were the most worthwhile targets; otherwise, two Hunters could never hold off over twenty patches of shadow.

The silver-chained Pocket Watch had already transferred the last wisp of flowing light it could spare to the Captain.

The old woman in the Bone Bracelet was the anchor for the entire array; if she moved even a fraction, everyone would collapse.

Only Captain Field was left to rely on himself. Could he hold on?

Richard knew the Captain probably wouldn't die, but his leg was almost certainly ruined.

For a low-Rank Hunter to lose a leg, his only future paths were retirement or dying in his next field assignment.

So, did this have anything to do with him?

The voice inside Richard's chest was remarkably calm.

He glanced at the Captain.

The man was desperately swatting at the other shadows with the flat of his left-hand axe, propping himself against the floor with his right hand, his face flushed dark red.

He didn't look at anyone, didn't ask for help, and didn't even glance down at his leg being slowly devoured.

He merely held his post.

Richard exhaled softly.

His mother's words from that night surfaced in his memory.

"If one day your sister falls, and your first reaction isn't to help her up, but to evaluate whether her injury is worth stopping your own progress...

From that moment on, you have already paid a price you don't even realize."

He had agreed with her then.

Although the Captain wasn't family, the situation right now perfectly mirrored her warning.

He shouldn't weigh the pros and cons so heavily. He had the ability to help, so he would follow his conscience.

"Sir."

"What is it?" Mr. Hutton responded quickly from the other side.

"I need to delay my next line of the verdict by half a beat."

"Why?"

"I'm going to give the Captain a hand."

Mr. Hutton's red pencil paused on the rubbing.

He didn't look up, but in less than half a second, he realized what that meant.

The only way Richard could help the Captain in this situation was with something else—something Hutton hadn't taught him, and something that couldn't be learned from a standard bookshelf.

He only asked one thing: "Have you thought this through?"

"I have."

Mr. Hutton nodded.

"Then don't hesitate. Do it!"

Richard hesitated no longer. During the exhalation phase of his third Breathing cycle, the flow of ether inverted, moving from the inside out.

In the material world, [Shadow Armor] worked by using the target's shadow as a medium to impose an additional load on their physical body.

Beneath the veil, the ether concentration was several times higher than in the material world, and the environment naturally amplified Spell Formula output.

The hand seeping into the Captain's left thigh was a shadow itself.

The rest of the child connected to it was still half-buried in the floor seams; only its upper body and that hand were exposed.

Richard applied the weight to the half below the seams.

From the waist down, a sudden sinking force yanked the entire nineteenth child downward...

In that split second, the hand seeping into the Captain's leg was dragged away by the weight of its own lower body.

With a soft pop, the hand tore free from the Captain's thigh.

The Captain seized the opportunity and swung the flat of his left-hand axe hard.

The heavy iron struck dead center on the child's exposed neck, smashing its upper body back into the floor seams.

Richard stood in place, his face significantly paler than before.

[Spiritual Capacity] dropped from 10 to 3, then down to 1...

He was just considering whether to use the Deep Ether Condensate in his pocket when the Captain used this brief respite to trigger a second outburst.

His entire body erupted in dark red flames.

The muscles in his arms bulged, and the veins beneath his skin burned dark red.

His two Enchanted Axes locked together, transforming into a single heavy axe.

The Captain swung it down violently.

"Get the hell away from me!"

The axe fell. The three derivatives flattened by [Shadow Armor], along with the two wrapped around the Captain's waist and left shoulder, were cleaved apart in a single strike.

The heavy blow shattered the children's formation, breaking the coordination of the survivors.

They scattered like a flock of startled birds.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Sarah's shotgun switched from piercing hearts to finishing off targets; she fired four Silver-Lead Bullets into the gap the Captain had cleaved open.

But Richard soon realized the children's rout was only temporary.

New grey bands were already seeping from the seams in the floor.

The smashed silhouettes of the children's shoulders and necks reassembled, slowly pooling back into their original shapes like scattered mercury.

"They aren't individual entities."

Mr. Hutton spoke in a low voice from the other side. He didn't look up; his red pencil kept moving across the rubbing.

"They share their Mother's roots."

"Scattering one only draws the rest closer together."

"So they can't be killed by force alone," Richard finally understood.

"Correct." Mr. Hutton finally looked up from the rubbing and glanced at Mrs. MacNeil.

The figure in the center gave a slight nod.

"Captain, Sarah," Mrs. MacNeil said softly. "From now on, do not attempt to finish them off."

"Just maintain the encirclement. We are entering the next phase."

The furnace-like fire in Captain Field's chest receded slightly.

He didn't reply, but he pulled his axe back to a guard position.

Sarah reloaded her shotgun but didn't pull the trigger again.

The rhythm of the battlefield instantly shifted.

Richard could see it through his Spirit Vision.

Hidden beneath the clamor of clashing blades and axes was a deeper undercurrent.

Mr. Hutton was reading continuously from the center.

With every passage he read, the glowing words on a specific part of the children's bodies dimmed.

With every dimmed passage, the Mother within the underground seams was lifted an inch higher.

Once read to the point of having nowhere to hide, she would emerge on her own.

"Edmund."

"Here."

"The seventh child to the southeast. The word on the shoulder blade."

On that child's shoulder blade was an extremely faint inscription, worn down by time.

"'Qui silentium tenet'—the one who keeps silence," Edmund reported.

"The pre-Roman equivalent?"

The freckled girl bit her lip.

"'An tí a choinníonn an ciúnas'—the one who maintains stillness."

"The Alexandrian School connection?"

Richard's mind flipped through its archives.

"'Silentium sub umbra'—silence beneath the shadow."

"Good."

Mr. Hutton slotted the passage into place.

The line of text on the old foreman's shoulder blade snapped dark, returning to the depths of the Mother.

"Do you understand?"

Richard had already figured it out. "We are calling out the parts of the Mother that originally had no names, one by one."

"Once they are called out, she can no longer hold onto them."

"Yes." The old scholar continued waving the red pencil. "Her body is made of all the nameless she has absorbed over the past few millennia."

"The nameless constitute her flesh. Once read aloud, that portion of flesh no longer belongs to her."

Richard frowned.

Every unnamed sorrow, every unanswered prayer, every unrecorded death had been gathered up by her.

She was a millennia-old tomb, burying only those whom no one remembered.

The children were the hands she extended to embrace later generations, but to the living, that embrace was lethal.

"These next few passages will be harder," Mr. Hutton said, continuing his work.

"When the Church suppressed her, they took the layers of her that originally possessed names and covered them up, layer by layer, with the title 'Demoness of the Underground'."

"For this next part, we must first tear off the covers laid down by the Church."

"We're dismantling the Church's seals?" Edmund stood at his position, his voice a bit tight.

"Correct." Mr. Hutton didn't hide it.

"The Church's seals from centuries ago were crude."

"What we are doing today is tearing them down, letting her true name be heard again so she can accept her own sleep-return."

"..." Edmund swallowed.

He looked down at the Silver Cross on his chest.

"You are right. The Church made mistakes centuries ago, and tonight we will mend them."

The old scholar gave him a slight nod.

"Then let us continue."

The red pencil danced across the rubbing once more.

"Edmund."

"Here."

"The inscription to the north covered in gold lacquer—can you read it?"

Edmund took a deep breath at his post.

The gold lacquer peeled away inch by inch under the light:

"...'Illa cui nomen tacetur'—the Unspeakable Name."

"Even the Church didn't dare address her directly?" Theodore muttered.

"Yes," Mr. Hutton affirmed.

"They covered this phrase with gold lacquer because speaking it aloud would awaken her, but they couldn't bear to erase it entirely."

"They knew they had done wrong." Edmund's voice lowered.

"They knew this Mother never should have been called a Demoness, so they left this line behind."

The old scholar extracted this passage from the rubbing and appended it to the end of the verdict.

The Mother was raised another inch within the underground seams.

In that moment, Richard could clearly see her.

She hadn't fully emerged, but her shape was nearly complete.

Within the vast underground sarcophagus, the female silhouette was slowly rising.

With every added line of the verdict, she accepted a fraction more of her original self.

She was finally returning to her rightful place.

"'Qui in cordibus orphanorum manet'—the one who dwells in the hearts of orphans."

"'Qui lacrimas matris bibit'—the one who drinks a mother's tears."

"'Qui in silentio noctis dormit'—the one who sleeps in the silence of the night."

Passage by passage, the children dimmed one after another.

The two recently missing children also stopped, their eyes empty.

The floor of the entire hall began to quake.

Richard felt the Mother beneath the ground raising her head.

In the closest layer, the 1881 miller's workshop, the shadows of twenty-five workers collapsed in unison;

a layer above that, in the 1340 chapel, the cross in the bishop's hand tilted to one side;

and on the highest layer, the pre-Roman mountains, the people singing around the twelve newly erected stones ceased their song.

The Mother was about to wake.

Captain Field's outburst was nearing its end; the furnace fire in his chest was on the verge of dying out.

"She's coming."

Edmund's Silver Cross burned against his chest, and he clenched it tighter in his left hand.

Maggie's Oak Short Staff stood by her feet, the carved ram's horn pointing downward.

Theodore gnawed on his lower lip.

Richard took a deep breath at his position.

A faceless female silhouette materialized within the grey mist.

She rose from the sarcophagus, looking exactly as she did in the cellar murals.

Richard avoided looking directly at her, but his Inspiration still stung slightly.

His expanding Inspiration, enhanced by his [Perception], was pushed to its limits.

This Mother's body was in this hall, but her waist was in the 1881 miller's workshop;

her shoulders were in the 1340 chapel;

her head was in the pre-Roman mountains.

She stretched all the way from this hall down to the deepest part of the well, her body the sum of these four layers of history.

But Mr. Hutton smiled. The target had finally appeared.

The red pencil was no longer needed; the rubbing was completely filled with the verdict.

The old gentleman held his right hand in the air and pressed his left hand against the rubbing.

He inhaled deeply.

He had been stuck at the threshold of a Practitioner for his entire life, unable to break through precisely because his ether foundation was impure.

But tonight was different. He didn't need purity.

A Scholar used words as their sword, and he was going to wield a blade broad enough to span three eras and dozens of generations, cleaving open every nameless part on this Mother's body that she couldn't name herself.

He began to read his verdict:

"'Stollithirenna'—the one who steals the shadows of the young."

This name was the master hook for the entire verdict tonight; only by securing it at the very front could all subsequent truths attach to it.

"You stand by shadows."

"'Stol.' Shadow."

"Your essence is the part untouched by light."

"This truth, we have comprehended."

The highest layer of the Mother's body, the pre-Roman mountain segment, began to dissolve.

The people who had been singing around the twelve newly erected stones now stood motionless in place.

Having been comprehended, the Mother's body on the pre-Roman mountain layer collapsed inch by inch.

She no longer had the right to stand on that layer.

Mr. Hutton continued his work:

"You are not a passive shadow, but a shadow that actively infiltrates."

"A shadow that steps out from the reverse side of light."

"A shadow that crawls upward from a child's feet."

"A shadow that flows from beneath a mother's eyelids."

"This truth, we have also comprehended."

A chunk of the Mother's body on the 1340 chapel layer collapsed.

Seven monks surrounded the bishop, their heads all thrown back; the cross in the bishop's hand radiated brilliant light.

The monks' mouths were moving; they were reciting the passage of scripture they had failed to finish.

"'-Renna.' Flowing."

"Also, Mother."

"You are the flowing shadow, the Mother of Shadows."

"The one who stands in the center of the twelve standing stones."

"The one who receives the dead infants."

"The one who gathers all the nameless into her embrace."

"This truth... we only comprehended tonight."

A chunk of the Mother's body on the 1881 miller's workshop layer collapsed.

The shadows of the twenty-three workers were originally facing the same direction, all frozen in postures of surprise.

Now, the faces of these shadows returned one by one to the expressions they should have held right before their deaths.

Some were laughing, some were panting, some had the crumbs of unfinished hard bread at the corners of their mouths.

The final second of their lives had been completely returned to them.

Mr. Hutton read three passages in succession.

Every passage dismantled the entity before them from a specific era, dissolving her body three layers down from the very top.

By the time the third passage was finished, all the color had drained from the old gentleman's face.

And the Mother finally gave her first reaction.