Chapter 215: A Clash of Virtuosos

"...When?" Ares asked first.

He walked the Hunter path, making him the most sensitive to war.

"Perhaps next year, or the year after." Hecate's reply was calm, her trifold voice overlapping without a single ripple of emotion.

"Local conflicts will ignite on Hemus Island first.

Once a single spark catches, it will follow that messy web of alliances and spread across the entire Old Continent."

"In three years at the latest, it will likely escalate into an all-out war."

"...Why?" Prometheus asked.

Every gaze at the table converged on the head seat.

"The surface reasons are printed in the newspapers every day."

Hecate's maiden voice spoke first.

"Unequal distribution of colonial interests. Germania rose too late and got too small a slice of the overseas territories, leaving them envious.

Franc and Albion have centuries of old scores to settle, and the Rus Empire is desperate for an ice-free port."

"All of that is true, and all of it is merely the surface."

The motherly facet of her voice took over—warm, yet inexplicably making one want to shrink back.

"The deeper reason starts with the 'annual veil decay rate.'"

Richard recalled the term.

Haldane's Introduction to Veil Dynamics had mentioned it.

"Over the past three hundred years, the annual veil decay rate has climbed rapidly. The veil is thinning."

At this point, she shifted the topic to a height those present would normally never dare imagine.

"At the Virtuoso level, flesh and spirit have essentially merged with the other side of the veil."

"As the veil thins, their ability to interfere with the material world is strengthened."

Richard breathed more softly.

"In the past, even though they could also exert power in the material world..."

Hecate continued.

"...it came with a price. Every time they acted on this side, they effectively had to drag a piece of themselves out from behind the veil."

Richard suddenly realized something.

According to his deductions from the literature, a Major Adept could cause city-level devastation;

A Virtuoso, having undergone a qualitative change, could probably destroy an island or a small country with ease.

Yet he had scoured the newspapers and flipped through all those shabby local historical records in the Municipal Library...

...and had never read of a single city or country being wiped out overnight by a "higher being" or a "natural disaster."

The world was plagued by constant conflict; wars occurred every year.

But large-scale disasters capable of erasing entire cities? There were none.

He had never been able to understand this, but Hecate's words tonight filled in the blank.

Because, starting from the Major Adept level, their true battlefield lay entirely behind the veil.

"Those higher beings used to entrench themselves in their own territories."

The crone facet of Hecate's voice lowered.

"The world behind the veil is vast enough. Unable to reach one another, they could not be bothered to fight, each minding their own business."

"But once the veil thinned, the material world's barrier loosened."

"They must rely on believers, sacrifices, blood-soaked nodes, sacrificial scars... and any thin point capable of providing continuous nourishment to sustain their overly massive existence."

So that was it. Richard now knew why there was a Virtuoso's power foundation beneath the Unresponsive Pit.

Ares had another question.

"But why is the Hemus region the first to start?"

Hecate raised a hand, casting a pool of black water onto the center of the table.

"First, let me show you something."

The pool of black water began to churn.

Richard's Inspiration caught the change before his eyes did.

The images projected by the black water carried a sluggish feeling, as if they had been passed through multiple hands and translated several times before arriving.

The first frame showed a peninsula.

Jagged mountain ridges and crisscrossing river valleys stretched out, with dusty gray cities scattered among the peaks.

On that map, a spot had originally glowed with an incredibly deep, steady light, like an eternal lamp burning deep underground for centuries.

"One month ago," Hecate said, "a Major Adept fell in the southern part of the peninsula."

No one at the table made a sound.

A Major Adept was the ceiling for all existing practitioners on the Old Continent.

A practitioner of this level was a city's stabilizing anchor simply by being alive.

"How did he die?" Nemesis asked.

"I don't know," Hecate answered quickly.

"My channels can only confirm that he died, not how."

In the projection, that eternal subterranean lamp went out.

Where it extinguished, the lid was pulled off the previously guarded thin point, and things began pouring out.

Mist seeped from the mouth of the well in wisps, then surged in torrents.

"What that Major Adept was guarding was a sacrificial scar over a thousand years old at the southern tip of the peninsula."

Another facet of Hecate's voice took over.

"The Thracians sacrificed to the subterranean gods in that area for centuries. The scar is extremely deep, and the nourishment is incredibly rich."

"A fertile field nurtured for a millennium, its sovereignty newly vacated," Hecate said. "What do you think would happen?"

The second frame surfaced.

This frame was even blurrier than the first, its shapes barely distinguishable.

Two inconceivably massive behemoths, existing on a scale beyond humanity, confronted each other in the sky above the peninsula.

Richard took one look at those two colossal entities, and his Inspiration instantly began warning him.

"The clash between the two Virtuosos is entirely because of that newly vacated well."

As she finished speaking, the two leviathans inside the mist collided.

Richard couldn't see the details; he could only see the changes occurring to the peninsula itself after they made contact.

Hecate didn't give the name of the first Virtuoso; she only projected a snippet of footage.

Among the mountains in the southern part of the peninsula, all the rivers flowed backward at the exact same moment, only to quickly surge back again.

The ancient Thracian gods' whispers within the subterranean water veins were seized from the earth and twisted into a rope.

The threads of destiny, rivers, and the underground were all seized by this being and wielded as weapons.

The second entity was even harder to see.

In the frame Hecate projected, every shadow on the peninsula stood up in unison from beneath its owner's feet.

The shadows of mountains, cities, people, and trees all detached from their physical forms and surged in the same direction.

It looked remarkably like the night Richard had pried open the seal on the Sphinx Lamp, when Nail Alley was filled with shadows detaching from objects.

Only, that night, he had merely leveraged a palm-sized oil lamp.

The being before his eyes was leveraging the "lightlessness" of all Hemus Island.

When those two Virtuosos clashed, there was no sound.

It was completely different from the massive devastation Richard had often imagined—mountains collapsing, the earth splitting, cities destroyed, and nations annihilated.

The true slaughter was entirely behind the veil.

Only these trivial scraps could bleed over to the material side.

Rivers flowing backward for three breaths; shadows standing up and then lying back down.

No infants born on the southern tip of the peninsula for seven consecutive days; flocks of sheep collectively kneeling in the same direction.

People would simply attribute these phenomena to droughts, plagues, and bad years.

"One won. One retreated."

Hecate retracted that blurry frame, and the black water settled.

"The victor is currently claiming the well."

She gestured toward Richard.

"Hermes's deduction from earlier is pretty much spot on."

"The Industrial Revolution has massively changed many old thin points, and even birthed new types of thin points that never existed before."

The atmosphere at the table sank.

"A new field where no one has planted their flag yet. The higher beings are rushing to cultivate and fatten it."

"The method for cultivating it is simple: trigger mass death."

"The fastest way to form a blood-soaked node is war."

"And so..." Her trifold voice rang out simultaneously.

"In diplomatic notes, an ambassador's wording is made just a fraction harsher than usual.

In military drills, a fleet's course drifts off by just a few nautical miles.

In border skirmishes, that one critical shot is fired."

The table was dead silent.

The clash between those two Virtuosos on the peninsula was likely just the prelude to this struggle.

The layered gaze beneath the Golden Mask fell on everyone at the table.

"I am showing you this so that you hurry."

"The veil is thinning. Wells are being vacated one after another, and filled one after another.

The higher beings are playing their game with increasing urgency. Once all-out war erupts, the entire Old Continent will turn into a massive blood-soaked node."

"When that time comes, no one will be spared."

"The paltry Spell Formulas and little tricks in your hands are not worth mentioning before that board.

Yet they are the only things you can use to inch forward right now."

Her trifold voice dropped in unison.

"For those who walk too slowly, when the fire burns its way to their doorstep... I do not need to elaborate on their fate."

It took quite a while for the four people at the table to recover.

Ares unclenched his right hand; it was trembling slightly.

The flames atop Prometheus's head flared up once more.

Nemesis's tilted scales almost completely toppled over.

Richard leaned against the back of his chair, calming his erratic breathing.

"That will be all for tonight." Hecate withdrew her gaze.

"The next gathering is in mid-April."

"Everyone is familiar with the method to leave."

"Close your eyes, and count to seven."

Richard closed his eyes.

One, two, three.

In his mind, the half-open well on the peninsula and the two behemoths confronting each other high above receded layer by layer.

Four, five.

He thought of the Sphinx Lamp, and the still extremely nascent shadow beneath his own feet.

Perhaps they shared the same root.

But on one end was him, a Newcomer who hadn't even carved out his own Signature, and on the other was a Virtuoso capable of leveraging the "lightlessness" of an entire peninsula.

Six.

How long was that path, and how far would he walk down it in his lifetime?

Seven.

The sea of stars scattered.