Chapter 278: I Am the Candle Flame!

The two lines of defense at the floodgate could no longer hold.

Both Mr. Hutton and Mrs. MacNeil were reeling from the backlash, leaving Richard standing alone in the center of the floodgate.

His own shadow had only just been patched together, the section at his shoulder still not fully closed.

Beneath the surface, the hundreds of floating corpses had already spotted the gap in their line.

Through Richard's Spirit Vision, the water in the entire Black Trench was converging toward Mr. Reeve.

Mr. Reeve approached from the west.

He had taken a detour, cutting through a residential neighborhood.

Along his path, a freshly harvested shadow stood inside every single home.

Following Mr. Reeve's footsteps, those shadows poured toward the Black Trench like a rising tide.

Mr. Reeve still wore his usual gray clothes, his shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

His face bore that same smile—so amiable it made a person's blood run cold.

He didn't draw too close, keeping himself immersed in the shadow of the small church.

He looked toward the Black Trench.

Deeper behind the veil, a pair of pupil-less eyes also gazed toward the trench.

It cast a single glance, then looked away.

But with just that single glance, hundreds of shadows twisted into a massive hand.

The faces crammed into the skin over its knuckles all opened their mouths wide toward the Black Trench.

It bypassed all the Hunters on the shore, breached the wall of filthy water, and lunged straight for the core of the ritual.

Mrs. MacNeil was the presiding officiant of this ritual.

The churning ether radiating from her was the brightest mass on this side of the veil.

She was the first target the hand meant to snatch; the two Scholars beside her were mere collateral.

Wentworth stood on the eastern defense line of the floodgate, having just kicked back a floating corpse that had lunged ashore.

He saw the massive hand in the dead center of the water, and his body went rigid.

The sheer mass of that hand was larger than everyone on their side put together.

Standing there, Wentworth's body relaxed.

For some unknown reason, a smile suddenly surfaced on the gaunt man's face, as if he had remembered something.

After the smile faded, he tossed his service weapon onto the ground.

A service weapon was for making it back alive; on this trip, he wouldn't need it.

He drew his two Enchanted Short Daggers from their sheaths.

"Gray Eyes!" he shouted.

Richard turned his head.

"...Squad Leader?"

"This time, you won't need that needle of yours."

Wentworth didn't look back.

He stared at the massive hand in the center of the water, twisted from hundreds of shadows.

A Hunter burning himself to his absolute limit shone as bright as a torch on this side of the veil.

A lit torch would attract every gaze hidden in the dark.

He was going to be that torch.

The ether in his circuits surged outward all at once, and his entire silhouette flared with white light.

He lunged toward the giant hand.

Those few charging steps were lighter than any path he had walked in his life.

In the final moment, he silently told himself:

"...I hope nothing goes wrong this time."

The giant hand snatched the blazing torch.

Boom!

Brilliant firelight erupted from its palm.

The hand twisted from hundreds of shadows was burned straight through from the inside out.

Strands of black shadow snapped one by one, curling and turning to ash as they wretchedly shrank back into the water.

In the center of the water, nothing remained.

Not even a speck of ember was left to collect.

Deeper behind the veil, the pupil-less eye blinked. It had just been tallying its inventory.

The pupil-less eye called Briston "Warehouse Seven."

Humans, to its eyes, had long since lost all distinction.

They breathed, they cried, and they were forced to listen to a prayer they didn't understand before receiving their porridge.

It tallied "names." A name was a ledger entry, hung on its web and waiting to be harvested once it ripened.

It had intended to let Warehouse Seven stew until war broke out across the continent, until the day the entire Old Continent became one massive, blood-soaked cauldron, before finally opening the pot.

By then, a fully stewed pot of "names and shadows" would be enough to heal its injuries, perhaps even pushing it one step higher.

But now, it had been chased by the local old monsters for over a month.

Its old wounds hadn't healed, and it had suffered new ones.

Pressed so relentlessly, it had no choice but to find a way to finish boiling this half-cooked soup ahead of schedule.

Opening the pot early meant low harvesting efficiency and a massive commotion—it was tantamount to lighting a signal fire right in front of its pursuers.

The pupil-less eye was betting that the speed at which it swallowed this mouthful would outpace its pursuers following the smoke to find it.

But now, a minor accident had occurred.

That blazing torch just now had burned its servant's hand.

The pupil-less eye was somewhat perplexed.

It had seen far too many candles.

Some burned bright and short; when they burned to the end and went out, it collected their leftover "names" into its vault.

But this particular torch had burned itself out completely, principal and interest alike, leaving absolutely nothing behind.

It couldn't understand why a lower-rank Hunter, who still had several years left to live, would be in such a rush to burn himself away until nothing remained.

What was the point?

..................

The defense line in the Western Suburbs had collapsed, but the shelter in the south of the city remained stable.

The picket teams held the northbound intersections, and the Branch Office had evacuated the entire factory district.

Hundreds of shadows wearing dead men's faces slammed right into the Hunters' silver bullets and Enchanted Short Daggers.

It wanted to consume this city, but more than half of the city's living residents had been awakened early from their "echoes."

This half-cooked pot of soup wasn't yet done, but the smoke had already risen.

The two official Virtuosos who had been lying in wait were biding their time for exactly this moment.

In the skies above Briston, the three Virtuosos clashed once more.

Every mirror in the city fogged over in the exact same instant, only to be wiped brilliantly clean in unison by an unseen hand.

The saints on the stained-glass windows of the churches all transformed into the exact same face, then shifted back.

The railway tracks vibrated without wind, singing a tune no one had ever heard.

Every shadow in the city vanished into thin air. There was not a speck of shade on the walls, the ground, or beneath people's feet.

Immediately after, the fires in every hearth across the city surged a foot higher all at once.

And this was merely the residual fallout leaking into the material world.

Richard and his group were behind the veil.

Behind the veil, the power of the sun, the hearth fires, and the shadows existed on an entirely different scale.

The inverted expanse of water hanging overhead was ignited.

A ray of golden light burned its way in from the extreme distance, illuminating the entire drowned domain until it was perfectly translucent.

Wherever the light touched, the shadows standing in the water were scorched until they curled up, silently reducing to black ash, only for things from even deeper within to surge up from the darkness and fill their place.

Once the golden light passed, it was immediately followed by a heat capable of melting human bones.

The water boiled violently, steaming with white mist that carried a scorched scent.

A darkness even deeper than this drowned domain itself then swallowed that gold and that fire whole.

Light, fire, and shadow—three forces twisted together directly overhead.

With every twist, the entire shoal behind the veil quaked.

Walls of water collapsed and rose again, and inside the bottomless "well" in the distance, something colossal was rolling over.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord knelt on one knee in the mud.

The Signature silver rivets on his Steel Prosthetic Arm were emitting a continuous wail.

Blood trickled from the corners of his eyes, running over old scars.

"Everyone, stay down. Don't look, don't think."

"Right now, we are nothing but grass on the battlefield."

In the shockwaves of Virtuosos clashing, even a Minor Adept was just a blade of grass to be casually trampled into the mud.

They didn't even have the qualifications to join the fight.

There was only one way to survive: avoid being noticed.

Richard had no time to grieve for the death of the inspector squad leader; the Silver Ring and Eagle Hook at his chest both turned icy cold at once.

With that strike just now, Wentworth had lit himself into a torch.

Now it was Richard's turn to pinch himself out into an extinguished candlestick in the corner of the room.

If one was shining brightly, the other had to stay pitch black.

Everyone lying prone on the shore was doing the exact same thing.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord knelt in the mud, blood streaming from his eyes, not making a single sound.

Mrs. MacNeil had lost two Spirit Lodging Vessels, yet she gritted her teeth and refused to let go of the array.

No one cried. No one called out a name.

Crying and shouting both gave off light.

Just as the shockwaves were about to sweep away the group crouched by the water, a howling wind began to blow.

The Virtuoso of the Gale tradition had extended a helping hand.

Using the sound of the wind, he gathered a barrier between this drowned domain and the clash raging overhead.

The shockwaves from the three Virtuosos' battle were blocked outside by that wind.

Interspersed within the howling wind was extremely faint music—a man humming a shepherd's tune.

Richard lay prone by the water, his back pressed down by the wind.

Without a doubt, this gale had saved them all.

"...We still have to finish."

Only after the three Virtuosos drifted further away as they fought did Mr. Hutton lean on his student's arm and slowly straighten his back.

The old man's throat was so hoarse he could barely speak.

"The sleep-return... we still have to finish it."

"If we don't finish the ritual, we can't go back.

That man who just burned himself up will have burned for nothing."

Mrs. MacNeil sat at the other end of the floodgate. Out of her Seven Spirit Lodging Vessels, two were gone.

The wisps of faint light from the remaining five were all compressed into the Bone Bracelet on her left wrist.

The ritual had half-collapsed.

The pronouncement had been repelled by the river's surface, the officiant was coughing up blood, and maintaining the innermost line of defense was taking a tremendous toll.

Richard's brain was working at lightning speed.

The pronouncements had always been about "invoking an authority recognized by the dead to declare their names and their final resting place."

[Speculation Lv.1, Progress 100% → Speculation Lv.2]

This was the very "judgment" he was re-evaluating himself.

It was precisely the advancement condition for [Speculation] Lv.3: Re-evaluate a judgment you once firmly believed in, and correct the error.

Both he and the entire academic system had firmly believed one thing.

The pronouncement had to be in an ancient, sacred, and encrypted language.

The older the era and the deeper the encryption, the greater the power.

They were wrong.

The power of the pronouncement never lay in the antiquity of the language, but in whether the judged accepted its definition.

Lying at the bottom of the Whitcom waters were Celtic priests, who could understand true names spoken in Old Gaelic;

At the Bottom of the Unresponsive Pit were centuries-old scars, which recognized that specific set of roll calls.

But lying at the bottom of the Black Trench were people who had just collected their wages last week.

You had to use words they could understand.

A judgment he had once firmly believed in had now been overturned and corrected by his own hands.

In this very moment, he stepped past the unlock condition for [Speculation] Lv.3.

Without time to overthink it, Richard propped himself up.

"Mr. Hutton, we had the material for the pronouncement wrong from the very beginning."

Mr. Hutton wiped the corner of his mouth.

He had just forcibly endured the backlash, severely overdrawing his ether.

"...Speak."

Richard laid out the concepts that had already taken shape in his mind, one by one.

"The pronouncement consists of three things: Tune, Word, and Seal."

"The Tune is the carrier and the frequency the dead recognize.

We used Latin, which they haven't known a day in their lives.

But they recognize the lullabies their mothers used to coax them to sleep. They recognize the work chants they yelled while lifting heavy loads down in the mines, the old songs they sang their entire lives in taverns, and the out-of-tune dirges they hummed beside their comrades' graves."

Mr. Hutton's eyes widened a fraction.

"The Word is the true name." Richard pulled out the stack of items wrapped in oil paper from his coat.

That was the legacy Old Biggs had sewn into his own chest, exchanged for his very life.

"For fifteen years, Old Biggs registered every nameless corpse: their name, age, cause of death, and address.

This is the master registry of true names for this funeral."

He spread that stack of papers flat across his lap.

"Old Biggs is dead, but he's still working the case for us."

"The Seal is the dual confirmation." Richard looked toward the other end of the floodgate.

Over in the material world on the other bank of the Black Trench, the old pastor was helping evacuate the civilians.

"Pastor Hawkins recognizes every single face in this area. The mourning of their families will serve as the resonance."

"Thousands of names." Richard tightened his grip on the files.

"I will handle the retrieval speed. Everything I've read is stored inside my head."

After listening, Mr. Hutton looked at Old Biggs's registry, then looked at the crowd on the opposite bank beyond the veil.

Academia had made a massive detour, only to circle right back to humanity.

"I will build the structure," the old gentleman said.

The two banks of the Black Trench quickly separated into two distinct roles.

Mrs. MacNeil returned to a kneeling position, propping her body up to initiate the array.

Mr. Hutton dictated the structure of the pronouncement, stitching the Words of the registry, the Tune of the folk songs, and the Seal of the families layer by layer into the framework of the sleep-return.

Richard took up his pen. With Old Biggs's registry spread across his lap, he alone commanded the retrieval of thousands of names.

On the other side was the battle line.

The Hunters suppressed the lunging wall of filthy water. Silver bullets struck the water, splashing up swathes of black.

And in the material world beyond the veil, on the true embankment of the Black Trench, old Pastor Hawkins began to rally the civilians.

Having received his instructions, the old pastor prepared to lead the singing using the tunes he had been secretly learning for thirty years.

The little melodies the families hummed to themselves beside the graves after the funeral dispersed—the ones the Church forbade them to sing.

Before singing the first line, he looked back at the sea of people behind him.

"In my entire life..." the old pastor's voice trembled. "The most pastoral thing I've ever done..."

"...is sing the songs the Church forbids."