Chapter 317: I Fight a Virtuoso?

Richard tried to bend his fingers.

The joints creaked, spilling fine, dry dirt from the gaps in the bandages.

He looked down at his chest.

The cavity was mostly caved in, the stark outline of ribs pressing clearly against the linen.

Something hard had been stuffed into the space where a heart should be.

The original organs had been removed long ago... stored away in Canopic Jars.

Lungs, liver, intestines, kidneys—not a single one remained.

To think this body could still move.

The deck rocked beneath his feet. The ship took a wave and listed a few degrees to the right.

Richard stood in place for a moment to adjust his balance, then looked up.

The deck planks were dark and oily, caked with salt stains along the cracked wood grain.

Thick, multi-layered linen sails had been torn by sun and sea breeze, then stitched back together with coarse thread.

A tattered flag hung from the top of the mast.

It bore the image of a vulture spreading its wings. The dye had mostly faded, leaving only a dark red background.

Then there were the surrounding ships.

So many of them.

Standing at the stern, he looked out to see dozens of ships packed tightly across the water.

The closest were within a hundred yards, the furthest half a nautical mile out. They varied in size, their sails spanning a range of colors and styles.

The nearest ones flew vulture flags, matching the ship beneath his feet, marking them as merchant vessels from the Black Soil River Basin.

Those further out flew different flags.

There were the anchor-patterned flags of the Levant;

The crescent sails of Ancient Libya;

A few fast merchant ships sporting Greek lateen sails;

And two heavily laden armed merchant ships belonging to the Albion Trading Company itself.

An entire mixed fleet.

Dozens of merchant ships from different nations and ports had formed a loose line in the anchorage area just outside the Harbor, waiting for the tide to clear them for entry.

Richard quickly assessed the situation.

The seed had given him a first-person perspective.

With the Sphinx's seed, he had been tossed into an underground water dungeon and forced to wade fifty paces through black water to clear the trial.

This time, he had been stuffed directly into a body.

This had to be the vessel where the Virtuoso of the Black Soil River housed their power.

He could feel the connection between this mummy and the other side, extending from the back of his neck deep into the veil.

At the other end was the Virtuoso's true body, massive and silent, anchored somewhere behind the veil where he couldn't perceive its full shape.

This shell was merely a hand split off from the main body.

Housed within the shell were the origins of the mystery—Name, Mirror, and Substitute.

But its reserves were far inferior to the main body's.

To put it in perspective, if the main body was a well, this shell was a single large bucket of water scooped from it.

Enough to use, but nothing to waste.

And if the bucket was smashed, the well would feel the pain.

There were about a dozen sailors on the ship beneath his feet.

They walked barefoot across the deck, their skin tanned so dark it verged on purple. Every one of them had visible ribs and thick calluses on their foreheads from kowtowing.

Not a single one looked at Richard.

They went about their chores, walking right around him.

Richard took a step forward.

The shadows of all the sailors on the deck twitched in unison.

A dozen shadows should have been cast naturally from their owners' feet, leaning to the right since the sun was on the left.

But the moment Richard moved, every shadow bent and prostrated itself in his direction.

Richard stopped.

The shadows stopped as well, snapping back to their original positions.

He gently lifted a finger.

The shadows spasmed once more.

A dozen shadows stretched halfway off the deck, reaching toward him.

This feeling of control was deeply satisfying.

Back in Nail Alley, after prying open the bronze lamp, the shadows had struggled to tear themselves away from their owners.

Right now, no prying was necessary.

Just by standing on the deck, this body made every shadow on the ship unsteady.

Richard lowered his hand, and the shadows obediently shrank back to their owners' feet, completely subdued.

He began to pace.

With every step he took, the shadows on the deck trembled before swiftly snapping back into place.

Having inspected the entire ship from stem to stern, Richard silently assessed the power at his disposal.

Shadows naturally obeyed this body without the slightest resistance.

They were completely suppressed by a deep, instinctual kinship.

Steeped in a thousand years of priestly inscriptions and accumulated offerings, this mummy shared the exact same roots as the Order of Shadows in the Black Soil River Basin.

Before it, all shadows were subordinates.

Reaching the bow, Richard glanced at the nearest sailor.

Just one look.

Everything about that sailor unfurled before him, laid bare like an open ledger.

His name was Hep, twenty-three years old.

He had sailed six deep-sea voyages and was terrified of scorpions.

He was missing half of his left pinky toe, crushed by an iron anchor.

He harbored a secret he hadn't told anyone: during his second year at sea, his fiancée back home had married his cousin.

No one had told him any of this. He simply took one look, and he knew it all.

This was Mirror.

Standing before a shadow, it reflected the other person's entire mold.

It reflected them with crystal clarity, revealing more than the person could ever see in a real mirror.

Richard shifted his gaze, turning to "look" at another sailor.

The same effect: names, fears, and unspoken secrets came flooding in all at once.

The third, the fourth... Everyone he looked at became an open book.

Richard suddenly sensed a strange detachment.

Upon seeing the matter with Hep's fiancée, he hadn't felt the slightest ripple of emotion.

Normally, he would have at least spared a sympathetic thought for the cuckolded fellow.

Right now, there was nothing. Utter emptiness.

In his mind, Hep was merely a line in an account ledger.

He tried to recall his own name.

Richard Williams.

The name was still there. He knew who he was.

But what did it mean to be 'tired'?

He thought about it for a long time but couldn't remember.

What about 'pain'?

There was an old, cracked wound on his arm.

Dried dark red flesh was embedded in the linen, a gruesome sight.

He poked it with his other hand. No feeling.

He pinched it hard. Still nothing.

This empty shell was filled with priestly inscriptions and the faith of worshippers.

The Virtuoso's true body was likewise fed by the things carved into it.

Hunger, pain, fear, greed, nostalgia, soft-heartedness... these wouldn't vanish in a single day.

They had been taken away, bit by bit.

With every step taken deeper into the veil, one was removed.

By the time one became a Virtuoso, almost nothing was left but the shell.

The shell was packed entirely with power, mystery, and rules.

The only thing left untouched was a primal 'hunger'.

The sacrificial scars had been drained dry; the relics back home had been hauled away.

It had to eat.

Richard stopped at the bow.

He looked down at the sea before him.

The distribution of Ether beneath the entire stretch of sea was revealed in absolute detail.

At the same time, he also saw two spheres of light on the distant shore.

One golden, one dark red.

They had long since laid out an inescapable net on the shore.

Richard stared at the two distant spheres of light for a long time.

The gap in power between those two spheres of light and this vessel wasn't as drastic as he had initially feared.

But there were two of them, and they held the defensive advantage.

They were waiting fresh for an exhausted enemy, holding every geographical advantage.

A thought surfaced in Richard's mind.

I'm fighting a Virtuoso?

In a one-on-two?

Seriously?

He looked back at the dozens of ships on the sea.

There were seven or eight merchant ships from the Black Soil River, blending inconspicuously into the fleet.

The rest of them—from the Levant, Ancient Libya, Greece, and Albion—were genuine merchant vessels.

They were here to trade at the Imperial Capital's Harbor. They had absolutely nothing to do with the grievances between Virtuosos.

Those two defending Virtuosos couldn't possibly smash the entire fleet just to stop his vessel.

The Harbor was the lifeblood of the Imperial Capital.

Not even a Virtuoso would go on a massacre against merchant ships from half the continent.

The political fallout would be disastrous; there was no need to risk it.

Which was exactly why the Virtuoso of the Black Soil River had chosen this moment.

Choosing to enter the Harbor during the busiest trading season, hiding themselves amid the heavy traffic.

Richard stood there for about a quarter of an hour, turning the situation over and over in his head.

Charging straight in was out of the question.

Pitting a single vessel against two defending Virtuosos in a direct confrontation was essentially serving himself up on a platter.

He had to be indirect.

He had two things at his disposal.

First, the shadows.

This body held natural sovereignty over shadows; all shadows were its subordinates.

He could split his shadow off, attach it to others, and use Substitute to slip into their shells.

Second, the fleet itself.

Dozens of merchant ships from neutral nations were about to enter the Imperial Capital's Harbor.

A plan took shape in his mind.

The mummy would remain on the Black Soil River merchant ship, unmoving, staying out of the Harbor.

He would split his shadow into a few strands and sneak across the water under the cover of night onto the neutral merchant ships.

Once aboard, he would use Mirror to read the sailors and Substitute to slip inside them.

After his shadows replaced the neutral crewmen, those ships would enter the Harbor, dock, and unload cargo as usual.

When the golden light shined down, it would hit Greek sailors, Levantine merchants, and Albion boatswains... all perfectly clean, ordinary people.

The mummy would remain on the Black Soil River merchant ship out at sea, serving as a backup plan.

Richard ran through the plan in his head.

It was feasible. He even suspected this was exactly how the Virtuoso of the Black Soil River had originally come ashore.

He selected three target ships.

One was a Levantine three-masted ship, stationed inconspicuously in the middle of the fleet;

One was a fast Greek merchant ship, whose shallow draft meant it would likely dock at a small pier in the inner Harbor... close to the museum;

The last was the Albion Trading Company's armed merchant ship, the largest vessel with the most crew—easy to hide in the chaos.

Richard crouched at the stern and split off three strands of shadow from the mummy.

He was extremely careful while doing so.

He didn't touch the shadows of the other sailors on deck.

Though those shadows naturally obeyed him, drawing on them would create fluctuations in the Ether.

Even the slightest fluctuation might be caught by a Virtuoso's Perception.

He only drew from his own shadow.

None of the strands were large, slithering from his hand like snakes.

The shadows climbed down the ship's hull and glided across the surface of the water in different directions.

By now, dusk was transitioning into night.

A moon hung in the sky, though drifting clouds obscured it from time to time.

The shadows wove through the shifting interplay of moonlight and cloud cover.

Whenever the moon shone, they flattened themselves beneath the waves.

When clouds blocked the moonlight, they emerged from the waves to move quickly.

The first strand of shadow reached the Levantine three-masted ship.

At the stern, a lone sailor on night watch was dozing against a pile of mooring ropes.

The shadow slipped under the sole of the sailor's foot.

From afar, Richard used Mirror to illuminate him...

Male, around thirty, Levantine, working the night shift. The rest of the trivial details didn't matter.

The shadow crawled up from the sole of the sailor's foot, wrapping around his calf and creeping up the inside of his pant leg.

The substitution began.

Two hundred yards away, the mummy gave a slight shudder as the shadow slipped into the sailor's body.

The substitution was complete.

On the Levantine ship, the night watch sailor opened his eyes.

A sharp gleam flashed in his eyes before he settled back into his drowsy state.

The second strand of shadow reached the fast Greek merchant ship, replacing a deckhand.

The third strand reached the Albion armed merchant ship, replacing a cargo porter.

Three shells. All in place.

Richard maintained his connection with the three substitutes.

Sustaining them constantly consumed this divided body's reserves, but the drain wasn't significant.

Now he just had to wait for dawn and the fleet's entry into the Harbor.

Dawn broke swiftly.

The signal flags for tidal clearance were hoisted from the Harbor lighthouse.

The fleet began pulling into port, one by one.

The first batch consisted of ships with the shallowest draft, with the fast Greek merchant ship near the front.

Richard controlled the substitute on the Greek ship, working right alongside the other sailors.

Striking the sails, dropping anchor, and tying the mooring ropes—he went through the motions exactly like a true sailor.

Mirror had read all of the sailor's memories, including how many years he had worked and how to tie the knots.

The fast merchant ship pulled alongside the small pier in the inner Harbor.