Chapter 321: Anti-Tomb Raiding

Yassin scratched his head and turned away.

From this moment on, Richard was George Randolph.

He bent down, hoisted a crate of goods, and walked through the loading bay into the museum.

The corridors were dark. Porters could only use dedicated service routes, bypassing the exhibition halls.

Richard followed the passage, carrying the cargo all the way to the outer ring of the underground Storeroom.

An iron door stood at the end of the outer corridor.

The true Storeroom lay just behind it.

Just like in any real museum, passing through that door required clearance. A porter's journey ended here.

A whiteboard hung on the wall beside the iron door.

Written in chalk on the board were the duty rosters and patrol schedules.

Richard memorized every single word.

He wasn't in a hurry.

The next step was trading his porter shell for a cataloger, granting him access to the middle corridor and the archives.

Once a cataloger, he would swap to a senior assistant with the clearance to pull files from the Storeroom's outer ring.

And from assistant, he would switch to the guard stationed at the iron door.

Three shells for three tiers of clearance.

Counting Yassin and George, that made exactly five. Not a single one wasted.

The third shell: Harold the cataloger.

Plump, wheezing when he walked, cleared for the archives.

The switch happened at a corridor corner, right as Harold walked past Richard holding a stack of files.

Their eyes met, and the transfer was completed in a single breath.

The fourth shell was Simon, a senior assistant. Skinny, wearing glasses.

Higher clearance. He could enter the Storeroom's outer ring to retrieve documents.

The swap occurred at a bend in the stairwell.

Simon brushed past Harold on his way down.

Harold rubbed the back of his head at the landing, then kept walking.

Four shells spent. With every transfer, Richard could feel another thread added to the web on the other side of the veil.

Over at the Harbor, the mummy was steadily losing ground under the combined assault of the two Virtuosos. The indigo mirror of the sea had shattered across most of the bay.

As long as it didn't die.

So long as the two Virtuosos kept pouring their power into fighting it, the city's Perception grid couldn't operate at maximum capacity.

He was saving his last swap for the guard standing in front of the Storeroom's iron door.

Richard swept his 'Mirror' over the man. The guard's name was Donald, a Practitioner-level Hunter armed with an Enchanted Blunderbuss.

Swapping into a Practitioner was completely different from taking an ordinary person.

Ordinary people had no ether circuits. They wouldn't even notice when you slipped inside them.

Practitioners had circuits, and those circuits were active.

The instant you phased in, their circuit would recognize that something was wrong.

The circuit would automatically reject the foreign presence.

Even if he couldn't resist, the ether fluctuations rolling off Donald's body would broadcast a warning.

Pretending to return a file to a shelf, Richard turned and walked a few steps deeper into the corridor.

He chewed the problem over in his mind.

A brute-force takeover wouldn't work. He had to suppress Donald's circuit first.

The most direct method to suppress a circuit was the Silence Spell in his arsenal.

Boosted by the mysteries of a Virtuoso, even deploying just a wisp of a shadow this time, he could instantly kill a Minor Adept with ease—let alone a mere Practitioner.

The problem was that casting Silence required drawing on ether.

Unleashing Silence in a building packed with security was no different from blowing himself up.

Richard mentally reviewed the list of moles written on the Papyrus.

The first two were already spent.

Rohe, the barge sailor, was too far out on the Harbor perimeter to reach.

There were a few more names further down.

His gaze settled on the fourth one.

Abdul Hamid, Museum Logistics Department.

Abdul was the man who pushed an old iron cart around every day, delivering tea and sandwiches to the staff on duty throughout the building.

His regular stops included the guard stationed at the iron door.

He came by every hour or two. The guards were completely accustomed to the routine.

Richard rubbed the short stubble on his chin.

The mark on Abdul could be triggered to create ether interference.

Richard retraced his steps toward the logistics department.

At the intersection between the corridor and the service passage, he ran into the short, plump, brown-skinned man.

Seeing Simon, Abdul flashed a fawning smile.

"Mr. Simon, working late tonight?"

"Yeah." Richard mimicked Simon's characteristically slurred speech. "What kind of mess is it out there?"

"Who knows." Abdul peered into his kettle.

"Almost out of tea. I need to head back and boil another pot.

Donald is still waiting for his. He chugs three pots a night. Drinks more than my camel back home."

"Donald is on the night shift?"

Abdul's tone carried a hint of schadenfreude.

"Security got bumped up a notch these past two days. Donald has pulled two night shifts in a row."

Two night shifts in a row. Richard silently filed that information away.

"Bring him an extra pot," Richard said casually.

"An extra pot?" Abdul chuckled.

"Why the sudden concern for Donald today, Mr. Simon? Usually, you two don't even bother to say hello when you cross paths."

"It's chaos outside." Richard jerked his chin toward the window.

"The people in the building are working hard. It's just a cup of hot tea."

Abdul nodded repeatedly.

"You're right. It's a tough night for everyone."

In the span of two sentences, without even needing to switch shells, the mark entered a semi-activated state.

Abdul turned and hurried off toward Donald.

Richard followed slowly behind, starting a countdown in his head.

He counted as he walked.

Reaching the middle of the corridor, he pretended to look down at the file in his hands.

The squeaking of the cart grew distant.

Donald lifted his eyelids.

"Abdul."

"Mr. Donald." The plump man's voice carried its usual warmth.

"It's loud out there tonight. Drink up and stay sharp."

"No need to call me 'mister'." Donald's mouth twitched, which was probably the closest thing to a smile he had managed all night.

He pushed himself off the wall and took the enamel cup.

Abdul parked the cart two steps away from him.

At that exact moment, Richard finished his countdown. The mark activated!

The sensation was fainter than a spiderweb drifting across the skin.

Donald lowered his head to sniff the cup and frowned.

"Did you change the tea leaves today?"

"No." Abdul looked innocent.

"Smells different."

"The copper kettle wasn't washed properly. Must have tainted the flavor a bit."

Donald snorted in disgust, but took a swig anyway.

He had been standing for a long time. The dry fire burning in his throat desperately needed hot tea to quench it.

Richard walked back down the corridor toward the iron door.

He stepped right up to the cart.

Abdul was still recounting some warship story he had heard, spit flying from his mouth.

Donald stood with his cup, holding a mouthful of hot tea.

A violent tremor rolled in from the distant Harbor, nearly making him spit the tea right out.

The mummy had breached the surface once more, kicking up a massive shockwave in the port entry zone.

The shockwave rippled through the entire city, throwing up a brief spike of static across the Perception grid.

The static lasted for less than a second.

The tremor startled Abdul so badly that the kettle lid slipped from his hand with a sharp clang.

"Oops." He bent down to pick it up.

Out of pure instinct, Donald's eyes flicked over to Abdul.

In the space of that single glance, Richard moved.

The shadow slipped out of Simon's shell and plunged into Donald's body.

The guard stiffened. His hand jerked instinctively toward his gun.

But inside the interference field generated by the activated mark, the circuit's rejection response lagged a half-beat behind normal.

In that half-beat, the 'Mirror' illuminated every twist and turn of the guard's circuit.

A split second later, Donald lowered his hand from the grip of his gun.

Abdul straightened up, wiped the lid, and set it back on the kettle.

He looked up at Donald.

The guard was still standing there, holding the cup in his left hand with his right arm hanging by his side, striking the exact same pose as before.

"Mr. Donald, would you like a refill?"

"I'm done." Richard set the teacup back on the cart.

Abdul let out an "oh," then pushed the creaking iron cart back the way he had come.

At the other end of the corridor, Simon was standing next to a filing shelf.

He blinked twice, a blank look on his face.

He couldn't remember why he was standing there.

"...Did I finish getting the files?" he muttered to himself.

Five shells. Every last one used.

From inside Donald's body, Richard reached down and unclipped the keys from his belt.

The door opened. The lighting in the Storeroom's outer ring was dim. Rows upon rows of numbered wooden crates lined the shelves.

Richard walked a few steps along the shelves, keeping his tread extremely light.

Donald's boots had rubber soles; they made almost no sound against the floor.

He began scanning the crates with his 'Mirror'.

The first contained an inscribed Stone Tablet. Its ether was incredibly weak.

The second held a Gold-Gilt Mask. Moderate ether, suppressed beneath a research seal applied by the Empire.

The third... Richard's eyes lit up. Here was the main event.

Inside the wooden crate sat a painted Canopic Jar. Its lid was carved in the shape of a jackal's head.

An artifact enshrined in a temple back home along the Black Soil River thousands of years ago.

When it came to affinity, its connection to these relics was closer than anyone's in the Empire.

Richard began reading them one by one.

The Gold-Gilt Mask, the Stone Tablet, the base of a Sacred Ibis Scepter, and an intact Painted Wooden Coffin.

The coffin lid bore a painting of the goddess Isis spreading her wings. Most of the pigment had faded, yet those outstretched wings still radiated a faint glow on the ether plane.

As he read the seventh item, he brushed against an even older seal.

The Empire's seals were only the outermost layer; he had no need to break them.

But beneath the imperial seals lay another ward—older and far tougher.

Richard carefully swept it with his 'Mirror', and the seal immediately flared with a warning in the tongue of the Black Soil River:

"He who takes this, let his bones shatter in the sand."

An anti-tomb raiding curse.

Richard gave the curse's structure a cursory scan.

These curses were gifts left for grave robbers by the priests who oversaw the burials.

The Sacred Ibis Scepter would devour anyone who tried to take it; the Canopic Jar would curse whoever opened it; the sphinx statue would swallow anyone who touched it.

He made a mental note of them and kept moving down the line.

By the ninth artifact, the ether texture was entirely different from the curses on the previous relics.

The curses were the handiwork of priests: ancient, fierce, and righteous.

But this barrier was relatively new.

Its ether signature bore the dual brands of the Solar Tradition and the Hearth Fire Tradition.

Richard realized what it was in an instant.

This was a trap waiting all along. It was the second lethal measure laid down in the Storeroom by the two Virtuosos.

He forced his hand to stop dead in front of the trigger and slowly retracted his Perception.

Just a hair away...

If the anti-tomb raiding curses on the earlier relics hadn't put him on high alert, he would have tripped the wire.

Microscopic silver threads became visible across the stone floor.

Richard crouched down and used his 'Mirror' to lightly graze the nearest thread.

The ether feedback sent a chill down his spine.

Whoever laid this trap had transformed the veil-side space deep within the Storeroom into a jar.

A jar with a tapered neck.

Easy to slip into, nearly impossible to escape.

Richard stood before the silver web for a long time.

The Harbor was merely an appetizer. This place was the real gauntlet.

Furthermore, the Black Soil River Virtuoso had a natural disadvantage here: it couldn't destroy its own artifacts.

The two defending Virtuosos suffered no such constraints.

The Empire had plundered so many supernatural items over the years that smashing a few didn't matter in the slightest.

One side was fighting with its hands tied; the other had nothing to lose.

Richard figured that in the original timeline, the Black Soil River Virtuoso must have failed at this exact juncture.

With that thought in mind, he advanced no further.

Richard stretched his 'Mirror' to its absolute limit, probing toward the artifacts resting at the very back of the Storeroom.

Items ten through thirteen bore only the ancient anti-tomb raiding curses.

He tried to use his 'Mirror' to read the true name of the tenth relic.

The moment the 'Mirror' brushed against the curse's outer layer, the hex detonated.

"He who takes this, let his soul drown in the River!"

To his shock, the anti-tomb raiding curses on these supernatural items were all interconnected.

His first touch had merely triggered a warning, but this time, it was going for the kill!