Chapter 391: Gerard Is Sharpening His Knife

Kasalis's face stiffened.

A full professor was personally endorsing a one-penny booklet. As a lowly clerk from the Department of Internal Affairs, pressing the matter any further would just be asking for trouble.

“...I was overly concerned.”

Kasalis tucked the booklet into his briefcase and bowed slightly to Mortimer.

He gave Richard a nod, then turned and left.

“My housekeeper took a copy of your booklet home,” the old professor said.

“Said she read two stories and couldn't sleep a wink all night.”

“My apologies.”

“What are you apologizing for?” Mortimer smiled.

“It takes good writing to scare people, and it takes being scared to make people follow the rules.”

Once the special edition circulated, that full page of rules spread everywhere through various channels.

Edith read it aloud to those who couldn't read.

Families who had come to the Imperial Capital from the northern countryside for work gathered around her, listening to her read it rule by rule.

When she read, “If they are wet, they are not your family,” an old woman who had recently lost her son quietly shoved her damp, crumpled handkerchief into her pocket.

Fischer held that page, muttering the words as he memorized them.

He stopped mid-recitation and suddenly looked up.

“Williams, your rules have a nice rhythm to them,” he said, entirely serious.

“Salt on the threshold, a lamp on the sill... You have a talent for poetry.”

Richard said nothing.

“I mean it.” Fischer slapped the booklet onto the table.

“It's a shame you aren't writing poetry. I'll set these six rules to a tune later so everyone can sing along.”

“Absolutely not,” Richard quickly stopped him.

“If this gets turned into a catchy tune sung everywhere like Tipperary, we'll have a real disaster on our hands.”

Fischer thought about it, realized he had a point, and reluctantly closed the booklet.

“Then we won't sing it,” he muttered. “A wasted poet.”

Montagu didn't say anything.

He silently pulled an entire stack of special editions from the pile on Richard's desk.

“Who are those for?” Richard asked.

“Northern Yorkshire. The tenant farmers around my family's estate.”

The blond young man tucked the stack of booklets into his briefcase. “They are the most vulnerable on the night of the Day of Mourning.”

On the day of the ritual preparations, Richard gave the two professors an explanation.

He told them a mix of truth and lies:

“I was there the night that batch of Black Soil River fragments at the museum was consumed. I was observing as a Scholar.

“At the exact moment the embers dispersed, I used a special method to intercept the reflection of three syllables of its true name.”

“Three syllables?” Mortimer's face was full of questions.

“Yes,” Richard nodded.

“I couldn't intercept the complete true name; it was so searing it would kill anyone who touched it. I only caught three syllables in its reflection.”

“I can't read these three syllables myself,” he added. “If I read them, I'll die.”

The seed really did originate from those embers; that part was true.

As for the story about “intercepting the reflection of three syllables,” he had made that up.

He said this without blushing or batting an eye, and the mask immediately began to heat up slightly.

Feeling the mask's resonance level increase, Richard silently broke a sweat.

Professor Mortimer naturally knew about the museum fragments; that was an operation personally led by Curator Welby.

But regarding Richard's claim of using a special method to intercept the name, the old professor didn't believe a single letter of it.

A Practitioner intercepted a segment of a Virtuoso's true name in a field set up by two Virtuosos, right in front of everyone, without being noticed?

That was impossible.

Mortimer stared at Richard for a long time.

He didn't expose the lie.

Regardless of what hellish method this kid used to get this segment of the name, one thing was certain... the weight of this thing was absolutely enough.

The rare resources the two of them had prepared—ancient texts, Waxing Moon Stones, a Virtuoso's guarantee—were no longer needed.

Trading a Virtuoso's true name for the name of a Major Adept Hunter.

That side of the scale was weighed down far too heavily, so heavily that the lord of the hunt wouldn't just have to honor the deal—it would have to make up the difference.

At this moment, MacFie explained the rules of the Wild Hunt to Richard.

“The lord of the hunt who leads the Wild Hunt is only utilizing the ritual system of the Wild Hunt itself.”

“Utilizing?”

“It didn't make these rules,” MacFie said.

“They have been consolidated over thousands of years. The entire ritual system of the Wild Hunt is older than any living Virtuoso.”

“That lord of the hunt can use these rules to do what it wants, but in return, it must strictly abide by them.”

Richard understood what that meant.

“So,” he said slowly, “if the thing I offer in exchange far exceeds the value of the name I want to take away...”

“...then the lord of the hunt must offer extra benefits to make the trade with you.”

MacFie nodded. “That's the rule. If you give too much, it has to compensate for the difference.”

“Furthermore,” he stared at Richard, “it must also provide you with a certain degree of protection.”

“Protection?”

“You've given it something it could only dream of wanting.”

“You become its sacrificer. Under the old rules, a sacrificer is protected by the lord of the hunt.”

“Of course,” the white-haired giant shifted the topic, “these rules only apply while this lord of the hunt is still a Virtuoso.”

“If one day, it advances to become a Master...”

MacFie didn't finish the sentence.

Richard understood.

A Virtuoso was someone who had walked to the end of a tradition. The path was paved by others, and the rules were made by others.

A Master was someone who forged a path of their own.

Once it reached that stage, it could arbitrarily rewrite the Wild Hunt. Even these rules, consolidated over thousands of years, would have to bend to its will.

Richard had the panel brand the mirrored remnant of the three syllables of that true name, stroke by stroke through the shadow, into that Dark Copper Mirror from the Ash Belt.

Anyone looking would only see that on a certain date, Richard Williams had performed an automatic scribe session.

He wrote down some Spirit Realm fragments, most of which were worthless scraps.

As for the Dark Copper Mirror branded with the three syllables by a spirit, it sat inconspicuously in a pile of scribed gibberish.

After waking up, Richard himself remembered nothing.

The two professors used their respective areas of expertise to erase every last remaining trace of the process from him.

Mortimer used the Classical Records Tradition's Deletion Annotation Technique to strike out any textual connection between Richard and the name, treating it as an erroneous annotation.

MacFie used the Moon Hunting Tradition's Rite of the Hidden Moon to push the shadow cast by Richard's lamp onto the veil one layer deeper into the dark.

After this was done, any divination performed by a Virtuoso or lower rank that landed on Richard would read:

“This person does not know this name.”

Finally, it was time for MacFie to verify its authenticity.

Highlanders had a rule called “smell the scent, do not read the words.”

He wouldn't read the name in the Dark Copper Mirror; if he did, he'd end up on the hunting ledger himself.

MacFie leaned down and took an incredibly light sniff near the lead box.

His face visibly turned a pale green.

The white-haired giant straightened up and took two steps back. He didn't speak for a long time.

“It's real,” he finally said, his voice hoarse.

Mortimer hadn't moved.

He stared at the lead box for a very, very long time.

Suddenly, the old professor smiled. It was the exact same smile he'd had that day while fishing by the canal.

“Kid,” he spoke slowly. “What you're doing right now...”

Richard looked at him.

“You're tossing a chunk of bloody meat in front of a starving wolf.”

The lead box was sealed tight and tucked away inside Richard's coat.

The three of them sat in the office for a while; no one spoke.

Then, the two professors frankly admitted something.

“On the Day of Mourning,” Mortimer set down his teacup, “the Academy System won't be able to hold back the tide.”

“Won't be able to hold it back?”

“We can't stop the public will, and we can't stop the decisions made by the higher-ups.” The old professor shook his head.

“Eight hundred families at the bottom of the sea, hundreds of thousands of families on the front lines.

“If you stand up now and say ‘no ringing bells, no praying, and no mourning on the night of the Day of Mourning’—which of those gentlemen in Parliament would dare do that?”

“This is a national tragedy,” MacFie took over.

“The bells must be rung, the hymns must be chanted, and the silence must be observed. In truth, this is the government giving an answer to the living.”

“This ringing, chanting, and silence... amounts to the entire nation conducting the largest séance simultaneously.”

“We can't stop it,” Mortimer said. “But we can do something else.”

“That night, all the faculty and students remaining at Imperial Capital University will unite.

“Imperial Capital University was built on top of an active ether zone.

“The entire campus is itself a massive sealing formation. On the night of the Day of Mourning, we will activate it entirely to minimize the impact from the mystical side.”

Richard thought they were telling him all this to assign him a task.

Entering the sealing formation, perhaps, or standing guard at a node.

Mortimer shook his head.

“You should go to 17 Flower Moon Street.”

Richard looked at him.

“Madam Marie has her own plans over there; she's preparing to do what she can within her power.”

“You possess a few things others don't.”

Mortimer didn't elaborate; he merely smiled knowingly.

“Going to help Madam Marie will serve a much more important role than staying here to guard the sealing formation.”

Clutching the lead box in his coat, Richard slowly nodded.

Hermes inherently had the responsibilities of a Ferryman.

“Go back and prepare.”

Richard stood up and bowed to each of the two professors.

He walked out of the office. The wind in the corridor was cold.

On the other side, in the small, iron-riveted room on the second floor of the Ashford Residence, Gerard was preparing the final things he would need.

A full set of field gear was spread out on the table, and right in the center lay the hunting knife that had been with him for most of his life.

Gerard sat behind the table, methodically sharpening it stroke by stroke on a whetstone.

The blade gleamed with a cold light beneath the lamp.

He sharpened it slowly and steadily, the force behind each stroke identical.

He had performed this set of motions for nearly fifty years; he wouldn't make a mistake even with his eyes closed.

As he worked, the old man's thoughts drifted far away.

That boy Richard had coaxed everything out of him—things he should have said and things he shouldn't have.

His old debts, the matter with Rosemary, the Rite of the Counter-Hunt, that invitation on the doorpost... he had told him everything, one by one.

He had even personally taught him the set of sign language used exclusively on the hunting grounds, gesture by gesture.

And after teaching him all that, what happened?

The kid plunged right back into school.

Gerard's hand paused for a moment before he resumed sharpening.

He only had a few days left.

The kid was clearly right here in the Imperial Capital; it wouldn't even take an hour to come over by carriage.

Instead, he was busy with his damn books.

He didn't even think about coming back to the residence to spend a little more time with this old man in his final days.

At this thought, Gerard couldn't help but think of his exasperating children.

His eldest daughter, Margaret, had been dead set on marrying an outsider, moving off to live in that soot-covered place, Briston.

Over the years, coming back once a year was considered frequent.

His youngest daughter, Isabella, taught right there at Imperial Capital University, not far from the residence at all.

Yet the girl never lived at home, holing up in her university dormitory all year round.

As her father, he could count the times he saw her in a year on one hand.

His eldest son was even worse. He ran off to the New Continent searching for some breakthrough and had been gone for over a decade.

For the first few years, he still sent the occasional postcard, but later, even those stopped.

Whether he was dead or alive completely depended on others occasionally bringing back the message, “He's still alive.”

Gerard's sharpening hand slowed down again.

Every one of the brats he had brought into this world was more trouble than the last!

And now, a grandson who finally looked like the most reliable of the bunch had popped up.

But in the end, this kid didn't come back either!

The more the old man thought about it, the angrier he got.

He had kept a stern face his entire life, guarded the family his entire life, and in the end, he was left to die all alone.

The sound of sharpening rang out rhythmically in the small room.

As Gerard's thoughts wandered, scenes from his past began to play in his mind.

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