Chapter 428: Breaking the Oath

Time rewound to before the poison gas spread. Richard was examining his newly leveled skill.

[Perception Lv.4, Progress 100%.]

For [Perception] to reach Lv.5, the condition was to independently escape the lock of someone of a higher Rank without relying on outsiders or a concealing supernatural item.

Then again, that entity from earlier hadn't actually locked onto him.

It had merely rolled over in its sleep, its attention drifting this way only because someone had chanted something they shouldn't have.

But that attention lingered for only a moment before shifting away.

Richard closed the panel.

If he had truly been locked onto, what awaited him could have been far more troublesome than mere death.

The two professors wouldn't have been able to reach him in time. Madam Marie couldn't either, and his grandfather even less so.

After some thought, he decided to conduct another transcription session before the Wild Hunt.

Mrs. MacNeil arrived the following evening.

She walked in with a basket and set it right on the table. Two balls of yarn and some knitting needles tumbled out.

"Your grandfather called me. He said he was worried about you."

She untied her shawl and casually draped it over the back of a chair.

"Although I said last time you could transcribe independently, you aren't at Imperial Capital University right now. There's no sealing array here, so the situation is different.

Besides, the teacher also said she was worried about you and asked me to come take a look."

She looked up, eyed Richard up and down, and nodded.

"Same rules as always. You go in yourself, and I'll hold the line on this end. If you can't get out, I'll reach in."

Richard laid out the items one by one.

Ashcore Grass, Poppy Capsule, Bay Leaf, Spirit Moss.

He no longer needed the formula paper to mix these four; a simple pinch between his fingers told him the exact weight.

"Turn the lamp down a bit," MacNeil said.

"Too bright and you won't see the path. Too dark and you won't find the door when you come back."

Having said that, she started knitting. The two needles clicked rapidly between her fingers, moving with practiced ease.

He just didn't know who she was knitting for.

Richard gripped his pen and closed his eyes.

Barely a few minutes after the herbs went in, the four corners of the room slowly began to fade, insulated by a layer of something thicker than water.

The well opening was right beneath his feet. He was much more proficient at diving now than on his previous two attempts.

His Inspiration brushed against the shallowest layer, and his hand began to move on its own.

The first thing he fished up was an account ledger. Someone owed the butcher one shilling and fourpence, a debt unpaid even in death.

The second was half a lullaby; it counted to seven before cutting off.

The third was a woman repeating a single phrase over and over: "I still have water boiling on the stove."

The fourth was a house number, muttered again and again until it blurred into something else entirely.

It was all useless, everyday chatter.

Richard pushed his Inspiration a little deeper.

The direction across the sea was supposed to be the noisiest. Before the great retreat at Mons, he had dredged up tens of thousands of voices twisted into a single plea of don't let me die, dense enough to fill several pages.

Months had passed. The spirits were multiplying day by day, and the casualty lists in the newspapers grew longer with every edition.

But right now, there was nothing from that direction. The voices were still there, yet they had all been pushed elsewhere.

He probed that direction a few more times.

On the third attempt, the needles in Mrs. MacNeil's hands stopped.

"Come back."

"I'll count to three."

She shifted her grip on the needles.

"One, two..."

Richard tactfully opened his eyes.

A dull ache crept up the back of his head first. He gripped the edge of the table, taking quite a while to recover.

Two pages were completely filled. He lowered his head and read through them line by line, his frown deepening the further he read.

"What is it? Didn't fish up anything good?" Mrs. MacNeil resumed her knitting.

"It's alright."

"Then why do you look so awful?"

Richard pushed the two pages aside. The contents were too clean, as if someone had taken a rag and wiped the place down beforehand.

Mrs. MacNeil had put her needles away at some point and was now studying his pale complexion.

"Do you scholars never remember to eat?"

"I've been very busy these past two days."

"You still need to eat, even if you're busy."

She fished out an oil-paper package from the bottom of her basket, unwrapped a block of hard bread, and shoved it into his hands.

"This is edible?"

Richard knocked on the hard object in his hand.

This thing seemed to be a dalieba, and not the kind from later eras studded with nuts and raisins and enriched with butter.

The one in his hands was the most primitive kind.

"Why wouldn't it be edible?" Mrs. MacNeil draped her shawl back on, looking displeased.

"It's the teacher's favorite. She says it reminds her of her grandmother."

She walked to the door, then looked back.

"Remember to soak it in milk. If you try to chew it dry, your jaw will probably swell up."

The door clicked shut behind her.

Richard stood for a moment holding the brick-like loaf, smiled, and set it on the windowsill.

He then sat back down at the table and smoothed out the two pages he had transcribed.

Senior Clara had spoken to him about the Hague Convention in the tearoom the other day.

Whoever violates this oath, the things they unleash shall no longer recognize their borders.

After two years of reading ciphertexts until his vision blurred, he understood one truth:

Anything that could be written down would inevitably be interpreted to have a second, third, or even more meanings.

Treaties were placed there precisely to be broken.

...

Six kilometers east of Langemark, half a monastery had been chewed away by artillery fire.

However, the cellar remained perfectly intact. A few iron nails on the wall that had originally held crucifixes now hung maps and a hurricane lamp.

Professor Hohenheim sat at the end of a long table.

He was seventy-two years old, a Major Adept scholar of the Hearth Fire Tradition. His public identity was that of a famous chemist.

This month was also the moment of advancement he had prepared for himself for a long time.

A piece of paper was spread out on the table.

"Read it again," Hohenheim said.

The legal officer pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

His military uniform was borrowed; the cuffs were too long, and the shoulders didn't fit right.

"The contracting parties agree to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases."

"Stop," Hohenheim said.

"The last word."

"Geschosse." The legal officer read the word out separately.

"And the Franc text?"

"Projectiles."

"The Albion text?"

"Projectiles."

Hohenheim leaned back in his chair.

"All three texts actually represent the exact same concept."

The legal officer nodded.

"Yes. They are meant to describe an object given an initial velocity, thrown, and landing along a parabolic trajectory."

Someone in the cellar gave a dry cough. It was an engineer captain.

Hohenheim ignored him.

"Are our objects being thrown?"

The legal officer turned the paper around so everyone at the table could see it.

"Of course not. The steel cylinders are buried right under our own walls.

Once the valves are opened, the gas will flow outward on its own. It has no initial velocity and no parabolic trajectory, nor is its landing point manipulated in any way."

"What delivers it to the enemy is the wind."

"The wind never signed that oath, so naturally, it is not a contracting party."

The cellar fell silent. The flame in the hurricane lamp flickered.

The engineer captain spoke up. His right hand was wrapped in bandages.

"Mr. Legal Officer, the jurists on the other side are aware of this logic too."

The legal officer took off his glasses and wiped them with his sleeve.

"Of course they know, but they won't wake up to it until they've suffered the consequences.

Until then, they will base their defenses strictly on the phrasing they've been repeating all these years."

He placed his glasses back on.

"The people of Albion have an almost fanatical faith in written documents.

That is their strength, and it is also the only crack through which they can be pried open."

"How much protection do you think their troops have?" Hohenheim asked.

The legal officer answered bluntly, "Zero. They haven't even issued a single piece of cloth to cover their faces."

"Why?"

"Because issuing them would be equivalent to admitting this will happen."

The legal officer placed the paper back onto the table.

"Admitting it will happen means admitting that the oath is unreliable. They won't be willing to acknowledge that."

Hohenheim finally laughed.

"Mr. Legal Officer."

"You haven't mentioned the matters regarding the mystical side yet."

At the mention of the mystical side, everyone in the cellar slowed their movements.

Hohenheim folded his hands on the table.

His hands were exceptionally clean and virtually devoid of wrinkles; they looked nothing like the hands a man in his seventies should have.

"Are you afraid of the part concerning the mystical side?"

"Of course I am," the legal officer admitted readily.

"I've picked apart the wording of many contracts in my life for people. Picking apart the wording for a steel mill? The worst consequence is losing my license to practice.

But picking apart the wording of that Entity... I don't even dare imagine the worst possible outcome."

Hohenheim nodded and revealed, "Then let me tell you something you might not know."

He said, "That Witness in that room only acted as a witness. It did not sign, it did not alter any words, nor did it offer any interpretations of the clauses. It simply listened and left."

Hohenheim unclasped his hands.

"It is neutral. A witness that only listens and does not speak. From now on, it will only recognize the literal text."

The hurricane lamp in the cellar flickered again. This time, no one spoke.

Hohenheim stood up and walked over to the map on the wall.

A red pencil had drawn an eight-kilometer-long line there, and a dense row of little squares was marked just beneath it.

"Captain, report it again."

The engineer captain clenched the gauze in his palm.

"All 5,730 steel cylinders have been fully buried."

"What are our exact casualties?"

The engineer captain answered mechanically.

"While the 2nd Engineer Company was handling them, a valve froze and cracked during the night.

The wind was blowing southeast at the time. Out of the 141 men in the entire company, only 53 made it out."

"In the final stretch of the communication trench, the company commander gave his wet cloth to a messenger."

"And after that?"

"On April 11th, one of the burial sites was struck by an enemy howitzer shell. None of the dozen or so men on duty at the time made it out."

Hohenheim's face was expressionless.

"155 men."

The engineer captain corrected him. "It's 157. Two more didn't make it at the hospital."

"Put it on the ledger."

The engineer captain's face flushed red. He took a half-step forward, blood beginning to seep through his gauze.

"What do you mean, 'put it on the ledger'? They aren't the labels you stick on your bottles."

Hohenheim turned to look at him.

There was no anger in those eyes, and naturally, no apology either.

"This involves secret knowledge of my Rank, which you gentlemen probably wouldn't understand. Nor do I plan to explain it in full."

"I will only tell you this: to take a step up, I must first accomplish something no one has ever done before."

"This act must be significant enough to make the entire veil remember this moment."

The legal officer spoke up from the other side of the table.

"Professor Hohenheim."

"In your tradition, will the Master acknowledge this act?"

Hohenheim blew away a speck of dust from the lampshade.

"Of course He won't."

"If the Entity sitting on the trunk knew that a Major Adept like me was trying to advance in this manner, He would probably just pick up His scissors directly."

"Then you...?"

"Which is why I won't wait for Him to cut."

Hohenheim pressed his hand against the lampshade, not feeling the heat at all.

"I can cut myself off."

At this moment, the vast majority of people in the cellar didn't realize just how monumental a statement this was.

Only the legal officer slowly took off his glasses.

"You intend to step beyond the tradition? The risks of doing so are immense."

"I know."

Hohenheim flicked his hand.

"But crossing over has its benefits. The path onward and upward will be much wider."

Of course, he wasn't going to mention the more fatal drawbacks to the people here.

He raised his head and looked toward the stone steps leading out of the cellar.

The wind was already picking up outside. On the surviving walls of the monastery, the few wild weeds sprouting from the brick crevices were leaning toward the southeast.

"What are the weather conditions?"

A lieutenant walked down the stone steps.

"Northwest winds at three to four meters per second. It should stabilize after nightfall."

Hohenheim glanced at the engineer captain again.

"Captain, pull all your men back from the front hundred yards before sunset tomorrow."

"Yes, sir."

He sat back down and continued reading the clause.

Reaching that specific word, he lightly dragged his fingernail across the paper like a blade.

Geschosse, projectiles.