Chapter 472: Rome! Rome!

That night, a gray moth landed on the windowsill. It folded its wings and transformed on the spot into a small Cloth Bag.

Richard locked the door and drew the curtains tight.

Hecate's letter was long.

"Hermes,

"There is a matter I originally intended to tell you in person in mid-June.

"After thinking it over, I decided to write it down for you now. The reason will be at the end of the letter.

"First: you can call in outside help for the team battle."

Richard's grip tightened on the edge of the paper.

"I know most of you aren't aware of this rule. It has never been written into any regulation.

"You only know that one table devours another, because that is the easiest part to see.

"Now I will tell you the rest.

"A team battle is fundamentally two tables fighting for a 'seat' behind the veil. It has its own set of rules: in any fight for a seat, both sides can bring people.

"There are restrictions. First, the person you bring must be invited by you personally.

"They cannot be hired, they cannot be coerced, and you cannot have someone else invite them on your behalf.

"An invitation holds weight on that side of the veil. The inviter asks, the invited nods, and that exchange forms a pact.

"Another point: the people brought in do not occupy a seat.

"They must take the field in their true bodies. If they get hurt, it is a real injury. If they die, they really die.

"There is also a limit on numbers—one person at most.

"Furthermore, you can only invite someone after completing your first resonance with the Divine Persona Mask."

Richard suddenly felt energized. The ability to call in outside help was immensely significant to him.

He turned the page.

"Second: why people of different Ranks can sit at the same table and fight the same battle.

"I waited a long time for someone to ask me this question, but no one at the table ever did.

"So I can only explain it myself.

"Have you ever thought about what a Practitioner could actually do when standing next to a Major Adept on the day of the fight?

"Take a hit for the latter? They couldn't block it.

"This is the true purpose of the Divine Persona Mask. The mask doesn't just give you more Divinely Crafted Armaments.

"The mask is a conduit connected to a name that has been chanted for millennia.

"The moment the team battle begins, the seven chairs will link into a ring.

"It will pull the weakest up and press the strongest down until it barely manages to level the playing field.

"Therefore, the people at this table with lower Ranks will receive a bigger boost in the team battle than anyone else.

"How much you are boosted depends entirely on your resonance rate.

"Now you should understand why I have been constantly pushing you all this past year."

Richard set the paper down on the desk.

Lately, Hecate had been going through everyone's resonance rates one by one. When she got to Prometheus, she had spoken incredibly harshly.

At the time, he just thought it was like a gardener complaining about a slow-growing seedling.

Now he understood. If Prometheus didn't keep moving forward, he would become the weakest and most easily broken link at their table.

The letter had a third section.

"Third: this time, I'm afraid we can't avoid it."

Richard's fingers tightened on the edge of the page.

"Last time, I told you all that I performed divination eleven times in a month, and drew the Ten of Swords seven times.

"I said then that several tables held malicious intent toward us, but I couldn't read who they were.

"Over the past half-month, I managed to read them. The clearest among them is the table from Rome."

Richard's Still Water rippled slightly before being suppressed back down.

He brought the letter closer.

"Why them? I've been pondering that for the last two weeks.

"The day I figured it out, I was reading the newspaper.

"On the twenty-third of last month, the Kingdom of Apennine declared war on Austro-Hungary.

"The version you read in the Imperial Capital was probably something like, 'The nation of justice has finally stood on the side of civilization.'

"What I read on my end was: the table in Rome received orders after that.

"At this point, you should know why I am writing to you all in advance.

"Because it takes time for you to invite people. If you have already woven a net, now is the time to use it."

—Hecate

The last page of the letter started on a new line.

"Addendum: The Roman Pantheon Table (What I know so far)

"Minerva (Head Seat) — Star Map Tradition, Major Adept, Scholar.

"Mars (counterpart to Ares) — Moon Hunting Tradition, Minor Adept, Hunter.

"Venus — Solar Tradition, Minor Adept, Secret.

"Vesta (counterpart to Hestia) — Hearth Fire Tradition, Minor Adept, Scholar.

"Diana (counterpart to Artemis) — Moon Hunting Tradition, Minor Adept, Secret.

"Fortuna (no counterpart, the oldest goddess of fate) — Unknown tradition, Minor Adept, unknown path.

"The last one is a new addition, completely unknown.

"I have partial information on the first six, but for the seventh, I only know someone is sitting in that chair."

Richard finished reading the last page and slowly put it back on the desk.

Seven people: one Major Adept, five Minor Adepts, and one unknown.

On his side, they had one Major Adept, four Minor Adepts, and two Practitioners.

The Imperial Capital was home to the people he had spent this past year traveling everywhere to see. He had originally planned to settle his mother's matter this summer.

Now it clashed with the team battle in the exact same month.

Richard packed the items on the desk into his canvas bag one by one.

The team battle had massive implications. He had found an excuse to return to the Imperial Capital first; his family would follow later.

On the train back to the Imperial Capital, Richard recalled the three Major Adepts he had consulted over the past year.

He had asked them all the same thing: whether his mother's shattered main circuit could be repaired. After all, it was what weighed on his mind the most lately.

After listening, the old professor had replied quite bluntly.

"What do you think a Major Adept Scholar is?"

"What is it?"

"Someone who can read and understand." Mortimer pushed up his reading glasses.

"I've read more in my lifetime than everything you can possibly imagine combined, but being able to read it doesn't mean I can repair it.

"I could look up thirty-seven similar cases for you. Out of those, twenty-nine were unable to recover.

"The remaining eight only recovered partial function, and all of them were physical injuries."

"Professor, are there specific details about those eight people?"

"Yes." Mortimer picked up his teacup.

"But every single one of those eight had a Major Adept of the Solar Tradition standing beside them."

"By the way, mid-June," the old professor suddenly said in a slow, drawn-out tone.

Richard's somewhat gloomy mood lifted in an instant.

There were some things that no longer needed to be over-explained.

The old professor snipped a piece out of his newspaper with a pair of scissors.

"I have a bad habit. I'm old, so I don't sleep much.

"I often wake up at two or three in the morning with nothing to do, so I bring out that bronze mirror and play around with it."

"What do you look at?"

"The fish in the canal, or whether someone forgot to turn off the lights in the department office."

He tucked the small clipping into his book.

"Your dorm room just happens to be right in the area I can see."

Richard stood by the window, speechless for a moment.

"Professor, in the worst-case scenario..."

"At worst, these old bones can still fish you out."

Mortimer closed the book.

"That's enough."

"It's not enough." The old man raised his eyes.

"But it will have to do for now."

He took off his reading glasses and wiped them with his cuff.

"It's the same for Old Mike."

Richard looked up.

"Catherine lives on campus too?"

"Yes." Mortimer put his glasses back on.

"Old Mike moved a chair into his office himself. He said he's going to read all night that night."

"Every time he says he's going to read, a few people disappear from outside the building."

Richard suddenly felt his tension ease a little.

"What, feel more at ease now?"

Mortimer glanced at him.

"...A little."

"That's the benefit of having someone willing to guard the door for you." The old professor set the scissors down on the desk.

"You feel at ease now because you've done a lot of things for other people.

"Favors are something you can't see when you're saving them up, but when it's time to use them, they pay off in full."

When he had asked Gerard, his grandfather listened to the string of questions and didn't speak for a long time.

"If your father's bridge breaks a section, he can tear down the broken part and rebuild it, and the bridge is still a bridge."

"Circuits are different."

He pulled out his shovel and knocked the mud off against his boot.

"Circuits grow out of your body. As they grow, they lay themselves down along your bones, blood vessels, and nerves. It takes over a decade to lay them completely.

"Margaret's main circuit shattered on the spot when she was twenty-six.

"Where it blew apart, all the connected smaller pathways recoiled and shrank back."

"Shrank back to where?"

"Shrank back to wherever could still be supplied. The remaining ones that can't be reached are left idling in place."

"What happens when they idle for over a decade?"

The old man sat down on a stone bench.

"Like a machine running without a load." He thought for a moment and used an analogy Richard could understand.

"There's a term for it in your father's profession, right? The spinning turns entirely into heat, and when that heat can't dissipate, it burns inward.

"That lung condition of hers all these years was burned out from that."

"What if we stop the idling?"

"If it's stopped, her body will feel lighter, but the circuit will still be ruined."

Richard copied this sentence down in his notebook, then drew a question mark next to it.

By the time he asked the third person, Richard wasn't holding out much hope.

It had been an evening in late May, while collecting the last rubbing on the northernmost slope of the Highlands.

He had mentioned the matter to MacFie in passing, originally intending it as just a casual remark.

But the white-haired giant shoved his flat flask back into his coat and turned to look at him.

"You should have asked me sooner."

"...Professor?"

"The Moon Hunting Tradition produces the most Hunters." MacFie sat down on the grass.

"Kid, do you want to hear the truth or do you want to hear something that makes you comfortable?"

"The truth."

"The truth is: a ruined circuit is ruined."

"All you can do is stop the idling so she burns a little less."

The white-haired giant patted his knee.

"That lung condition can recede. She'll be able to sleep through the night, and she won't have to spend half the night sitting by the window on rainy and overcast days.

"She won't need to rest halfway up the stairs, and for the next twenty or thirty years, she'll live a normal life just like an ordinary person."

The train crossed a switch, and the carriage swayed.

The answers from all three Major Adepts ultimately boiled down to the same conclusion: she couldn't be fully cured, but she would be able to live out her natural lifespan.

He closed the notebook and shoved it into the innermost pocket of his canvas bag.

Outside the window, the lowlands retreated backward. In the fields, someone was cutting the first crop of grass of the year.

They would cut a row, straighten up to catch their breath, and then cut the next.