Chapter 498: Boss, Who Did You Offend?

"Crack!"

Richard felt as if he had snapped a dry branch baked too long in the sun.

The massive, grotesque bug had no mouth and could not scream. It had already rushed behind him, its funnel-like maw stretched to the limit, yet it froze in midair.

The stroke anchoring its root origin had been erased from the ridge. It didn't explode or dissipate; it simply didn't know what to do next.

The catch on the foremost section of its iron shell unfastened on its own, dropping to the ground with a clatter.

Then the second section, the third... This time, the rear segments did not drag them back.

The reason for dragging them back no longer existed.

Hundreds of arms released their grip, each twitching a couple of times on its own.

Richard was very familiar with that movement. After finishing a paper or an assignment, he would stretch his fingers in the exact same way.

It was the movement of someone who had worked through the entire night finally lifting their hands from a long table. The filthy chemical stains began to fade, returning to the natural color of human hands.

A few fingers remained bent in the curvature of gripping a shell casing, unable to straighten.

Through the darkness inside the funnel maw, Richard saw the bottom.

Inside were only tens of thousands of matches facing upward, a vat of deep, almost blackish-purple water, and a long table sprinkled with yellow powder.

Those objects lingered quietly in the funnel for a moment before dispersing.

The well behind the veil closed. The matches retracted into the dye vat on the second layer, and the dye vat retreated beneath the long table of tonight's layer.

Overhead, it turned back into a roof, and beneath his feet, it became the floor once more. The thin iron sheets above rattled in the night breeze.

The crack was still there, with cool air rising from below, but now it was just an ordinary crevice.

Richard retracted his antler and turned around. He opened his mouth, just about to say something.

The curved wall Greer had constructed collapsed with a crash. A mismatched assortment of industrial parts popped their catches and fell back to the ground, scattering everywhere.

The bearded man stood up from the pile of parts and patted the dust off his trousers.

"...It could have taken three more hits." He was quite satisfied with his creation.

MacFie shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled over leisurely from where the cold radiance had dissipated.

He first looked at the residual iron shells on the ground, then at the slanted scratch carved into the glass.

The white-haired giant reached out and gave Richard a heavy pat on the shoulder, nearly sending him crashing into the glass.

"Alright, wrap it up!"

"Professor..."

"Right, hurry up and summarize what you just figured out."

MacFie seemed to suddenly remember something and crouched down beside him.

"...Now?"

"Right now, while it's fresh."

"Give it some time and you'll only remember that you won, not how you did it."

Richard rested his hands on his knees, panting a couple of times.

"The key is that the reflection shrank the scope of my reading and analysis."

He pointed at the thin glass covered in yellow powder.

"That bug is only the size of a hand inside the glass, making it easy for me to take the whole thing in at a glance."

"When it spread out over dozens of meters in reality, I couldn't perceive that much all at once."

"And then there's the glass itself." Richard picked up a shard of glass.

"A piece of glass is the boundary between inside and outside."

"Striking the glass with my blade is the same as striking the stone ridge."

Richard recalled the half-second after his strike. His Still Water had seen it clearly: the reflection in the glass severed, and the lunging monstrous bug severed at the exact same moment. There was no conduction time or chronological order in between.

"On the other side of the veil, the reflection and the main body are inherently one entity."

He slowly summed it up:

"When we normally look in a mirror, the one in the mirror is fake, and the main body is real."

"But once things are flipped on the other side of the veil, everything is a reflection to begin with."

"Therefore, in the Mirror Tradition, attacking the mirror reflection yields the exact same result as attacking the main body—perhaps even a better one."

MacFie had also picked up a piece of glass to examine. Hearing this, he nodded in satisfaction.

"That strike of yours just now is something Catherine couldn't learn in a lifetime.

"You should have clearly seen the differences between the various traditions tonight as well."

The white-haired giant stood up and slapped his knee.

"Alright, let's clean up first."

Greer, of course, was the first to get to work. Who told him to be from the Hearth Fire Tradition?

He cursed as he clambered up. "I really just came here to be pure manual labor."

Complaints aside, his hands moved faster than anyone else's.

"You guys probably don't realize the value of this thing." He crouched amid a pile of scrap iron, visibly excited.

"Old evil creatures are a dime a dozen. Ancient battlefields, old mills, church cellars... they look the same today as they did centuries ago. The academic community has studied them inside out for hundreds of years.

"The one today is different."

He flipped over a section of the iron shell and pointed to the rust on its inner wall.

"It formed only in recent decades. The outer shell is an idler cover from an assembly line. This sort of thing didn't even exist in the world before 1880."

He dragged the funnel maw over as well. Halfway through, he realized it wouldn't budge and shouted over his shoulder, "Professor, lend a hand."

MacFie lifted the funnel with a single hand and weighed it.

"I'm taking half of this."

"What do you want it for?"

"To bring back and show the students. Once they've studied a new type of evil creature, they'll know exactly how to deal with it when they encounter one in the future."

Richard was also picking through the remains, pressing his palm against item after item.

For the vast majority of the items, his panel didn't react at all.

The time since this weak point formed was still too short; it had practically no history to speak of.

Even the shed had only been built this March. These new objects hadn't been fully steeped in ether yet. No matter how eerie they looked, they were merely a pile of scrap.

The personnel from the Branch Office also helped collect whatever could be salvaged. Richard only picked out a small jar of yellow powder and a strip of conveyor belt leather with bite marks lingering along its edge.

There were also a few shell casings. The Branch Office staff had initially intended to destroy them all, but MacFie snatched a few from their hands, claiming the Academy needed them for samples.

There were also chemical raw materials, including a small bottle of nitrocellulose solution.

It should have been colorless, but now it had some sediment.

Richard turned the bottle halfway against the light, and that layer of sediment rotated along with it.

He placed this bottle of nitrocellulose solution into his Frost Branch Box as well.

Greer watched from the side. "You're not going to take more? There's still so much on the ground."

Richard snapped the Frost Branch Box shut. "Bringing it back just means carrying scrap. It takes up space and requires purification."

"Does purification cost money?"

"Purification costs your life."

Greer thought about it and surprisingly nodded, then clutched those two sections of iron shell a bit tighter against his chest.

Resting up and cleaning the scene took far longer than the actual battle. By the time everything was finished, it was already midnight.

On the other side, the factory director had just gone to sleep when he was called over from his home.

The man, in his fifties, had hastily thrown on a suit jacket, buttoning it completely wrong.

He entered the shed only to see a floor littered with broken bricks and scrap iron, wearing a very peculiar expression on his face.

A clerk from the Branch Office handed over a document.

"Mr. Director, we recommend that your factory make some adjustments to its work arrangements.

"First, reduce the night shift quota by a fifth, temporarily for three months.

"Furthermore, during shift change roll calls, you need to read out full names, not employee numbers.

"For any female worker whose hands cannot stop moving after her shift, arrange for someone to hold her hands and call her name until she stops on her own.

"For the next month, the factory is not allowed to leave anyone working alone at night."

The director knitted his brows tightly and didn't speak for quite a while.

"I can follow everything else, but I don't have the final say on the ammunition loading quotas.

"The quotas are handed down by the Ministry of Munitions. On the nineteenth of last month, they ordered all loading plants nationwide to increase production by fifteen percent.

"If I tell them to load less, I'll have people investigating me tomorrow.

"Once they're done investigating, my position will be gone. They'll replace me, and the next guy will only push the quotas even higher."

His eyelids drooped, visibly exhausted.

"Gentlemen, the frontlines blow through 30,000 rounds a day. When ammunition runs short, what am I supposed to hold the line with?"

The clerk stood there, momentarily at a loss for words.

He truly couldn't refute that.

The Branch Office indeed had the authority to lock down a few streets, halt work for a day, and issue a warning ticket to this factory in the name of public health.

But the quota telegram from the Ministry of Munitions... a mere clerk from the inspectorate team couldn't even pull a copy of that telegram.

In the current climate, all factories involved in military industries were under government control. The factory director no longer had absolute authority.

Richard listened from the side.

He suddenly walked over and unfastened his canvas bag.

"Mr. Director."

"...And you are?"

"Richard Williams, Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University."

He spread out his notebook on the table. "I'd like to tell you about a case first."

"About what?"

"In 1898, there was a match factory just north of Bolton."

Greer lifted his head, deep in thought.

Richard recounted the case with deadpan seriousness.

"That factory had to increase its production output in the spring.

"The director who signed that quota slip began making ledger mistakes in March.

"While writing down columns of figures, they would all turn into a single number, filling up an entire page. He thought he was just tired."

"In April, he woke up in the night and found his right hand moving outside the blankets."

Richard raised his right hand, lightly pinching his thumb and index finger together, then releasing and pinching again.

"Just like this, mimicking the exact gesture of dipping match heads in phosphorus on the workshop floor.

"He slept on his side and pinned his arm down, but the next morning, his hand was still outside the blankets."

The director's gaze fell upon that hand.

"In May, his wife said his fingernails were turning yellow, and no matter how much he washed them, the color wouldn't come off."

"One night in June, his wife woke up in the middle of the night and saw him sitting on the edge of the bed..."

Richard paused intentionally.

"His entire jawline was glowing green in the dark.

"Phosphorus necrosis of the jaw. You might have seen workers like this."

The director's Adam's apple bobbed.

Richard continued his story. "In July, the factory's accounts stopped adding up.

"There was a surplus batch in production, and those extra items were made neater than anyone else's.

"The factory reported it up the chain, claiming they had exceeded their quota, and even received a commendation."

He closed the notebook.

"One morning in August, when people found the director, the poisoning symptoms on his body were far worse than those of the most severely afflicted female worker.

"He was sitting behind his desk, both hands still moving."

The director stood before the long table, his eyes darting around.

"...Sir, this story of yours."

"Don't rush to disbelieve it just yet."

Richard poured a little yellow powder onto a blank sheet of paper.

The moment the powder hit the paper and scattered, it began to line up, arranging itself perfectly straight into sets of two columns.

The director took a half-step back.

Richard silently infused his ether. These were traces already etched into the powder; it only took a minuscule amount of ether to activate them.

"This is the exact alignment method used in your factory."

The director braced himself against the edge of the desk, unsteady on his feet.

MacFie stood by, impatiently shoving the clerk next to him.

The clerk looked helpless but drew out another sheet of paper.

"Mr. Director, this is the health inspection opinion form we are issuing.

"It clearly states: The factory exhibits collective neurological symptoms caused by chemical dust and continuous night-shift operations. We recommend a temporary adjustment to production quotas, the addition of shift change roll calls, and a ban on solo nighttime operations.

"It has already been stamped with the inspectorate's seal."

He handed a pen over along with it.

"Take this paper and report it up the chain. Just tell them we forced you to make the changes."

...

Right before getting into the car, Richard raised his hand.

He parted his thumb and index finger, framing a square in front of his eyes.

"Click."

The tiny amount of ether that had just recovered in his Micro-circulation was drained by less than half.

This time, Richard learned his lesson and completely excluded MacFie and Greer from the frame. The picture only contained the dimly lit Shed A.

On the flip side, behind the veil, lay that pile of broken bricks, scrap iron, and dry powder, with a tremendously faint stroke still hanging there. He would take his time studying it once he got back.

As the few of them prepared to get into the car and head back, a commotion drifted over from the factory area.

The female workers filed out of the locker room one by one. The hair colors of several women were noticeably unnatural.

The forewoman stood at the door, holding the roll call ledger.

She flipped open the ledger, no longer reading out employee numbers.

"Ida Quinn."

The older woman at the front of the line paused in surprise.

"...Here."

"Dolly Hill."

A thin girl further back raised her hand.

Her right hand was still lightly pinching its thumb and index finger together.

"Here."

The forewoman glanced at her, walked over, reached out, and clasped the girl's hand completely in her own.

"Dolly Hill."

The girl's hand pushed against her palm twice.

"Dolly Hill."

It pushed once more.

"Dolly Hill."

It stopped.

The girl looked up, her eyes suddenly turning red without her even knowing why.

"...I'm right here."

"I know you are."

Three hundred and twenty names were read for a solid fifteen minutes.

Once they finished and the line had walked a dozen paces, someone struck up a tune.

"Call once, no answer; call twice, no answer; call thrice and she'll knock on another's door."

A second voice joined in:

"The wet ones don't count, the cold ones don't count, the ones brought indoors don't count."

By the third line, the whole road was echoing with it.

They weren't singing in unison. Several of them were out of tune, and a few people rushed the tempo on the final verse.

But they were singing with extraordinary joy.

The car drove out of the factory gates. Greer sat on the edge of the truck bed, hugging those two iron shell sections without saying a word for a long time.

"Williams."

"What is it, Associate Professor?"

"That story you just told, the match factory in Bolton..."

"I made it up," Richard admitted without batting an eye.

The truck bed fell silent for a moment.

"...I knew it." Greer shook his head.

"There is absolutely no record of a Bolton case in the School of Engineering's archives."

MacFie burst out laughing up front, causing the entire vehicle to rock.

"You brat, you're just full of lies."

"Professor..."

MacFie looked back.

"Still, the effect was certainly quite good."

Greer, still hugging his iron shell, chimed in.

"...I almost believed it myself just now."

He glanced at Richard with a slightly complicated look in his eyes.

"You weren't like this during your summer study program, were you."

Richard leaned against the truck bed and pretended to rest with his eyes closed, offering no reply.

They had managed to rein in this one factory today, but the Ministry of Munitions' telegram had been sent nationwide.

Richard suddenly remembered the stack of manuscripts tucked away in his drawer.

The editor-in-chief of Century Review had commissioned a long-term column. He had been conceptualizing it for a long time, and now he decided to change his very first piece to cover what had happened today.

As his body swayed in the truck bed, the two people in his mind began to speak of their own accord.

"Mr. Undersecretary, the frontlines need artillery shells. I intend to raise the loading factories' quotas by another twenty percent."

"A brilliant move, Your Excellency. That is an incredibly brave decision."

"Brave?"

"Brave meaning that the newspapers will be publishing photographs of those girls."

"...Then what do you suggest?"

"I suggest establishing a committee to conduct a thorough, prudent, and comprehensive study on 'The Impact of Continuous Night Shifts on the Physical Constitution of Female Workers'."

Whether it would work, Richard didn't know.

But if he just went back and slept on it tonight, his conscience wouldn't be able to let it go.

Once they reached the city district, both professors headed back to their dormitories at Imperial Capital University. Dropping him off alone at the Ashford Residence would be a long detour for the convoy.

So, Richard simply returned to his dorm to rest as well.

When he took out the Sphinx to check, right above the human face's forehead, next to the engraving that had just closed, a new one had appeared.

It was extremely shallow, having only barely begun.

Richard spread out the items he brought back on his desk again, pressing his palm against them one by one.

[Available Points: 3.23... 3.31... 3.44...]

[Available Points: 3.61]

The weak point hadn't existed for long and couldn't steep out much. He had mentally prepared himself for this long ago.

The next afternoon, Petrie Building, MacFie's office.

MacFie dug out a stack of paper from behind his desk and slammed it onto the table.

"You now owe me a paper—'The Severing Spell Formula Using Reflections as a Medium: Conditions for Establishment, Effective Range, and Costs'.

"Determine the specific title yourself."

Richard gathered up the stack of papers, nodded, and walked out of the office.

His panel had already lit up in his field of vision.

[Achieved: Fully translate a segment of knowledge from the expression method of one tradition into that of another tradition, with the translated version operating independently within the new tradition.]

Around this time last year, he had been thinking: All the major traditions are strictly segregated; could translating between them actually work?

It had seemed far too difficult, yet now this requirement had been quietly fulfilled, and achieved in actual combat no less.

What he lacked now was how to organize it using systematic language.

Richard called up his panel.

[Learning Lv.4, Progress 97%.]

[Learning lv5: General Knowledge]

[Increases the decryption and learning speed for unseen languages, codes, and inscriptions. The magnitude of increase depends on existing knowledge reserves.]

[Learning lv5] would arrive within the next couple of days.

After returning and writing a section of his paper, Richard quickly got stuck.

He wrote the earlier parts very smoothly. He had actual examples for the establishment conditions, and he had roughly mapped out the effective range.

What got him stuck was that his sample size was too small, and there was still one thing left unverified.

In the factory, what he slashed was an evil creature that was physically present.

The monstrous bug had been right in front of him, separated only by a layer of glass, with both its reflection and its main body in the same shed.

What if the reflection wasn't in the same shed?

A person's reflection elsewhere—a business card, a photograph, a form, a name—would that work?

Furthermore, to experiment, he needed a target.

It couldn't be an evil creature. Evil creatures were too unstable; any tested results couldn't be written into the paper, and heading down to a weak point again would be too troublesome.

Nor could it be the main body of a living person. He was terrified he might actually kill them.

The best option was something that belonged to a living person but wasn't their actual main body.

Moreover, that living person needed to be far enough away.

After he slashed off a stroke, that person wouldn't die, wouldn't be crippled, and wouldn't lose their livelihood over it... At most, they would just have a rather unpleasant couple of days.

Richard put down his pen and leaned back in his chair, thinking for about three minutes before a wicked idea suddenly popped into his head.

Ah, got it!

He reached into the side pocket of his canvas bag and fished out a Bronze Seal.

Genoa, No. 11 San Lorenzo Street, Second Floor. Visitors require this for entry.

"...Sorry about this, Senior Mercury."

He placed the Bronze Seal right in the center of his desk, and couldn't help but crack a smile after doing so.

In academic research, someone always has to be the first frog to get boiled.

Richard first made his preparations.

He sprinkled two rings of coarse salt around the Bronze Seal. This step would likely go unused, but Donner's phrase, "the greatest fear in our line of work is greed for petty gains," had been echoing in his ears for the past two days.

Then, he propped up Venus's silver mirror opposite the Bronze Seal.

Finally, he placed the Frost Branch Box open by his right hand, ready to seal it shut immediately just in case.

With the preparations complete, he pressed down with his Condensed Mirror Method.

Eighty percent, seventy, sixty, fifty... thirty.

Mercury's "business card" revealed its layers within his pool of water.

The outermost layer was the bronze itself. It wasn't very old, only about twenty years.

The wear was concentrated on the corners, likely scraped out from being stuffed in a pocket and rubbing against other metal objects.

Knowing Mercury's personality, he probably mixed this thing in with the coins in his pocket.

Richard pressed his Still Water even deeper.

With this connection, even he was somewhat surprised. It was just too clear.

So clear that he could almost smell the scents in the other party's second-floor office: ink, old carpets, and a hint of tar wafting up from the harbor.

"...It's so easy to read."

He sat at his desk and thought for a moment before it dawned on him.

This seal was originally something that person handed out for others to read.

The entire existential purpose of a business card was to be seen and remembered in place of its master, so that people would come to do business.

Having finished reading it, Richard pondered for a moment before readying his strike.

The first stroke was the thickest, flowing in one continuous breath from start to finish: Transport.

Moving goods from here to there—ships, cabin slots, warehouses, transit ports.

The second stroke was finer, but the deepest: Guarantee.

If I say this batch of goods is genuine, then it is genuine.

The third stroke was the shallowest and the shortest: Solicitation.

In other words, making people walking down San Lorenzo Street stop at No. 11 and glance up at the second floor.

Richard thought it over and decided to slash the final stroke, Solicitation.

If he slashed the first stroke, the dozen or so trade routes in that man's hands would plunge into immediate chaos.

Slashing the second stroke would be even worse. That was the most valuable asset the man had built over the years; a commercial reputation was far more important than any merchandise.

"...Hmm."

Richard pulled out his antler, weighed it in his hand, and put it back.

This thing was too ruthless. He wanted this cut to be a bit lighter.

He plucked a Silver Needle from his needle box.

Resting the needle tip against the silver mirror, he dragged it diagonally down the shallowest part of that stroke.

"Click!"

Richard withdrew his Still Water.

The Bronze Seal sat in the center of the desk, completely unchanged.

...

Genoa, No. 11 San Lorenzo Street.

The August Mediterranean sun baked the entire street like a branding iron. People stood on the steps as usual, taking off their hats to fan themselves.

In the second-floor office, the blinds were halfway drawn.

Mercury... Of course, no one in Genoa called him that. Here, people simply called him "Boss."

He sat behind his writing desk, finishing up his review of the day's shipping schedules.

After finishing, he set the schedules down and looked up at the wall clock.

Eleven-forty.

"...Piero!"

"Unc—No, Boss, what are your orders?"

The clerk leaned halfway into the room from the outer office. This was his relative, who walked the path of the Hunter and had only recently achieved Signature.

The young man was only nineteen this year, with a patch of freckles that hadn't fully faded from his nose. Whenever he stood, he never quite knew what to do with his hands.

"How many people came up this morning?"

Piero thought for a moment.

"...Does the mailman count?"

"No."

"Then nobody."

Mercury grunted and folded up the shipping schedules.

"It must be because it's too hot. Once it gets above thirty degrees, people don't like climbing stairs."

The clerk nodded repeatedly in agreement. "Yes, you're absolutely right."

"There should be some in the afternoon." Mercury calmed his mind.

But nobody came in the afternoon either.

The next morning, two telegrams arrived one after the other.

The first was from a cotton merchant in Marseille, saying his elderly mother had suddenly fallen ill and pushing their scheduled meeting this week to the next month.

The second was from a shipowner in Livorno, stating that the shipping schedules had been temporarily adjusted, so he had to make a trip himself. Apologies, apologies, let's reschedule, reschedule!

Mercury laid the two telegrams side by side on his desk, rubbing the stubble on his chin.

"Piero, both of these men have perfectly valid reasons."

"Yes, very valid."

"So valid that I can't find a single flaw in them."

The clerk stood at the door, unsure of what to say.

"Bring me last month's ledgers," Mercury said.

That afternoon, he reviewed last month's transactions several times over, running a complete audit.

When he was done, he closed the ledgers and leaned back in his chair, feeling even more bewildered.

There were no issues with the accounts, and that was the most damning part of all.

If there had been an issue with the accounts, he would at least know who to go after.

At seven o'clock on the morning of the third day, Mercury stood by the window with a cup of coffee in hand.

San Lorenzo Street woke up very early.

The ship tackle shop diagonally across the street had already rolled up its shutters. The insurance firm next door had its doors open. The old moneylending lady on the third floor was currently shifting a pot of basil out onto her windowsill.

At a quarter past eight, the first person walked over from the street corner.

The man was dressed in a light linen suit with a briefcase tucked under his arm.

This attire made Mercury very happy; this gentleman was here to talk business!

In the end, however, the gentleman stopped right at the entrance to No. 11.

He tilted his head and glanced up at the second floor.

Mercury hurriedly set down his coffee cup.

The man stood in the doorway for barely five seconds.

Then he switched his briefcase to his other arm, turned around, and headed toward the insurance firm diagonally across the street.

Mercury stood by the window, dumbfounded.

"Piero, bring me paper and a pen!"

For the rest of the day, he sat by the window counting heads.

The second person stopped at the door for three seconds;

The third person stopped the longest—almost eight seconds—and even reached out to touch the doorframe;

The fourth person had already planted a foot on the first step, only to pull it back.

By five in the afternoon, twelve tally marks were drawn on the paper.

Every single one of those twelve people had walked up to the door and suddenly forgotten what they were trying to do.

Meanwhile, the ship tackle shop diagonally across the street had sold two winches today;

The insurance firm next door hadn't closed its doors once all afternoon;

The basil of the old lady on the third floor was growing quite well.

Mercury slid the paper to the center of the desk. "Piero!"

The clerk came in.

"Sit."

"...Boss?"

"I told you to sit."

Piero sat down on the chair opposite him, perching on only half the seat.

"Tell me, what in the world has been going on these past few days?"

Mercury let out a long sigh. "I've been in business for half my life, and the thing I despise most is being left in the dark."

The clerk raised his hand and asked rather timidly, "Boss, did you offend someone recently?"