Chapter 524: Chaotic Transformation

Richard glanced back and spotted a figure standing by the registration desk. The man still wore his same old overcoat, cobwebs from the library clinging to the lapels.

It was Mortimer, of course. He had refused to eat dinner yesterday, but for some reason, he had ventured out on his own today and even joined the line in front of the registration desk.

He called out to Richard in the Albion Language:

"Come here for a second and help me hold down this register. The wind is a bit strong."

He wasn't wrong. The wind at the mouth of the valley was exceptionally fierce due to a funneling effect, sweeping into the courtyard in endless gusts and flipping up the corners of the papers on the desk.

Richard sighed softly. He walked over with his plate and freed up one hand to help the professor pin down the flapping pages.

He glanced down curiously, only to freeze on the spot.

The entire page was already filled, and the second had only three empty lines left at the bottom. Every single name listed had been dictated by Professor Mortimer.

The young monk was still holding the pen.

His grip on the pen had long since lost its form. His fingertips were stained with ink, and a smudge marked his nose, likely left there when he wiped away sweat.

The inkwell had bottomed out. He scraped the nib against the glass, producing only a dry scratching sound. Mortimer wasn't finished. "Next person. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd."

"Sir, please slow down."

"Llywelyn. Two 'L's."

The young monk copied it down. When he looked up, his face was the picture of despair.

"Sir, there are too many consonants in this name. It's more than we mountain folk use in an entire year."

Mortimer explained matter-of-factly, "That old boy was from Wales. The Welsh would rather die than part with a vowel. They save them all up and trade them for sheep."

Pinning the pages down beside them, Richard bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh.

"He died in 1871. Add that next to it," Mortimer continued.

"Sir, we only record names here."

The old professor refused to yield an inch.

"Write it down. There were two Llywelyns in the department that year. If you don't specify the year, they'll end up fighting over these beans down below." The young monk looked at him, then glanced over at the large iron pot.

The elderly monk in charge looked just as exasperated, but he gave a helpless nod.

The young monk sighed, lowered his head, and tacked on the year.

The line behind Mortimer stretched all the way to the edge of the well.

Right behind him stood an old woman leaning on a cane, draped in a faded, heavily washed shawl. She thrust her chin forward, tapping her cane impatiently against the stone slabs.

Behind her was a mule driver with his arms crossed, chewing on a stalk of grass.

Beside the man stood a little boy wearing an empty plate on his head like a hat, until his mother snatched it away.

Everyone's eyes were glued to Mortimer's back, yet no one uttered a single word of complaint.

By the pot, the old monk threw glances their way every so often.

The little boy tugged at his mother's skirt and asked in a hushed voice, "Mom, does that grandpa know everyone in the whole world?"

His mother smacked the back of his head. By now, the young monk had cracked open a fresh bottle of ink.

He looked up and ventured cautiously, "Sir, generally speaking, we only claim portions on behalf of one or two people at most."

"I've simply lived longer than most," Mortimer replied. "Turn the page."

The monk flipped past the second page and began writing on a fresh, blank sheet.

The mule driver bit his grass stalk completely in half.

Richard kept the pages pinned down, his gaze trailing up the long list of names.

The string of names he had offered up that afternoon filled half a page at most. Sandwiched among these dense records, his contribution looked positively meager.

Every single name on Professor Mortimer's two pages was followed by a year of death.

Richard scanned back and forth, but when he reached the bottom of the list, his faint smile faltered.

There were two names sharing the professor's surname. One was followed by 1856; the other, 1861.

Richard's hand remained planted on the page.

Mortimer's eyes were still fixed on the monk's pen when he suddenly spoke. "How long have you been holding that plate of beans?" "A while now," Richard replied.

"They aren't even steaming anymore."

Richard glanced down. A sheen of grease had already coagulated over the broth at the bottom of the plate, and a few blackened, sodden leaves—likely sage—floated at the edges.

"Professor, you do know what lies beneath this soil..."

Mortimer hummed in agreement. "Right. It's a cemetery. I'm far more aware of that than you."

He rattled off the next name. While the monk scribbled, he casually resumed his conversation with Richard.

"That Irishman who crossed the mountains to get here—the very first page of names he wrote with his own hand is still in there. His handwriting was even uglier than yours."

"And for over a thousand years since, they've kept records every single year.

"How many people are buried in this ground? How many times have beans been boiled in that pot? How many have come to claim their share?"

Mortimer noted that the most densely packed page in the registry belonged to the year 1630.

"Half the population of Milan died in 1630. Later, Manzoni wrote about that great plague. When the ladies of the Apennine Peninsula read it, every last one of them dabbed at their eyes with their handkerchiefs.

"People died in this valley in 1630 too. The fires beneath the monastery's bean pots didn't go out for a single day. Yet, when spring arrived the following year, the valley's survivors went right back into the fields to sow their crops." The old professor glanced sideways at Richard, evidently guessing his concern about eating crops grown over graves. "For countless years, the people of this valley have lived perfectly healthy lives. I've never heard of a single person catching some bizarre disease and dying just from eating these beans."

Richard stared into his plate and remained silent. Mortimer didn't wait for a response, pressing on.

"You've eaten plenty of bread in the Imperial Capital. Have you ever wondered whose heads the wheat for that bread sprouted above?"

"Across the entire Old Continent, could you find a single patch of dirt that hasn't served as a grave? The people here merely took one extra step: they recorded the names of the dead."

With that, the old professor dictated the final name to the young monk. The monk finished the last stroke and sat there, pen in hand, waiting for more.

Mortimer waved his hand dismissively. "That's all, young man. You can stop writing."

The young monk slumped back in his chair and let out a long, heavy exhale.

Mortimer strolled over to the iron pot. The elderly abbot serving the beans offered a warm smile as he ladled out a generous portion for the old professor.

The earthy stench of the beans, mingled with the sharp scent of sage, wafted into Richard's nose once more.

Holding his plate, Mortimer turned around and swept his gaze over the courtyard.

According to custom, everyone who received a portion of beans was supposed to give it to someone else to eat.

Richard had already exchanged his beans with a local mother, meaning the old professor couldn't pass his portion to him. After a moment's thought, Mortimer simply shoved his plate into the hands of the young monk who had been handling the registration. The young monk shot to his feet in panic.

"Old sir, I'm just here to help with the writing!"

Mortimer firmly pressed the young monk's hands around the edges of the plate. "You just filled out three whole pages for me. Consider a plate of beans your wages. Don't stand on ceremony."

Cradling the plate, the young monk turned and shot a hesitant look toward his abbot by the pot.

The elderly monk gave an approving nod. Only then did the young monk sit back down, pick up his spoon, and begin to eat.

The line finally shuffled forward. The old woman wrapped in the black shawl stepped up to the table and stated a name, which the monk transcribed in three quick strokes.

After collecting her plate, she hobbled straight over to Mortimer, her cane tapping heavily with every step, and shoved her plate right against the old professor's chest.

Mortimer didn't bother with pleasantries. He scooped up a spoonful of beans and shoved it into his mouth. After two chews, his wrinkled face scrunched up in distaste.

"Overcooked. The beans have been boiled to mush."

The old professor muttered complaints nonstop, yet his spoon never paused. He devoured the entire serving, scraping up every last drop of broth at the bottom before turning back to eye Richard's untouched plate.

"See that? I ate every last bite.

"If I go mad or drop dead from a fever tonight, send an international telegram to Pendleton first thing tomorrow and ask for a leave of absence. Tell him I got lost in the mountains." Richard looked down at the beans in his hands. The face of the local mother who had exchanged plates with him surfaced in his mind.

He raised the plate and took his first bite. It tasted exactly as terrible as the professor claimed. The beans were boiled to a pulp, there wasn't nearly enough salt, and the earthy stench was entirely unmasked.

The moment the beans hit his stomach, [Filtration] triggered.

[Filtration] granted the body a formidable resistance against toxins, decaying matter, and parasitic pathogens.

A moment later, the effects of [Filtration] slowly faded, indicating that the system did not register the beans as a harmful foreign substance.

His interface panel lit up.

[Condition met: Actively ingest and fully metabolize one product from behind the veil.]

[eating Lv.4, Progress 52% → 83%.]

The bottleneck that had stalled Richard for so long had suddenly been broken by a humble plate of farmhouse beans.

Once the meal was finished, the crowd in the courtyard gradually dispersed.

The two Serbian refugees squatted side by side; one of them scraped the last few beans from his plate into his companion's.

The elderly monk and his disciple began cleaning the pot and plates. Richard walked over and asked in his stiff, broken Apennine, "Excuse me, but over all these years... has anyone ever gotten sick from eating this?"

The old monk lifted his head, his cloudy eyes fixing on Richard for a long moment.

"Yes."

Richard's chest tightened.

But the monk had more to say.

"But the only ones who ever fell ill were those who broke the rules and scooped straight from the pot themselves."

He hung the wooden spoon back on its hook and leaned heavily against the wall as he slowly made his way inside.

That night, Richard lay on the hard wooden bed in his guest room.

The window was high and small, offering only a narrow sliver of sky from his vantage point on the mattress. But out here in the mountains, free of the city's coal smog, the stars were startlingly dense.

Thanks to the effects of [Wild Sleep], he plunged into a deep slumber mere breaths after closing his eyes.

Halfway through the night, however, he jolted awake. A thread of Perception was reaching toward him, tracing the connection of his name.

Richard lay perfectly still in the dark.

The thread of Perception brushed against the registration book first.

The young monk had simply left his pen resting on top of it before heading off to bed.

No one had ever thought to put the book away, nor did anyone feel it needed locking up.

The thread of Perception flowed along the pages, skimming over the 237 names recorded that day.

After a quick scan, it flipped further back.

It skimmed through last year's entries. The year before. Ten years ago. Fifty years ago.

Some years were packed tightly with names, while others had only a dozen sparse lines—the plague years and famine years, when few travelers could make the trek.

Over a thousand years of history. Hundreds of thousands of names.

On an etheric level, every single name bore the exact same format.

Lying in bed, Richard could feel the encroaching thread of Perception begin to fray in confusion. It had locked onto a single name and tracked it straight into the courtyard.

But then it discovered the target name etched into the registry alongside 236 others. Digging deeper, it collided with hundreds of thousands of identical signatures.

The sheer weight of a millennium stretched out before the intruder like an endless field of identical, unharvested crops.

The thread lost its way in the endless fields of wheat.

Richard lay in the darkness, listening to the mountain wind howl over the eaves.

He had gone to staggering lengths to prevent anyone from reading his tracks.

Yet tonight, his salvation had been a simple plate of farmhouse beans, and an old, unprotected ledger that had been recording the dead for a thousand years.

The ledger held so many names that any thread of Perception brushing past it would read nothing more than, "There are a lot of people here."

Richard rolled over and pulled his blanket tighter.

It was cold up in the mountains.

...

On the evening of November 16th, Richard and the professor returned to Genoa from the mountain monastery. The landlady had already lit the hearth for them.

Mortimer sat in the dining room. After finishing dinner and polishing off a pot of Darjeeling tea he had brewed himself, he declared, "That trip was well worth it," before hobbling upstairs with his cane.

Richard returned to his own room and shut the door.

The token the lord of the hunt had given him was trembling again, rattling even more urgently than last time.

He sat on the edge of the bed with the token in hand and closed his eyes.

His Shadow rose from the cracks between the floorboards, donned its mask, and drifted upward.

High atop Cloud Ridge, the wind was faint tonight.

The procession was unusually scattered. The riders hadn't bothered holding formation; they were clustered in loose knots of two or three, idly chatting.

One small circle was busy placing bets, wagering on who could be the first to remember the exact year they joined the Wild Hunt.

A nearby group was locked in a heated debate over whether the deepest reaches of the Deep Realm actually had a bottom.

The lord of the hunt sat astride his mount at the very front of the procession. The old Scholar hovered half a horse-length behind him.

"You're here," the lord of the hunt greeted him. "I called you to give you notice. On the eve of Yule, we will take you down into the Spirit Realm."

Richard probed cautiously. "You mentioned last time... that there were other matters you needed to handle."

The lord of the hunt answered quickly, clearly unwilling to be pressed on the details.

"I'll handle my own business. You just want a messenger, and I'll drag one up for you while I'm at it."

He abruptly changed the subject, wheeling his mount around to face Richard directly.

"However, before we descend into the Spirit Realm, you must prepare three things: a lamp, a rope, and an anchor."

"Your lamp is your own Inspiration. As you descend, only your own light can illuminate your path. You cannot borrow another man's lamp, and even if you could, its light wouldn't reach you."

"As for the rope, we will provide it."

The lord of the hunt sounded quite magnanimous as he continued.

"The Wild Hunt itself is the rope. As long as you're tethered to our procession, even if you fall, we can haul you back up."

"And the anchor?" Richard asked. "You'll have to figure out the anchor yourself," he replied.

Beside him, the old Scholar gave a dry cough.

"What is it?"

"According to the rules, when the procession descends into the Deep Realm, you are required to provide a supernatural item to act as the anchor and secure the bottom line for everyone."

Suddenly, the howling wind across Cloud Ridge seemed to fall perfectly silent.

The lord of the hunt sat utterly motionless. "Then put forward the cheapest one."

"We used the cheapest one last time in Flanders."

"Then bring out the second-cheapest."

"The second-cheapest is a nail. It was pried from the keel of a sunken ship three hundred years ago. It's rusted so badly that only half of it is left..."

"That's the one." The lord of the hunt cut him off.

"A nail acting as an anchor—doesn't that sound incredibly fitting?"

Further back in the procession, the gamblers and debaters abruptly fell silent. A man clutching a charred piece of wood squeezed his way out of the crowd and shouted, "My lord, it truly is a blessing to serve under a leader who knows how to pinch a penny!"

Uproarious laughter erupted from the middle of the procession, rippling all the way to the unseen rearguard.

Everyone began chatting about what they needed to prepare. The axe-wielding youth insisted on bringing his axe, only to be shot down and told he wouldn't be able to chop anything in the Deep Realm anyway.

The lobsterback demanded to wear his full formal uniform, insisting that "a man must maintain his dignity, even when going under."

The crippled little hound adamantly refused to leave Richard's side.

The barefoot spirit, right on cue, asked if anyone had seen his "sheepskin shoes."

The lord of the hunt raised his Horn and blew a sharp, clipped note. "Enough. Fall in."

The unruly mob slowly shuffled back into their departure formation.

Before departing, the old Scholar lingered behind to give Richard a few specific instructions.

"Young man," he began. "What do you know of the Spirit Realm?"

Richard pondered for a moment before answering honestly. "I once shadowed a medium who practiced as an automatic scribe."

"And when you practiced as an automatic scribe, how deep did you manage to go?"

Richard dared not hide a single detail.

"The furthest I ever reached was the very fringes of the Spirit Realm. I cast my Inspiration out and skimmed a few scattered thoughts off the shallowest edges of the well."

"I understand," the old Scholar nodded.

"This time, we will be diving directly into the well."

"The stray thoughts lingering around the mouth of the well naturally separate themselves into individual strands.

"You latch onto one strand, and you read the thoughts of a single spirit. When you let go, it drifts away on its own."

"But once you reach the bottom of the well, things are no longer so simple. Down there, everything bleeds together."

"When you speak in the material world, you must use a language. If you speak Gaelic, Greek, or Latin, those who do not understand the tongue have no idea what you are saying.

"Language acts as a wall—it separates you from others, but it also protects you."

"But when you sink into the extreme depths behind the veil—down into the Spirit Realm—that wall simply melts away."

Richard couldn't clearly make out the old Scholar's face, yet he sensed an intense severity in his expression.

"There are no distinct languages down there. There is only raw meaning.

"The moment you attempt to express a thought, it is automatically broadcast. And it works exactly the same for everyone else."

"So, I'll be able to understand the exact meaning of everything anyone else tries to express?" Richard asked.

"Correct," the old Scholar confirmed, before adding, "But they will be able to understand every last bit of you as well."

Richard immediately grasped his meaning. Down there, he wouldn't be able to hide anything.

The old Scholar laid down the rules.

"Once you cross over, do not give a name to anything. Do not announce your own name. And above all else, do not answer any questions. Down there, an answer is an absolute declaration of consent."

"Have you memorized this?"

"I have."

Of course he had to memorize it. This was a matter of life and death. "While we certainly won't be diving to those lowest depths this time, I may as well tell you about what lies even further down."

The old Scholar's tone shifted into a casual drawl.

"If you ever found a way to reach the absolute bottom of the Deep Realm, you would stumble across entities that were never meant to be found."

"What do you mean?" Richard took frantic mental notes. None of this would ever be recorded in a textbook.

"I don't know if you've ever come across this particular term in your books: Chaotic Transformation."

The old Scholar explained at a leisurely pace.

"You should have met enough of them by now to understand what a Virtuoso truly is."

Richard nodded.

"To become a Virtuoso, one must surrender a part of themselves."

The old Scholar continued, "The surrendered part is stripped from their physical body. It no longer exists in the material world. It ascends, becoming a conceptualized entity behind the veil."

Across Cloud Ridge, the chatter of the tens of thousands of riders gradually faded into the distance. "The vast majority of those surrendered fragments remain safely behind the veil, right where they belong."

"But... what if that surrendered fragment were to rot?"

Richard's Shadow subconsciously tightened its grip around its Caduceus.

"What do you mean by rot?"

The old Scholar's description grew incredibly vague—after all, he hadn't ever witnessed it himself either.

"Think of it this way. Say a Virtuoso surrenders a single breath, a pound of flesh, or a handful of bones. If you leave those pieces alone for hundreds, or thousands of years..."

The lord of the hunt spoke up from the front of the line, clearly having listened in on their entire conversation.

"When a Virtuoso loses their true essence, they undergo Chaotic Transformation... descending into an unspeakable horror lurking within the Deep Realm."

"I'll give you one final reminder about the schedule. The reason we chose the eve of Yule is because Yule marks our final hunt of the year.

"We'll dip down into the depths, finish our business, and ride right back up to finish our circuit. It saves everyone a great deal of trouble."

"The entrance lies right beside Gotthard Mountain in Helvetia. Make sure you don't forget."

The old Scholar quickly chimed in. "That mountain ridge forms the convergence of four major rivers spanning the Western Continent. To the north lies the Rhine, to the west the Rhône, to the south the Ticino, and to the northeast the Reuss."

"It is the true boundary of boundaries. Stand atop that rocky peak, and whichever direction you step, the drops of water trailing off your boots will plunge into completely different realms."

Richard mentally pulled up the geographical data on those four rivers. He noted that they ultimately poured out into the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Po River basin, or distant highland lakes.

As the procession prepared to ride off, the old Scholar fished a crumpled piece of paper out of his saddlebag.

"Someone asked me to pass this along."

Richard's Shadow accepted the note.

"...Who from?"

"Skadi."

Richard opened his mouth to press for more at the mention of the name.

But the old Scholar shook his head.

"I'm only here to make the delivery. I haven't read a single word of what's written inside, and I don't need to know if you plan on sending a reply."

He flicked his reins and rode off toward the east. ...

By late November in Copenhagen, the sun barely dragged itself over the horizon by half-past eight in the morning, only to plunge back into the sea by four o'clock in the afternoon.

Even during those scant seven and a half hours, the sky barely brightened.

Inside an attic situated on the backstreets of the free port, Loki sat at his desk, smoothing out a piece of paper.

Scrawled across the page was, naturally, a recruitment advertisement.

Over the past month, he had scattered these flyers all across the northern lands—Gothenburg, Bergen, Christiania, and a handful of unmarked taverns.

He had revised the wording on the advertisement several times, whittling it down until only the most essential lines of information remained.

Far more candidates showed up than he'd anticipated. Six arrived in the first week. Eleven in the second.

By the third week, he threw his door open one morning to find four men sitting on his staircase. One of them still had fish scales clinging to the cuffs of his trousers.

The admission fees were pouring in like a rising tide. This racket was infinitely more lucrative than busting his hump as a lowly broker.

Loki snatched up his pen and scratched one final line onto the bottom of his poster:

"This run descends into the Deep Realm. If you can't stomach the pressure, don't bother showing up." The lord of the hunt had personally mandated that addendum.

On the eve of Yule, the procession would be marching into the extreme depths behind the veil.

Every fresh recruit had to know exactly what they were signing up for. If they didn't, the sheer pressure would likely crush them to death en route.

And if they died down there, their spirits couldn't even be absorbed into the Hunting Register. They would simply dissipate into nothingness.

Loki himself would have loved nothing more than that. He could have pocketed an entire haul of blood money for absolutely zero effort.

But the lord of the hunt stuck to his principles. The participants had an absolute right to know what they were riding into before the hunt began. It was a paramount rule of the procession.

Loki set his pen aside, folded his hands over his stomach, and stared at that final line of ink for a long time.

'The lord of the hunt is diving into the Deep Realm.' That snippet of news was incredibly valuable.

Even better, it was highly time-sensitive. The earlier he managed to sell it, the higher the price he could demand.

And he held a second piece of information in his hands.

Upon checking his records, Loki had discovered that the position of 'Emissary' had never existed in the Wild Hunt's history.

This meant the so-called Emissary had almost certainly just been appointed. Combine that with the inquiries Apophis had been frantically spreading as of late, and entirely new strings of clues began threading together. It didn't take long for a buyer to travel up from Marseille.

The man's ancestors hailed from Venice, though the family had relocated to Marseille three generations ago.

He was another middleman who fenced absolutely everything. Today he'd offload a cargo ship bursting with olive oil; tomorrow he'd peddle fresh leads from the mystical side.

The two men hunkered down in a tavern in the port's back alleys for an hour and a half.

The buyer started by grilling him on his sources. Over and over, he demanded to know exactly where the intel came from.

Loki answered without a shred of hesitation. "From the recruitment ads the lord of the hunt ordered me to post. Do you want to see the original draft?"

The moment he laid eyes on the original draft, the middleman's hands began to tremble.

The parchment bore the immaculate, blocky script of the old Scholar. Branded into the bottom right corner was the unmistakable indentation of the Antler Tip.

Anyone surviving in this line of work recognized exactly whose signature that depression represented.

This recruitment drive had undeniably been greenlit by the lord of the hunt himself.

They haggled over the price for another forty minutes. The final sum settled at ten thousand krone in cash, coupled with an old supernatural item imported from the Port of Alexandria. The artifact was deeply saturated with ether, and its provenance was squeaky clean.

The buyer even threw in a bonus scrap of intel: the Iberian table had swapped out another member just last month. By the time Loki headed home, heavy snow was falling from the sky. He stood silently outside his own iron gate, letting the snow pile thick over his hood.

Frost clung to the glass panels behind the iron bars. Slowly, the frost melted away on its own, pooling into the distinct shape of a string of hoofprints.

He had sold the intel to the broker from Marseille, who had subsequently fenced it to his superior in the Port of Alexandria.

That Alexandrian superior then routed the news straight to an unmarked safehouse south of Cairo.

Sitting inside that room, Apophis finished reading through both pieces of intelligence.

The first confirmed that the lord of the hunt was descending into the Deep Realm. The second revealed that an Emissary had suddenly appeared within the ranks of the Wild Hunt.

On their own, neither piece meant much. Put together, Apophis felt he had finally grasped the crucial thread. He finally had a solid lead on the Black Earth River Master's affairs.

Apophis stood up and pulled the Bronze Mirror down from the far wall of the room. He channeled a surge of ether into the glass. "Lord Priest."

A long stretch of dead silence answered him from the other side of the mirror. Apophis wasn't in a hurry. He simply stood there and waited.

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the surface of the mirror turned so impossibly black that it seemed to devour the light in the room.

The Black Earth River Master finally cast his gaze through the glass. "What is it?"

Apophis bowed low. "There's been a breakthrough regarding the matter you entrusted to me."