Chapter 129: Shadow Armor

Just as he thought this, the panel refreshed on its own.

[Spell Formula mastery has reached the required standard.]

[Stone Armor (Reversible)]

Richard's eyes lit up.

This was the real reason he had trained so relentlessly in Stone Armor these past few days.

The Fog Wall Spell wasn't a proper Spell Formula and couldn't be inverted.

Stone Armor was the first—and so far, the only—respectable Spell Formula he had truly mastered.

Richard pressed [Confirm].

The inversion process produced no external effects.

There was no light and no sound. Nothing in the alley changed visually.

But Richard could feel it. The ether flow inside his body, which had grown accustomed to moving outward from within to solidify around him, quietly flipped.

From the outside in.

The stonemason's protective prayer made the body as hard as stone.

But the most fundamental attributes of stone were hardness and weight.

The armor utilized the hardness.

Once inverted, it utilized the weight.

As Richard pondered this, the ether flow inside him offered a clear response.

Applying weight through a shadow essentially meant piling stones directly onto the target's shadow.

When the shadow grew heavy, the main body grew heavy right along with it.

[Shadow Inversion complete.]

[New Spell Formula generated: Shadow Armor (Lorica Umbrae).]

[Effect: Uses the target's shadow as a medium to apply an external load to the target's main body. Duration and intensity are directly correlated with Stone Armor proficiency and ether consumption.]

[Limitation: The target must have a shadow to cast the spell. Cannot be cast in lightless environments.]

[Side Effect: The caster cannot use Stone Armor while this spell is active.]

Richard ran the effect description through his mind.

Stone Armor and Shadow Armor were simply two different applications of the same Spell Formula.

He could either direct it inward to harden himself, or direct it outward to weigh down his opponent.

He could only choose one direction at a time. Offense and defense could not coexist.

The light limitation was to be expected.

The spell's medium was a shadow. Without light, there was no shadow, and without a shadow, there was no path to cast the spell.

But Richard stared at the line that read "Cannot be cast in lightless environments" for a moment, and another idea bloomed in his mind.

The light limitation was just a current restriction.

Almost all low-tier Spell Formulas came with these rigid prerequisites: what must be present, where it must be cast, or what must be done first.

In its early stages, Stone Armor relied on the Gargoyle. The Fog Wall Spell required Ashcore Grass. Even the simplest beginner breathing methods had to be anchored by visualizing the Seat of the Sun.

But medium restrictions weren't eternal; they were just crutches for the inexperienced.

So what about the "must have light" restriction?

Richard's thoughts raced ahead.

If the current Shadow Armor transmitted ether through the specific channel of the "target's shadow"...

What was the essence of a shadow?

It was a "lightless" area left behind when a physical object blocked the light.

But in the world behind the veil, wasn't "lightlessness" itself a kind of shadow?

If his ether manipulation abilities improved further one day, could the requirement of a "visible shadow" as a medium be bypassed?

If he could break free from the constraints of physical shadows and directly manipulate "lightlessness" on the etheric level...

Then it wouldn't just be "piling stones on a target's shadow."

It would be directly applying weight to an area of darkness.

Richard's gaze swept around, landing on the corners of the alley sunk in shadow.

Every dark spot in the entire alley could be weighed down.

Anyone walking in from the alley entrance would feel each step grow heavier the moment they stepped into the shadows.

As they moved forward, that oppressive weight would continue to accumulate.

At a certain critical point, the weight would surpass what human bones could bear.

Or, even more terrifying, he could turn a massive expanse of darkness into weight and concentrate it entirely on a single target...

Richard chuckled to himself.

He remembered a highly famous battle manga from his past life.

One of its devil fruits possessed this exact ability, generating a gravitational field through darkness.

His train of thought just now was quite similar to that.

Of course, this was a very distant prospect.

As a Newcomer, he would be doing well just to make a target bear a few times their own body weight on their shadow.

To reach the stage of "manipulating swathes of darkness," he might need to reach the Minor Adept or even Major Adept level.

He remembered the "fragment" label of Shadow Inversion clearly.

This tradition was fractured and incomplete in the world behind the veil. Perhaps he could find other fragments?

Having a direction to aim for was always better than having none.

...

At nine in the morning, the sun was still buried behind the chimneys, yet to climb higher.

Richard pushed open the somewhat worn small door on the east side of the library's third floor and set his satchel on the table closest to the wall.

He planned to spend all of his flexible time today in this small reading room.

Three items were spread out on the desk.

On the far left were his Latin notes; he still hadn't finished digesting the Virgil commentaries Mr. Holland had assigned him.

In the middle was an ancient Greek translation chart, the thin sheet of paper from Mr. Hutton pinned beneath a paperweight.

On the far right sat a thick notebook covered in a fresh kraft paper wrapping.

Tucked inside this notebook were all the original materials he had copied from the Imperial Capital University Library.

Richard picked up the kraft paper notebook and opened it to the bookmark marking the middle.

He had already deciphered the sections covering seals and ascension page by page. Now, he was consolidating the rest.

The first deciphered section was titled "A Study of Veil Weak Points."

Over the span of a dozen pages, the author had mapped out every known weak point across the entire Old Continent.

Richard traced the spaces between the lines with the tip of his pencil.

The author called the first category "Blood-Soaked Points."

These were places on the surface where massive amounts of death had coagulated.

They included a vital northern stronghold that had repeatedly changed hands during the Three Hundred Years' War, a southern market burned to the ground during the plague years, and several ancient cities swallowed by sandstorms or volcanic eruptions even further back.

Death had been salted into the earth. In the most concentrated areas, taking a single step would give anyone with high Inspiration a splitting headache.

Richard drew a line under this paragraph.

By this classification, the old textile mill ruins beneath the Greenwood sports field counted as a microscopic blood-soaked point.

It wasn't large enough to make the author's list, but its nature was much the same.

The second category was called "Sacrificial Scars."

Ancient priests had repeatedly performed the same rituals in specific locations. Over hundreds or thousands of years, the rituals themselves had carved deep grooves into the etheric plane.

Even if later generations tore down the temples, hauled away the stones, and plowed the foundations into farmland, those grooves remained. They didn't disappear on their own.

The author provided an example.

Deep in the heartland of the Western Continent, there was an oak forest. Local farmers had cleared the land there for generations, and every year their plows turned up small bronze knives.

Those knives had been left by druids and had rested in the soil for over a millennium.

To this day, no birds built nests in those woods, and even passing foxes took a detour.

The third category was the "Drowning Line."

This one was the most unique.

It wasn't on land; it was in the sea.

Due to ocean currents, seabed topography, or reasons even harder to explain, certain waters had seen repeated shipwrecks for centuries.

Every shipwreck dragged an entire vessel's worth of people and cargo straight to the bottom of the sea.

The seawater swallowed sound, light, and the passage of time, but there were some things it could not swallow.

They sank to a certain depth and slowly fermented there.

The author made a special note: the shipping lanes between the Aegean Sea and the eastern coast of the New Continent were densely covered with drowning lines.

In these words, Richard saw the shadows of the details left unsaid in the news report about Captain Harding.

The fourth category was "Places of Starfall."

The author only mentioned it in a footnote: certain mountain peaks, tall towers, and isolated islands would align with the world behind the veil under specific astrological phenomena.

These locations worked in the opposite direction of the first three.

The first three seeped upward from below. The places of starfall descended from above.

This was followed by a line of fine print: "It is not recommended for any practitioner below the rank of Major Adept to linger in such locations for more than fifteen minutes."

Richard copied this passage into his notebook and then added his own thoughts beneath it.

If anyone below a Major Adept couldn't handle it, did that mean Major Adepts needed these places to perform their rituals?

He flipped the page, moving into the second section: "The Depths of the Veil."

This section detailed the world behind the veil.

The author divided the depth behind the veil into three layers.

The first layer was the "Near Shore."

The Near Shore was the closest layer to the material world.

The empty streets, rooms that shouldn't exist, and extra shadows in the mirror that those with Inspiration sometimes glimpsed in their dreams mostly belonged to residual images cast by the Near Shore.

The rules here were not too different from the material world. Gravity, light, and the sense of time were mostly maintained.

The Near Shore served as the habitat for most wandering spirits and lower-level evil creatures.

The second layer was called the "Deep Realm."

The rules in the Deep Realm began to deviate from common sense. Both the Spirit Realm and the Astral Realm existed in this layer.

Higher-order beings resided in the innermost reaches of the Deep Realm.

Most of the time, they stayed in their own territories and did not actively cross the boundaries.

If any living creature rashly entered their territory, they would...

This line of text had been deliberately wiped from the original book in his memory.

The author had written a single sentence after this paragraph:

"A practitioner returning from the Deep Realm will look in the mirror more frequently, because he needs to repeatedly confirm that the face in the mirror still belongs to him."

Richard rested his pencil horizontally across the spine of the book, a fine layer of goosebumps rising on his arms.

He flipped to the third layer. Only two lines of text had been deciphered for it.

"The third layer cannot be spoken of; to speak of it is to invite it."

"Upon reading this, please close the book and take a deep breath."

Richard stared at those three lines for a long while.

The original text was written in ancient Greek. His palms had sweated slightly when he deciphered it.

He closed the notebook and performed a complete cycle of Fourfold Breathing.

When the four breaths ended, the inverted tree of light inside his chest returned to a steady rhythm.

He opened the notebook again and moved to the third section.

"Products Behind the Veil."

The author shifted their tone, jumping from metaphysical descriptions back to the practical plane.

To practitioners, the world behind the veil contained more than just danger.

The first category was minerals.

The author listed a brief inventory.

"Night-Jade Stone": once ground, its powder served as the core ingredient for several crucial alchemical potions.

"Wick Copper": its ether conductivity rate was dozens of times higher than ordinary copper.

It was perfectly suited for crafting vessels meant to bear long-term seals. The Sphinx Lamp was likely made of Wick Copper.

The second category was flora.

Ashcore Grass ranked at the very top. The author described it as "cheap, abundant, practical, and long-lasting."

A long string of names trailed after Ashcore Grass.

"Multi-Eyed Black Moss": when ground and mixed into eye drops, it could grant an ordinary person temporary Spirit Vision at the cost of restless sleep for the next few nights.

"Silent Fern": its leaves made absolutely no sound in the wind. Once processed, it served as a key medium in sealing rituals.

"Blood Vine": found around blood-soaked points. Slicing the vine caused it to seep a red sap, which was a commonly used auxiliary draught for practitioners of the Path of Blood Ignition.

The third category was bone and flesh.

This description was the briefest; the author seemingly had no desire to write more about it.

"The bones and flesh of evil creatures are, with few exceptions, mostly harmful. Do not attempt to eat, wear, or keep them long-term. If they must be utilized, leave them to professional alchemists and inscription masters."

Beneath this was a line of fine print: "This paragraph is written for my students. If the reader is not my student, please consider yourself one."

Richard chuckled at the phrasing.

He stretched his neck and shoulders and finished his completely cold tea.