Chapter 202: The One Who Carved Deep Valleys with a Single Breath

The Chief Responder continued chanting as phantoms swarmed frantically out of the dark tunnel mouth, one after another.

These phantoms didn't pick the closest targets; they all surged straight toward Lieutenant Colonel Ord.

Richard could tell that the Chief Responder was concentrating the vast majority of his killing intent on the lieutenant colonel alone.

His mind raced.

Wentworth's ether circuit was on the brink of spinning out of control.

The Deep Ether Condensate was too potent, its side effects severe.

Moreover, he didn't know how the condensate would react to an out-of-control circuit. If it caused secondary damage, Wentworth was finished.

Only one thing was fast enough, immediate enough, and capable of a targeted activation of the Micro-circulation.

[Moon Nail: Reflection].

Richard reached into his shoulder bag and grabbed the long silver needle box.

This time, he skipped the cautious warm-ups, compressing the entire Needle Piercing process to its absolute limit.

Draw the needle, channel the breath, drive the needle.

A condensed mass of ether took shape at the needle's tip, white tinged with cyan.

Richard locked his eyes on Wentworth's position.

The extra boost from [Perception] allowed him to clearly see the flow of the main circuit inside Wentworth's body.

The active end of the circuit lay right on the inner side of his right arm.

That segment of ether was spinning wildly out of control, accelerating until it reached the critical point of collapse.

Richard stepped forward quickly and flicked the Silver Needle from his fingertips.

The entire mass of pure ether poured straight into Wentworth's spiraling Micro-circulation.

That segment of the main circuit, on the verge of collapse, was violently scoured from the inside and forcibly reactivated.

Wentworth's flushed face froze right at the breaking point.

He gasped heavily, stumbling two steps backward to escape the Chief Responder's zone of Silence.

He glanced down at his needle-pierced right arm, then looked back at Richard in the innermost circle.

Richard had already retreated to his original position.

The inspector squad leader didn't have time to overthink it.

He gave a quick nod in Richard's direction.

Then, gripping his Enchanted Twin Blades tightly, he flanked around the side.

Richard took the strap of the Colton 120 Camera off his neck, let it hang diagonally by his waist, and drew the Webley Revolver from his coat's inner pocket.

The grip was already warm from his sweaty palm.

He swung the cylinder open and pressed six Enchanted Bullets from his bandolier into the chambers one by one.

The phantoms weren't drifting very fast, and they were only a dozen or so feet away.

Under [Perception] Lv.2, the dark glow at the core of each one was almost visible to the naked eye.

That was enough.

On the other side, Old Biggs also raised his revolver.

The old coroner's gun was shorter than Richard's, with linen wrapped around the grip so it wouldn't freeze his hand in the winter.

The two men each took up a position in the angle of the light locks.

"Grey Eyes," Old Biggs said, not daring to use his name aloud. "Aim for the ball of light dead center on their chests. Don't aim for the face. An evil creature's face is a lie."

A bird-like phantom swooped past the outer edge of the innermost circle, about seven or eight paces away from Richard.

Richard leveled the revolver with his right hand, bracing his wrist with his left.

"Bang!"

The gunshot was muffled inside the enclosed cave.

The ring of exorcism runes on the base of the bullet bloomed into a tiny silver flower on the etheric plane.

The bird was sliced in half, its foggy form dissipating with a hiss.

The recoil shoved Richard's right shoulder back. He steadied himself and lowered the muzzle.

Old Biggs fired a shot as well.

His target was a faceless child phantom.

The bullet tore straight through the center of its chest. The mist scattered vertically on the spot without even causing the surrounding lights to flicker.

Through this coordinated volley, Richard spent four of the six Enchanted Bullets in his revolver.

He ignored two of the weaker phantoms; there was no need to waste bullets on targets that would shatter from a slap with the flat of an Enchanted Axe.

The four he killed had been approaching the innermost circle from two different directions, posing the greatest threat to Mr. Hutton's defensive line.

Old Biggs had taken down three on his side. Working together, they managed to relieve a portion of the pressure on the outer ring.

Richard glanced toward the Pit Core.

The Chief Responder was entangled by Mr. Hutton's verdicts and Mrs. MacNeil's Seven Spirits, his advance significantly bogged down.

But he was still moving forward.

The Weaver Woman's threads were stretched to their absolute limit.

The Wolf Spirit's golden net had several holes torn through it.

The cross-legged figure of the old woman from the Bone Bracelet was beginning to turn transparent.

Mr. Hutton's voice reciting the verdicts grew weaker and weaker.

The Chief Responder was suppressed to the point where every step was a struggle, yet his chanting never stopped.

The Group Two Leader raised his rifle to offer support from the other side, aiming at the two phantoms hugging the ground.

But right before he pulled the trigger, a certain segment of the Chief Responder's chant suddenly changed its tune.

It wasn't a new line of incantation. He picked out a few syllables from his original sentence and rearranged them into an extremely brief Spell Formula.

The Spell Formula was aimed directly at Lieutenant Colonel Ord.

Richard saw it clearly through Concealed Spirit Vision.

The moment the Spell Formula landed on him, the lieutenant colonel's breathing rhythm faltered for half a beat.

Only half a beat.

The phantom in front of the lieutenant colonel's left leg seized that momentary opening to lunge at his feet.

The Group Two Leader's shot hit the phantom in the back, missing its core.

The phantom's sharp claws slashed across the lieutenant colonel's left leg.

His trouser leg was ripped open, and blood seeped out.

The lieutenant colonel let out a muffled grunt and stepped back half a pace.

"Lieutenant Colonel!" the Group Two Leader shouted from the other side.

"I'm fine," Lieutenant Colonel Ord replied, his voice steady.

His main circuit had taken a hard hit from that disruption Spell Formula, causing its efficiency to drop significantly.

The Chief Responder didn't pause. His chant swelled into a new verse.

This time, even more phantoms swarmed out—a full fifteen of them, their target still the lieutenant colonel.

The female Group One Leader, the one with a scar on her brow bone, had already dispatched countless phantoms.

The Silver-Lead Bullets in her rifle were nearly spent, and she switched to Enchanted Bullets.

On the Group Two Leader's side, he was shielding Pony, firing as he retreated.

"Pony, stick close to me!" the Group Two Leader shouted. "Don't break formation!"

Right then, the Chief Responder cast another Silence Spell.

This time, the zone of Silence fell over the area where the Group Two Leader and Pony stood.

Pony was too close. His hand violently trembled as he raised his gun, and the Flintlock slipped from his grasp.

As for the Group Two Leader, in the exact instant he pulled the trigger, his Breathing rhythm was brutally cut off by the Silence.

His Spell Formula failed.

The Signature Artifact Dark Silver Gem embedded in his rifle should have released a burst of silver light alongside the shot to cleave through the leaping phantom.

But the gem didn't glow.

The phantom slammed into the Group Two Leader's chest.

He instinctively tried to block it with his rifle stock.

Before he could bring the gun up, the phantom burrowed straight into his chest.

Richard saw it with crystal clarity through his Concealed Spirit Vision.

After the phantom burrowed into the man's chest, the Ether Circuit inside his body—already disrupted by the Silence—was outright severed.

It all happened in a flash, too fast for Lieutenant Colonel Ord to come to his aid.

The Group Two Leader's footsteps halted.

He looked down at his own chest.

The man looked a little dazed, not yet grasping what had just happened.

"What's going on..."

He muttered to himself before pitching forward and collapsing.

"Group Two Leader!" Pony lunged forward.

He tried to catch the fallen leader.

But the phantom that had burrowed into the man's chest phased back out and lunged at Pony.

"Pony, duck!" the Group One Leader shouted from afar.

A delayed air bullet finally arrived, blasting the phantom into powder mid-air.

"Drag that kid back!" the lieutenant colonel roared.

The Group One Leader charged over, grabbed Pony by the back of his collar, and yanked him roughly away from the Group Two Leader's body.

Pony stumbled back a few steps, his hand still in a death grip on a scrap of torn cloth.

On the other side, Richard couldn't spare a glance for anyone else; his eyes were locked on the medium in the Chief Responder's hand.

It was a black scrap of something woven from an unknown material, clutched tightly in his right hand.

His gaze shifted to the Chief Responder's feet.

The inverted core area wasn't pitch black.

The halos of the five activated stone rings glowed steadily.

Where there was light, there were shadows.

—[Shadow Armor]

Following his modified approach, Richard reversed the ether flow from inward to outward, concentrating all the weight squarely onto the shadow cast by the Chief Responder's right hand.

The Chief Responder had just leaned forward to lunge, but right in that moment of hang time, his right hand gripping the medium abruptly sank.

The added weight wasn't particularly heavy for someone of his tier, but the sudden pressure caused his hand to instinctively loosen.

That black medium slipped from between his fingers.

Due to the sudden spike in weight on his right arm, his center of gravity was dragged half a step off balance.

"Grey Eyes! Fall back!"

Mr. Hutton's voice boomed through the cavern.

Only then did Richard realize that while casting [Shadow Armor], he had unwittingly stepped outside the protective range of the light locks.

He immediately dispelled the technique and retreated to the innermost ring of the lamp array.

Several light locks enveloped him once again.

Relying on the Silver Ring Madam Marie had given him, hanging around his neck, he pushed his gaze-shielding to the absolute maximum.

It ensured the Chief Responder paid him absolutely no mind from start to finish.

Richard simply stood quietly in the innermost circle, his eyes locked on the Chief Responder.

The battle on the outer ring had reached its most brutal stage.

The Chief Responder missed his lunge at the center of the Pit Core. His rhythm broken by the stumble, his chanting stuttered for the very first time.

Yet the phantoms he summoned continued to pour out in an endless stream.

The Chief Responder picked up the dropped medium and once again closed in on the center of the Pit Core.

Mr. Hutton's voice chanting the verdicts had grown intermittent.

The old man leaned heavily on the rune table, his entire body trembling.

Of Mrs. MacNeil's Seven Spirits, the Wolf Spirit's golden net was mostly shredded, and the Weaver Woman's threads were on the verge of snapping.

Wentworth, stabilized by that needle, had flanked to the side.

But his burst limit was completely overdrawn; there was no way he could pull off a second full-power charge.

Phantoms were still flooding the battlefield.

The entire situation had reached a tipping point.

Richard's gaze swept over toward Mrs. MacNeil.

The medium stood inside the second ring of light locks, clutching her Spirit Lodging Vessel.

Her eyes were fixed on the lieutenant colonel.

That night in Whitcom, at the most critical moment, the medium had summoned the lingering spirit of her teacher, Madam Marie, from the Bone Bracelet.

Logically, the current situation was far more perilous than that night in Whitcom.

The Bone Bracelet in the medium's hand shouldn't have remained shut for this long.

But Mrs. MacNeil's left hand hovered over the Bone Bracelet at her belt, making no move to go any further.

He remembered the 'trump card' Mr. Hutton had mentioned earlier and waited silently.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord stood on the outer ring.

The trump card he had held back this entire time finally had to be played.

The lieutenant colonel glanced at the Group Two Leader lying on the ground, then at Pony, who had been dragged back and was now kneeling on the floor.

"Everybody shut up. No one is to respond to this next part," the lieutenant colonel ordered.

He slowly raised his Steel Prosthetic Arm toward the inverted sea of stars overhead.

At that moment, a very faint tremor rippled through the entire core area.

Standing in the innermost ring, Richard didn't dare lock onto the lieutenant colonel with his Spirit Vision.

He could only use the absolute minimum radiation of his Perception to 'listen' for the moment the lieutenant colonel spoke.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord opened his mouth.

He chanted three lines of an invocation, pausing for a full breath between each one.

"He who stands at the apex of the cloud trails, one and the same with the wind."

The moment the first line left his lips, the stones in the cavern's ceiling shuddered slightly.

Some higher being dwelling in the deepest depths of the veil was roused from its slumber by those words.

"...He who once carved deep valleys with a single breath."

As the second line was spoken, the sound of a distant wind howling through a mountain pass echoed against Richard's eardrums.

Woven into that wind were countless faint, highly compressed breaths, almost impossible to hear.

"His lungs gone, his bones become flutes, only his breath remaining in this world."

The moment the third line left his lips, Richard froze.

He didn't dare move, nor did he dare look.

There was a gaze hovering overhead.

That 'overhead' wasn't the ceiling or the cavern roof.

It was a conceptual 'above,' the highest, most distant, most alien direction Richard could barely even fathom.

Just one glance, and the area where that gaze fell was instantly locked in an extreme state of compression.

The singular point caught in that grip remained perfectly still, while everything around it was irresistibly forced back.

Air, ether, and phantoms were all shoved away, along with the chant flowing from the Chief Responder's mouth.

Only then did Richard realize what it truly meant to be a 'Virtuoso'.

That being's 'Mystery' was the Wind.

The wind had no boundaries, no weight, and no death.

He had walked into the absolute depths beneath the veil, ripped out his own lungs, blown his bones into flutes, and discarded every part of himself except his 'breath.'

What remained was a wisp of existence equal only to the wind itself.

It did not need to be found, nor did it need to answer to anyone.

All it needed to do was breathe.

Its breath was the breath of the entire veil in this region.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord's Steel Prosthetic Arm, from the shoulder down to the fingertips, became enveloped in a razor-thin layer of white airflow.

That airflow had been borrowed from 'above'.

As the airflow descended, the lieutenant colonel's face instantly turned stone-grey, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

He reached out his hand in the Chief Responder's direction.

The prosthetic fingertips pointed down.

The entire core area was filled with an omnipresent, low-frequency wind pressure.

The wind pressure didn't blow, didn't shift, didn't make a sound.

It simply existed.

Guided by the spell, that Virtuoso softly blew a breath in this direction.

The Chief Responder couldn't withstand that breath.

The phantoms around him shattered first.

The bird-like phantom was crushed into powder by the pressure, and the faceless child phantom was ground to pieces down the middle.

The lead chant, the harmony, and the final tune of the Responder Group—their incantations were completely smothered by the wind pressure.

No one could ever finish chanting that segment of the true name.

The almost-completed true name revolving in the Chief Responder's mouth was violently crushed to a halt by the wind pressure.

Richard leaned inside his light locks, his face pointing straight at the ground, not daring to lift his gaze even an inch.

In that moment, a sudden thought struck him: what if, one day, he reached that level too?

Would his lungs be taken?

Would his bones be turned into flutes?

Would the only thing he left behind in this world be a shapeless wisp of breath?

Richard couldn't remember later just how long that wind pressure lasted.

The Chief Responder managed to withstand the initial brunt of it, but his body was on the verge of collapsing under the sheer pressure.

The compressed airflow on Lieutenant Colonel Ord's prosthetic arm dissipated.

The lieutenant colonel stumbled half a step forward and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"...Now."

His voice was so hoarse it was barely audible.

Wentworth had been waiting for exactly this.

He didn't need to use a burst of speed this time; the Chief Responder was already crushed into immobility.

Wentworth slipped behind the Chief Responder. The runes on his Enchanted Twin Blades flared, and a crimson arc sliced straight through the Chief Responder's back.

The Chief Responder's already crumbling humanoid form was completely shattered by the strike.

The fragment of the true name revolving inside his body dispersed.

The entire core area began to flip back right-side up.

The inverted sea of stars overhead slowly faded.

The starry sky dimmed one star at a time, morphing back into the rocky ceiling of a cavern a hundred and fifty feet underground.

The stone slabs beneath their feet remained, and the activated halos within the nine stone rings stabilized once again.

Lieutenant Colonel Ord lowered his Steel Prosthetic Arm.

The wind pressure lingering on the metal slowly dissipated.

The cavern fell silent.

"...Did we win?" Pony asked, his voice raspy as he knelt on the ground and looked up.

No one answered immediately.

Everyone was gasping for air.

Wentworth dropped to one knee, his overdrawn body barely able to hold on.

Mr. Hutton leaned against the rune table, his face drained of all color.

Mrs. MacNeil withdrew the Seven Spirits back into her Spirit Lodging Vessel.

Richard stood in the innermost ring.

After casting [Shadow Armor], driving in that [Moon Nail: Reflection], and sustaining his Spirit Vision for so long, he was equally pushed to his absolute limit.

But just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief, his Inspiration caught a razor-thin sense of wrongness.

In the moment before the Chief Responder died, the look on his face hadn't been fear.

It was a smile.

That smile was exactly identical to the ones on the faces of the severed 'Final Tunes'—peaceful and fully satisfied.

Mr. Hutton didn't sit down to rest.

The old man was severely depleted, his entire body shaking, but he leaned over the rune table and picked up his chisel once more.

"The seal wasn't broken." Mr. Hutton's voice was weak, but his hand was steady.

"But it was 'asked' a question, and it was infiltrated in reverse."

"The sixth through the ninth rings must be entirely re-engraved and resealed."

"And, we need to add a new node."