Chapter 223: The Fading of Mystery

Richard stood inside the innermost ring of the light-lock and glanced down at his chest.

The Silver Ring and Eagle Hook hanging from a leather cord around his neck were icy to the touch.

They had stayed ice-cold ever since the pit was sealed.

As for his [Perception]—he stole a quiet glance at his Panel.

The progress for [Perception] Lv.2 had surged upward.

After half a day of continuously observing two entities countless ranks above his own, the progress had shot up to nearly sixty percent.

He hadn't done anything.

He had merely stood there, watching and listening, breathing within a swirling gust of wind as a gaze occasionally swept past him.

But that "watching" and "listening" alone were the best nourishment for the [Perception] skill.

...

The day before Professor Mortimer was set to return to the Imperial Capital, Richard asked Mr. Hutton for an introduction.

He brought the Ebony Box to the old professor.

They met in Hutton's office.

"Professor." Richard pushed the box across the desk.

"I have something I can't identify myself. I was hoping you could take a look."

Professor Mortimer set down his cup of warm water, reached out with his perpetually trembling hand, and pulled the box closer.

He looked first at the temporary seal added by Ares.

He said nothing. The seal was too crude—so hastily thrown together it wasn't worth a second glance.

Then his gaze fell on the layer added by Hecate.

The old man chuckled.

It was a dry, raspy laugh, like a man recognizing an old friend's handwriting or stumbling across a sentence far too mature for a schoolchild's homework.

Richard waited for him to explain the joke.

Professor Mortimer did not.

When his chuckling faded, he examined the box for a moment before speaking in a slow drawl.

"This belongs to the Web Weaving Tradition."

Richard's mind stirred.

The pre-Roman altar in the Ash Belt belonged to the Web Weaving Tradition;

The Bronze Mirror, with the shallow relief of the "Threads of Fate" circling its rim, was also from the Web Weaving Tradition.

"You must have divined this already," the old man said with absolute certainty.

"...I have."

"What did you get?"

"Opening it completely is a dead end."

Professor Mortimer chuckled again.

"But you didn't divine why it means death, did you?"

He hadn't.

The Tower card only gave outcomes, not the reasons behind them.

That was the boundary of his current divination capability. Probing any deeper would invite backlash.

"Professor, could you..."

"What's the rush?" Professor Mortimer waved a hand. "Let me break it down for you."

He tapped the box lightly.

"There's a very common misconception in our line of work."

"Many people think that whatever is sealed inside a box just wants to 'jump out and bite.'"

"...Doesn't it?" Richard asked.

"The ones that bite are the lowest tier."

The old man continued, "Sealing things that bite is the easiest job. You just carve an inscription like an iron cage and leave it at that."

"The truly troublesome ones are the things that don't bite."

A chill crept down Richard's spine.

"If they don't bite, what do they eat?"

"They feed on 'pitch'."

The old man lightly plucked the air around the box.

"Let me give you an analogy. Have you ever held a tuning fork?"

"...I know what it is, but I haven't held one."

"When you strike a tuning fork, it rings at a fixed pitch."

Professor Mortimer gestured.

"If you don't strike it, it doesn't ring.

But if you strike another fork with a similar pitch right next to it, it starts vibrating on its own."

"These types of things are tuning forks."

Richard suddenly understood.

"It won't come out," the old man continued. "It just waits inside the box for someone to disturb the ether around it."

"To unravel its seal, you have to use ether, don't you?"

"...Yes."

"And when you read its inscriptions, you have to extend your Inspiration into them, right?"

"...I do."

"The moment your ether moves and you read those inscriptions, that fork starts ringing."

Professor Mortimer tapped the desk rhythmically twice.

"It rings once, and it siphons a sliver of your ether."

"It rings a second time, and it siphons two."

"By the tenth ring, your own ether circulation will perfectly match its pitch."

The old man paused, pulling his trembling hand back to his knee.

A sudden sheen of cold sweat broke out on Richard's back.

"Then what should I do?"

"Have you recently seen or learned a method to make ether 'quiet down'?"

He was referring to the Silence Spell, and Richard wasn't surprised the professor had noticed.

"...I have," Richard answered honestly.

"I recently read about a method that can temporarily 'pause' ether activity within a confined area."

"Then it's simple."

Professor Mortimer pushed the box back toward Richard.

"To handle things that 'feed on resonance,' you don't need overwhelming strength.

When unraveling its seal, you first use your method to draw out a small pocket of 'dead water' around the box."

The old man traced an invisible circle around the box.

"Inside that patch of dead water, no matter how fine your ether flow is, its tuning fork won't hear a thing."

Richard stood by the table, running the method over and over in his mind.

Silence. Form a vacuum.

Read the inscriptions from within that vacuum, letting the energy seep out in batches.

This perfectly aligned with the stress-fatigue method he had used on the Sphinx Lamp, and it seamlessly matched the "Temperance" and "Star" from his divination.

Divination had only told him that doing it in batches was feasible.

Now, the professor had filled in the blanks: why the batch approach worked, and what had to be done first.

Richard stood straight and gave a formal bow.

"Thank you for your guidance, Professor."

Professor Mortimer was granting Hutton a considerable favor.

He did not stop there. He picked up his ginger water and took another sip.

"Since you've delivered it right to my doorstep, and it's been years since I've unraveled something of this caliber, I'll use it to warm up my hands."

The old man brought the box in front of him.

"Stand a bit closer. Watch carefully."

"...Yes, sir."

Richard's breathing unconsciously grew lighter.

He quietly pulled out a notebook and a fountain pen.

Even with his [Erudition], he still fell back on his habit of taking notes.

Mr. Hutton glanced over and nodded in satisfaction.

Professor Mortimer rested his finger against the first layer of the nested seal.

"This layer is a 'Gag Knot' from the Web Weaving Tradition."

"The Celts used it to seal the mouths of their sacrifices, preventing them from shouting forbidden names during rituals."

"Its core inscription is anchored... right here."

The old man tapped it lightly.

"To break it, you have to strike at the 'seam' where it closes."

With a light swipe of his finger, the Gag Knot—which had looked utterly seamless to Richard's Inspiration—unraveled on its own.

The fountain pen practically flew across the notebook.

"Gag Knot... closure point... fine seam... anchor stroke..."

He wrote until his fingers ached, but barely halfway through the notes, the old man moved on to the second layer.

"This layer is a 'Reverse-Reading Lock' added by someone later.

Fearing someone might read it straight through, they made it so reading it backward forms a curse."

Professor Mortimer hooked a finger.

The second layer dissolved, and the deconstruction of the third began.

"The third layer is a 'Branching Knot'—knots looped within knots. If you untie the surface layer, a new one grows back from inside."

"To break it, you first have to find the 'mother branch'."

"The mother branch is the only stroke that doesn't sprout child branches. It's the most unremarkable one."

Professor Mortimer tapped a spot among the dense runes.

"Here."

Richard looked over; that single stroke was indeed the most unnoticeable marking in the entire seal.

If the professor hadn't pointed it out, Richard could have studied the seal to pieces without realizing it was any different from the surrounding strokes.

With a hook of the finger, the mother branch snapped.

The entire layer of Branching Knots retracted inward on its own, peeling away like an onion skin.

Richard's pen paused on the paper.

He stopped writing; attempting to keep up was futile.

[Erudition] securely archived every stroke he saw and every explanation he heard.

Richard was just about to jot down a footnote when the old professor spoke without lifting his head.

"At your tier, just managing to memorize what a Gag Knot is is already quite good."

Professor Mortimer touched the innermost layer.

"Still, your willingness to take notes is a good thing."

"Someone willing to take notes might leave blanks where they can't record it all, but they know exactly what pieces they are missing."

"Then, when their Rank is high enough, they can look back and fill in those missing pieces themselves."

"Someone who refuses to take notes assumes they understand the moment they watch it, and that fragment of understanding becomes the absolute limit of what they will ever grasp."

Richard listened with his head bowed.

By the time the seventh layer of the seal completely unraveled, the danger radiating from the box in his Inspiration had dropped to a manageable level.

Professor Mortimer pushed the box back in front of Richard.

Ares's sloppy temporary seal was untouched; the box itself remained sealed.

Richard carefully wrapped the box back up—one layer of oiled paper, one layer of coarse salt.

Halfway through packing it away, he raised his head.

"Professor, I have a question."

"Just now, as you dismantled that seal from start to finish... you barely touched the structure 'itself'."

"I've read that when Scholars appraise supernatural items, the hardest part is extracting the danger without damaging the item's intrinsic value."

Professor Mortimer chuckled.

"Little Hutton, this student of yours hit the nail on the head."

Beside them, Mr. Hutton revealed a hint of gratification before immediately suppressing it.

Professor Mortimer held his ginger water and leaned back in his chair.

"Once you reach a high enough level, you'll realize that everything we Scholars do boils down to a single action."

"Just one?"

"Seeing."

The old man emphasized the word heavily.

"Once you see something clearly enough to understand it, it is no longer a 'mystery'."

"And when it is no longer a mystery, it loses its power over you."

"This is what's known as 'The Fading of Mystery'."

Richard's breathing grew lighter.

The fading of mystery.

The deeper the understanding, the less the "mystery";

understand it entirely, and all supernatural power bleeds away.

Professor Mortimer smiled:

"What I lack most right now is new amusement. Deconstructing your box today was quite entertaining."

"...Entertaining?"

"Indeed. The person who set this seal is quite interesting."

The old man took a sip of ginger water.

"If you ever cross paths with them, pass on a message for me."

"...What message?"

"Tell them: 'Old Mo wants to know if you copied this seal from Chapter Three of his 1887 paper.'"

Richard stared in sheer disbelief.

"...Did they?"

"Pretty much." Professor Mortimer nodded. "They changed seven runes and hid two pivot points, thinking I wouldn't notice."

"You noticed?"

"It's my own work. How could I not?" The professor lifted his cane and lightly tapped Richard on the head.

...

It was already dusk by the time he returned home.

Evelyn, wearing her checkered apron, was staring at a fresh tray inside the oven with a bitter frown.

"Brother! You're just in time," she said without looking back. "Come quick. It's a disaster."

Richard's heart skipped a beat.

He had spent the entire trip home mulling over the seal, his nerves still strung tight, and he bolted into the kitchen.

"What's wrong?"

"Mr. Rabbit..." Evelyn pointed at the baking sheet, her voice trembling. "He collapsed."

Richard looked down.

Inside the baking sheet sat a row of gingerbread rabbits, all with plump, round bellies and crooked icing eyes.

The one in the middle—the one Evelyn had knighted and dubbed "Mr. Rabbit" (Version Five)—had genuinely caved in.

His round belly was sunken, his long ears flopped limply to one side, and the icing on his face had melted into a blur.

"He was supposed to be the smartest one in the litter,"

Evelyn mourned.

"I added an extra spoonful of sugar to make him sweeter, but instead he just... melted."

Richard stared down at the collapsed, blurry gingerbread rabbit, holding his tongue for a long moment.

"...My condolences. He sacrificed himself for sweetness."

"Stop joking!" Evelyn swatted his hand.

"I'm seriously starting to suspect that too much sugar makes them collapse."

"Highly likely," Richard nodded. "Too much sugar, and the structure can't hold up."

He thought back to the Ebony Box.

In all things, excess was just as bad as deficiency.

"Then I'll cut back on the sugar for the next litter."

Evelyn jotted a note in her notebook, which had a cake drawn on the cover.

"Minus half a spoon. Too much and they collapse, too little and they're not sweet. I have to find that... that exact spot in the middle."

"Temperance," Richard blurted out.

"What?" Evelyn didn't understand.

"I said, it's called temperance."

Richard pinched the collapsed Mr. Rabbit and popped him into his mouth.

"Not too much, not too little. Just right."

"Hey... that was a failure! I was keeping it to study!"

"He already collapsed," Richard mumbled through a mouthful of gingerbread. "It was time to lay him to rest."

Their mother, Margaret, walked into the kitchen carrying an empty teacup and glanced at the squabbling siblings.

"Dinner is oat porridge again," she said.

"Mom," Evelyn immediately protested. "I've been baking rabbits all afternoon!"

"Rabbits are rabbits, and porridge is porridge," Margaret said as she sorted the vegetables.

Richard picked up the warm bowl of oat porridge his mother had served and sat at the table.

Outside the window, the early spring sky was staying light longer.

He finished the last bite of his porridge and reached for one of the uncollapsed rabbits on the tray.

"That's the Rabbit Knight!" Evelyn was quick to slap his hand away. "He's still alive!"

"He has to die in the line of duty eventually."

"Not by your hand!"