Chapter 231: The One Behind Him

"I'm ashamed to say," he answered steadily.

"I couldn't unravel that seal of yours myself. I lost the thread by the third turning point."

"Oh?" Hecate's old-woman voice cut in. "Then how did it end up an empty shell?"

"I had some help from a senior."

Richard offered the explanation, deliberately leaving the thought unfinished.

"A senior Scholar."

Around the table, the others' breathing hitched slightly.

"When the senior dismantled your seal..."

Richard continued, "...he explained a few things as he worked. My own learning is shallow, so I only caught the gist."

Hecate's Golden Mask faced him in silence.

"The senior said the framework of your seal was set up brilliantly."

Richard started with praise.

"Especially the third layer of overlapping seals, where the two intents of 'closure' and 'reverse reading' were woven together seamlessly. He said the stacking method looked familiar, somewhat like a certain paper from 1887."

"The senior also said..."

"...that you altered the inscriptions on that framework yourself, and quite brilliantly at that.

Anyone who could rework the old framework to create these two new turning points truly knows their craft."

Having said his piece, Richard stopped there.

He never used the word "plagiarism." He never said, "Did you think I wouldn't notice?" And he certainly never revealed the Professor's name.

But anyone who knew the trade would naturally catch the unspoken meaning.

On the surface, his words praised Hecate for being "brilliant" and "knowing her craft."

But as for the person who could recognize at a glance exactly whose framework she had used and where she had tweaked it... did anyone even need to ask whose mastery was higher?

Over at the head of the table, the silhouette of the Torch and Key swayed for a moment before steadying.

Hecate fell silent for a long moment.

Richard waited.

Publicly calling someone out for plagiarism would make anyone turn hostile.

But as long as he offered her a way out—framing "plagiarism" as "carrying on a legacy," and "being seen through" as "expert appreciation"...

...she could take the out and preserve her dignity.

"...That paper."

Hecate finally spoke, the sharp edge in her maiden voice now tucked away.

"I have indeed studied it in depth."

"The person who wrote it must be getting on in years by now."

"Yes," Richard answered. "That senior is quite old."

"Is the Professor still teaching?" Hecate asked.

"Occasionally."

"I see."

Hecate didn't press the matter.

She didn't ask for a name, and Richard didn't offer one.

But no one sitting at this table was a layman.

In the mystical world, Scholars honored with the title of Professor were all Major Adepts.

The Virtuosos, Masters, and Archons mentioned in the old texts were virtually unseen in the Old Continent today.

The Major Adept tier was the absolute peak that anyone currently living could hope to reach.

And a figure like that was standing right behind Richard.

The scales in Nemesis's mind tipped entirely in Richard's favor.

She was an orphan of the Moon-Hunting Lineage. Whatever meager connections her father had built in life had mostly been severed upon his death.

She had earned her seat at this anonymous round table entirely on the back of sheer, stubborn desperation, scraping out her family's most closely guarded heirlooms one by one to pave her way forward.

But this youth in front of her—Hermes—was different.

He had someone backing him. Even rarer, his words just now had been perfectly measured, advancing and retreating without the slightest misstep.

He revealed what needed to be revealed, hid what needed to be hidden, and even managed to save Hecate's face in the process.

An indescribable feeling welled up in Nemesis's chest. If only she had someone to watch her back as well...

Ares remained slumped in his chair.

He thought back to how he had been half a year ago.

Back then, he had proudly laid out his 3rd Circle Enchanted Bullets on the table, full of high-spirited confidence as he bartered for intel on the Ash Belt.

He had thought of himself as a true Hunter, the only person at this table who actually waded in and out of evil creature nests with cold steel and live fire.

And now?

He sat at this table, unable to even stammer out a proper word of congratulations.

Scholars truly were a different breed. They lived long, held high status, and the further up they went, the more untouchable they became.

Prometheus didn't care about any of that. He was busy trying to figure out exactly who was standing behind Richard.

There weren't many Scholars in the Empire worthy of being called "Professor" to begin with.

The registered ones, the ones in government offices, the hermits—he had a rough tally of them all in his head.

He would have to reevaluate just how close he should get to this youth from now on, and how much he needed to hold back.

Dionysus—a newly promoted Minor Adept—looked at Richard with a gaze that ran deeper than the others.

Only by reaching the Minor Adept tier and crossing that threshold could one truly grasp just how much weight Scholars carried within the mystical world's hierarchy.

Advancing to Minor Adept required transferring a part of one's soul into a signature artifact.

And that critical ritual always required the help of a Scholar...

On the other side of the table, Demeter's ears had immediately perked up.

She remained completely stoic. With her hands resting on her knees and her mask angled down, she looked as though she hadn't heard a thing.

But her mind was racing.

1887... in the field of sealing... something written well enough for Hecate to use as a foundational framework...

A wrinkled old face immediately surfaced in Demeter's mind.

White eyebrows, sparse hair, and a pair of hands that shook incessantly. He always looked terrified whenever he carried anything, yet he never actually spilled a single drop.

She had only met the man once, at an academic seminar in the Imperial Capital—though she could no longer recall what the topic had been.

When the host announced, "We now invite Professor Silas Mortimer for his commentary," she had expected an imposing, awe-inspiring figure to take the stage.

Instead, a hunched-over old man had shuffled out. Supported by a young assistant, he had spent half a minute tremblingly feeling around for the stairs.

She was just a hotheaded rookie who had newly crossed the Practitioner threshold back then, and her first thought had been:

'This is the Major Adept Professor from Imperial Capital University? This old geezer looks like he's about to drop dead.'

Then the old man had taken his seat at the podium and started speaking.

And from that moment on, she hadn't had time for a single stray thought.

And now, the youth sitting at this table had that very Professor standing behind him?

Thinking of that wrinkled old face, Demeter found the situation rather amusing.

Hecate's seal had stolen the old man's framework?

If the old man found out, he would probably hobble over on his cane to tremblingly demand an explanation.

Of course, all these thoughts merely spun around in her head. Beneath her mask, she remained a picture of perfect calm, not leaking a single emotion.

She was always like this.

She couldn't let anyone know about her running in circles through the wastelands.

Nor could she let them know how utterly bizarre she found all these youngsters.

Someone standing right at the threshold of becoming a Major Adept needed to carry themselves like one.

Steady, taciturn, and commanding enough to hold the room.

As for her natural, irrepressible liveliness... she would just have to force it to behave itself.

Without any rush, Richard stowed the empty Ebony Box and the Bronze Mirror back into his leather bag.

He hadn't brought these two items to trade; they were purely meant to build his reputation.

With that reputation now firmly established, he was ready to strike while the iron was hot and finish the actual piece of minor business he had come here to do.

"I have a few other things to offer," he said.

"One is a reverse-engineered model of [Shadow Armor]. The other is [Moon Nail: Reflection]."

"Neither is an exclusive. Ares and Nemesis both have copies already."

Dionysus was still hesitating. His recent promotion had completely bled his meager resources dry.

Demeter, however, raised her downward-angled terracotta mask.

"I've heard Hecate mention those two models before. I'm personally quite interested in them."

Richard looked at her.

Demeter placed her calloused hands on the edge of the table.

"I left in a hurry today and didn't bring any goods. I can't pull anything decent from my inventory to trade."

Saying this, she pulled out a stack of something and set it on the table.

It was cash. A thick stack of banknotes.

"But I did bring money. Thirty pounds for one, sixty pounds for both."

With that, she slid the stack of bills across the table toward Richard.

"See if this is enough."

Every eye at the table instantly locked onto the stack of cash.

Sixty pounds was no small sum.

Richard quickly ran the math in his head.

He had reverse-engineered these two manuscripts stroke by stroke himself. It was pure paper labor—it cost him absolutely nothing to produce.

And now, with a single word from Demeter, sixty pounds in cold, hard cash had just been slapped down on the table.

It was essentially sixty free pounds.

"It's enough. Deal."

Demeter accepted the two manuscripts and set them on her lap.

"Hermes, this appraisal skill of yours..."

She cast another glance toward his empty Ebony Box.

"If I ever get my hands on something I can't quite identify, could I ask you to look it over?"

"I can look it over," Richard said. He had been waiting for exactly this opening. "Appraisals come with a fee, naturally, depending on the item."

"As they should." Demeter nodded. "Paid work is reliable work. I don't trust anything done for free."

Hecate's tri-layered voice echoed out once more.

"That concludes the trading segment."

"We will now begin the intelligence-sharing segment."

The moment the intelligence segment opened, the conversation around the table converged on a single topic.

Prometheus spoke first.

His contacts in the New Continent had brought back the heaviest news of the night.

To the list of three inland New Continent colonies that had been completely emptied out—"without war, without plague"—a fourth had just been added.

The houses were still standing. The furniture was untouched. Even the clothes on the washing lines were still there. But the people were gone.

The Admiralty's extraction teams still couldn't scrounge up enough volunteers to investigate.

"The Old Continent is heading for war," Prometheus said, keeping the fire on his head suppressed. "And the New Continent is starting to unravel, too."

"The two are connected," Nemesis chimed in.

Her intelligence from the Highlands reported a southward migration of evil creatures.

Over the past two months, the packs of roaming evil creatures in the northern Gaelic Highlands had swelled again. They were tracking south along the industrial belt, moving much faster than before.

"My sources couldn't figure out what's driving them out," Nemesis said. "All they know is that the evil creatures are on the run."

Dionysus shared his news from the Imperial Capital.

Last month, the committee under the Royal Society had raised the alert level for anomalous events by another half-tier.

The maintenance cycle for all registered seals had been shortened from eight months to six.

Ares had no new intelligence to offer.

His contact lines in the Ash Belt had been severed right along with his arm.

He could only offer a brief overview of some of the more troublesome evil creatures in the region. After that, he had nothing left to say.

Demeter remained silent.

When her turn came, she simply shook her head.

"I don't have much to say. I just tend to my fields. Over the last two years, the grain has been growing faster and faster, but the yields have grown hollow."

She said this single sentence, then clammed up again.

Something clicked in Richard's mind.

Growing faster, but growing hollow.

It sounded like simple farmer's talk, but if applied to matters of the veil... it meant weak points expanding rapidly, weak points devoid of underlying substance.

Whatever "fields" she was tending to, they certainly weren't ordinary ones.

He didn't press the issue. It was his turn now.

He mentally sifted through what he could share and what he absolutely couldn't.

The night Professor Mortimer sealed the Unresponsive Pit, that Virtuoso of the Gale tradition had arrived on the wind.

Richard had been there to hear every single word exchanged between the two old friends reuniting after decades apart.

Some of those words could absolutely not be repeated outside.

The fact that the Virtuoso's true body was currently in the New Continent... the fact that he was born in a village in this very region... the fact that he refused to tell the Professor the name of that village before leaving...

He couldn't breathe a single word about any of that.

But there was one thing he could share.

"The fallen Major Adept from Hemus Island," Richard began.

Everyone at the table looked toward him.

Even Hecate had admitted that her channels were only good enough to confirm the man's death, not how he had actually died.

"I've heard a bit about his cause of death," Richard said.

At the head of the table, Hecate turned her Golden Mask toward him.

"He wasn't murdered," Richard enunciated every word. "He starved to death."