Chapter 288: Blood and Price

As the gathering wound down, Richard took the opportunity to ask again about seeing the genuine artifacts in the Storeroom.

Curator Wetherby stroked his beard.

"I knew you had your heart set on that."

"Sorry for the trouble."

"It's no trouble at all." The curator gathered his long beard against his chest.

"I'll just have to go down with you. The collection is official property, and the rules must be followed."

A weight lifted from Richard's chest.

The two arrived in the Storeroom, surrounded by serpentine bronzes, sacrificial knives, human-skin drums, and a few polished skull vessels...

He didn't dare get too close, merely extending his Inspiration along the flowing ether toward the nearest glass display case.

Practice made perfect. With the added boost from [Silent Observation], he was already quite skilled at this.

[Available Points: 1.83... 1.84...]

The numbers ticked upward, though much slower this time.

The Storeroom didn't have that torn-off Virtuoso fragment stirring things up.

The seals were locked down tight. The slight leakage seeping through the gaps was so faint he could barely catch it.

[Available Points: 1.85... 1.86...]

It would probably take quite a while to finish absorbing it this time.

He needed to make conversation so the curator wouldn't get suspicious.

"Curator," Richard said, crouching in front of a serpentine bronze piece to examine its coiled patterns.

"The human sacrifices in the subcontinent and the islands... I've read about them, but I don't quite understand it all."

Curator Wetherby, who had been studying a human-skin drum with his hands behind his back, perked up at the question.

Old scholars who ran museums always loved to lecture.

"What do you want to know?"

"How many people... do they actually kill?"

Richard's Inspiration brushed over the bronze piece, skimming off a thin layer of ether.

"I read an old record that claimed when a certain temple was completed, the sacrifices alone..."

"Killed over ten thousand people," Curator Wetherby said with a nod.

"When war prisoners were plentiful, a single altar could see hundreds of chests cut open in a day. The blood flowed down the steps like a river, pooling at the bottom and coagulating into a thick crust."

Suddenly, the damp, metallic scent of spices lingering in the Storeroom felt slightly nauseating.

"Listen closely, Richard. Warfare over there is very different from how our nations in the Western Continent fight.

"When the Empire goes to war, it's for land, money, and cities. But when they fight, sometimes the entire goal is just to capture people alive."

"To feed to their gods."

A chill ran through Richard as he listened.

"And what about the islands out at sea?"

"The islands operate on a whole different set of rules," Curator Wetherby said, shifting gears.

"The jungles are deep, the miasma is heavy, and there are countless tribes. A single island might have dozens of tribes locked in endless warfare."

"They worship their ancestors, mountain gods, and the things living in the sea."

"Some of the most vicious tribes over there will actually practice cannibalism."

"Cannibalism?"

"Exactly," Curator Wetherby said, frowning.

"And not out of desperate starvation, either."

"They believe spirituality resides in the brain. They crack open the skulls, scoop out the brains, and eat them raw.

"Eat enough of it, and they catch a bizarre disease. They start trembling all over, unable to stand, laughing uncontrollably until they simply die laughing.

"They don't realize the cannibalism causes it; they just assume they've been cursed by their enemies.

"So they go back to war, capture more people, and eat more brains..."

"Richard." Curator Wetherby studied his expression. "You look a bit pale."

"...I'm fine," Richard said, taking a moment to recover. "I just feel... it shouldn't be this way."

The old man sighed.

"It shouldn't. I've devoted my whole life to scholarship; I've read about the Black Soil River, Persia, and the island nations.

"But even I feel sick to my stomach when I read these records."

He looked up at the lamp hanging from the Storeroom ceiling.

"Think about it. A person can till a field, spin yarn, work in a mine, or carry sacks.

"Here, they are our most vital workforce.

"Factories, railways, and shipyards all rely on tens of thousands of such hands to keep them running."

The old man shook his head.

"But over there... that kind of workforce is just tossed away, sacrificed to feed invisible things."

"They burn them up and get nothing in return. Fields still need to be planted, and yarn still needs to be spun."

"It's no different from tossing a crate of gold pounds into a furnace just for fun."

Richard stood before the glass case, listening to the curator's speech, but his mind had drifted elsewhere.

The sky over Briston was gray year-round.

More than half the adults in the city suffered from respiratory issues.

His own lungs had grown up marinating in that same coal smoke.

The men in the mines spent their whole lives in the pits. By the time they hit their thirties or forties, their lungs were coated in an unwashable layer of black grit.

They weren't dead, but their breaths grew shorter with every passing year.

He thought of the teenager he'd seen lining up for the draft earlier, so emaciated that his shoulder blades jutted out.

The names carved beneath the Black Trench mostly belonged to the lowest class in the city.

Over in the Spice Islands, they dragged people to stone troughs and fed them to invisible gods with a single slice of a knife.

Here in the Empire, they stuffed people into mines, factories, and military trains, feeding them to a different kind of invisible thing.

They were ground down by the machine for decades, until their lungs were pitch-black and they couldn't catch their breath...

The only difference was that one death was quick, and the other was slow.

He masked his turbulent thoughts.

"Then... with human sacrifice being so prevalent, wouldn't the weak points over there be incredibly rich?"

"Extremely rich," Curator Wetherby said, raising his eyebrows.

"Hundreds, even thousands of years of blood, poured into those places generation after generation. How could they not be?"

"And their mystic side..."

"Is no joke either," Curator Wetherby said, stroking his beard.

"If we're talking about top-tier powerhouses, the Eastern Continent and the island nations are every bit a match for our Empire."

A brief silence fell over the Storeroom.

Richard's Inspiration continued to roam over the small green-glazed statues, the carved sacrificial knives, the human-skin drums...

[Available Points: 2.01... 2.04...]

It crossed the two-point mark.

Richard breathed a sigh of relief the moment the numbers broke past two points.

Outwardly, however, he didn't show a thing. He just followed the flow of the conversation.

"Curator, after hearing all that, there's still one thing I can't figure out."

"Hmm?"

"You said the weak points in the Eastern Continent are incredibly rich, and their mystic side is powerful."

Richard looked at the curator.

"Yet when the Empire's fleets sailed over, chunk after chunk of their land was conquered by the Empire and the other powers of the Western Continent."

"If their mystics are so strong, why couldn't they defend their own borders?"

Curator Wetherby's hand paused on his beard.

"That question..."

He opened his mouth to answer, but stopped, gathering his white beard against his chest once more.

"You really do have a sharp mind."

"Curator?"

"It's a long story," the old man said, waving his hand.

"The root cause of their failure to defend their borders is actually hidden in that very same strength..."

He stopped mid-sentence, lightly tapping the air above the human-skin drum.

"Never mind. We won't get into that today."

"You can ponder it yourself. Once you've spent more time in the Imperial Capital and read more, you'll naturally figure it out."

Richard didn't press the issue.

The ether seeping out in the Storeroom was growing fainter with every pass.

[Available Points: 2.07... 2.09...]

The numbers halted at 2.09.

The supernatural items began to seal themselves back up, cutting off the remaining seepage.

Richard did a quick mental calculation.

Without the Virtuoso fragment shaking things loose, he'd spent over half an hour just to harvest barely 0.3 points.

Still, it was enough to push his total past the two-point threshold.

One shouldn't be too greedy. It was time to quit while he was ahead.

After a moment's hesitation, Richard reached into his bag and pulled out the Sacred Ibis Bronze Paperweight and the Small Bronze Balance.

Ordinarily, he would've just used the Silence Spell to repeat his usual trick.

But with the curator here—an expert who dealt with antiquities daily—it was better to ask for advice first.

"Curator, there's something else I'd like to ask you about."

Curator Wetherby's eyes fell on the two bronze items, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Artifacts from the Black Soil River."

"Thoth's bird, and Maat's scale. Where did you get these?"

"My cut from a case back in Briston," Richard replied, offering half the truth.

"They've been tainted with some unclean things. I want to purify them, but I haven't found the right method."

Curator Wetherby took the Sacred Ibis paperweight, weighed it in his palm, and leaned in to inspect the inscription on the bronze base.

"Hmm... The foundation is still relatively clean. They've been tampered with, but not too severely."

Curator Wetherby placed the paperweight back into Richard's hands. "Then this will be easy to fix."

"When you purify it, don't try using some spell formula to clash head-on with its resentment."

"Clash head-on?"

"The thing about resentment is, the harder you press it, the deeper it burrows."

Curator Wetherby shook his head. "You need a different approach."

He paused, pointing at the Sacred Ibis.

"Think about it. What was this bird originally meant to do?"

"Thoth's bird keeps records for the Nine Gods," Richard replied. "Whatever is written in the ledger, that is what the deceased's heart is."

"Exactly."

The curator instructed,

"It was born to 'record the truth.' All you have to do is remind it of its original job."

Richard vaguely grasped the idea.

"You mean... let it 'keep records' again?"

The old man gestured toward the Small Bronze Balance with his chin.

"The balance works on the same principle. These two supernatural items are meant to be used together."

"If you use it to weigh things, the supernatural item will remember what it was originally meant to do."

"Thank you for the guidance, Curator."

Curator Wetherby walked toward the Storeroom exit with his hands behind his back.

"I'm just a chatty old man. Give me a willing listener, and I'll talk their ear off."