Chapter 304: Spirit World Passage

At nine o'clock on Friday night, Richard sealed the doors and windows tight.

A blank sheet of paper lay spread across the desk, a fountain pen resting beside it.

Without warning, the flame of the gas lamp on the windowsill shrank.

A black cat squeezed through the gap under the door.

"...Madam," Richard said, rising to his feet.

The black cat paced over to the desk, its golden eyes falling on the blank paper.

"Since this is your first time, I will watch over you myself."

A thread of gentle attention channeled through the black cat from somewhere impossibly far away.

"In the future, when you are in the Imperial Capital, I will arrange another watcher for you."

"For tonight, simply do exactly as I say."

The black cat raised a paw, and several items materialized out of thin air on the desk.

Ashcore Grass, poppy shell, bay leaf, and spirit moss.

"Ingest them in this exact order," the black cat said.

"Once you have, take the pen in your hand."

"Do not think about 'writing' anything."

"The more you think, the more you will merely write your own thoughts."

"Simply let yourself fall into a trance. Your hand will move on its own."

Richard looked at the small piles of herbal powder, feeling a touch uncertain.

"Madam... during the automatic scribe, where is it that I 'go'?"

The black cat twitched its ears.

"You go nowhere. You remain right here in this chair."

Those golden eyes shot a glance out the window before turning back.

"What leaves is your Inspiration."

"The Ashcore Grass will loosen your Inspiration. The poppy shell will put you halfway to sleep, and the bay leaf will point the way."

"The spirit moss acts as a bridge."

"It builds a tremendously narrow bridge stretching from your chair all the way to the Deep World behind the veil."

"Both the Spirit Realm and the Astral Realm exist within the Deep World."

Richard's breathing slowed.

"The automatic scribe sends your Inspiration to the very edge of the Spirit Realm."

The black cat continued its explanation.

"The Spirit Realm is awash in 'thoughts'."

"Thoughts scattered by the living, thoughts left behind by the dead... hundreds, even thousands of years' worth, sinking there thread by thread."

"Your task tonight is simply to reach into that sea of thoughts and dredge them up at random."

It stressed, "Remember, you must only sift through the edges unconsciously."

"Your bridge is incredibly narrow. If your emotions grow too strong or you delve too deep, it will snap."

"And once that bridge snaps..."

All warmth vanished from those golden eyes.

"You will never return."

A chill ran through Richard's heart.

"I will guard you," the black cat promised.

"If anything goes wrong, I will yank you back."

The Ashcore Grass tasted bitter on his tongue.

The poppy shell carried an indescribable sweetness.

The bay leaf held a hint of spice.

The spirit moss was the strangest of all; it tasted like absolutely nothing.

Yet once swallowed, a fresh scent—like damp earth newly turned after a rain—rose from the back of his throat.

Once he consumed the mixture, he settled back into his chair at the desk and gripped the fountain pen.

At first, nothing happened.

About five minutes later, his eyelids grew heavy.

The objects in the corners of the room slowly faded into the gloom.

The desk, the walls, the gas lamp... everything seemed separated from him by a layer of water.

No, something far thicker than water. It flooded over him and the room, layer upon layer.

Things drifted along the edge of a well connecting to the Deep World.

Threads of light drifted slowly through the thick, viscous fluid.

These were the lingering thoughts left by the dead, forgotten memories, and sentences broken off before they could be finished.

He heard voices—distant, impossibly faint.

At first, there were only one or two threads of sound, impossible to tell if they were human voices or something else entirely.

But soon, the voices multiplied, growing denser by the second.

Layer pressing over layer, they gathered from all directions.

They had drifted on the other side of the veil for who knew how many years, packed tightly together.

Richard's Inspiration brushed against one of the threads.

It was the dying worry of an old woman, fretting over a fire she had left burning on her stove.

He quickly pulled away.

Deeper down, the walls of the well spiraled into the unseen depths.

Far deeper still hung a few points of "starlight."

Stars in the night sky twinkled.

But these points did not twinkle. They remained nailed to that impenetrable blackness, radiating a light that was neither warm nor cold.

That was the path to the Astral Realm.

And in the absolute depths, something moved.

Slowly. Impossibly slowly.

Like a colossal whale rolling lazily in the abyssal ocean.

The moment Richard's gaze drifted in that direction, a stabbing pain tore through his Inspiration.

As he stood peering down the well, his footing suddenly went hollow. He nearly pitched headlong into the depths.

He frantically reeled his Inspiration back, redirecting it to trawl for the debris floating in the shallows.

Crouched on the corner of the desk, the black cat stared unblinking at the young man.

Richard was like a lamp, and right now, his light was incredibly dim.

Multiple layers of concealment wards had suppressed the glow of his lighthouse to a mere ember.

None of the entities drifting and hovering in the well noticed such a tiny, faint spark.

But if Richard sank too deep, that little spark would plummet to the bottom of its own accord.

Thus, the black cat guarded the mouth of the well, its etheric form pressing lightly upon the edge.

Should the massive things at the bottom attempt to crawl up Richard's line, they would have to get through it first.

Thanks to its presence, Richard could extend his Inspiration to the rim, skimming off the topmost floating thoughts thread by thread.

The more he gathered, the more Richard felt his Inspiration transforming.

What he absorbed and scribed this night exceeded the volume of ten ancient texts deciphered on a normal day.

Immersed in this sea, his Inspiration surged forward at a blinding pace.

His hand filled one page, then moved on to the next.

The vast majority of it was noise.

Broken sentences, looping symbols, and endless repetitions without beginning or end...

Yet interspersed among the noise were a few fragments that actually made sense.

His hand scratched out a snippet of a melody.

It was an ancient funeral dirge. Only the first half remained; the rest was lost.

Next came a string of crooked numbers.

It seemed to be an accounting ledger someone had kept in their mind up until their dying breath.

A debt of two pounds and seven shillings, never repaid in life.

After that came half an incantation.

Just half—baffling and entirely useless for casting any actual spell.

Then, his hand jotted down a set of longitude and latitude coordinates.

That belonged to a drowning sailor; the coordinates marked the exact patch of sea he had stared at as he sank beneath the waves.

There was also a counting lullaby meant to coax a child to sleep; it abruptly cut off at the number seven.

On their own, none of these fragments were worth much.

But bundled together and sold to the guild, they would fetch at least a little coin.

In his trance, Richard "saw" a shadow drift past the rim of the well.

The shadow was thin enough to let light through, bearing the shape of a dead man.

It had no destination in mind, simply drifting aimlessly along the rim.

Richard was reminded of texts he had deciphered in the past.

After a person died, their shadow—their shuyet—would remain in the Underworld and continue to exist.

It served as the "vessel" for the deceased to walk upon the other side.

This shadow drifting past the well was likely a residual echo left behind by someone who had perished long ago.

It did not recognize Richard, and Richard made no move to touch it.

Separated by that viscous, murky "water," neither disturbed the other.

A new realization slowly dawned in Richard's mind.

Everything he was pulling up consisted purely of echoes.

He was catching the reverberations, not touching the source.

As for touching the source... any entity capable of maintaining clear consciousness this deep behind the veil in the Spirit Realm was absolutely beyond his ability to confront.

Richard's hand filled one page, then moved on to the next.

At a certain point, his hand abruptly paused.

Then, it began to scribe furiously.

What spilled onto the paper were no longer fragmented sentences.

It was a chorus of overlapping voices, transcribed thread by thread by his hand.

Each individual thread was faint and frail.

It was the desperate inward scream of someone terrified of dying.

"Don't let me die."

"Don't let me die."

"Don't let me die."

...

Thread pressing upon thread, they densely covered more than half the page.

In his trance, Richard felt a tight pressure at the back of his head.

This chorus was completely different from the scattered, shallow debris drifting along the edge of the well.

That debris was fragmented—each thread separate, entirely isolated from the rest.

But this chorus of "Don't let me die" was twisted into a single, massive strand.

Tens of thousands of threads braided together, festering into an intense, cohesive will.

Amidst the sea of overlapping "Don't let me die," his hand abruptly stopped.

Then, it wrote down a different sentence.

This sentence was completely different from the tens of thousands of threads before it.

It was clear, loud, and delivered with a commanding tone.

It read as though someone were standing above the masses, shouting down at them.

"The archers are right above you."

Richard's hand copied this sentence down.

The black cat's golden eyes suddenly widened.

"Enough!"

Its voice projected directly into Richard's mind.

Madam Marie raised a paw, and the hand gripping the pen froze.

The thick, viscous "water" surrounding him slowly ebbed away.

The desk, the walls, and the suppressed flame of the gas lamp all came back into sharp focus one by one.

Richard violently snapped back to reality.

A dull ache surged through the back of his head.

He looked down at the stack of paper.

Several pages had been filled, the vast majority covered in incomprehensible noise.

But dominating more than half of the center page was a chorus of overlapping "Don't let me die."

At the very end, a solitary sentence stood out: "The archers are right above you."

"These..." Richard's voice was hoarse. "What are they?"

"Fragments of the Spirit Realm," the black cat said with a nod.

"Most of it is noise. Shattered thoughts drifting on the other side."

"The few fragments that actually hold meaning can be traded in for coin by MacNeil."

"But these two..." Its golden eyes fell on the densely packed page.

"Someone on the other side twisted tens of thousands of threads into a single strand."

Richard stared at the mass of "Don't let me die."

"Tens of thousands..." he murmured.

"Tens of thousands of people, all terrified of dying at the exact same moment, begging for the exact same thing," the black cat said.

"When things like that gather together, they form an overwhelming will within the Spirit Realm that will not quickly dissipate."

With the task concluded, the black cat remained crouched on the corner of the desk, its golden eyes sweeping over Richard.

"You have been practicing the Silence Spell recently, correct?"

"I have," Richard said, his eyes lighting up as he remembered his aunt's prior advice.

"Is there anything you don't understand?"

Richard outlined his current difficulties.

The tip of the black cat's tail flicked slowly twice.

"The reason your pocket of vacuum dissipates so easily is because you only 'expel' without 'locking.'"

Richard listened with rapt attention.

"The underlying principle of Silence is extremely simple. You gather a pool of 'dead water' around your target."

"Once the water is dead, Ether can no longer transmit through it. At point, you have the target in a chokehold."

"But the vacuum you are currently expelling is far too active."

"The moment it thins, the ambient Ether seeps right back in, and the target recovers."

Richard pondered this in silence.

"Mr. Reeve's true mastery lies in his 'locking,'" the black cat continued.

"He doesn't simply expel the dead water; he also 'stitches' the edges of that dead water shut."

"When you cast the spell using Silent Fern, it automatically plugs those gaps for you. That is the entire purpose of a casting medium.

But when you cast without a medium, you must manually manipulate the Ether to stitch those gaps yourself. That requires long-term practice."

"Thank you, Madam," Richard said, his bottleneck instantly cleared by the explanation.

"Take your time practicing this Spell Formula. There is no need to rush."

The black cat stood up and squeezed back out through the crack in the window.

"That concludes tonight. MacNeil will contact you when further arrangements are made."

Only after the person—or rather, the cat—had left did Richard finally have a moment to check his Panel.

The progress of all three skills—[Perception], [Speculation], and [Learning]—was rising.

This came as a surprise; Richard had assumed the automatic scribe would only boost his [Perception].

Given that he was fully immersed in the Spirit Realm, a rapid rise in [Perception] made sense.

But for [Speculation] and [Learning] to surge forward as well was unexpected.

Then again, the automatic scribe involved more than just "gathering"; it also demanded "discernment."

Sifting through tens of thousands of stray thoughts drifting in that sea was an exercise that naturally bolstered his [Speculation].

As for the fragments he had transcribed, each one was essentially a "text" he had never read before.

Which naturally fed his [Learning].

Richard reviewed the progress of all three attributes in his head.

[Learning] Lv.3 was rapidly approaching 70%.

As for [Speculation], his recent stint helping out in the Compilation Group had already been nurturing it.

Combined with tonight's automatic scribe session, his [Speculation] progress had now broken past 90%.

At this rate, he would likely reach [Speculation] Lv.3 by the end of the month.

The three mental attributes were incredibly close to all hitting their marks.

And once all three hit the threshold, more than just [Inner Awakening] awaited him.

First of all, planting that seed required all three mental attributes to be at Lv.3.

Furthermore, once the four physical attributes and the three mental attributes all hit Lv.3... a brand-new function would unlock for his [Spirit] attribute.

Just like last time, [Speculation] was the master key. Once it clicked into place, everything else would follow.