Chapter 328: Its True Name

Richard leaned back, the back of his chair creaking.

He already had an approach in mind.

The scepter rejected replacers.

If he walked over relying entirely on that Virtuoso's repertoire of replacement techniques, it would be like knocking on a judge's door with lockpicks in hand. The only thing waiting for him would be a bullet.

But what if he approached under his own identity?

Richard Williams, Scholar, Practitioner.

His own connection to Thoth was far cleaner than the connection between Thoth and that Black Soil River Virtuoso.

What did Thoth govern? Records, writing, weighing, and true names.

What did a Scholar do? Reading, deciphering, appraising, and bookkeeping.

The two were one and the same.

His eyes brightened, then quickly dimmed again.

The Seed Trial belonged to the Black Soil River Virtuoso. He was using the Virtuoso's shell within the trial.

The entire trial operated within that framework.

Furthermore, he could not bring anything into the environment constructed by the Seed.

The two Thoth artifacts in his hands had no equivalents inside the trial.

Richard stared at the three cards again.

But what if he changed his approach...

The artifacts themselves could not be brought in, but the work they performed for him could stay in his mind and enter with him.

He could use those two Thoth artifacts to complete a full "corrective bookkeeping" ritual beforehand.

Once he went through the entire procedure, both the process and the results of the ritual would be internalized.

When he stood before the scepter, he would use ether transmission to submit the completed work in its entirety—along with his identity, his purpose, and his reasons for doing so.

Richard slowly stood up and paced back and forth across the cramped dorm room.

His chair scraped against the base of the wall, bumping a desk leg with a muffled thud.

His Inspiration fell upon the brass paperweight and bronze scale on the desk.

He had come across this ritual set in the museum's ancient texts section.

It was the standard procedure used by priests of the Black Soil River Basin to record the merits and sins of the dead in the Hall of Judgment.

The first phase was the "Register of the Comer."

Opening a file to record the identity and origin of the visitor.

The second phase was the "Record of Submission."

Listing out, line by line, exactly what had been tampered with and what it originally should have been.

The third phase was the "Oath of the Recorder."

The recorder would sign and affix their seal, declaring the record true and accurate; signing meant welding their own credibility to the ledger.

He sat at the desk and lightly tapped his fingertip against the bird's beak on the brass paperweight.

When Thoth first saw him, the god had asked a single question.

"What does the scribe take?"

If "recording the name clearly" equated to taking it away...

Then he did not need to move a single physical object out of the Storeroom at all.

All he had to do was uncover the tampered labels on those thirteen old relics, correct them one by one, and record their true names in his own ledger.

Once the ledger was processed and the ritual completed, the names would return to their rightful places.

The names of the thirteen relics would all be in his hands.

According to Thoth's rules, this counted as taking everything.

Richard sat back down, the chair creaking again.

There was still one operational problem.

In the trial, he operated deep within the Storeroom using Donald's shell.

When the scepter read the shell, it would first illuminate the replacer's label, leaving no time to examine anything else.

Unless he shed the shell right as he stepped before the scepter.

To verify his theory, Richard went to the library the next morning and found an early commentary detailing the relationship between Thoth and the Hall of Judgment.

One passage caught his attention.

Before entering the Hall of Judgment, a scribe had to complete a cleansing of hands and a weighing in the outer hall.

Cleansing the hands washed away impurities unrelated to the judgment.

Weighing meant using the scales to weigh one's own intentions.

Once both were done, not even the monster in the Hall of Judgment—which devoured people at the slightest provocation—would touch him.

This passage set Richard's last lingering anxiety to rest.

Every step of the ritual had a documented basis.

The following night.

The paperweight and bronze scale rested quietly on the desk; Richard had already used them to complete the entire preparatory process.

[Seed entrance opened.]

[Selecting entrance: 5. Deep within the Museum Storeroom (Sealing Array Area)]

When he opened his eyes again, he was already standing in the deepest part of the Storeroom.

All prerequisite stages had been skipped.

The true names of the five relics had all been read out, the mirror-like seawater had flipped, and the sun and hearth fire had been drawn away.

The Perception network within the city revealed the window he needed.

The five shells were all in place, and Richard was currently inside Donald's body.

Deep within the Storeroom, the sacred ibis atop the scepter kept its eyes half-closed.

This time, he stopped just outside the silver lines and shed the shell.

His shadow peeled away from Donald's body, the entire process resembling a snake shedding its skin.

The shadow stood outside the silver lines.

It was pitch-black and faceless—a mass of darkness slightly shorter than a human figure.

But right in the center of the black mass, the inverted tree of light from the Seat of the Sun faintly radiated a warm glow.

The watermark left behind by the ritual he had performed in his dorm room was illuminated with exceptional clarity.

The eyelids of the sacred ibis on the scepter twitched.

Richard felt an incredibly precise force sweep over his shadow's entire body.

Traces of replacement... they were present, lingering around the outermost ring of the shadow.

But beneath those replacement traces were his own ether traces.

The sacred ibis's eyes widened slightly. It recognized traces of its own kind, and the scepter hesitated.

Richard did not give it much time to hesitate.

He began transmitting information through the ether.

"Richard Williams, Scholar, Practitioner, Signature upon the Sphinx Lamp."

"Work completed: Corrective bookkeeping."

The message was brief and clear.

The scepter verified the transmission as he sent it.

Only when it scanned the trace of Signature upon the Sphinx Lamp did it fully confirm his identity.

For the second section of information, Richard pushed out every detail he had gathered across the three trials, line by line.

"The true name of the ledger's tamperer has been lost, leaving only three honorific titles."

"The first act of tampering: Taking the true names of the living for personal use. The scope spans the Imperial Capital's harbor district, the Black Soil River Basin, the Levant, and the Greek city-states."

"The second act of tampering: Using a 'mirror' to reflect the forms of the living, and using 'replacement' to wear their shells. The replaced lose their true names and are reduced to mere vessels."

"The third act of tampering: Overwriting the thirteen Black Soil River relics within the Imperial Capital Museum with forged ether labels. The original owners of the relics are unknown, forcibly woven into this network."

Everything he submitted was the unvarnished truth; not a single word was false.

Thoth governed records, and the essence of recording lay in "not a single stroke more, not a single stroke less."

The more details he piled on, the more meticulously the scepter read them.

And the more meticulously it read, the more it could confirm that this ledger was genuine.

The neck of the sacred ibis began to lean slightly forward.

For the third section, Richard pushed out the final piece of information.

"The Oath of the Recorder."

"I, Richard Williams, declare the submitted record to be true and without error."

"Should there be falsehood, I submit to judgment."

He signed his name and left his mark, welding his own credibility to this ledger.

On the scepter, the sacred ibis pointed its long, Reed Pen-like beak toward the ceiling.

The nine silver lines dimmed one by one, radiating outward from the center.

The cage did not fall. Richard walked forward through the passage.

As he walked past the scepter, the sacred ibis atop it closed its eyes.

The names of the supernatural items were already in his hands.

Every entry that needed recording was noted; every stroke that needed writing was flawless.

This was the very thing he had been guided to do all along.

Richard drew back his Inspiration and gave a slight bow toward the scepter.

The scenery shifted once more, returning him to the sealed stone chamber.

In the center of the chamber stood the figure with the head of the sacred ibis.

After enduring these four trials, Richard had finally gained a trace of understanding.

This figure of Thoth in the stone chamber and the Sacred Ibis Scepter in the Storeroom were actually one and the same.

This time, the Bronze Mirror face reflected Richard's shadow.

"You made it over." The god Thoth spoke, still using Richard's own voice.

The Reed Pen in His hand stood upright, its tip pointing downward.

"The authority of the recorder is never light."

"When you record an event, that event is pinned to the veil."

"When you write a name for an object, that object is bound to that name forevermore."

Thoth tilted His mirrored head.

"The name you give must be 'true'."

"You illuminate what it is, and you write down what you illuminate... that is what constitutes a name."

"Write it wrong, and the name will backfire."

"Write it skewed, and the name will distort."

"Write a name that even you yourself do not believe..."

Thoth placed the Writing Slate before Himself.

The line of text on the Writing Slate lit up.

"...that is isfet (falsehood)."

"The name of a falsehood will ultimately devour the named."

Richard stood on the Stone Tablet.

Thoth rested the Reed Pen horizontally across the Writing Slate.

"It is not a power."

"It is a right."

"The recorder's right—to name."

"Before the scepter, you spoke words that no one taught you."

"No tampering, no falsifying, no replacing another's name for personal gain."

"Only recording the truth of what is seen."

Thoth vanished. The dense inscriptions covering the walls of the stone chamber began to glow.

Light seeped from the walls and converged in the center of the chamber.

The Panel lit up at the bottom of his vision:

[Seed germination complete.]

[Ability Acquired: Pen of the Recorder (m??w n mntw s?)]

[Nature: Classical Tradition (Fragment)]

"Effect: Can bestow a name upon a designated target, granting it a temporary buff."

"Trigger Condition: The target must be completely analyzed from the ether plane to the material plane."

"Warning: Naming must not be fabricated or invented. Excessive deviation will result in backlash. The severity of the backlash depends on the degree of deviation."

At the very bottom was a supplementary note.

"The inscribed name is the pen, analysis is the ink, and ether is the paper. Lacking any of the three, the words cannot be written."

Richard was pondering the effect of this naming ability when a new line of text caught his eye.

[Bonus Extraction: Its True Name (Complete)]

[Status: Sealed.]

[Reason for Sealing: Holder's Rank is insufficient; unable to bear it.]

[Warning: Any form of active recall, silent recitation, writing, or transmission will trigger resonance. Once resonance occurs, the holder will be locked onto.]

Richard stared at this sudden information, feeling a bit dizzy from the impact.

While he had already formed some guesses during the ritual about the ability he would receive upon completing the trial, this piece of information caught him entirely off guard.

The stone chamber began to darken.

Thoth stood in the center of the chamber, His mirrored sacred ibis head reflecting Richard's shadow.

The reflection was even clearer than when he had first entered.

"Go," Thoth said, His voice still mirroring Richard's own.

"The first day of the Year of Truth begins the moment you open your eyes."

The grayish-white light faded, the outlines of the stone chamber blurred, and a pulling force tugged from behind him.

His vision returned to the dorm room.

Lying in bed, Richard recalled the three honorific titles he had read during the trial.

"He who walks in lightless lands, breathing as one with the shadows."

"He who once illuminated the names of all things with a single mirror."

"He whose flesh is sealed and bones inscribed, leaving only a shadow forever blanketing the world."

Reciting honorifics in the real world would only invite disaster, but it would not affect that Virtuoso in the slightest.

Yet what the Panel had sealed was actually a true name!

Richard remembered the ancient myth of Isis and Ra.

Once the sun god's true name was grasped by another, even He was no longer invulnerable.

And now, Richard was grasping the true name of this Black Soil River Virtuoso.

Even though it was sealed by the Panel and he could not even allow himself to think about it, it was undeniably there.

A true name was a chain.

When you grasped hold of it, the other end of the chain was tethered to that Virtuoso.

Both ends of the chain were connected; you could follow the chain to touch him, but he could also follow the chain to find you.

If that Virtuoso followed it all the way here... Richard did not dare think any further.

He took one last look at the small text on the Panel before folding it away.

He repeatedly warned himself: Do not think about it, do not recite it, do not write it, do not touch it. Treat it as if it does not exist.

At the same time, however, a deeply hidden and somewhat ambitious thought surfaced from his chest.

His current Rank was insufficient; he could not lift the chain at all.

But the chain was sealed there, waiting for him to use it at any moment.

Until one day—perhaps far in the future, perhaps not so far... when his Rank reached the level where he could bear a true name.

On that day, when he picked up this chain again...

Richard cut his thoughts short. He stared at the ceiling, trying his hardest to suppress the upward twitch of his lips.

Do not smile. Hold it in!

If he smiled, it would be easy to get carried away, and if he got carried away, it would be easy to think about it.

But even if Richard refused to think about it himself, the other side had already faintly sensed that something was wrong...