Chapter 433: One Who Causes People to Cough Out Their Lungs in a Single Night

The lord of the hunt came from the center of the procession.

Tens of thousands of mounts parted, clearing a path.

It reined in at the very front and glanced down at the patch of black willow stumps.

"Is it cleared?"

"Almost," the rider gripping the reins answered.

"Who cleared it?"

"Him."

Those antlers tilted half an inch toward the shadow.

The shadow planted the Caduceus firmly.

"That one above..." the lord of the hunt said. "He does not yet have an honorific name."

"Those without an honorific name cannot enter a tradition."

"Those outside the traditions belong to me."

It paused. "But tonight, he will have one."

Richard understood the subtext.

Walburg was a cleansing night, and cleansing nights had their rules.

The lord of the hunt had operated by these rules for centuries, but they had bound it for just as long.

It could not hunt a Virtuoso without cause.

"I believe you do have a reason," Richard said, projecting his voice through the Mask of Hermes.

The antlers turned toward him.

"Speak."

"Connecting the Second Signature to the lineage system is a two-way street."

"A tradition is a tree, and everyone who connects to it is a branch.

The one at the trunk enjoys all the nutrients, and also holds the pruning shears."

This was basic knowledge.

"I know that, of course," the lord of the hunt said, neither interrupting nor showing impatience. It was in a good mood tonight.

"The one about to complete his advancement walks the path of the Hearth Fire."

"The boundary marker for the Furnace Fire Lineage rests on 'completely transforming one thing into another.'

He aimed to touch that marker. He did it, but he went too far."

Richard was simply parroting what he had just learned from the old Scholar in the procession.

He had the shadow point the tip of the staff down.

"The only rule of the Hearth Fire is... the fire recognizes the furnace."

"A product that refuses to acknowledge its master will not be recognized by the Hearth Fire."

"Given all this, the one ascending is definitely not a Virtuoso of the Hearth Fire Tradition."

Beneath the clouds, it remained quiet for a long time.

The lord of the hunt flicked its antlers, completing the logical chain.

"So this guy definitely intends to cross traditions. At the final moment of his advancement, he will sever his own branch.

He will cut himself from that tree and graft himself somewhere else before he hits the ground."

"A Virtuoso who severs his own branch... is an unowned thing before he lands."

"And unowned things, on Walburg Night..."

The lord of the hunt burst into laughter.

That laughter rolled across the entire procession as tens of thousands of mounts pawed the ground at once.

"However, this transition period will undoubtedly be short."

The lord of the hunt had suddenly realized a crucial point.

"That Master of the Hearth Fire Tradition will act personally," Richard said.

"The moment He acts, the branch snaps."

"How will I know when He acts?"

"You can go remind Him."

The aura around the lord of the hunt shifted. Suddenly, it changed the subject.

"By the way, if the hunt is successful, what do you want?"

"The share that belongs to me on the ledger," Richard said. "I do not want anything else."

"You are not greedy."

"The greedy will be purged."

That laughter rolled out once more.

The lord of the hunt raised its horn.

It first drew in a breath.

As it inhaled, all the wind stopped in the exact same instant.

"He who dwells not within the furnace, but rather the furnace dwells within him."

The moment the first line fell, the water in a quenching trough at a workshop in the northern Rus Empire stopped bubbling.

At a bell-casting workshop along the Rhine River, the bellows were still being pumped, but the air coming out was cold.

Every furnace went out.

"He who once melted the un-meltable, who redefines the melting point for all creation."

On Covent Street in the Imperial Capital, Clara's distant uncle sat behind his lathe.

He waited until the heat on his back completely faded before turning around, standing up, and turning off the power to the Picture Teleprinter.

He found a stool, sat down, and did nothing else.

Further away, a recently independent craftsman sat guarding his furnace.

The fire shrank before his eyes, dwindling to a speck before it vanished.

"Master?"

His master had already stepped to the window, facing west.

No one read the third line of the honorific name aloud.

From Iberia to the Rhine, from Covent Street to countless unknown workshops, tens of thousands of furnaces finished reading it for Him.

"With no blood to be sealed, no bone to be cast; all who enter the fire and change their form are his limbs."

On the other side of the veil, a branch snapped from the tree.

The break was remarkably clean.

By the time the one holding the shears brought them down on the trunk, the branch had already severed itself.

It fell rapidly, desperate to reach something else below.

The lord of the hunt raised its horn again, this time blowing only half a note.

That half-note was a corner torn from a name, ripped away jaggedly, its edges still laced with blood.

The instant Richard heard that half-note from so far away, his entire Inspiration flared with a violent warning.

He naturally recognized what it was; the lord of the hunt had stored it inside the horn's chamber.

Now, it had opened that chamber just a crack.

In the deepest reaches of the veil, something was being dragged toward this side.

It struggled the entire way.

Of course, it did not want to come. It tore at that tether the whole way, yet even at the end, the line held.

When it arrived, a small patch of the clouds darkened first, collapsing inward to form a massive hole.

Richard could not clearly see what tumbled out of the hole; he could only make out many mirrors.

Thousands of them spilled out and unfurled, forming a mirror canopy facing downward.

"Its injuries haven't healed," the leader gripping the reins murmured.

"Nothing it can do about it." The one carrying the wood pulled out that chunk of charcoal again.

"When its name is in someone's hands, its neck is in their hands. And there's no way for it to slack off on the job."

The mirror canopy descended over the distant yellow-green toxic gas, and the newly ascended Virtuoso immediately scattered to dodge it.

The methods of the Black Earth River Master were known to all: first, it reflected what you were, and then it replaced you with something else.

This was what it had done its whole life, for hundreds, even thousands of years.

But dodging in front of a mirror was useless. The Black Earth River Master could not replace someone of the same Rank, but it could distort them within the glass.

The first mirror reflected a livid purple face, the bruising creeping all the way into the whites of the eyes, which stared fixedly throughout the night.

In the second mirror, a mouth hung open, frothing. In the third, a person knelt with hands braced on the ground, trying to vomit but failing, their lungs already filled to the brim...

The thousands of mirrors were filled entirely with hands clawing at throats, livid faces, pink foam, horses kneeling and unable to rise, and rats frozen mid-run.

"This..." The young man wielding the axe swallowed hard.

"These methods are too foul."

Once the mirror canopy had reflected enough, the thousands of mirrors stood upright in unison.

The reflective surfaces faced outward, toward the deeper reaches of the veil.

Toward that unfathomable height—a place no one could pinpoint, yet everyone knew was where the higher being sat.

This was the most ruthless part. The tens of thousands of people below could not see it, nor did they have the time to look.

It was reflecting this for the one above to see.

As the mirror canopy stood upright, the entire cloud bank lit up, flashing with a stark, unseemly glare.

Dozens of hands gripping reins pulled back half a loop at the same time.

"It's giving the new Virtuoso a name."

"What name?"

"See for yourself."

Words began to appear on the mirror canopy: "I name you... one who causes people to cough out their lungs in a single night."

In his rattan chair, Richard marveled at the lesson he had just learned. He had gained a brand-new understanding of the concept of "the first to name."

Hohenheim finally had no choice but to show himself.

If he did not come out, the "great work" he had painstakingly achieved would truly be reduced to this single phrase.

At the same time, on the other side of the clouds, that deep red seal pressed down once more.

The lord of the hunt, uninjured, took it head-on, while the Bone Flute—with one of its holes plugged—struck up a new melody nearby.

The tune was crippled, yet it climbed higher. The two Virtuosos, who had no relationship to speak of, had temporarily joined forces.

Tens of thousands of riders spilled out in all directions, pouring into the overturned lowlands below.

The pack of hounds scattered with them, one hound leading a segment, each segment snapping at a swarm.

The proper work of the cleansing night still had to be done; it could not stop.

At the very front, only the shadow and a few who did not blow horns remained.

Just then, a corner of the mirror canopy suddenly tilted their way.

After finishing its reflection of that yellow-green mass, it swept out to both sides, intentionally sweeping over the lord of the hunt's procession.

"What's it doing here?" the axe-wielder yelled first.

"Picking up scraps," the one carrying the charcoal said.

"Whose scraps?"

"Ours."

The few leading riders straightened their backs in their saddles.

"Whenever two or more clash behind the veil, the procession must retreat three marches away."

"We did retreat."

"We retreated from those two. This one came looking for us on its own."

"Then what do we do?"

"Scatter."

"Scatter where?"

"Anywhere," the old man said, pulling his hood down over his eyes. "Just don't stand in a line."

The Black Earth River Master did not expect to snatch back its name. It merely wanted to shine across that procession, claiming anyone it could catch.

If it caught no one, it still lost nothing.

Mirror after mirror flipped over.

The first one reflected a hound handler.

The mirror showed the length of rope in his hand.

The rope was reflected, but not the man. He pulled the rope into his chest and sank entirely into the clouds.

The second mirror caught a young man holding a wooden bowl.

The rim of the bowl was ringed with teeth marks he had gnawed himself.

He had spoken the least on this journey, only laughing along when others recounted old tales.

The mirror reflected that bowl, and the bowl flashed within the glass.

After the flash, the young man's hands were empty.

It also caught someone at the rear of the procession holding a hoe. The mirror displayed the exact plot of land that person had tilled while they were alive.

The mirror flashed, and the person grew noticeably fainter.

It caught an old soldier wearing chainmail.

In the mirror, the old soldier saw the saddle he had eaten during the year of the siege.

He let out a loud shout—the name of a woman.

After he shouted, he was gone.