I Loaded the Occult Panel

By late November, Briston was dressing itself up for the season.

The drab shops along the streets began stuffing their display windows.

The local department store branch piled cotton wads into a fake snow mountain inside.

At the peak sat a tin-foil-wrapped Christmas tree, with discounted gloves and scarves arranged beneath it.

Two plucked turkeys hung in the doorway of the butcher shop, wing roots pointing skyward and heads drooping, looking thoroughly reluctant about the whole affair.

Someone had wrapped a ring of holly branches around the public telephone booth.

The red holly berries matched the red paint perfectly. Passersby would occasionally cast a second glance before shrinking their necks against the cold and hurrying on.

The soot remained the same, the factory whistles remained the same, and the river’s foul stench remained the same.

But a faint sense of anticipation now hung in the air.

The old woman selling hot pies had moved her cart from the street corner to the main entrance of the post office, where the foot traffic was heavier.She hung a handwritten cardboard sign on the side of her cart: ”Christmas Special Meat Pies, Two Pence Each.”

The price was double the usual, but the filling, spiked with cinnamon and cloves, was truly something else.

At the Greenwood campus, the Christmas atmosphere had arrived even earlier.

Classroom discipline had noticeably slacked. Students in the back rows dozed or passed notes... Nobody was in the mood to study anyway.

A few boys had already started writing out Christmas gift lists in their textbooks, their sprawling handwriting flanked by stick-figure doodles of various sneakers.

Even Grey brought up her family’s Christmas decoration plans during lunch.

Her mother was arranging to transport a real fir tree from the countryside to set up in the living room. It was supposed to reach the ceiling and would be covered in real candles.

Warren scoffed at that. ”Real candles? Isn’t your family worried about a fire?”

”The candles are only lit on Christmas Eve,” Grey said, resting her spoon on the edge of her plate. ”Besides, there will be buckets of water standing by.”

”Does it still count as romantic if you have buckets of water waiting?”

”You have to be alive to see your next Christmas.”

Warren opened his mouth but found he couldn’t argue with that.

Hugh, who had been silently gnawing on his bread beside them, suddenly looked up and asked, ”What do your families eat for Christmas?”

”Turkey,” Warren said.

”Turkey with what?”

”Mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, pudding...”

At this, Hugh’s chewing slowed, and his eyes glazed over.

Richard held his teacup, staying out of the Christmas chatter.

His attention had already drifted back to the desk in his bedroom.

Every night, after the whole family went to sleep, his bedroom light would flick on.

The orange glow cast a circle across the desk, illuminating a few items lined up side by side.

The Gargoyle, the Ancient Greek translation chart Mr. Hutton had provided, and the notebook he had brought back from the Imperial Capital University Library.

The downstairs living room light had been out for a while. Father’s snores drifted up through two layers of floorboards, and Evelyn’s breathing from her room was even and steady.

The Gargoyle crouched at the corner of the desk, its maw wide open, wings half-folded against its back.

Over the past few weeks, he had chewed his way through most of the first two sets of inscriptions.

Mr. Hutton’s Ancient Greek translation chart solved the issue of direct substitution, while the remaining grammatical deductions were ground out through the boost from [Learning Lv.2].

Progress was slow, but he inched forward every day.

He classified the contents of the first two inscription sets as the ”base inscriptions.”

They functioned similarly to a prologue, introducing the Gargoyle’s era of creation, its maker’s identity, and a general explanation of the inscriptions’ overall purpose.

The first set served as the prologue of the base inscriptions.

Once translated and restored, it read as follows:

”This vessel was crafted by Inscription Master G.T., by order of the Inscription Master Guild of the Western Continent.

The inscriptions upon its four faces respectively record the origin, chants, operation, and annotations of the Spell Formula. Unified, it is named ’Stone Armor.’”

This object was cast approximately four hundred and sixty years ago.

Back then, the Albion Empire had not yet established a constitution. Regional guild organizations held autonomous power independent of royal authority, and the Inscription Master Guild was one of the oldest and most insular among them.

The second set of inscriptions was the origins chapter of the base inscriptions.

”Stone Armor originates from the protective prayers of stonemasons.”

”Stonemasons labor at great heights year-round, scaling church spires and repairing bell tower flying buttresses. Falls and falling rubble are their most common causes of death.”

”This technique uses physical contact with the Gargoyle as the trigger, and one’s own Ether as the material.

It condenses a thin, dense Ether shell over the surface of the skin, harder than stone. The duration depends on the caster’s Rank and Ether reserves.”

After reading this passage, Richard set down his pencil and leaned back in his chair.

The purpose of this esoteric technique was already perfectly clear.

It was a general-purpose defensive art, nothing more.

No wonder his grandfather had said his aunt didn’t care much for the Gargoyle.

But for Richard—a Newcomer who hadn’t even been practicing for half a year and possessed absolutely no means of self-defense—this thing was an absolute godsend.

The Fog Wall Spell could only confuse ordinary people, and Ashcore Grass was a consumable resource; every piece used was a piece gone forever.

He had yet to buy his probationary inspector’s service weapon, and even if he did, firearms were restricted depending on where he could carry them.

Stone Armor, however, was a layer of armor pressed right against his skin. It took up no space, circumvented pat-downs, and required no ammunition supply.

He flipped his notebook to a fresh page and continued grinding through the third set of inscriptions.

He had returned from the Imperial Capital during roughly the last week of October.

While he could barely parse a few scattered symbols from the first two sets, the latter two were completely incomprehensible.

That remained the case until Mr. Hutton gave him the new Ancient Greek translation chart. With a direction, he finally had a foothold.

The third set of inscriptions detailed the Spell Formula’s chants and operation.

The casting process was divided into three stages.

Stage One: Trigger Contact.

Place both hands on the Gargoyle’s surface and maintain contact for at least three full breaths.

During this contact, ”shake hands” with the Gargoyle.

The Gargoyle was both a key and a mold.

For a beginner, the trigger contact was a rigid prerequisite; without the Gargoyle, the Spell Formula could not be activated.

Only upon achieving proficiency could one cast aside the casting medium and operate the armor independently.

In other words, this crutch was only needed by novices.

Once he practiced it to a proficient level, the Gargoyle could be tossed into a drawer to gather dust.

But until then, the Gargoyle had to remain within arm’s reach.

Stage Two: Armor Draw.

Once the trigger contact was complete, the practitioner would push large amounts of Ether to the surface of their skin.

Different breathing methods would result in varied manifestations when the armor crystallized.

Richard mainly focused on the parameters of the Golden Path.

Naturally, drawing the armor wouldn’t actually turn the skin to stone.

There would be an Ether shell on the outside of the skin, practically invisible to the naked eye.

Stage Three: Sustenance.

With a single cast, a Newcomer could sustain the armor for less than half a minute.

Casting it again required touching the Gargoyle to perform another trigger contact.

Richard set down his pencil and shot the Gargoyle a glance.

It sat crouching at the corner of the desk, its mouth gaping wide.

It certainly looked ferocious, but it was far too heavy.

The sooner he mastered the Spell Formula, the sooner he could ditch this heavy crutch.

The inscription’s description of the defensive effect stated the hardness could withstand ”direct stabs from bladed weapons and strikes from blunt instruments.”

But the inscription made no mention of firearms.

He figured that if he actually faced bullets, the thickness and hardness of this armor probably wouldn’t be enough.

At the end of the third set of inscriptions, there was also an addendum regarding localized reinforcement.

Richard did some quick math.

If he concentrated that same total amount of Ether entirely onto a single fist, the thickness, hardness, and duration would all massively increase.

An idea for how to use it suddenly struck him.

Layer the entire armor onto his fist, and throw a punch.

With such a small impact area, combined with the hardness and mass of the armor itself, smashing through a thinner brick wall shouldn’t be a problem.

The inscriptions did, in fact, mention a tactical record that left him not knowing whether to laugh or cry:

”Stonemasons would often leap from high places, using their armor-reinforced foreheads to ram their opponents.”

This mode of attack inexplicably reminded him of a certain palm technique that fell from the sky.