I Loaded the Occult Panel

After dinner, Richard returned to his bedroom, closed the door, and slid the bolt shut.

He took the two new supernatural items out of the Cloth Bag and lined them up with the objects already on his desk.

The Eagle Badge went on the left, the Silver Ring on the right.

He started with the badge.

He covered it with his right hand, pressing his palm against the copper relief of the eagle’s wings.

The Panel began a steady absorption.

The pace was about the same as in the shop—roughly 0.01 per minute.

The ether accumulation inside the badge wasn’t particularly deep, but it was perfectly even.

A hundred and fifty years of history had left a thin, dense ether membrane within the copper base.

Like smoke stains baked into the walls of an old house over countless years, it could neither be wiped off nor washed away. It had completely fused with the copper itself.As he absorbed it, Richard used his Spirit Vision to establish a fixed gaze on the badge’s surface.

Maintaining a fixed gaze was much easier in this kind of close contact. As the ether flowed into his palm, his perception latched onto the badge.

He could vaguely sense the ether distribution inside the badge.

It was even and stable, lacking any sealed structures or interfering inscriptions.

It was a ”clean” antique.

The ether had accumulated naturally. There was no artificial injection or ritual enhancement; it had simply steeped over time in its environment.

Furthermore, nothing was sealed inside...

Then again, if everything was as dangerous as the Sphinx Lamp, the world wouldn’t be far from total destruction.

About forty minutes later, the ether in the badge ran dry.

The Panel showed that the badge had contributed roughly 0.41 points.

Next was the Silver Ring.

The ring was much smaller than the badge, but its ether density was noticeably higher.

Once he pressed his palm against it, the Panel’s numbers jumped by a much larger margin.

The silver purity was unusually high. The appraisal note Clement had relayed was now verified by Richard’s own senses.

High-purity silver was inherently an excellent ether conductor.

For artifacts of the same era, the purer the silver, the higher the ether deposition efficiency, and thus the greater the final accumulation.

Under the fixed gaze of his Spirit Vision, the sun cross and circle symbol on the ring face revealed faint undulations.

The symbol hadn’t been carved in later; it had been cast as a single piece.

When the creator cast this ring, they had designed the sun symbol right into the mold.

This meant the ring had never been an ordinary piece of jewelry.

It was the identity marker of some organization or guild, used by the wearer to declare their affiliation.

The sun cross and circle symbol was a Celtic tradition, native to the Western Continent.

It belonged to a completely different cultural lineage than the sun motif on the Solar Seal.

About twenty-five minutes later, the ring was empty as well.

The Silver Ring contributed roughly 0.69 points.

That was half again as much as the badge—the clear advantage of high-purity silver.

Richard wrapped the two drained supernatural items separately in the Cloth Bag and tucked them back into his drawer.

He sank his consciousness into the Panel and glanced at the total.

[Available Points: 2.13]

He had actually managed to save up two whole points.

Adding to his previous stash, the two new supernatural items had contributed a combined total of about 1.1 points.

Richard leaned back in his chair, staring at the number on the Panel.

It was enough to light up a new skill and advance an existing one.

The progress bar for Breathing Lv.2 was still creeping forward, currently sitting at around 95%.

At this rate, it should naturally max out in about two weeks.

Once that happened, he could invest one point to push Breathing through to Lv.3 and acquire the Healing trait.

Setting aside one point for that, he still had one point left in hand.

Richard shifted his gaze to the unlit skills on the Panel.

The three intellect attributes: Learning Lv.2 (Activated);

Speculation Lv.— (Unactivated, Prerequisite: Learning Lv.3);

Perception Lv.— (Unactivated).

[Perception]

He lingered on this skill option for a long time.

Old Biggs had warned that having an Inspiration that was too high at a low Rank could easily invite disaster.

The larger the window, the more eyes outside could see you.

But when Old Biggs talked about Inspiration being too high, he meant the kind of innately off-the-charts Inspiration where someone could correctly distinguish and sort twenty objects on their very first day of training.

Richard’s Inspiration test result had been average—squarely in the ”just enough” tier.

Lighting up [Perception Lv.1] should bump his Inspiration from ”just enough” to ”rather useful.”

The gap between Lv.1 and a level that would attract attention from the depths of the veil was vast.

He recalled his experience lighting up other skills.

After [Breathing] Lv.1 was activated, his breathing efficiency had improved gradually; he hadn’t turned from an ordinary person into a superhuman overnight.

Similarly, after [Learning] Lv.1 was activated, his learning efficiency had accumulated at a slow and steady pace.

He hadn’t been able to recite Latin declension tables backward instantly; that had taken a week or two to build up.

It was only with Mr. Holland’s one-on-one tutoring that he went from being practically clueless to competition-ready—and even then, he still couldn’t match someone like Montagu, who had trained since childhood.

[eating], [sleep], and [walking]—each one followed the exact same pattern.

Activation was just the starting point. Improvement relied on practice, and practice took time.

The Panel didn’t offer a shortcut to the heavens. It was simply a fast track up the mountain with a gentle slope and a smooth surface.

How fast or slow he climbed depended entirely on his own two feet.

By that logic, after [Perception] Lv.1 was activated, his Inspiration would also improve gradually.

To reach the disastrous level Old Biggs had warned about, he would need to raise [Perception] to Lv.3 or higher.

And going from Lv.1 to a full progress bar for Lv.2, judging by his experience with other skills, would be impossible without several months—or longer—of continuous training.

The degree of his Inspiration increase would be kept within a safe range.

The window would get slightly larger, but not large enough to draw the attention of distant eyes.

By the time he could spare the points to push [Perception] to Lv.3, he figured he would have reached the Practitioner Rank and gained some capacity to protect himself.

Richard made his decision.

He locked his consciousness onto [Perception] and pressed it.

”Confirm?”

He confirmed.

The gray faded from the text just as cleanly and decisively as it had when he activated the other skills.

[Perception Lv.1] Progress: 0%

[Available Points: 1.13]

The change didn’t start in his chest like Breathing, nor did it well up from the depths of his mind like Learning.

It began at the edges of his five senses.

The first to change was his hearing.

Downstairs, his mother was putting away the dishes. The previously muffled clattering shifted into distinct, distinguishable acoustic elements.

A porcelain bowl settling on the wooden rack, an iron spoon striking the edge of a pot, the squeak of the rubber washer as the faucet was twisted shut.

From Evelyn’s room next door came the rustle of turning pages. The varying thicknesses of the paper produced subtle differences in the sound they made when flipped.

Thick pages made a sharp swish, while thin pages gave a softer rustle. She was flipping quickly, likely searching for a specific passage.

Next came his sense of touch.

The sensation of his fingertips resting against the desk grew far richer.

The direction of the wood grain, the unevenness of the varnish, and the gradient of the desk’s temperature spreading outward from where his skin made contact.

His vision didn’t undergo any obvious changes on the surface.

The lighting, colors, and contours of the objects in the room looked no different than before.

But Richard noticed that the sheer volume of information he could extract with a glance had multiplied.

Scanning his bookshelf now, where he once would have just seen ”a row of books,” he instead saw ”seventeen books; three have creased spines; the far left one is half an inch shorter than its neighbor; the corner of a piece of paper is wedged between the fifth and sixth books.”

The information density had skyrocketed, and he could freely choose whether or not to process it.

Combined, these sensory changes formed a holistic experience.

He felt completely lucid.

Hearing, touch, smell, sight, and taste (though he couldn’t test that one at the moment)—information streams that had previously operated independently were now converging.

Sitting in his chair, he could simultaneously perceive everything happening around him.

He didn’t need to deliberately focus his attention; the information simply came to him.

Richard closed his eyes, sitting in that state of lucidity for a long time.

He had only just activated [Perception], yet he was already experiencing something so wondrous.

It was hard to imagine what the world looked like through the eyes of those born with off-the-charts Inspiration.

Their view of the world would be entirely different, naturally separating them from ordinary people by a thick barrier.

Growing up with that kind of perceptual barrier would easily lead to psychological alienation.

They would either become incredibly cold and detached, or incredibly arrogant.

The person sitting at the head of the Theogony Salon had given him a similar impression.

Richard turned up the lamp wick and took the divination candle and copper plate from his drawer.

He wanted to test whether activating [Perception] would change his Spirit Vision and divination practice.

He lit the candle, and the flame stood tall in the center of the copper plate.

Following the steps Old Biggs had taught him, Richard regulated his breathing and cleared his mind of distractions, letting his consciousness sink into that critical state between wakefulness and trance.

Previously, entering this state required three to five minutes of warm-up.

He had to adjust his breathing round by round and peel away stray thoughts layer by layer. It was like waiting for sediment to settle in muddy water—it couldn’t be rushed. The more he hurried, the messier it got.

Today was different.

By the end of the second cycle of breathing, he was already touching the edges of that critical state.

As the third cycle concluded, he slipped right in.

In his Spirit Vision, the candle flame in the copper plate began to display changes on the etheric level.

When he used to practice Spirit Vision, the material and etheric layers had always tended to blur together.

Now, the gap between them had widened a bit.

Not by much, but enough to reduce his confusion while observing.

Richard observed the candle flame in his Spirit Vision for about ten minutes before switching to his divination practice.

The core of divination was the ”question.”

Spirit Vision was passive reception; divination was active projection.

It meant projecting a question onto the etheric layer, observing the feedback, and translating that feedback back into language.

Richard used Wax Whisper to select a simple practice topic: tomorrow’s weather.

This was the standard practice subject Old Biggs recommended for beginners.

Weather was a natural phenomenon; it didn’t involve personal will.

The information on the etheric layer was relatively clean and free from interference, making it perfect for novices.

He projected the question.

The Wax Whisper reading indicated a west wind.

Tomorrow would most likely be overcast turning to light rain, with temperatures two to three degrees lower than today.

Richard noted the divination result in his notebook, closed it, and blew out the candle.

The improvements brought by lighting up [Perception] were extremely practical.

No single ability had taken a massive leap, but all activities related to sensation had been smoothed out.

His Spirit Vision was clearer, his divination more sensitive, and even his daily observational skills had stepped up a tier.

Richard thought back to his second meeting with Old Biggs, when the man had used a ”cold reading” to deduce that he had a younger sister who liked to worry.

Now, he could pull off something similar—and with much greater ease than Old Biggs, without needing nearly as much time to observe.

His window had indeed grown larger.

Fortunately, the night outside was quiet, with no unwanted eyes peering in.

Richard rolled over and closed his eyes.

The streams of sensory information continued to process in the darkness behind his eyelids.

He felt like a freshly wound clock—tick-tock, tick-tock—steady and unhurried.

Wrapped in that calm, Richard fell asleep.