I Loaded the Occult Panel

In the carriage, Richard rubbed his belly. The fine feast at the Dawn Family home had left him comfortable and satisfied.

By the time he returned to his room and sat down, the pile of food in his stomach had already been mostly digested by his [eating] skill.

On his interface, the progress bar for [eating] Lv.2 was full.

The Dawn Family banquet had pushed it over the finish line.

He invested the points and upgraded it.

[eating] Lv.2 → Lv.3.

Richard closed his eyes, feeling the slight change within his body.

[eating: Filtration].

His body had gained significant resistance to toxins, putrefaction, and parasitic pathogens.

The trait lit up, but Richard did not feel any immediate physical difference.He didn’t track down any poison to test it; there was no need right now.

The foundational abilities of [eating]—regulating food intake and extracting every drop of nutrition—had grown another layer more solid.

In the future, if he ate that bland oatmeal, his body would probably wring the benefits out of every single oat, unwilling to let a speck go to waste.

Having reached Lv.3, Richard went ahead and previewed the advancement conditions and traits for level 5.

”[eating] Lv.5 Unlock Conditions:

Lv.4 progress 100%;

points 2;

actively ingest one product from behind the veil, or one dose of Deep Ether Condensate, and completely metabolize it.”

”Unlock Trait — [Decay Digestion].

Safely ingest and metabolize the flesh and bone of evil creatures from behind the veil, as well as various low-level contaminated substances, without suffering corruption, extracting usable nutrients from them.”

Richard placed [Filtration] and [Decay Digestion] side by side in his mind. Using [Speculation], he carefully compared them and figured out the mechanics.

[Filtration] handled the job of ”expelling.”

Toxins, rot, and parasitic diseases—the body would recognize them as hazards, endure them, and push them right back out to protect itself.

It was a floodgate that only blocked and took nothing.

[Decay Digestion], however, did the job of ”assimilating.”

The flesh and bone that should never be swallowed, the contaminated substances that normal bodies couldn’t withstand...

It would no longer push them away. Instead, it would break them down, crush them, and reassemble them into nutrients the body could use.

Turning decay into miracles.

Richard thought of the book Products Behind the Veil.

In the section on ”Flesh and Bone,” the author’s warning was extremely stern: Mostly harmful. Do not consume, wear, or preserve.

That single phrase, ”Do not consume,” placed an entire category of items from behind the veil strictly off-limits to ordinary people.

Ghoul remains, Swamp Corpse corpse wax, flesh soaked and rotted in ether... just smelling them would bring bad luck, let alone eating them.

But once [Decay Digestion] was lit up, that boundary would shift.

Richard’s breathing involuntarily lightened.

[walking] took care of travel, [sleep] took care of rest, and [Breathing] took care of injuries.

Add [Decay Digestion] to the mix...

A death trap in the eyes of others would become an all-you-can-eat buffet to him.

And it wouldn’t just be eating to survive. It might even push his body to the next level...

As these heated thoughts swirled in his mind, Richard read the unlock conditions again, and his excitement instantly cooled by half.

”Actively ingest one product from behind the veil, or one dose of Deep Ether Condensate, and completely metabolize it.”

This was a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.

[Decay Digestion] was the ability needed to safely eat harmful things.

But to unlock [Decay Digestion], he first had to eat a product from behind the veil.

Without [Decay Digestion] to protect him, how could he dare eat one?

Richard thought about it and realized it wasn’t completely impossible.

Products from behind the veil were also divided into different tiers.

The highly hazardous flesh and bone belonged to the most dangerous tier, which he absolutely couldn’t touch right now.

But plant life like Ashcore Grass or Multi-Eyed Black Moss had mild toxicity and hadn’t been soaking in ether for very long.

With the floodgate of [Filtration] holding the line, if he cautiously took just a tiny bit, he might actually survive it.

As for that ”one dose of Deep Ether Condensate”...

Richard’s gaze subconsciously drifted toward the small vial tucked close to his body.

The Condensate Prometheus had traded him was a potent substance meant for nourishing supernatural items and saving lives in battle.

But the more he thought about it, the more dangerous it seemed.

That stuff was as intense as injecting adrenaline straight into the veins. Prometheus had forbidden him from using it to heal circuit damage precisely because it was too aggressive.

If he swallowed a whole dose, who could say whether he would unlock the trait or just burn himself from the inside out first?

The botanical route was definitely the safer bet.

It was just that to meet this condition, he would have to wait until he had more funds and could choose a secure time when he was alone, undisturbed, and could fall back on [Healing] if things went sideways.

He couldn’t rush it.

Richard filed this away in his mental ledger for long-term plans.

This ability to ”eat everything behind the veil” would fall into his hands sooner or later.

...

Down in the second-basement morgue, Old Biggs had been working continuously for several days.

At one end of the workbench sat a messy stack of death registry ledgers, while the other end held the work that had just been delivered this morning.

When the stretcher was carried in, the two orderlies turned their faces away.

”Mr. Bigelow, it’s another unidentified one.”

The older orderly tossed the paperwork onto the table.

”Fished out of the canal, around the Mill Street section. No one has come to claim it, so we’re leaving it with you for now.”

”I know,” Old Biggs waved them off.

The orderlies left in a hurry, unwilling to linger in this unlucky place a second longer.

Old Biggs put on his reading glasses and pulled back the tarp.

The thing lying on the table could no longer be called a face.

Everything above the cheekbones was a caved-in, ashen-black mess; the facial features had been hollowed out bit by bit from the inside.

The flesh clung tight to the bone, looking as though it had been roasted by fire and then soaked in water.

It was the handiwork of the Echo Society. Old Biggs recognized it immediately.

He followed protocol first.

Snipping away the clothes soaked in canal mud, he checked for external injuries, took measurements, and recorded the bone age.

When he reached the chest cavity, just like last time, he cut off the external interface port and quickly burned it.

Moving on to the limbs, he lifted the deceased’s left arm and wiped the muddy water away with a damp cloth, starting from the shoulder.

He wiped past the crook of the elbow, past the forearm, down to the inner wrist.

He stopped.

On that patch of skin on the inner wrist, there was something.

Two small dots over a curved line. It was a smiley face.

The gas lamp wick burned steadily, the flame standing perfectly straight. There wasn’t the slightest breeze.

Old Biggs looked down at the smiley face on that wrist, staring at it for a long time.

Setting down the damp cloth, he turned the deceased’s left hand over, then over again.

The hand was very small, the wrist bones delicate. It was a woman.

On the outside of the wrist, near the ulna, there was a slight bulge left behind by an old, healed injury.

Old Biggs pressed his thumb firmly against the bulge.

More than a decade ago. The tea house server in the South District of the Imperial Capital.

She had shielded someone from a shove by a drunk customer, and her wrist had smashed against the corner of a table.

He had just become a coroner back then and knew a bit about bones, so he had strapped a splint onto the girl he liked for half a month.

On the day he secured it, she had laughed at him for tying it too tight, saying her fingers were numb.

Old Biggs gently laid that small hand back onto the table.

He straightened his back, took off his reading glasses, and wiped them on his sleeve.

The smiley face was still there. He had drawn it back when he found out she had consumption.

The girl had told him back then, ”Don’t always wear such a long face. With you looking so grim, it makes me feel like I’m actually going to die.”

Out of options, he had picked up a piece of half-burnt charcoal from beside the stove and drawn a smiley face on the inside of her wrist.

He had said, ”Look, now someone is smiling for you. Whenever you want to cry, just look at this.”

And she really had smiled.

Old Biggs stood before the table, completely motionless.

In his mind, all those frayed, disconnected threads began tying themselves together, one by one.

This was exactly the job he had done his entire life.

Evidence couldn’t speak for itself; he had to piece it together, case by case.

The Echo Society specifically targeted the dying.

In a city, the dying were everywhere.

Before they could take their last breath, a hand would reach up from below and catch it.

Once caught, they became tools.

In this half-dead, half-alive state, she had served as an anchor for the Echo Society. For over a decade.

Old Biggs swallowed hard.

After circling for over ten years, she had still returned to him.

”...Did you know which way to drift?”

He reached out and smoothed back a strand of muddy hair plastered to her forehead.

...

On Sunday, Richard went to the Branch Office as usual but didn’t see him.

When he asked the young clerk on duty, the clerk flipped a page in the ledger.

”Old Biggs, huh,” the clerk said without looking up.

”He’s been planted down in the basement. It’s been like this for days—goes down first thing in the morning and doesn’t come up until night.”

”The autopsy department?”

”Yeah.”

Richard didn’t ask anything else and headed down.

The heavy wooden door to the autopsy department was ajar.

Richard knocked. Old Biggs’ voice came from inside, sounding more muffled than usual.

”Come in.”

He pushed the door open and walked in.

There was no corpse on the workbench, only a towering stack of death registry ledgers, flipped open in complete disarray.

Old Biggs sat behind the table, wearing his reading glasses. He was holding a yellowed old file, his gaze distant and unfocused.

The Copper Penny he usually spun between his fingers was lying quietly on the tabletop, motionless.

”You’re here.” Old Biggs glanced up, then looked back down.

”Have you been...” Richard pulled up a stool and sat down. ”Have you been down here this whole time?”

”Yeah.”

”What are you looking for?”

Old Biggs tapped the old file.

”Just digging up some old things,” he replied vaguely, closing the folder. ”It’s nothing.”

Richard looked at him.

From interacting with him over the past six months, Old Biggs had always struck Richard as a chatterbox.

He would twirl that Copper Penny in his fingers like magic and never had a filter on his mouth.

Madam Marie’s quotes, old tales about his master’s lineage, the tricks of the coroner trade—he would spout them without a second thought.

But today, Old Biggs was uncharacteristically quiet.

That Copper Penny lay motionless on the table, and his eyes couldn’t seem to focus, constantly drifting over to the stack of ledgers.

”Old Biggs.” Richard softened his voice. ”What happened?”

”Nothing.” Old Biggs waved a hand and poured himself a cup of tea.

”It’s just... when you get old and start flipping through old records, it’s easy to start remembering things you shouldn’t.”

He took a sip of tea and mentioned casually, ”Right.”

”A couple of days ago, by the small river east of Slag Alley, I saw a black dog.”

Richard’s heart instantly sank.

The black dog. He had read about it in a book.

Nemesis had also talked about it at the Theogony Salon.

It was a local phenomenon of the Empire proper, an omen of doom on the level of a natural disaster.

Anyone who saw a black dog would suffer a massive tragedy within three days to three months;

Those who were followed by it for a whole night rarely lived past the month.

”A black dog?” Richard’s voice grew tight. ”What... what did it do?”

”It crouched there and stared at me for a good while.”

Old Biggs smiled, brushing it off.

”Its fur was pitch-black and shiny. It gave me a couple of looks, then walked away.”

He shook his head in self-deprecation.

”For a guy like me, even the black dog finds me unlucky.”

Sitting on the stool, Richard felt a chill run through his whole body.

The black dog had stared at Old Biggs for a good while.

That wasn’t just taking two looks and leaving; that was marking a target.

”Old Biggs.” Richard sat up straight. ”This black dog thing... you should know what it is, right?”

”I know.” Old Biggs drank his tea. ”Old wives’ tales. What, you believe in that stuff too?”

”It’s not a matter of whether I believe it or not.”

Richard’s expression was grim.

”Whoever the black dog targets usually ends up in deep trouble. Did you... provoke something recently?”

Old Biggs’ hand paused.

”Old Biggs.” Richard raised his voice. ”What exactly are you digging into?”

”Nothing.” Old Biggs shoved the old file under the ledger.

”I told you it’s nothing. Just a single old man going through old records, feeling a bit nostalgic. Don’t overthink it.”

”Come with me to the Imperial Capital,” Richard suddenly suggested.

Old Biggs looked completely bewildered. ”Go to the capital? What would I do there?”

”I’m leaving at the end of May.” Richard looked at him.

”Come with me to Madam Marie’s place. You can lay low with your teacher for a bit.”

”Lay low from what?” Old Biggs laughed. ”Just because a black dog looked at me a couple of times?”

”It never hurts to lay low.”

”Kid.”

Old Biggs finally picked up the Copper Penny, but he just pinched it between his fingers. He didn’t spin it.

”When guys like me do our job, our hands don’t shake. And if something really does happen to me, no one’s going to lose sleep over it.”

”Stop talking like that,” Richard frowned.

”I’m telling the truth.”

Old Biggs put the penny back on the table.

”Don’t bring up going to the capital again.”

”More and more people are dying lately, and this autopsy department needs someone to run it.”

”You just worry about your own business.” He waved his hand.

”Your summer study program is important, and getting into university is the biggest event of your life. Don’t get distracted by an old man like me.”

Richard wanted to keep persuading him, but Old Biggs had already dragged the stack of ledgers over and put his reading glasses back on.

”Go on.” He didn’t look up. ”Go do your own thing. I’m busy here.”

Richard stood where he was, saying nothing more.

He could sense that Old Biggs was hiding something from him.

But the old man wouldn’t talk, and he wouldn’t leave.

”Old Biggs,” Richard said one last time before leaving.

”If you change your mind, let me know anytime. I’ll buy your ticket to the capital.”

Old Biggs didn’t look up; he only waved his hand.

”I know.”