I Loaded the Occult Panel

Isabella and Sophia did not recover until noon. Faces flushed, they slunk away dejectedly.

Before leaving, his aunt put on a stern face and strictly forbade Richard from breathing a word of what had happened the previous night, especially to the people in her department.

Richard agreed with utmost solemnity.

Once everyone had dispersed, the butler came to find him, saying his grandfather wanted him in the study.

Richard straightened his clothes and headed over.

Gerard sat in the study, a cup of tea resting at his elbow.

This time, he didn’t crush Richard with his ether field; he merely swept it lightly over him.

Afterward, he pondered for a long while.

”You’ve made your Signature.”

”Yes,” Richard said, standing before the desk. ”My aunt took me to do it last night.””Isabella mentioned your compatibility.” Gerard picked up his teacup and took a sip.

”She said in all her years as a Practitioner, it was the first time she had seen a Signature like yours.”

Richard didn’t reply.

Gerard set down his cup, took an object from the desk drawer, placed it on the surface, and pushed it across.

It was a book, incredibly old.

It had a parchment cover with no title or author, not even a trace of gilded lettering.

”Take this book back and read it yourself.”

”What’s in it?”

”What lies between a Practitioner and a Minor Adept, and how to cross that gap.”

The old man tapped the book’s cover. ”And what comes after Minor Adept.”

Richard reached out and took the book.

”I could explain it to you.” Gerard picked up his cup again.

”But if I tell you, what you remember will only be my words.

”Only by deciphering it yourself will the knowledge truly become yours.”

”Besides,” the old man added, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.

”The encryption on this book is as simple as it gets.

”If you can’t even crack something this simple, there’s no point in walking the path ahead.”

Richard understood. His grandfather was testing him in passing yet again.

”Then...” Richard tucked the book into his coat. ”Regarding my advancement, what is the family’s stance?”

Gerard glanced at him.

”I’ve already told you what support the Ashford family will provide: information, connections, and guards.”

”Now that you’ve made your Signature, you are a Practitioner.”

”On my end, I’ll secure one specific resource for you to start with.”

”Ether Condensate.”

Richard thought of his own medium-concentration Ether Condensate.

It was pure ether that had precipitated from evil creatures or pseudo-evil creatures, or naturally condensed behind the veil, compressed into a solid, tangible mass.

”Every quarter,” Gerard continued.

”The family will allocate one portion to you. It will come from my personal inventory and be delivered to you through Isabella’s channels.”

”It won’t be a large amount,” the old man clarified upfront.

”The family’s inventory has been tight these past two years. But one portion a quarter will be enough to nourish your internal circulation.”

Richard understood the weight of the offer.

It was a provision neither too lavish nor too meager.

For a newly advanced Practitioner, Ether Condensate was exactly what they lacked most.

”Thank you, Grandfather.” Richard gave a slight bow.

”No need to thank me. You’ve earned it.” Gerard waved his hand dismissively.

”Take the book back and decipher it. As for the things written inside, weigh them yourself.”

...

Back in his room, Richard spread the nameless old book open on his desk.

He turned to the first page.

Over the past six months, his decryption skills had improved rapidly.

From the early days of struggling through Appendix C, when a single page would take him all night;

to the raw materials brought back from the Imperial Capital University Library, Whitcom’s Boundary Stone, and the various supplementary materials and exercises sent by his aunt...

Having dismantled them one by one, and aided by [Learning] and [Speculation], his decryption speed was now leagues beyond what it once was.

He glanced at the Academy Style used in the book.

It felt somewhat familiar, following the same style as On Ascension Within the Veil.

The phrasing habits, the sentence rhythms, and even the preference for hiding ciphers were a perfect match.

Perhaps it was by the same author.

The subsequent decryption proceeded with hardly a hitch.

The first chapter’s encryption was a double-layer substitution, plus a displacement shift based on a Latin declension table.

He cracked it apart in no time.

Once deciphered, the lines of ciphers resolved themselves into plaintext in his mind.

The first paragraph detailed a Practitioner’s path upward.

”You, who read these words, have already signed your name and formally become a Practitioner.”

Richard recognized it as the author’s usual opening.

First grounding the reader in a specific context before delving further.

”You might ask, from here to the ’First Oath’ prior to becoming a Minor Adept,

”what lies between, and when will I reach that step?”

”My answer will disappoint you.”

”There are no milestones, no measurements, no progress bar you can count on your fingers.”

Richard’s pen paused.

”The door to Minor Adept does not open based on ’how many years you have trained,’ nor ’how many books you have read.’

”It opens for only one thing—the Threshold (Limen).”

”The Threshold means taking your chosen Practitioner skills and honing them to the absolute elite level of your entire profession.

”A Hunter trains their blade until its shadow can no longer be seen;

”A Secret practitioner stacks their seals layer upon layer, interlocking ring upon ring;

”a Scholar gleans truths from texts that others could read for a lifetime and never see.”

”Artistry like this cannot be quantified.

”How much stronger you are today compared to yesterday is something neither others nor you yourself can measure.”

”And so, our traditions collectively summarized a method for you to see exactly where you stand.”

Richard continued decrypting.

”Your signature artifact.”

”From the moment you sign, it is bound to you.

”For every fraction your abilities grow, it undergoes a corresponding fraction of metamorphosis.

”This metamorphosis is slow, but it is tangible and visible.

”Today, it might gain a new function it lacked before; tomorrow, a certain effect might strengthen by half.

”It quantifies those unquantifiable skills on your behalf.”

”If you want to know how far you are from the Threshold, look at your signature artifact.

”As long as it continues to change, you continue to grow.

”Once it stops changing, there are only two reasons.”

”Either you have touched the Threshold.”

”Or your potential has reached its limit.”

Richard thought of his Sphinx Lamp.

Before he signed, it could give him nothing; it was just an old brass lamp steeped in ether.

After the signing, it granted him the ability of the ”Shadow Ferry Between Worlds.”

According to this book, for every fraction his skills grew from now on, the lamp would metamorphose alongside them.

That shadow would also grow stronger, step by step.

Below that was another paragraph explaining how to catalyze this metamorphosis.

”The signature artifact’s metamorphosis cannot be forced, nor can it be rushed. But for it to grow, it requires nourishment.”

”First comes the daily, gradual nourishment of your own ether, allowing the artifact to recognize you as its master. The deeper this recognition, the firmer the foundation of its metamorphosis.

”This is the bedrock of it acknowledging its master and taking root.”

”Then comes the Ether Condensate.

”This substance allows the metamorphosis to grow faster and more robustly; it is the nutrient that adds flesh to its bones.”

So that was it. This was the purpose of the quarterly portion of Ether Condensate his grandfather had promised.

”Ether Condensate—Hunters use it to warm their circuits, Secret practitioners use it to nourish their Spirit Lodging Vessels, or as a catalyst for alchemy.

”Every profession has its own use. For Scholars, Ether Condensate can be used as ink to write something extraordinary.”

”But nourishment is ultimately just nourishment. What truly drives the signature artifact’s metamorphosis is your skill.

”For Scholars, I must issue a special warning here.”

Richard’s gaze locked onto the words.

”Reading books can make you highly knowledgeable.

”But knowing a lot does not equal high skill.”

”You could sit in a room and memorize every tome in the Empire perfectly, and your signature artifact wouldn’t budge an inch.”

”It waits for you to step outside, descend into the cellars, stand at the edges of the weak points, and match what is written in the books with the living, breathing ecology behind the veil right in front of your eyes.

”It waits for you to make mistakes, and then to correct them.

”It waits for the first time you misjudge an entity’s origin, and subsequently pay the price for that misjudgment.”

”Only then will it move.”

Richard set down his pen.

This paragraph clearly articulated, sentence by sentence, the path he had blundered through over the past six months.

Whitcom, the Western Suburbs Unresponding Pit, the counting boy at the Holbrook Textile Mill...

If he wanted to walk toward Minor Adept in the future, he would have to descend into that world again and again.

Below was the second half of the book.

Richard picked his pen back up.

The encryption in this latter half was a layer deeper than the beginning.

It took him nearly half an hour of decryption to restore the first page.

In the restored opening, the phrasing changed abruptly.

Earlier, when discussing the Threshold and metamorphosis, the tone had been grounded, like an old master teaching a craft to his apprentice.

But here, the author’s tone grew heavy.

”You, who read these words, have surely read the volume I left behind previously.”

That previous volume, On Ascension Within the Veil, was one from which Richard had long since etched every sentence deeply into his mind.

”In that volume, I told you about the candle.

”I told you about the line drawn at the level of Major Adept, and how the entities above that line can no longer be called human.

”I will not repeat those words.”

”In this volume, I will tell you how that line is crossed, inch by inch.”

Richard continued decrypting.

”Let us first speak of the step from Minor Adept to Major Adept.”

”The tradition you chose as a Minor Adept must be cashed in at this step.

”The second Signature—the world knows it as ’tapping into the legacy system.’

”But very few will tell you that the moment you tap into it, a two-way door opens between you and the source of that tradition.”

”Nutrients flow through this door, from the trunk to your branch.

”You will feel stronger, faster. A Spell Formula that used to take you half a day to condense will now form at your first thought.”

”But the door goes both ways.”

”For everything your branch bears, the trunk claims a share.

”The higher you grow, the more the trunk claims.

”One day, you will no longer be able to distinguish which wisp of ether is yours, and which flowed in through that door, only to eventually flow back out.”

”You think you are using the power of that tradition.

”But one day, it will be the tradition using your hands to do its work.”

Richard recalled the first half of the book, which had discussed ”pruning.”

This second half warned that once the door opened, there would be no distinguishing one from the other.

Comparing the two, a chill broke out across Richard’s back.

He continued decrypting.

”Next, the Major Adept.”

”The world knows that a Major Adept’s ether fuses deeply with their flesh, enabling them to unleash city-state-level destruction. This is merely the surface.”

”The true transformation is hidden where you cannot perceive it.”

”At first, you sleep less and less, until eventually you do not sleep at all, yet you feel no fatigue;

”your palate dulls, until exotic delicacies and a bowl of clear water gradually lose their distinction on your tongue;

”you stand in a crowd, listening to them laugh, argue, and cry;

”you hear every word, yet you increasingly fail to understand why they feel such emotion.”

”You will think this is composure, detachment, that you have perfected your craft.”

”It is not.”

”It is the price the veil exacts from you.

”For every fraction of power it grants you, it takes away a fraction of your ’humanity.’

”At first, what it takes is inconsequential... a bit of gluttony, a bit of drowsiness, a few tears shed for others.

”By the time you realize it, those things will be like a mudflat after the tide has ebbed—never to return.”

”I once met a Major Adept Scholar.

”He could remember every word he had read over the past century, but he could not recall the weather on the day his mother passed away.

”When he told me this, there wasn’t a trace of regret on his face... He had long since forgotten what ’regret’ felt like.”

Reading this, Richard spaced out for a long while.

The encryption below deepened yet another layer, and he decrypted it exceptionally slowly.

”As for a Virtuoso...”

Reaching this point, the words suddenly became sparse.

When writing about this level, the author’s phrasing became exceedingly frugal.

Richard could faintly sense that this frugality did not hide a refusal to speak, but a fear of speaking—and an inability to do so.

”Virtuosos no longer ’possess’ power.”

”They have lived themselves into becoming the power itself.”

”If you ask me what a Virtuoso is like, I cannot answer.”

”I have seen one, or rather, I believe I have.

”Thinking back on it, I cannot remember his face, his voice, or even whether he was truly a ’he.’

”I only remember that when he stood there, the shadow beneath my feet stretched toward him.”

”He told me one sentence before he left, and to this day, I have not fathomed it.”

”He said, ’Everything I have is still here, but none of it is mine anymore.’”

Richard’s pen hovered over the paper for a long time without descending.

Below was the book’s conclusion.

”I write this volume for those who have read Ascension, because if you have read that volume, you have most likely already entertained the thought of ascending.”

”I cannot stop you; no one could stop me back then.”

”I will only tell you one thing that you will forget in the future, but that I hope you remember...”

”Every step you take upward replaces the person ’you’ are, little by little, with something else.

”The exchange is incredibly slow, so slow that you yourself cannot perceive it.

”By the day you finally notice it, the replacement will most likely be almost complete.”

”So, while you still remember what you are ascending for...

”carve that ’what for’ into a place the veil cannot take away.”

”Carve it onto the people you care about most; carve it into the home you can return to.”

”That is the only mirror left to you that can reflect whether ’you’ are still ’you.’”

”Cave, et memento. (Beware, and remember.)”