I Loaded the Occult Panel

The moment she put on the mask, the scales tipped violently to one side.

Then she wrenched them back, holding them in a deliberate state of imbalance.

Richard remembered someone asking Hecate: was she walking toward that name, or was she being devoured by it?

Now, she held the answer in her own hands and wore it on her face.

Hecate’s hand gestured toward the red-gold mask.

”Prometheus.”

”The Prophet, the Fire-Bringer, the Titan who stole fire for humanity.”

”Prometheus is a prophet. The mask will enhance your foresight and judgment. There is also fire to catalyze alchemy. You are the ’Giver,’ able to empower your creations.”

”The price: a liver consumed by day and regrown by night.”

”Wear this mask, and you will glimpse fragments of the future—especially... the inevitable bad endings.””You will see them, but you won’t be able to stop them. Foresight is torment.”

”Furthermore, stealing fire means being hunted and punished. The more you create and the more you know, the more you will draw backlash from higher up.”

Prometheus didn’t put it on. He kept the mask suspended in front of him, repeatedly ”looking” at it and weighing it.

Richard silently compared the two masks.

Compared to Nemesis, Prometheus provided more numerous and varied benefits, and the price was correspondingly steep.

And the man holding the Prometheus mask—someone who most likely had a Hearth Fire Tradition alchemist backing him—understood that ”borrowed fire burns the hands.”

”Chief,” Prometheus said.

”I will accept this mask for now.”

He reached out and tucked the mask away.

”But I’ve always been slow to act.”

”Allow me to hold onto it for now. I will wear it later.”

Hecate didn’t seem to mind.

”Of course. The mask is yours. When you wear it is your own business.”

Richard felt somewhat grateful that Prometheus had set a precedent.

Now, when he declined to put his own mask on right away, he wouldn’t stand out.

Hecate gestured to the deep purple one.

”Dionysus.”

The purple ivy mask drifted over to Dionysus.

Dionysus set the Double-Handled Kantharos down on the table.

He reached out and took the mask.

”The God of Wine, Revelry, and Theater,” Hecate introduced.

”Dionysus bewilders enemies with intoxication and illusions. He can send crowds out of control, make believers lose their minds in revelry, and grant Boundary Dissolution.”

”The price.”

”Freedom and loss of control are two sides of the same coin.”

”The more you borrow power through this mask, the easier it will be to lose yourself in revelry and intoxication.”

Dionysus turned the deep purple mask over in his hands.

”How interesting.”

The man slowly put the mask on.

From beneath the ivy mask, his voice stretched into a drawl.

”Losing control... I’m not afraid of that.”

Finally, Hecate gestured to the Ancient Bronze Mask.

”Hermes.”

The mask, cast with golden wings and twin snakes, floated over to Richard.

Richard reached out and caught it.

”The Messenger, the God of Commerce, the Patron of Orators and Scholars, the Ferryman of Souls, the God of Words and Cunning.”

”Hermes’s power will enhance your persuasive abilities; whatever you say or write becomes a binding contract. His transmission will strengthen your deciphering skills, and his ’ferrying’ allows you to cross boundaries.”

Richard held the mask.

This power was exactly what he needed.

”The price stems from Hermes ferrying souls across the river. Wearing the mask will cause you to ’attract’ the dead. It will make the veil around you more ’transparent.’”

Richard’s heart sank. He was already ferrying shadows between the two realms.

This price would only add fuel to the fire.

”Then there is the God of Cunning,” Hecate continued.

”You will experience the urge to deceive and cross the line.”

”And as the Boundary-Crosser and Traveler, you will feel a restless urge to never stay in one place.”

Richard thought of his current [Perception: Calm Observation].

He wondered if the restlessness brought by the name of Hermes would stir up his pool of still water from within.

If that restlessness muddied the water from the inside, his protective state of ”still water reflecting no shadow” might be rendered useless.

Coupled with the price of attracting the dead and becoming transparent behind the veil... he needed to study this mask thoroughly.

Richard held the Ancient Bronze Mask, his expression completely unreadable.

But his mind was racing, and a thought surfaced.

This mask... is a conduit, funneling the concept of the god’s name into the wearer.

It is a structured ether construct. In other words, a Spell Formula.

And I have [Shadow Inversion].

When the mask operates normally, it draws the concept of the god’s name into my body, and the price is that the concept devours me in return.

Then... what if I could invert it?

He had too little information right now to verify any of this, but it was undoubtedly a direction worth testing.

He tucked the mask away, offering a tactful excuse similar to Prometheus’s.

”All four masks have been delivered.” Hecate withdrew her hand.

”Remember, when borrowing power from the masks, we must watch out for each other. We rise and fall together.”

With the delivery of the masks complete, Hecate tilted her Golden Mask toward the center of the table.

”Now that the masks are in your hands, we proceed according to the old rules.”

”Trading first, then sharing intelligence.”

In the center of the table, the items used for the earlier demonstration still sat where they had been left.

The bone needle-tube from the Seam-Eyelid Monster and the Floating Head’s cervical vertebra, which was still attached to glowing intestinal threads, lay untouched.

Heracles leaned forward and dumped a few more items onto the table.

A folded piece of hide—the very same Flag Fabric the Flagbearer had held in the projection, which Heracles had torn in half and brought back.

Beneath the Flag Fabric lay a Bone Horn, entirely charred black, with several stiff, dark-red tendons wrapped around its mouthpiece.

Next to the horn rested a fist-sized black core.

The moment it was placed down, its aura of corruption was so thick it practically threatened to burn a hole through the table.

Dionysus, who was closest to it, subconsciously moved his Double-Handled Kantharos further away.

Richard withdrew his Inspiration to a faint whisper and let his senses sweep over the items one by one, following the flow of ether.

The Flag Fabric was the core medium for the Flagbearer’s amplification Spell Formula.

The Bone Horn was likely the artifact it used to gather evil creatures and amplify them.

As for that black core...

That had to be the ”heart” of a high-tier evil creature. It was a dense mass of polluted ether that had festered for countless years, compacted layer upon layer.

None of these were things ordinary artisans or Scholars could even touch.

”Here,” Heracles said, spreading his large hands over the edge of the table.

”These were harvested from the Flagbearer. They’re the only three things worth bringing out.”

He thought for a moment, then dumped out a small pile of miscellaneous odds and ends with a clatter.

He casually swept them into a corner of the table, keeping them far away from the other items.

A copper bell rusted into a black lump, a small knife with a snapped blade, a clay figurine covered in cracks...

They were fragmented odds and ends, and every piece radiated a stubborn layer of filth.

Heracles offered an explanation.

”I picked these scraps up along the way through the Ash Belt. They stewed in that filthy place for god knows how many years, and this is how they looked when I fished them out.”

He pushed the broken knife back into the pile.

”The official appraisers at the Branch Office deemed them ’of no collectible value’ and returned them to me, granting me the right to dispose of them.”

”I’ve come tonight hoping to trade these for some Ether Condensates, and perhaps a few things to stabilize ether circuits.”

His wares were fully laid out. The Flag Fabric, Bone Horn, and black core were grouped together, while the small pile of junk sat far apart at the corner of the table, separated by a clear line.

The cluster of fire above Prometheus’s head flickered.

”I want to trade for that high-tier evil creature’s core.”

Everyone at the table turned to look at him.

Prometheus was never one to scramble for items, yet tonight he was the first to make a move, asking for the most valuable piece on the entire table.

”An artisan I know needs exactly this kind of material,”

Prometheus said lightly.

He took out a small vial and placed it in the center of the table.

The vial was a size smaller than the bottles of stabilizer he had brought out previously.

The liquid inside was so incredibly pure that one could feel it just by looking.

Heracles’s thick muscles twitched.

What he needed most right now was exactly this sort of thing to suppress his surging ether.

He knew the truth of that hunt: the fiercer the Blood Rage came on, the harder it was to dispel.

”I’ll trade!” he said without hesitation.

He considered it a massive profit. He was exchanging a burden he couldn’t even process for a vial of exactly what would save his life.

At the head of the table, Hecate’s overlapping eyes fixed on the small vial.

An artisan capable of using a high-tier evil creature’s ”heart” as forging material, who could also produce such a vial...

Must be at least a Major Adept.

Hecate silently counted the few Major Adept artisans within the Empire, going through them one by one.

The one in the south was advanced in age and had sealed his furnace years ago;

The one in the north was highly eccentric and never dealt with people through such channels;

The one in the Imperial Capital didn’t match either; he pursued brute potency over purity.

Looking at it now... either this ”Fire-Bringer” had been holding back all along, or the person backing him had quietly crossed that threshold recently.

Advancing to Major Adept, and as an artisan no less.

Such news couldn’t possibly be hidden within their circles, nor was there any need to hide it.

The person backing Prometheus... probably wasn’t within the borders of the Empire.

Hecate withdrew her gaze. In terms of sheer influence, a Major Adept artisan was scarcely inferior to a Major Adept Scholar.

The longer she managed this table, the more she felt that distributing those tokens back then had been the right move.

The people at the table harbored their own thoughts, but the trading continued.

Demeter lifted her calloused hands from her lap.

The pile of seeds, spores, and rhizomes she had laid out on the table was still stacked in its original spot.

”I’ll trade these for intelligence, mediums, or money. Any of them will do,” she said very slowly.

Dionysus set his Double-Handled Kantharos down and fished out a rolled-up bundle.

”I will use this to trade for that pinch of Requiem Poppy.”

”This is a partial collection from a sealed library in the Imperial Capital. I copied it just a few days ago; you might find it useful.”

Demeter took the catalog and the content summary, scanned it briefly, and then handed the pinch of Requiem Poppy over to him.