I Loaded the Occult Panel

During the first week of May, the weather cleared up again, putting Richard in a fairly good mood.

The window in Room 314 was cracked open, letting the breeze carry in the scent of lilacs.

Richard walked in to find his aunt pulling a stack of rubbings from her drawer, piling them up until there wasn’t even room on the desk for a teacup.

”Aunt Isabella, you wanted to see me?”

Isabella patted the stack of rubbings.

”Routine inspection.”

”It’s been nearly two months. I need to know if handing you over to Clara has made you stupid.”

Clara sat in the chair by the window, a rubbing spread across her lap.

She glanced up at Richard, the corners of her mouth turning up in a faint smile, but said nothing.

His aunt pulled a sheet from the top of the pile and pushed it toward him.Medieval Church ritual, Latin, three layers of steganography.

Richard had seen this one before; it had stumped him for an entire night.

”You have ten minutes.”

He only took six.

Isabella took it back to check.

”How did you decrypt this layer?”

”The offset isn’t fixed. It follows the fasting periods on the church calendar. There’s a mark in the margin.”

Isabella brought the paper closer, searching for a moment before finding a mark no larger than a fingernail.

”Who taught you this decryption method?”

”Senior Clara.”

The office went quiet for a moment.

Isabella placed the paper back on the desk.

”I had to brute-force that one back in my day.”

Richard said, ”I know. Senior Clara told me.”

Clara lowered her head by the window. She hadn’t turned a single page of her own rubbing.

”What else did she tell you?”

”She said you marked up her collation in red from top to bottom that year, and the final line read: Redo the whole thing.”

Isabella set down her red pen.

”That was her own failure to apply herself.”

Clara shot her advisor an exasperated look.

”I was only an undergraduate back then, and you gave me a problem like that.”

Isabella sat in her chair for a moment, then suddenly asked,

”Do you think Clara explains things more clearly than I do?”

Richard thought for a moment before answering tactfully, ”Senior Clara explains things more slowly than you do.”

”Since when is slower considered better?”

”It makes the information easier to absorb.”

Isabella’s lips moved, but she didn’t say anything else.

She simply turned around, walked over to the bookshelf by the window, and started flipping through her materials.

”Since the two of you are so full of energy today, let’s get down to business.”

His aunt pulled out an old booklet with a frayed cover and handed it to Clara.

”Last Saturday, an internal bulletin from across the strait made its way into my hands.”

The relaxed atmosphere instantly grew tense.

”What kind of bulletin?”

”At a house in the Durham District, all four people inside were found dead on the morning of May 2nd.”

”The first officer on the scene ruled it a suicide, but the papers reported it as a case of nervous breakdown.”

”Two trucks showed up within two hours. Personnel in full protective gear got out and locked down the entire area.”

Richard set down his rubbing.

”Who was the homeowner?”

”Hohenheim.”

Richard had no reaction to the name.

But as his aunt elaborated, it began to sound familiar.

”He was seventy-two. On the surface, he was a chemist holding quite a few titles in their academic societies.

But on the mystical side, he was a Major Adept Scholar of the Hearth Fire Tradition.”

Isabella continued.

”The last line of the bulletin noted that the homeowner’s whereabouts are unknown.”

”Aunt Isabella, the family of a Major Adept can still have something like this happen to them?”

Isabella gave him a look.

”Do you know what a person has to surrender to reach Virtuoso?”

”I only know that the higher the Rank, the harder they are to perceive,” Richard replied.

He thought about it silently.

The mystical side obviously had to be mystical. It sounded like nonsense, but it actually made sense when examined closely.

Isabella opened the old booklet in her hands.

”Being unperceivable is the result. You follow a tradition to its very end and touch that boundary stone.

From the moment you touch it, you are no longer the one walking the path; you become a part of the path itself.

A path has no boundaries, but a person does.

So when that moment arrives, a question is forced upon you.”

”What question?”

”Who am I?”

Richard thought it sounded quite philosophical.

Isabella continued,

”You won’t be able to answer it yourself because you will have already melted into the path, so someone else has to answer it for you.

On this side of the veil, everything that still remembers your existence is a nail.

Your wife remembers the rhythm of your snoring, your daughter remembers which hand you use to slice bread, and even your cat recognizes the sound of your footsteps on the stairs. These things will pin you in place on your behalf.”

Clara also looked up, blinking.

Isabella went on.

”The more anchors you have, the deeper you sink. The advantage is that even when you dissolve into the deepest depths, you can still recognize the way back.”

”But others can also follow those anchors to reach you.

If those anchors die, change, or forget you, they sever.

If too many sever, you lose your foothold.”

Isabella tapped the document.

”The person in this report took a different route. He didn’t leave a single one.”

”After advancing, he took matters into his own hands and proactively severed all his ties, cutting them perfectly clean.

His name, his family, his students, even the potted flower he’d grown on his windowsill for years—he didn’t leave a single one.”

Richard instinctively glanced toward the windowsill. The once-withered potted mint had sprouted new leaves this year, a vibrant, shiny green.

”That way, no one can reach it, and no one can recognize it.

The deadliest mistake is to linger in the middle—lacking the ruthlessness to cut away all your ties, yet lacking enough anchors to support yourself.”

Clara finally spoke up. She had been studying the report beside her advisor the whole time.

”The bulletin says four people died: the wife, the daughter, an old servant who had worked for the family since his youth, and a cook.”

Isabella frowned.

”Right. They say the silverware in the dining room was neatly arranged and the soup was still simmering on the stove. The family was waiting for the master of the house to come home for dinner.

The cook wasn’t even scheduled to work that day. She just came back to grab a pair of old gloves she’d left behind, and even that was calculated.”

Richard sat in his chair for a moment.

He thought of the cloud of yellow-green toxic gas that night, and what the old Scholar beside him had said about the newly ascended Virtuoso waiting for his moment.

Richard had assumed he was waiting to achieve something great, but looking at it now...

The faint scent of lilacs continued drifting through the cracked window into the office, but he suddenly found the smell a bit cloying.

Isabella finally concluded.

”I suppose you can’t really call it suicide. Perhaps ’reclamation’ is a better word?”

Richard asked the question he actually wanted answered today: ”After it severs all of that, does it still remember anything from when it was human?”

Isabella looked at him.

”For the first year, it probably has to relearn its own name.

During that year, it can’t look out for anyone.”

A year, Richard calculated silently.

”What about after a year?”

”After a year, the Master above it will keep it in check.”

As Isabella spoke, she reached into the sugar jar, but her fingers grasped nothing.

She turned it upside down and tapped it against her palm, but not a single speck fell out.

Clara chimed in from the side, ”Sophia stopped by yesterday afternoon to ask me about the scope of the final exam.”

”Why would she eat my sugar just to ask about an exam?”

Isabella sighed, returned the empty jar to its place, and picked up her red pen again.

”Alright, inspection is over. You haven’t gotten stupid. Now get out.”

Richard gathered his things and walked to the door, but just as his hand touched the doorknob—

”Professor,” Clara spoke up again.

”There is one more thing I think you should know. Richard is the one who healed all my injuries.”

The red pen pierced a hole in the test paper.

”When did this happen?”

”During my final two weeks at the sanatorium.”

”Why didn’t either of you mention this to me?”

Clara said, ”I thought you would hear it in my piano playing.”

”Of course I heard it. I just thought you recovered on your own.”

Isabella turned to Richard. ”Come back and sit down.”

Richard returned to his seat.

”When did you acquire this ability?”

”After my signature artifact underwent its metamorphosis.”

”And the price?”

”It’s relatively slow.”

”Slow doesn’t count as a price.”

Richard continued explaining.

”It’s the only thing I’ve been able to find so far.

I tested it on a few of my cousins at home before trying it on Senior Clara.

The lighter the injury, the faster it heals. The deeper the injury, the longer they have to soak. Other than being slow, I haven’t found any other cost.”

”After all these tests, I’m planning to use it to heal my mother.”

Isabella immediately grew tense.

”If you’re really going to treat her, why don’t you test it on me first?”

Richard was a little surprised.

”What do you mean?”

”My sister’s circuits have been crippled for years. We’ve had quite a few people look at her.

Every single one of them told me they could give it a try, but every time they did, she ended up bedridden for ages afterward.”

Isabella folded her hands together.

”So, if you’re going to try it, test it on me first. It’s the only way I’ll feel at ease.”

Richard thought for a moment. ”Then sit properly. Lean against the backrest and straighten your spine.”

His aunt parted her lips as if to say something, but ultimately chose to follow her nephew’s instructions.

She pressed her back against the chair and placed her hands flat on the desk, looking like a schoolchild called on by a teacher.

Her lips were pressed lightly together; she was clearly nervous.

Watching her, Richard found it somewhat amusing.

He activated his Spirit Vision, combining it with the condensing mirror technique to examine his aunt’s body for any ailments.

The first thing that came into view was her current posture.

A poor sitting habit that had gone uncorrected for years, coupled with reading small print for two decades, had left her with problems in her neck and right shoulder.

Her meal times were irregular, and she liked eating sweets as a main meal, resulting in stomach issues.

Then came the aspects related to the mystical side.

She had been practicing the deep reading of the Classical Records Tradition for over a decade, but had taken quite a few wrong paths along the way.

The finest branches at the tips of her circuits had been deprived of ether nourishment for a long time, causing them to darken segment by segment.

Minor flaws like these wouldn’t normally have much impact, but at a critical moment—such as when advancing—they would start to cause problems.