I Loaded the Occult Panel

”What level are you on with the Abyss Throat Method?” Barnaby asked.

”I’ve stopped counting.”

”You have to count.”

”Counting makes it worse,” Phillips said. ”The more you count, the more you want to rush.”

Barnaby smiled and didn’t press the issue.

On this path, no one could really talk anyone out of anything.

Fast growth, rapid power, the inability to stop... these warnings were printed in every orthodox text. They had been printed for centuries, yet people kept throwing themselves into it year after year.

Barnaby stood up from the edge of the stage and dusted off his trousers.

”That young gentleman from tonight—why don’t you invite him down to take a look sometime?”

The stage fell silent for a couple of seconds before Phillips set down his teacup.”His family is fully intact.”

”His mother and sister call him twice a week to ask if he’s eaten, what he had, and if he has enough to wear. His aunt teaches at Imperial Capital University and gives him special tutoring every day.”

”People who go down can’t carry that many attachments.”

Barnaby draped his coat over his arm.

”Our path is meant for those who never plan to come back,” Phillips said.

”He still intends to return.”

Barnaby let out a soft ”oh” and didn’t press the matter.

He walked to the wings and glanced back.

”By the way, another one recently came down here in the Imperial Capital.”

”I hear it’s a young girl, younger than you even. But she’s moving down this path faster than anyone.”

Phillips didn’t look up.

”Moving fast isn’t always a good thing.”

Barnaby smacked his lips and slipped into his coat.

”Remember to kill the lights when you lock up. The gas is billed by the hour.”

His footsteps faded down the corridor, leaving Phillips alone in the theater.

He picked up the teapot and poured out the last cup.

..................

On Monday, Isabella noticed something wrong the moment she walked into her office.

The pot of mint on her windowsill had turned green.

She dropped her briefcase on the desk and walked over for a closer look.

This particular pot of mint was a cutting Clara had smuggled out of the botanical garden’s greenhouse two years ago.

Over the past two years, it had withered five times. Each time, it had died back until nothing but bare stems remained.

Each time, Isabella would drown it with a massive pitcher of water, only to forget about it for days afterward.

It had been clinging to life in a half-dead state ever since.

Now, it had shot up to half the height of the window frame. Layers of leaves spilled outward, the topmost ones covered in a fine fuzz.

Isabella pinched off a leaf and held it to her nose. The scent was incredibly pungent.

She placed the leaf on her desk, sat down, and pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

At the very top, she wrote: Mint Observation Record.

Then she tried to recall the last time she had watered it.

Unable to remember, she opened her planner and flipped backward through the pages.

Her planner was filled with grading papers, department meetings, and seal diagram revisions. Not a single word mentioned the mint.

She called the cleaner in.

”Has anyone touched the mint on my windowsill this month?”

”No, Associate Professor. You said last time that no one was allowed to touch it.”

”I did?”

”You asked who would take the blame if someone touched it and it died.”

Isabella dismissed the cleaner.

At noon, the department office posted this month’s secondment list.

Isabella had been waiting for this sheet of paper for the past two weeks.

The last batch drafted had included two lecturers from the Department of Classics and the teaching assistant for the chronology course. The reasons for the transfers were never listed.

She read the list from top to bottom. Her name wasn’t on it.

Things were strange on another front as well. Vincent had been winning so consistently at cards lately that his entire company refused to sit at the same table with him.

In the first round, Vincent’s luck was average, and he lost two pence.

In the second round, he won the two pence back.

In the third round, his hand was so awful he wanted to laugh. He called all the way to the end just to save face, and when they finally revealed their hands... the lieutenant sitting across from him had an even worse one.

By the seventh round, he started to feel that something was wrong.

By the eleventh round, the lieutenant slammed his cards down and stood up, claiming he needed to go inspect the sentries.

By the fourteenth round, the remaining two men also said they needed to go inspect the sentries.

”Where are you getting all these sentries to inspect around here?” Vincent called after them.

No one answered him.

The next day, he played with a different group of people and won again.

On the third day, he deliberately played good hands terribly, but he still won.

On the fourth day, someone suggested switching to dice. He rolled six times, and rolled high all six times.

”You’re cheating!” the lieutenant finally snapped, unable to take it anymore.

”Do I even need to?” Vincent pushed the dice in front of him. ”Roll them yourself.”

The lieutenant rolled a two.

Vincent took the dice and rolled. A six.

”...Roll again.”

Six.

”Again.”

Six.

The dugout remained silent for a long time.

Eventually, the lieutenant pulled his blanket over his head and rolled over to sleep. He muttered one sentence before drifting off.

”You brat, stop winning all the time!”

”Why?”

”When my uncle was in the New Continent, someone at the card table won consecutively for half a month.”

”And then what?”

The lieutenant ignored him and started snoring.

Vincent gathered the cards, stacked them neatly one by one, and tucked them into his breast pocket.

Truth be told, he wasn’t enjoying it either.

If there was one thing he loved, it was a steep challenge.

Back when his younger cousin remarked that he carved turkeys beautifully, he had spent Christmas dinner carving the bird in front of a whole room of people, switching the knife from his left hand to his right. When he finished, he even flipped the blade to show everyone the clean edge.

Winning without the slightest effort was like carving a boneless goose. It was utterly boring.

..................

Gerard went up to the small, iron-riveted room on the second floor. A sewing box sat on the top shelf of the tin cabinet.

The old man picked out a needle and was about to close the lid when the velvet cloth slipped, revealing a crack.

He lifted the velvet cloth completely.

Underneath was a thin wooden board with one corner slightly raised.

He pried at it with his fingernail and popped it open.

A piece of paper lay inside the hidden compartment. Gerard took it out.

The paper held a drawing.

Drawn in charcoal with crooked lines, it depicted the profile of a man.

The man’s nose was drawn decently enough, but one eye was higher than the other, and the chin forcefully stretched the entire face out by half an inch.

She had probably gotten tired of drawing the hair, simply scribbling the charcoal back and forth dozens of times until it was a solid black mess.

Gerard pinched the paper and sat down in the chair behind the desk.

He held it up to the light. Flipping it over, he found a line of small text on the back: ”A return gift for you.”

Gerard placed the paper on the desk and smoothed it out with his hand.

When the butler came upstairs, he knocked twice on the door.

”Master.”

”Enter.”

”The afternoon mail.”

The top item was a bill bearing the letterhead of a shipping agency, with an address in Liverpool.

Below the letterhead was a second address, located in the New Continent.

There were only a few lines of typewritten text on the card.

”Per the client’s instructions, a consignment of fourteen crates has been placed in storage for your esteemed self. Freight, insurance, and storage fees have all been prepaid.”

”The delivery date for said consignment is scheduled for November 2nd of this year, or anytime thereafter.”

”Client: Lauren Ashford.”

Lauren. That was the name of his eldest son.

Gerard picked up the card and flipped it over to check the back.

The back was blank.

”No letter?”

”No letter, Master. Just this single card.”

”Bring up the atlas from the study. The one for the New Continent.”

The butler went back downstairs.

..................

Early in the morning, as Richard walked out of his dormitory, a paperboy was shouting at the top of his lungs by the main intersection.

”The Tania has sunk! One thousand two hundred dead!”

Richard handed over a penny and stood by the base of the wall to read through the paper.

The ship appeared to have been an unarmed merchant vessel. After it was torpedoed by an enemy submarine, the casualty list revealed that many of the victims were neutral citizens, including infants not even a year old.

Richard folded the newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and headed toward the Academy District.

Returning to his dorm after classes, Richard noticed a crowd surging out of an alley two streets east of the Academy District.

The man leading them was gripping half an iron railing, snapped right off the fence of a church graveyard.

They stopped in front of a bakery. The sign above the shop read: ”Schmidt & Son.”

”Schmidt!” the leader shouted.

A man poked his head out from behind the counter inside the shop.

He was in his sixties, his apron covered in flour, both hands still sticky with raw dough.

”Sir, this is Smith.”

He wiped his hands on his apron and pointed at the sign.

”Smith. S-M-I-T-H. The paint for that horizontal stroke chipped off the sign.”

”Chipped off?”

”It fell off three years ago, and I just never got around to fixing it.”

”Then you should have just fixed it.”

”...Sir, a repair costs eight shillings.”

Someone in the crowd laughed. It was an ugly sound.

The glass of the storefront window shattered from the center. The iron railing smashed through, sending a whole row of freshly baked bread tumbling across the floor.

Someone stepped on the loaves, crushing them underfoot, then stomped on them again.

Old Smith stood behind the counter, too terrified to stop them. He braced both hands against the countertop, his fingers still dotted with dough.

Only after the crowd had left did he bend down to pick up the surviving loaves from the floor, one by one.

Richard stood across the street. He could see two policemen at the intersection.

One had his hands behind his back, while the other had his baton tucked under his arm. They were less than eighty yards from the bakery.

When the leader carrying the iron railing walked past them, he even nodded to the officers.

The policeman with his hands behind his back nodded in return.

The older officer spoke to Richard as he walked by.

”Sir, I’d suggest avoiding the streets to the east today.”

”Why?”

”Orders from above. The police force is prioritizing the protection of critical areas.”

By evening, the chaos had spread far beyond a single street.

Two fires broke out in the East District, sending thick smoke billowing up from behind the rooftops.

News from Liverpool and Manchester didn’t arrive until the next day. The situation there was even more brutal than in the Imperial Capital.

The newspapers later tallied the damage: in that one week, over nineteen hundred shops were smashed across the country.

Among those whose shops were destroyed were Germanic people, Rus people, Sami people, and Iberians.