I Loaded the Occult Panel

At the end of August, Mortimer met with the Virtuoso he was closest to—the old president of the Royal Anthropological Society.

The man was a contemporary of Mortimer’s mentor’s mentor, giving them a measure of personal connection.

Despite this, he still presented him with a document.

It explicitly stated: From the day of my passing, all private book collections, manuscripts, annotated copies, and unarchived drafts under my name shall unconditionally belong to the archives of the Royal Anthropological Society. They are not to be appraised for value, carry no conditions, and are not subject to dispute by heirs.

The old president read through the document and gave a soft hum of acknowledgment.

”Mortimer, I thought you wouldn’t take this step for another ten years.”

Ten years from now was roughly when Mortimer calculated this body of his would succumb to old age and die.

Holding a promotion ritual right before death, using its effects to catch a fleeting glimpse of the scenery at the top—this was something many Major Adepts did.

Of course, there had yet to be a single successful promotion.

Even if one truly completed some great endeavor, a body and mind too old and decayed could never sustain the full promotion.”Mortimer, let me tell you some news first.”

”Go ahead.”

”That Master won’t be in any specific location.”

As the old president spoke, the books and scrolls in the room gently fluttered.

”You people always think the Masters sitting at the very peak must have a temple, a well, or a vast wilderness.

”Some do, but this one from the Classical Records Tradition does not.”

”That entity’s anchor is every place where someone is still reading a book.”

Mortimer was about to speak, but the man’s next words sent a chill of shock through him.

”In your lifetime, you have probably already met him several times.”

”...What?”

”You borrowed a manuscript from 1432 on the third floor of the Imperial Capital University Library, and the man behind the counter told you, ’This copy is not for outside loan.’

”You were stopped by someone in Dublin who said your slip was missing a signature.

”And when you were on the third underground level in Prague looking for Abyss Tradition titles, someone turned the lights up a bit brighter for you.”

”Wherever there is someone turning a page, he might be there.”

Mortimer sat there, speechless for a long time.

He couldn’t even remember how many people he had spoken to in libraries, let alone what he had said to them.

The old president continued.

”Since he could be anywhere, he isn’t guaranteed to be anywhere in particular.”

”However, because I share the same tradition, I can point you in a general direction.”

He picked up his pen again and wrote down a location.

”In the last week of October, at the Ambrosian Library in Milan, you have a thirty percent chance of encountering him.”

If Richard were here, he would probably have a strong sense of déjà vu—it sounded exactly like trying to catch a rare Pokémon at a fixed spawn location.

Mortimer naturally didn’t know what a Pokémon was, but he also felt it would be a tricky prospect.

”Why Milan?”

”Because that library was one of the first to open its doors to anyone who could read.”

The scrolls slowly drifted, forming a model of that very library.

”There’s another reason, which you can probably guess yourself.”

”...The war.”

”Yes. A hundred miles to the north, they are digging trenches, and to the south, they are moving boxes into cellars. Everyone on the Apennine Peninsula is transporting paper toward the mountains.”

”When the paper moves, it’s much easier to bump into him.”

Mortimer stood up and pushed the document across the table.

”President, what about the other seventy percent...?”

”Don’t worry, there’s no danger.

”At worst, you’ll sit in that room for a day and nothing will happen.”

Thanks to those hints, Mortimer immediately realized what was happening.

He hadn’t noticed when this librarian had come in at all. Neither the door nor the floorboards had made a single sound.

The man’s head drooped slightly. He was in his forties, of average height, with a pencil tucked behind his ear.

He looked no different from any exhausted librarian.

He looked at the smoke filling the room and reached out, fanning the air in front of his face in a highly exaggerated manner.

”Sir, why are you burning paper in the reading room?”

Mortimer froze in his chair.

”That smoke...” The man lifted his chin, gesturing toward the ceiling.

”...has already seeped out through the crack under the door. The corridor is full of it now. The people downstairs think there’s a fire.”

Mortimer sat in his chair, staring at the man, unable to utter a single word.

The scenario he had envisioned went like this:

Ether would surge throughout the room, and the veil would tear open down the middle.

The Master would speak through some object, delivering a sentence he wouldn’t understand but which would be enough to keep him awake for the rest of his life.

He had even prepared himself to straighten his back at that exact moment, adjust his reading glasses, and deliver a nonchalant line:

”I am Mortimer, a Major Adept of the Classical Records Tradition. I have taught at Imperial Capital University for a century, and I am ready to fulfill my path.”

But instead... this librarian stared at the pile of paper ashes in disgust and pointed his pencil at the name written in blood.

”Oh, Mortimer, huh? You rank twenty-seventh in the contemporary entry for Major Adepts.”

Mortimer waited for his next words.

The man tucked the pencil back behind his ear.

”When I was coming up the stairs, I was thinking: which graduate student is smoking a pipe this time?

”Turns out it was a hundred-and-twenty-year-old gentleman burning his own manuscripts in my reading room.”

Mortimer couldn’t help but correct him, ”A hundred and twenty-three.”

The librarian raised his eyes.

In this conversation, it was the first time he truly looked at Mortimer.

”...A hundred and twenty-three. Apologies, my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

He was obviously lying, and he didn’t even try to hide it.

”Follow me.”

The librarian turned and walked away. Mortimer hugged the bronze basin and followed behind.

The staircase was located in the deepest part of the library, so narrow that two people couldn’t walk side by side.

The further down they went, the older the books on the shelves became.

The man spoke as he walked, talking entirely about disjointed, random things.

”...Careful, the stone on the eleventh step is loose.

”Three university students came by last week saying they wanted to see Dante’s original handwriting.

”There is no original handwriting of Dante in this world. I explained it to them for a long time, but they didn’t believe me. They said I was keeping it for myself.”

Carrying the bronze basin as he trailed behind, Mortimer suddenly felt a strong urge to laugh.

He counted the steps as they descended.

When they reached the third floor, he tried something once.

Just once.

He pulled his Inspiration back until it was exceedingly faint, then lightly brushed it against the back of the man in front of him.

The moment it connected, he read a card with three lines written in pencil:

Author unknown.

Volume count: One.

Note: This item is for in-library reading only.

Mortimer withdrew his Inspiration.

He had met many Virtuosos in his life. When one arrived, the wind across the entire street had stopped;

when another came, every piece of paper in the room flew into the air before falling back into place.

Standing to the side at the time, although he revered the power of a Virtuoso, he hadn’t found it strange.

Such a behemoth squeezing into a tiny room would naturally torment the material plane until it groaned and cracked.

But on their walk today, the veil hadn’t moved an inch.

Because this was already his room.

No, this entity wasn’t merely in here.

The old president had said: That entity’s anchor is every place where someone is still reading a book.

Since he was everywhere... Back when he was a child in the rural parish reading room with only three rows of shelves, that old man napping by the window who never got angry when awakened.

Could that have been him?

Mortimer suddenly felt the step beneath his feet go a little soft.

The man in front of him turned his head.

The lantern’s light shone upward, casting a somewhat comical look on his face.

”Sir, you just read me.”

Mortimer’s fingers gripped the edge of the bronze basin so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

”...I did.”

”What did you read?”

”A card.”

The man switched the lantern to his other hand and nodded in satisfaction.

”That’s right. I am a card.”

He turned back around and continued descending.

At the end of the fourth floor was a counter. The bookshelves behind the counter stretched endlessly into the darkness, with no end in sight.

The librarian hung the lantern on a hook, walked around behind the counter, and bent down to pull a thick register from beneath the desk. The pages rustled as he flipped past a dozen sheets.

”...Right here. Entry twenty-seven, Mortimer.

”Entered into the register: 1817.”

1817. That was the year he had just graduated. He had been kicked from a teaching assistant position into a field squad, forced to chew on frozen bread for three months on the wastelands of Northumberland alongside his mentor.

Back then, the entire Empire was still agonizing over the debts incurred after Waterloo.

The newspapers published pieces on the Corn Laws every day, and people cursed the Parliament in the streets daily.

He remembered that winter being absurdly cold.

Only later did he learn that it was because a volcano to the south had erupted two years prior, robbing the entire Northern Hemisphere of its summer.

There was no sun that summer. The crops rotted in the fields, and the parish graveyards couldn’t dig graves fast enough.

The librarian read the next line.

”Promoted to Minor Adept: 1824, thirty-two years old, relatively late among peers.”

Mortimer offered no defense. It was indeed late. The first from his cohort to ascend had beaten him by several years.

”Promoted to Major Adept: 1861.”

In 1861, he was sixty-nine years old, and the Imperial Capital had just begun preparations to build its first subway line.

He remembered walking out of the ritual site and seeing a crowd of people gathered in the street, fervently discussing the newly installed gas lamps.

At the time, Mortimer had thought: The world is changing faster.

But over the fifty-four years that followed, this world personally told him that the changes had only just begun.

The man wasn’t finished.

”Those inducted into this tradition by his hand...”

His fingertip slid down.

”Major Adepts, one.”

”Minor Adepts, six.”

”Practitioners, twenty-nine.”

”Return status: Good.”

”Overdue: None.”

”Damaged: One volume, 1893.”

In 1893, his best student was attempting to advance to Virtuoso.

A dense fog had risen over the sea, and under the joint interference of multiple parties, the attempt failed at the very end.

Mortimer could only stand by and watch, utterly powerless to do anything.

”Given your contributions to this tradition...”

Just as Mortimer was about to speak, the man continued reading.

”Don’t rush, there’s the even more important anchor statistics chart.”

The librarian said, ”I’ll read it to you.”

”There’s no need...”

”I’ll read it.”

He began to read.

”Mentor: Owen; Harrow, struck from the register in 1844.”

Mortimer closed his eyes.

”Peers from graduate studies, eleven.”

The man’s finger slid down line by line.

”1839... to 1891, all struck from the register.”

In 1891, by the time Mortimer rushed over, his old senior had already been cleaned up, a white cloth covering his face.

He lifted the cloth to take one look, then covered him back up.

That day, he stepped out of the man’s house and looked around the street, suddenly realizing he didn’t recognize a single person there.

”Family.”

”One older brother, struck from the register in 1856.”

”One older sister, struck from the register in 1861.”

”...No descendants.”

”Further down, after 1893, this column received no more additions.”

The librarian frowned, looking somewhat troubled.

”Sir, your family, friends, and teachers are all no longer in this world.”

”All that remains below this are a few students.”

He flipped another half-page down the register.

Mortimer looked down.

He found that the list was shorter than the previous one—fewer than ten names in total.

The ink on the last name was still fresh.

Richard Williams, January 25, 1915.

Indeed, it was only when that kid had been willing to take such a risk for his own grandfather that Mortimer had truly acknowledged him.

The librarian finally handed the pencil and paper over to Mortimer.

”All right. Write down what you came here to do on the paper.”

That was how the Classical Records Tradition operated; they believed everything should be recorded in a catalogue, ready to be reviewed at any time.

Mortimer took the paper, wrote on it, crossed it out, and wrote again.

I wish to take a step upward... Too soft.

Is there still room in this tradition... That handed all the initiative over to the other party.

Am I qualified... He didn’t even put the pen to the paper for that one.

The pencil twirled half a turn in his hand.

The librarian watched him scribble until the entire front of the paper was covered in black strike-throughs, his face devoid of any expression.

Mortimer used the clean space on the back and laid it out plainly: I apply for promotion.

The man took it back and lightly checked it off with his pencil, without a shred of hesitation.

”Regardless of whether your promotion succeeds or fails, nurture your students well.”

The librarian raised the lantern a little higher, illuminating those densely packed bookshelves.

”Books must always have someone to continue reading them. Otherwise, they are just a pile of paper.”

After leaving the library, Mortimer returned to the inn, sat down, and spread the newspaper he had bought during the day over his knees.

Halfway through his reading, the door downstairs clicked open.

Footsteps quickly approached and stopped at his door.

”Professor.”

”You’re back?”

”I’m back.”

Mortimer folded the newspaper and placed it on the windowsill.

”Where did you go this afternoon?”

Richard entered the room, sat across from him, and recounted his afternoon.

”I was looking for a place to report in all along the way.

”City Hall, the police station, I even thought about looking for the Guild’s branch office.

”When I do fieldwork in the Imperial Capital, the first thing I do is always report in.

”I go to the Branch Office to hand in my paperwork and get a case number. If something goes wrong, someone will handle it, and when I return, I can even get my expenses reimbursed.”

”But they don’t have that here.”

”They don’t,” the old professor nodded.

”Why?”

”Because this place doesn’t have a center that has lasted long enough.”

Mortimer reached out and drew a circle in the air.

”Over in the Empire, from Cromwell up to today, they’ve used the exact same system for two hundred and sixty years.

”They argue fiercely in the middle, but the upper echelon remains the same group of people.

”So the mystical side naturally becomes proceduralized: the Branch Office, the General Administration, personnel slots, public funds, routine wear and tear.”

”Here on the Apennine Peninsula, who knows how many times the rulers have changed over the last eight hundred years.

”Today it’s the Duchy of Milan, tomorrow it’s a Spanish Viceroy.

”Then it was the Austrians, and later Napoleon.

”Finally, they fought a four-year war themselves and founded a nation—and that was only fifty-four years ago.”

”In a place like this, where are you supposed to report?”

Richard knew this himself. What he really couldn’t figure out was:

”So what do the people here rely on to maintain stability? There can’t be a complete lack of order and regulations, right?”

Mortimer adjusted his reading glasses.

”You mentioned that spice shop you visited today, where the owner dipped his finger in water to show you whether the saffron turned yellow or not.”

”Yes.”

”Why did he show you that?”

Richard thought for a moment.

”...Because I’m a foreigner. If he displays honest business practices in front of me, I might spread this shop’s reputation...”

He suddenly understood. Hadn’t he learned about this shop’s stellar reputation from his senior, Sophia?

”Exactly.” The old professor was pleased with his student’s comprehension.

”He showed you because that shop sign is worth far more than half an ounce of saffron.”

”Order here is built on commercial credit.

”Companies, pharmacies, watchmakers, glassmakers, papermakers... These shops have been open for three hundred years.

”Passed from father to son, and from son to grandson. The country has changed six times, but the shops remain.”

Richard then brought up the serpent column at the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio.

”Professor, that column just stands there in the side aisle. Anyone can walk right up and touch it.”

Mortimer nodded.

”What you want to ask is: why is such an item left out in the open for anyone to touch.”

”Yes.”

”If this were the Imperial Capital, it would currently be sitting in the deepest level of a closed museum warehouse. Merely moving it would require a deputy minister’s signature, followed by the co-signatures of two professors.”

”Yes.”

Mortimer spread his hands over his knees.

”Because the people here consider it a holy relic.

”Holy relics are different from other artifacts.

”Those get locked up, but holy relics must be kept out in the open, because their very purpose is to be touched.”

”Are you saying...”

”That old woman touched it, probably because her son is at the Isonzo River.

”The mother held her child up to it because she wants that child to survive until next winter.”

”The very reason that column became what it is today is due to that exact faith and prayer.”

Richard stood up and walked to the window.

At the base of the building across the street, the sunken Roman stone was still there, though it was almost invisible in the twilight.

He suddenly turned around.

”Professor, this afternoon, you...”

Mortimer picked up his cup and took a sip of water that had long gone cold.

”I slept the entire afternoon. My back is sore.”

Richard stood by the window and looked at him for a moment.

”Then don’t be late for the meeting tomorrow.”

”I am never late for meetings. The ones who arrive late are that bunch in their forties—they think they still have plenty of time.”

After speaking, the old professor guzzled another large mouthful of water, seemingly very thirsty.

Richard smiled and turned to go back to his own room. They were staying in a suite with one parlor and two partitioned rooms.

”Little Richard.”

”Hmm?”

Mortimer took off his reading glasses and slowly wiped them with his cuff.

”Let me ask you something.”

”Go ahead.”

”Why are you walking this upward path?”

Richard answered with a hint of hesitation, ”So that the people who remember me can live well.”

Mortimer placed his reading glasses back on his face.

”...All right.”

He put his cup back on the windowsill.

”Then get some sleep early. The meeting is at ten tomorrow.”

...

That night, Richard sat down at the desk in his room.

He first wrapped the half-ounce of saffron in oil paper, tucking it away safely to take back home.

For Evelyn, saffron was a luxury she wouldn’t even dare to ask for.

Richard brought up his panel.

[Available Points: 1.61 → 2.13]

While seven or eight people had come and gone in the basilica, he had stood right in front of that column, pretending to read the inscriptions on it.

In reality, he truly had been studying the casting method of that serpent, its alloy ratio, and the pattern of its scales.

0.52 points wasn’t much—roughly equivalent to an ordinary artifact, and less than the ascetic monk’s 1,100-year-old stone bowl.

But this had been completely free; he had even dusted off a layer of grime for the column while he was at it.

Speaking of which, he wondered if there were any more opportunities like this out in the open to absorb points.

He could ask the professor later. After all, a Scholar studying statues and ruins on the street was perfectly justified and natural.

Richard felt somewhat fortunate that he had chosen the Scholar path. Otherwise, a Hunter going out every day to handle antiques and ”study” historical ruins would look suspicious no matter how you spun it.

In the morning, Richard read the title aloud once.

”Western Continent Academic Mutual Aid Committee; Wartime Rare Originals Preservation Case; Apennine-Albion Joint Working Conference (Third Round; Milan)...”

Halfway through, he had to take a fresh breath just to keep reading.

Mortimer cast him a sidelong glance.

”Stop reading it.”

”Professor, I want to memorize it.”

”What do you need to memorize it for?”

”In case someone asks what I’m doing...”

”Just tell them you’re a copyist.” The old professor tapped his cane against the floor.

”That excuse will still work for at least another ten years.”

Richard didn’t quite understand why it was specifically ten years.

The venue was set in a long hall on the second floor of the Palazzo Brera.

The ceiling was painted with a group of people amidst the clouds. The painter had clearly been much more concerned with making the clouds look good; the people’s feet were uniformly hidden behind them, making it look as though none of them had feet at all.

The long table was draped in dark green woolen cloth. There were eleven main seats, while two rows of hard wooden chairs lined the walls for observers.

Richard’s seat was in the very last row, right next to the door.

Aside from the matter of ”making a copy of every original text and sending them into the cellars of the Helvetian mountains,” there were two other items on the agenda.

First, how to divide the maintenance responsibilities for the weak points along the Alps-Isonzo line.

Richard had already heard the name Isonzo no less than twenty times from the mouths of newsboys.

The banks of the river were covered in trenches, and there were so many dead that the newspapers couldn’t even be bothered to print an exact count anymore.

The other item was far more granular: deciding on the translation conventions for the Emergency Field Sealing Manual.

The chief delegate for the Apennine side was Professor Tagliaferro. His white hair was combed back without a single strand out of place. As he spoke, his hands rested folded on the table, not moving an inch from beginning to end.

He read his opening remarks for forty minutes straight.

For the first ten minutes, Richard was still taking notes on the key points. By the twelfth minute, he realized that all he had written down was ”Since the founding of this committee,” ”We are indebted to you all,” and ”In these difficult times”...

He quickly put his pen down.

Next, Richard went back to counting the footless people on the ceiling. When he reached twenty-nine, he lost count and had to start over.

At the fortieth minute, Tagliaferro lifted his hands from the table.

”Gentlemen, we will now recess. Please, help yourselves to coffee.”

The entire hall instantly came alive.

The sound of chairs scraping backward merged into a single cacophony, louder than every noise made in the previous forty minutes combined.

Richard stood at the very outer edge of the crowd, holding a tiny white porcelain cup.

The sip of black liquid inside was thick. He took a taste, squinting his eyes at the extreme bitterness.

”nza h,” someone next to him said.

Richard turned his head and found a young man around his age, slightly plump with black hair, clutching a stack of papers to his chest.

”...No sugar.”

The man repeated it in very slow Latin, afraid Richard wouldn’t understand.

To think the incident from yesterday afternoon had already spread. It seemed the Apennines were no less skilled at gossip than any other country.

”They’re out of sugar,” Richard replied in Latin as well.

The man froze for a moment, then laughed so hard the entire stack of papers in his arms shook.

”Luca di Valle.”

He freed up a hand.

”...Copyist for the secretariat.”

”Richard Williams.”

”I know.” Luca jutted his chin toward the main table.

”The roster said ’one accompanying recorder.’ I was the one who copied the list on our end. I almost misspelled your last name.”

Richard reached out and shook his hand.

Luca was twenty this year. He had gained his Signature less than a year ago and followed the Classical Records Tradition.

When he recounted all this, he used the local language. He started speaking very quickly, but after seeing Richard struggling to understand, his pace slowed down to popping out one word at a time.

In truth, the two of them could have communicated in Latin or Franc, but then it would be Luca who struggled with unfamiliarity.

”Let’s just mix them together as we talk,” Richard suggested considerately.

When the meeting adjourned for lunch, Mortimer came out of the long hall and tossed a stack of papers into Richard’s arms.

”Professor, this is...”

”Post-meeting transcription, archiving, terminology comparison, and compiling an index.”

”Organize the index according to the Apennine alphabet, not our Empire’s alphabet. This copy will ultimately stay in their cabinets.”

Holding the stack of papers, Richard stood on one side, while Luca stood on the other.

Across the corridor, the two young men exchanged a glance and nodded to each other.

Then they lowered their heads and began copying the texts.

After transcribing for a while, Richard looked up and noticed the green lamp across the hall was still lit.

He tore off the corner of a piece of paper, wrote a line, folded it into a triangle, and pinched it between his fingers as he walked out. From across the corridor, he flicked it onto the opposite desk.

The paper triangle spun onto Luca’s manuscript and came to a stop.

Luca unfolded it to look. Written on it in Latin was:

”ta ha m?” (What time are you copying until before you sleep?)

He looked down, scribbled a line, folded it back up, and flicked it back.

”m hata fnt.” (I’ll sleep when the paper is done.)

On the first night, Richard returned to the inn and fought on until two in the morning.

The Apennine language portion was a gruelingly hard chew.

He recognized the Latin roots and could rely on them to guess eighty percent of the general meaning, squeezing the remaining twenty percent out from context.

[Learning: General Knowledge] had truly opened its eyes for the first time that summer afternoon, behind the seventh row of shelves in the museum’s ancient tomes section.

That stack of twenty-nine palm leaves, nineteen types of symbols, and three high-frequency ones—it only took him ten minutes to deduce them from completely unintelligible to readable.

He changed his reading method, mentally constructing the Latin declension tables first.

Six cases, five declensions. He had memorized them to death back at the Greenwood lunch tables.

Then came Ancient Greek, utilizing the handwritten notes Lillian had handed him on the second floor of the library.

And Franc, which he had spent the last two days practicing conversationally with those three Franc military officers in the train carriage.

Finally, there was the batch of annotated Medieval Church Latin texts; his aunt had sent him copies just last year.

Thousands of old materials lined up in his mind, naturally interlocking like gears.

The Apennine language itself had grown directly out of Latin.

When he figured this out, that entire stack of paper took on a different look in his eyes.

Richard picked up the third page again.

This time, he didn’t guess. He read it smoothly all the way through.

When morning came, Mortimer inspected the results and offered no evaluation, directly spreading a piece of paper between them instead.

He had pulled it out once on the train; it was the committee’s list of materials that needed to be preserved.

The first few lines were all clearly named: the private book collection of such-and-such family, a book of psalms from a certain monastery, a fourteenth-century medical prescription.

But the lines that followed were marked with: Era undetermined, Author unknown, Incomplete manuscript.

”Today we get down to real business. I’m taking you to the Ambrosian Library to look at some surviving lone copies.”

Richard folded the paper and tucked it into his inner pocket.

As he tucked it away, his fingertips brushed against his antler-tip token.

This morning, it had already turned cold, accompanied by a constant trembling.

Outside the window, the bell tolled nine times.

There were even more people clutching chrysanthemums on the streets than yesterday. The day after tomorrow was November 1st. Halloween was tomorrow night.

The lord of the hunt had already issued the invitation for the Wild Hunt.