I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 117 Character Portraits

Richard lay in bed, staring at the ceiling.

A dog from a house in the alley across the street was barking again. It barked three times before its owner yelled at it to go back to its spot.

The numbers on the panel floated at the edge of my field of vision.

[Sleeping Lv.1] Progress: 99%

He blinked.

Unlike eating skills, sleep experience is accumulated purely by the product of sleep duration and sleep quality.

If you get seven or eight hours of sleep every day, the progress bar will move forward a bit.

The improved oxygen supply brought about by Breathing Lv.2 resulted in his sleep quality being significantly higher than that of ordinary people.

Falling asleep quickly, not waking up during the night, and having longer periods of deep sleep.

After two months of accumulating high-quality sleep, the progress bar quietly filled up tonight.

[Sleeping Lv.2] Progress: 0%

The changes came much more quietly than the upgrade in dining experience.

In the morning, Richard opened his eyes.

He woke up before the alarm clock even went off, as if he had been pulled out of the water and emerged cleanly from the surface of his consciousness.

He sat on the bed for a while, sensing the state of his mind.

The information I organized in my mind last night stayed safely in its place, and each piece of information could be retrieved instantly.

It not only helps him sleep well, but also keeps him energetic during the day.

During sleep, it performs a high-quality process of organizing and solidifying the information stored in the brain.

The forgetting rate is reduced after a night of review and reinforcement of what was learned during the day.

………………

That day, Richard took advantage of his free time after class and went to his private reading room again.

A notebook lay open on the table; it contained records of Theogony Salon.

The handwriting was a size smaller than his usual notebook size, and he planned to add a little more at each gathering in the future.

He turned to a blank space in his notebook and began to draw a portrait.

The portrait Hecate was pointing to was:

A hidden figure, possibly at the level of a Grand Master, possesses the means to support cross-city delivery and dream communication, has extensive knowledge of the Empire's mystical side, and has long cultivated an information network.

Richard's pen stopped below the phrase "long-term operation of information networks" and wrote the letter M.

M refers to Mrs. Mary; out of caution, he did not write her name.

If you break down the elements in the portrait of Lady Mary, you'll find that there are many corresponding elements.

First, the Grand Mastery rank.

Old Big admitted that his teacher was a master, the pinnacle of living practitioners in the Old World, which matched the strength Hecate displayed in the temple.

Secondly, the direction of concealment.

Lady Mary was a medium from a folk guild and was a representative figure of the hidden direction.

Hecate's methods for constructing dream temples, manipulating spirit messengers, and arranging sensory spaces all belong to advanced applications of the covert approach.

Furthermore, the long-term operation in the capital and the presence of disciples throughout the country are crucial, as the delivery of spirit messengers must rely on anchor points.

To deliver the token to completely different cities, there must be an active anchor point in each of those cities.

Only someone with a student network spanning the entire empire could achieve this.

Gerald had mentioned on the phone that Mrs. Mary's admissions policy was to accept all applicants.

This "casting a wide net" approach to recruitment seems somewhat similar to what Hecate said to the newcomers at the first round table.

Furthermore, from a mystical perspective, the Triad Goddess corresponds to youth, the present, and the future.

According to Old Biggs, Mrs. Mary's students spanned at least three generations.

The earliest disciples have already retired, while the latest are still apprentices.

This intergenerational mentorship structure corresponds perfectly to the three stages of a young girl, a mother, and an old woman.

Richard connected the five lines with straight lines, and each line ended up pointing to the same name.

If Hecate is indeed Lady Mary, then the danger level posed by the Theogony Salon to him would rise a notch.

He has already made contact with old Bigger; the Warren family invites Mrs. McNeill to perform exorcisms every year.

From Briston to the Imperial City's Flower Moon Street, from the secret guild to the family mansion, he had no idea that he was already caught in the net while standing on the sidelines.

If this inference is true, then every action and every word one makes may be seen by an unseen, hidden eye.

The thought of this possibility sent chills down Richard's spine.

The next day after school, Richard took some time to help his younger sister with her homework.

Evelyn's problem tonight is an application problem about wage distribution in a textile mill.

While he was outlining the solution to his sister's problem, he was actually repeatedly calculating another possible approach in his mind.

"Brother, you were especially patient when explaining the problems today."

Evelyn put the end of the pencil in her mouth and lifted her head from her workbook.

"Your homework was difficult today."

"It's not particularly difficult..." she muttered, then lowered her head again.

After dinner, he helped his mother clear the dishes and returned to his room, turning to the page in his notebook that circled Mrs. Mary.

If you want to refute a reasoning, the safest way is to find the contradiction between it and known facts.

The biggest contradiction lies in motivation.

Gerald and Old Bige both spoke of Lady Mary's reputation within the local guilds.

She has a stable partnership with the official system, and even the Imperial branch offices use her students' local intelligence network when they go out on missions.

Her entire foundation is built on her reputation passed down by word of mouth.

A person who can manage to gain the respect of all three factions has no reason to run an underground organization that violates mainstream ethics and uses divine names to address each other.

She can work quietly within her own client base; there's no need for her to sit at an anonymous round table anymore.

Motivated people are those who "cannot get the position they want within the rules".

Hecate's monologue, "How dare mortals address each other by the name of gods?" reveals an arrogance that transcends existing rules.

But for Mrs. Mary, once the rules were openly disregarded, all the credibility she had built up over the past decades would vanish overnight.

Even from a purely profit-driven perspective, she had no reason to do this.

Richard crossed out the "M" in his notebook.

But this chain of suspicion didn't break; it shifted from the "teacher" in a different direction.

The second suspect was written on the next line of the notebook.

Mrs. McNeill, this time he used K. to refer to her.

She was Mrs. Mary's favorite student.

They frequented wealthy families in the north and had readily available information channels with local secretive intermediaries.

After the divination disc incident, she was the first to give the Warren family the assessment that "this little guy is not simple".

If anyone needs to observe Richard's progress over the long term, gather data on his abilities, and determine whether he deserves to be included in the roundtable, Mrs. McNeil is the eye of the trade.

The pen tip paused for a moment below the word "eyes".

Richard put down his pen.

The person who truly operates from the shadows will not allow any visible relationship between themselves and the invitees to emerge.

Hecate wouldn't make such a crude move.

The meticulousness with which she built the temple and manipulated the spirit messengers suggests that she is someone extremely sensitive to "information leaks."

This kind of person wouldn't let information flow into the home of a client with a talkative son.

Richard also crossed out K.

What Richard is most confident about right now is another newcomer sitting at the same table.

Nemesis.

The woman, judging from her voice, is young and has undergone rigorous debate or public speaking training.

Her father was a hunter, and the determination for revenge projected by the divine name when Hecate unveiled the curtain was exactly the same as someone's speech.

In Richard's mind, there was only one person who could put together this set of characteristics.

Catherine Blackwood.

This person has a burning desire for justice in his bones.

The debate training matches, and the family background matches.

I'm about 60-70% sure I can confirm it.

Richard also did not write anything explicitly pointing to Catherine in his notebook.

The identifications all stop at the level of symbols and abbreviations, with N. corresponding to Nemesis.

Richard had no intention of verifying it.

If you are 60-70% sure you recognize Nemesis, then the other person's guess about "who Hermes is" is probably not too far off either.

The two were both at an anonymous round table, and both likely recognized each other, yet both tacitly chose to remain silent.

This tacit understanding itself is a form of protection.