I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Chapter 129 Shadow Armor

Just as I was thinking this, the panel refreshed itself.

[Surgical technique proficiency level detected]

【Stone Armor (Reversible)】

Richard's eyes lit up.

This is the real reason why I've been practicing "Stone Armor" so diligently these past few days.

Fog Wall is not a proper spell and cannot be reversed.

Stone Armor is the first and only spell that he has truly mastered to date that is worthy of being called a public spell.

Richard pressed [Confirm].

The reversal process has no visible effect.

There was no light, no sound, and nothing in the alleyway changed visually.

But Richard could feel that the etheric flow within him, which had become accustomed to flowing "from the inside out and condensing within himself," was subtly reversed at this moment.

From the outside in.

The stonemason's protective prayers make the body as hard as stone.

The most basic properties of stone are hardness and weight.

The armor plating was designed for hardness.

After reversing, the weight of the stone is taken.

As Richard thought this, the flow of ether within his body gave a clear response.

Applying weight through a shadow is essentially like piling stones on the other person's shadow.

When the shadow becomes heavy, the body itself also becomes heavy.

[The Shadow Reversal is Complete]

[New Spell Generation: Lorica Umbrae]

【Effect: Apply additional load to the target body by using the target's shadow as a medium】

Duration and intensity are positively correlated with Stone Armor proficiency and Aether consumption.

[Restriction: The spell requires the target to have a shadow; it cannot be cast in an environment without light.]

[Side effect: During the spell, the caster cannot use Stone Armor.]

Richard mentally reviewed the effects.

Stone Armor and Shadow Armor are the application of the same technique in two directions.

Either go inward and harden yourself; or go outward and make the other person more important.

You can only choose one direction at a time; you can't have both offense and defense.

The limitation of the light source was also expected.

The medium of the spell is the shadow; without light there is no shadow, and without a shadow there is no path for casting the spell.

But Richard stared at the line "Cannot be used in environments without light" for a while, and another idea popped into his mind.

The limitation of light source is the current limitation.

Low-level techniques almost always come with these rigid prerequisites: "must have this," "must be in that place," and "must do this first."

In the early stages, Stone Armor is inseparable from Gargoyles, Fog Wall is inseparable from Gray Bud Grass, and even the simplest introductory breathing technique relies on the visualization of the Sun Seat for anchoring.

But media limitations are not permanent; they are merely a crutch for those who are not yet proficient.

What about the restriction that "there must be light"?

Richard's train of thought began to slide forward.

If we say that the current Shadow Armor is transmitting ether through the concrete channel of "the target's shadow," then...

So what is the essence of a shadow?

It is the "lightless" area left after light is blocked by a physical object.

But in the world behind the curtain, isn't "no light" itself a kind of shadow?

If one day his ability to manipulate ether is further enhanced, will the requirement for "development" of shadow as a medium be replaced?

If he could break free from the limitations of physical shadows and directly manipulate "no light" at the ethereal level...

That would no longer be "piling stones on the shadow of a certain goal".

That is applying weight directly to a dark area.

Richard's gaze swept around and landed on the corners of the alleyway that were shrouded in shadow.

The entire dark corner of the alley was weighed down.

People walking from the alley entrance begin to feel each step heavier than the last as soon as they step into the shadows.

As you walk further, the sense of heaviness continues to accumulate.

At a certain critical point, the weight will exceed the limit that the bones can withstand.

Or, to be even more terrifying, imagine turning a vast expanse of darkness into weight, concentrating it all on a single target…

Richard couldn't help but chuckle to himself.

He remembered a very famous shonen manga from his past life.

One of the Devil Fruits has this ability: to create a gravitational field through darkness.

My own line of thought expansion was quite similar to that one.

Of course, this is a very distant idea.

In his early stages, he was already doing well if he could make a target carry several times his own weight on his shadow.

To reach the point where one can "manipulate vast areas of darkness," one might need to reach a level of minor or even major mastery.

He remembered the "fragment" label of the Shadow Reversal very clearly.

This tradition is incomplete in the world behind the curtain; perhaps I can find other fragments?

Having a direction to imagine is better than having no direction at all.

………………

At nine o'clock in the morning, the sun was still hidden behind the chimney and had not yet risen.

Richard pushed open the slightly worn door on the east side of the third floor of the library and placed his backpack on the table closest to the wall.

He plans to spend all his free time today in this small reading room.

Three things are spread out on the table.

On the far left are Latin notes, and he hasn't finished digesting the Virgil commentaries that Mr. Holland marked for him;

In the middle is a table of ancient Greek words, with the thin sheet of paper Mr. Hutton gave me pressed under the paperweight;

On the far right is a thick book with its cover re-wrapped in kraft paper.

The notebook contained all the original materials he had copied from the Imperial University Library.

Richard picked up the brown paper notebook and opened it from the middle where the bookmark was.

He had already deciphered the parts of the notebook related to sealing and promotion page by page, and now he was consolidating the remaining parts.

The first section deciphered is titled "An Examination of the Weak Points in the Curtain".

The author uses more than ten pages to mark out all the known weaknesses of the Old World.

Richard used the tip of his pencil to follow the line spacing.

The first type is referred to by the author as "blood spots".

This is a place where a large number of deaths have been accumulated on the earth's surface.

The important town that changed hands repeatedly during the three hundred years of war in the north, the market that was burned to the ground during the plague years in the south, and several ancient cities that were swallowed up by sandstorms or volcanic eruptions even earlier.

Death, like salt, is pickled into the earth; in the most concentrated places, every step on the ground causes headaches for those with high spiritual sensitivity.

Richard underlined this paragraph.

The ruins of the old textile factory beneath Greenwood Field, by this classification standard, would be considered the smallest bloodstain.

The scale is not large enough to be included in the author list, but the nature is similar.

The second type is called "sacrificial scars".

Ancient priests repeatedly performed the same rituals at specific locations, and over hundreds or thousands of years, the rituals themselves etched grooves into the etheric plane.

Later generations demolished the temple, removed the stones, and turned the site into farmland, but the ditches remained in their original locations and did not disappear on their own.

The author gave an example.

In the heart of the western continent lies an oak forest where local farmers have cultivated the land for generations, and every year their plows unearth bronze knives from the ground.

Those knives were left behind by the druids and have been lying in the ground for over a thousand years.

No birds have built nests in the woods to this day, and foxes avoid them when they pass by.

The third category is "drowning line".

This type is the most special.

It's not on land, it's in the sea.

Shipwrecks have occurred repeatedly in certain sea areas for centuries due to ocean currents, seabed topography, or other reasons that are even more difficult to explain.

Every shipwreck drags the entire ship, including its people and cargo, to the bottom of the sea.

The sea swallows up sound, light, and time, but there are some things the sea cannot swallow.

They sink to a certain depth and ferment there slowly.

The author specifically noted that the shipping route between the Sea of ​​Aegis and the eastern coast of the New World was riddled with drowning lines.

Richard saw echoes of what Captain Harding's news article didn't mention in this text.

The fourth category is "where the stars hang low".

The author only mentioned in a footnote that certain mountain peaks, towers, and isolated islands correspond to the world behind the veil under specific celestial phenomena.

This type of location is in the opposite direction to the previous three types.

The first three types seep upwards from the bottom, while the star-shaped ones seep downwards from the top.

The text followed by a smaller line of text: "It is not recommended that any practitioner below the level of Great Mastery linger in such locations for more than 15 minutes."

Richard copied this passage into his notebook, and then added some of his own thoughts.

It's not possible for those below the highest level of mastery; perhaps a ceremony is required for someone at the highest level of mastery in such a place?

The notebook turned to the second section, "The Depth of the Curtain."

This section describes the world behind the curtain.

The author divides the depth behind the curtain into three layers.

The first layer is "nearshore".

The nearshore layer is the layer closest to the material world.

The empty streets, rooms that shouldn't exist, and extra shadows in mirrors that those with inspiration occasionally glimpse in their dreams are mostly afterimages cast by the near shore.

The rules here are not much different from those in the material world; gravity, light, and the sense of time are basically maintained.

The nearshore area is the habitat of most wandering spirits and lower-level evil creatures.

The second layer is called the "Deep Boundary".

The rules of the Deep Realm began to deviate from common sense; the Spirit Realm and the Astral Realm both exist in this layer.

In the innermost layer of the Deep Realm dwells beings of even higher order.

They mostly stay within their own territory and do not actively cross boundaries.

If any living creature were to enter their territory without warning, it would...

This passage was deliberately erased from the original text of the book in my memory.

The author added a sentence after this paragraph:

"When practitioners return from the deep realm, they will look in the mirror more often."

Because he needed to repeatedly confirm that the face in the mirror still belonged to him.

Richard laid the pencil across the spine of the book, a fine layer of goosebumps rising on his arm.

He flipped to the third layer, where only two lines of text were deciphered.

"The third layer cannot be spoken of, for to speak of it brings about."

"Please close the book and take a deep breath after reading this far."

Richard stared at the three lines of text for a while.

The original text was written in Ancient Greek, and his palms were slightly sweaty when he deciphered it.

He closed his notebook and took a full four-stage breathing exercise.

After four breaths, the inverted tree of light in his chest returned to a stable rhythm.

He reopened his notebook and went to the third section.

Products Behind the Curtain.

The author then shifts focus, moving from metaphysical descriptions back to a practical level.

For cultivators, the world behind the veil holds more than just danger.

The first category is minerals.

The author has compiled a short list.

"Night Jade Stone," when ground into powder, is a core ingredient in several key alchemical remedies.

"Lamp wick copper" has an ether conductivity that is dozens of times higher than that of ordinary copper.

It is best suited for making objects that will bear seals for a long time; the Sphinx lamp may have used copper for its wick.

The second category is plants.

Grey clover is listed first, and the author describes it as "cheap, plentiful, easy to use, and with a long shelf life".

The name "Grey Lotus" is followed by a long list of names.

"Multi-eyed black fungus," when ground and mixed into eye drops, can give ordinary people temporary clairvoyance, at the cost of restless sleep for the next few nights.

The "Silent Fern," whose leaves make no sound in the wind, is a key medium in sealing rituals after processing.

"Blood Vine" is distributed around the blood spots. When the vine is cut, red juice will seep out. The juice is a commonly used auxiliary medicine for practitioners of the Blood Burning Path.

The third category is bone and flesh.

This type of description is the briefest; the author seems unwilling to write more.

"The bones and flesh of evil creatures are mostly harmful, with a few exceptions."

Do not attempt to consume, wear, or store this product for extended periods.

If you require its use, please have it handled by a professional alchemist or inscription master.

Below is a small note: "This section is written for my students. If you are not my student, please consider yourself one."

Richard chuckled at the way it was written.

He stretched his shoulders and neck, and finished the tea that had gone cold.