I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Wentworth looked at the ebony.

"This gun was named by its original owner."

"That was the first person I worked with when I first became an inspector. He had been in the business for several years longer than me. I called him Old Kai."

Richard's heart skipped a beat; this was a name the other party had called out during the plot twist.

"He said the hardwood part of the handle was too dark in color, looking like ebony, so that's what it was called."

"After his sacrifice, I retrieved this relic."

Since no one in his family practices occultism anymore, I've been keeping it for him.

Wentworth pulled the gun out of the velvet.

"The craftsman who made this gun was an old alchemist on Covent Street in the capital."

He turned the gun upside down, palm facing up, and handed the handle to Richard.

"Please take this."

Richard took it.

The gun was almost half again as heavy as his police-issue Webley.

The handle's curve fits snugly in the palm, and the center of gravity is perfectly balanced.

When he holds a gun with one hand, he almost never needs to actively stabilize the muzzle.

He activated his spiritual vision and scanned the entire gun.

The silver line around the edge of the six magazine slots lit up under the Spirit Vision.

The same extremely fine inscription runs along the inner wall of the barrel, extending from the bore to the muzzle.

It took Richard a while to figure out the function of the small silver stud at the end of the handle.

That silver nail is the entrance for ether to enter the gun.

"Basic enchantments," Wentworth explained.

He pointed to the small silver stud at the end of the handle.

"The user pushes the ether in from here and stores it in the wheel."

"Once fully charged, the inscription will imbue the bullet with the exorcism effect."

"How strong is the effect?" Richard asked.

"Similar to a single-ring enchanted bullet."

Wentworth smiled:

"It's not enough to deal with mid-level or higher evil creatures, but it's sufficient to handle the scale of the Mist Shadows from yesterday."

Richard silently did the math in his mind.

Enchanted bullets are consumables; each one costs real money.

Ebony's silver bullets can be reloaded after being used up, and its enchantment effect can be recharged.

Wentworth continued.

"The transfer of the gun to you is a private transfer, so there's no need to go through any reporting procedures, saving you an unnecessary record on your file."

Richard looked at the gun and didn't feign reluctance.

An enchanted wheel handcrafted by an alchemist can cost tens of pounds just for the craftsmanship alone.

But the significance behind this gun can no longer be measured in monetary terms.

"I will use it well."

He held the wooden box in his arms.

As he reached the office door, Wentworth called his name again.

Richard.

"What's wrong?"

Wentworth sat back down behind his desk.

He had his head down and looked very tired.

"That gun never made a mistake in Old Kai's hands; it was me who made the mistake in the end."

"...And don't let it go wrong in your hands."

"Um."

Wentworth nodded.

He didn't say anything else, and lowered his head to look at the documents on the table that hadn't been approved yet.

………………

It was already afternoon when I got home.

The bus stopped at the station at the east end of Kuangzha Lane, and he got off the bus.

The sun was weak in early spring, and a few neighborhood children were playing with snowballs on the street.

When he got to his front door, he first stomped the snow off his shoes and then straightened his coat.

Pushing open the door, I found Margaret in the kitchen.

"You're back?" She poked her head out from the kitchen.

"...I'm back."

Richard hung his coat on the coat rack by the door and placed his shoulder bag by the stairs.

My mother never asked me on her own initiative.

She will only listen when she is willing to talk.

Evelyn heard the noise and ran down from the second floor.

"elder brother!"

She grabbed Richard's arm.

"Where did you go? You didn't come home to sleep last night. Mom and I waited for you for ages."

"I conducted an academic survey with my teacher."

Richard replied with the answer he had prepared beforehand:

"I took a walk around the mining museum and studied the industrial history of the old mines."

"Industrial history?" Evelyn pouted. "You're definitely lying to me again."

"I'm not lying to you, look..."

Richard pulled an old receipt he'd casually picked up in the branch office from his coat pocket: "This is what we have in our records."

"..."

Evelyn took the receipt and examined it closely, finding it to be an extremely boring industrial record receipt.

She returned the receipt to him with some disappointment.

"Your kind of study tour is so boring."

"It was pretty boring," Richard nodded seriously. "But the teacher said there would be a study tour allowance before I went, so I went along."

How much is the subsidy?

Three pounds.

Evelyn's eyes lit up immediately.

Three pounds!

Lunch was simple; Margaret made a stew of beef and potatoes, served with bread.

Richard ate a large portion; after last night's exertion, his body was rapidly replenishing its various nutritional signals.

While Evelyn ate, she told him about what happened at school yesterday.

The girl in their class who always loved to talk was called upon to recite the order of kings in front of the whole class.

As a result, she memorized it backwards, and the teacher, both amused and exasperated, punished her by making her copy it.

The bakery owner downstairs is pregnant.

Today she was kneading dough herself in the shop, which scared the customers so much that they didn't dare to speak, for fear of disturbing her.

As Richard listened to this, the lump in his stomach that had been there since last night slowly eased.

After dinner, he spent some time having tea with his mother in the living room.

Evelyn went into the kitchen to continue working on her new dessert.

Richard leaned closer to his mother and lowered his voice.

"...Something happened in the mining area in the western suburbs."

Margaret didn't look up; she held the teacup to her lips and blew on it.

"No need to go into details, the fact that you came back alive is enough."

Richard nodded and didn't continue.

The mother took a sip of tea.

"Next time there's a field mission of this scale, try not to go if you can avoid it."

"……knew."

"I know you won't agree," the mother sighed. "So be careful, so we don't find out later."

"Yes."

………………

In the morning, Richard walked into the classroom.

Warren was sitting in his usual spot when he saw him enter, and his eyes immediately lit up.

"Richard! Where did you go with Mr. Hutton yesterday?"

"I went to the area around the mining museum," Richard replied casually. "Old mining industrial history, pretty boring."

"What's so interesting about studying a place like that?" Warren curled his lip. "I was wondering why you've been disappearing like a ghost lately."

Hugh was lying on the table, sketching his sketchbook. The latest page depicted a way of roasting poultry that Richard had never seen before in the cafeteria.

"Do you want to see it?" Hugh pushed the notebook towards him: "I drew it in my head yesterday, 'Bristol Pigeon Roasted in a Charcoal Oven'."

"You imagined it?" Richard took the notebook.

"Hmm." Hugh nodded seriously. "I plan to go to the market next spring to buy one and see if a real pigeon looks like this."

Richard couldn't help but laugh.

"You drew it in far too much detail."

"Painters must be meticulous," Hugh said earnestly.

Mason came over from the next aisle.

"Richard, have you heard? There was a strike in the western suburbs yesterday that killed more than a dozen people."

"...I've heard about it."

"Really?" Warren leaned closer.

"It's true, the workers and the overseers are at odds, and the militia has been deployed again."

Mason lowered his voice:

"My dad came home last night furious. He works at a flour factory in the south of the city. The workers wanted to cause some trouble, but he and the workshop foreman suppressed it."

"..."

Richard didn't interrupt.

Grey then entered through the back door of the classroom.

"morning."

She nodded to the group and put her backpack in her seat.

"Richard, I made you almond cookies for lunch today."

Thank you.

"You've lost weight again recently." Grey's eyes swept across his face.

Richard knew in his heart that he looked haggard because he hadn't rested well these past few days, and it wasn't simply because he had lost weight.

Richard was not paying attention in class this morning.

[Critical Thinking] Since the start of the program, his way of listening to lectures has changed.

When the teacher tells a short story, his mind will automatically pick out what the supporting beam of that short story is, what the weak point is, and what the implicit stance is.

Throughout the entire class, his mind was far more active than his body was.

School in the afternoon.

Richard walked out of the classroom and went to the third floor of the library.

Mr. Hutton didn't come back today; he's probably still dealing with the aftermath of that mine incident.

Richard placed his shoulder bag on the table in the private reading room in the corner of the third floor.

He first took out the medium-concentration ether condensate that he had been given at yesterday's summary meeting and placed it on the table.

A sweep of spiritual vision reveals a uniform, semi-transparent etheric layer on the surface of the condensate.

He thought for a moment and then put the condensate back into the inner layer of his shoulder bag.

We don't need this for now; we'll save it for nurturing rare objects later.

Next, he took out his notebook.

Throughout the winter break, we've gathered enough material for the next gathering of the Divine Genealogy Salon.

He re-examined what he could currently offer.

We should not misuse related information, and absolutely must not take any action.

That was one of the pieces of information that the branch office had to keep secret. The more he knew about it, the less he could talk about it outside.

What he could offer were only a few semi-finished models of anti-conversion papers on existing surgical techniques, and some improvement plans for normal surgical techniques.

We can take out the spoils we received this time and see if we can exchange them for something.

Richard closed the notebook.

After finishing the tidying up, it was nearly 6 p.m.

Most of the students on campus have left.

The streetlights came on, turning the snow a pale yellow.

Richard walked out of the library and headed towards the school gate along the main road.

He stopped in his tracks as soon as he reached the school gate.

A deer was crouching on the street corner outside the school gate, seemingly having been waiting for a long time.

Richard's eyes were immediately drawn to it.

A light brown fawn, about one-third the size of a normal horse.

The antlers are small and forked, and they have only recently grown out, with a layer of light down still clinging to the forked ends.

As soon as the little deer saw him come out, she stood up and stared straight at Richard with her big amber eyes.

Richard scanned the pedestrians along the entire street.

A mother leading her child is walking past a deer.

The child looked across the street at the candy shop in the direction his mother was pointing, without even glancing at the deer.

A worker pushing a bicycle walked around behind the deer, the bicycle tire almost grazing the deer's tail, but the worker didn't notice at all.

It seemed that only Richard could see it on the entire street.

The feedback he received from his spiritual vision was that this deer was also a messenger from the spirit world.

But its temperament was different from that fluttering moth and that polite gray-robed humanoid.

The moth is mechanical, the gray-robed doll is cold and sinister.

Deer possess a pure, innocent quality that blends wildness and spirituality from the forest.

Little Deer looked at Richard, then turned and walked into the alley.

After taking a few steps, he turned back and glanced at Richard.

Richard followed.

The high walls on both sides of the alley blocked the streetlights, and the snow on the ground was trampled into mud.

The deer lowered its head and touched a spot on its neck, leaving a letter on the ground.

Richard bent down and picked up the letter.

The cover features a Hermesian caduceus.

He raised his head.

The deer was less than three steps away from him, but it did not move away.

It raised its head and gently nuzzled Richard's chest.

Richard felt a warm flow of ether.

It is confirming something that is hanging on it.

Richard looked down.

What it brushed against was the silver ring where Lady Mary had left a "kiss".

He wore it close to his body the whole time.

After the deer finished "sniffing" the silver ring, it gently shook its antlers, seemingly reminiscing.

Then, he turned and walked out of the alley.

By the time Richard realized what was happening, the deer had completely disappeared.

The alley was empty except for his own footprints on the mortar.

Richard stood still, taking a moment to catch his breath.

This messenger deer may very well know Lady Mary.

Combining this with my previous speculations about Hecate's identity, the probability of this deduction is now over 90%.

Richard stopped thinking about it and opened the letter.

Inside was a handwriting familiar to Hecate, telling him to attend the party at the usual time the day after tomorrow.

The signature still features a torch and a key.

After reading the letter, he walked out of the alley.

The streetlights at the intersection were still on. Several students returning home late ran past him and headed towards the bus stop.

Richard followed behind them, heading towards the bus stop.

The bus headlights turned from the street corner.

The car pulled up in front of him, and the door slammed open.

He got into the car.