I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"I'm ashamed to say it," he replied calmly.

"I can't break that seal myself; I can't find it after reading the third stroke of the turning point."

"Oh?" Hecate's old woman voice chimed in, "Then how come it's just an empty shell?"

"I received help from a senior colleague."

Richard passed the message out, leaving half of it unsaid.

"A senior scholar."

The breathing of the people at the table softened.

"When you, senior, broke this seal on me."

Richard continued, "While they were dismantling it, they said a few words to me, but I'm not very knowledgeable and only remember the gist of it."

Hecate's golden mask faced him, but she remained silent.

"The senior said that the structure of your seal is very cleverly designed."

Richard started by praising them.

"Especially the third layer of overprinting, which intertwines the two intentions of 'closing' and 'reading backwards' into one, is so tightly overprinted that it is impermeable. He said that this overprinting method looks familiar, like a paper from 1887."

"The senior also said..."

"You changed the inscription on that skeleton yourself, and you did it very cleverly."

The person who can create these two new turning points on an old framework is truly an expert.

After Richard finished speaking, he stopped there.

He didn't mention the word "plagiarism," nor did he mention "thinking I couldn't see it," and he didn't reveal his professorship.

But those in the know can naturally discern the intricacies involved.

On the surface, this was a compliment to Hecate on her "expertise" and "brilliance."

But who can recognize whose skeleton it is at a glance, and which parts have been changed... do we need to think about who has the higher level of skill?

On the main seat, the outlines of the torch and key swayed slightly before settling back down.

Hecate remained silent for a long while.

Richard waited.

Anyone who publicly accuses someone of plagiarism will turn hostile.

But as long as you offer a way out, portraying "plagiarism" as "a continuation of the tradition," and "being seen through" as "knowledgeable appreciation"...

She can actually use this opportunity to back down gracefully.

"...that paper."

Hecate spoke last, the sharpness in her girlish voice fading:

"I have indeed done in-depth research."

"The person who wrote it must be quite old by now."

"Yes," Richard replied, "that senior is quite old."

"Is the professor still teaching?" Hecate asked.

"Teach occasionally."

"Um."

Hecate did not pursue the matter further.

She didn't ask for his name, and Richard didn't say it either.

But none of the people sitting at the table were laymen.

On the mystical side, scholars who are revered as professors are all highly proficient.

The experts, masters, and recluses mentioned in the literature are not many examples found in the Old World.

The highest level of mastery is the limit that living people can reach.

Behind Richard stood such a figure.

The scales of Nemesis tipped completely in Richard's favor.

She was an orphan from the Hunter Moon lineage, and most of her father's connections from his lifetime were severed after his death.

She sat down at this anonymous round table, relying on a stubborn determination to never give up until she hit a wall, and dug out her most treasured possessions one by one to pave her way forward.

The boy named Hermes before me is different.

He has powerful backers, and what's even more remarkable is that his words just now were perfectly composed.

What needed to be revealed was revealed, and what needed to be hidden was hidden; even Hecate's face was covered up.

Nemesis felt a strange mix of emotions; he wished he had someone to support him...

Ares curled up in his chair.

He thought of himself six months ago.

At that time, he laid out the three-ring enchanted bullets on the table, full of confidence, ready to exchange them for information about the Ash Belt.

He saw himself as a hunter, the only one at the table who had truly fought his way in and out of the den of evil creatures.

Now, however...

He sat at the table, unable to even utter a coherent congratulation.

Scholars are different; they live longer, have higher status, and become more valuable the higher they go.

Prometheus ignored all of that; he was pondering who the person behind Richard really was.

There are very few scholars within the empire who can be honored as "professors".

He had a general idea of ​​who was on the register, who had resigned from their official posts, and who had gone into seclusion.

I need to reconsider how close I should get to this boy in the future, and how much I should keep to myself.

Dionysus, the newly promoted junior expert, looked at Richard with a deeper gaze than others.

Only when one reaches a minor level of proficiency, having crossed that threshold, can one truly grasp the scholar's significance within the entire mystical system.

To advance to a minor master, one must transfer a portion of their soul into a named artifact.

That crucial ritual requires the help of scholars…

On the other side, Demeter immediately perked up her ears.

She remained calm, her hands resting on her knees, her mask hanging down, as if she hadn't heard anything.

But my mind was already racing.

In 1887, in the field of sealing studies, he wrote something so good that Hecate could use it as a framework...

A wrinkled old face immediately popped into Demeter's mind.

White eyebrows, sparse hair, and hands that always trembled, she carried everything with trepidation, yet she never spilled a single drop.

She had only met that person once, at an academic seminar in the capital whose topic she could no longer recall.

The host said, "Please welcome Professor Silas Mortimer to comment," and she thought a powerful and imposing figure would come up.

As a result, an old man with a hunched back, supported by his young assistant, walked up and shakily searched for the steps for a long time.

At that time, she was still a greenhorn who had just crossed the threshold into the industry, and she thought to herself:

This is the renowned professor from Imperial Capital University? Is this old man nearing the end of his life?

Then the old man sat down at the podium and began to speak.

She didn't have time to think about anything else.

Who is that professor standing behind the young man at the table?

Demeter found the image of that wrinkled old face somewhat amusing.

Hecate's seal was stolen from his skeleton.

If the old man finds out, he might hob off on his cane and go demand an explanation.

Of course, all of this went through her mind, but beneath the mask, all was calm and didn't leak out.

She's always been like that.

The fact that he ran in circles in the wasteland must not be known to anyone.

He secretly observed these young people doing all sorts of strange things, but he couldn't let anyone know.

Those who are about to reach the threshold of mastery must act like those who are about to reach the threshold of mastery.

Steady, quiet, and able to command respect.

As for that undisguised liveliness... let it stay put.

Richard calmly put the empty box and bronze mirror back into his leather bag.

He didn't intend to trade these two items; he only wanted to establish a reputation.

Now that he has established a reputation, he wants to capitalize on this momentum and get the small business deal he really wants to do tonight done.

"I have a few other things here."

"One is a reverse engineering model of [Shadow Armor], and the other is [Moon Nail - Reflection]."

"They're not exclusive anymore; Ares and Nemesis both have them."

Dionysus was still struggling with his decision; the promotion had exhausted his limited resources.

Demeter, however, raised her terracotta mask.

"I've heard Hecate mention those two articles before, and I'm personally very interested in them."

Richard looked at her.

Demeter's calloused hands rested on the edge of the table.

"I came in a hurry and didn't prepare anything. I can't find anything decent in the inventory to replace you."

As she said this, she pulled out something and put it on the table.

It was banknotes, stacked thickly.

"But I brought money with me, thirty pounds for one article, and sixty pounds for two."

After she finished speaking, she pushed the banknotes toward Richard.

"See if this is enough."

The eyes of everyone at the table immediately fell on that stack of banknotes.

Sixty pounds is no small sum.

Richard did the math in his head.

These two manuscripts were written by him, one by one, on paper; there was no cost involved.

Now, with a single word from Demeter, sixty pounds in cash is slapped onto the table.

That's equivalent to an extra sixty pounds for no reason.

"That's enough, deal."

Demeter took the two manuscripts and placed them on her lap.

"Hermes, your appraisal skills are truly remarkable."

She glanced at the empty ebony box again.

"If I ever have something I'm unsure about in the future, could you help me take a look?"

"I can take a look." Richard had been waiting for this sentence: "The appraisal fee will be charged at our discretion."

"It should be charged," Demeter nodded. "Only those who charge are reliable; I don't trust those who do it for free."

Hecate's triadic timbres were reassembled.

"The transaction process ends here."

"Information sharing will now begin."

Once the intelligence gathering began, the conversation at the table immediately veered towards the same goal.

Prometheus spoke first.

The news he brought back tonight from his connection to the New World is the most somber.

Another colony has been added to the list of three colonies in the New World that were emptied out "without war or plague".

The house is still there, the furniture is still there, even the clothes hanging on the line are still there, but the person is gone.

The Navy's support team still couldn't gather enough volunteers.

"War is brewing in the Old World," Prometheus said, suppressing the fire above his head. "And things are getting chaotic in the New World too."

"The two ends are connected," Nemesis continued.

The line she drew on the highlands indicated that evil spirits were moving south.

The number of wandering evil creatures in the northern Gaelic Heights has increased again in the past two months, moving south along the industrial belt at an even faster pace than before.

"What's driving them? I can't detect it with my line," Nemesis said. "I only know they're running."

Dionysus reported from the capital.

The Royal Society's committee raised the alert level for unusual events by half a level last month.

The maintenance cycle for the registered seals has been shortened from eight months to six months.

There's no new news from Ares.

The thread of his ash belt broke off on his own arm.

I could only briefly introduce a few of the more troublesome evil creatures in the Ashlands, and that was it.

Demeter remained silent.

When it was her turn, she simply shook her head.

"I don't have much to say. I'm just tending to the fields. The grains in the fields have been growing faster and faster these past two years, but they're also becoming increasingly weak."

She said just that one sentence, and then stopped talking.

Richard's heart skipped a beat.

Grain grows fast, but it's not very sturdy.

This sentence sounds like a farmer's saying, but when applied to matters concerning the curtain... the weakness of rapid growth, the weakness of superficial nutrition.

The "field" that this person is guarding is probably no ordinary field.

He didn't ask any further questions; it was his turn now.

He mentally went over what he could and couldn't say.

That night shouldn't have been a trap. Professor Mortimer closed the thread, but that expert in the tradition of strong winds came by on the wind.

The two old friends met again after decades, and Richard listened to their conversation from beginning to end.

Some things absolutely cannot be taken out.

That expert was actually in the New World, said his birth village was in this area, and refused to tell the professor the name of his village before leaving...

Not a single word of these can be omitted.

There is one story I can tell.

"The fallen master of Heimers Island," Richard began.

Several people at the table looked over.

Even Hecate herself said that her information was only enough to know that someone was "dead," but not "how they died."

"I heard a little about the cause of his death," Richard said.

From the main seat, Hecate's golden mask was facing towards them.

"He wasn't murdered," Richard said, emphasizing each word. "He starved to death."