I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"Does that hunter know what kind of title #039 Hercules is?"

"He knows better than either of us," Hecate smiled.

"He came to me himself asking for this anchor."

The hunters dream of acquiring a top-tier title that suits them perfectly.

Even if you offered him a fortune, he might not be tempted.

"If you offer him a mask of Hercules, he'd risk half his life for it."

Demeter remained silent.

She suddenly realized that Hecate's table was run by a deeper level of management than she had initially thought.

"Hercules... is a good name." She repeated it again at the end: "May the hunter be worthy of it."

"I can't take that responsibility; I have other options." Hecate collected the pool of black water.

"There are only a few top-tier titles, and people are lining up to grab them."

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Demeter asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Do you think I'm the only one performing this kind of ritual?"

Demeter remained silent.

"You've seen the game played in the Old World."

Hecate's voice reverted to that of an old woman.

"Well after well is emptied, and those in high positions are playing their chess moves more and more hastily."

"We're all sitting at our own tables, running our own businesses; no one can hide anything from anyone else."

"you mean……"

"Other salons have already entered the third stage."

Demeter's heart skipped a beat.

"They've not only advanced," Hecate continued, recounting the information she had gathered.

"One table took the first step towards becoming an expert by using the ritual in the third stage."

The temple remained silent for a long while.

Demeter has been guarding her "field" for so many years, and has been hovering at the threshold of mastery for who knows how long.

To her, experts were beings above the ceiling, almost outside the human realm.

Hecate said that someone had already used this ritual to put their foot across.

"So this set of rituals..." Demeter was equally intrigued.

"You gathered the six of us together at a table to make masks, advance to the next stage... that's what you're aiming for."

"Hmm." Hecate made no attempt to hide anything.

"Seven people at one table, seven masks, seven names."

Only when everyone has mastered the basics and entered the third stage can that set of rituals be put into practice.

Once it starts spinning, everyone sitting at the table can get a share.

The path they take to achieve mastery is much shorter than if they went it alone, and I myself can make further progress.

"But if you're even a step too slow, you'll lose everything."

Her girlish voice was clear and cold.

"The other tables are already running. If we have to ask one of the lagging ones to keep us going, we'll be slowly gathering seven experts."

They've already taken that step and reaped all the benefits.

By then, all my years of hard work will have amounted to nothing, and I won't even be able to afford a bowl of soup.

Demeter finally understood why Hecate had gone to such lengths, scattering dozens of tokens and sifting and testing them one by one.

She gathered seven stakes that could be placed together in that ritual.

Each stake must be straight, solid, and able to withstand the weight.

Ares's stem was bent and rotten.

"I'll tell you the truth."

Hecate's voice softened again, carrying the casualness that only old acquaintances have.

"Nemesis was originally thinking of replacing those guys on the table as well."

Demeter looked up.

"She has nothing behind her; her father died, her connections were severed, and her resources dwindled with each use. In terms of influence, her situation is actually precarious."

Hecate continued speaking.

"But I've seen her twice, and this girl is ruthless to herself, and not stupid either."

Hermes stole the show tonight, and she sat below without thinking too much, knowing when to back down.

This kind of temperament allows them to handle the pressure of rituals.

So you kept her.

"Keep the weak ones, replace the listless ones, keep the ruthless ones. I can't afford to keep idle people at this table."

"It's getting late," Hecate waved for them to leave. "You should go back too."

"Hmm." Demeter stood up.

Before leaving, she couldn't help but say one more thing on Ares's behalf.

"That child is going to be switched... Can't we at least do it with some dignity?"

Hecate was silent for a moment.

"Yes."

"A sum of money enough for him to get a prosthetic limb, and a 'see you later'."

I won't skimp on the courtesy he deserves.

Demeter closed her eyes, counted to seven, and disappeared into the temple.

Hecate sat alone in the main seat for a long time, seemingly lost in thought.

………………

Richard opened his eyes.

The notebook on the table was open with a blank page, and the fountain pen lay across the table, its ink already dried.

He raised his hand and touched his chest.

The silver ring and eagle hook, hanging from the leather rope, were both left to cool.

Richard flipped through the notebook to the "Theogony Salon" section.

He dipped his pen in ink and first noted down tonight's earnings.

"Second formal gathering, received: sixty pounds in cash."

Sixty pounds.

Even including the expenses for previously ordered equipment, he had more than thirty pounds in cash at his disposal.

Add this sixty pounds, and it'll be ninety pounds.

What is ninety pounds?

Rogers, the father, was an engineer; he couldn't save that much money even after several years.

Richard suppressed his slight smugness and continued taking notes.

"Intelligence obtained..."

He meticulously organized everything he had heard that evening that he could put into his notebook.

Hecate added that the winner was the one who was weaving the rope; he was closing the well, but he wasn't doing it smoothly.

Another colony was left empty in the interior of the New World;

The evil creatures from the northern highlands have moved south;

The alert level in the capital city has been raised by half a level, and the maintenance cycle for the seal has been shortened to six months.

Demeter's saying about farming is that the grains in the field grow faster and faster, but become increasingly sparse.

Richard's pen stopped at the bottom of the last line.

It grows fast, but it's weak.

He used the word "debate" to reverse this sentence.

Grain, field, the person guarding the field... Demeter's sheaf of wheat hanging above her head, and the sickle lying below.

A junior expert who is almost at the threshold of mastery calls himself "someone who stays at the forefront of fieldwork".

The "field" she guarded was no ordinary field.

After taking notes, he leaned back in his chair and began to work on the most important matter of the night.

The second stage: the mask of divinity.

The mask is a conduit that carries a thread of the knowledge that has settled over a thousand years onto the wearer.

Leverage external resources to help with promotion.

Richard's sense of vigilance far outweighed his greed.

There is no such thing as free power.

A pipe; you borrow water from it, and it recognizes you.

Hecate herself said that a large part of her power came from the mask.

In other words, a large part of her power is also contained in that mask and the rules for making the mask.

Wearing the mask she made is like taking a section of track laid out by someone else on your own path to advancement.

The track is easy to follow, but where it leads is up to others.

Not to mention the title "Hermes".

The guardian deity of messengers, merchants, orators, and scholars; the guide of souls; and also the god of words and trickery.

A name is always two-sided.

Will the borrowed words and knowledge also bring in the threads of "deception" and "spirit-leading"?

Richard flipped through the notebook to the three columns: "Shareable/Middle Layer/Top Secret".

He added a line to the "Top Secret" column.

Whether or not the divine mask will be accepted is yet to be determined.

Before accepting, it is necessary to ascertain: what kind of marks the mask left on which side of the curtain.

After he finished writing, he put down his pen.

There's one more.

Hecate looked at him differently tonight than before.

Previously, he was a newcomer with some talent and perhaps some connections.

He stole the show tonight, and his importance in Hecate's eyes has clearly increased.

Being heavy is both a good thing and a troublesome thing.

Richard recalled Mr. Hutton's advice.

Those who lean against towering trees first learn to look up and wait for the tree to fall, and then they fall down with it.

Hecate is not a tree.

She is a gardener, and she has gathered this table to nurture seedlings.

She nurtured the one seedling that grew straight and strong, while the one that withered and rotted...

He recalled the look in Hecate's eyes when she looked at Ares's broken shoulder on the table earlier.

Ares, I'm afraid it's in jeopardy.

………………

On the first day after the Easter holiday, Richard arrived at school as usual, just as the morning bells were ringing.

After the morning prayers ended, he followed the crowd into the familiar corridor.

Spring comes late to Greenwood; the row of old elm trees outside the window have only just sprouted their new buds, a tender, vibrant green.

The color has deepened due to the dampness from last night's rain.

Richard was somewhat surprised when the classroom door opened.

When school started, their class's classroom was packed.

Forty or so heads were crammed together, and extra chairs had to be added to the back row.

Now, as he scans the area from the doorway, he counts fewer than twenty.

The empty desks remain untouched and in their original positions.

All the chairs were upside down on the table; the handymen had put them up there before the holiday.

There are more overturned chairs than chairs with people sitting on them.

Richard walked to his window seat.

To his left was Hugh's table.

The drawer was empty; Hugh's sketchbook was gone, along with the charcoal pencil stub he had chewed to a pulp.

Only a faint scratch remains in the lower right corner of the desktop.

It's a chicken that Xiu carved with a knife last year when he was bored. The comb is crooked and it's missing a claw.

The row to Richard's right was originally Warren.

Once Easter was over, he followed the path his family had laid out for him and went to the Chamber of Commerce to learn double-entry bookkeeping and coal price information.

Mason went to work as an apprentice at a machine factory in the south of the city. His father was the foreman and found him a decent job.

As for Grey, she's leaving for the girls' school in the capital in May, and she's probably already at home packing her bags.

The table full of people dispersed completely.

Richard was the only one left, still sitting in his original spot.

"Williams".

Someone called out from diagonally opposite him.

Richard turned his head.

The person who called him was a tall, thin boy named Percy, whom he only knew by nodding acquaintance.

This kid often sits in the back row of the classroom and dozes off; there are more ink dots than words on his homework.

Now he has three Latin grammar books spread out in front of him, dark circles under his eyes, and a few unshaven stubbles on his chin.

"How much did you review during your vacation?" Percy's pen stopped on the workbook.

Richard glanced at the page he had opened.

Percy copied two full pages of noun endings for the third declension.

I messed up the lines while copying, mixing up the genitive cases of corpus and tempus, and made three or four mistakes.

"I reviewed some," Richard replied vaguely.

"Look at this, isn't it?" Percy turned the notebook around.

Richard glanced at it.

"The genitive case of corpus is corporis, but you wrote it as corpus here without the 'r'."

Percy stared at what he had written for a long time, then crossed out the mistake, his hand trembling.

"...Thanks." He lowered his head again. "There are still two months left. My family said if I don't pass the preparatory course, they'll send me to my uncle's firm to copy documents."

Richard did not respond.

The dozen or so people who remained were all going to take preparatory courses.

With two months left, it's the final sprint.

The classroom was very quiet. You could hear the scratching of pens on paper and the crisp sound of someone tearing a corner of a book while flipping through it.

Richard sat down in his seat and placed his backpack on his lap.

He pulled a copy of Tacitus's Chronicle from his bag.

As soon as the book was opened, Percy looked up again from diagonally opposite him.

He glanced at the book's cover, his throat tightened, and he lowered his head even further.

Richard moved the book to his side, to the right half of the table.

He turned the page down.

Tacitus wrote about Rome, about how those once-glorious families rose and fell.

The text describes the denunciations and eventual demise of members of the Senate under Tiberius's rule.

Richard turned the page, not letting himself linger on that section for too long.

The bell rang again; the first class of the morning was history.

Mr. Hutton walked into the classroom carrying the well-worn lecture notes, glanced at the overturned chairs, and said nothing.

"Today we'll talk about 'population mobility' in the early days of the empire."

"You might feel that this topic is far removed from your own experience."

"It's actually not far."

His gaze swept from the front row of the classroom to the back, passing over the rows of empty desks.

"The people in a city are constantly moving every year."

Some leave, some stay; some go up, some fall.

"What history records are always those who remain, those whose names rise to the top."

"Those who leave, those who go down, don't even get a single line of text."

Mr. Hutton turned the page of his lecture notes.

"But the number of people not recorded in history books far exceeds the number recorded."