I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Knowing that Richard was leaving the capital, Phillips sent an invitation via a servant.

The invitation was written on fine kraft paper with a gold-stamped border, but the cursive script was written in an overly flamboyant and unrestrained style.

Richard stared at the screen for a long time before finally understanding what it meant: this guy was inviting him to his home.

The invitation letter ended with an additional sentence:

"Just bring your silver tongue, you don't need to bring anything else, my house has everything."

Richard put the invitation in his pocket and straightened his collar in front of the mirror.

As usual, the coachman at Ashford Manor took him there.

Upon arriving at the destination, Richard had a general idea of ​​what to expect.

The houses here stand side by side, with high and wide porches.

Ivy climbed the wrought iron railings, and the roots of that ivy were probably older than Richard himself.

This is not the territory of the newly established business.

The Phillips house is at the end of a street lined with sycamore trees.

It was a gray-white stone building, four stories high.

A wide stone staircase leads to the entrance, with two Ionic columns on the steps.

Above the door is a stone family crest: a falcon with outstretched wings, its talons grasping a broken sword.

Richard paused for a moment beneath the family crest.

What settled beneath the foundation could not escape his inspiration.

This building is much older than Ashford House.

An elderly male servant opened the door for Richard, his manner respectful and attentive.

"Mr. Williams, the young master is waiting for you on the fourth floor."

Richard followed the male servant inside.

The walls are adorned with enormous oil paintings, stretching from bottom to top.

The paintings mostly depict men dressed in hunting attire, holding hunting rifles with hunting dogs lying at their feet.

Richard walked beneath those paintings, and through his spiritual vision, he read something different.

The figures in those paintings all have very faint traces of ether remaining on the frames.

These traces were left little by little by several generations over the long years.

This family has produced many excellent hunters in every generation.

The fourth floor was Phillips' own domain.

The male servant pushed the door open, and Richard was momentarily taken aback by what he saw.

This is hardly a young man's bedroom; it's clearly a storeroom.

A whole row of mahogany glass cabinets lined the wall, crammed full.

A brass planetarium, gears meshing with gears;

Next to it was a wooden mask, dark and gaping wide open.

Beyond that was a complete set of bird specimens, from palm-sized hummingbirds to raptors with wingspans reaching half a person's height, one after another.

"You're here?"

Phillips poked his head out from a pile of junk.

He was hunched over a large desk, on which lay a disassembled pocket watch, its parts scattered all over the table.

"What are you doing...?" Richard looked around. "Opening a museum?"

"Sigh." Phillips put down the tweezers in his hand and stood up.

"My dad has this problem: he can't resist buying rare or unusual things."

They bought them but never played with them, so they're all just sitting here with me.

He led Richard through the cabinets and cabinets filled with his collection.

"Look at this." He took out a grandfather clock from the cabinet, with twelve little figures inlaid on its face.

"Helvetius came from here. On the hour, these twelve little men come out and circle around, each blowing a different horn."

My father spent a fortune to buy it from a bankrupt earl.

Richard leaned over and took a look.

The bell was exquisitely crafted, but several pieces of paint on the twelve little figures had chipped off, indicating that they hadn't been maintained for many years.

"And this too."

Phillips then dragged out a long wooden box containing a hunting rifle.

The stock is inlaid with silver and carved with intricate vine patterns.

"My dad's treasure, one stick is equivalent to ten years' worth of chewing for an ordinary family, and it can fight off evil spirits."

He picked it up, gestured with it, and then put it back:

"Unfortunately, I have no interest in hunting at all; I'd rather stay indoors and read."

Richard's gaze shifted from the silver-inlaid hunting rifle.

In the innermost corner of the room, a half-person-high metal cabinet stood all alone.

Unlike the glass cabinets in the room that are open to all, this metal cabinet is locked.

Under Richard's spiritual vision, there was a very tight seal in the crack of the cabinet door.

The thing suppressed beneath the seal caused the leaves of the inverted tree of light directly behind his sternum to tremble slightly.

"Don't touch that."

Phillips followed his gaze, and his usual nonchalant attitude subsided.

"My dad brought it back."

"They said it was dirty stuff taken from some case, locked up there, and I wasn't allowed to touch it."

"Your dad's job..." Richard hesitated, "It sounds rather dangerous."

"That's for sure." Phillips pursed his lips.

"His department is in charge of things that others are unwilling or afraid to touch."

"Those who believe in cults, go astray, or trade living people for labor... when something happens to them, they are the ones who have to clean up the mess."

They trade living people for labor, shifting the cost onto others.

Richard had derived it in his notebook;

I even saw it with my own eyes at the bottom of that puddle in the western suburbs.

"All done tidying up?" Richard asked casually. "Where did you put all this stuff?"

"Burn what needs to be burned, seal what needs to be sealed," Phillips said dismissively.

"He took home the rest that he felt was still worth researching."

He gestured with his chin towards the ground floor.

"His study downstairs is much more eerie than my room."

"There's an entire wall of books; I won't even let you in the door."

Richard simply said "Oh" and didn't ask any further questions.

After circling around, I finally stopped in front of the bookshelf at the very back of the room.

This row of bookshelves is different from the fancy collections outside.

Rows of hardcover books lined the shelves, their gold-embossed spines gleaming with a dull sheen.

"These are your own things." Richard looked at the books.

"Um."

For the first time, Phillips' tone became somewhat serious.

"Virgil, Horace, Catullus..."

Phillips read out the names one by one: "This shelf is what I've been collecting since I was ten years old."

"No wonder you didn't do any of the practice problems." Richard looked at him. "Your books are all here."

"You understand me best." Phillips put the book back on the shelf and laughed.

"The assessment is for those who want to climb the ladder."

As for me, with this shelf of books and an endless supply of fine tea, that's enough for a lifetime.

As he spoke, he turned to prepare tea.

Suddenly, the sound of a door opening came from downstairs.

It wasn't the soft sound of the old male servant opening the door just now.

This time, the door was pushed open forcefully, hitting the wall with a dull thud.

Phillips stopped preparing the tea.

Richard noticed that the slight lethargy on the guy's face gradually faded away.

"...It's my mom who's back."

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

It wasn't fast, but every step was taken very steadily, climbing up step by step.

Richard looked in the direction of the sound.

A woman went up to the fourth floor.

She wore a deep purple velvet dress, made of the finest material, but with an extremely simple cut and no unnecessary lace.

Her hair was combed neatly and tied into a tight bun at the back of her head.

She entered the room, her gaze sweeping over the collection before finally settling on Phillips.

This woman has ether in her body.

The ether was extremely clean, but Richard, sitting nearby, couldn't hide it from his enhanced perception through [Contemplation]. This was a practitioner who had passed the threshold.

"Mother," Phillips straightened up, "I have a guest."

The woman then turned to look at Richard.

She looked at Richard, her gaze lingering on him for a moment.

"Who is this?"

Richard Williams.

Phillips introduced, "My classmate from my training program also came in second place this time."

"Second place in the training program..." The woman's lips twitched, but it wasn't exactly a smile:

"I remember now, he's Mr. Gerald's grandson, isn't he? He's certainly a promising young man."

She nodded slightly to Richard.

Richard stood up and returned the greeting politely.

He is a sensible person.

The air in this room was so oppressive that it was hard to breathe.

A family dispute was about to erupt in this house, and it was too much of an eyesore for him to stay here as an outsider.

"Phillips," he nodded to his tea friend.

"I have to go back and pack my things. I have to catch the train early tomorrow morning, so I'll have to say goodbye now."

Phillips opened his mouth, clearly wanting him to stay.

But when he looked at his mother's face, he couldn't bring himself to say the words of urging her to stay.

"...I'll take you downstairs."

"You don't need to see him off," the woman said. "Let the servants see him off. You stay here; I have something to tell you."

Richard followed the male servant downstairs.

Just as he was about to leave, he vaguely heard a voice drifting down from upstairs.

It was the woman's voice.

Not tall, but every word was squeezed out from between his teeth, cold and hard.

"...Your father has held the position of Chief Inspector of the Capital for so many years. Don't you have any idea how much effort he has put into you?"

The door closed.

Richard stood on the street and glanced back at the gray-white stone building.

Chief Inspector.

The Chief Inspector of the Imperial Capital is a prominent figure in the entire secret society of the Imperial Capital.

Those who can sit in that position are usually highly skilled hunters.

The portraits of hunters in hunting attire on the wall in the foyer, the Purdy shotgun in the building, and the locked metal cabinet... it all matched up.

No wonder Phillips didn't care about failing the exam.

With his family background, even if he becomes a lecturer, there will be people to protect him.

But it was precisely because of his family background that his mother pressured him so much.

Richard shook his head and turned to walk toward Ashford's carriage.

………………

As the door closed, Phillips knew that this day was likely to be difficult.

Richard is a shrewd fellow; when he sensed something was wrong, he ran faster than a rabbit.

Phillips cursed the opportunist in his heart, but he couldn't blame him.

If I were in someone else's situation like that, I would also want to get away as quickly as possible.

Only he and his mother remained in the house.

The mother stood in the middle of the room, looking at her youngest son.

Phillips put his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again, unsure where to put them.

In front of his mother, his ability to be indifferent to anything, even the collapse of the sky, was completely useless.

"The list of those who passed the training," the mother spoke first. "I've seen it."

"……Um."

"Twenty spots," the mother said calmly. "Not for you."

Phillips remained silent.

The mother spoke each word carefully.

"Your father contacted someone in the Classical Society and also asked two associate professors in the department for favors to get you the study qualification."

"That Ashford kid went in."

"That red-haired girl from the highlands, whose family was either dead or scattered, with no one left to rely on, she still got in."

"Even that daughter of the mill worker who carried sacks," she said, scrutinizing her son, "she got in too."

"You're the only one who didn't get in."

Phillips put his hand back in his pocket.

"Mother," he said in a muffled voice, "I did my best in the first two of those tests."

"What about history and folklore in the first two sessions?"

Phillips did not answer.

He submitted those two matches almost entirely without any entries.

He didn't do any of the supplementary materials that were given out before the exam.

On the day of the exam, he sat in his exam room and stared at the history exam paper for a long time.

In the end, he only wrote down a line of Virgil's poem that he loved most in the corner of the test paper.

"I'm asking you," the mother took a step closer, "can you feed yourself with that shelf of books?"

"Your father has held the position of Chief Inspector of the Capital for so many years. Don't you have any idea how much effort he has put into you?"

Phillips looked up.

"I don't care."

His voice carried a hint of strength:

"The Royal Academy is pretty good too. I can become a lecturer and read the books I want to read."

Wouldn't it be better to live a comfortable life?

"So comfortable," the woman smiled.

There was no warmth in that smile.

"Your father was soaked in ice water and beaten on wooden stakes since he was a child."

The scar on his left shoulder was torn by an evil spirit; it required seventeen stitches.

"He persevered from being a practitioner, to becoming a minor expert, and finally to his current position as the Chief Inspector of the Capital."

"Your grandfather, your great-grandfather..."

The mother's gaze swept over the hunting portraits on the wall facing the entrance hall:

"In the centuries-long history of the Phillips family, not a single man has ever had an easy time."

"Of all places, you want to be comfortable here."

Phillips felt extremely uncomfortable under that gaze.

The Hervédi clock has reached its hour.

With a tinkling sound, twelve tiny figures with peeling paint emerged from the bell and began to blow out-of-tune horns in a circle.

Neither the mother nor the son glanced at the bell.

After the horn sounded, the little man returned to the bell tower, and the room fell silent again.

"Since you can't be relied on in this lifetime."

The mother spoke.

"Then let's prepare as soon as possible."

"Your father and I have already arranged a marriage for you."

Phillips' heart sank.

"The Earl of Blackburn is a perfect match."

"Since you can't earn anything in this life, you might as well raise a child as soon as possible."

His mother looked at him.

"Your child might be even stronger than you."

Phillips felt as if something was blocking his chest.

He recalled the day of the tea party, and the young Miss Blake who was surrounded by a group of young men.

The sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl obediently followed suit, bowing to people with a smile on her face that she herself didn't know the reason for.

"I don't want to marry someone I don't know, and I don't want to have children so soon!"

"I just want to read my books, drink my tea, and live my own life! What's wrong with that?!"

The woman's face turned pale instantly, and she raised her hand.

Phillips instinctively closed his eyes.

But that slap never landed.

She didn't actually hit him.

The lady of the Phillips family never lifts a finger.

She slowly lowered that hand.

But that hurt even more than slapping Phillips.

"Good." The mother's voice trembled slightly. "Very good!"

"Your father is out there day and night without rest, and you, on the other hand, are at home telling me, 'I want to read your books and drink your tea.'"

"The Phillips family has been around for hundreds of years..."

"...What's all the noise about?"

A voice came from the stairwell.

The mother and son both looked towards the door.

Phillips' older brother is back.

He had already reached the threshold of being a minor expert a couple of years ago, and now he works in a branch office near the capital.

He is also the family's most reliable hope right now.

"Mother," the older brother said, looking at his younger brother whose eyes were red, "my brother is still young."

"Still too young?" The mother's temper flared up immediately.

"Your dad was already quite capable of handling things on his own at his age!"

The young man went over, took his mother's arm, and led her out the door.

"Mother, please come downstairs first, have some tea, calm down, and let my brother and I talk about this properly."

He helped his mother to the door, and she turned back to look at Phillips.

That glance held disappointment, weariness, and something else that Phillips couldn't quite make out.

Then, she followed her older brother downstairs.

Phillips remained alone amidst the room full of his collection.

………………

After a while, the older brother came up again.

He sat down opposite Phillips, looked at his brother, and sighed.

Don't take that marriage to heart.

"My mother said it in a fit of anger, that the marriage proposal should be discussed at least two years from now."

There has been plenty of room for maneuver in the past two years.

Phillips remained silent.

"You," his older brother patted him on the shoulder, "don't always go against Mother."

"I will also speak up for you on Father's side," the eldest brother continued.

"There's no rush to get your name signed. We can discuss it further once you've settled things at the Royal Academy."

The young man offered a few more words of advice, but seeing that his younger brother remained silent, he figured it was pointless.

He stood up and left: "I'm leaving now. Think about it calmly."

Phillips stood up and lit the candle on his desk.

He walked to the row of bookshelves and took something out of the bottom shelf.

It is a teapot.

It's hard to say if it's the work of a famous artist, but it's quite old.

But in terms of craftsmanship and value, any other piece in the collection is more precious than it.

But Phillips used this pot for seven or eight years.

From the age of ten, whenever he studied in this room, the tea he drank was brewed in this pot.

Pot after pot, year after year.

Virgil, Horace, Catullus… that shelf of books, each one was read page by page while drinking tea from a pot.

This teapot is a rare object.

But it was the most common kind, something my father bought on a whim back then.

Such a rare item would certainly not be used by prominent families to have their children sign their names.

He was holding the teapot in his hands.

Under his spiritual vision, this unassuming teapot fit him perfectly.

Phillips sat down at his desk.

A wisp of ether flowed down his arm and into his palm.

This teapot, which has been used for seven or eight years, was brought to the table.

Phillips closed his eyes.

The moment that wisp of ether seeped into the pot... the pot recognized him.

An invisible "declaration" was sent out behind the curtain through this unassuming teapot.

Phillips opened his eyes; he had become a practitioner.

After recognizing him as its owner, the teapot is gradually "aligning" itself in a certain direction.

Phillips poured out the pot.

A stream of amber-colored tea flowed from the spout.

The tea leaves, steaming hot, are poured into the cup, filling the air with their aroma.

Phillips picked up the cup of tea that had appeared out of nowhere and took a sip.

It was Darjeeling, and even better than what he usually drank at home.

He leaned back in his chair and slowly finished his cup of tea.

He poured himself another cup, this time Ceylon tea.

Whatever he wants to drink, that's what the pot will serve.

Darjeeling, Assam, Ceylon tea... you name it, they have it. You could drink a different one every day for a lifetime.

This pot is probably completely useless against evil spirits.

But Phillips had no intention of dealing with any evil creatures in the first place.

Others' extraordinary possessions are knives, books, or the tools they use to venture into other worlds.

He didn't urge him to fight for it, nor did he push him to climb higher, nor did he ask him for anything.

She simply and quietly kept refilling his cup after cup.

This is exactly what he wanted.

There was something that would keep him there, without him having to go anywhere.

Phillips leaned back in his chair and slowly sipped his tea.

Downstairs, the voices of my mother and eldest brother talking drifted up from two floors away, muffled and indistinct.

Those voices, that marriage, that centuries-old reputation... they're all outside the door, far away from him.

The door was closed, the curtains were drawn, the candlelight was warm, and the tea was hot.

After finishing one cup, he didn't rush to get up and poured himself another.

The sky outside the window had become completely dark sometime earlier.

The outline of that bookshelf gradually dimmed in the candlelight.

Phillips' eyelids felt heavy.

He suddenly remembered a line from the Aeneid, the poem he knew best.

The door leading down was wide open day and night.

The hard part is never going down, it's coming back.

He soaked in this lukewarm warmth, half-asleep and half-awake, thinking:

What if someone is alone and doesn't want to come back at all?

He held the ever-refillable cup of tea, leaning against the shelf of books he had collected over six or seven years.

"I have books to read."

"There's tea to drink."

The candlelight burned quietly.

"This life... is enough."