I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The two lines at the sluice gate can't hold up anymore.

Mr. Hutton and Mrs. McNeil were both suffering from the backlash, while Richard stood in the middle of the gate.

His own shadow had just been patched up, but the shoulder section hadn't fully closed yet.

The hundreds of floating corpses underwater had already noticed the flaw on this side.

Under Richard's spiritual vision, the water of the entire Black Ditch was converging towards Mr. Reeve.

Mr. Reeve came from the west.

He took a longer route, passing through a cluster of houses.

Along the way, each household had a shadow of something that had just been harvested standing there.

The shadow followed Mr. Reeve's footsteps, surging towards the Black Ditch like a tide.

Mr. Reeve was still dressed in the same gray clothes, with the shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

His face was that kind of kind face that made people feel cold.

He didn't get too close, standing entirely in the shadow of the chapel.

They looked towards the Black Ditch.

Deeper within the curtain, a pair of pupil-less eyes also looked towards the Black Ditch.

I only glanced at it before looking away.

But in just that one glance, hundreds of shadows were twisted into a giant hand.

The faces squeezed onto the knuckles were all facing the dark ditch with their mouths open.

It bypassed all the hunters on the shore, crossed the wall of filthy water, and went straight to the heart of the ritual.

Mrs. McNeil was the officiant at the ceremony.

The swirling ethereal energy emanating from her was the brightest spot on the side of this curtain.

The first person that hand reached for was her; the two scholars beside her were just incidental.

Wentworth stood on the eastern defensive line of the sluice gate, having just kicked over a floating corpse that had rushed ashore.

He saw the large hand in the middle of the water, and his body stiffened.

That hand was bigger than all of them combined.

Wentworth stood there, his body relaxing again.

For some reason, a smile suddenly appeared on the gaunt man's face, as if he had remembered something.

After laughing, he threw his sidearm on the ground.

The gun is meant to get us back alive; we won't need it this time.

Two enchanted short swords were drawn from their sheaths.

"Grey Eyes!" he shouted.

Richard turned his head.

"...Team leader?"

"This time, I don't need your injection."

Wentworth is no longer looking back.

He looked at the hand formed by hundreds of shadows twisted together in the middle of the water.

A hunter who has burned himself to the extreme shines like a torch on this side of the curtain.

A lit torch will attract all eyes in the darkness.

He wants to be that torch.

The ether in the loop surged out all at once, and his entire outline burst into white light.

He lunged at the giant hand.

Those few steps he took were lighter than any other step he had ever taken in his life.

In his final moments, he silently said to himself:

"...Hopefully, this time, there won't be any more mistakes."

The giant hand grasped the torch.

boom!

A bright burst of light erupted from the palm of his hand.

The hand, formed by hundreds of shadows, was burned through by the torch.

The black shadowy threads broke, curled, and turned to ash one by one, shrinking back into the water.

In the very center of the water, nothing was left.

There wasn't even a single ember left to collect.

Deeper within the curtain, the pupilless eye blinked; it had just been taking stock of its inventory.

The Eyeless One calls Briston "Warehouse Number Seven".

In its eyes, there are no longer any distinctions between people.

They can breathe, they can cry, and they are forced to listen to a prayer they cannot understand before receiving porridge.

It takes stock of the "names," each name representing a ledger, hanging on its web waiting to be harvested when ripe.

It originally intended to keep Warehouse No. 7 simmering until the day war broke out in Europe and the entire Old World became a bloodstained hotspot before opening the pot.

Back then, a pot of stewed "Fame and Shadow" was enough for it to heal its wounds and even climb another step forward.

But now, he's been being chased by some local old folks for over a month.

The old wound hadn't healed, and a new one had appeared.

It was chasing too fast, so it could only try to cook the half-cooked soup in advance.

Preheating the pot too early results in low harvesting efficiency and creates a lot of noise, essentially setting off a fire in front of the pursuers.

The Eye Without Eyes was gambling on how fast he could take that bite, faster than the pursuers who were following the smoke.

But now a small accident has occurred.

The torch just now burned the servant's hand.

The Eye Without Pupil was somewhat puzzled.

I've seen far too many candles.

Some burn brightly, but the wax is short. When it burns out, it puts the remaining "name" into its storehouse.

But this one burned through its entire capital and interest, leaving it with nothing.

It couldn't understand why a lower-ranking hunter who could still live for several more years would be in such a hurry to burn everything to ashes.

What's the point?

………………

The defensive line in the western suburbs collapsed, but the refuge in the south of the city remained intact.

The patrol team guarded the intersection leading north, and the branch office cleared out the entire factory area.

Hundreds of shadows with dead faces encountered the hunters' silver bullets and enchanted knives.

It wanted to devour the entire city, but most of the living people in the city had already been woken up by the "response" in advance.

The soup was still half-cooked, but smoke was already rising.

Those two official experts who had been waiting for this moment had been waiting for all along.

Above Briston, the three experts clashed once again.

All the mirrors in the city were fogged up at the same moment, only to be wiped clean by an unseen hand.

The saints in the church's stained glass windows were all changed to the same face, and then changed back.

The railway tracks hummed without wind, playing a tune no one had ever heard before.

The shadows of the entire city vanished into thin air; there was not a single shadow on the walls, the ground, or under people's feet.

Immediately afterwards, the fires in all the furnaces in the city jumped up a foot at the same moment.

This is just a small remnant that has leaked out of the material world.

Richard and his party were behind the curtain.

Behind the curtain, the power of the sun, the hearth fire, and the shadows is another measure.

The water surface hanging upside down overhead was set ablaze.

A beam of golden light burned from the far distance, illuminating the entire submerged realm.

Where the light shone, the standing shadows in the water were burned and curled up, silently turning into black ash, while something deeper surged up from the darkness to fill the void.

After the golden light passed, a heat that could melt human bones followed.

The water was boiling, steaming up white mist with a burnt smell.

A darkness even deeper than the Drowning Domain itself swallowed up the gold and the fire from before.

Light, fire, and shadow—three forces intertwined overhead.

With each twist, the shallows behind the entire curtain trembled.

The water wall collapsed and then rose again, and in the bottomless "well" in the distance, something enormous was turning over.

Lieutenant Colonel Odd knelt on one knee in the mud.

The silver rivet bearing the signature on the steel prosthetic limb is emitting a mournful sound.

Blood trickled from the corner of his eye, flowing over the old scar.

"Lie down, don't look, don't think."

"We are now like grass on the battlefield."

In the aftermath of a clash between experts, even a mediocre expert can be easily trampled into the mud.

They weren't even qualified to participate in the war.

There's only one way to live: don't get noticed.

Richard had no time to grieve for the death of the inspector general; the silver ring and eagle hook on his chest felt cold.

Just now, Wentworth turned himself into a torch.

Now it's his turn to wring himself out like a candlestick with its light extinguished in the corner of the room.

If one is bright, the other must be dark.

Everyone lying on the shore was doing the same thing.

Lieutenant Colonel Odd knelt in the mud, blood streaming from the corner of his eye, without uttering a sound.

Mrs. McNeil took two spirit artifacts and gritted her teeth, refusing to loosen the formation.

No one cried, no one called out names.

Crying and shouting both emit light.

Just as the aftershocks were about to sweep away the group of people lying by the water, the wind howled.

That expert in the tradition of fierce winds extended a helping hand.

He used the sound of the wind to create a screen between this drowning realm and the battle overhead.

The aftershocks of the three masters' duel were blocked by that gust of wind.

The sound of the wind carried a faint melody, a man humming a shepherd's tune.

Richard lay prone by the water, his back pressed against the wind.

Without a doubt, the gust of wind saved them all.

"...It still needs to be done."

After the three experts had walked away while fighting, Mr. Hutton, supporting his student's arm, slowly straightened up.

The old man's voice was so hoarse that he could barely speak.

"Returning to sleep... still needs to be done."

"We can't go back until the ceremony is finished."

The person we just burned was burned for nothing.

Mrs. McNeill sat at the other end of the gate, and two of the seven spirit vessels were taken away.

The remaining five faint rays of light were all pressed into the bone bracelet on her left wrist.

The ceremony was half ruined.

The verdict was pushed back by the river, the host vomited blood, and the innermost line of defense was struggling to hold on.

Richard's brain was working at lightning speed.

The pronouncements all state, "In accordance with the authority recognized by the deceased, their name and final resting place are declared."

[Critical Thinking Level 1, Progress 100% → Critical Thinking Level 2]

This "judgment" that he himself re-examined.

This is precisely the condition for advancing to level 3 of [Critical Thinking]: re-examining a judgment that one once firmly believed in and correcting its errors.

He and the entire college system firmly believed in one thing.

The judgment must be in ancient, sacred, and encrypted language.

The older the encryption, the deeper it is, and the greater its power.

wrong.

The power of a judgment lies not in the antiquity of the language, but in whether the person being judged accepts the definition.

Lying at the bottom of Whitcomb is a Celtic priest who can understand Gugel's true name.

We shouldn't accept that set of chanting names when there are hundreds of years of scars at the bottom of the pit.

But lying at the bottom of the ditch are people who were still receiving their wages last week.

You have to use language they can understand.

He had once firmly believed in a judgment, but he had personally overturned and corrected it.

[Critical Thinking] He overcame the conditions for unlocking level 3 at this moment.

Without time to think, Richard propped himself up.

"Mr. Hutton, we made a mistake in choosing the material for the verdict from the very beginning."

Mr. Hutton wiped his mouth

He just took the brunt of the backlash, and his ether was severely depleted.

"……explain."

Richard laid out the things that had already taken shape in his mind, one by one.

"A judgment consists of three things: the melody, the lyrics, and the seal."

"Tune" refers to the frequency recognized by the carrier and the deceased.

We use Latin, which they've never recognized in their entire lives.

But they recognized the lullabies their mothers sang to lull them to sleep, the work songs they chanted while lifting heavy loads in the well, the old songs they sang their whole lives in the tavern, and the off-key funeral ballads they hummed to their companions at the graveside.

Mr. Hutton's eyes widened slightly.

"Words, that's my real name." Richard took out the contents of the oil paper package from his pocket.

That was the legacy that old Bige had sewn onto his chest, a legacy he had earned with his life.

"For fifteen years, Old Bige registered every unidentified corpse: name, age, cause of death, address."

This is a complete list of real names from this funeral.

He spread the sheet of paper out on his lap.

"Old Big is dead, but he's still solving cases for us."

"The seal is for double confirmation." Richard looked towards the other side of the gate.

On the other side of the Black Gully, in the material world, the old pastor was helping the people evacuate.

"Pastor Hawkins recognizes every face in this community, and the grief of the families is a resonance."

"Thousands of names." Richard gripped the file tightly.

"I'll manage the retrieval speed; everything I've read is in my head."

After listening, Mr. Hutton looked at the old beg's roster and then at the crowd on the opposite bank outside the curtain.

Knowledge, after going around in circles, comes back to people.

"I'll build the structure," the old man said.

The two banks of the Black Ditch quickly split into two distinct branches.

Mrs. McNeill knelt down again, supporting herself as she began the ritual.

Mr. Hutton dictated the structure of the judgment, stitching the words of the register, the tune of the folk song, and the seals of the family members into the frame of the final resting place, layer by layer.

Richard held the pen, with Old Big's roster spread out on his lap; he single-handedly retrieved the names of thousands of people.

On the other side is the battle line.

The hunters pushed back against the wall of filthy water, their silver bullets striking the water and splashing up patches of black spray.

Meanwhile, in the material world beyond the veil, on the true embankment of Black Ditch, Reverend Hawkins began to gather the people.

The old pastor, having received the instruction, prepared to lead the singing with the tune he had secretly learned for thirty years.

After the funeral, the family members stayed by the grave, humming the little tunes that the church forbade them to sing.

Before he sang the first line, he turned around and looked at the crowd behind him.

"The most pastor-like thing I've ever done in my life," the old pastor's voice trembled, "is..."

"It's a song that the church doesn't allow."