I loaded the Mysticism panel.

The silencing technique is progressing faster than Richard expected.

He knew perfectly well why it was so fast; his shadow had played a crucial role.

The shadow has been practicing silence behind the curtain for weeks, wearing a Hermes mask.

The "Border Crosser" bonus from the mask is a perfect fit for Shadow to do this.

The essence of a vacuum is to draw a line between the inside and the outside, remove all the ether inside the line, and then sew the edges of the line shut to prevent the ether outside from flowing back in.

Hermes governs boundaries and crossings.

The shadow, wearing a mask, sensed where the line was, and the line almost appeared on its own.

Perception, through the wisp of spirit that "astral projection," continuously feeds back into Richard's physical body.

During the day, while he was practicing with a steel pipe in the material world, he was simultaneously receiving feedback from the shadow in his mind.

The experiences from both sides overlap, mutually corroborating and complementing each other.

What the shadow perceives behind the curtain is where the "lines" on the etheric level are;

Richard was training in the material world on how to "spit out" a vacuum at the physical level.

One is in charge of finding the way, and the other is in charge of walking.

Once you know the way around well, walking becomes much easier.

From late October to mid-November, he did only one thing: throw away his crutches.

The breakthrough happened on a Monday.

Richard stood in the middle of the training room, his hands free.

The steel pipe was left on the equipment rack in the corner, and he didn't touch it.

As the tidal breathing began, the etheric tide in the chest cavity adjusted its own frequency and rose.

Inhale and let it flow down the slope, the ether rising up.

It keeps rising, it's reached its peak.

Just as he was about to lose his breath... he forcibly twisted something out of his own ether.

The vacuum spherical mass floated about two feet away and hovered in the air for a moment.

The dust on a certain area of ​​the training room floor was sucked away by the vacuum and scattered in all directions.

Although it ended quickly.

The edges weren't sealed, and ether seeped back in from several directions simultaneously, filling the vacuum in less than a second.

But without a doubt, he has taken the first step.

It's okay that it's broken apart; it's already detached from the steel pipe.

His hands were empty; there was nothing in his palms except sweat.

Richard squatted on the training room floor for a while, reviewing his feelings from beginning to end.

The reason for the failure is clear: the edges were not sealed.

He did manage to spit it out, but he was so focused on spitting that he didn't bother to sew it up.

As Mrs. Mary had taught me, Mr. Reeve's brilliance lay in his ability to "lock" things.

After spitting out the stagnant water, he casually sewed up all the edges, leaving no gaps.

I've got the feel for it, what I lack is practice.

There's only one way to do this: practice.

For the next three days, he would go straight to the training room as soon as his afternoon classes ended.

On the fourth day, Richard stood in the middle for another afternoon.

The vacuum that was expelled hovered in the air for about ten seconds, completely sealing off the edges with uniform density.

He extended his inspiration to explore the mass of that vacuum, enough to disrupt the rhythm of a practitioner's technique for a while.

It's not powerful, but it's sufficient.

This technique is similar to muscle training; you can never fully develop strength or precision.

What he needs right now is to pass the minimum standard; he needs to get past that first before thinking about pushing it up.

The panel quietly displayed a line of text when he snapped out of his inspiration.

The technique of silencing has been mastered (without a medium).

Richard stared at the line of text for two seconds, then let out a long sigh.

From finding the Silent Shell that night, to Mrs. Mary's psychic intervention and the complete three-page structural diagram, to the exchange for the Silent Fern, and the guidance from the cat's avatar...

This technique of silencing is indeed a secret derived from that master of the Black Soil River; it's really too difficult to master.

"You can finally retire," he said to the steel pipe as if possessed.

Of course, the steel pipe wouldn't say anything.

Richard finished the spell and sat down on the floor.

The silencing has been achieved, so...

He brought up the selection box for "Shadow Reversal".

A notification popped up on the panel.

[Shadow Reversal - Silence Technique.]

[Reversal result: Resignation procedure (resignatio umbrae).]

[Effect: Compresses the target's internal space with high-density ether, forcing sealed, hidden, and suppressed information to leak outwards.]

[Note: If the contents sealed within the target's body exceed the caster's rank, the exudate may backfire on the caster.]

[Side effect: The caster cannot use silencing spells during the spell.]

The side effects are the same as those of Stone Armor/Shadow Armor; if you use one, you can't use the other, and they are mutually exclusive.

Richard walked to the equipment rack and took something out of his bag.

It was the silver-handled ceremonial dagger that Captain Field had given him.

He had already extracted most of the ether from it, leaving only a thin layer of the base.

The dagger was also encased in a makeshift seal made by Mr. Hutton, which was applied with silver powder and fine salt.

Richard placed the dagger in the center of the training room floor and took two steps back.

Let the shadow emerge from behind the curtain and stand above the dagger.

He sent a thought to the shadow: open the seal.

The outline of the shadow narrowed.

A surge of ether pressed down from the shadow's palm, gathering towards the surface of the dagger seal.

The more you compress, the denser it becomes; the denser it becomes, the heavier it gets.

The ether formed a tiny high-pressure zone on the seal's surface, the exact opposite of the stagnant water zone created by the silence.

Silently drain the ether, open the seal and fill it with ether.

The outer shell of the seal began to creak and crack, and several extremely fine cracks appeared on the silver powder layer.

The thinnest part of the dagger seal couldn't hold on any longer, and a wisp of ether seeped out from the crack.

Richard used his inspiration to read the seeping ether, which was the sealed memory remaining inside the dagger.

One winter night, a dagger was stuck in an old oak stump.

Several people dressed in dark robes sat around a fire burning in the middle, and someone was chanting incantations.

The image lasted for about two seconds before disappearing.

The seal cracks closed again, the high pressure was removed, and the elasticity was restored.

The dagger was unharmed, and the seal was also intact.

Richard picked up the dagger and examined it; the cracks on the silver powder layer were no longer visible.

It's like trying to force a few drops of liquid out of the bottle opening without opening the cap, relying on external air pressure.

"Done." He put the dagger back into his bag.

The effectiveness of the seal has been verified; the next step is to test it on living creatures.

Catching a cat on the campus of Imperial University shouldn't be difficult; there are always a few stray cats lurking in the bushes.

But Richard thought to himself that it wouldn't sound good if word got out that he had used some unknown magic on a cat on campus.

Moreover, he didn't want his hidden techniques to be seen by others.

Richard decided to find a more private place where he could feel safe, and Ashford's house seemed like a good option.

Rats frequently get into the tool shed in the back garden of the mansion, and the housekeeper has complained several times, saying that those creatures have chewed up two pruning shears.

He was also planning to return to the mansion this Saturday, as his grandfather had asked him to regularly check on how Vincent and his gang were doing with their [Moon Nail Reflection] technique.

On Saturday, after returning to Ashford to instruct his cousin, he squatted in the tool shed for half an hour and waited for a large gray rat.

The mouse poked half its body out of the hole at the base of the wall, its sly eyes darting around.

Richard let his shadow emerge from behind the curtain and hover three feet above the mouse.

The shadow, palm down, unleashed its seal.

The ether pressed down, gathering around the mouse and forming a high-pressure zone.

The rats reacted much more violently than the seal.

Its whole body stiffened for a moment, its four legs stretched straight, and its tail whipped the ground twice like a whip.

Then it did something very strange.

It squatted there and began to repeatedly rub its face with its front paws.

They rubbed very quickly and very hard, as if they wanted to rub something off their face.

Richard reads with inspiration.

There are no etheric circuits in the mice's bodies, nor is there anything "sealed" inside them.

But it has instincts.

Enveloped in a high-pressure zone, the fears buried deep within their animal instincts were forced to surface.

The mouse is using the soothing behavior of rubbing its face to cope with sudden fear.

About five seconds later, Richard withdrew the spell.

The mouse paused for a moment, then turned and scurried back into its hole in the wall.

It moved so fast that its front paws disappeared into the darkness before the tip of its tail was even outside the cave entrance.

This technique is indeed effective on living things as well, forcibly bringing suppressed instincts and emotions to the surface.

Richard sat down on an old wooden crate in the tool shed, his notebook spread out on his lap.

He wrote down the test results in a few lines.

"Regarding seals: It can force out fragments of the contents without damaging the seal itself."

"For living animals: It can bring out suppressed emotions/instincts/memories (currently limited to the level of animal instincts, not tested on humans)."

He added another half-sentence in parentheses after the second line.

"Speculation: It's also effective on humans, so perhaps it could be developed into a combat interference or torture method?"

The pen tip paused on the paper for a moment.

But if you randomly rummage through someone else's box, what if it's a circus box and a lion might jump out?

This is not alarmist.

The lesson from that incident at the Echo Meeting is still fresh in my mind.

Mrs. McNeil drew an eyeless card from the deck.

The sound of pruning shears "snip, snip" came from the garden outside the tool shed; the gardener was tending to the roses.

The mouse has already disappeared.

The housekeeper will probably complain again tonight about finding fresh rat droppings in the yard.

Richard came out of the tool shed and stood for a while on the garden path.

In mid-November, it gets dark earlier and earlier in the capital city.

He turned up the collar of his coat and walked towards the front hall.

My mind was filled with all sorts of application scenarios for the technique of opening seals.

The system for sealing was practically tailor-made for his appraiser career path.

In the past, when he was appraising something of dubious origin, he would either rely on his spiritual vision to examine it from the outside, or ask Professor Mortimer to dismantle it layer by layer from the outside in.

Now that there is an opening mechanism, he can squeeze out a few drops of the contents without breaking the seal or altering the structure, simply by applying external pressure to taste it.

Try it first, then decide whether it's worth continuing.

In the past, this work had to be done by flipping through tarot cards one by one.

Combined with silence, it can form a set of tactics in battle.

First, silence the opponent to stop their technique and disrupt their breathing rhythm.

Taking advantage of the moment when the opponent's self-defense system is paralyzed, open the seal and follow up, pressing inward.

The two spells are mutually exclusive and cannot be used simultaneously, but they can be used alternately, forming a combination of positive and negative techniques.

Richard pushed open the door to the front hall and went inside.

The butler was standing under the window at the end of the corridor, talking to a maid.

Upon seeing Richard return, the butler turned around and bowed.

"Young master, dinner will be ready in half an hour."

"it is good."

Richard went upstairs to his room and closed the door.

I started by doing a set of tidal breathing exercises to relieve the fatigue accumulated from several days of high-intensity training.

The level 4 Healing skill gradually dissolves the minor blockages in the microcirculation caused by the overuse of ether.

He sat with his eyes closed for about ten minutes.

Once his breathing had completely calmed down, he opened his eyes, and the bronze Hermes mask materialized.

The mask has not yet been reversed by the shadow.

The condition is that he has "mastered the technique." He has indeed used the bonus given by the mask, but he is far from "mastering" it.

There's no rush to reverse the mask.

Let's familiarize ourselves with the new tools we have first, and take things one step at a time.