I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Hecate finished the matter of the shimmering face, and the outlines of the torch and key slowly softened back to normal.

When it came time to trade, Prometheus was the first to place the items on the table.

Several copper sealed jars, each about half the size of a fist, with their mouths sealed tightly with sealing wax.

The voice beneath the crimson mask was still a little hoarse.

"These are all high-purity alchemical stabilizers formulated by Master. Their purity is almost two levels higher than the batch we gave you before."

The eyes of the people at the table simultaneously fell on the bronze jars.

Alchemists of the highest level of mastery are few and far between on the entire Old World.

The stabilizers from this person would never be available on the market and were quickly snapped up by a few people.

Richard and Nemesis didn't have enough money, so they simply didn't participate.

"In addition, Master left a message for Chief."

Hecate's golden mask tilted to one side.

"explain."

"The item the chief asked him to make is finished, and it will be delivered by a spirit messenger in a few days."

This refers to the blueprints in the box Hecate gave us last time.

Hecate didn't say much, but the outline of the torch swayed as if to indicate that she had received it.

Dionysus pulled out a wooden box shaped like a wine chest from behind the chair.

Inside, there were six small, dark glass bottles, all sealed with wax.

"The 'base layer' of several old taverns in the eastern and southern districts of the capital."

He pushed the two bottles onto the table.

"What?" Hercules' lion mask tilted to the side.

Dionysus flicked his finger against the side of the bottle.

"The bottom of the old tavern, which has been undisturbed for decades, is mixed with the remnants of ether."

Inside lie the oaths sworn, the curses uttered, and the tears shed over decades by that stove.

He held a bottle up to the light, and the layer of grayish-black sediment at the bottom of the bottle looked oily in the dim light.

"It's very handy as a sealant, especially for sealing things that are related to 'promises' and 'oaths'... You put a layer of base coat in the cracks, which is like having decades of tavern rules guarding your door."

A soft laugh came from beneath Demeter's terracotta mask.

"You dug up the floor of that pub, didn't you?"

"A legal acquisition," Dionysus raised his hand.

"Those stores all closed down; the wartime restrictions on business hours squeezed them out of business."

I bought the furnace and ash together, and the boss even thanked me for helping him move a bunch of junk.

On Hercules' side, the man under the lion's mouth mask dumped an old military backpack onto the table.

A whole table of things rolled around with a clatter.

"We brought back from clearing out weak points in the rear from the front lines; everything that can be sold is here."

Richard's spiritual vision swept across the messy table.

Hercules's possessions were numerous and varied, including some materials processed from the remains of evil creatures and several sealed fragments.

There were two other items whose origins he was unsure of: a blackened identity tag and a glass jar sealed with wax.

The words on the ID tag were burned by the high temperature, and Richard could only barely make out half of his name and a regimental number by getting closer.

"Where did you find this ID card?" Richard asked.

"No man's land".

"In the corridor between the two armies, barbed wire was tangled with mud and rotten people."

The man turned the cards over.

"The regimental number on the sign didn't match either of the two sides. After checking for a long time, we found that it belonged to a transport company that had been listed as missing three months ago."

"How did the transport company end up in the no man's land?" Dionysus put down his cup.

"That's the strange thing." Hercules shifted his stance.

"There are living people in the no-man's-land."

There was a moment of silence on the table.

"The hunters from the front lines told me about it."

Hercules placed the cards face down on the table.

"The death corridor between the two trenches, people dragged corpses there at night."

"But those people were not a search team collecting the bodies of their own people, nor were they related to night scouts."

The search team had a number, and those who conducted nighttime reconnaissance wore black smocks.

Those men wore patchwork tattered clothes, with pieces of their uniforms sewn together on both sides, looking like scarecrows dug out of a garbage dump.

"Deserters from various countries." Prometheus suddenly realized something.

"Yes." Hercules nodded emphatically.

"Escape from the trench, escape into the no-man's land, there's no going back."

It is said that they would come out at night to drag away corpses, stripping the dead of their clothes, rations, and ammunition. During the day, they would retreat into bomb craters or the ruins of collapsed bunkers.

As the artillery on both sides bombarded each other's positions, these men huddled in the gaps between the barrages, barely surviving.

He pushed the identity card toward Richard.

"This plaque is also given to Lord Hermes; perhaps you will find something interesting on it."

Richard picked up the identity tag, looked at it, and then put it away.

Hercules picked up the wax-sealed glass jar again, shook it a couple of times, and found a layer of brownish-black mud at the bottom.

"The soil of the no-man's-land."

"That no-man's-land stretches hundreds of miles from the coast to the inland."

"A blood-soaked belt stretching for hundreds of miles... The blood-soaked spots were always scattered, one after another, in a mine pit, in an abandoned mill."

He drew a line horizontally along the table with his index finger.

"This time it's a very long line."

Richard stared at the layer of mud at the bottom of the jar, recalling the files that shouldn't have been buried.

The pit shouldn't be a single point; the three mine blood-soaked points form a triangle on the map.

What Hercules was describing was a blood-soaked belt that stretched across the continent, from the North Sea to the borders of Helvetii.

Hundreds of thousands of corpses lie scattered across a span of hundreds of miles, and more are being piled up every day.

"Let's nurture this line for another year or two." Hercules pressed his palm on the table.

"I don't even want to think about what might grow underneath it."

Aside from the identity plaque and the soil sample, Hercules dumped out two other items among the pile of odds and ends, two of which he himself was unsure about.

A crudely made copper buckle with a cornflower engraved on its surface;

The other was a small lead tube about the size of a palm, sealed very tightly, with its surface so worn that it was impossible to tell whether it had been engraved before.

"These two items were salvaged from the ruins of a bunker that had been blown over by artillery fire."

Hercules pushed them to the center of the table.

"I spent a long time using my clairvoyance, and all I knew was that there was something inside."

"Lord Hermes handled those cursed artifacts for me quite efficiently last time, so I brought them directly."

"Then I'll accept it for now." Richard nodded. "I'll get you an appraisal report later."

He wrapped the two items separately in oil paper and put them into the side pocket of the canvas bag.

Then he paused and said something he had been thinking about for a long time before this gathering.

"From today onwards, I will purchase any etheric condensate you have, regardless of concentration or quantity, on a long-term basis."

"Payment can be in cash or deducted from the cost of the testing service, with processing time calculated based on the concentration."

There was a two-second silence on the table.

Hercules was the first to react.

His chair creaked.

Are you serious?

"real."

"Very good!"

Hercules was almost ecstatic.

"Every time I come back from a field mission, I have a lot of condensate in my pocket. If I try to exchange it for money through the guild channels, they take 20% of it, and I have to wait in line for half a month."

Once, I went to the guild office three times, and the old man behind the counter always rolled his eyes at me when he saw me.

Richard was very satisfied with the guy's reaction.

"Then we'll collect the ether condensate, and proceed with the testing. You can give me a list later on how the concentration is calculated."

"Alright, alright, alright!" Hercules slapped his thigh.

Demeter spoke up as well.

"That saves me trouble."

Her fields yielded a stable output; the condensate was a byproduct.

The official recycling channels offered prices even lower than the guild's, so low that when she sent a batch of medium-concentration products there last time, the buyer gave her a number that made her think she had misheard.

"I deliver a fixed batch every quarter. If you want it, just send it according to the schedule."

"I'll take it," Richard readily agreed.

As he spoke these words, the Hermes mask he had tucked into his arms grew slightly warm.

[Internal Awakening] Silently initiating operations: acquisition, pricing, transshipment, and offsetting labor hours with goods... This is precisely the duty of the god of commerce.

From marketplaces to banks, from wool trading to maritime trade, everything involving two or more people exchanging goods at a table is under the jurisdiction of the messenger god.

Every time he closes a deal, the mask gets hotter.

Richard silently made a mental note of what Hecate had said, and at that moment, Hecate's words took on a tangible meaning.

Doing business was Hermes's job.

After Hercules finished celebrating, he pushed the evil materials from his pile of things to the center of the table.

"Let's see if anyone wants these too."

Richard's spiritual vision quickly scanned the pile of materials.

The quality of these materials varied greatly, and they were difficult to process. He couldn't use them himself, so he didn't sell them.

The only thing he could barely find acceptable was a clump of grayish-green slime, a corrosive glue secreted by some kind of trench monster.

Demeter picked away the clump of grayish-green slime first.

"Is this stuff highly corrosive?"

"Yes, they tore up a large section of barbed wire," Hercules gestured.

"I'll take it." Demeter collected the slime into her bag. "I'll take it back to feed the fields."

Hercules put away the banknotes, opened his mouth, then closed it again.

This woman actually used the corrosive gel secreted by the evil creature as fertilizer.

It was Nemesis's turn.

Several lines of text were projected onto her scales; they were her list of inscription deciphering services, similar to what was announced at the last gathering.

Richard glanced at it; the other party's business was displayed there, but no one was paying.

The people on the table had unidentified items that needed to be authenticated, and it had become a habit for Richard to do so.

The demand for inscription deciphering is not large to begin with.

Nemesis's stall went unattended.

Richard noticed the other person's somewhat stiff posture and slightly lowered mask, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration.

"Hercules." He turned his head. "You copied the inscriptions on the altar, didn't you?"

"Huh?" The man was taken aback by the sudden call.

"I copied a few paragraphs, but the drawing looked like scribbles."

Every time there's a historical site, I make a rubbing of it, but I can't understand most of them, so I just leave them there.

"Have you ever thought about having someone decipher those rubbings of inscriptions you have?" Richard asked.

Hercules waved his hand.

"They must have thought about it, but the academics at the conference channel have booked appointments until next year."

Richard shifted his gaze toward Nemesis.

"Nemesis can accept it; she has a scholar of great expertise standing behind her."

Hercules's posture changed abruptly.

Having reached the level of minor expert, he was well aware of the true value of a major expert scholar... A single sentence from him could get several hunters like him to run errands for him, and they would even fight over them.

"You vouch for her?"

"I'll vouch for her."

Hercules did not hesitate any longer and pulled out a stack of crumpled papers.

His thinking is very direct.

Hermes' reputation speaks for itself; since he's willing to vouch for Nemesis, we can trust him.

"Here, these are seven prints taken last month from the cellar of a church that was bombed in Leuven. They're worth half of each other."

He pushed the stack of papers toward Nemesis.

Nemesis reached out and caught the paper.

She flipped through it, and the words on the scale lit up.

"Medieval Frankish Latin, based on the ecclesiastical script of the Merovingian dynasty, I can accept that."

Richard then took something out of his canvas bag.

This is an ancient Gaulish inscription that he copied down during his fieldwork at Foxton.

The triple sacrificial structure is the two-thousand-year-old system beneath the foundation of the eastern half of the camp.

"This one is for you too."

He laid the rubbing flat on the table.

"The ancient Gaulish system dates back to before the Roman conquest, and there are several parts involving Gaulish dialect variants that I can't understand."

Nemesis's scales tipped slightly.

This is a rubbing that the two of them made together last time, and it is also one of Professor McFee's areas of expertise.

"Why don't you decipher it yourself?"

"These spots are right in my blind spot, so you can definitely do them faster than me."

That's the truth.

Richard has too many things on his plate right now, and he's not as good at dealing with Gaul and Celtic matters as they are, so it will take him several days to finish them.

Give it to Catherine… no, give it to Nemesis; it will save him a lot of time.

The others watching from the sidelines had already discerned the unspoken understanding between the two.

The two scholars who entered the venue at the same time were about the same age and had similar ranks.

They even introduce business to each other; this level of trust is practically an open secret.

Richard no longer intended to hide anything.

The party has entered its second phase, and photos of faces have already been taken; there's no point in pretending not to know each other anymore.

"We'll share the decryption results."

Nemesis silently typed out a line of small print and sent it separately to Richard as a way of thanking him for introducing the business.