I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Of the seven doors, six were open.

The inverted city had collapsed most of its length, leaving only a small section of the street in the very center suspended above the dome.

The eleven-year-old boy stood in the middle of that small street.

There was no path under his feet; the houses on all sides had collapsed and dispersed into mist.

"Mom?" He stood there, his voice trembling. "Mom, why are you ignoring me..."

He had only been dead for twelve days; he was a modern-day apprentice who had fallen into the sea alive.

Ancient pronouncements, sacred language, encrypted inscriptions... none of them worked on him.

"Stop looking." Richard mimicked Hathaway's accent.

"Mom can't find you because you went to the wrong door."

The boy looked up at him.

Those eyes were still human eyes, only they were covered with a layer of water.

"Mom is waiting for you on the shore."

"It's not in these empty rooms. Count to ten, and when you're done, just follow the light and you'll get home."

"Count to ten?" the boy asked softly.

"Count to ten." Richard nodded. "Count slowly."

The boy tilted his head, wondering if what he said was true.

Then he started counting.

"One...two..."

The small, upside-down section of the street beneath his feet sank little by little as he counted.

"……ninety."

After counting, the boy gave Richard one last look.

"I'm home."

The wisp of spirit transformed into a faint light, rising upwards along with the living aura seeping in through the crack... no, it headed home.

The upside-down city has dissipated, and the curtain has been turned back.

The snake mother's body, now reduced to a mere layer of skin, drooped limply on the stone seat.

The twelve hundred years in her womb are gone.

Corbyn intertwined the Old Norse, Latin, and Albionese languages, with none dominating the others:

"Sofie nu." (Go to sleep.)

"Requiescant." (May they rest in peace.)

"We're home."

The cave fell silent.

The silence was even more unsettling than the previous noise that filled the cave.

Richard's still water, collected in the lingering air from the crack at the cave entrance, took a long time to completely dissipate.

None of the three hunters were much better than the other.

Colonel Javier sat on the ground, his face ashen.

Gerald sheathed his knife, and Richard could see that he was standing very weakly, his etheric energy much more depleted than when he entered the cave.

Old Phillips finally stopped the clock and wiped his mouth.

"It's over." His voice was hoarse.

Only then did everyone dare to breathe a sigh of relief.

Phillips was the first to collapse, landing hard on the rock.

He pulled the box of tea leaves from his pocket, poured out the last few leaves, and stuffed them into his mouth.

"It's good to be alive." He chewed until his cheeks were bulging, his words muffled.

"The first thing I'll do when I get back is brew a pot of tea, and nobody's allowed to take it from me."

Corbyn was tidying up the rubbings beside him, without even looking up:

"What you're chewing is dry tea leaves. Only when they're brewed can they be called tea. What you're doing now is just eating grass."

"Associate Professor, let me have some fun. I was scared to death just now." Phillips rolled his eyes.

"The only one in danger is your father." Corbyn rolled up the rubbing.

"You're standing far enough away from the Serpent Mother that the Inspector General has enough time to react to any head that lunges at you."

Phillips opened his mouth, but then ran out of words and continued chewing his grass in silence.

Montagu used to help his cousin.

Javier waved his hand and helped himself to his feet.

"I don't need your help." The colonel grinned. "I'm only forty-eight this year. I'm not at the age where I need help yet."

Hathaway squatted in front of the stone seat, looking at the pile of remnants.

"The remains of a high-ranking evil creature are something those people in the branch office dream of."

She reached out and touched it: "There's also ether condensate, and the purity is frighteningly high."

The snake mother's corpse couldn't be left for long, and Corbyn was in a hurry to finish it.

"First remove the spine, then remove the concretions in the skull."

As he spoke, he wiped the knife on his sleeve.

"Once these colors fade to the color of lifeless objects, their hardness will increase several times over, and then even an electric drill won't be able to penetrate them."

Hathaway didn't answer, but her hands moved even faster.

They were practically racing against time to do this.

The Serpent Mother's flesh and blood are undergoing a slow transformation, a death that only alchemists can comprehend.

When he breathed his last, his body was still suspended between two worlds.

Half of it is the flesh and blood that this world can contain, and the other half is the kind of people who only knew Saint Hilda and the Viking longships in their time.

Richard looked into the still water, and the shimmering spots on the surface were still there, flickering like a candle flame about to go out.

Phillips, who was squatting down to help, suddenly said, "Look at this..."

He pointed to the section of the snake mother's tailbone.

The scales, which had originally shimmered with a faint light, were gradually fading from the edges.

The fading started from the crack closest to the cave entrance and continued deeper into the stone seat.

"Hurry up!"

The group stopped talking and quickened their pace.

Corbyn held the last skull in his hands and gazed at the dying light in the cave for a long time.

"It's a pity that if there had been an alchemist here, it could have been preserved better."

Only when the snake mother's remains had completely faded into a dusty skeleton did that trace of something other than human energy truly dissipate from the cave.

The remains were hastily dismembered.

The seven skulls were removed, and the etheric condensates deposited in each skull were of extremely high purity.

The scales were scattered all over the ground, most of them had lost their etheric activity, only a few near the spine still had a faint glow.

The entire spine was pulled out, with black beads the size of ammonite embedded between the joints.

Those black beads were the cores that condensed after she digested them, and each one was an excellent raw material for alchemy.

Hathaway collected the old stitches from the snake mother's teeth, which still had the nun's hair wrapped around them.

"Take these back with you." She rolled up the old thread and put it into an oil paper bag.

"It should be handed over to the parish for safekeeping; the things the nun cut out should be returned to the church."

Corbyn also found some odds and ends deep inside the cave:

A few iron nails soaked in ether, and half a set of runestones;

There are also several pieces of iron embedded in the snake mother's stomach wall, which should be fragments of the sealing artifacts originally brought by the Vikings.

These are all good things; we'll distribute them according to our contributions when we get back.

Richard helped Gerrard walk out.

This time, the grandfather did not refuse; he put a hand on his grandson's shoulder.

"Grandpa," Richard said softly.

"Um."

"In the future..."

"Let's go back first," Gerald interrupted him. "We'll talk about it once we're out of the cave."

As the stone steps spiraled upwards, nearing the cave entrance, the cool air of the early morning seeped in through the crack, carrying the familiar salty smell of Whitby Cliffs.

It was a close call, but thankfully, two highly skilled hunters were dispatched at once.

The fighting is still going on across the sea, but this stretch of sea cliff is clean tonight.

Those ammonites on the fourteen-mile coastline are no longer a concern.

Hathaway carried the lantern and walked at the front.

The light shone on the cave entrance; it was still dark outside.

The crooked tombstones in Whitby Cemetery stand atop the cliff, battered by the sea winds for centuries.

Something was sitting at the entrance of the cave.

It was entirely black, so black that even the thin line of gray that had just peeked out from the eastern sea refused to be touched by it.

It crouched in the middle of the burrow entrance, its tail pressed against the frozen ground, neither making a sound nor moving.

Richard's still water reached the black dog, but there was nothing on the surface.

The mirror reflects darkness, but it doesn't reflect the shape of that crouching figure.

It is clearly a real shape, but the mirror shows only an empty space.

The black dog wasn't exactly an evil creature; it was more like a rain that was about to fall.

A mirror cannot reflect a shower of rain, nor can it reflect a cloud of fog.

Old Phillips' voice came through, even more serious than when he had spoken to the Snake Mother.

"Don't... move..."

Each of his words was broken down into individual syllables.

"Don't look into its eyes."

"Don't talk to it."

"Don't...go...to...it!"

The black dog raised its head.

My gaze slowly shifted from the group of people at the cave entrance.

He moved the blades of grass past Phillips, who then stopped chewing them.

Moving the conversation over to Corbyn, the associate professor who had spent his life meticulously studying texts opened his mouth but made no corrections.

The hand moved towards Hathaway, and Hathaway's lips moved slightly.

That word is not uttered by local fishermen at night, so she ultimately didn't say it.

Move past the colonel, and past Montagu next to the colonel.

Then it looked at Gerald and old Phillips.

The black dog stared at them for a long time, so long that the line of gray on the sea surface widened by half an inch, and it was still watching.

Richard, who was holding his grandfather's hand, suddenly wanted to pull the old man behind him.

He knew it was useless.

The black dog doesn't bite, bark, or block the road.

It only appears and follows, then silently disappears after a certain night.

The black dog was unstoppable; he still wanted to pull it.

Gerrard patted him lightly with the hand that was on his shoulder.

The slight post-battle relaxation that had been felt in the cave had completely vanished.

No one spoke; the black dog neither stood up nor approached.

It just sat there, motionless, on the boundary between light and darkness.