I loaded the Mysticism panel.

"Let me meet that person first," McFee said.

He closed his eyes and began to recite.

"Submerged in the gap between the two seas, swirling with the Gulf Stream."

The water in the shallows behind the weak point completely turned upside down, with water from all directions pouring in one direction, into a whirlpool that was growing larger and larger at the left end of the wilderness.

"He once drank from a thousand sails in one gulp."

The crisp sound of the mast breaking, the muffled thud of the cable snapping, the silent grinding of a person's lungs filled with seawater into the salty, fishy air.

"The tide has sealed the throat, the blood has turned to salt, only the whirlpool remains, forever swirling in the sea."

The moment the honored name was finished being recited, that gaze pressed down completely.

Richard felt as if he were submerged in the far north sea, the cold seeping into his bones, his throat filled with salt.

His stillness technique was almost disrupted by the salty smell, and he gritted his teeth to tighten the still water.

McFee opened his eyes and nodded slightly in that direction.

Professor Mortimer held the chipped teacup and solemnly wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

"The old chairman is very particular about rules; it's impolite to have tea dregs on your lips in front of him."

He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, there was not a trace of the usual feigned ignorance in his dry, hoarse voice.

"Sitting atop ten thousand scrolls, one who shares the ancient wisdom of oracle bone script."

As the first sentence fell, papers appeared out of thin air on both sides of the boundary line.

Paper filled the sky—parchment, papyrus, bamboo slips, clay tablets—every page covered with writing.

The words floated very slowly on the page, not yet completely pinned down by the ink.

"He once weighed all the nations with a single scale."

The shadow of a steelyard scale loomed overhead.

The steelyard beam stretched as far as the eye could see, bending the sky behind this curtain by a thin line.

"The blood has turned into ink, the bones have become the pen, only the written record will be forever recorded in the world."

All the moving characters stopped at the same time and fell back to their respective positions in an orderly manner.

A "person" sat among those pages.

Richard couldn't see the other person's face clearly, but he could see the pen in the other person's hand.

The pen tip hangs suspended, an inch above the paper, poised to fall at any moment yet never falling.

The older president arrived more quietly than the other, perhaps due to different traditions.

Richard peered through the doorway using his spiritual vision.

The shallow water behind the curtain inside the door should have been empty, but now two enormous figures stand there.

"Don't reach for them with your eyes," McFee said, pressing down on his shoulder.

"One of them came from the whirlpool of Strommar Island; if you look at it too much, you'll get caught up in it."

The other one... you shouldn't even look at it, it'll just hold you accountable too.

Richard completely suppressed his inspiration back into his body.

The bronze mirror was in his arms, wrapped in three layers of lead, salt, and bone, one layer on top of the other.

Fenrir's head was in another wooden box, and his bewildered eyes were still peering out through the cracks in the box.

McFaye crouched down and unscrewed the seal on the narrow door, section by section.

The ancient inscriptions outlined by the silver lines lit up one after another, then went dark one after another, and the door opened.

There were no steps or openings behind the door, only darkness.

Richard stepped in and used the method Whitcomm had taught him to dive down.

Behind him, the shallows receded into a vast expanse of mudflats, and looking down, an inverted patch of sky hung in the black water.

"Let's begin," Mortimer's voice came from behind.

The old professor stood on the shallower side of the boundary line, with something slowly unfurling beside him.

On the other side, McFaye's voice, the sound of the deep current swirling, drowned out the breathing of the sleeping creature beneath the black water.

The weight of these two experts has been placed on this boundary.

Richard closed his eyes and summoned his shadow from the shallower part of the curtain.

The shadow stood on the boundary line, and the dark figure seemed to sink even deeper in the training room.

The two elderly professors each stayed on their own side, not even glancing in their direction.

This attitude actually made Richard feel a little more relaxed.

"Put it on."

Richard handed over the Hermes mask, and the golden-winged serpents covered the faceless face of the shadow.

The shadow's outline tightened, and the transparency stretched by the mask receded as Richard handed over the name.

"The Silent Ones".

As the name was placed, the transparent aura around the shadow that would have attracted attention was suppressed.

The shadow stretched out its two dark arms and laid out the half set of rune stones one by one.

Richard silently recited the true name of each rune in his mind.

The hunter used the book of runes, and Richard used runes to build a familiar table for it.

"fehu".

Livestock, wealth—the first one lit up.

"uruz".

Atomic cow, strength.

"thurisaz"

"ansuz (speech)"

"raidho (journey)"

"kenaz (torch)"

The six runes were arranged in a neat circle along the boundary line, as if to prevent the visitor from thinking that he had hidden something else.

The shadow positioned Fenrir's head right in the center of the circle.

The dog's eyes were looking deeper into the black water.

With everything ready, Richard retreated to the space between the two professors.

The last thing he did was to suppress his thoughts as much as possible.

He couldn't think of that name, couldn't pronounce it, and couldn't write it.

The letter was written not by his hand nor his brain, but by a hand that had no idea what it was writing.

On the night of the divination, he laid out all the tools he could use on the table.

The Magician, the Moon, the Three of Pentacles... not a single card in the deck revealed his true name.

Because there's no room for it on the divination plate, if you touch it, the person has to follow the chain to reach you.

So it never appeared in that night's divination.

But it's the only thing that's heavy enough.

Richard raised his head and began to recite the honorific name that Professor Mortimer had told him.

"Riding across the roadless wilderness, hoof to hoof with the wind."

All the winds in the wilderness stopped at the same time.

"He once roused a thousand armies with a single corner."

In the far distance, in the darkness of the deep realm, a glimmer of light appeared.

The wind picked up again, and this time it carried the sound of hooves, rolling down from the horizon.

A bugle call sounded before the thousand troops charged, the sound of the bugle drowning out all the hoofbeats.

"Blood has sealed the saddle, bones have become the bow, only the sound of hooves remains to hunt for eternity."

As the name was finished being recited, a crack appeared in the upside-down darkness.

An endless line of people surged out of the opening, sensing the presence of two equally skilled individuals. The line then came to a halt directly above the open field.

The hunter bent down and glanced at the dog's head inside the boundary line.

"..."

Of course it recognized its lost dog.

The hunter's gaze lifted from the dog's head and landed on the table made of half a set of runestones.

Then the message fell on the shadow messenger standing by the table, holding up a dog's head.

The shadow held the black bronze mirror, which was wrapped in three layers of shell.

Richard's words traveled along the wisp of spirit embedded in the shadow.

"Here is a gift in exchange for Gerrard of the Ashford family, whose name will be removed from the hunting register."

The hunter's gaze fell upon the black bronze mirror.

The shadow lifted the mirror high, revealing the bone needle first.

The hunter picked it up and held it in front of him, his aura becoming more subdued.

Richard's breath caught in his throat.

The hunter was recognizing a handwriting it hadn't seen in a long time when it flicked the bone needle back.

The needle tip pierced the ink-stained surface in front of the shadow's feet, the end of the needle still trembling.

It doesn't accept anything superfluous; if it does, it has to be recorded in the account, and the recorded account has to be compensated.

Under its gaze, the lead, salt, and bone layers naturally separated.

In the innermost mirror, the reflection of three syllables is imprinted.

The hunter read it and was immediately stunned.

The hoofbeats stopped, the horns fell silent, and even the seemingly endless column behind them seemed to freeze in mid-air.

Richard huddled between the two professors, sweat seeping from the back of his neck.

The next moment, the flow of ether around the Hunter became active.

It turned into something... Richard couldn't think of any other word, so he could only call it a surprise.

The seemingly endless procession stirred in the wilderness, tens of thousands of horses pawing the ground simultaneously, tens of thousands of blurred outlines peering toward the mirror.

"Walking in the land without light...breathing with the shadows."

It certainly recognized the other party, that fickle one who had been stirring up trouble all over the world for centuries, hiding deep within the veil.

Now, the fragment of the real name of this expert, who is even more senior than himself, has actually been presented to him?!

"Where did you get this?" The hunter's gaze was fixed on Richard.

"This transaction is not recorded in the accounts."

Richard was under a lot of pressure, but with a group of people around him helping him, he was able to barely hold on.

"You just need to say whether this real name is enough to cross out the name of a master."

The hunter didn't ask any more questions; he simply placed the object from the black bronze mirror onto the scale.

The scales sank, and the invisible scales pressed down to the bottom.

Gerald Ashford's name is as light as a leaf on this scale.

The hunter was very satisfied and put the black bronze mirror into the horn cavity.

The moment the corner was sealed, the three syllables fell silent, and no sound could be heard anymore.

Then, it untied a roll of something from the saddle and shook it.

The animal hides were spread out and stretched out in both directions with the wind until they disappeared from sight.

The names on the leather surface were densely packed, one line overlapping the other.

The wind turns the pages for it, stopping when it reaches a certain page.

The hunter thought for a moment, then casually blew a breath.

The ink faded to grayish-white, and after a gust of wind, nothing remained on that line.

Within the semi-circle, Fehu's runestone trembled slightly.

The symbol of livestock and wealth is a "livestock" that has been removed from the register.

Richard's anxiety eased somewhat.

But before the accounts were settled, the scales were already hanging overhead.

One end of the scale weighed down the hound's head and the three syllables, while the other end held only the name that had just turned to ash. The scale leaned so much that it almost stood upright.

The old chairman, holding the pen, sat there without urging anyone to hurry up; he simply recorded.

The hunter mentally reviewed his collection.

He couldn't bear to part with the signet ring that had been removed from Alexander the Great's finger bone.

The arrow that shot down something it shouldn't have fallen with is even more precious.

They were all hunted over hundreds or thousands of years, night after night, and it felt heartbroken to take any of them out.

It glanced over there again.

Two experts were watching closely, and two highly knowledgeable scholars were also setting up their formations in an orderly manner.

If you try to fool people too badly, the pen on your head will fall down.

Richard, huddled in the darkness, could sense that the other person was troubled.

It was clearly reluctant to cover the debts of a practitioner and also to provide protection for this little thing.

This is too troublesome, so troublesome that it's completely unbecoming of someone who's an expert.

High-level artifacts are also very important to experts; they are truly reluctant to part with them once they are taken out.

It thought for a long time, and seemed to have figured something out, then suddenly laughed.

Outside the boundary line, something blew from the hunting party.

It was a deer antler, with a very thin rein wrapped around it.

The shadow caught it.

Richard's inspiration was applied, and the information about the horn was automatically extracted.

Deer antlers are second only to highly prized artifacts; they are also a token of trust.

With the token, he can choose which team to join.

On certain nights, such as Lent, the Four Seasons, and Halloween...

When that endless procession crosses the border, he can use this token to become a member of the Wild Hunt army as a living person.

Of course, he can also choose not to go; that's his exclusive privilege.

With the token, he was a candidate for the team, a prospective member of the Wild Hunt.

Wild Hunt members are naturally protected by their hunters, and they have already upheld the rules.

The calculations were meticulously done, and the scales above our heads gradually tipped.

Mortimer's gaze swept from the antlers back to the scales.

The old professor's lips curled down slightly.

No one said it out loud during the ceremony, but none of those present, including the two experts, were fools.

As expected, those who have reached the master level are all extremely shrewd.

The Hunter Lord pressed his hoof down towards the two beings of the same level from afar.

The one on the left returned a hint of saltiness, while the one on the right returned a page turning.

The three masters greeted each other from afar across this vast wilderness.

"The accounts are settled." The hunter withdrew his gaze and led the seemingly endless group.

"I'm not going to pursue Ashford's debt anymore. As for whether you'll join or not... I'll wait and see."

The group galloped into the darkness of the deep realm, the sound of their hooves growing fainter with each passing moment.

Finally, only the wind remained in the wilderness, and the wolf's head was gone.

Richard held his knees and panted for a while.

Shadow retrieved the antler tip with the reins wrapped around it, half a set of rune stones, and his great-grandfather's remains, then retreated into the boundary circle.