I loaded the Mysticism panel.

When it came to the transaction, the atmosphere started to cool down a bit.

Because it had been so short since the last gathering, everyone's inventory hadn't been fully updated yet.

The liquid in Dionysus's cup had stabilized, but he wanted to do more verification.

Richard Nemesis didn't make a move this time; the items they had were either waiting to be processed or being kept for their own use.

There are only two people currently engaged in a transaction, one of whom is Prometheus, who has just been promoted to Minor Master.

He displayed the first batch of products processed by the new furnace, mainly several bottles of newly formulated stabilizer.

These stabilizers were naturally of lower quality than those his master had made before, but there were more of them.

There are also these two ether crystals that he refined himself, and they are of pretty good quality.

"These are the first batches I fired in my new furnace. I can give anyone who wants them a discount."

Demeter picked out a bottle of stabilizer and gave her a packet of seeds she had grown in her own field in return.

She herself, as usual, laid out a bunch of materials from the mystical side.

She took out a bag of spores and handed it to Richard.

"Hermes, do you still want the Silent Fern?"

Since Richard mastered the Silent Spellcasting technique, he no longer had an urgent need for spores.

But this thing can be kept to enhance one's spells or for other purposes in the future.

He took the bag of Silent Ferns.

"Of course I want it. Are you going to exchange it for the authentication service, or for money?"

Demeter waved her hand.

"The report you wrote for me last time, which helped me appraise that bowl, was quite clear."

I followed your instructions and everything went smoothly. I'll thank you for the spores.

Richard nodded and casually asked, "How's the field lately?"

Demeter seemed to be in a bad mood: "Something's not right."

"What exactly is wrong?"

She explained in two sentences.

"The grains are growing faster and faster, and they're getting weirder and weirder."

They're all empty shells of grain. As I mentioned before, a harvest that's been forced is ultimately empty.

The ether seeping from the curtain can also cause certain crops to mutate.

"So what did you do?"

"Of course, I burned it all. I dared not leave it, because sometimes other things would get into the empty shell."

Demeter had already cut the subject short.

"Let's not talk about this anymore. I'll handle the wheat matter myself."

Hercules seemed to have been holding it in for a long time, and suddenly blurted out a sentence.

"Hermes, don't think I'm being too direct, but I have a question for you."

"Please speak."

"Your serpent staff..."

The way he carefully chose his words looked much more strenuous than when he swung that giant club.

"...Could I use this to collect a debt?"

Demeter looked over with some interest.

Hercules quickly explained:

"There's someone up north who owes me money. He's a middleman. He took my deposit and hasn't delivered the goods for three months."

As soon as I arrived, he closed the door and had several of his employees block the entrance and try to reason with me.

Richard thought for a moment:

"I can go in with my cane, say everything from beginning to end, and then come out without a single hair out."

"That's fine then!"

"But as soon as I take a step toward him, or put my hand on his shoulder, my ability is immediately nullified."

"If the messenger uses force, then he is no longer a messenger."

A muffled sound came from beneath the lion's mouth mask.

"Then it's of no use to me at all."

Dionysus laughed so hard that the liquid in his cup almost spilled out.

He raised the cup toward Richard.

"How about we team up? You take the cane and go in, I'll give him the wine and get him drunk, and we'll split the profits 30/70."

Demeter asked, "And to whom do the seven belong?"

Dionysus thought for a moment and said, "Of course it belongs to Hermes. I'm just here for the fun of it."

Everyone at the table laughed.

On Nemesis's tilted scales, two words appeared: "For money."

Dionysus put the cup down.

"Nemesis, that's unfair of me. I'm just a winemaker; what else can I possibly gain from working all year round?"

Hercules suddenly remembered something, took something out of his pocket, and slammed it on the table.

"Speaking of which, I found something interesting on the counter of a pub when I came back."

Richard's gaze fell over, and he almost choked on his breath.

"The shopkeeper said these were sold by newsboys, one penny a copy, and they were distributed all the way from Manchester."

Hercules opened the book.

"I initially took it as a joke, but I couldn't laugh when I saw this page."

He pointed to the six lines of text and read them haltingly:

"If someone doesn't respond when called three times and is soaking wet, they're not from your family... Gentlemen, the person who wrote this must be an expert."

Dionysus then spoke.

"It's been rolled out here in the capital as well. Last month in the southern district, I saw a policeman squatting on someone's steps, reading aloud to an old lady, sentence by sentence."

Demeter said, "The country kids use it to jump rope."

"The maids of several tenant farmers in my neighborhood dance to this tune in the threshing ground. They don't respond to the first sound or the second sound... and they dance in perfect unison."

Richard sat on his stone chair, pretending nothing was wrong.

Hercules closed the book and patted it solemnly.

"I don't know which side this person is on, but if I could get to know him, I would definitely have to buy him a drink."

"Then he must be a heavy drinker." This was said by Nemesis.

Richard glanced cautiously in that direction and found that there were no more words on the scales.

"That's good, but it's a pity I can't find him." Hercules stuffed the booklet back into his pocket.

Hecate raised her hand from the main seat.

"Information sharing will now begin."

Dionysus spoke first.

"Normally I should be the one to go first in this segment, but I don't have any information tonight."

"I've been busy with other things this month."

Hercules asked, "So what have you been up to?"

"Let's find a place to drink."

A laugh, whose source was unknown, echoed from inside the hall.

Dionysus picked up the cup again.

"Those of you who are not in the capital probably do not know about what happened on the 6th of this month. The King has made an oath."

"What oath?"

He said, "He swore in public that he would not touch alcohol until the war was over, and then had the royal wine cellar locked and the key handed over."

From that day on, every household in the capital with even a modicum of standing had half of their wine cabinets emptied.

Some families even put up a sign in their foyer that read, "This household swears an oath."

"The Minister of Armaments said something in a speech last month that is now being talked about throughout the empire."

"What are you saying?" Richard asked.

He said that alcohol was more harmful to the empire than all the enemy submarines combined.

After Dionysus finished speaking, he laughed first.

"As you all know, since I hold the name of the god of wine, it is naturally more convenient for me to gather intelligence through drinking parties."

But the higher-ups are already discussing restricting the tavern's opening hours.

"We've already restricted those located near factories, so I really don't have much information this month."

Prometheus then spoke up.

"Recently, most of the raw materials that alchemists need and the chemicals that factories need are being purchased by the same group of people, which you probably don't know."

"Especially the gas cylinders, they were almost bought out in one go."

"I have an agent in a neutral country, and I've been dealing with him for several years."

He continued speaking.

"Last month he received an order and bought up all of that factory's production for the year."

He told me that the money for this order was also handled strangely; the accounts were registered to a private company, but the funds came from the military's account.

Demeter asked.

"What's in the gas cylinder?"

"Pretending to be airy."

"They are all seamless steel cylinders. Those filled with liquid or powder do not need to be seamless. The most expensive thing about seamless cylinders is that they do not leak."

He added:

"And that order also required brass valves, lined with lead."

"Lead is soft and heavy, so people generally don't want to use it if they can avoid it."

Unless, of course, the thing inside corrodes even copper.

Hercules asked, "Isn't that similar to gas?"

"Gas does not need to be lined with lead."

"What is that?"

"I don't know either."

"There's another thing: the price of sulfuric acid has tripled in the last three months."

This stuff can be used to make explosives, as you all probably know; factories all over the mainland are scrambling to get it.

Sugar prices have also gone up, to an alarming degree; you can hardly find white sugar on the market now.

Hercules continued the conversation.

"I happen to have a route here that's connected to the front lines."

Everyone at the table turned their attention to him.

"I have an old friend who used to fight wolf dens with me in the north, but he was taken away last autumn."

Now hanging in a small hunting team across the sea,

In a letter he sent me last month, he mentioned that the rats had all left the recent front.

Richard frowned and silently observed.

Hercules then explained.

"You probably don't know what the situation is like in those trenches; there are more rats than people."

Rats gnaw on people's boots while they sleep; if someone dies and isn't taken away in time, their face will be gone the next morning.

"After fighting for half a year, the rats in that place were fatter than cats."

But since last month, that section has completely disappeared.

Demeter asked, "Where did they all go?"

Hercules said.

"They must have gone to the rear, in groups, even during the day, running along the trenches to the rear."

The engineers killed dozens with shovels, but the rest kept running away.

"The birds are all gone. There used to be a few nests of crows living off the dead people in that place, but now the sky is completely clear."

Nemesis's scales tipped, and words surfaced.

"The hunting teams in the sky have recently changed their routes."

Previously, it followed the old battlefields; this year, it started following the airships.

Upon arriving in Demeter, she proactively stated that there was no intelligence available that evening.

The main issue is that things in the fields haven't gotten serious enough to warrant being discussed on this platform yet.

Upon arriving in Hermes, Richard began to recount the information he had gathered.

"Recently, the academic system has been quietly recruiting people, mainly classical scholars, as well as archaeologists and surveyors."

Hercules didn't take it seriously.

"Everyone gets seconded, especially in the current situation."

Richard continued speaking.

"It's not unusual to be seconded, but it's quite unusual to be asked to be someone familiar with Homer's geography."

Dionysus asked a question.

"Knowing Homeric geography, where are we going?"

"In March, the Navy lost several capital ships in the Strait. Colleagues who returned from there said that the anchorage on an island in the Sea of ​​Aegis is now full of ships."

The peninsula they were to land on was opposite the site of Troy, and now tens of thousands of people had to cross over there.

After everyone had finished speaking, Hecate began:

"Based on the information you all have today, a new way of dying may be invented."

On the day it is created, many people may die at the same moment in the same way.

"The most difficult to transport is a corpse whose body is intact."