I loaded the Mysticism panel.

Beneath the terracotta mask, the woman herself seemed lost.

"...I don't know," she said.

"you do not know?"

"I really don't know."

"I've reported that something's wrong with the fields countless times this year."

The grains grow faster and faster, but become increasingly weak; I burn them every year, and they grow back every year.

"I thought the curtain was too thin."

"I thought it was..." She couldn't continue.

Hecate spoke up at this moment: "It was my fault."

All eyes turned to the person in the main seat.

"I actually knew all along."

Demeter suddenly raised her head.

Hecate said, "The table in Rome didn't buy her; they just planted a crop in her field for a season."

"That season's crops served as their intelligence reading for a whole year."

Richard stood at the center of the circle, mentally pushing this line forward.

Demeter diligently farmed every day, spending half her life working on that land, and she never took precautions against it.

Hecate said, "I wrote a letter to each of you six, with the same basic structure but different details."

"In her version, I wrote Hermes as part of the canonical tradition."

On the Seven Hills, Minerva closed his eyes.

"……I see."

Hecate ignored them and turned to face Demeter.

"I should have told you sooner."

"But I know you're not one to lie."

"It's my fault that you were used by them."

The farmer woman chuckled: "...You."

She lifted her hands off her knees and stood up straight, supporting herself on the ground.

"In that case, I should do something too."

"What are you going to do?" The big, clumsy guy wasn't angry anymore and asked, scratching his forehead.

Demeter did not answer, but lifted the sickle from her knees, aiming at her field.

"My field is located on a vulnerable spot, and I've been guarding it for over a decade."

"Something started going wrong last autumn. The grains grew very fast but were also very weak. When you broke them open, they were all hollow inside."

"I burned season after season, and then it grew back."

"I always thought it was a problem of weak points."

She raised the sickle.

"So someone was sabotaging my land."

Hecate suddenly raised her hand.

"Demeter... the roots of that season have become one with your veins."

"I know." Demeter's calloused hands tightened around the sickle handle.

"It's my job to only know how to plant and harvest."

The sickle fell, its blade striking a field of grain that grew rapidly but was hollow inside when broken open.

The entire season's crops were uprooted.

The wheel of fate on the sixth hill stopped at the same instant.

Fortuna looked down at the wheel in her hand, as if she didn't recognize it.

"...That's all."

"What's gone?" Minerva asked.

"The line is broken."

Demeter braced her scythe against the ground and let out a long breath.

"Breaking the crop has saved me some trouble, but there won't be any harvest this year."

Hercules returned to his own lines and walked over to her, taking her arm with one hand.

"Are the seeds still there?" he asked.

Demeter was unsure what the other person meant.

"……exist."

"Then it can still be planted."

The man thought he looked really cool after saying that, and he slung his huge penis over his shoulder and chuckled.

Richard stood in the center, putting the reed pen he was holding back into his inner pocket.

He looked at the furrow where soil was falling down, and the expert hadn't yet answered Matthew's last question.

Minerva walked to the edge of the hill and looked down at the tangled queue below.

"Fortuna".

"I can't read anything anymore."

"I know, please sit down."

The star map in the sky is still there, but it's spreading outwards from the center, much like a plate of beads that's been kicked over.

The extremely thin lines connecting the stars are half empty and half connected in the wrong place.

The owl atop the goddess of wisdom turned its neck, and a star in the sky shone back, connecting the two lines.

Richard saw this scene clearly in his mind.

"...They are more difficult to deal with than I thought," Hecate said.

She stood on the outermost edge, holding the torch aloft without putting it down.

"However, the star chart tradition also has its limitations; it can only trace back from what has already happened."

"The owls of Minerva take flight only at dusk."

Hercules slammed his massive club into the ground, panting heavily.

"Boss, what about the foreign help you hired?"

"Thank you."

Where are they?

"have no idea."

The eyes beneath the lion's mouth mask widened: "...The person you invited, you don't know?"

Hecate did not turn around.

"When I went to ask her, I only asked if she was willing to help."

She said yes.

No one responded to the question from the seven hills below.

"After that, when I asked her anything, she didn't answer anything," Hecate said.

"When will you make your move, where will you make your move, how much effort will you put in, and will you leave after you've finished... I can't get any of that out of you."

Dionysus hung the cup on his waist: "What if she doesn't come?"

"She said it was okay, so we have no choice but to believe her."

After Hecate finished speaking, she stopped talking.

Richard glanced at it; Hecate's etheric field had been in chaos several times that night, the most chaotic being when Minerva pierced her left shoulder.

But from the moment she entered the venue until now, she has never lowered the hand that was holding the torch.

She was really waiting for that turning point, and she was so certain of it was almost frightening.

A highly skilled person, not daring to ask a single question, dared to stake the entire table on that "yes".

So, where exactly was the person who was invited standing?

On the first hill, Minerva had already begun to rebuild the star map.

She had no choice.

Mars' entire faceless legion was attached to that map;

Fortuna's fate hinges on that chart;

Every piece of firewood the female kitchen god added to the earthenware basin had to be matched with the person whose wood was needed, according to the diagram.

The game was over, and only seven people remained at the table, each playing their own game.

The owl turned its neck.

The scattered stars in the sky were brought back one by one.

During the reconstruction, the diagram was left open.

Just as Richard was about to remind everyone to press their advantage, an extra stroke appeared on the half-finished map in the sky.

That stroke wasn't drawn by Minerva himself; it just appeared silently and without anyone noticing.

Minerva's hand stopped.

"……who?"

No one answered her.

That stroke went down three stars, moving one of them from the west to the south.

Minerva reached out to wipe it, but two more strokes appeared where she had wiped them away.

"Don't answer!" Fortuna, on the sixth hill, suddenly screamed.

Although she is only a minor expert, her inspiration is not much worse than that of a major expert.

"Master, don't take it, that's not our map anymore..."

It was too late, and the extra strokes started writing on their own.

A line that originally controlled the marching points of the troops was connected to that dark place beneath the Tiber River that no one wanted to mention.

A star that originally shone on the granary in the west of the city was moved outside the furrow.

There was another line that Richard couldn't understand, which stretched straight down from the center of the star chart and connected at the other end to the owl above Minerva's own head.

"It's over," Minerva said.

By saying this, she already knew who had made the move.

Richard finally understood the most fatal flaw of the star chart tradition at this moment.

The viewer is connected to the object of the view; as she reads the picture, the picture is also reading her along the same line.

She tried to pull her hand back, but the backlash had already flowed back along the line.

This woman, who had been constantly trying to take the lead, suddenly fell from her position.

Something was dripping from under the metal mask, pouring onto the stone steps.

One eye of the owl on her shoulder closed.

After it closed, it never opened again.

"First Lady!" Fortuna cried out, leaning against a pillar.

Minerva did not respond to her.

She reached out, grabbed the picture that no longer belonged to her from the center, and tore it off.

The moment it was torn apart, everyone at the table in Rome experienced a complete sensory distortion.

Mars crawled out of the ruins of the second hill.

The iron mask was cracked at one corner, and the left shoulder guard was completely gone.

He gripped the bent spear, raised his head, and found his target on the battlefield he saw.

Hercules was standing ten paces directly in front of him.

The lion skin, the giant club, the lion's mouth mask, and even the three still-bleeding cuts were all in their original places.

Mars tentatively turned the bent spear around and plowed across the ground, aiming to slash at the man's face.

The spear pierced through him, but he didn't even have time to feel any joy.

A scream came from behind the colonnade, and the Goddess of the Hunt tumbled out from behind the colonnade and fell onto the stone steps.

The spear pierced his left shoulder and right ribs, and the bow slipped from his hand.

"...Diana!" Venus screamed.

Mars stood still, looking down at his spear.

Hercules, who was opposite him, was carrying his giant club on his shoulder and grinning at him.

That grinning gesture was exactly the same as it had been half an hour ago.

"...When did she move there?" Mars's voice was hoarse.

"She didn't move," Minerva said.

"Then what I cut was..."

"You're cutting what you think you see."

These aren't even the worst things; the altered stars in the sky have started moving on their own.

They loosened from their original positions one by one and fell down.

In addition, they opened their "eyes".

The star has a crack in its surface, the pupil of which is sunken in so deep that the bottom is invisible. The thin crack at the edge opens and closes, like something slowly breathing.

Hundreds and thousands of them rained down densely on the entire city of Seven Hills.

"Withdraw the troops!" Minerva was the first to react.

"It's too late," Fortuna said.

The first star has fallen.

It landed on the right flank of the Mars Legion, without making a sound or flashing as it fell.

The entire square formation simply vanished.

The square shields of the Republic era, the scale armor of the Empire era—over several centuries, the soldiers who marched in sync with each other have not left a single piece of armor.

The second one, the third one, the fourth one...

That entire, faceless army, stretching as far as the eye could see, was devoured in less than ten seconds.

Mars stood still, letting out a roar that sounded inhuman from beneath his iron mask.

Then those stars turned around.

"...No." Dionysus's wine glass fell to the ground.

The entire group of people who had died outside the city, summoned by their chief, were looking up at the sky.

They died outside the city and hadn't entered it for hundreds or even thousands of years; tonight was their first time entering.

The star fell.

"Those are our men!" Hercules roared.

"Step back, all of you," Hecate said.

"chief……"

"We can't control that."

The entire mass of dead was devoured faster than Mars's army.

Hecate held up the torch all night, and the flame flickered and dimmed a little.

She herself staggered half a step.

"Chief." A line of text quickly appeared on Nemesis's scales: "Is she... friend or foe?"

Hecate held the torch steady again.

"The abyss doesn't distinguish between friend and foe; it only recognizes whether it can be devoured."

Richard's shadow looms large in the hearts of many.

The black mass that had been embedded in the stone slab's texture shrank away from his feet for the first time, and was still trembling.

The shadow collided head-on with the water horse on the mudflats last month, and dared to run all night on the cloud ridge with tens of thousands of riders. Tonight, it is trembling.

And then it ended. The stars were all eaten, and one by one they went out of existence.

When the last one was destroyed, the sky above the City of Seven Hills was completely clear.

That person only made one move from beginning to end, and didn't even enter the arena.

"Whatever you do, don't go and investigate her," Hecate said from the front.

"She agreed to help me, let's see if she's safe from protection."

Richard recalled all the information he had read about the Abyss that year, all of which were warnings.

My aunt said that the Yuanhou method grows fast, becomes strong quickly, and can't be stopped.

The secrets of the abyss are sweet, powerful, and deadly.

Richard always believed that the abyss was a path where you trade your life for speed.

But tonight, he finally saw what it looked like when the Abyss Tradition reached its pinnacle.

A master of the astrological tradition was unable to make a single contact with the other party from beginning to end.

Despite being of the same rank, they were completely unable to resist.

The situation came to a standstill, and the group at the Rome table lost sight of the entire room.

The owl on Minerva's shoulder never opened one eye again; from that moment on, she could only see what was in front of her.

The goddess of the hunt was pierced by her own spear and was clinging to life next to the goddess of the hearth.

Mars's legions were all wiped out.

The situation in Greece isn't much better.

Hercules himself doesn't admit it, but the petrification trauma has always been there.

The superior doll had lost one arm, and Catherine's uncle could no longer stand upright.

Separated by the ravaged open space below the Seven Hills, neither side dared to make the first move.

Suddenly, a sound came from the banks of the Tiber River.