The bus was nearly empty.
Richard sat down by the window, placed his bookbag on his lap, and pressed his face to the glass, watching the streetlights slide past one by one.
By the time he got home, his sister had already finished baking bread.
She had recently gotten obsessed with a recipe for "honey oatmeal bread."
She’d tried making it a few times, and she felt today’s batch wasn’t half bad.
"Brother, try some." Evelyn pushed a slice toward Richard’s mouth.
Richard took a bite.
"...Better than the last batch."
"Right?" Evelyn nodded smugly. "I used room-temperature softened butter this time. It incorporates more evenly when you knead the dough."
"Mm."
"Why are you back so late today?"
"I was at the library," Richard answered naturally. "I have to turn in a translation for my Ancient Greek class tomorrow."
Evelyn just said, "Oh," and didn’t press him.
Tonight, their father was home for dinner, a rare occasion when he didn’t have to work late.
Evelyn stood guard in front of the cabinet as if protecting a Seal that needed her constant vigilance and reinforcement.
She brought a plate of freshly baked, nicely shaped macarons to the table. "This plate is for eating."
"What about that plate?" their father asked, looking toward the highest shelf of the cabinet.
"That one is aging."
"Macarons need to age?"
"They do," Evelyn replied with conviction. "All good things require patience."
Their father glanced at the plate, tucked away on the highest shelf where no one could reach it, and asked no more questions.
Richard ate his macaron, head lowered. ’She’ll probably let that plate "age" until no one even remembers it’s there,’ he thought.
’Then, one afternoon, Evelyn will finish it all by herself and announce that it "failed to age properly and can’t be eaten."’
Dinner was more enjoyable than it had been the past few days.
At the dinner table, his mother glanced at him a couple of times. She noticed that the weight that had been pressing down on him for days seemed to have lifted slightly tonight.
She said nothing, simply picking out the largest piece of potato from the stew and placing it in his bowl.
Back in his room, Richard shut the door.
He dragged out the old wooden box he usually used for storage from under his bed.
On top of the box were two textbooks for his classics minor. Underneath them was the stack he actually needed to sort through.
He opened the wooden box and took out the items he would need tonight, one by one.
The first stack was manuscripts.
The one on top contained his notes on an improved version of the Moon Nail, which he had revised repeatedly over the past half-month.
The core improvements focused on the choice of medium and the rhythm of the Casting.
He had compressed the three steps of "receiving the needle—guiding the breath—piercing with the needle" so they could be completed within two breaths, while also adding a deduction of an extended path for "focusing the beam."
The second manuscript detailed a batch deployment method for Stone Armor.
He had changed the deployment method to be done in batches: the first batch would lay the foundation, the second would cover the entire body, and the third would be allocated specifically to weaker areas.
Using the same total amount of Ether, it could last for over a minute and a half, and its original effect would also be enhanced.
Richard took out these two manuscripts tonight and went through them from beginning to end once more.
Ever since activating Rationality, he saw his own past writings in a new light.
Beneath that stack of manuscripts was an even older one.
It was the table of contents for his reverse-engineered theoretical model of Shadow Armor, which he had taken to trade at his first Divine Pantheon Salon.
Richard pulled that one out and spread it on his desk.
The handwriting on the page was incredibly familiar.
At the time, he thought he had hidden the core formula for the "reverse-engineering" layer perfectly.
He had provided the framework but left blank spaces, allowing anyone who saw it to recognize it contained real substance without him giving it away for free.
Now, rereading it, he started sighing before he was even halfway through the page.
’What I wrote back then wasn’t a "half-finished Technique model" at all.’
’It was just an outline that looked the part.’
’The skeleton was hollow, the load-bearing beams were illusory, and every deduction was fudged with a vague placeholder at the critical juncture.’
And for something like this, Prometheus had actually been willing to trade a bottle of Deep Ether Condensate.
Richard’s fingers pressed down on the edge of the page.
’Prometheus probably knew with a single glance how much of it was real and how much was just an empty, embroidered pillow.’
But he had shown a necessary tolerance for a Newcomer who had just found his way to the edge of the Round Table.
That bottle of Ether Condensate wasn’t so much payment for the table of contents as it was a deposit, paid in advance for "the better things this kid will produce in the future."
Richard refolded the outline and set it aside.
’Dionysus is far more shrewd.’
Looking at Richard’s *Reverse-Engineered Theoretical Model of Shadow Armor*, he had coolly stated, "I’m only interested in finished products," and treated the half-finished work with a half-finished price.
’He doesn’t make you feel he’s arrogant or that he can’t recognize value, but he’ll never give you that extra bit of leeway.’
Richard took out a new, completed manuscript.
Since activating Rationality, he no longer needed to leave placeholders for himself when writing things like this.
If a load-bearing beam could stand, he made it stand.
If a load-bearing beam couldn’t stand, he would simply admit that it couldn’t stand yet and treat that section as an open-ended question, leaving it for the reader to deduce further.
This was completely different from his previous method of "making things vague to hide his secrets."
He went through the manuscript from beginning to end again, changing the wording in three places.
Then he checked his model paper for Moon Nail · Reflection and put all four documents away.
The second stack was physical objects.
He took out the small, oil-paper packet of Dangling Star Sand, then put it back in the very bottom of the wooden box.
He didn’t plan on bringing this.
Dangling Star Sand was far too versatile. It could be mixed into the base of a Crystal Ball, the pointer of a Star Disc, or the sealing paste for Tarot Cards. It could also be used to Nurture certain Marvels related to "suspension," "inverted reflection," and "reflection."
’It’s more worthwhile to keep it for myself.’
After some thought, he took the piece of Ether Condensate out from a hidden compartment.
The condensate itself was wrapped in oil paper.
When he opened the paper, his fingertips could feel a burning sensation.
A sweep with his Spiritual Vision revealed the uniform Ether Layer on the condensate’s surface, slowly seeping outward.
Its radiation was extremely regular. After leaving it on the desk for half a minute, the Ether Density of the entire surface would be a notch higher than in the corner of the room.
’Keeping something like this at home requires it to be sealed up tight.’
He didn’t need it himself. The ten points of pure Ether within his Spiritual Appearance were his most stable source for Nurturing the Sphinx Lamp.
His aunt had said something similar back in the Imperial Capital.
Ether Condensate could Nurture Marvels with high efficiency and in large quantities, but it was, after all, an external object.
Feeding a Marvel with condensate is "spoon-feeding";
using the pure Ether from one’s own Spiritual Appearance is "continuously establishing a connection."
The former grows flesh; the latter grows roots.
A Marvel recognizes its master through the latter.
Tonight, he planned to put this piece of condensate on the Round Table.
It was useless to him, but for someone whose signature Marvel was still in the early stages of being Nurtured, or for someone who needed it for an Alchemical catalysis, it was a very practical item.
As for what he wanted to trade for this time, he wasn’t planning on getting another Technique.
He hadn’t even started learning the Silencing Technique, which would require at least one or two months of dedicated time.
His practice with the Moon Nail was still a million miles away from the advanced versions Nemesis had mentioned, like "Moon Blade Rain" and "Moon Chain."
He had just finished modifying the batch deployment method for Stone Armor and still needed to test it repeatedly in practice.
And breaking through the "must have light" limitation of Shadow Armor was an even more long-term project.
Juggling four Techniques at once was already more than enough. Taking on another would be biting off more than he could chew.
This time, he planned to ask about those two herbs and whether there were other stable channels for acquiring Marvels.
Going through official channels meant undergoing the Headquarters’ appraisal process, and who knew how long it would take to get a response.
At the Round Table, Prometheus had channels for gathering things from the Deep Realm.
Dionysus, though shrewd, was well-informed.
Nemesis came from the Moon-Hunting Tradition and was also familiar with the resources found around the Deep Realm.
Even just getting a single clue from them would be better than Richard fumbling around in the dark on his own.
The same logic applied to channels for Marvels.
With that, he had everything he needed to bring.
He turned off the wall lamp and lay down on his bed.
The silver ring on his chest felt cool against his skin.
...
When Richard opened his eyes, he was already seated at the large, marble Round Table.
The golden mask of Hecate, in the head seat, was colder than on the previous two occasions.
The triple-layered shadow of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone was frozen in place; neither her torch nor her key was visible.
It was a signal.
Of the seven stone chairs, five were occupied today.
Prometheus sat within his red-gold halo, the flame above his head burning at a steady pace.
Nemesis was still accompanied by her long whip and Balance Scale, the whip coiled motionlessly at her feet.
The chair next to Richard showed, as usual, only the faint image of a Double Serpent Staff.
Dionysus’s purple chair was empty.
Hecate was the first to speak.
"Dionysus has business to attend to today."
She didn’t explain what it was, and no one at the table asked.
The one who had changed the most was Aries, who had missed the last gathering on injury leave.
Several new cracks ran down the left side of his Red Copper Mask, from the brow bone to the cheekbone.
The man’s entire left arm was gone from the shoulder down.
Richard could tell from the shape of the stump that it had been chewed off by something.
The bone’s break was jagged, and there were teeth marks at the point of severance.
Hecate lifted her chin in his direction.
"Aries."
"...Present."
"Last time, you traded with Lauren’s contact and entered the Ashen Zone."
"Yes."
The man’s head drooped.
"When you came out, you were the only one left."
"Yes."
There was no deliberate blame in Hecate’s words.
But everyone at the table could hear her subtext: Aries had done something foolish.
"Your two brothers," Hecate continued, "are they both dead?"
"...Both dead."
Aries’s remaining right hand gripped the edge of the table, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.
Hecate stopped her questioning there.
She didn’t continue to rub salt in the wound, nor did she turn to offer any pretty, placating words.
Today, she said nothing of the sort.
Saying nothing was, in itself, an expression of her disappointment.
"...Let the trading begin."

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