At 10:30 PM, Richard sat down at his desk.
His notebook lay open to a blank page. A fountain pen rested beside it, its nib dipped in ink but not yet touching the paper.
He closed his eyes and deepened his Breathing to the third cycle.
The Star Sea receded, layer by layer, as the coolness of marble solidified beneath his feet.
When he opened his eyes again, he was standing in the Divine Hall.
Seven stone chairs surrounded the Round Table.
Hecate sat at the head of the table. The upper half of her gold mask was that of a maiden, the lower half, a crone.
The torch and key coalesced above her head, looking particularly solid tonight.
Richard’s gaze swept across the circle of chairs first.
The seventh chair, which had been empty last time, was occupied tonight.
In other words, all seven chairs were filled for the first time.
Richard mentally reviewed the rules Hecate had established earlier.
’Once all seven chairs are filled, the gathering enters its second stage, which involves the divine names of everyone present.’
He glanced at the head seat. Hecate didn’t bring it up. The torch and key remained steadily coalesced, showing no sign of proceeding.
Richard suppressed his doubts and focused on the present.
He looked at Aries first.
Last time, the left side of Aries’s Red Copper Mask had been cracked, and his entire left arm was gnawed off below the shoulder, the stump bearing teeth marks.
After two months, Richard had thought that with Moon Nail · Reflection keeping the stump animated, the man would have recovered somewhat.
He was wrong.
Aries was curled up in his chair.
The rift in his Red Copper Mask was wider than before, running from his left eye all the way to his jaw. Through the fissure, a grayness like that of a burnt-out furnace was visible.
Before, his severed arm had simply been a stump at the shoulder.
Now, the area around the stump had taken on a deathly gray pallor that should never appear on a living person.
His right hand gripped the armrest tightly, as if letting go would cause him to slide off the chair.
Richard’s gaze lingered on the severed shoulder for half a second.
’It seems the "feverish heat" from that consultation letter couldn’t be suppressed after all.’
From the head of the table, Richard’s inspiration perceived a change in the surrounding Ether a moment before his eyes did.
It was faint and brief.
When Hecate looked at Aries’s severed shoulder, the Ether around her contracted slightly.
It was... disgust. A sliver of it leaked out from under her golden mask before she quickly concealed it again.
He averted his gaze.
When his gaze fell upon the seventh chair, Richard’s breath hitched.
The person seated there was perfectly steady, as if the chair had grown just for her.
It was a woman.
She wore a mask, neither gold nor bronze, but of fully fired terracotta.
The mask was marked only by a few shallow grooves pressed into the brow and cheekbones, simple to the point of being crude.
What truly captured Richard’s attention was what was above her head.
Coalesced there was a sheaf of wheat, so full it drooped, along with a sickle.
The wheat hung heavy, each grain plump and seemingly ready to fall from the stalk at any moment.
The sickle was positioned beneath the wheat, its blade facing inward.
The life-giving wheat and the harvesting blade, one above the other, held a tense balance above her head.
Richard understood.
Demeter, the Goddess of Harvest, the Mother of Grain and Earth.
She controlled the prosperity and decay of the harvest, and with it, the life and death of the earth.
In the myths, when her daughter was abducted by Hades, her fury caused all growth on earth to cease. Plants wouldn’t sprout, grains wouldn’t ripen, and even the gods were deprived of their incense offerings.
The God-King ultimately had to intervene and arrange for her daughter to be returned to her for half of the year.
From the head seat, Hecate spoke first.
"Before I introduce the newcomer," her maiden’s voice began, "I have some joyous news to share with you all."
All eyes at the table turned to her.
"Dionysus," Hecate’s Mother’s voice took over, warm and gentle.
"Congratulations on your promotion to Minor Mastery."
Richard’s gaze instantly shifted to Dionysus.
The man in the deep purple Evergreen Ivy Mask raised the Double-Eared Kantharos Cup before him in a slight gesture toward the head of the table.
"My thanks, Chief." His reply was slow, the voice from beneath the Evergreen Ivy Mask drawing out the last syllable.
"The ritual was completed in March. I’ve only just recovered."
He didn’t mention a single word about his tradition or specialization.
Richard quietly made a mental note.
Dionysus had officially surpassed the previous assessment of being "at the upper limit of a Senior Practitioner, or just touching the threshold of Minor Mastery."
The man still had that air of nonchalance about him, but the density of his Ether was on a completely different level from a few months ago.
"Congratulations," Prometheus said first.
"Congratulations," Nemesis added.
Aries also moved his lips.
A single, muffled word escaped the fissure in his mask.
"...Congratulations."
Richard also raised the temporary cup that had coalesced in his hand.
"Congratulations."
The one in the seventh chair remained silent the entire time.
She merely inclined her head slightly toward Dionysus, as if in acknowledgment.
Dionysus put the cup back down and said no more.
Hecate’s gaze moved from Dionysus to the person in the seventh chair.
"Next, I will introduce tonight’s newcomer to you all."
Only then did the occupant of the seventh chair move.
She lifted the hands that were resting on her lap.
The woman’s hands were rough, her palms calloused. They were not the hands of a noble, but those of a farmer.
"Everyone, I am Demeter. I am honored by Hecate’s invitation to join you at this table tonight."
After stating her name in a single sentence, she returned her hands to her lap and sat quietly.
The entire table fell silent.
This newcomer didn’t show her hand, nor did she try to curry favor. She lacked even the cautious politeness Richard and Nemesis had shown when they first joined the table.
She had simply arrived, sat down, announced her name, and was now waiting for others to speak.
In that silence, there was a weight greater than any ostentation.
Hecate’s maiden’s voice spoke up.
"I personally invited Demeter. She is also a Minor Mastery, and not far from Grand Mastery."
The atmosphere at the table shifted.
A Minor Mastery personally invited by Hecate, and one said to be not far from Grand Mastery at that. No wonder she had the aura of a big shot the moment she sat down.
Richard did a quick calculation in his head.
Seven people at the table. Hecate in the head seat was all but confirmed to be a Grand Mastery.
Of the remaining six, Dionysus had just crossed the threshold of Minor Mastery tonight, and Demeter was a senior Minor Mastery vouched for by Hecate herself.
The Practitioner tier was quickly becoming the lowest rung.
"As for the path Demeter follows," Hecate’s Mother’s voice continued, "how much she is willing to share is her own business."
"Mm," Demeter grunted in acknowledgment, then fell silent again.
Most at Minor Mastery were either trapped in their family’s strained resource chains or struggled alone to gain seniority.
This was the first time Richard had seen a Minor Mastery practitioner who presented herself as a simple farmer like Demeter.
At the head of the table, Hecate’s golden mask turned toward Demeter, her maiden’s voice as clear as ever.
"This is Demeter’s first time here."
"She is still new to the rules. Tonight, she will just observe. Next time, we will formally conduct the token recognition."
"Fine," Demeter replied with a single word.
Hecate’s gaze swept across the entire table.
"The trading session," she said. "Let us begin."
As soon as the trading session began, the mood at the table cooled considerably.
This was normal.
After two consecutive sessions with major trades, with one item after another being placed on the table, everyone’s inventory had taken a hit.
Two months later, their stocks hadn’t recovered, and they hadn’t been able to accumulate anything new.
When time was needed for digestion, forcing it would only produce insignificant odds and ends not worth presenting.
Nemesis was the first to spread out a cloth.
On the cloth were some scraps and old items from the Moon-Hunting Tradition.
She was looking to trade for something ordinary: a report on the recent movements of Evil Beings in the Northern Highlands.
If someone had it, they’d trade. If not, so be it.
There were no takers.
Prometheus laid out several vials of alchemy stabilizer, from the same batch as last time.
He wanted to trade for firsthand information from the interior of the New Continent.
No one at the table had been to the New Continent, so there were no takers for this either.
Aries’s good arm emerged from under his robes and placed three Evil Beings Materials on the tabletop.
They were the leftover scraps he had brought back from the Ashen Zone last time and failed to trade.
"...Anyone want them? Selling cheap."
No one responded. The table was silent for a moment.
It was Dionysus, however, who put out the most items tonight.
Having just been promoted to Minor Mastery, his avenues had clearly widened.
He took out several things from a tin box, one by one.
Richard identified them one by one using Erudite.
An advanced method for Environmental Ether Retention, only accessible to those at Minor Mastery;
A partial catalog from a closed collection at the Imperial University library;
And two advanced mediums that only circulated within Minor Mastery circles.
They were good items, but none of them were usable by anyone at the table.
The retention method required one to be at Minor Mastery;
Few at the table had access to that library collection;
And the two mediums were separated by a huge gap in Tier.
After taking everything out, Dionysus himself was well aware of this.
He pushed the items toward the center of the table, his voice from under the Evergreen Ivy Mask drawing out the last syllable.
"Take a look. If you fancy anything, make an offer. I’m not expecting to trade them away this time anyway."
The others at the table glanced over the items but didn’t make a move.
Richard understood what was happening.
Dionysus was flexing, showing off his resources to the rest of the table, and more importantly, to the one at the head seat.
’I’m a Minor Mastery now. I have these things in my possession.’
Whether they were traded or not was secondary. The important thing was for others to know he had them.
Demeter didn’t move from beginning to end.
She watched the items come and go at the center of the table, not reaching for a single one, not making a single offer.
The sheaf of wheat above her head drooped silently.
But beneath her mask, her composure had long since broken.
Before entering this Divine Hall, she had thought Hecate must have had a reason for inviting her. She’d wanted to see what kind of people were here.
But when she sat down and looked around, she saw the table was mostly filled with young people.
Every one of them had a "pretending to be calm but actually very nervous" look, and then there was the one with the severed arm, sitting there all listless and pitiable.
She thought to herself, ’This isn’t some secret Round Table, it’s a flock of chicks huddled around a mother hen.’
Hecate was the mother hen.
At the sight of that Dionysus fellow, so full of himself after just promoting to Minor Mastery and acting as if he wanted the whole table to know, Demeter had to suppress a laugh.
’Then again, on the night she herself had been promoted, hadn’t she run a dozen laps around a crooked tree in the barrens?’
To this day, she was the only one who knew about it, a secret she planned to take to her grave.
It was Richard’s turn.
"I have two items."
He took two items from the leather pouch at his side and placed them in the center of the table.
An ebony box and a palm-sized Copper Mirror.
Several people at the table looked over. Aries’s good arm twitched.
He recognized these two items.
They were the two questionable Marvels he had brought back from the Ashen Zone last time, which Richard had traded for.
"These two." Richard tapped his finger on the box and the Mirror.
"Aries originally brought them back from the Ashen Zone, and I traded for them.
You all know they were suspected Marvels, with contents of unknown origin."
"After I took them back, I had them appraised."
"Inside the Copper Mirror was a sealed Low Tier Curse from the Weaving Net Tradition: the ’Comparison Curse’."
"The box contained something that absorbs through resonance—far more troublesome."
Richard pushed the box and the Mirror further into the center of the table.
"Both have been fully appraised, and their contents have been completely dismantled. Only the empty shells remain."
At the head of the table, Hecate could no longer sit still.
"Hermes, when that box passed through my hands, I added a Seal to it."
"How did you dismantle my Seal?"
Everyone else at the table turned to look at him in unison.
Richard knew the crucial moment had arrived.
’A Seal added by Hecate herself was meant to prevent anyone from dismantling it recklessly.’
’As for Professor Mortimer’s comment—"Old Mo wants to know if you copied Chapter Three of his 1887 paper."’
’If he were to repeat that verbatim at the table, it would be like slapping Hecate in the face in front of everyone.’
’People like her hate having their weaknesses exposed in public more than anything.’
Richard’s emotional intelligence wasn’t that low. He had already prepared his response.

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