The Mist Wall Spell

The two of them retraced their steps, making their way through the passage in silence.

As he walked, Richard sorted through the images he had just seen.

The Ghoul in the Afterimage had been far more powerful than he'd imagined from the written description.

Iron spikes, shears... In the hands of ordinary people, those were already considered decent weapons.

Dozens of people had surrounded a low-level Evil Being, and the result had been a one-sided slaughter.

The two of them climbed out of the electrical room. The night wind rushed in, making the fronts of their clothes flap.

A low-level Evil Being had cost several lives and forced a factory to close.

If no one had set up a seal and returned every few years to renew the Silver Inscription and replace the Wax Seal,

Vox Mortis would have continued seeping into the surrounding environment, constantly disturbing the ordinary people nearby.

Perkins had been affected only briefly, yet he'd been bedridden for two weeks.

And this was only a Ghoul.

Appendix C stated in black and white that among the Occult Side's threat levels, Ghouls were classified at the very bottom.

What were the mid-level ones like? And the high-level ones?

The things Mr. Hutton had mentioned in class:

The sounds described by survivors before the New Continent expedition team disappeared; the widespread anomalies that arose after the destruction of an indigenous ritual site; the government report whose conclusions had been blacked out.

"We recommend halting any further investigation."

What level of threat lay behind that report?

And how many lives were lost in those "expedition forces missing" stories that the newspapers brushed off so casually?

Richard walked in the shadow of a wall untouched by moonlight. He hadn't been afraid earlier, but now the more he thought about it, the more unnerved he felt.

Most ordinary people—his father, Evelyn, the old woman who set up a street stall every morning, his classmates dozing on the school bus—knew nothing about the world behind the Veil.

They had no idea what lay beneath their feet or what floated in the air around them.

The two of them returned to the school building, and Mr. Hutton opened the door to an empty classroom.

He didn't turn on the overhead lights, only switching on the desk lamp on the teacher's podium.

Its light illuminated two desks. Everything else was in darkness.

He sat down beside a desk and pulled an iron box from his briefcase. Inside were two things.

The first was a Silver Coin, the one that had been placed at the center of the Silver Plate while they reinforced the seal.

A layer of gray-blue frost covered its surface.

"This is a by-product of the sealing process." Mr. Hutton set the coin on the desk.

"The Silver Coin served as a 'filter medium' in the seal's core. You can think of it as the limescale left on a kettle after distilled water evaporates."

"Is it dangerous?"

"Not to ordinary people. To you..." Mr. Hutton pushed the coin toward him.

"It might actually be a little useful. The Aether deposited on it is quite pure, since it's been filtered by the seal.

You can hold it while practicing the Breathing Technique. It should help a little."

"You can have it. Consider it compensation for nearly getting into trouble."

Richard nodded and didn't refuse.

As soon as his thumb touched the silver surface, the panel lit up in the corner of his vision.

[Available Points: +0.03]

His heart began to race.

Throughout their trip into the basement, the panel had remained lifeless despite the dense Aether filling the air.

But the moment he touched this old Silver Coin, the number had jumped.

He already knew the answer, but to make sure, he ran a comparison test.

He set the coin on the desk and moved his hand away. The number stopped changing.

That seemed to confirm his conclusion beyond doubt.

The antiquities that generated points shared certain traits: they were old, and they had either been saturated with Aether or used in an Occultism ritual.

The pendant was an artifact from the Eastern Continent, the God-Descending Disk was a ritual tool, and the Sphinx Oil Lamp had been used by priests.

Now this Silver Coin had taken part in a sealing ritual and accumulated Aether residue. It was also an old silver coin.

Age + supernatural saturation = usable.

Age without supernatural saturation = unusable.

Aether without age = unusable.

With that in mind, he naturally steered the conversation in that direction.

"Sir, this Silver Coin looks pretty old."

Mr. Hutton was cleaning his Graving Chisel. At that, he raised his eyelids.

"Good eye. It's an old coin."

"How old?"

"Turn it over and look at the front."

Richard flipped the Silver Coin over.

A profile portrait had been minted on the front: a man wearing a laurel wreath, his features blurred.

"Is this... a coin from the old dynasty?"

"Looks like you paid attention in my history class. I thought you had your mind entirely on Holland."

Mr. Hutton joked to lighten the mood, then continued explaining.

"This Silver Coin was issued by a mint in the late old dynasty. It dates back to before the constitution. It's more than three hundred years old, but not quite four hundred."

He put the tools, wrapped in a piece of velvet, into his briefcase.

"This batch of coins was passed down alongside the seal.

The predecessor who set up the seal used coins from the same period as a medium. They were made of pure silver and had been saturated by a ritual. After they were passed down, the same batch was reused every year to reinforce the seal.

They were used for forty-three years, so the deposits on them grew thicker and thicker."

"So these Silver Coins themselves have become supernatural items?"

"More or less." Mr. Hutton fastened the clasp on his briefcase.

"They're nowhere near as powerful as genuine supernatural items. A Silver Coin that's three or four hundred years old, used in sealing rituals for decades, can only accumulate a limited amount of Aether.

It's more than enough to help a beginner practice the Breathing Technique, but that's about it."

He said it casually, but Richard committed every word to memory.

He didn't really need help with his practice; his Breathing Technique was already progressing steadily.

The Silver Coin's real value lay in the points.

He slipped it into his pocket, rubbing his fingers over its cold surface.

The second item looked rather insignificant.

It was a short, gray-green stalk of dried grass, about the length of his little finger. Both broken ends had dried and turned yellow.

"Grey-Stamen Grass." Mr. Hutton pushed the stalk into the lamplight.

"It's a plant that usually grows in areas contaminated with Aether. A few stalks sometimes sprout in the damp crevices around the outer edge of a seal.

After processing, its fibrous tissue retains a trace amount of Aether, which can be used as a medium for Spellcraft."

He closed the iron box and tapped the lid twice with his fingers.

"An environment like the one beneath the Greenwood foundation, with a constant low-level seepage of Aether, is a hotbed for plants. Besides Grey-Stamen Grass, there are fungi, mineral deposits, and salts precipitated from limescale. All of them are supernatural resources."

"Is there a market for these things?"

Mr. Hutton didn't explain in much detail.

"There is, in certain circles."

Richard didn't press him.

The old man had drawn a clear line:

I'll teach you what I can. As for how that circle operates, you don't need to know yet.

"So, what can Grey-Stamen Grass do?"

Mr. Hutton pulled an old piece of paper from the side pocket of his briefcase and unfolded it beneath the lamp.

It contained a set of instructions written in small letters. The style was completely different from the coded language in the book's appendix—plain, clear, and unencrypted.

"You can use it to perform a little trick." The old man handed him the paper.

"In our line of work, we call it the Mist Wall. It's not a proper Spellcraft, really."

"The Mist Wall Spell can briefly disrupt a target's Perception, for about five to ten seconds.

Their sense of direction and their vision and hearing all become jumbled, as if someone had blindfolded them and spun them around dozens of times."

"What about people who aren't ordinary?"

Mr. Hutton shook his head. "Any Practitioner with proper training can dispel it easily, but it's more than enough to deal with some foolish thugs."

Richard took the paper and scanned it.

The instructions were simple: break off a small piece of Grey-Stamen Grass and crush it in his palm, then blow onto it using the exhalation rhythm of Quadruple Breathing.

The Aether remaining in the fibers would be activated by his breath, forming a field of Perception interference in front of his palm.

Its effective range was about three meters, and its duration depended on the practitioner's skill with the Breathing Technique.

"Grey-Stamen Grass is a consumable. You use it once, and you lose a piece."

Mr. Hutton gestured at the stalk. "The one I gave you should be good for eight or nine uses. That ought to be enough to protect yourself."

Richard folded the paper and put it in his pocket with the Grey-Stamen Grass.

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me." Mr. Hutton stood and fastened his briefcase.

"You mustn't tell anyone what you saw today—not the location of the seal, the entrance, or the Silver Inscription structure."

He added, "Not even your family."

"I understand."

Mr. Hutton picked up his briefcase and walked to the classroom door.

"Williams, you did much better today than I expected."

He turned sideways. The desk lamp's light caught only half his face.

"Your breathing went out of rhythm for two beats when the Afterimage overwhelmed you, but you pulled yourself back together.

You were afraid, but you didn't run. You lost control, but you regained it... That matters more than talent."

He opened the door, and a cold gust swept in from the corridor.

"But don't be too brave."

"In our line of work, the overly brave tend to die first."