9 Knights Road

Late March, 9 Knights Road, East District, Lundenim.

"All right, this is it," she said.

Gordon looked up.

It was a respectable terraced apartment building, about a twenty-minute walk from the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences University and far enough from the Blackwater River. Neither deserted nor conspicuous.

The ground floor housed Hopkins Dental Clinic. Its enamel sign read: extractions, fillings, denture repairs.

The smells of clove oil, alcohol, and heavy bleeding drifted through the door, followed by the clink of metal. Finally, a patient's scream shot straight through the roof.

"Quite a welcome this place has for us," Gordon remarked.

"It's not so bad." Charlotte handed him the key.

Gordon accepted it solemnly.

He had slept on wooden tables in dissection rooms, scavenged unwanted old blankets from academy corridors, and calculated late at night how many days a piece of black bread needed to last.

Now, he simply acted as though none of that had ever happened.

The entire second floor was his.

Two bedrooms, a living room, a small workroom, and a bathroom.

It was hardly spacious, but the layout was compact, without a single square meter wasted.

Charlotte thought Gordon was examining the light, wallpaper, and furniture. But he was looking at something more important: security.

The door was metal, fitted with a double-bolt lock. It would take at least three burly men to force it open.

A drainpipe outside the rear window offered a way down into the alley behind the building. The attic vent could only be opened from inside, and climbing through it would put him on a continuous stretch of gray-tiled rooftops.

Across the street stood another row of apartments with tenants constantly coming and going. Gordon would neither stand out nor be remembered here.

To the left, he saw a laundry yard, rows of white shirts fluttering in the wind, their sleeves whipping against one another. To the right were Knights Road's cheap restaurants and small theaters.

The more he looked, the happier he became.

The workroom had enough space for a wooden table, and specimen racks could be nailed to the walls.

The smell of chemicals from the dental clinic would drift upstairs, conveniently masking blood, disinfectant, and spiritual reagents.

More importantly, someone screamed downstairs every day. Killing someone here now and then would hardly be out of place.

One bedroom was large, the other small.

Charlotte led him into the larger one. Bedding, a medicine chest, a kettle, clean towels, clothes hangers, and a small safe had already been set out along the wall.

The smaller room was completely bare except for a wooden bed.

"Everything's ready," she said. "This isn't because I care about you. If you die, I'll lose a very useful adviser."

"Understood. I'll do my best to copy all your lecture notes," Gordon said with a nod.

"You'd better keep being this clever." Charlotte glanced at him.

Gordon looked around at the living room, workroom, bathroom...

At last, he had a place of his own.

"Well?" Charlotte waited for his verdict.

"Good. Very good." Gordon nodded.

It sounded perfunctory, but he was genuinely happy.

"Hmph... I'll keep a running tab for now." Charlotte waved the spare key in her hand. "I'll drop by occasionally, so don't do anything bad here."

"Define bad."

"You know what I mean." She turned and walked away with light steps.

Gordon was left alone in the apartment.

First, he counted his money.

After deducting miscellaneous living expenses and the money he had given Vera, Gordon still had 33 gold pounds, 8 silver pounds, and 97 copper pennies.

He stacked the money and locked it in the safe.

Before, money had passed through his hands without ever truly staying. Today it went to the cafeteria, tomorrow to the bookshop, the day after to the academy's cashier.

Now, 33 whole gold-pound notes sat in his home. Not enough to repay his student loan, but enough for a foothold. A beginning.

A good life was built this way, saved up bit by bit. Once a person started saving, it became addictive.

He cleaned the rooms, placed textbooks such as Basic Anatomy, Introduction to the Properties of Source Substance, and Imperial History on the shelves, then set up his newly purchased experimental equipment in the workroom.

Afterward, he turned the bathroom's brass valve.

After a short wait, the pipes coughed up a mouthful of rusty water before producing a steady stream of hot water. The mirror gradually misted over.

The room was so narrow that turning around required negotiating with the wall first.

But he no longer had to queue at a public bathhouse, endure other people's singing, or worry that picking up the soap might turn into a fencing match.

Gordon also bought butter, salt pork, sausages, and potatoes, arranging them neatly in the kitchen cupboards.

He knew perfectly well that once Vera moved in, these provisions would probably disappear at an astonishing rate.

Still, filling the cupboards with food gave him a sense of stability and order.

That was all... Nothing fancy, but Gordon liked it more and more.

By the time he finished, it was late at night.

Then a faint vibration came from the roof. A little later, it moved to the doorway.

Gordon opened the door for Vera.

"The vent won't open," Vera said.

"What did you expect? Taking the stairs is the civilized way."

Vera offered no opinion on civilization and simply began inspecting the apartment.

"The front door can be defended, and the rear window offers an escape. It really is a place two people can live." She saw her room. "...Why is it so empty?"

"I left room for your personal aesthetic."

"I don't have one."

"Having none is having one. We call it minimalism."

Vera accepted this explanation. She hid potions, smelling salts, spare bandages, daggers, and gold pounds in drawers, the kitchen, gaps beneath the windowsill, and under the floorboards.

Seeing her stash things around the apartment, Gordon knew she would fight desperately to protect it.

"Did Charlotte find any leads?" Vera asked.

"Yes. A man called Harold," Gordon said. "An old servant of the Montfort family. Octopus Face was most likely one of his men."

"I looked into those giant clam shells. They seem to come from something called a Tridacna Demon."

"A Giant Clam Demon?" Gordon asked.

"Mm." Vera spread her arms to indicate an exaggerated width. "Anyway, it's definitely big."

"How strong do you think Harold is?"

"I'm not sure," Vera said. "Without source substance, he's useless. Even with a gun. But if he has source substance, he's an unknown opponent."

"Is there a big gap between a trainee hunter and a Professional Hunter? Between you and Gray, for example?"

"Arthur Gray has fused with more than three pieces of source substance. Nobody can count all the tricks he has up his sleeve," Vera admitted. "There's a risk I could fail."

That was a clear warning.

If the information was accurate, Harold was no low-ranking member of the Wet-Foot People like Octopus Face. He could not be underestimated.

If Gordon merely stood behind her offering advice, sooner or later he would send Vera alone into a death trap.

"So if we find Harold, we have to go together," Gordon said.

"Without source substance, that would be difficult," Vera said.

"What if I have some?" Gordon asked.

Vera licked her lips, seemingly unsurprised.

"That would make sense," she said. "People carrying source substance attract each other."

"You can sense source substance in other people?"

"Not at first. After a while, I can," Vera said. "I don't get tired of being around you because my instincts tell me you're one of my kind."

"...Instincts..." Gordon quietly examined his own sensations.

"Anyway, you can't get far without source substance. Now we have a future," Vera said.

"Good." Gordon did not ask exactly what she meant by "we."

"Get some sleep. If there's danger, I'll wake up before you," Vera said.

"I want to know how an Essence Hunter trains. Then I won't always have to wait for you to wake up first," Gordon said.

"You want to get stronger." Vera raised her eyes.

"I want to fight people without relying on luck."

Gordon now had source substance, money, a home, and friends. He had no intention of relying on luck every time a storm hit.

Vera stepped closer, tilting her head slightly.

"...True. You shouldn't waste source substance."

"So how do I train?"

"People with abilities don't need to rush into sword training, or start with physical conditioning."

"Then what do I train?"

"Know yourself."

Gordon waited.

"That's it? Two words?" he asked.

"That's enough," she said. "That's what they teach at hunter school. Source substance doesn't change you out of nowhere. It only amplifies what you already are."

Gordon was still thinking when a copper penny suddenly flew at him and struck him squarely in the chest.

"What was that for?" he asked.

"Once you can dodge my attacks," Vera said, "we can go on adventures together."

"..." Gordon took this very seriously.

What Vera called an attack was probably not the same thing an ordinary person understood by the word.

"Know yourself" was the first lesson in source substance training.

That night, Gordon closed his eyes in his bedroom and calmed his mind.

At first, there was nothing.

A carriage creaked past outside, the streetlamp beyond his window hissed, pipes dripped inside the walls, and a cat padded across the roof tiles.

Gordon stopped listening outward and sank his awareness into his body.

The small piece of source substance he had dug out of the Spider Aberration: Unbroken Strings.

It lay at the center of Gordon's brain, governing his nerves, limbs, and every part of his body.

Countless transmissions, delays, and feedback loops took place within the human body. Blood pushed through its vessels, and muscles contracted gently in the darkness.

[Synchronized Conduction] allowed commands to reach his hands and feet more precisely. Essentially, it eliminated error.

Then-

What if I extended this "string" outward?

It could do more than govern Gordon's body. It could touch the floor, walls, air, and water pipes, gathering equally subtle changes and identifying what constantly flowed throughout the world.

Everything was connected.

Before a fist swung, the shoulder moved. Before a foot landed, the center of gravity shifted. Before a bullet left the muzzle, someone had to pull the trigger.

Long before the result appeared, the world had already delivered a whole chain of advance warnings.

Shifts in force, displaced air, changes in temperature...

Those warnings were simply too minute to mean anything to human senses.

What Unbroken Strings did was gather those wasted vibrations.

Gordon activated his source substance ability.

The wall trembled faintly.

Got it!

A rhythmic "sway, sway" came from next door.

Vera was performing some repetitive motion in her little room.

Four times a second.

After ruling out every other possibility, Gordon suddenly realized.

She was... mining.