World Occult Usage Guide

The knocking was intermittent. Jacob van Hofwegen opened the door with a puzzled look. Outside were members of the Red Poppy Merchant Guild. It turned out they just had something to discuss with him and didn't have any ill intentions.

Despite inquiring about the knocker's identity and purpose, Jacob, still uneasy, wrote down a line in pencil, a star-studded affirmation of his predetermined fate.

"Please come in," he said.

Two sailors, one fat and one thin, pushed open the door and entered, carrying heavy suitcases, their faces showing somewhat unnatural fake smiles.

Before "Comerth" officially approached, various organizations backed by powerful families sold off their secular stocks and exchanged all their cash and virtual currency for gold, other metals, or ores.

Due to global economic turmoil and fluctuating exchange rates, gold became the unspoken unit of currency in transactions among wealthy families, and it could be used to estimate the value of any item.

"Do you think there's something wrong with this box of gold?"

Jacob stroked his beard, about to continue speaking, when two sailors suddenly opened their suitcases with a "bang," and heavy gold bars spilled out.

"Crash..."

In an instant, the entire cabin was bathed in a golden glow.

A golden light danced in Jacob's eyes. His pupils suddenly contracted, he slammed the book shut, and jumped out the window to escape.

However, it was too late. The liquid gold climbed up every glass window with lightning speed, condensing into a hard metal shell like frost. The mythical energy sealed off the space, creating an airtight prison in the blink of an eye.

"bump!"

Jacob's shoulder slammed heavily against one of the windows. A look of surprise flashed across his face, but he quickly calmed down, leaned against the wall, opened the old book with two fingers, and began to write words with a pencil.

"Fortunately, the [Burning Mirror] was nearby, and he arrived in time. The sun shone on the mirror, reflecting the fierce flames of the celestial bodies, burning away all the shackles that prevented Jacob from leaving the Flying Gull and blocking the pursuers."

The starlight and moonlight flickered faintly, barely acknowledging the future he had described. Jacob raced against time, biting open the pen cap with his teeth, the flowing cursive writing covering the pencil marks.

In an instant, an iron dagger suddenly stopped in mid-air.

Its end was grasped by a slender golden hand on the ground, and it moved forward as if it were mounted on a sliding rail. The sharp point was already aimed at Jacob's vitals, and it was only a few meters away from piercing his heart.

"Gurgle...gurgle..."

A round, full-length mirror flew in from below and floated outside the cabin window.

The scorching Atlantic sun shines on its surface, like flames spewing from the sun's surface, ignoring the distance of more than ten light-years. The heat is refracted by the mirror and cast onto the metal that covers the ship's cabins.

"Well!"

The golden hand trembled uncontrollably, and the sound of melting echoed.

Although Lin Xile desperately wanted to plunge the dagger into Jacob's chest, the high temperature of the deck prevented it from maintaining its metallic shape.

Left with no other choice, she had to huddle together.

Liquid metal converged at a single point, solidifying into the shape of a young girl.

The gold turned red, softened, and finally materialized, with blood vessels connecting to blood vessels and flesh connecting to flesh. From the internal organs to the bones and then to the skin, Lin Xile's body returned to normal.

Glancing at the menacing full-length mirror, Lin An immediately rolled away and hid.

As a "prophet," Jacob wouldn't go out without bodyguards. This [Burning Mirror] must belong to the Red Poppy Merchant Guild's mysterious entity, rated around legendary, with extremely high radiation and pollution levels.

The mirror may have lost its own consciousness and is now entirely controlled by Jacob's "notes".

The light it refracted was comparable to sunlight without the ozone layer, extremely deadly. If Lin Xile hadn't been able to convert metals with high melting points, he probably would have been melted into charcoal the moment they met.

As expected of the head of a powerful family, his methods are terrifying.

The midday sun was scorching. With the mirror adjusted to a different angle, countless deadly rays of intense heat pierced through the glass, filling the cabin.

The two sailors had no idea what was happening. The moment the mirror's light touched them, a three-centimeter-radius hole, deep enough to expose bone, was burned through their bodies, and all the muscle tissue along the way turned to charred black.

"Ahhhh!"

The sailors were stunned for a moment, then screamed in agony, rolling on the ground in pain.
The mirror showed no sympathy for its companions; instead, it turned its surface even more aggressively, as if enjoying their despair and fear.

"laugh!"

The light slanted, and the poor sailors turned into two shrunken little lumps of charcoal.

While the intense heat easily incinerated a living person into dust, the furniture touched by the light remained completely undamaged.

Because the "light" reflected by the mirror only works on the mystic, "Comerth" energy, and living things, it cannot affect inanimate objects; otherwise, the entire ship would have started to melt the moment the mirror appeared.

This was the first thing Lin An observed, and it was also the reason he confirmed that the mirror was merely a legendary-level mystic. (Limitations.)

Perhaps even low-ranked mystics can unleash some powerful and unsolvable mystical spells, but they are always subject to various restrictions, stemming from the "rationality" imposed on their prototypes by later generations—a kind of artificiality feeling ashamed before the gods.

Lin Xile hid behind the sofa, her thumb lightly touching the floor. Thin strands of molten metal flowed like a stroke of a painting that could turn corners, avoiding any exposed or open areas, only moving slowly in the shadows and blind spots.

Frustrated by the inability to find anyone, the Burning Mirror cast its light into every corner, like a laser gun continuously firing bullets.

"Where? Where? Where?"

Finally, the mirror, having run out of patience, smashed through the glass and half of its body peeked into the cabin.

There was no natural light in the room, and the deadly high-temperature beam of light vanished in an instant. The extended liquid metal meandered down the wall, gripping the silver edges of the mirror.

"Click-clack, click-clack!"

Startled, the Burning Mirror retreated, and the metal hook snapped easily when it pulled hard.

To avoid the light from the mirror, Lin Xile carefully controlled the liquid metal, making sure that each "stream" wasn't too thick, so that when it formed the hooks, it didn't have enough volume to allow the [Burning Mirror] to break free and escape.

Despite its madness, the mirror retained its instinct to seek advantage and avoid harm. It dared not venture into the captain's cabin again, constantly turning around, the intense heat of death spreading throughout the corners.

Every second, it would "shine" on the only exit of the cabin to prevent Lin Xile from finding a chance to escape.

The situation has reached a stalemate.

Lin An half-withdrew from Lin Xile's consciousness. The sea breeze whistled past, and a black dot appeared and disappeared in the distance.

"Hallelujah!"

As for the Chamber of Commerce President, he had already escaped from the captain's cabin while [Burning Mirror] and Lin Xile were confronting each other, and was now sitting on a lifeboat, watching the battle on the other side from afar.

He gripped the pen and paper tightly with both hands, breathing heavily with slight shock, and continued to write down his fantasies about the future in trembling handwriting.

Jacob van Hofwegen recalled the fragments of the battle he had just witnessed, and he couldn't help but wonder: Could the "Forester" be a master alchemist? Had all my previous investigations been misguided? And why was that?

The starlight guided the pen, solidifying this conjecture.

"This means that the Ranger is not the physical body of Atticus of Brahma, nor was he ever chosen by him or any member of Brahma as one of their bodies. The two are not friends, relatives, or business partners. He and Atticus have never had any relationship whatsoever."

The pen tip moved freely, the ink spread, and it pattered onto the slightly yellowed old paper.

"So, is it because Atticus is still upholding that ancient covenant from Genesis that Brahma is helping the Rangers?"

The darkness deepened, and Jacob looked up as shadows enveloped a young man with dark hair who blocked the ever-present blazing sun of the Atlantic Ocean.

He wore a voodoo priest's mask, and the ram's skull, with its horns severed, gleamed white, with traces of dried blood on its teeth, silently telling the story of its former master's fate.

Lin An scanned the green data in the system and understood.

Upon hearing the code name "Alfonso III," he was fairly certain that it was the prototype for the Chamber of Commerce president.

In fact, we can get a glimpse of this from Kevin's "The Black Hen," where the Eastern sage, the gifts from the genie in Arabia, and the wisdom of the demon Astaroth all subtly reflect the patriarch's tendency to possess relics.

As one of the territories of Isban, the Kingdom of Flanders preserved much of the dynasty's legacy.

To this day, the kingdom preserves numerous buildings and statues left by successive Isbanian emperors, and the Flemish people display the gifts of their former rulers, just as they display the spoils of war left behind by their defeated neighbors.

Alfonso III, Emperor of Isbani and Prince of All Garcia, fought against armies from the Arab region on numerous occasions throughout history and participated in the famous "Zionist Movement."
Before the 11th century, Arabic-speaking armies conquered the Visigothic Kingdom. As the conquerors mixed and intermarried with the local inhabitants, a linguistic environment gradually formed in which Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and the Romance languages ​​originally spoken by the locals coexisted.

This gave rise to an Arabic-speaking monotheistic community, Mozarabs.

After the collapse of the Gödokha Caliphate, 33 independent small states, ā'ifa, emerged. The kings of these states, following the model of the Caliphate's court, recruited poets, promoted the study of philosophy and natural sciences, and fostered a period of cultural revival in the Arab region.

When the Alfonso kings conquered these Thais, they inherited the vast library left by the previous kings, which not only collected some of the leading scientific and philosophical works of the ancient world, but also gathered a large number of works on astronomy, astrology, and mathematics.

These books were all written in Arabic, but through the efforts of scholars and archbishops, translations into Hebrew, Greek, and Latin began to spread. With the spread of Protestantism, corresponding versions were available for every language in the West.

These works significantly influenced people's thinking about the four elements, wind, fire, water, and earth. One of them was the natural philosopher, wizard, theologian, and monk Roger Bacon.

This man was obsessed with Eastern wisdom and even traveled thousands of miles to visit the Song Dynasty in the Far East, becoming the first person in the Western Regions to record the gunpowder formula in writing, thus ushering in the era of firearms.

From this, Lin An could easily deduce that the mirror confronting Lin Xile was none other than Roger Bacon's "The Burning Mirror" (De speculis comburentibus).

The mysterious prototype of Jacob, the guild leader of the Red Poppy Merchants, is none other than the renowned Arabic Renaissance astronomical and magical book—the Picatrix. (End of Chapter)