The next day, inside Laura’s Flower Shop, vibrant rays of light streamed in from the massive glass panes on the ground floor of the two-story building, providing sufficient sunlight for the lively floral life placed along tables and shelves.

A mild aromatic scent wafted across the whole room, spreading outside through the gaps in the windows. This scent attracted the animals wandering outside the shop, piquing their curiosity.

Laura sat loftily on a comfortable cushiony couch placed in the corner of the room, with faint sunlight hitting her fair white skin, causing her light brown eyes to dazzle with ethereal beauty.

“Two hours in and still no customer,” she murmured blandly and stared at the clock placed on the opposite end of the room hanging on the wall. “At least there’s plenty of these little fellas around here.”

She moved her gaze to the birds, insects, bees, and even the stray cat and dog that entered her store; a faint smile blossomed on her youthful face.

Those wild animals were wandering around her store peacefully without causing a ruckus. All they did was simply observe the strange flowers, specifically, strange sunflowers, placed inside basic pots.

Unlike the normal sunflowers with a dark center and bright yellow petals, the sunflowers inside her shop were more varied and colorful in appearance. Some had plenty of petals with alternating colors of yellow and white, others had incredibly thick stems, and many of them were far from the traditional sunflower.

With a quick glance around the shop, one could see sunflowers colored a shade of pink, white, peach, and even blue!

If the sunflowers were arranged neatly, one can form a whole rainbow of sunflowers!

These strange sunflowers greatly attracted these wild animals that continuously sniffed the mild scent coming from the strange flowers, and as if intoxicated by it, they couldn’t stop themselves from continuing to do so.

“Come here, you rascals,” she whispered softly and patted the ground beside her.

Her seemingly normal call broke the animals and insects out of their intoxicated state, and they turned to look at her with intelligent and friendly gazes.

They silently walked to her side, with the bees even buzzing their way to her.

“Aren’t you all a cute bunch?” she chuckled and extended out one of her fingers, allowing one of the bees to land on the tip of her finger gently.

“You bees sure are cute.” A soft green light flowed from the tips of her fingers and pure lifeforce flowed into the body of the bee on the tip of her finger.

Its body wriggled and writhed for a few seconds, and after the light dissipated, the bee appeared to be more lively and faster than its peers, flying around in a hyper-buzz state.

“From now on, you’ll be the one leading all of the bees here, okay? Well, until we find a queen to govern you all,” said Laura.

The bees around her buzzed in unison as if they understood her words.

“Good!” she clapped her hands and waved her hand. “Now go on you bunch of buzzing bees, I’ll give you all some sweet nectar later. You guys can build your beehive later.”

They bobbed their bodies up and down and left to do their work, flying around some of the flowers to do their bee magic.

“Now.” She moved her gaze to the birds, dog, and cat standing still peacefully to her side.

“You guys would be my good little boys and girls! Doggy, Catty, you two will be my cuddle buddies. Bird boys, you ten will be my personal singers!”

“All of you would elevate the mysticalness of my shop, and eventually create the rumor of a mysterious fairytale princess selling flowers in the city.”

“With that, I’m gonna be back in Aegis so that I can finally uncover the strange divination result the original got regarding Insea City, mkay?”

“Woof!”

“Meow!”

“Chirp chirp chirp!”

“Good, good!” she laughed mischievously and once again laid back on her soft sofa, plunging deep into its cushiony warmth. “Now, just tweet when a customer arrives, and as for me, I shall be sleeping majestically.”

…

Around the same time Laura fell asleep inside her shop, Christopher returned to a familiar place that made him feel an indescribable sense of nostalgia.

He stood on solid air, his eyes gazing upon the expansive city beneath him.

I’m back in Civer City. Christopher sighed and, just like any other time he was in the city, he recalled various memories from the deep recesses of his mind.

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This was both a city full of fond memories and horrific tragedies that would forever haunt him as long as he lived; this was the place where he met his dearest friend, and now his greatest foe.

Just how far have you already reached, Braun? Christopher took a step forward and his figure disappeared.

In the next moment, he arrived at the center of the city where a massive building reached the skies.

On the tip of the tower, Christopher phased his hand through the fabric of space-time and carefully took out a Level 3 artifact from his pocket space.

The artifact was a gold-framed pair of glasses, with circular lenses. Upon wearing it, the glasses shimmered with a golden color and the entirety of the city began to change.

In his eyes, the mysterious concept known as fate was fully unraveled—well, partly unraveled. With the Glasses of Fate Cloud Perception, he can view fate as varied clouds, each representing different meanings.

For example, a black cloud meant death, and depending on the appearance it took, it can display the cause of death of a person.

Another example was a red cloud representing the fate of love.

Because it was only at Level 3, it could at most barely perceive the fate of a Demigod entity, but considering data had shown that the avatars of Lucas Hum could only reach the peak of Level 3, this artifact was more than enough.

As he tried to view the fate of an entire city, all of the different clouds began to meld into one another, forming one big cloud of fate that was indistinguishable from one another from a distance.

Due to its limited level, its level of accuracy was quite low, and he could only perceive fate more accurately from a closer distance, but considering the nature of turbulent fate, it wouldn’t be that hard to pick it out from the rest of the city’s collective fate.

As he slowly looked around and rotated in a 360-degree motion, he stopped turning and paused, staring into the far-off distance where a cloud of fate churned and twisted chaotically, appearing distinctively different from the uniformed clouds that covered his view of the city.

Of course, that wasn’t the most important part.

The important part was where that chaotic cloud of fate was currently located—it was right in his previous school, back when he was still a normal high school student studying for college.

Even though only three months had passed since then, it felt a lot longer for Christopher.

He quickly took off his glasses just to make sure he wasn’t tripping with his memories, and yep, it really was his school.

I wonder how my friends reacted to my sudden death… Christopher sighed at the thought as he felt a deeper depth of sadness compared to before.

Besides Braun, he also had other friends in school, all of whom he had built a close bond with over the course of high school.

When the meteor shower incident passed and their fates were embroiled in a messy turn of events, the two were officially designated as dead by Aegis. They then also caused another accident, ‘killing’ both of his parents through an accident, and secretly transporting them to the Garden of Eden.

Dismissing his useless thoughts, Christopher steeled his heart and took a step forward, flashing through space and appearing right in front of his school’s school gates.

Students walked in and out of the school gates in droves, leaving behind trails of clouds of fate that clouded his vision. He took off his glasses again to clear up his view and walked past the crowd, with everyone else ignoring his presence as if he was completely invisible to them.

Just why is their avatar inside my school of all places? Christopher sighed at the unfortunate coincidence and quietly planned in his mind how he would minimize the casualties if a fight were to break out between him and the avatar.

Of course, before that would even happen, he would plan on taking them out in one go, capturing them with his overwhelming might as a peak Level 4 Demigod.

However, there posed a problem—the clouds of fate belonging to the wandering students around him clouded his view, making it so that he had a harder time finding the source of the turbulent fate.

Because of this, he was forced to wander around without his glasses, prolonging the duration of his search as he had to constantly put them on and take them away while roaming.

And it’s also because I’m a sucker for nostalgia. Christopher helplessly smiled as he observed the changes that had happened to his school in the timeframe that passed after his supposed death.

A soft breeze of wind drifted along the ground, carrying with it wilted orange-colored leaves. Christopher extended out his hand and grabbed a drifting leaf, mumbling to himself, “It’s already autumn.”

He stared up at the sky, observing the grayish-blue sky with clouds drifting along peacefully.

“And soon, it’s going to be winter. Right now, if things didn’t take such a big turn, I would just be a normal student enjoying the cold breeze of autumn wearing multiple layers of clothes on top, being drippy as hell.”

“Braun would have also finished his ongoing novel at that time and finally allowed me to read it…”

“Damn it, Braun. Just why… Why did you have to do all that?” he muttered with trembling fists, crushing the wilted leaf in his hand into dust. “We could have talked things out, we could have done things peacefully. I would have found a way to share my powers with you, and we could have strived for the top together just like always.”

His voice echoed lightly across the empty field, with the sound of rustling leaves filling the background.

“You’re really asking me that?”

The voice broke Christopher out of his depressive state with his eyes rapidly shifting to his back. When he did so, he finally noticed the figure that he had somehow ignored all this while.

Behind him, a young man with messy black hair, pale white skin, and dark brown eyes that almost appeared black sat on a wooden bench with a book at hand. They twirled a pen with their dainty fingers and held a black leather-bound book in the other.

The boy wore the school’s school uniform, appearing just like any other student you can find on the street, but the boy carried an air of mysticism that gave him a distinct vibe from the others.

All of these details meant nothing to Christopher though. The boy’s face, the boy’s clothes, the book, the pen, they didn’t mean shit.

The reason was simple—Christopher immediately recognized who they were regardless of physical appearance or the shimmer of their soul.

This was a familiarity that couldn’t be replicated. This was an intuition that couldn’t be fooled.

Christopher’s eyes constricted to pins as he unknowingly stepped back. He felt chills in his heart as all of the randomly arranged dots in his mind were finally organized into one congruent line.

That strangely familiar face of Lucas Hum. The coincidence of the avatar being inside the very same school he used to attend. The series of chaotic events that were currently causing a ruckus within Dela.

All of them gathered into one single conclusion.

“Braun…?!” Christopher nearly lost his balance, his mind turning into a mess.

The young boy grinned teasingly and closed the book in his hand with a crisp thud, and said amicably, “Long time no see, Christopher.”