Lux scans the rows of shops that span the Olinchester Back Market. This market is famous for being shady; a place where a person can easily be swindled if she lacks bargaining experience. Of course, this goes both ways; it is not as if the only victims here are the buyers. The shopkeepers have to stay on their toes as well, since shrewd customers can pressure them into losing trades. This is exactly the sort of place Lux is looking for. He begins to search the market for a place to start doing business.

“Excuse me sir,” Lux asks a shopkeeper with an empty spot next to him, “would you mind if I set up shop right next to you here?”

The shopkeeper eyes him carefully. Lux asked him rather politely, which might mean that Lux is a gullible kid. Maybe he could charge Lux for the spot—spots are free for everyone here—by conjuring up a convenient lie. But even if Lux does not have the skin complexion of the locals, he has the hustling swagger of a person who is at home in a place like this.

“Yeah, no problem, kid,” responds the shopkeeper, a little bummed out.

Lux sets up his booth. As he does that, he looks carefully around where he is. To his satisfaction, there are no obvious government agents like spies, soldiers, bureaucrats, or even cops. Getting caught by those guys is the worst-case scenario.

It seems he ended up in a place where fortune tellers like to sell their services. There is one that shakes “dragon bones”. There is one that moves coins along a board covered with letters. There is one that uses a crystal ball. Another one reads creases on a palm, another one…

“What the hell are they doing,” Lux chuckles to himself.

He is done setting up. Lux takes out a deck of cards. They are Tarot cards. Tarot card reading was a technique he had spied upon during his last stop at Babolin. Experience tells him to use one of these “mysterious” techniques when he read people’s futures, since otherwise they tend to not believe him. Of course, they are always useless and only for show.

Lux waits. The great thing about being in a place with a ton of fortune tellers is that people looking to get their futures read will come. No need to spend an exhausting amount of time getting people to try him out. They will come to him.

A group of boys, all around 16 years of age or so, enters the area. Their charismatic leader leads them right in front of Lux.

“Look, guys, fortune telling is all a hoax, I tell you. Just watch, I’m gonna ruin this guy’s day,” he tells his group while pointing at Lux, “nothing he says is going to be anything more than wishy-washy nonsense.”

Sycophantic responses to the effect of “Hahaha, yeah, show 'em Drew!” burst from the group of boys.

“Then would you like to have your fortune told?” says Lux.

“Yeah, what do I need to pay you?” Drew asks.

“Nothing. Just sit down with me. Basically, what I’ll do is I’ll put my hand on your head. Then you’ll feel a sort of prompt inside your head, asking for permission for me to synchronize with you,” Lux explains, “I will then shuffle the cards, and draw the card that will represent your fortune.”

“Wait, that first part sounds a little weird. Why do we have to do that?”

“It’s just the way that I read fortunes.”

Drew’s face puzzles a little. Then he relaxes, giving Lux implicit permission. Lux, with his eyes closed, puts his hand on Drew’s forehead. Inside, the magical channels of the two reach toward one another and establish a link. Mutually foreign flavors of mana intermingle and become one. Lux opens his eyes and sees a timeline stretched to a definite point in time in the future. This boy will live 80, no, 90 more years?

This is certainly more than the mean lifespan in Ulic’s mean lifespan of 70 years. While interesting, Lux can only pick one spot on this timeline, and he needs Drew to tell others of his accuracy so they will come to him. Lux, with considerable willpower, resists his curiosity about Drew’s longevity and selects an event a short five minutes into the future.

Lux draws a card. Ultimately meaningless, since he can always twist the card’s interpretation to suit his actual reading. Wait—the card is Death. Well, this will be pretty hard to work around.

Drew sees the card, and his face pales briefly. Lux, ever perceptive, notices this. Easy money.

“Yes, so your card is Death. No worries though; no one is going to die—“

Drew lets out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief unable to show weakness after all that grandstanding earlier. However, Lux notices because he is right in front of the boy.

“—instead, your older brother will show up here very soon, and as you go back home with him, you will see some chickens getting butchered and sold to customers on the way back.”

Lux curses himself for this crappy improvisation. Chickens? Butchered? He deserves to get called out for this stupidity.

Drew recovers quickly. “My older brother? He’s been at academy studying! There’s no way he’s going to be here.

This is dumb, let’s go guys,” Drew says as he waves to his squad.

“Just wait five minutes.”

Drew cocks an eyebrow, and lets his curiosity get the best of him. Five minutes pass.

A tall, skinny guy with a light complexion and dark hair walks into the area, shouting, “Drew? Drew! Where are you, ya little rascal!”

“James?!?! Why are you back from academy?” Drew asks in disbelief, taking a glance at Lux. Lux tries his best to suppress his “I told you so” smile.

“The academy is having us do some practical job experience in the real world, and I was able to do it in Olinshire! I’ll be with the family for a couple months. I knew I’d find you here with your gang!”

“They’re not my ‘gang’, they’re my friends,” Drew responds as his squad shuffles awkwardly. “Anyways, James, this guy knows the future! He said that you would come before you came! It’s ridiculous!”

“What? I thought that you said you were too smart to believe in fortune telling. Hmm, alright, Mr. Fortune Teller. How much for a reading?”

“Two Beike,” responds Lux.

This was always Lux’s business plan. He would charge nothing for the first reading, a little more for the second reading, and so on, until his prices for each reading were astronomical. Once his accuracy was confirmed through word of mouth, people would pay anything to be given their futures. There is no cost too high for the power to change your own destiny.

He reads James’s fortune, and it proves to be accurate. This continues on and on, and the false name and identity he came up with, “Estersquire the Seer”, spreads like wildfire throughout the market. People line up in droves to get their futures read. Lux achieves huge profits. A mental clock begins to ring in Lux’s head. When the business reaches its peak, it is time to plot the exit plan. No matter how opaque this marketplace is to officials, they will not let a phenomenon like this pass unchecked.

The day market ends, and the shopkeepers start to close up. Lux is no exception. The people waiting for his fortunes are told to come back tomorrow, and while they are displeased, they understand and disperse. Of course, there’s no way he’s coming back.

“Hi, are you closing up shop? I was hoping to have my fortune told,” says a voice behind him.

“Yes, I’m closing up…for the 10,000th time,” Lux responds as he turns around.

A man with a white suit and a hat that shades over his face stands in front of Lux. The amount of shade is a little unnatural; maybe this is the work of magic? It shades just enough to cover his entire face. Lux eyes him suspiciously. He pulls out a roll of bills from his pocket, unfolds them, and straightens them out, clearly to demonstrate that this is no small amount of money.

Lux sees this large sum and dramatically sighs, “All right, I’ll make an exception. Let’s just sit down on the ground facing each other.”

The other man complies.

“By the way, what is your name? I’m Estersquire,” says Lux.

“You’re not telling me your actual name?” questions the man.

Lux stares blankly at the man.

“Well, I guess that doesn’t matter. The name’s Yorwell. Nice to meet you,” says the man.

“I’m guessing you already know the drill?”

“Yep. I’m ready whenever you are. I’d like my future in roughly a month predicted.”

Lux reaches his hand to Yorwell’s forehead, with one hand over a crystal ball. He switched to the crystal ball from the Tarot cards a while back because the crystal ball has always been the most conducive to fortune telling bullshitting for him.

Their magic channels connect, and the act throws Lux into a blank space, with a timeline stretching before him. Lux draws himself closer to the timeline to choose a spot to look at. He sees where next month is located and looks closer. The timeline is blank there. Why the hell would it be blank?

He shifts to another spot on the timeline. Blank. Lux shifts further down. Blank. He continues to travel down the timeline, looking for any spot that is not blank.

It is now apparent to Lux. This timeline is not merely large. This timeline truly spans infinity.

Confused, and more than a little frightened, Lux pulls himself out of Yorwell’s destiny. Clearly, this Yorwell is strange, and it would be wise to try not to associate with him.

“So, what’s the prediction?” Yorwell asks, opening his eyes.

He is clearly a lot shadier of a character than Lux had thought before. Why is his timeline blank, and why does it run across infinity? Why is he shading over his face? What is he hiding? Is he a higher plane of being, a god? Is he an enemy?

The last thing Lux needs is a deity as an enemy. Surely some god is not here to punish him for using his foresight for commercial purposes. It was all in the name of capitalism!

“Uhh, well, sorry…but I’m unable to make a reading for you. I think my crystal ball is malfunctioning.”

“Really? Well, you’re the first fortune teller to ever tell me this.”

“Oh really? I, uh, yeah, I’m just an honest guy, you know? You can keep your money, by the way.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m actually a little happy, you know.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re well known, Mister Estersquire. Everyone around here says you’re the best seer ever, with 100% accuracy. If someone like you says they can’t read my fortune—“

“Wait, wait. I said my ball malfunctioned. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“A person who switches between these fortune telling mediums like it’s nobody’s business probably doesn’t even use them for fortune telling. Others might not notice since they leave after getting their fortunes, but I’ve been watching you for a while.”

Damn. Since most people were just happy to have their fortunes told, they just ignored that little detail.

“If someone like you says they can’t read my fortune, then it might mean I don’t have a fortune. In other words, I don’t have a destiny. I’m glad.”

Yorwell continues, “However, I’m a little curious for the reason…but I feel as if that’s a whole other can of worms. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you, kid?”

Lux, at this point so off-balance he can’t even be annoyed at Yorwell calling him a kid, replies, “No, no I don’t.”

Why is he so averse to the idea of destiny?

Yorwell takes off his hat, and the shade disappears from his face.

“I know you’re wondering why I’m so obsessed with this idea about destiny,” Yorwell states.

Damn it! There was no way he betrayed what he was thinking on his face!

“No, don’t worry about it. It’s normal to wonder.”

Tsk. This guy can read expressions well. Although that last one Lux really gave it away.

“The notion that the universe had a beginning implies the existence of destiny. First, assume that all events have a cause and an effect. Then, at the beginning, all the pre-conditions for all future events in the universe were set. The very first positions and energies and magic of all the objects in the universe at the beginning are the cause of the effects that came after them, and the effects become the causes of the next effects, and so on.”

“Take that reasoning indefinitely, and you realize that everything in this world was determined from the very beginning,” Yorwell concludes.

Lux puzzles, “If it’s already settled that destiny is real, why do you care about it? There’s nothing anyone can do in that case.”

“Yes, you’re right. But I hate the idea that the things I do are just part of some script that nature or some greater being wrote at the very beginning. I despaired over this, and then I came across you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Being able to predict the future implies that a central destiny exists. I was going to go to you to confirm it for myself so I could stop wasting my brainpower thinking about how to break apart from these shackles.”

Yorwell continues, “But unexpectedly, you said that my destiny is blank. Blank! A person who can read futures says that he cannot read my future! You rekindled the fire within me!”

This guy’s crazy! Who cares whether destiny is a thing or not? Unless…

“I think you just realized it yourself. Your ability to read the future changes the future itself. Unlike me, who may or may not be chained down still, you are definitely free.”

Tsk. In the back of his mind, Lux always knew that his ability was unnatural. Being able to predict the future gives a person the ability to change it. But the fact that using his power changes the future always bothered Lux. If the world began due to some kind of higher being and destiny is the script that it wrote, then every prophecy he told would deviate from that script. And surely a deity would be capable of making better decisions than Lux ever could.

So it is entirely likely that Lux’s powers were making the world a worse place. Lux knows this, but avoids thinking about it. He does not appreciate that Yorwell brought this up.

“So I was thinking, why don’t we work together to free the world from fate?”

This guy is definitely off his rocker. What kind of goal is that even? It’s incredibly vague. How would they even start? It’s not as if there’s some country to defeat, or an evil boss to take down. Yorwell is talking about “freeing” the passage of time. Even if that is even remotely possible, what is the tangible objective? And even if they can “free” the world from fate, is it desirable?

Probably not: nature can definitely make better decisions than two above-average humans.

“I have my own goals that I have to pursue, and I don’t particularly have a motivation to fight against destiny, whatever its purpose or conclusion. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to decline your offer,” carefully words Lux.

“I never said that this was optional. You’re going to join me, whether you want to or not.”

Lux blinks, and stares at Yorwell for a few moments, slow to comprehend exactly what just transpired. Then it clicks. Lux takes a nearby table, flips it in Yorwell’s face and dashes in the opposite direction.

He just needs to get some distance between Yorwell and himself. Then, he can disable his face-shifting magic or change to a different face, perhaps even change his clothes. Yorwell would not be able to catch him then. Lux sprints around the busy street, pushing people aside as he runs. Surely by now Yorwell’s lost sight of him.

Yorwell appears in a flash beside him. “You’re pretty confident in your speed. But I think I’m a little bit faster.”

Yorwell’s arm comes from above to knock Lux out from the back. In the nick of time, Lux dodges the blow by bending over backwards and retreats by flipping backwards acrobatically. He takes a few sandwiches from the stall next to him and throws them in Yorwell’s face, and quickly chants a spell. A lance of ice materializes and shoots towards Yorwell’s stomach. Before the lance lands, Lux turns and runs.

There is no way the lance damaged Yorwell. Despite his lack of sanity, Yorwell is incredibly strong. However, it at least slowed him down. Hopefully, it slowed him down just enough to let Lux change his appearance and disappear into a crowd.

Lux turns into an alley and begins chanting. He notices something odd. Some unfamiliar energy lingers over his body. Lux analyzes it. It’s…it’s a tracking spell! Damn it all! That conniving jerk Yorwell snuck a tracking spell on him! No wonder Yorwell could find him in the middle of all those people.

Yorwell, as if on cue, appears in the alley. Lux places an inverse mana shield over himself. The inverse mana will cancel out any spells cast in his direction, a useful spell that he should have cast on himself from the beginning.

Lux throws his last sandwich at Yorwell’s face. This time, Lux uses magic to give it the ability to home into its target. As planned, the sandwich finds its way to Yorwell’s face.

“Arrrrghh!!! Stop with these dumb sandwiches! Fight fair you piece of trash!” Yorwell screams as he swallows a mana crystal and shoots a fireball in Lux’s direction. The fireball did not find its target, as the sender was blinded.

That wasn’t the first time people complained about his combat “strategies”. But casting the offensive spell out of frustration instead of using magic to run faster (as he was doing before) sets Yorwell back several steps behind, giving Lux all the time he needs to change his appearance as he runs into a crowd of people.

Ha. Dumb crazy people don’t think about what they’re doing. If that fireball hit him, he would have died. Then who would help Yorwell on his crazy quest? And if it didn’t hit, then Yorwell would fall behind. Well, this was what Lux always took advantage of: the loss of his opponent’s focus. No one can keep themselves 100% engaged all the time, not even the powerful Yorwell.

Of course, Lux doesn’t keep himself focused the entire time either. However, he never goes on the offensive, so his mistakes are far harder to punish. He only goes on the offensive when he knows from the future he will be rewarded. Basically, the strategy goes: stay on defense until a sure victory.

Lux exhales. That was a harrowing experience. In any case, was Yorwell correct in his interpretation of Lux’s reading? The first assumption he made was that Lux’s reading was correct; not an unreasonable assumption from Lux’s view, since none of his prophecies have ever been incorrect. However, is it possible that Lux’s future sight just glitched that time?

However, Yorwell not being a part of destiny was the only way to explain why Lux never saw Yorwell in any of the visions he performed earlier. It sounded like the only reasonable explanation for the blank vision. The second assumption that Yorwell made was that having no destiny meant that he could affect the destiny of the world. This was reasonable. Having no destiny means that fate does not include you in its narrative. Then you are essentially an unaccounted, outside element, and every action you make affects fate.

For example, as an outside element, if destiny decreed that a particular rock would stay in a place for all eternity, then you could go to it, move it, and change destiny.

All in all, Yorwell’s conclusions are reasonable. Does this mean that Lux’s not the only one who can change the future?

A feeling of fear wells up in his stomach. Lux always felt comfortably safe. No one could hurt him; even if he could not tell his own future, he could always tell the futures of the people in his surroundings and combine all this information to stop any unfavorable events before they ever happen. This was why he was never afraid of going to those shady markets to make his money.

This was the source of his “hustling swagger”. If some ruffian were going to cut him up in some alley, then he would see it before it would happen and just avoid that particular alley. Alternatively, because this ruffian would no longer have the element of surprise, Lux would just dispatch him, since he could now surprise the ruffian. Lux has never been confident in his fighting ability, but in an ambush, he has always been top-notch. But if Yorwell decided to be Lux’s enemy, Lux would be helpless.

But wait—maybe this is not such a bad thing. Lux sometimes felt as if his life were the equivalent of playing a video game with a walkthrough guide: something only marginally better than a joke. Now that Yorwell is here, and the possibility of others like this exists, things are about to get interesting…

Shuddering with equal parts fear and excitement, Lux growls, “Bring it on.”

-break-

Lux packs his wares up and saunters his way through the dusty path to the train station. On the way, a familiar face shows up. Lux thinks about running away, but upon realizing that the window to escape had already passed, relents. He joins the familiar face and walks down the road with her together.

“Oy, Lux! I knew I would find you here. You really need to listen to the elders at the Temple and stop doing this shady business,” chastises the girl.

“Whatever, Oliver. Did you have fun finding me?”

“Shut up. You don’t even know how annoying this was. First, I stopped by all the shady markets around our mountain, but you weren’t anywhere to be found there. To think you expanded your operations even further…”

“Well, I am an entrepreneur. You always have to tap new markets, you know?”

“Alright, I take that back. I shouldn’t have used ‘operations’ and you’re not an ‘entrepreneur’, since it’s just you and you’re just going around doing the same old morally questionable stuff you always do.”

“Morally questionable?”

“Come on. We keep telling you that telling the fortunes of all these people is going to make things chaotic. It’s upsetting the balance of the world.”

“Do you actually believe in that ‘balance of the world’? It always sounded like to me a dumb justification for the status quo.”

Oliver explores, “It feels kind of like a convenient lie, but it’s convenient because it is plausible. I mean, most things in the world have to reach equilibrium for them to benefit all things optimally. Why not the entire world itself? Why not fate? At least, that’s what some of the elders at the Temple think, and I think their argument is pretty compelling.”

“But if I am also a part of fate, then nothing I do changes anything. Ahh, whatever. I don’t care, I’m just going to do what I want to do,” deadpans Lux.

“Yeah, I thought so. You can’t read your own future, so it looks like we’ll never know either way,” Oliver sighs.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

At this moment, they reach the train station. They pay for their tickets and board the train towards the town near where the temple is located: Ulic City. Now a little thirsty, Lux focuses his mind accesses his mana reserves, and then condenses the water vapor in the air into a cup he was carrying with him. The air turns a little dry. Lux takes a swig of his magically produced water.

“That’s always really amazing to me, how you can do that without eating or drinking mana,” comments Oliver.

“Hah, well, it’s not that awesome. Because of this, I can’t eat or drink mana.”

“Really? That sounds tough. Why though?”

“Natural magic users like me can’t, since our natural mana conflicts with any outside mana. It’s kind of like what happens when a guy with Type B blood receives Type A blood, except on a spiritual level. I can do it and use the extra mana, but there would be severe recoil. In extreme cases, I might entirely lose my ability to use magic,” explains Lux.

“Huh, that almost makes me feel as if being an induced magic user is better. Sure, we have to go through a surgery, but we can use outside mana, making our magic use limitless.”

“Well, natural magic users have much better control over their mana—since it is their own—and so we can do more complicated spells. You can’t do what I just did, can you?” challenges Lux.

“I guess it’s just the classic conflict of quality vs. quantity.”

The two disembark at the station and eventually arrive at the aptly named God’s Mountain, the mountain upon which the main temple is located. Hundreds of tourists crowd the area, posing for pictures along the entire path. Any mildly informed tourist of Ulic City knows that seeing the beautiful natural scenery on and around God’s Mountain is a priority.

The path up God’s Mountain does not end at the temple at the top. It actually leads part of the way there, and then stops. Part of the reason is past that point, the land is not conducive to path-building: with all the unstable footing, random cliffs, and strange (see: dangerous) monsters lurking around. The other reason is that the monks of the main temple either believe themselves to be above interacting with normal people or they practice the faith seriously and want to avoid any unnecessary distractions to their meditation.

So anyone who wishes to interact with the temple usually goes to one of the branches either down below in Ulic City or elsewhere.

However, for those in the know, a hidden passageway not far from the end of the main mountain path winds its way to an elevator. This elevator, obviously, leads all the way up to the temple.

A small number of astute tourists and other interested parties observe as various monks disappear around the end of the path. Inevitably, from this, they deduce that there must be some sort of shortcut up the mountain around there. So they go searching for this shortcut, if only to sate their curiosity.

However, they will never find it. First, the passageway’s location is itself a puzzle. Based on the date, the time, or some other global variable, the passageway’s location will change. The monks also change the key variable randomly. Today, the key variable is the date. It is the 5th day of the 16th month of the 500th year ADM (after the democratization of magic). Sum the digits up and you get 17. Divide it by nine (the number of different locations), and take the remainder, which is 8. So the passageway today is at location nine (since the remainders go from 0 to 8).

Second, a complex illusion cloaks the passageway. Only those with impressive magical control can dispel it long enough for them to figure out how to get in. The Temple trains all of its monks (and any other non-monk important people) to hone their magical control to near-absurd levels, far above the average person’s control. Thus, only they can dispel the illusion. Of course, someone could always try to fly up to the temple with some sort of flying device, but that’s too wasteful, both energy-wise and time-wise for anyone but the obsessed to try.

Lux and Oliver step in front of location nine, and Oliver prepares to dispel the illusion. She reaches into her pocket for a mana crystal, but there’s nothing there. Lux laughs.

Oliver rolls her eyes. “It happens to everyone. Just get rid of the illusion so we can find out how to get in.”

Lux waves his hands and the passageway comes into sight within seconds. Oliver never gets used to seeing this. The best monks, despite years of work, still take at least a few minutes to break the spell. Lux, with his natural talent in magical control, easily picks it apart, allowing them to quickly enter the hidden path.

Oliver and Lux step into the elevator and push the only button in the elevator: the button labeled “Temple”. After a few moments, the elevator doors open up to the spacious, octagon-shaped center of the temple. Looking up, balconies from each level of the building stripe the central octagonal space all the way up to the ceiling.

After a few moments, the monks notice Lux.

“Hey, everybody! It’s Lux! He’s back!” shouts a monk.

A small crowd begins to gather around Lux. Oliver slips away just before the scolding begins. There’s no need to stay by and risk the chance of them starting to question her about various things. They might, for example, figure out that she was using Temple money to vacation while searching for Lux. Yes, best to let Lux be the lightning rod.

“LUX! We’ve been looking for you everywhere! Stop doing whatever you please!” lectures a senior monk.

“We’re all behind on work because of you! I hope that cash you made was worth it! And I hope Hurst chews you out for this!” says another one.

Lux apologizes to all of them. He does not mean the apology in the slightest, and both Lux and the monks know it. But what can the Temple do to him for his transgressions? Nothing.

“You know, one of these days, we’re going to shut you in a dungeon and not let you get out, you scoundrel.”

Lux raises an eyebrow. They did, indeed, try that on him once. However, like any hierarchal organization, the Temple has tons of social climbers. The people stationed in the temple change from year to year, and even month to month, as slackers get kicked off the mountain and try-hards make their way up. Therefore, Lux, even with his limitation of being unable to read someone’s future more than once, constantly has new people to read.

So when the temple attempted to lock him up in a dungeon, he naturally found out about it and foiled every attempt. One of the attempts, funnily enough, involved a few stooges dropping a cage over Lux as he slept. Out of spite, Lux disguised himself as an elder and tricked those idiots into dropping the cage over a sizable number of the leadership. Until the trapped begged him to let them go out of hunger, he was content to leave them there.

Of course, he wouldn’t have let them starve. Probably. Maybe.

Lux, after finishing his routine apologies, begins to walk around the golden statue in the middle of the space. It is a woman, sitting cross-legged while meditating. She holds one hand up to refuse worldly pleasures. Her name, lost over the ages, is simply “The Enlightened One”, but most people call her “Enli”. She represents the religion (probably more accurately a philosophy these days) of Illustrism.

Lux shakes his head at the statue. Her belief was that worldly pleasures were tying us to the punishment called life; therefore, people should detach themselves from their wants. Now, tons of people across this world subscribe to her ideas. But only nominally: the Temple that she founded herself is now a powerful organization with its hands in the political processes of many countries. The Tou—the leader of the Temple—holds almost as much power as the democratically elected government of Ulic.

Lux never “believed” in Illustrism, and his presence at the Temple actually pulls Illustrism farther and farther away from its original goals. But it’s always sad to see what must have begun with so much passion atrophy into nothing.

He pushes open the doors to his room and leaps onto the bed. It’s as annoyingly soft as ever. There’s a meal placed on the table. That’s annoying too. The monks never do anything nice like this unless they need to have something done. However, the meal looks and smells pretty good. There’s a hefty serving of seafood and a good, balanced amount of all the other food groups. Healthy and tasty, exactly the way he likes it. Fighting cognitive dissonance, he scarfs it down.

Almost the moment he’s done, a serious-looking battle monk pushes aside the doors (without knocking!) and looks at Lux.

“Lux. As soon are you’re done, it’s time to meet with the Tou. It seems like there’s an important thing he needs to discuss with you,” the warrior says.

“Hi, Hurst. You’re as strangely punctual as ever. I thought I had swept my room for all bugs and cameras, but maybe I didn’t look closely enough?”

“I assure you, I came here now entirely by chance,” Hurst responds.

The two stare at each other. Then they both begin to laugh.

“You know, this is kind of a twisted joke. You don’t think you can just let it go? I mean, it’s been five years since this started!” jostles Lux.

Hurst wears a face of fake disgust. “You know, some of the traps you laid in your room almost got me killed!”

“I laid them because I realized some guy was bugging my room! It wasn’t personal. And it’s not like the former owner of the title “Foremost beneath the Heavens” could ever be in danger of anything I do.”

“That’s all in the past. All I do is bodyguard the Tou and train you in combat occasionally. But you don’t really have any talent, aside from being a vicious ambusher. No offense. “

Lux clicks his tongue. “None taken.”

“Alright, that’s enough catching up. The Tou is getting impatient. We’ve got to go.”

The Chamber of Enlightenment, or as Lux calls it, “The Throne Room”, is on the first floor. Just like a throne room, there is a red carpet leading from the door to the important person’s chair. Just like a throne room, there is space for people to line up on the sides of the carpet. Just like a throne room, the important chair sits several steps up, decorated with jewels and expensive fabrics.

This time, no one aside from the Tou’s guards, Lux, and Hurst are in the room…except for a blonde-haired teenager. Evidently, the Tou wants to discuss something private, along with that mystery person that she brought along.

“Lux, I need to ask you for another prophecy,” the Tou says.

Lux cocks his eyebrow. “Obviously, not for you, right? I’ve already done you, after all. It saved your life and everything, Ramsey.”

The Tou’s face wrinkles in annoyance. “Does it kill you to be respectful? I’m 50 years your senior, for Enli’s sake. Forget that. Anyways, the prophecy is for Sorin,” the Tou gestures at the boy next to her, “he’s from the Yin family, who helped us a lot when we were starting our expansions internationally, as you might recall.”

“This is no ordinary fortune-telling you want. You want me to be detailed,” Lux guesses.

“Please be serious here. It seems like that’s how he’d like to be repaid. Can you do it?” the Tou asks.

“My mana capacity is already weak,” Lux responds, “a detailed reading would make me tired, uncomfortable, and probably prevent me from using magic for a few hours. Give me a reason why I should do this.”

“I could offer you freedom.”

“Tch. Please. That’s not even a funny joke anymore. If you want a favor from me, burn one of your Commands. Let’s see how much you honestly want to give me my freedom.”

The Tou wrinkles her forehead, clearly annoyed. “Look. You know I don’t want to use the Commands. We need to have something that connects you to us. You’re the Temple’s biggest asset. I’ll allow you to do whatever you want, except that when we need you, you have to come to our aid.”

“That’s not freedom.”

Lux sighs. They’ve had this same conversation a million times. In the end, it always comes down to Lux daring the Tou to use one of her Commands over him, and the Tou trying not to use one. Every time, the Tou ends up using one of her Commands, and Lux complies. You’d think that after trying to get Lux to voluntarily comply all these times and failing she would eventually give up. Guess the Tou didn’t get to become the Tou without some frugality and doggedness.

“Alright, so I’ve rejected you about a thousand times. What makes this time any different to the rest?” Lux asks.

“Well, for one, you would be advancing humanity. Sorin here wants to be a hero.”

Lux catches his breath, a little surprised. Even Hurst, who is normally impassive, nearly chokes on his water. “A hero? Sorin, I can call you Sorin, right? Sorin, if you want to be a hero, I hope you didn’t just mix up hero and adventurer. Those are different things. What are you going to do that is going to make you a hero?”

The Tou opens her mouth to answer, but Lux interrupts, “Ah-ah, no. Let the guy answer this himself. I don’t need a rehearsed answer from you. I want to hear an honest answer from him.”

“I want to save Aoreak from Wrath.”

“Wha-what? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Do you even know what Wrath is? It’s an invincible super-being. No amount of modern technology or magic has been able to take it down. Luckily for us, it only terrorizes Aoreak, but your actions could doom the rest of us, you idiot. What if it gets mad and decides, ‘Hey, those guys from Ulic are mean. Why not go destroy them too?’” Lux nervously rattles off. The Tou, however, still appears strangely confident and calm.

“See, that’s why I want a prophecy. To see if I end up messing up badly, and what I should do to avoid it,” Sorin says.

“Tsk. And if I don’t give you a prophecy, you’ll threaten to go anyway, making me partially responsible for the end of the world,” Lux conjectures.

“You catch on quickly! But that’s not the whole story...”

“You also want me to go with you! If I don’t go along, then even if you correct your actions based on my prophecy here, there’s no guarantee that you won’t still end civilization. You conniving bastard,” Lux says as he shoots a deadly glare at the Tou. She knew about this! At least she has the shame to look off to the side.

“The Aoreaks have been dealing with this the past decade or so,” Sorin notes, “those of us with power should try to do something to help.”

“Who the hell cares about them? I have my own problems to deal with. And power? Alright, maybe I have power. But I’m not going to be able to carry out this operation. I don’t have good combat abilities. I’m the world’s only source of information about the future, and that’s basically the extent of my worth when it comes to this. I hope you have something planned.”

Sorin walks into the middle of the room, places the briefcase he held on the table, opening it up. He carefully picks up a metal cylinder that has the words ARCANE plastered across it. What does that even mean? Lux looks at Hurst. He doesn’t know what that is. Lux turns his head to the Tou. Confidence radiates from her. She knows something.

Sorin explains, “Arcane: an adjective describing a material that generates magic spontaneously. Unlike the mana crystals, which are simply jewels that had mana stored in them during the Great Beginning, arcane materials can be generated from ordinary matter colliding at high speeds. These substances continuously radiate powerful raw magical power.”

“You can’t seriously be thinking of using that, right? The mana crystals people use are at a level much lower than this “arcane” stuff you’re talking about. If you use that, it might rip apart your body.”

Sorin smiles and continues, “Yes, and that’s the point! If we can shoot this into Wrath, there’s no way it will survive! The magical energy will tear it apart from the inside. This is a type of weaponry no one has ever used, or even thought of before. Now that we have this, we can save Aoreak!”

Not a bad idea. The Aoreaks have tried over and over again to kill Wrath. At this point, it had become a kind of ritual. Every few years or so, some strong person would work up the courage to challenge Wrath. She would gather up a bunch of other strong people, and they would work together to bring it down. However, not one of those groups ever came back alive.

But all of those heroes tried orthodox methods. They would train their magic, learn incredibly destructive spells, and use weapons of the highest caliber (as time went on, this went from swords to guns to even helicopters and machine guns). The obvious thing to do would be to bring an army, but whenever Wrath was confronted, it would fight and then finish off its challengers by sucking out their souls, leaving freaky living dead behind. From this, many people conjectured that death to Wrath meant that the soul would be trapped, unable to rest.

Good luck getting any sizable contingent of people to fight against that.

Yet this arcane material may hold the key to Wrath’s defeat. Wrath has always been famously resistant to poison, but that was likely because it has a different composition to humans. For example, antibiotics work on bacteria because they are poison to bacteria and harmless to us. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that poisons that work on humans and other common animals might not work well on a creature of a different species.

This arcane material would solve this problem. Magic, in unstable, raw forms like this, is toxic to every form of life. Up to now, there has been no exception found. Wrath is a form of life. This could work.

“Alright. I never had a choice anyways, but right now I’m a little intrigued. I think this has a decent shot of working,” says Lux, “I’ll read your future now.”

He appears before Sorin’s timeline, and searches for swellings in the line, since those are the places where the major events occur. There are more rigorous explanations for this, but the hand-wavy version is that during a critical event, lots of separate timelines begin to intertwine. These groups of related timelines partially show up in the timelines of each person related to the event, creating a bulge.

Lux reaches towards the first bump and concentrates.

Lux and Sorin are at a beachfront. In front of them, rising out of the water, is Wrath. It looks like nothing in particular, but if Lux had to describe it, he would say it looks like a manta ray that don’t really flap as Wrath mostly uses magic to keep itself in the air. However, “manta ray” does not really give a sense for how enormous Wrath actually is. It is said that when Wrath is overhead, it blocks out the entire sky and envelops entire cities in darkness.

Usually, manta rays are cute and inert. And to be honest, Wrath is kind of the same way, give or take a few wings and all the size. It rarely destroys anything on purpose, from what most people can tell. It simply demolishes all by running over everything in its path from its point A to its point B. In that sense, Wrath can be compared to a natural disaster like a hurricane or an earthquake. Except Wrath doesn’t stop.

“NO! Why is it showing up now, and why is it showing up here? We just got intel that it was at least a few days away!” the Lux down at the beachfront screams.

“Shut up! We have to do what we can. Load up the arcane shell. We’re launching it into Wrath now. It’s our only chance,” Sorin screams back.

They work furiously to get their preparations done to launch the shell.

“We aren’t ready! This launcher doesn’t have enough power! WE’RE DONE FOR,” Lux despairs.

“It’s better than doing nothing. We’re launching now.”

They fire the shell. It makes its way towards Wrath, and the shell cracks the armor that surrounds Wrath. However, it didn’t have enough power to break the armor. The shell, now without any velocity, simply drops off Wrath and falls into the ocean.

Wrath continues to glide forward, apparently not even noticing the shell that bounced off of it.

“The shell didn’t even get its attention. This was all a waste. It’s over…” Lux mumbles.

“Yeah, it looks like it’s all over. Goodbye, Lux.”

“Hah. At least this means it doesn’t consider us challengers. Our souls won’t be eaten by it.”

“You’re right. It could’ve been worse.”

At this moment, Wrath crashes into the area of the beach they were on. Lux winces. He has watched himself being killed hundreds of times, but the shock of it never wears off. As it continues, the area that Lux and Sorin were at becomes visible. Lux was hoping that they had somehow managed to survive, but evidently not. The two of them were ground into red-colored paste by Wrath.

“So it all ends there,” Lux numbly sighs.

He releases himself from the timeline, and recounts the events of the future to the people present.

“So basically, we’re going to have to avoid that beachfront. Whatever we end up doing, we can’t go there.”

“Can’t we just not go there during that time?” asks Sorin.

“Sure, but our knowledge of the future will change our actions now. This will likely cause large changes in the future: the so-called Butterfly Effect. A small change in our actions may cause Wrath to come earlier or later. Best to just avoid that area.”

“By that logic, our actions could make it go anywhere else in Aoreak.”

“Wrath could have had a reason to go through that beachfront. In that case, it would go through it no matter what, but there is still the chance it could change its time of arrival, catching us off guard. The Butterfly Effect is unlikely to change things that are done on purpose by important actors.”

“Glad we got all that sorted out. Then are we ready to go?” Sorin asks.

“Yeah,” Lux says as he takes a look at the Tou, who nods, “It’s time to go.”

“Hurst, it’s been great seeing you. Could I possibly ask you to come with us? You’re the strongest person I know,” Lux says.

Hurst shakes his head, “That’s all in the past. I have a family: a wife and two kids. And there’s no way that I’m letting my soul get sucked out by that monster.”

Lux nods, “That’s fair. I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

Lux turns to the Tou, “I do get trip expenses, right?”

“Please, don’t be insulting. Yes, you do. Just check in to the treasury on your way out,” says the Tou.

Lux smiles, “Yeah, thanks.”

Sorin and Lux, with spirits high, leave the “Throne Room” to embark on their journey.