Chuang Tianshang woke, facing a familiar man in a mask. Shoe found herself tied to the chair, clasped with several Mana suppressor and high-grade shackle likely loaned from a disgruntled badger.
“Hal Jordan.”
“Sorry,” Rem replied. “But today I go by Jay Garrick.”
Chuang snorted.
“Just how many fakes names do you use?”
“Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Bruce Wayne, John Jones, Scott Summers, Alfred Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Wally West, Damian Al Ghul, Tim Drake, Nathan Summers, Arthur Curry, and—I hate this one the most—James Howlett,” Rem lifted his eyebrows. “Trust me. I won’t run out of made up names soon.”
Chuang stared at the weirdo.
“Why Cytortia?”
Rem looked at Chuang, pulled a bad crisped from his paper bag and began munching.
After several minutes of crunching noises — together with Chuang’s patience — lost to the wind, Rem emptied every bit of crisp, went to his bag and get another pack.
Chuang snapped.
“Answer my bloody question!?” She screeched. “Why on Earth did you pick her!? WHY?”
Rem opened the packet.
“Sour-cream,” Rem rejoiced longingly. “My favorite flavors right from home. My hero’s perfection is him hanging out with his pa. Me. It is me peacefully eating these chips in a free and happy world. Want some?”
Chuang wanted to bite this jesting bastard.
“Answer the question! Dammit!”
“I already answer the question,” Rem said. “You just don’t understand it.”
Chuang bit her lip. Again? Cytortia said she wouldn’t understand. This guy said she wouldn’t understand. What high and mighty mystery was beyond her understanding. Chuang glared at Rem, her teeth clenched so hard she could sense them breaking.
“Then help me understand, oh almighty [Clairvoyance],” Chuang mocked him. “What is so special about the girl who can’t fight, that make you guys flock to her.”
“Simple. She is not you.”
Chuang tried to bite off Rem’s nose with a leap, but a potato chip nailed her in the eye.
“Down girl,” Rem calmly brushed the chip dust from his hand. “I already said my idea of perfection is eating this potato chip in a world where everyone is free. But if you—or anyone else in the 33 Crap-sacks—put your ass on that throne, happiness will be the furthest place from where I get to enjoy this chip. And I can’t have that.”
Chuang stopped in her track.
“You want the Cytortia in charge because you want peace.”
Rem shrugged.
“I can give you that,” Chuang promised. “Every 33 Stars want to end these conflicts. We are fighting for peace.”
“That is true,” Rem admitted. “You are fighting for a new world order under your command—a stable world order. Sadly, stability does not equate to freedom. I want the world where everyone is happy and free, not the one where people who disagreed with me and my great overlord end up in gulag.”
It was that explanation that finally convinced Chuang she didn’t understand the entity in front of her.
“You want your detractor to be happy?” Chuang said. “You want to give them a chance? Are you sure Velnia is not possessing you?”
“Velnia’s version of the world build itself on naivety,” Rem felt tired at the mere mention of the Starland’s princess. “The girl refuse to acknowledge life innate evil. You can’t stop people from being a jerk. Refusal to stand up against blatant evil because it act nice to you is another kind of evil. I know people will disagree with me. I understand some will hate me. Even then I value their life as a fellow man. I want to wake up in the morning knowing people realize someone still cares.”
Chuang’s brain broke as she tried to comprehend Remus Breaker, the Alien from Planet Earth. Superman’s heat-vision melted the Heavenly Daughter of Fire without ever being real.
“I can’t understand you.”
“Told you so,” Rem said. “Your ultimate weakness is the fact your absolute power distance you from the rest of humanity. The all-powerful jerks duking it out in the sky without realizing that your shit is raining down below to the people who can’t defend themselves. And you ask me why people flock to Cytortia? Cy is a caring girl first and goddess second. She has zero ambition to rule, which is good because I don’t want to rule.”
“For someone who glimpses into the future, that ambition is downright pathetic.”
Rem smiled.
“Many men see what I become when I aim to achieve something. All of them regret it,” Rem said. “Now please tell me about the future.”
Chuang paused.
“What are you talking about?”
Rem made a tutting sound.
“You are not even hiding it,” Rem replied. “Many things make little sense during our fight. You noticed who Melody is. You foresaw hat she can become, and it rightfully terrify you. The real telltale is Luxinna. You directly call her the Monster of Lightwell.”
Rem stretched.
“Cytortia also said you know about the World Enemy invasion and somehow convinced that she would join Alchemical Society. Popular guess is you have [Clairvoyance], but you don’t. If you do, you would aim for Hikma the entire fight. I run the simulation 25 times with different inputs and the only way you survive the fight after losing your ring is taking out Hikma before making a full retreat. Melody cannot catch you with her poor mobility. My prediction show that you have a 44% chance of making it out of the forest safely with only Luxinna on the trail and me on the sniper.”
Rem noticed how Chuang stared at him.
“What?”
“What are you talking about?” Chuang looked at Rem like he arrived from space.
“[Clairvoyance], duh.” Rem replied.
At that moment, Chuang realized the ocean of depth hidden beneath the man before her.
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“Do you know [Clairvoyance] work?” Chuang’s lip quivered uncomfortably as Remus Breaker took a crow-bar to her common sense. “The skill allows a person to peer through the thread of fate and calculate the future.”
“Boring.”
“Boring?” Chuang raged. “Every god and living-thing have unchangeable fate. All destinies are unmovable, and [Clairvoyance] acted like a compass that navigate the water. It delivers the right decision to navigate to a proper destiny.”
Rem huffed.
“Bullshit,” Rem called. “No mysterious power is carving destiny on a tablet made of unbreakable diamond. It is all probability. [Clairvoyance] is not future predicting ability. It is the modelling device designed to predict an outcome base on data accessible from Astral Consciousness.”
Chuang blinked.
“What?”
“Well, telling you won’t matter much,” Rem sadistically explained. “Plus, I love to see that pretty face scrunch up in agony, it isn’t every day I get to talk down on gods.”
Rem pulled out a map.
“[Clairvoyance] forecast the future using available data in real-time. But because it is in real-time, it is vulnerable to the butterfly effect. Enough tipping from that domino and even destiny will eat bullets. Let us say I try to read the future of an apple, [Clairvoyance] will malfunction because it perceive whatever the outcome, I will do something different to defy its prediction. It is impossible to predict the apple future, because a variable—me—exist to defy it.”
Chuang listened to that lecture, eyes widened.
“Impossible!” Chuang refused to accept that theory. “The Holy Church ascend to power with the Pope’s [Clairvoyance]! If subverting [Clairvoyance] is that easy, how can they hold their power. Thalia Holyworth is the No. 10 of the 33 Stars for a reason. Even I and Chuang barely come out ahead against her!”
“Automatic Selection.”
“Eh,” Chuang blinked. “What?”
“[Clairvoyance] focus on the likeliest data and screen out the rest in its default mode,” Rem said “Thalia Holyworth and Pope-chan is invincible because they forecast events that have 99.9999999% chance of occurring. But here a dirty secret: the screening is a clutch. Let me guess, the Pope’s [Clairvoyance] never progress beyond ‘A’, right?”
Chuang speechlessly nodded
Rem chuckled. The board-state just tipped massively in his favor.
“You have me worrying for a second. Don’t tell me you guys believe in [Clairvoyance] so much you never trying to study it. Do you experiment with it at all? Do you understand how it worked? Are there any counter measure when its malfunction or do you brush it under the rug and pretend the mistake is a fluke?”
Chuang’s silence told Rem everything.
“Fucking unbelievable,” Rem facepalmed in a mixture of disappointment and amusement. “How are you still alive? The World Enemy must sleep for the last millennia given how happily ignorant you are. Now that I finally have an actual goddess I don’t like tied up and accountable—I have a question—why is everyone of your technology outside Isle of Knowledge look like it got source from middle age. What with the licensing law and trade secret that one organization steamrolled your civilization progress?”
Chuang’s voice turned deceptively quiet.
“No organization is sane enough to spread their secret into the public domain,” Chaung said. “Not everyone is a naive as Arden Christy.”
Rem blinked, and he lost it.
“OH MY GOD! THIS IS GREAT! NO WONDER THOSE BUFFOONS IN THE WHITEHOUSE GLUED THEIR TRAP SHUT FOR ONCE. YOU CALL YOURSELF A GOD. EVEN THE MOTHER FUCKING SURRENDER LAND OF FRENCH TOAST COME OUT BETTER. HOW CUCK ARE YOU PLANNING TO GET!?”
Rem wiped his tears.
“This explains everything. It totally explain why the Earth suddenly become hermit kingdom whose trade deal so far have been mineral resources, third-world children and fucking New Zealand's wool,” Rem said. “No wonder they asked Athena to keep the private economy partially isolated from Phantasia for two mother-fucking decades, while exporting the best of the generation to Balperia.”
Chuang thought Rem suddenly gone crazy.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” Chuang shouted. “How could a Mana-less civilization like Earth hide anything from the gods?”
“They are not hiding it,” Rem slammed his fist on the table in a fit of laughter. “Hiding a law is impossible. We only succeed because of disinterest. That godly arrogance is a hell of a pit to fall into.”
“Arrogance?” Chuang said in confusion.
“Let me demonstrate my planet’s hidden trump-card,” Rem explained. “I call this invention: Breaker’s Consciousness Convergence Calculation or Breaker’s CCC. Base on assumption [Clairvoyance] is an ability to predict the future by accounting by present variable, I discover that those inputs is adjustable and the resulting future isn’t unchangeable.”
Rem grabbed a paper and write his method.
“CCC is an ability to model the future and the past by inputting variables and manually run it using [Clairvoyance]. To successfully use CCC a practitioner must use several techniques and overcome 3 problems. First, the accessibility of the information depend on the level of [Clairvoyance] compared to the target’s importance. A deep meditation using Astral Tracing patented by Remus Breaker and Hikma De Darwin will solve the first problem as long as the information already existed. While the risk of backlash remained, it is minimizable by the exercise of self-regulation and caution. Second, the information must sort out properly. An altered version of combat conditioning method taught and supervised by goddess Scathach can resolve this stage. Third is manually inputting and altering [Clairvoyance]. The third problem represent the most arduous part of CCC because the requirement for the user to create a subconscious routine using self-imposed hypnosis in combination with Scathach’s mental conditioning technique. To satisfy the condition, I used the [Mentalism] Arcane compiled by Hikma De Darwin from the Astral Conciousness under the catalyzation of Art of Hypnotism by Arya’s Academy, Legend of Zeniji from Oolongo of Elypt, House of Mentalism by D. C. Tanmar and Hundred Year Myth by Yuliman.”
Chuang lost count of how many times her mouth dropped open that day.
“What the hell is that?”
“Nothing much,” Rem showed her the piece of scribbled paper he signed. “It entail how I altered my [Clairvoyance] from forecasting skill to strategic model. Essentially, instead of following the hand of fate like a blind man, I demand fate to tell me how to win. It is what put you in that chair after losing the battle your precious Pope would predict your victory. With this paper in hand and access to the source material I listed, anyone with [Clairvoyance] can also use CCC to change fate itself.”
Rem waved the paper in front of her.
“I am a simple man, so I will ask a simple question.” Rem said. “How much do you think this is worth?”
Chuang named no price—no one could. The technique that explored [Clairvoyance] on that level never existed in the history of Phantasia. No one in their history even came close to that. Convention dictated [Clairvoyance]’s vision occurred when witnessing an object or a person. A selected few understood that prayers helped raised the chance of the vision. The height of the rank also influenced the vision quality and frequency.
As a few who fought Thalia Holysworth, Chuang considered herself to be more knowledgeable on [Clairvoyance] than most 33 Stars. But she was nothing comparable to this enigmatic pioneer. How could a monster like this exist? Who would think of activating [Clairvoyance] by self-hypnotism or forcefully altering the variable to change the vision? The piece of paper in his hand detailed a formula to turn certain defeat to an absolute victory. The Holy Church alone would pay their fortune to get it.
“The licensing profit,” Rem declared his price.
“Licensing?” Chuang’s brain drawn a blank yet again. “What?”
“Well, it a nice little concept from home,” Rem answered proudly. “The founding fathers of my country is tad concern with freedom since they just kicked the British from our dirt. In 1790, they created the copyright act. Inventor can apply to the government to secure the right of an intellectual property for exclusive use or distribution. Essentially, if you try to copy my work, I can sue you. This process also put the value to my work after it have publicly published, allowing me to license it out for production and replication. Sure, you can’t copy my work, but you can extrapolate and marketed it out to make bucks.”
“You are telling me you share your foundation?” Chuang’s perspective did a somersault. “You let your invention get used by someone else and fueling your enemy? What a joke? If everyone learn the secret to your foundation, then your organisation and family will suffer?”
“Yes, if suffering equate to their creativity gear running,” Rem mocked the Heavenly Daughter. “Idea is like currency. It is at its most powerful when circulate in the investment. The innovative idea in my chest will only degrade in value or lost to time. An innovation in the free market will generate me — the original author — hell of profit. Because the patent is leasable, multiple folks can build on my hard work and patent their shit. Maybe an enchantment to predict climate with [Clairvoyance] or an artificial [Clairvoyance]. Unlike you, stingy small-minded goddess, I view imitation as greatest flattery and will happily buy those licenses to innovate more shit. I can go from climate prediction to space-flight simulator. That is how my Mana-less world achieve space-flight with no magic. Meanwhile, you gods still crawl under the stratosphere, worrying about a Joe getting ahead, hoarding your knowledge like a petty little doggy born with the platinum spoon.”
Rem derided.
“And here you are the valuable chest of immense extrapolatable knowledge,” Rem suddenly realized something. “You know what, I should talk to Cy about licensing. We have come up with insane ideas so far and patenting act will be a helpful catalyst for internal industrial revolution. Anyway, would you mind tell me your secret, or should I use this opportunity to test my newly invent interrogation technique on you.”
Chuang often looked back to that day and cursed herself for not giving Rem the ball