“You said Raegan. I never told you his name was Raegan.” Then Annaliese frowned as she realised something else. “Actually, I never told you my name either. And there was the comment about the war… and you knew where I lived… and you knew I was the Prophetess when I haven’t even been officiated. Plus, your Fate…” She stared at Lucy. “What are you?”
Lucille huffed and put away the referral, replacing it with a newspaper. “It’s a bit rude to refer to me as a ‘what’. I’m very much a human.”
Annaliese gulped. “A-Are you a Fate Devourer?” she asked shakily.
Lucy stared at her over the top of her newspaper. “And that is very rude to refer to me as. No I am not. I have never touched the stuff, or even used the light element,” she stated crossly, studiously ignoring the girl.
The Prophetess hesitated. “Then… why didn’t Fate tell me you were coming?”
Still ignoring the girl, Lucy looked out the window and whistled. “Wow, what a beautiful tree.”
The golden-eyed girl was dumbfounded. “How is that even changing the subject?”
“Haaaa…” Lucille sighed, pinching her nose bridge. “Just take the hint. Let’s discuss this another time. Honestly, you’re almost worse than Sedric…” she grumbled.
“Who’s Sedric?” Annaliese asked curiously.
Lucy gazed at the girl with narrowed eyes, having had an idea. “You know what? I’ve told you to go to sleep.” She pointed a finger at the girl. “So, just go to sleep. Nighty night.”
Before the girl could react, Lucy twisted her mana into a small white mana-circle at the tip of her finger, and a ball of the same colour shot out and inserted itself into Annaliese’s forehead. She slumped against the window, breathing slowly.
“Haven’t needed a sleep spell for several years,” Lucy muttered.
Now that the girl was asleep, she rolled up her newspaper. In the Tower, the alternative to wearing noise-cancelling headphones to block out untowardly noisy people was to pretend you were reading a newspaper. As was also sometimes the case with certain noisy people when it came to headphones, it didn’t always work. The act of reading a newspaper was even more fake in Lucy’s case, as the speed of her thoughts meant anything she saw was recorded nearly instantly. That was without even considering the fact that just having the newspaper within her spiritual energy field meant her mind had already known the contents within. She took off her overcoat and kicked up her legs to sit sideways on the bench, back against the window.
Having returned to her expressionless default when others weren’t around, she closed her eyes as she mentally reconstructed the image of what she had seen at the border of the forest near the Prophetess’s house. An austere-looking man with greying sideburns and black hair, and a wild-haired bearded blonde man with steely-grey eyes. One in gold and crimson armour, wearing a lavish cape, and the other in gold and white armour, indicative of a Paladin.
Rolland Louveste and Jasten Albrecht.
She put her hands behind her head. They… were not the best possible witnesses, but they weren’t the worst. The Templar of High Justice was greedy and ambitious, someone who pushed for the Mystical Realm’s involvement in the Heavenly Realm, and was very discriminatory towards cultivators after a few years of destroying a few Fate Devourer Sects. But the man was cautious. He wouldn’t jeopardise Gidelis Annador’s plans by acting out before a discussion with the High Truth. The fact that the Prophetess had seen they had a week before she was taken meant Annador wasn’t overly worried about what the Commission wanted with the Prophetess. It was possible he had already heard the rumours of there being a new Faction Head for them too.
It was actually Jasten Albrecht who was the bigger issue. He was an irregular. A genius warrior and the youngest ever Templar at 36, the man was unpredictable. Even until the end of the first timeline, nobody discovered what his intentions were. She was actually surprised to see him next to Louveste, because she knew they had been very hostile towards each other, to the point they had tried to kill each other several times. She wasn’t close enough to get a good look at their residual spiritual energy waves to see their emotions, however, so she couldn’t begin to estimate what either of their intentions were. And the fact Albrecht was here also shed light on a few key details regarding his past relationship with the Prophetess….
Still, neither of them had tried to intercept her. Either they already knew something about the black-haired girl wearing a half-mask from the Commission, or they didn’t want to interfere with the Prophetess and her for another reason.
Possibly both.
She stole a glance at the sleeping form of the boy, remembering what she had seen through the shard. While seeing the internal mana of another person was useful, it wasn’t anything she couldn’t do with her own dense spiritual energy. But she had learnt that depending on what she wanted to see, the shard could show her layers of the world. The basic ones were mana, like mana-vision, and just spiritual energy vision, which could see both spiritual energy and mana, but she could also see the little multi-coloured glistening motes and spheres within any User’s centre that represented a User’s skills, including the larger sphere that sat above them just below the heart, that represented their Origin Skill.
When she looked at the boy, she could see his Origin Skill was this weird semi-2 dimensional spherical concave grey structure that represented his unformed Origin Skill, and he had no smaller motes or spheres that represented any other skills, showing he truly wasn’t a User. It confirmed that she was seeing a User’s skills when she used the shard.
But it also confirmed something else. She was aware that skills technically weren’t a thing, just being some sort of coalesced mental structure of nebulous ‘Influence’ the System so loved shoved into roughly formed epicentres of tangible conceptual weight, so it meant the shard had some sort of relation to the System. She had a vague idea of what might actually be in her eye, which if put into more commonly understandable terms would be saying it’s like Marcus, which left her feeling weird, like some sort of parasite had attached to her, however, she decided she would ignore it. It was closer to a symbiotic relationship anyway. But she had digressed.
She paused to consider the fact she had gotten distracted again. It was giving her flashbacks to the mental instability she had been under before she fixed her soul. The way her thoughts had distorted in that limbo before the Tutorial was not normal, no matter how much she had rationalised it to herself while in that state. And all that rambling about metal toothpicks. She checked to see if her personality was beginning to degrade again and gave a slight sigh of relief to see it was just her being emotional.
Which was normally an odd occasion for her, but she had isolated her personality complex from the vast majority of her thought strands so it would give the soul energy time to settle, and hopefully not become too unstable again. The normal emotional control wasn’t active, which meant she got angrier easily, and now was definitely feeling the age gap when it came to dealing with Sedric, Scytale and Annaliese. Funny, because most of the Tower realms consider someone within their 200s to be the equivalent of someone in their late twenties.
Actually, it was probably normal for someone in their late twenties to feel an age gap when around teenagers, or in Sedric and Scytale’s case, those who still acted like teenagers. Questions after questions. When you know too much, you stop wanting to know, so she had a hard time relating to their curiosity about what she knew, but sheesh. And if she began telling Sedric and Annaliese about her ‘regression’….
Imagine having to discuss the fact the butterfly effect meant some trillion people might not even be born to those who haven’t even come in contact with such topics… the ethical dilemmas of time travel weren’t really discussed by the general population in the Mystical Realm. Theoreticals were only a conversation topic enjoyed by factioneers of All-Aeon Athenaeum, after all.
Well, she could happily blame the butterfly effect on the ‘Hero’, who likely hadn’t even considered it that far. And the soul existed regardless of space and time, so they hadn’t actually disappeared for eternity. But true reincarnation was only a thing in the Heavenly Realm, so she didn’t know where those unborn souls would go.
But when she had used the shard to look at the boy’s condition, she had tried to peel back a few more layers. Or maybe it was closer to applying a filter to her vision. She had heard that those with Fate-vision, or Fate-sight as it was also called, saw the energies of Fate as massive semi-translucent rivers of gold aura that flowed to and from people, cities, and places, the current of gold diverting depending on which Fate someone has determined a place to have. Those with high Fate just have more opportunities in general, and head towards better quality futures due to the greater quantity of opportunities. Those who manipulate Fate can select opportunities to occur out of several choices in someone’s Fate. So, she had tried to see Fate, because realistically that should’ve been one of the layers.
Well, she should’ve known she was a special one. Of course, she wouldn’t be able to see what everyone else could. Instead, what she saw was the overlapping all-encompassing white spiritual realm overlaid on her vision. The spiritual realm was an immaterial and non-physical realm that didn’t technically occupy any space whatsoever but was always present. And normally, you saw the spiritual realm when you entered your soul space, or projected your soul body, and ‘nascent soul’ as those who like being unique would say. Through her vision, she saw the Prophetess’s golden spherical Origin Skill surrounded by a vague golden silhouette of her body, in the same position as she was in the physical realm, leaning against the window while she slept.
Her golden centre slowly let out golden ripples into the spiritual realm, like light reflecting off the surface of the small waves of water. In the spiritual realm, ripples represented the residual spiritual energy given off by all sentient creatures, otherwise known as thoughts, which could be sensed and heard using spiritual energy.
If you asked Lucy if she was a mind reader, she would say only if you wanted her to be, and it wouldn’t be very effective. Even soul cultivators who had a good understanding of the spiritual realm had great difficulty in decoding and translating the millions of sensations and emotions even the tiniest mammal felt. She would just conveniently not mention her thousands of helpful thought strands that could do it for her if she wished.
But the golden ripples weren’t thoughts. Thoughts were just ripples, like ripples on water, which normally had no colour. Coloured ripples represented concepts. And considering they were emanating from the Prophetess’s Origin Skill, it was likely the concept of ‘Fate’.
The boy, however, was… interesting. Nobody knew what the spiritual realm actually looked like, as an individual’s spiritual energy only translated it into a form that the User could understand, but it was Lucille’s first time seeing something in the spiritual realm that looked like a real paradox. Half of what she saw looked somewhat like those physics diagrams of wormholes or black holes. The tiniest motes of colour in the surrounding mostly pure white area seemed to be dragged towards the opening of a funnel, which occupied the space where the boy’s incomplete Origin Skill was and fell down into an endless hole.
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But like a Klein bottle, there was another structure occupying the same space as the funnel. This one was upside down and seemed to spit out motes of pure white substance. It sounded like he was an existential vacuum cleaner of some kind, but she didn’t think that was what was going on. His Origin Skill was unformed, after all, so it was currently applying the barest minimum of its preliminary functions. She had no basis to determine what his Origin Skill actually did.
She didn’t believe his ability couldn’t be controlled. The System never gave truly dangerous Origin Skills. That would defeat the entire purpose behind the System if skills hurt their Users. Perhaps his Origin Skill just needed understanding. That reminded her about a certain mage who may like to study his abilities, and considering what she knew about how concepts worked, he just might be immune to it.
But now she thought of him, he was actually a talent in and of himself and might be willing to be part of an independent force under her. She had the resources and knew of a valuable gift she could tempt him with. A sponsorship might be a good idea. That mage’s Essential Order Origin Skill gave him all 6 essential elements, and he was interested in probability and chance calculation, so he would be a good fit for Saufren Lestial’s divination skills. Now she needed an excuse to do so without arousing attention…
She opened her eyes as she remembered something. In her discussion with the four Counties, they had agreed to hold an internal debut for her to officially reveal her plans to the entire Commission. They weren’t going to invite Faction allies or any other force due to the Empire’s annual end-of-year ceremony, as it was a rule for a new noble of a large noble faction in the Mystical Realm to meet the Emperor personally before holding an external debut, but organising a smaller event purely for the Faction wasn’t illegal. If she used her authority as Head to order Efratel to come to the debut, without inviting him with her real name, then she’d have enough time to talk to him before the event. She would also like to discuss his trip and the Alichanteu’s internal conflict in more detail, while also asking him about his interactions with Trisroa Vel-Winteridge and the Barbosas siblings.
Vincent would organise it. He was her aide, after all. She’d never tell him the real reason she wanted him as her aide was so he could deal with all the nobles for her. She turned her head to look out the window, noticing the outline of a city on the horizon, still a good hour and a half away. She sighed and turned her body back around, sitting normally on the bench, and opened her dimensional bag to get some paper and a pen. She might as well do some work while they were waiting. She needed to make the most of her time.
…
“You cast a spell on me!” Annaliese exclaimed, stunned outrage apparent on her face.
Lucy looked up from her newspaper to gaze dully at the girl opposite her. They had just dropped off her brother at the hospital. “Technically I cast a spell at you. Also, for the record, you’ve said this at least four times already. This is the fifth,” she said, returning to her newspaper.
The younger girl was unrelenting. “But you used magic to shut me up! How is that fair when I can’t even do anything back!” she responded, indignant.
“If I wasted a spell on you, just so you would keep quiet…” Lucy replied dryly, “Then maybe that’s saying something about you.”
“They were understandable questions,” Annaliese stated, stubbornly sticking to the topic.
“I remember saying we’ll discuss this later.” Exasperated, Lucy threw out an arm to gesture to the busy streets of the Gilded Seat, becoming increasingly tired by this conversation. “How, may I ask, does this look like a good place to discuss confidential topics about your immensely high status, Miss Prophetess?!”
Annaliese blinked. “Don’t noble carriages like this have soundproofing, especially with the amount of money you have?”
Lucille glared at her. “I specifically took a lower quality carriage without expensive soundproofing enchantments just so I wouldn’t draw attention. And don’t think for one moment that just because I have money, I’d waste it however I want. You should know even more than me how important money is.”
That finally made her shut up for a moment, looking sheepish. But it was only for a moment. “So… are we there yet?” she asked, nearly pressing her nose against the window to see outside.
Lucy rolled her eyes with a loud sigh as she folded her newspaper and put it down. She pointed to the other side of the carriage. “If you would look out the opposite window,” she said, weary, "then you would see our designated location, and then I don’t have to tell you because you could see it for yourself.”
The blonde-haired girl eagerly switched to viewing out the other window, and her eyes grew rounder as she spotted the Headquarters towering over all the other buildings. She turned to stare at Lucy. “That’s your house?”
“House of half a month, I suppose. I only live on the top floor though,” Lucy replied.
“You live in a mansion,” Annaliese stated. Then she blinked and frowned slightly. “Actually, how old even are you?”
Lucy had an unreadable expression as she looked at the girl. “…18. Why, may I ask, do you need to know?”
Annaliese felt that something was a little off with her answer but didn’t focus on it, instead pulling back to look at Lucille with a shocked expression. “You sound nothing like a teenager.”
“So I’ve been told,” Lucy stated, unamused. “Why are you so suddenly confident in revealing your true opinions all of a sudden, thinking I’d just let it go?”
The other girl shrugged. “You don’t seem to really care about other people’s opinions.” She thought for a moment. “Or about other people much, either,” she added.
“How very astute of you. And convenient for your continued well-being,” Lucy responded dryly as she pulled back on her overcoat. She cocked an eyebrow at the girl as she gestured to the door with her head. “Also, we’re here.”
The carriage pulled to a halt precisely one second after that, and the door opened. Annaliese quickly hurried after Lucy as they exited the carriage, and stopped to stare, amazed at the giant marble and gold building that glinted in the sun of the late afternoon. Brilliant flowering hedges lined the pathway, full of gorgeous blooming flowers of all kinds. Lucy gestured to the pathway.
“I decided to take the side entrance, believing it to be the wisest course of action,” she stated. “I didn’t think you’d appreciate having to go through the main reception hall.”
The golden-eyed girl blinked in confusion. “Why? I’ve heard the reception hall is supposed to be gorgeous.”
“Because the reception hall would be filled with pretentious noble nitwits who would love to judge us both,” she stated blandly, walking down the path. The two Chavaret guards followed her. “As you have so accurately pointed out,” she continued sarcastically, “I wouldn’t care about their opinions, but I’m not sure you would be so resilient to their gazes.”
She gave a pointed stare as she looked Annaliese up and down, especially looking at Annaliese’s dress, which was dirty at the knees and hem, patched up in places and obviously too small for her. The girl turned red as she held the dress’s skirt in her hands, twisting it awkwardly. Lucy sighed at her reaction and just exasperatedly walked towards the Headquarters, leaving the Prophetess to hastily try to catch up to her.
“Don’t you think you should be far past the point of embarrassment by now?” Lucille said, pinching her nose bridge.
Annaliese scratched her cheek. “Er… I hadn’t really considered it much at all, with all that had been going on.”
Lucy turned to gaze at the girl silently for a moment. Then she spoke up, “What you are doing right now is unhealthy.”
The girl flinched. She hugged herself and looked to the side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Focusing too much on the present, ignoring your emotions, keeping yourself going without stopping, forcefully acting bright and bubbly,” Lucy replied, stepping through the side entrance. A doorkeeper bowed to her as they passed after Lucy held up her black card for him to see, and they continued walking. “I kept things moving fast so you didn’t fall into shock, but you are going to be completely exhausted for a while. Stop trying to rush things.”
She raised an eyebrow at Annaliese. “It’s obvious you think I’ll answer your questions as soon as we get to my floor. Don’t think I’m going to do that when you’re running on less than two hours of sleep.”
The expression on Annaliese’s face froze as Lucy made her way towards the lifts. Lucy smiled brightly at the Prophetess. “Unless 24 hours have passed, I will refuse all meetings with you. I will be telling that to my staff.”
Annaliese was aghast. “What! No, you can’t do that! You can’t just order me to rest, you’re not my mother!”
Lucy stubbornly ignored the girl’s attempts to get her to withdraw her words as they stepped into the lift. Exercising an extreme talent for blocking out noisy people, Lucy headed towards her living quarters on the top floor once the lift had ascended.
Annaliese was silently glaring at Lucy as she opened the door to her living room. Vincent, because of how often they used her room to discuss things, had taken up the habit of staying there when Lucy wasn’t in her study, and so looked up from what he was reading as he heard them come in. Lucille sighed as she took off her coat and slung it across the back of the couch, sitting down on the couch with aplomb.
Annaliese just shifted awkwardly as Vincent shifted his glasses, peering at her curiously. He turned to Lucy. “It seems you had a successful trip? I’m not sure I appreciate the lack of details beforehand, however,” he said, looking at Lucy with narrowed eyes.
Lucy closed her eyes, not bothering to look at him. “Let’s just say the situation was urgent. I’ll tell you about it later.” She gestured with her thumb to the girl behind her. “Please organise a room for her on this floor, as well as someone to get her some clothes.”
Vincent raised an eyebrow at how tired she looked but got up and walked over to the Annaliese, holding out a hand to shake for her. He smiled at the girl. “Pleased to meet your acquaintance, Miss Verdon. I am Vincent Evisenhardt, Lucille Goldcroft’s aide. I am sure you have had an arduous journey, so please have a good rest during your time here.”
The Prophetess looked wary as she shook his hand. “You… know who I am?”
Her reaction made Vincent pause, and he shifted his half-moon glasses again to look at her more closely. “No I do not,” he stated blandly. “I have absolutely no clue who you are, besides your name.” He gave Lucy a side-eye. “I was unfortunately left in the dark about several details due to someone here.”
Lucy didn’t react. “Also, please send someone to talk to the hospital. Her brother is there. It would be best if the boy had as few people visit him as possible, and try to avoid using Citadel healers too.”
Vincent frowned slightly as he looked at her. “It seems there were some issues. But Citadel healers…” He held his chin. “Protection’s light element spells are the most effective. Why would you want to avoid using them?”
Lucy finally opened her eyes and turned around to look over the back of the couch. She made eye contact with Annaliese, before looking at Vincent. “Her brother had terrible lifeforce reduction. Light element spells don’t apply much in that circumstance, as water and wood element healers can aid better.”
Vincent gazed intently at Lucy. It wasn’t an excuse that could fool him in the least, because light element spells were still beneficial in a multitude of other ways for an injured individual, but he sighed and decided to let it go. “I’ll organise something.”
Lucy pointed to the Prophetess. “And, this girl has stayed up for 28 hours straight with only a less than two-hour nap before we came here, so please organise her room as quickly as possible.”
The blonde-haired girl glared at Lucy, while Vincent looked between them both, observing their interaction. Then he smiled, seemingly understanding something, and Lucy narrowed her eyes at him. Vincent placed two hands on the Prophetess’s shoulders and spun her around, pushing her towards the door. “Come here, let me show you to your new room, Miss Verdon.”
“Huh? Wait-”
He pushed her out of the room, a businessman-like smile on his face. “Now, now, do you want to damage the Faction’s reputation by refusing our goodwill?”
“But-”
“During your time here, you will be treated like a noble! Do you really want to miss this chance?”
“Um-” The weak cries of Annaliese as she tried to refuse slowly quietened as they left Lucy’s living room, Vincent firmly moving her along. When she couldn’t hear them anymore, she exhaled loudly and twisted her body on the couch, kicking her feet up. She put an arm across her eyes as the other hung limply over the edge of the couch.
He’s going to give me grief about this.
She had a strong suspicion he was beginning to catch on to the reason why she had hired him. Possibly the reason why she wanted to pretend she was a puppet leader, too. Unfortunately for him, their contract meant he needed to work for her for at least ten years before he could even leave, a short time period for a member of the realms. They were in it for the long run.
Scytale had decided to devote his full attention to finding a way into Ashale’viaf’s three hidden gardens since he wasn’t allowed to eat any more natural treasures without asking her. She was glad it was keeping him entertained, but the idiot knew nothing about the way magic arrays and mana-circles functioned, so he was just trying to force himself through the doors. At least it meant he wouldn’t terrorise her new guest.
On the topic of guests… she expanded her spiritual energy field to see what Sedric was up to. The staff were giving her reports, Sally Meyers being especially keen on helping her for some reason, but she wanted to see firsthand how he was using the card. Well, she made it sound like she didn’t know why Sally Meyers was trying so hard, but truthfully she had just decided to ignore it. Gratitude was burdensome. It was better for them to hold hostility towards Lucy because then she knew she was allowed to screw them over.
Sedric was currently unpacking boxes in his new workshop. It seemed he had put the card to good use, as he had purchased high-quality versions of his most basic tools, although she noticed that a few of the tools seemed to have far too many redundant ‘special features’ to say he was smart with his choices. Like the workbench that had a plush leather swivel chair attached. He’d find out in time that more often than not, he would be standing up to work. Well, that was for him to experience and not for her to tell him. When he realised the uselessness of it, she could use it as blackmail in the future if he became too free with his spending.
As for her two other ‘guests’ of a sort… Apophis and Ouroboros were actually dormant. With their souls formed, they needed to fall asleep to let them settle properly. They had essentially been subjected to tremendously long periods of soul damage, which couldn’t be healed with just a donation of her own spiritual energy. They also needed to learn to understand the new information coming from their own spiritual energy perception, and so she had left them on her bed in her new bedroom, which she wasn’t using too much really.
She likely wouldn’t become a Rank-1 for a good few months at least because of the lack of weapons, as she wanted to avoid using powerful magic as an alternative in case the System restricts it, and certainly didn’t have the time to level up afterwards, especially when she hadn’t tested out how her broken Status worked. Scytale would likely match his own plans to hers too, as it was just easier for them both to remain together at this time. She had nobles to deal with first anyway.
Which reminded her of the Citadel. She doubted they would stretch the time to officiate the Prophetess any longer than the week she already had, which was hopefully enough time to sort out everything she needed to with the Prophetess. She wouldn’t know which high-ranking member would come to collect her, but they would likely already know she existed. She needed to keep them guessing about what she was really like. That wouldn’t be too hard for her though. As long as she managed to trick the Citadel’s light element lie-detecting spells, she would be fine. With her ability to control her emotions and even her own thoughts, putting on a whole different persona was effortless.
As long as Annaliese kept her mouth shut.