“Young man, do you wish to see your fate?”
Lucas stopped in his tracks and looked at the old man. He looked for a good few seconds and analysed him, but couldn’t make out anything about him. He really seemed like an ordinary beggar to him and nothing else. However, what this beggar said made him seem like an astrologer of some sort.
Lucas knew that fate couldn’t be calculated in this world and destiny couldn’t be measured. The reason was, of course, because of the presence of that one being. The astrologers in this world were jobless, and this once-revered profession was now regarded as nothing but a scam.
Lucas, however, could feel that this old man in front of him wasn’t someone ordinary. How? He had no idea. It was an intuition of his which he got from years and years of experience. And also, it wouldn’t hurt to listen to what he was saying, as even if he was a scammer, there would hardly be any loss on Lucas’s part.
“Yes.”
The old astrologer nodded his head and took out two dice from his cloth bag. He shuffled the dice in his hand and threw them on the ground. One die showed the number six, and another showed four on it. The astrologer bent down, picked the dice back up, and put them in his bag. He then took out a scroll from his bag and gave it to Lucas and said,
“Young man, your fate seems to have deviated towards another path. Whatever thing you were about to do right now would’ve failed, and the possibility of this happening is over ninety percent. However, fret not. Keep this scroll with you and tear it when the sun touches the horizon and dusk ends.”
Lucas nodded his head and took the scroll in his hand. He looked at the astrologer and said, “thank you. Can you please tell, what I owe you for the help you’ve provided me.”
The astrologer looked at Lucas, and instead of answering him directly, he said,
“The walker of time suffers betrayal, trying to save everyone and everything. Traveller, when there seems no path to walk, traverse the deepest darkness, choose the wrong, for the right isn’t judgement.”
Lucas frowned because he couldn’t understand even a single thing about what the astrologer was saying. He was about to ask more about it to the astrologer, however, right at this, Mikhail held Lucas’s shoulder and said,
“Don’t bother. He’s just a scammer anyway. We need to go quickly or things would get problematic.”
However, even after searching around for a few minutes, he couldn’t see him. It seemed as if the astrologer never even existed in the first place, and this bugged Lucas a lot.
‘Fuck, my intuition was right! That was indeed some bigshot! But where did he go!? And what the hell did he just blabber before going? I know he must be an astrologer, but could he not just speak in a normal tone? Argh… fuck my luck,’ Lucas thought to himself when he failed to find the astrologer.
He shifted his gaze to Mikhail and looked at him deeply. Just why did this guy have to interrupt him at that very moment? Lucas thought, but then he shoved aside those thoughts since he knew it wasn’t really his fault either. The astrologer did seem like a scammer.
Lucas searched once again for him but failed to find him. It really seemed like he didn’t exist at all and had Lucas not been holding the scroll he gave him, he would’ve just thought that he was hallucinating or something.
Lucas sighed and gave up searching for him, as he knew it was pointless. He walked towards Mikhail and the two once again left for the Emperor’s palace where Liam was.
A few minutes later.
The two arrived a few kilometres outside of the Emperor’s palace. Lucas looked at Mikhail and said, “alright, a simple and easy plan. You teleport with me inside, distract the people and I go towards the target. Once I reach, I’ll rip this talisman and signal you that your job is done. From then on, we two are on our own, okay?”
“Okay.” Mikhail agreed.
The two were discussing the layout of the palace, the number of people and various other minor details just for the sake of this one simple plan for the past few minutes in the restaurant and on their way here.
Now everything was ready, and it was time to take action.
Mikhail put on a disguise on himself and on Lucas too, held his shoulder and teleported right inside the Emperor’s palace.
DING! DING! DING! DING!
Bells started resounding everywhere in the Emperor’s palace because of Mikhail and Lucas, the intruders suddenly forcing their way inside.
Mikhail ignored that and spread out his senses to search for the person Lucas had mentioned. In the next second, he found him and once again teleported along with Lucas towards him.
…
Liam was sitting and meditating, trying to comprehend the laws of the world and improve his magic rank. However, his meditation was disrupted due to the loud ringing of bells, so he got up and cursed,
“What the fuck is happening? Just what is wrong with this place? There are constant problems, one or the other here. Isn’t this supposed to be calm and peaceful? These motherf—”
Liam was about to curse again when space fluctuated around him and Lucas and Mikhail teleported out.
Lucas wasted no time and dashed towards Liam, giving him a chop on the neck with the side of his palm, knocking him unconscious.
Liam, who was about to curse the staff of the palace again, suddenly felt everything around him turn dark and fell unconscious.