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Chapter 522: Prophecy

While Roland was happily preparing his new magic spell, the hastily assembled adventuring team outside the ruins was now fully prepared to set out. At this time, the adventuring team leader Barton finally told everyone their goal and reason for being here.

Right now, in their temporary campground, Barton was vividly talking to everyone. He was both boosting everyone’s morale as well as assigning tasks. All the mercenaries and companions gathered around him were looking forward to the fight they expected.

“Our mission this time is incredibly important. It’s highly risky, but also comes with great rewards. As long as we succeed, we’ll basically cut off the Undead Calamity. This will absolutely make all of us into famed heroes. None of us will ever have to worry about the next meal ever again.”

Mercenaries were no volunteers. Talking about ideals with them would be a waste of time. Only the most practical benefits would possibly motivate them. But, that still wouldn’t be enough. No matter how high the rewards, no mercenary would be willing to undertake a certain death mission. One would have to be alive to enjoy the rewards, after all.

Currently, if you only looked at the surface, attacking the heart of the undead camp would definitely be a certain death mission. These mercenaries had been willing to come along half because of the promised munificent rewards, but also half because they believed that the well-known veteran mercenary Old Barton wouldn’t be so idiotic to go on a certain death mission.

“...According to what that person told me, we don’t need to fight the undead head on. Our main opponents will be the metallic toys inside the ruins. And, our goal is to bring my daughter to a special location inside those ruins. You don’t need to understand the specifics, because you might not even understand even if I explain to you. You all only need to do what you’re best at—opening up the path with your weapons!”

“That’s right, as long as we find the connection point, we can reclaim the right to control the Sky Tower. All you need to do is bring me and this little girl to that location. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Timlad added that as an addendum. Originally, Roland had wanted the great engineer to stay behind and help defend the city, but then thought about how this mission would probably be impossible to accomplish without Timlad’s help. In the end, Roland could only let Timlad come along.

“Relax, I won’t be a burden on everyone.”

Timlad chuckled as he said this, and even made a pose to flash his muscles. He received a round of laughter that the mercenaries tried their best to hide.

Of course, nobody really thought that Timlad would be a burden on everyone else, since he was a famed mythic hero of this generation. In fact, everyone trusted his character and abilities far more than that terrifying and abnormal-seeming elf-form dragon lich that came along.

It was also because Timlad came along that Barton had a much easier time of convincing all the mercenaries to sign up for this mission. Such a famous personage was coming along, which meant to everyone else that this definitely wouldn’t be a certain death mission. And, Timlad had a good reputation, which greatly helped to improve everyone’s morale. It even made everyone feel as they were going to be responsible for saving the world.

“Now then, allow me to explain. Our main goal is to reach the very top of the Sky Tower. But since this Sky Tower has a unique design, that actually means the deepest underground layer. And even though the high-level undead aren’t in the tower, the mechanical guardians will be quite dangerous. But, that’s also a chance for us. I have a plan. First, we need to find a large mechanical guardian that’s by itself...”

The plan was quite an old-fashioned one. The main forces would strike from the front and attract the enemies’ attention, while a smaller team would raid the most important location. But, clichés were actually quite useful in combat sometimes—as long as they were practical. Roland would act as the main force in front to attract the undead’s attention, with the goal of pressuring Conservation enough to have her call for reinforcements from the ruins. That would naturally weaken the defenses of the ruins in the rear even further.

And, with a Haletdam generation expert like Timlad in the adventuring team, that would make it far easier for everyone to explore this Haletdam generation ruin.

As Timlad explained the plan to everyone, he also paid extra attention to the bald old man who was carefully watching over his daughter. This time, Timlad was not only acting as an advisory expert for the adventuring team. Roland had also given him the task of assessing Old Barton’s abilities.

‘Allow me to see if you’re worthy of Roland’s high opinion of you. If you want to become a core member of his new Dawn Plan, the current you is still far too insufficient. An army’s leader can’t be so overly concerned with familial love... Still, this is really strange. Why is that Roland can always randomly find people that are so capable to work for him? And, Roland’s never even misjudged a single person! Are skilled heroes so common in the world? Is he really that excellent a judge of character and abilities? Or, are the rumors that Roland has a prophetic ability actually real?’

Although Roland had previously brought out his strange pictures and prophecies of Armageddon, Timlad hadn’t truly believed them. That was because pictures and other magical images could all be faked. And as Timlad was a pure science-believing engineer and former soul research expert, the more he researched this topic, the more he refused to believe that it would be possible to see through the future with so many factors of karma at work.

As Timlad considered the ethereal Concepts of Fate and Prophecy, he felt very confused despite having received the inherited memories of a Haletdam generation scholar. It could still be somewhat explained by saying that Roland had outstanding insight with how the random novices he picked all grew up into mythic heroes. However, Roland had mysteriously given his full support to Olivia and Timlad back when they were nothing but pure young novices. That was incredibly difficult to explain.

In fact, Roland had given Olivia and Timlad so much financial support that was all wasted at first with constantly failed experiments. Olivia and Timlad themselves felt quite depressed at not being able to accomplish anything, yet Roland had a completely relaxed attitude about everything. It was as if he had one hundred percent confidence that they would succeed. But, for any researcher to accomplish anything, luck would be even more important than ability. With how sly Roland always was, his confidence in the novices Olivia and Timlad seemed completely unfounded to Timlad himself.

‘It’s the same this time as well. Roland directly told me that Old Barton has the leadership ability to lead his future army and the ability to become an incredible hero in the future. Yet, Barton is clearly just an old mercenary who has yet to accomplish anything noteworthy in his long life. And, he’s too old, so his best growth period is long past him. It’s absolutely inconceivable what Roland sees in Barton. I don’t think it can be explained in any way apart from prophecy.’

Although Timlad wondered about this, he had no intention of directly asking Roland about it. Although prophecy was something incredibly difficult to understand, and a person with the ability to control fate made him feel somewhat helpless, it was also reassuring to have a prophet who could always foresee victory on his side. And, the most important part was...

‘None of us are following Roland because of his prophecies or because we think it will lead us to a glorious future. In fact, I always thought that he was just scamming others back in the day when he kept prophesizing about an Armageddon. Dark cults always use the same tactics...’

Timlad shook his head and tossed such thoughts to the back of his mind. Roland’s crazed prophecies from back in the day had already been transformed into reality. His prophecy about Armageddon was now a real threat. His seemingly empty ideals about creating Hell had already been actualized. As for Roland’s companions that shared the same path and ideals as him, some had parted ways, and some had died. But even more people gathered together to help transform Roland’s ideals into reality. Since Roland had already lived up to what he’d promised, what did it matter if he had a few secrets?

‘...At the very least, we’ll all believe in him and walk down this path together with him.’

Timlad thought that to himself, and didn’t need to say it out loud. The young Timlad had now grown up to become a famed mythic hero. Yet, he still had the same wish as before, wanting a better future for himself and his family. And in the current day, everything that the Northlands (and Hell Faction) had done was all to make the world a slightly better place so that ordinary people could lead better lives.

But right now, the person that Timlad was thinking of as a prophet was currently dealing with his own frustrations.

“You’re supposed to be the Creator Goddess of Order, which is like the GM of an online game. Can’t you come up with a new prophecy? The world is now so far off track from the game’s story that all the old prophecies are useless now.”

[This means that you’ve done an excellent job. However, new prophecies will be impossible. Actually, my prophecies are only calculations on what the most likely outcome is. These calculations use my abilities as a Creator Goddess over the laws of Time and Space to predict what will happen in the future. Making such a prophecy has a tremendous cost associated with it, limiting the number of times I can do so. It will be absolutely impossible for me with my current strength. And you can analyze from the foundational workings that even if I was at my strongest, I still wouldn’t be capable of making a new prophecy with how far off track Fate has become.]

As expected, my System rejected my request for a new prophecy. But, upon careful consideration, Astrya had no reason to lie to me. Everything she said was completely logical.

“Just like the stories said, prophets are unable to prophesize about themselves? Then, doesn’t that mean that all prophets are under the restriction of being unable to do anything themselves? Wouldn’t that make their prophecies into useless garbage...?”

I felt like I suddenly understood the nature of prophecies much better. I definitely didn’t understand an ethereal concept like prophecies that could predict the future. However, if prophecies were actually a logical calculation of the future, with analysis backed up by the foundational laws of Time and Space to help make the prophecy 100% accurate, that was far more understandable.

Since prophecies were only a calculation of what was most likely to happen in the future, I now completely understood why the “game walkthrough” that she gave me didn’t have any information about me or Karwenz. That was because this prophecy had been made by the Creator Goddess of Order herself, and the moment that she made this prophecy, what really happened was destined to veer off from what the prophecy predicted.

That was why, logically speaking, there was no such thing as a 100% accurate prophecy in the world. As long as the prophecy was made, and as long as someone heard the prophecy, the future would definitely be changed. That was because the prophecy would never include the prophecy itself.

And since a prophecy was a calculation made using the laws of Time and Space in a computer-like fashion, then the first variable would be my System that made the prophecy, and the second variable would be me who heard the prophecy. I then interfered with the lives of others included in the prophecy, making them into a new variable. With so many variables accumulating, the power required for making a new prophecy would multiply exponentially. This was the foundational reason why my System told me a new prophecy would be impossible.

In that case, Astrya’s prophecies could likely only be used once every few millennia, and only after all the major characters in the previous prophecy had died. This was actually a weak ability that only appeared strong.

“Tsk, this cheat ability is one-time use only and has already been used up. So useless.”

[You should be satisfied with what you got already. Would you prefer that Cynthia who attached herself to Karwenz had this ability instead? That would truly make Karwenz into the harem protagonist of this story. Would you like to see that instead?]

Now that I thought about, Karwenz’s character story was that his parents, friends, women, and country had all perished. He then killed all his enemies as he leveled up, including even the Gods. The deeper his grudge, the faster he would level up. He really did seem like the typical protagonist of a Xianxia novel. Still, I felt that it wouldn’t be the right style for this story.

I shook my head and gave up on the idea of asking my System for a new game walkthrough. In fact, I didn’t really expect it in the first place. After all, I hadn’t relied on this so-called prophecy to achieve what I had today.

And, I even secretly heaved a sigh of relief. This wasn’t because I didn’t trust my System, but rather because prophecies and Fate were concepts that made me feel uneasy.

If everything was already predestined, that would feel like a complete denial of everyone’s efforts. It was far more realistic that prophecies were actually super computer-like calculations.

But, right now wasn’t the time for me to be thinking about prophecies.

My next spell was successful. Although it would have been nice to have a certain ice queen singing “Let it go!” as the spell created an ice castle, the spell was supported by plenty of mana, an ice magic grandmaster, ice fairies, and the exquisite design of a Gold Elf princess. Soon, a beautiful and ethereal castle of ice appeared in front of everyone.

This ice castle was decorated in the typical elven style—ridiculously opulent. However, the main castle facilities seemed to be designed for giants. At the very least, the mega stone catapults were so large that even their snowball ammunition was taller than ten meters. It was obvious that no ordinary humans could wield such weapons.

The ice castle’s area just happened to completely fit all of Starwood City within it. The main defensive feature of the ice castle, the castle walls, stood more than seventy meters tall. It would be impossible for any giant other than a Titan to cross over such walls.

I wasn’t crazy enough to enchant these castle walls with my special [Hibernation Chill], as that would kill all the ordinary people within Starwood City. Still, this frozen ice castle wasn’t exactly easy for the ordinary people to handle due to the low temperature. The only part that made it slightly better for them was the fact that it was currently in between summer and autumn, so the base temperature was still alright.

And now, I finally took off the fake beard I had been using as Karo rather than Roland. Since I had done so many obvious things already, there was no more need to attempt at concealing my identity. Not only that, I felt that it would be rude of me to continue covering my face as I felt an Undead Emperor to the south of me with her attention on me.

“Long time no see. How have you been, Zero?”