The light of the magic circle flared, and the gold coins on the high platform began to melt away rapidly.
Countless points of light and shadow flickered to life, like film clips of the City of Alchemy from every angle. Many blurry human figures continuously formed and dissipated.
Harvey exclaimed excitedly, "It worked! I've connected to Fate!"
Harvey had indeed improved a great deal, but controlling such a powerful magic circle was still a bit much for him.
As the visions appeared, he felt as if a mountain was crashing down on him. The immense pressure made his heart race and his body tremble.
Ambrose immediately reminded him, "Don't resist it. You're capturing fragments of the future, not fighting against Fate. You believe in fate, don't you? Death will come for you sooner or later, so it doesn't matter if it's now or then!"
Harvey gave a bitter smile. No matter how much one accepted fate, it was impossible to be indifferent to death. Easier said than done.
Harvey could only force himself to concentrate, trying to find what he was looking for among the ever-shifting images.
"The secrets of the sewers..."
As he silently chanted this, the flickering images began to slow. The city scenes dwindled, and the dark, damp sewers started to dominate the view.
"Nicely done!" Ambrose praised.
The kid really had talent. Ambrose wondered who his teacher was. The School of Divination was difficult to get into. It was a true waste of talent for such a clever student to be sent out as an advisor to some backwater lord instead of being properly mentored.
Through Harvey's efforts, the images changed more and more slowly. The light and shadow began to freeze, solidifying into a fragment that shimmered with blue light.
Harvey said excitedly, "Success! This is fate!"
The fragment was like a small piece chipped from the river of time, endlessly replaying the same scene.
A blurry figure appeared in the sewers, holding a glowing artifact. A powerful force descended from the heavens, pierced through the surface of the earth, and entered the person. A divine spark began to form. Countless phantoms of gods appeared, and amidst their blessings and curses, a mortal ascended to godhood.
It was a very detailed vision. Except for the identity of the ascending god being unclear and the nature of the divine spark being unreadable, every other detail was vividly real, as if it would truly happen.
Just as Harvey was about to dissipate the mana and end the ritual, Ambrose spoke. "Don't relax. This is a false fate."
"A false fate?" Harvey said in surprise.
Ambrose explained, "That's right. Those lunatics in the City of Alchemy have created a false fate to mislead all beings with prophetic abilities. I ran into a group of druids and a hag in the sewers earlier. They were all lured there by prophecies.
"Prophecy is just a glimpse into a corner of fate. You can't expect every peeping tom to see the same scene through the same keyhole—unless someone deliberately created a fake."
Harvey had never imagined such a thing was possible. To create a false future to deceive all seers? What kind of magic was this? It must have been beyond the Legendary tier.
"What do we do now?" Harvey asked. He couldn't even tell if a prophecy was real or fake, let alone find the hidden truth.
"Use your power, the power of the School of Divination! Don't tell me you haven't prepared anything these past few days. Whether it was to escape or to kill me, you must have prepared several futures, right?" Ambrose said.
Harvey felt incredibly awkward. So Ambrose had been watching his every little move.
Preparing a future. It was a mysterious concept, and in practice, it was just as mysterious.
Mages of the School of Divination could manifest fate through meditation, for example, by turning it into a twenty-sided die.
Before the future arrived, they could roll the die and fix the number.
Then, they could use the number rolled on that die to replace the outcomes of the future. A high roll could replace a bad future, turning it into something good. A low roll could replace a lucky future, turning it into something bad.
Even more absurdly, these Dice of Fate could not only replace one's own future but also someone else's.
When Ambrose encountered the hag in the sewers, he had used this technique, replacing the hag's random teleportation future to ensure she would always teleport nearby, never able to escape.
This was the power of the School of Divination: to alter results, as if they were gods.
No one could say for sure whether replacing the future counted as changing fate, or if the act of replacing it was fated to happen all along.
Ambrose had conducted many tests in the past, only to find himself lost and without any answers.
And now, Ambrose wanted Harvey to use his own dice to replace this future.
If this was a false prophecy, then the Dice of Fate could shatter it.
Harvey took a deep breath and began to focus his power.
One by one, dice shimmering with starlight materialized, beginning to circle around Harvey. This was the materialization of his prophetic power.
Seeing this, Ambrose wasn't particularly pleased. He thought with annoyance, *Tsk, only five dice... In my plan, it would take at least seven to reliably shatter this false fate.*
Harvey was unaware of Ambrose's lowered opinion of him. He was completely focused on controlling his Dice of Fate, trying to use their power to alter the prophecy fragment before him.
One die flew out and sank into the fragment, causing only a few ripples.
The scene within the fragment remained unchanged. The blurry figure still became a god, as if nothing had happened.
Seeing this, Harvey steeled himself and threw the remaining four Dice of Fate at it.
This time, the false prophecy fragment finally changed. Numerous cracks appeared, and then it completely exploded.
Ambrose sighed. Dozens of Dice of Fate materialized around him and blasted the shattered future into even smaller pieces. The entire laboratory was filled with what looked like a shower of light.
After disintegrating, the endless specks of light reconverged, forming seven small crystals, each reflecting a different future.
Ambrose sighed again. In the end, he still had to intervene.
But having already abandoned the path of divination, every time he used the power of the school, he made it harder for himself to walk a new path, forever remaining a watered-down Legendary.
But what was done was done. With no time for regrets, Ambrose quickly examined the new futures.
In the first fragment, Ambrose saw a small mountain of gold. A million gold coins had appeared in his laboratory.
Excellent, truly excellent. It was the will of heaven. He was destined to be rich!
But what did this have to do with the sewers?
In the second fragment, a woman of noble bearing but with skin as white as paper appeared. She was holding Ambrose's head... and only his head.
Ambrose's greatest fear had come to pass.
So, a favorable future was the will of heaven, but for an unfavorable one, was he suddenly supposed to be the master of his own fate?