Chapter 499: A Fate Foretold
Chapter 499: A Fate Foretold
Ambrose posted his message about his approaching death in the group chat, but nothing happened for quite a while.
Then, as usual, the dwarven vampire Heki Stone chimed in. [Human-Hater: Are you putting on some act again? I don't get it this time.]
Ambrose was genuinely at a loss for words. Why did this dwarf never believe him whenever he actually told the truth? Had the Lord of Knowledge cursed the man to never be able to tell fact from fiction for the rest of his life?
But it wasn't just the dwarf vampire who didn't believe him. Practically no one in the group did.
Gareth even commented, [Dullahan's Crown: Who do you owe money to? Trying to dodge a debt with this excuse?]
[Pale Little Skeleton: You trying to stiff a devil on a payment? No need for that. It's not like you can't afford it.]
[Mute: What kind of joke is this? You're a lich. Don't tell me you've already made enough gold to satisfy your obsession.]
[Black Rose: If you've been tired lately, come rest a while in the Umbral Depths. Discipline a few drow while you're at it.]
[Human-Hater: You're just building up to something again, aren't you? Next, you're going to drop some shocking news and expect us all to gasp and applaud like an audience. I've already seen right through you. Skip the boring setup and just get to the point.]
......
Watching the group cheerfully carrying on without him, Ambrose could only repeat himself. [Megaman Tiga: There's no setup. Friends, my time has come. This is the fate every diviner is destined to meet.]
This time, the members of the group chat really did fall silent.
Ambrose began settling his accounts with the group, one by one, the way a man wrote his last will. [Megaman Tiga: Aige, my friend, in the future, the kouto will gather beneath your banner in great numbers. Once they're freed from their madness, even though the faith they provide will be lessened to some extent, it should still be more than enough to carry you to your goal. That'll settle our contract in full.
[Gareth, I'm handing all of the overseas alchemy operations over to Isabel. She's my student. She's still a bit lacking right now, but give her a few years and her achievements in alchemy will surpass mine. You can trust her without worry.]
[Lady Rose, I'm sending all my research on the living mercury slimes to the Umbral Depths. With the current population already established, continued breeding shouldn't be difficult. As for the plan to bring down Lyon, I'm afraid I won't be able to see it through myself. But I'll hand over everything I've set up on Lyon's end to you...]
Ambrose kept writing, page after page. This time, everyone finally understood he wasn't joking. He was genuinely putting his affairs in order.
For the members of the Elegiac Society, this was truly a first.
The undead were immortal by nature, only ever perishing through some accident or another. No undead ever knew in advance when death would come for them, so none of them ever arranged their final affairs the way a dying man might.
Nothing like Ambrose's situation had ever come up before.
Everyone remained silent except for Black Rose, who couldn't quite believe what was happening and cut Ambrose off mid-will.
[Black Rose: Shut up. I'm heading over.]
That declaration put an end to Ambrose's long monologue. He had no choice but to close the Necromantic Codex and wait for the undead queen's arrival. He hadn't expected that posting his own death notice would get Black Rose this worked up.
He'd left her every connection and resource tied to Lyon, hadn't he? That was really the best he could do.
Black Rose arrived quickly, with Milena in tow.
The moment she saw Ambrose, Black Rose seized his arm and said coldly, "Open up your private space. We're talking in there."
With a creditor at his door, Ambrose had no choice but to comply.
Once inside the cluttered space, Black Rose confirmed the time flow had been set to a year inside for every day outside, then finally sat down and said to Ambrose, "What exactly is going on? How do you go from perfectly fine to dying, just like that?"
Ambrose had no choice but to explain about Selwyn's letter.
Black Rose looked puzzled. "That's just a letter. What does that have to do with you?"
Ambrose tried to explain. "It's hard for outsiders to understand, but think of it this way: that letter is like a bow. It has narrative weight. Once it's introduced in a story, it's bound to fire a fatal arrow eventually. And as far as I'm concerned, that arrow has already passed straight through my soul. There's no changing it now." [1]
The instant the letter transformed into a scroll, the future Selwyn had worked so hard to conceal had surfaced in Ambrose's own soul as well. He'd seen a hazy, indistinct image, which he knew with total clarity was his own death.
Black Rose refused to give up. "You're connected to so many gods. Surely your own master, the God of Alchemy, can save you? Elevating you to become his attendant god should be simple enough for him."
Milena chimed in eagerly, echoing her mother. "That's right, Father! You can't just give up! Use that unbeatable brilliance of yours to solve this problem!"
As the two of them refused to let the matter drop, Ambrose realized that outsiders truly had trouble grasping what it meant for a diviner to simply... await death.
Only by witnessing that fate could not be defied for themselves would they finally understand what state he was in now.
"Fine. Let's ask my master, then."
Ambrose immediately reached out to the God of Alchemy, and the deity's image appeared on the magic mirror in short order.
The God of Alchemy was, as always, swinging his crystal hammer. He seemed to be mid-experiment every single time Ambrose called him. He set the hammer down. "My dear student, which god have you offended today, that you need your old master to come clean up your mess again?"
This time, Ambrose didn't joke back. He simply said, calm and steady, "Master, could you elevate me to become one of your attendant gods right now?"
The God of Alchemy blinked, taken aback. "Where's this coming from all of a sudden?"
Ambrose offered no explanation. He simply pressed on. "Can you?"
The God of Alchemy nodded. "Of course I can. But your contract with Hell isn't finished yet, is it? Once you become a god, you won't be able to keep making soul transactions on that scale anymore. Gods aren't permitted to funnel large numbers of souls into Hell privately."
The instant she heard that, Black Rose dropped her manners. She demanded, agitated, "Why would there be a restriction like that?"
The God of Alchemy shot Black Rose a puzzled look. He could sense that something was off about the mood. Nevertheless, he explained anyway, "Under Hell's rules, the souls of the wicked fall into Hell through random assignment, unless they've already made a pact with a specific devil before death. This is a rule set by Asmodeus, the Lord of the Nine Hells, to preserve the basic balance among the nine layers of hell.
"No god is permitted to conduct soul transactions with any devil in Hell. Sending down a handful of souls now and then is one thing, but something on the scale of millions of soul-coins is simply forbidden. Asmodeus will never allow any other god to disrupt Hell's balance of power that way. Otherwise, any sufficiently powerful god could just flood Hell with heroic spirits and stir up chaos on a whim. Asmodeus would work himself to death trying to manage it all."
The nine layers of Hell were an unusually special plane. In theory, every wicked soul across all the myriad worlds was meant to descend into Hell to face punishment. That was a rule laid down by Aion at the world's creation. But in practice, Hell's own devils rarely behaved themselves, and had made no shortage of enemies along the way.
For a realm meant to punish the wicked, it was more than a little ironic that its administrators were, without exception, wicked themselves.
As Lord of the Nine Hells, Asmodeus had his hands full not only keeping his own subordinates from rebelling, but also guarding against overzealous, self-righteous gods barging into Hell to stir up trouble.
Sariel was the perfect example of exactly that. The chaos she'd once caused had thrown Hell into utter turmoil, and it had taken Asmodeus personally stepping in to put an end to it. This was precisely why he'd since cut off all soul transactions between gods and Hell. After all, who could say for certain whether the souls being sent down were genuine sinners, or heroic spirits sent in to cause trouble?
If you stuffed an entire lot of them into some infernal lord's territory all at once, were you trying to overfeed the devil, or provoke him into rebellion?
This particular rule was strictly enforced, and precious few gods dared to break it.
Ambrose summarized. "So what you're saying is, I need to finish paying off the soul-coins I owe the Archduchesses of Hell first, since mortals dealing with gods aren't bound by Hell's rules. If I were to become your attendant god, I wouldn't be able to complete that transaction anymore, which would put me in breach of contract, and the devils would come after me."
The God of Alchemy nodded. "Have you run into some kind of trouble? Weren't you still waiting for the Goddess of Wealth to reach out?"
Ambrose shook his head. "It's nothing. Just asking. Sorry to bother you, Master."
The God of Alchemy studied Ambrose for a moment, but said nothing further. His image slowly faded from the magic mirror.
The instant the God of Alchemy vanished, Black Rose spoke up again, urgent. "There's still a way, then! Just complete that contract! And even if you can't, you could hide in the God of Alchemy's realm and—"
Ambrose looked at Black Rose and shook his head. "It's not that simple. Even if I fled into my master's realm this very instant, the end result would be the same: devils would come for me and drag me down to Hell. No matter how I try to hide, the outcome won't change. There will always be some unforeseen moment where I slip up and get caught.
"Same story for the alternative. Even if I started manufacturing soul-coins right now, holed up in my private space, the materials would suddenly run short, and I'd have to restock—and then something would go wrong during transport. Or maybe, once the soul-coins were finally finished, some other Archduke of Hell would seize them during the exchange... It doesn't matter what the accident ends up being. The outcome's already fixed."
Black Rose still seemed unwilling to accept it. She murmured to herself, "There has to be another way. If it's useless, then what's the point of that scroll this Selwyn person sent you? Why would he send you something like that at all?"
"To buy me time. I can use that scroll to make the entire world forget I ever existed. After a period of upheaval, I could dig myself a hole and bury myself in it—and maybe, after a thousand years or so, when I finally wake up again, everything happening now will have vanished. Anything that would have condemned me to death will have been worn away by time."
Black Rose seized Ambrose's hand at once. "Then do that. In the Umbral Depths, we can find plenty of suitable places to hide away. I've already waited for years. I don't mind waiting a few more centuries for Lyon to collapse on its own."
Ambrose looked at her, caught off guard. That was no small thing to hear. Was she really willing to set aside her hatred for Lyon?
But unfortunately, all he could do was shake his head again.
"There'd be no point in that. As a diviner, you can't just praise the Goddess of Fate for her favor whenever things go well for you, and refuse to believe in her the moment fate turns against you. Even if I erase my own name from the world, I'll still reach the end of my life in some corner of the world where no one will know."
Black Rose couldn't understand why Ambrose had already resigned himself so completely to his own death, but she wasn't ready to give up.
"If you can't defy fate, then let me help you. I'll lock you away somewhere. I'll make it absolutely certain that no one can kill you!"
1. Chekhov's gun. ☜