Chapter 677: Central Council Senate (5)
“Astrology, huh…”
Lennok had done similar things a few times in Machina, but it was always closer to intuition-based guesswork.
He hadn’t actually used a divination spell or ability.
An astrologer who gazes into the fate of others.
Not only did she foresee the destruction of Ars Nova, but her abilities were also directly recognized by Ascendants?
Then it’s understandable why the senators are observing the situation, deferring to her.
It must be because she is such a powerful spellcaster, and an existence that serves as justification to conclude this matter.
It seems they’ve decided that if Lennok agrees to the astrology, they can trust the decision to some extent.
“……”
He didn’t think it was just nonsense or a lie.
After all, there were seers in this world who had seen a branching point in the future where a conclusion had been reached, and returned.
Unlike Antares, who had seen one branch of a conclusion and returned, what would an astrologer who peeks into fate tell Lennok?
It was also true that he found it intriguing, precisely because he had never easily approached the concept of ‘fate.’
“……Alright.”
He leaned on his staff and slowly walked towards the astrologer.
Standing before the astrologer, Lennok spoke to the senators looking down from their seats.
“If you intend to conclude today’s events with this astrological reading…”
“……”
“However, I will hear the results of the astrology alone.”
Lennok nodded, looking at the woman with closed eyes.
“This seems like a purely personal matter. You aren’t planning to just sit there idly and eavesdrop on someone else’s fate, are you?”
“You don’t need to worry about that, Van.”
Silford replied.
“Once the spell begins, no one will be able to observe its progression anyway.”
“……”
“Aside from one observer to keep the two of you anchored to the current reality, no one will presume to delve into your fate.”
“Observer?”
At Lennok’s question, the Chairman spoke.
“Senator Meyer.”
Thump!!
The one who rose was an old man, appearing older than anyone else present.
Yet, his steadfast gaze and aura shone brilliantly, defying the passage of time.
The old politician who had recognized Lennok’s talent early on and tried to persuade him.
The greedy old man, who had started his career in the lower house, was now a member of the Senate, seated in this assembly hall.
The Chairman looked at Meyer and asked him.
“I believe you have a personal acquaintance with Adamant Thunder.”
“Indeed.”
“Could you serve as a witness here, on behalf of us and Adamant Thunder?”
“It’s not impossible.”
As Meyer tapped his throne, its height swiftly lowered, descending to Lennok’s immediate vicinity.
Meyer slowly walked over to Lennok and the astrologer and asked Lennok.
“Van, are you alright with this?”
“I intend to accept it.”
Lennok replied quietly.
“Because I knew that a coordination with the Central Council was necessary at some point.”
He didn’t like the fact that he was subjected to the Elder Council’s mediation, but it would be a lie to say that the method itself didn’t pique Lennok’s interest.
An astrologer who divines the fate of mortals. How could he not be intrigued, especially when her abilities were directly recognized by Ascendants?
While things had become bothersome, it was acceptable if Meyer, who held goodwill towards Lennok, was made the witness.
Since Meyer had been observing Lennok’s talent and maintaining contact for a long time, he would likely strike a suitable balance no matter what happened.
Meyer gazed curiously at the astrologer, who stood motionless with her eyes closed.
“Her abilities are more recognized than you imagine. It’s my first time seeing it directly too. It feels like encountering a strange souvenir…”
“Oh my, how perceptive of you.”
Silford, who had been smiling beside him, interjected, adjusting his fedora.
“Actually, her true nature is closer to that.”
“What did you say?”
“I mean, she’s not just some convenient or highly skilled fortune-teller.”
Silford subtly shifted his gaze towards Lennok.
“Well, you’ll understand when you experience it yourself.”
“If you’re ready, may we begin?”
The astrologer, stepping forward, spoke to Lennok in a gentle voice.
“The time allotted to me is limited. The moment I can leave my consciousness in the present world is fleeting. Wandering beyond the sea, repeatedly falling asleep and waking up…”
She asked.
“Compared to drifting within truth, aren’t our actions truly meaningless?”
“……Perhaps.”
Lennok, who had been silently gazing at the astrologer, chuckled.
“Do those who desire your abilities think the same?”
If the very act of summoning the astrologer for mediation was to confirm that Lennok posed no threat to Vulcan, then it was understandable.
However, it was also true that he suspected there might be some hidden intention within this process itself.
The topic of Evan Vylun, which Armand mentioned to gauge Lennok’s reaction, and the Senate’s offer of establishing a Magic Tower as a trade.
Even the circumstances and trade conditions subtly straddled the boundary between Van and Evan.
Perhaps someone among them suspected that Van and Evan were the same person.
Lennok vaguely suspected this and intended to agree to the astrology precisely to dispel that very suspicion.
She took out a faintly glowing glass bottle from her pocket and dipped her hand into it.
The moment she scattered black, starlight-glowing powder around Lennok and herself, slowly drawing forth her mana.
[Shrink: Star-Linked Mirror]
Shwaaaak!!
As if a dark wave rose on a sandy beach, a thick, pitch-black curtain surged around Lennok and the astrologer.
A wave of darkness, like faint stars twinkling beyond the distant blackness.
A black sphere, rising from beneath their feet, spun, isolated from the assembly hall.
Seeing the space instantly transform into an isolated zone, blocking external gazes, the senators nodded.
“It’s begun.”
“About 15 minutes, wasn’t it?”
“Who knows. It might end even sooner…”
“……”
The senators stared at the dark curtain with unreadable expressions.
The Chairman, too, simply looked at the dark curtain with emotionless eyes.
Silford looked up at the senators’ conversation and offered a strange smile.
Lennok’s eyes gleamed as he observed the immense form of the dark curtain surrounding him and the astrologer.
“An unusual concept borrowed indeed. Is it literally a mirror that reflects constellations?”
The actual width of the dark curtain surrounding the three wasn’t that large.
However, an overwhelming sense of projection, as if reminiscent of a vast cosmos, made the dark curtain itself appear infinitely wide.
Its purpose was similar to the Lighthouse Keeper’s celestial sphere that illuminates the night sky, yet the feeling was entirely different.
It wasn’t the sky viewed from the ground, but an ominous reflection that seemed to faithfully project the very landscape of the Outer Sea.
“Let’s begin right away.”
Lennok nodded, gazing at the dark curtain reflecting the cosmos.
Meyer looked around the surrounding dark curtain with curiosity, then subtly stepped back, as if not to interfere.
Lennok looked at her, who was smiling strangely with her eyes closed, and asked.
“Do you need time to prepare for the astrology?”
“……”
The astrologer didn’t answer, simply lifting her closed-eyed face.
As if gazing at Lennok’s face beyond her closed eyelids, the woman’s lips slowly parted after a long silence.
“You, sir, do not believe in fate.”
“Don’t believe… it’s a bit different from that.”
Lennok replied candidly.
Because he knew that even such a Q&A could be part of a ritual.
“I am not convinced of the correlation between fate and existence.”
Chance and inevitability, and fate.
Lennok still didn’t fully agree with those concepts and their order.
What Lennok had done all along was merely to reject and deviate from predetermined answers.
Instead of reflecting the past and present, he seeks answers in the future.
A process without a visible end persists under an infinite cycle of cause and effect.
Lennok’s process of building Hierarchy and finding answers was always forged by twisting established laws and veering off the path.
The astrologer slowly nodded and took something out from within her robes.
“To see fate is not to observe predetermined causality and foretell it.”
Taking out a worn deck of cards, she slowly turned them over and laid them down, speaking.
“Though the possibilities for a single person may seem infinite, if you trace their trajectory through the time they’ve lived, you can discuss their flow.”
“……”
“I merely trace the trajectory of time along the movement of the stars and tell you its direction.”
“Are these cards tools to observe the movement of such stars?”
“Form doesn’t matter. Direction has no meaning. As long as it can reflect constellations and imbue meaning, it doesn’t matter what is used.”
Kneeling before Lennok, she smiled and pointed to the cards.
Dozens of cards were arranged in a tear-drop shape.
“Pick one card and check it. Any one is fine. Even the order you choose is part of the divination.”
Following her words, Lennok picked up a card and turned it over.
At the same time, the landscape of the dark curtain above their heads flipped, and a specific constellation began to shine brightly.
She began to explain.
“The first card relates to the desire you currently hold strongest. What scene does it depict?”
“There’s nothing.”
“……What?”
The astrologer’s reply was slightly delayed.
Instead of answering, Lennok flipped the card and extended it towards her.
On the face of the flipped card, only pitch-black darkness twisted and swirled.
“……”
Was she trying to convey that the future was completely unseen in this way?
If her intention was to mess with Lennok, it was a rather ingenious idea.
“Please flip one more card and check it.”
The astrologer, who had been silent for a while, spoke again.
“The second card hints at your current situation. What does it show?”
“It’s the same.”
The face of the second card also showed nothing but an inexplicable darkness coiling.
“……The third card about your connections and the person who will be your benefactor…”
“I only see faint, hazy mist.”
“The fourth constellation reveals upcoming dangers and their countermeasures…”
“Something’s moving… but it’s squirming so much I can’t tell what it is.”
“……”
The astrologer, too, seemed to sense something strange and tilted her head.
Unlike the initial serious atmosphere, the divination kept veering off into strange directions.
He flipped a few more cards after that, but only scenes of something black and hazy squirming and swirling repeatedly appeared.
No concrete image emerged that could provide any hint.
The astrologer, who had been silent, muttered.
“……This is strange.”
“Divination of this sort can’t always go well.”
Lennok shook his head.
Considering his target-specific resistance ability, it wouldn’t be strange if the divination itself didn’t work on Lennok at all.
Even if Lennok himself allowed the divination, it wasn’t surprising that the spell might not work at all.
“No. That’s not it.”
But the astrologer immediately denied Lennok’s words.
“Astrology is a divine art that likens the flow of stars to humans and indicates direction. If the divination doesn’t work, the cards won’t even arrange themselves. For fate to halt like this is impossible. Unless the constellations themselves are fluctuating…”
“So?”
Lennok asked.
“Should I just keep flipping cards like this?”
“……Let’s try a different method.”
The astrologer, after pondering, took out a crystal ball from within her robes.
A crystal ball shrouded in pitch-black mist.
Holding the crystal ball in both hands, she stood and carefully extended her hand towards Lennok.
“Place one hand on the crystal ball, and align your gaze so both eyes look at its center. When the time comes… Kyaaak!!”
CRACK!!
Before Lennok could even place his hand, the moment he cast a glance at the crystal ball, the black crystal ball shattered.
It exploded in the astrologer’s hands, its fragments cutting her hand, causing blood to stream down.
The astrologer stared blankly, head tilted up, without even attempting to stop the bleeding from her cut hand.
Meyer, who had been standing silently behind them, also looked their way, slightly surprised.
Lennok looked at her and said.
“Isn’t this enough?”
“……”
Was it because he was a fated being? Or because he was a being who defied fate?
Perhaps it was because fate itself didn’t exist for Lennok.
Does a great will, dominating the entire cosmos, truly exist in the first place?
[Accept your fate.]
The last message he saw just before opening his eyes in this world.
Still, there was no answer. Only questions, endlessly chaining.
Although his curiosity was piqued by the claim of being able to see a mortal’s fate, and he agreed, the outcome was as expected.
But the astrologer bit her lip slightly and shook her head faintly at Lennok’s words.
“Not yet. The divination has definitely been conveyed. I can tell.”
“……”
“Something inexplicable is here. It’s with us. If only I can reflect it…!”
“……Something inexplicable is here?”
Doesn’t that imply something different than simply the divination not working?
As Lennok thought so and unconsciously lowered his gaze to his feet.
“……”
His eyes sank with a chill so profound it felt like they were freezing.
Meyer, who was watching from the side, called out to Lennok with a look of dismay.
“Van…?”
“……It’s moving.”
“What?”
“The images on the cards are moving together.”
Something black and hazy. But the colors reflected on each card were squirming and rotating at the same speed.
As if the images on the cards weren’t individual, but divided and connected.
What did that fact imply?
“……I see. It was watching this place from the beginning?”
Lennok muttered that, and began flipping the cards one by one again.
The cards the astrologer laid out weren’t reflecting different futures, situations, or crises.
The image contained within this deck of cards had, from the very beginning, pointed to only one thing.
Each time a card was flipped and placed on the floor, the hazy, squirming something began to form a round shape.
As he flipped cards from the periphery and aligned the image towards the center, its form became more concrete.
“Ah, ahhh…!!”
The astrologer, who had been watching Lennok flip the cards, realized the true nature of the image and recoiled, trembling violently.
Her blind eyes were half-open, as she convulsed in place, trembling frantically.
CRACK, CRA-CRA-CRACK…!!
With each flipped card, cracks began to appear in the landscape of the dark curtain the astrologer had cast.
As if unable to bear the scene about to be revealed, the mirror reflecting the cosmos warped.
“Van?!”
After making Meyer, who was approaching in alarm, step back, he flipped the last card, completing the image.
“……”
A colossal eye, floating in an abyss of unknowable darkness.
The eye, drawn across the faces of dozens of cards, slowly squirmed, gazing at Lennok.
Below the eye’s pale pupil, a viscous, crystalline substance flowed like tears, as if wounded.
The eye’s size was so immense and colossal that it was difficult to discern its true form with just a few cards.
From the very beginning, the divination had been showing only one image.
“Aaaahhh!!!”
Ignoring the convulsing astrologer who was spitting blood, Lennok silently gazed at that eye.
Because, as much as she instinctively knew, Lennok was also certain of who the owner of this eye was.
The Ascendant Kebaek Launch Operation attempted at the Well of the Codex.
The miracle of the Demon Gunner who had used the body of a fallen Ascendant as a bullet to launch it beyond the Outer Sea.
Lennok, sharing consciousness at the edge of the Well, saw how far that bullet had reached.
The abyss of the Outer Sea. The harbinger of ruin, swimming beyond the distant cosmos, singing of destruction.
The wounded, bleeding Outer God was watching Lennok.