Chapter 499.1: Reversal of Positions (1)

Fate was an abstruse concept to most.

Many people saw fate to be the design of an absolute being that couldn’t be changed. Some even believed that the Sia Continent was truly under the jurisdiction of the Goddess of Fate. Often, when a person lamented about their past regrets, they would remark ‘Such is fate’.

However, that wasn’t an accurate depiction of the world.

The Sia Continent was created by Genesis Goddess Sia and not the Goddess of Fate. It was possible that the flow of fate was predetermined, but it was certainly not fixed. In fact, it didn’t take a powerful being to change the flow of fate. Even humans could do it through their transcendent powers, and Roel was an example of that.

Roel had undergone many life-and-death trials before he was able to change the trajectory of his life, and for that very reason, he knew just how powerful fate was.

Charlotte’s ‘Arbiter of Fate’ Bloodline might be weaker than Nora’s ‘Angel King’ Bloodline in terms of absolute prowess, but it could pull off miracles under certain circumstances. That was also why the Sorofyas regarded the bloodline as one of their greatest treasures.

That being said, even with the Goddess of Fate’s blessing, divining the Six Calamities was no easy feat.

Divination-related spells had a high tendency to fail when used on a far stronger or more influential individual. Even if the diviner did divine something, they wouldn’t be able to trust the result to be accurate. On top of that, the entire process would be draining on the diviner.

Take the current war against the deviants for example, it was theoretically possible for a seer to divine the trajectory of the war so that humankind could always make the best possible decision to counter them. However, that was impossible to pull off in practice. A war involving the fates of two races far exceeded what any seer could divine.

It was the same when it came to the Six Calamities.

Even though the Six Calamities were in an immature state, they were still beings created by the Mother Goddess, existences surpassing the gods. Their strength was not at a level that could be properly captured using the existing Origin Level classification. Even seers from the ancient era would have been incapable of divining them.

The only ones who could peek at their fate were those who had the Goddess of Fate’s blessing like Charlotte, but even so, she had to slowly do it step by step.

In a study room, Charlotte stood in front of a table with her eyes closed. Specks of light rose from her body before transforming half of the room into a mesmerizing celestial river. From the brilliant starlight, a divine avatar carrying a balance emerged.

“Balance of Fate,” murmured Charlotte.

The Goddess of Fate raised the balance up.

Coins representing Charlotte’s life manifested in Charlotte’s hand. She glanced at the slightly skewed balance before flicking the coins onto it one by one.

The balance’s imbalance reduced with the addition of every chip. By the third one, the balance was already leaning in Charlotte’s favor. With that, she finally made her move.

Ding!

An ancient gold coin was flipped into the air. It ascended to the peak of its trajectory before descending onto the table, landing with a metallic clink. It twirled a few rounds before falling flat on a corner of the constellation map.

The moment the divination result came out, Charlotte’s face paled. The phenomena she had summoned vanished without a trace, and the abrupt loss of mana left her feeling light-headed. She was forced to grab onto the table to support herself and take a brief rest.

“Charlotte!”

Roel felt great distress seeing the price Charlotte had to pay to make the divination. He quickly rushed to her side to support her. Meanwhile, Charlotte carefully examined the constellation map and made several calculations.

“Eastward. Three days later.”

After interpreting the divination result, Charlotte collapsed into Roel’s arms and fell asleep. Roel carried her to the nearby sofa, where he quietly gazed at the constellation map on the table.

A week had passed since they exchanged their rings in Love Forest.

The Diamond Rivière had been traveling in accordance with Charlotte’s divination result during this period of time, leading them to the vast eastern plains.

When Roel first raised his idea of using the two of them as bait to lure out the propagator of the curse, there was vehement opposition from many in the Sorofya House. They thought that it was too risky. But when the two of them insisted on it, they had no choice but to cave in.

After all, none of them had better ideas as to how they could resolve Charlotte’s curse.

To them, Charlotte’s days were already numbered. It didn’t sound like a bad idea for her to spend her remaining days traveling together with the man she loved… and who knows? There might just be a miracle.

With that consideration in mind, along with Bruce and Grandpa Ugin’s staunch support for the proposal, Rosa’s upper echelon soon changed their tune.

The noblewomen saw off the ill-fated lovebirds for their final journey with tears in their eyes whereas the noblemen chose to hold their tongues.

The Sorofyas also dispatched an army of elites to escort the Diamond Rivière in case the evil cultists made a move. Wandering Scholar Andrew and the other high transcendents also hurriedly returned to the country, ready to reinforce them should the target appear.

Out of safety considerations, Roel and Charlotte decided not to reveal the fine details of their plan with the Sorofyas and Rosa’s upper echelon. It was not that they didn’t trust them, but the best way to trick one’s enemies was to trick one’s allies too. By restricting the information to just between them, they could minimize the possibility of news leaking out.

For better or for worse, Roel was certain that the member of the Six Calamities was already aware of their situation.

The progression of Charlotte’s curse had actually slowed significantly back when she was on the verge of death, possibly because the member of the Six Calamities thought that it had already succeeded and wanted to conserve its strength. However, shortly after Roel started sharing his life force with her, the curse abruptly aggravated.

In fact, there were even several attempts to afflict Roel with the curse as well through his connection with Charlotte, but those ended in failure.

Clearly, the ancient monster had sensed that something was amiss and attempted to kill the two of them through the curse. But just as Roel had guessed, the curse was completely ineffective on him, likely because he was in possession of two Crown’s Stones.

This meant that Charlotte was the only victim of the curse, but that wasn’t a problem as long as Roel continued to share his life force with her. Without any other external intervention, they would be able to sustain this state for a long time.

Meanwhile, Rosa continued to devote all of their resources to uncovering the trail of the Six Calamities.

The positions had been reversed.

Roel and Charlotte were now the ones waiting whereas the ancient monster was forced to go deeper into hiding. This was likely to be an unnerving turn of events for the ancient monster. Its plans had been thrown into disarray, and there were countless people hunting it down now even though it hadn’t fully matured yet.

The feeling of being cornered would surely prompt it into action.

Holding onto that belief, Roel and Charlotte patiently waited.