Chapter 401: Chapter 401

Magic Miss glanced at the test tube between her fingers, then nodded. Leaning against the tree trunk with her left hand, she took out her own portion of the ashes and tossed it to Jenkins.

He didn’t refuse; the material was extremely expensive.

“I’ve had enough. Just take this and all the trouble that comes with it... I imagine you might know what they use these ashes for.”

“The Savior of the Epoch’s End.”

Hearing his answer, the woman’s face showed surprise once more. “So you do know... Are you a believer in a new god?”

He shrugged without answering, carefully putting the ashes away. If he was lucky, they would provide ample funds for his upcoming trip to Bel Diran, which would certainly improve the great writer’s financial situation.

“The qualifications for a Savior can’t be forced. They took the wrong path.”

Jenkins had no idea what she’d figured out. She was probably just letting her imagination run wild.

As they spoke, the sound of rustling leaves came from one side of the woods, accompanied by frantic footsteps drawing closer. Without a second thought, Jenkins snatched up his cat and deftly climbed a tree. Magic Miss gave him a final nod, her skin and clothes shifting to camouflage colors as she turned and ran in the opposite direction.

A few dozen seconds later, a stranger in the robes of a Sage Church priest burst through the undergrowth.

He shouted, gasping for breath with his hands on his knees.

Jenkins and Chocolate, whose fur had returned to its normal black and white, immediately leaped down from the tree. He steadied himself with a hand on the ground before rising with an apologetic smile, all traces of his earlier mysterious demeanor gone.

“I thought you were an enemy... Is something wrong?”

“Miss Bevanna sent a message. She said you absolutely must not leave this area, and that it would be best to stay close to that giant tree.”

He pointed to the giant tree, and just as Jenkins turned his head to look, a loud bang erupted from the priest’s robes.

The bullet tore through his clothes and slammed into the golden barrier covering Jenkins’s body. The barrier shattered on impact, and the black patterns on his skin faded. The force of the blow sent Jenkins staggering back several steps, but he simultaneously thrust out his hand, sending slivers of silver light shooting forward.

The ring on the priest’s finger flashed, absorbing the slivers of light. Cracks appeared on the ring before it shattered completely. A whisper escaped his lips. The sound of a baby crying seemed to fill Jenkins’s ears, and his vision blurred for a moment. In that split second, a second bullet shot out.

He instinctively tilted his head to the side, thinking he had dodged it completely, but a few seconds later, a stinging sensation flared up on his cheek.

He stepped forward and threw a punch. The priest retreated instead of advancing, not expecting the silver ribbon of light now coiling around Jenkins’s frost-wreathed arm. He dodged the fist, but not the slivers of light that shot out again.

The infant’s cry echoed once more as black mist poured from the priest’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. The black mist coalesced, as if trying to form something, but its caster was already failing. Though he struggled to resist the mental corruption of that strange knowledge, the terrifying whispers utterly destroyed his mind.

Jenkins touched his temple and, sure enough, his fingers came away with blood. He quickly knelt beside the priest. A candle appeared in his hand, and its flame leaped up, enveloping the black mist and burning it to nothing.

He pried the pistol from the man’s hand and fired a single shot into his forehead.

Standing up, he scanned his surroundings. The once-dense points of light were now sparse. This man must have slipped in while the defenses were thin.

“Damn it, which faction is this?”

The attack methods he had just witnessed had no distinguishing features, and there were no special markings on the body. He kicked the corpse. Another poor bastard who didn’t even carry a wallet.

“Waiting around to die isn’t my style.”

Though he didn’t know what had happened outside to turn this safe place into a dangerous one, staying here was definitely not the right choice.

He called to Chocolate, ready to leave, but before he could take a step, he summoned the light orbs representing his abilities. For more chapters visıt N0v3l.Fiɾe.net

“I just learned quite a lot from Magic Miss. Maybe...”

He focused his spirit on The Unknown Path. The color representing fate flared violently twice before unexpectedly dimming, as if about to be extinguished.

It seemed some force was obstructing the guidance of fate—something that had never happened before.

The purple light quickly, defiantly, burst forth again. At the same time, the red representing Twin Demons, which sat beside The Unknown Path in the very center, also began to glow.

A brilliant radiance of red and purple erupted before his eyes, and a clear purple line materialized.

Fate was not guiding Jenkins to another location, but pointing directly at his pocket.

Chocolate, perched on Jenkins’s shoulder, looked down with its amber eyes.

The object chosen by fate was Professor Burns’s textbook, “The Kingdom’s Chronicles.”

Swallowing hard, Jenkins summoned a silver sphere of light for illumination and turned to the indicated page. It was the very content the professor had taught on the day of the Reading Festival: the historical account of the five border dukes’ rebellion, which took place around the year 1400 in the Universal Calendar.

“If I remember correctly, one of the surnames was Augustus... Hmm?”

Jenkins’s guess was completely wrong. While fate was indeed guiding him to one of the surnames, it wasn’t “Augustus,” but “Otin.”

As his finger pointed to the word and he whispered it aloud, the purple line dissolved into motes of fluorescent light and vanished into the air.

Chocolate tried to bat at them with its paws, but then it simply lifted its head and gazed toward the distant giant tree.

“Otin? What does that mean?”

He was completely baffled by the clue. After all, Jenkins didn’t know anyone with “Otin” in their name, nor had he ever heard of a place related to it.

It was the only connection he could make. The way the kingdom’s language pronounced “Otin” sounded almost identical to the word “Odin” from a language of his past life.

“Am I overthinking this?”

He wondered hesitantly, trying to find another line of thought. But then he turned his head and saw the hundred-meter-tall tree, and the pool of water at its base...

A wild idea surfaced in his mind.