Chapter 445: The Unknown

“All Kneel for the Fate Lord!” the chamberlain, a tall white-haired old man, announced, making all the neatly dressed men and women in the courtroom kneel down as a completely naked young man with long flowing blond hair reaching his butt, entered with a long golden lance in his hand.

He slowly made his way on the crimson carpet then climbed two steps reaching the golden throne in the center of the room and sat on it, crossing his legs.

“You may raise your heads!” he said as he struck his lance to the ground, allowing everyone to stand up and look up as two guards in white armor closed the gate.

The room shimmered with a strange light as the isolation formation activated.

“Welcome back my lord... “ the chamberlain said nervously. “You humble servants, thank you for all the work you are doing!” he added as he bowed down.

“Stop with the nonsense... I''m already dead tired of killing fucking demons for 25 years consecutively...” the fate lord replied dismissively. “Now, report how the collapse is going?” he asked, noticing the uneasy atmosphere around the room. What did those idiots do now?

No one replied as everyone in the court began to look at each other nervously...

“What?” the lord, who was in a cheery mood after gaining quite a few Authority points in the last few years, lost it at once. “What happened?” he asked.

“Phantom! ” the chamberlain called loudly, making a tall skinny court lady shoot him a glare of hate then step forward and bow. He was clearly making her the scapegoat but she didn’t dare complain in front of the lord.

“My lord...” Phantom said after standing back up. She paused. “We had an incident...”

“An incident?” he asked.

“Ah... Ehm... “ she hesitated. “...Yes...”

“WHAT IS IT? SPEAK!”

“My lord... We ask for your forgiveness...” she said as she fell to her knees, all in the hall did, making the lord grow a little fearful.

“Don’t make me repeat my words...” he asked coldly. “What happened?”

“The... The Fate thread in the temple...” she paused. “They were burnt...”

“...”

“...”

“What?” he asked in an unbelieving tone. “WHAT DID YOU FUCKING SAY?” he asked again as he sprung to his feet and he opened his eyes wide. Everyone looked away...

“7 months ago, the fate threads... The ones in the temple... They were all burnt...” she repeated nervously.

“I FUCKING HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME!” he flared in shock. “WHAT DID YOU MEAN BURNT?” he still couldn’t believe what he heard.

“Ah... Burnt as if completely turned into charcoal...” Phantom said nervously. “After we noticed the smoke, we hurried to open the vault, but due to all of the protection around it, we could only do that after an entire hour! By that time, the fire that started from one of the talismans tied around a thread belonging to one of them had already spread everywhere and destroyed everything!”

“...”

“....”

“AH...”

“...”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHH! SHIT! FUCK! DAMN IT! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HAD TO PAY IN ORDER MATERIALIZE THESE FATE THREADS? DAMN IT! HOW ARE WE GOING TO CONTAIN THOSE FATED EMPERORS NOW?” He yelled. "DAMN IT! NOW WE WILL HAVE TO REALLY FIGHT FOR THE DAMN IMPERIAL LAGACY!”

“....” No one dared to answer that. They had no idea. Oops... This may be bigger than they anticipated....

“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! A BUNCH OF USELESS GERMS! IS THIS WHAT I GET FOR ENTRUSTING YOU WITH ONE SIMPLE TASK!”

“....” Everyone was pondering that they should’ve called in sick today.

“DAMN YOU! DAMN YOUR ENTIRE OFFSPRING, A BUNCH OF SHIT-EATING VERMIN... DO YOU WANT ALL MY WORK FOR THE LAST 500 YEARS TO GO TO WASTE? WHY THE HELL AM I KEEPING YOU HERE...” He slowly lifted his lance “YOU ALL GERMANS...” he spat as a white flame appeared atop the lance’s blade.

SHIT... Everyone didn’t know what to do. They didn’t dare to take a step back, but they really needed to run...

“Calm your anger, my lord....” The chamberlain finally decided to risk it and intervene. He had no idea that his lord would be this angry.

“FUCK YOU AND FUCK MY ANGER.... WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING IN MY ABSENCE?” the lord flared. “DAMN IT!”

“My lord ... Ever since the incident, all our agents had been investigating the reason behind the fire in addition to trying to figure out the reason behind the divergences we started to observe...” the chamberlain clarified.

“WAIT? WHAT? DIVERGENCES” he asked as he lowered his lance a bit and frowned. “YOU MEAN FROM THE PROPHECY?”

“Yes, My lord.... Let me explain...” Phantom hurried to speak. “Ever since the incident, the events from the world began diverting from those we had in the prophecy!” she explained. “According to our analysis, this could only be from the interference of those Cursed Fate Thread owners or the one who set the fire!... That’s why we had been investigating them, hoping to patch things up!” she said.

“Oh... It seems like you are not that stupid after all...” the lord paused. It might not be all lost. “How much divergence is there?” he asked as he lowered his lance and the flames completely faded.

“Since the fire, we have already deviated 32% from the prophecy compared to the usual 1.21%!“

“I see... WAIT.... FUCK WHAT? 32%” he gasped. This was a big number even for him, the one who had power over Fates. No... This couldn’t be the result of a mistake... Someone was definitely behind this.... Another lord?

“Yea, my lord. This can’t be natural!” Phantom said as if reading her master’s mind.

“Um... “ he said as he calmed down a bit, his mind thinking of who could have done it. “Did you find anything?”

“...”

“What?”

“Sorry, my lord... Other than a few dead ends we couldn’t find anything of substance... We had very little info to locate the Fated Emperors, and it is as if whoever was behind managed to hide from all our artifacts! We were awaiting your return to decide on our next course of action! ”

“Dead ends? Hidden?” the Fate Lord said as he frowned, someone came to mind.

“Not really... I was a sensation, that’s why I thought that this was the best chance for trouble so I cast a misfortune curse and waited to scan every suspicious or weird-acting person I could locate!” she said.

“You guys must have ruined a lot of people’s future to use that old thing... “ he smirked. whoever makes a curse, always has to pay an appropriate price, and this misfortune curse was no exception, to activate it over a city, 1000000 people had to willingly sacrifice their luck for the next 10 years.

“People are willing to sell a lot of things that they don’t realize are important, my lord!” Mirage said.

“True, hopefully it didn’t go all to waste...” he said. Making a lot of people unlucky at once, muddied the destiny of the world, but after the incident, this was a necessity.

“Well... We did find a few interesting leads... Victor ended up being a false one... I have four things to report...” Mirage said.

“Enough with the suspense... Speak damn it!” the lord said. He hated cliffhangers. Maybe this was the effect of him being an all-knowing fate lord or something.

“Yes, My Lord! The first thing is that due to us using the misfortune curse, a demon might have managed to escape a dungeon... Since he was calling himself The Nutcracker, we think he is a high-ranking one!” she explained. Low-ranking demons rarely had names. “We know he was traveling west a few months ago, but we lost contact with him ever since...”

“Oh... The world didn’t destroy him?” the Lord frowned.

“No... We believe he has some kind of X-ranked hiding artifact as we are not the only one trying to locate him to no avail... He might also be connected to our targets!”

“Unlikely, but do keep an eye on him... All info about him shall be sent directly to my desk!” he said with some greed in his eyes.

“Yes My Lord... The second thing I want to report is that there was a connection between Victor and the Thunder sect, he seemed to be in a... Ehm. Relationship with the Thunder sect’s old patriarch’s son... That guy is a dark scion... Too bad he was killed by Caspian before I could investigate further!” she said.

“Killed by Caspian? Why?’ the Lord frowned.

“He was impersonating Nova who ran away from the wedding... He found out when the real thing appeared to stop the farce!”

“Oh... Typical dark scion drama...” the lord sighed. Although killing those guys was hard, it was doable if it was done by a full-fledged Scion who could negate the other protective fate power.

“Wait... Is that Victor guy gay or straight?” this guy was having a harem wedding, but he had to add a guy?

“... Unknown my lord...” Mirage said, wondering if this question was really that important.

“I see... What else then?” the lord asked.

“The third thing is that I found one of the Destined Gate Guardian Scions you told us to search for...” she said smirking at Phantom, she didn’t report that to her. “Her name is Zoe, she is a Von Weise! She is the destined Fire Gate Guardian!”

“Really? FINALLY SOME GOOD NEWS!” The lord’s mood improved a little hearing her. “Did you contact her?”

“Not yet my lord... I think this is something you wanted to oversee by yourself...” Mirage bowed.

“TRUE! There can’t be any mistakes here... I will send one of my disciples to charm her, I will make him go see you in a few days, tell him what he needs to know... Now what is the fourth thing you found?”

Mirage slowly took out a storage ring.

“MIRAGE? WHAT IS THAT?” Phantom who was clearly not informed about this said.

“It was with the priest at the wedding... I followed after him after he left the hotel, and discovered that not only was he working for the Von Zwei family and was instructed to ruin the wedding and kill Victor with his wives, but that he didn’t do it on purpose. He turned out to be the agent for another unknown power, who was trying to use the wedding to pass some kind of unknown agenda!” she said nervously.

“Oh...” the lord frowned. That dark chamber rebellious pests? “Do you know who they are?” he asked.

“He said that his boss was someone he called his majesty The Supreme Ruler!” Mirage added, making the room grow silent. The taboo words!

“Again?” the lord asked with clear annoyance. “The same guy?”

“Unknown, I was discovered by him before I could get more info. He wanted to kill me and pin it on the Von Zwei family, but thankfully he seemed to have been poisoned by someone, probably Theodore Von Weise. The poison activated and he died in front of me. ” she said. “Still, I managed to get his ring... Too bad I couldn''t open it!” she said as she presented the ring to the lord.

“Let me see!” the lord said as the ring floated toward him. He grabbed it and inspected it. It was an ancient high-quality storage ring!

Interesting...

Slowly, using his Authority, he performed the ownership-changing ritual to break the original owner’s rights on it....

; ; FAILED... NOT ENOUGH AUTHORITY!

What?

The lord tried again.

; ; FAILED... NOT ENOUGH AUTHORITY!

He secretly made a drop of his blood seep through his skin and then touch the ring.

; ; FAILED... NOT ENOUGH AUTHORITY!

WTF?

“Are you sure this ring belonged to the priest?” he asked nervously.

“Ah...I am not sure, but he could use it freely....” Mirage said.

“Ah... Um... Rings can belong to others while granting the usage rights...” the fate lord said as he put the ring away, acting as normally as possible as his mind raced. WHO WAS IT?

“My Lord... Was there anything interesting in it?” Phantom asked.

“NOT YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS!” the lord flared as he stood up, making her fall to her knees. He just thought of a crazy possibility. “We will continue your reports later... I need to check on a few things!” he spat as he stormed out of the hall.

Everyone looked at each other with a frown as soon as they were sure he was no longer there. Although they didn’t dare to say it, all of them knew what that look in their lord’s eyes was.

It was the look of fear. A certain body part of his clearly got shorter too, but no one dared to look...

Anyways!

What was the thing someone who had power over Fate and Destiny feared most?

Simple, it was the Unknown!