Lich for Hire

Mr. Misfortune had always believed that, while capital punishment might exist, it should serve no purpose beyond punishment and deterrence.

Once nations began using condemned prisoners for Hellgates, they would slowly but surely move on to serious criminals, then ordinary offenders—and, eventually, anyone.

Such moral quagmires were dangerous.

Mr. Misfortune could not accept such a practice. So he sabotaged several sacrificial rites, killing the condemned prisoners before they could be offered up.

For that, he became a wanted man in the Unholy Kingdom.

Of course, avoiding capture was trivial for a legendary diviner. Mr. Misfortune had only appeared in public for Harvey's sake.

After hearing his explanation, Harvey could only sigh at the cruelty of war.

If not for Lyon's relentless pressure, the tiflings would never have been driven to such extremes.

Harvey took his leave. He needed to deliver Mr. Misfortune's message back to his master as quickly as possible.

But just as he was about to go, Mr. Misfortune called him back. "Wait. Take this with you."

He handed Harvey a metal coin. The material was unfamiliar—not quite steel, but not magical either. It looked like a simple trinket, poorly crafted and cheap.

Harvey asked, puzzled, "What is this coin?"

"The stake from that bet between me and your master. Take it back to him. He'll understand."

Harvey carefully put the coin away, then departed.

This time, Mr. Misfortune did not stop him.

Harvey left the small house and headed straight for the teleportation array.

Despite the heavy security of what was essentially a military zone, he walked straight in without being noticed.

Every gaze that might have fallen on him was thwarted: eyes stung by blowing sand, blocked by passing figures, distracted by absurd coincidences. To everyone else, Harvey simply did not exist.

As he walked, he could faintly see translucent threads stretching everywhere.

He reached out to touch them but felt nothing, as if they were merely illusions.

"The power of fate is truly incredible."

With that quiet remark, he stepped into the teleportation array, adjusted the destination unseen, and returned to the desert.

He wasted no time. Rushing back to the underground factory, he found Ambrose reviewing a pile of documents.

Recently, Catherine had been recording the drow's behavior in painstaking detail. As Ambrose read through the notes, he began devising several "educational" methods, though they would take time to implement.

He cocked his head upon seeing Harvey back so quickly. "Back already? He was waiting for you, wasn't he?"

Harvey smiled. "Just as you predicted. The moment I reached the tifling lands, Mr. Misfortune was there waiting for me."

Ambrose snorted. "Mr. Misfortune... that old man's got quite the sense of humor, using a name like that at his age."

"What's wrong with it?"

Harvey didn't quite see the issue. The name seemed appropriate for a legendary diviner, surely?

Ambrose didn't bother explaining. "What did he send back? A message, or a letter?"

Harvey replied, "A message. He said for you to meet him in two months and three days, that you'll get what you want then. And he gave me these."

He presented the stone slab and the coin to Ambrose.

Ambrose froze.

Harvey waited quietly. Nearly ten minutes passed before Ambrose finally stirred again.

He handed the slab back. "This isn't for me. It's for you."

Harvey blinked. "For me? What is it, exactly?"

Calmly, Ambrose said, "Finding this slab was what made us diviners in the first place."

"This slab...? But I can't sense anything from it."

"Of course you can't. It's just ordinary rock." Ambrose sighed. "What made us who we are wasn't the slab, but the moment at which we encountered it.

"At a certain point in life, you might come across something that changes everything. The key isn't the object. It's you: who you were at that critical instant. This rock is just a token. That old man wants to take you as his apprentice. Sending it to me is his way of asking for my approval."

Harvey was stunned. "Master, I never even considered—"

"No need to panic," Ambrose cut him off. "It's perfectly normal to study under multiple masters. I've had more than a dozen myself. There's no rule saying you can only get one."

Harvey frowned. "That's usually across different fields, isn't it?"

Learning carpentry from one master and smithing from another was fine, but apprenticing yourself to two masters in the same discipline? That was sure to invite criticism.

Both Ambrose and Mr. Misfortune were diviners. If Harvey apprenticed under them both, it would reflect poorly on him.

"Don't worry about that," Ambrose said. "Do you have any idea how rare diviners are? Even counting you and my senior, I must've met fewer than ten in my entire life."

Given Ambrose's centuries of experience, that spoke volumes.

But it wasn't too surprising. Divination was notoriously difficult to learn.

Many simply couldn't grasp the concept of fate. It was like people who were unwilling to accept that 0.999... equals 1. If they couldn't cross that threshold, nothing deeper would make sense.

Harvey had extraordinary talent. In Ambrose's eyes, Harvey would surpass him in divination if he could survive long enough. It was only natural the old man would want a rare genius in an already rare field as his disciple.

"He must've taught you quite a bit," Ambrose said.

Harvey nodded. After witnessing the threads of fate, he had begun to understand another way to wield the power of divination.

Ambrose didn't press further. "Don't get greedy, and don't push your luck. Abuse the power of fate, and it'll kill you. And I won't be able to save you anymore."

Harvey smiled. "Don't worry. I've already died once, and I don't plan to take more reckless risks."

"Anything else?" Ambrose asked.

"He mentioned that the tifling kingdom is now using criminals as sacrifices to build more Hellgates."

Ambrose frowned. "It's gotten that bad?"

He hadn't expected things to escalate so far. Hellgates were not something to be opened lightly. At this point, the collapse of the tifling kingdom was a matter of when, not if.

Harvey could only repeat what he had heard.

"Alright, I understand," Ambrose said. "Get back to your work. In two months, we'll go see him together."

"Yes, Master." Harvey hesitated, then asked, "There's one more thing... about that bet you mentioned."

"What is it?"

"What did you bet?"

Harvey was deeply curious about how two diviners gambled against each other? Were they trying to probe each other's future?

Ambrose rubbed the coin between his fingers. "We each hid an item. Whoever found the other's first would win. He gave me his family crest, and I gave him a special coin. I hid his crest on a carriage leaving the city. It took him three days to catch up to it, and two more to return."

"And you?" Harvey asked.

"I didn't find his," Ambrose said calmly.

"W-What?"

"And yet you still won?" Harvey was completely lost.

"That bastard threw the coin into the sea," Ambrose said irritably. "I knew where it was, but how was I supposed to retrieve it?"

"...Ah."

"No, wait. Master, if you didn't retrieve the coin, just how did you win?"

"I had two identical coins." Ambrose smirked. "I simply took out the other one and claimed I'd retrieved it. He conceded."

Harvey: "..."

So his master had planned to cheat from the very beginning.

"Didn't he suspect what you did?" Harvey asked.

"He figured it out later," Ambrose said. "But by then, the bet was over. He's like you, always a beat too slow. No wonder he wants you as a student. You're quite alike in that regard."

Harvey: "..."

That felt insulting.

"Why did you two make that bet in the first place?"

Ambrose and Mr. Misfortune had both awakened as diviners as a result of the same rock. It was a rare bond. If they had worked together, the outcomes would have been terrifying.

Ambrose leaned back and said, "He came from a noble tifling house, one of the most powerful at the time. He wanted me to join him and use this power for the good of the world, to repay Fate's gift. But I just wanted a comfortable life. We argued. To convince me, he challenged me to that bet.

"But he lost."