Chapter 189: Inheritance

Chapter 189: Chapter 189: Inheritance

Jeremy woke up in a white space.

It wasn’t the suffocating white space in the seabed palace from back then. This place was vast, quiet, and something was flowing very softly - like the sound of water beneath a layer of ice.

He sat up. His body didn’t ache. The blood on his face was gone.

And right in front of him, planted straight into the white ground, was the bone scepter.

The light from the blue stone at the top of the scepter radiated outward in rings, spreading slowly like waves.

[You have arrived.]

Golden text appeared in mid-air - the exact same handwriting he had seen four years ago.

Jeremy paused. "You haven’t dissipated?"

[The entity you are speaking to is not me. It is merely a record I left within the scepter, activated when someone qualified touches it. Once the inheritance concludes, it will also end.]

[But before that, there are a few things you need to know.]

Jeremy stood up.

He swept his gaze around the white space, then asked, "Where are the other four?"

[Outside. The inheritance only accepts one person - the bearer of the Domain of Order.]

[Not because I chose you. But because among the five of you, only your ability is compatible with what I left behind.]

The text dissolved, then a new line appeared.

[Do you know why the seal at the Alan Riri mountain range has endured for hundreds of billions of years?]

"...Because the Mialans survivors offered their souls as the price?"

[Half of the reason.]

[The other half is because the thing used to forge the seal was not magic. It was a rule.]

Jeremy froze.

[Magic can be broken by stronger magic. But a rule can only be broken by a rule.]

[What you call the Domain of Order - Silence - is not an offensive skill. It is a fragment of the authority to impose rules. The deity who granted you the number 305 was the last god in a sequence of three hundred and five. Do you know why that deity ranked last?]

Jeremy remained silent.

[Because that deity was not strong. That deity was simply absolute.]

[Order does not need to be strong. It only needs to have no exceptions.]

The lines of text paused for a beat, then continued.

[The seal at Alan Riri is wearing down. Not because magical beasts are chipping away at it. But because those who forged it are all dead, and a rule maintained by no one will naturally dissipate.]

[What I left within this scepter is the method to reinforce it.]

Jeremy’s heartbeat quickened a tempo.

"How long can it be reinforced?"

[It depends on the one maintaining it.]

[If it is you at your current realm - three years. If you touch the sixth tier - thirty years. The eighth tier - two hundred years.]

[But I must make one thing clear, and you must listen carefully.]

The text appeared slower, stroke by stroke.

[Reinforcement is not a cure. It only buys time. The day the Aberrants finish their evolution, no seal will be able to hold them.]

[What I am handing you is not a weapon to win. It is merely a breather.]

Jeremy looked at the scepter.

He had thought about that for a long time. But hearing it stated outright still felt different.

"How many years is enough?" he asked.

[No one knows.]

[But I can tell you the number I calculated. If Sylvanor begins preparing today, and there are no missteps - they need forty years to muster enough forces to confront it.]

"We only have sixteen left."

[Correct.]

Jeremy stood still.

Sixteen years. Forty needed.

And what he had just exchanged with two hours and seventeen minutes, with a chunk of missing flesh from Lucius’s shoulder, with three liters of blood and a near loss of his own sanity - was merely a three-year extension.

"...Then I must reach the sixth tier," he said.

[Yes.]

[And you won’t make it in time. Unless you accept what I am about to offer.]

The scepter trembled.

From the top of the scepter, the blue stone detached itself, floating over to stop in front of Jeremy.

Inside it, he saw a tiny silver seed.

[The Ashbloom Flower. The very last seed of Mialans.]

[It has two paths of usage. You may only choose one.]

[The first path: plant it. It takes seven years to bloom. On the first day it blooms, it is a fate-altering miracle drug - capable of healing a severely injured soul, no matter how grave the damage. One person. One time.]

Jeremy thought of Sylas. Thought of Raphael.

One person.

[The second path: swallow it raw. It will burn all the remaining potential in your life to push you to the sixth tier within three years. Enough for you to reinforce the seal for another thirty years.]

[The price is that you will halt permanently at the sixth tier. Never to advance further. And your lifespan will be cut in half.]

The white space fell silent.

Jeremy looked at the tiny silver seed rotating slowly within the stone.

On one side, thirty years for the entire continent, exchanged for half his life and a permanent ceiling.

On the other side, one person. Just one.

Sylas - the younger brother who had pushed himself into an infinite slumber to pull him back.

Or Raphael - the one counting down his days one by one, the one who had handed his share of the burden over to Jeremy because Raphael knew he couldn’t hold on.

He stood there for a very long time.

[You have one hour to decide.]

"No need," Jeremy said.

He looked up.

"I choose the first path."

The golden text paused. For one beat. Then two beats.

[...You know what choosing that entails, don’t you.]

"I know."

[Three years from now, the seal will erode further. You have no way to reinforce it beyond three years with your current realm.]

"I know."

[Then why?]

Jeremy looked at the seed.

"Because you miscalculated one thing."

[...]

"You calculated that Sylvanor needs forty years, and only has sixteen. But you calculated that number based on the Sylvanor of today."

He continued, his voice calm, "Three years ago, the entire continent didn’t even know where magical beasts came from. Now, the curriculum of every academy has changed, the three major factions are all researching, and every child entering school this year learns how to fight magical beasts from their first year."

"You calculated forty years for a continent that knew nothing. Not for a continent that already knows."

[...]

"And if I swallow that seed," Jeremy said, "I gain thirty years. But I stop at the sixth tier. And thirty years from now, the one standing on the frontlines will still just be a sixth-tier mage nearing the end of his lifespan."

"I don’t intend to be just a prop holding the door shut."

The white space was silent for a very long time.

Then the text reappeared.

[...Ymir Prometheus once said something very similar.]

Jeremy paused.

[He said: I do not save the world. I merely clear the path for the one who can save it.]

[Then he died, and his family was annihilated.]

"I know."

[You still choose this?]

"Yes."

The blue stone dissolved.

The silver seed fell into Jeremy’s palm, so light it was almost weightless.

[Then accept the inheritance.]

The bone scepter lifted from the white ground, spun in a circle, and then disintegrated into countless motes of light flying toward him.

They seeped into his skin, into his bones, into his sea of consciousness.

And in that moment, Jeremy saw.

How to forge a rule. How to anchor it to heaven and earth. How to make an invisible thing endure long after its creator has died.

Not magic. Not incantations.

But a perspective.

A perspective that three hundred and five deities had used to divide this world into the possible and the impossible.

When the last mote of light completely dissolved, Jeremy opened his eyes.

[The inheritance is complete. The totem will fade in three days.]

[One final statement.]

Jeremy waited.

[The person you intend to save with that seed - have you chosen?]

"...Not yet."

[Then think it through carefully. The flower only blooms once. And on the day it blooms, if no one is there, it will become a flower of death like any other.]

[Seven years. Do not forget.]

The golden text dissolved.

The white space shattered.

And Jeremy woke up amidst a drifting boulder in the purple sky, with four people looking down at him.

"He’s awake." Leon breathed a sigh of relief. "You slept for two days."

Jeremy sat up.

He opened his palm.

The silver seed lay there, minuscule, unlit, looking no different from an ordinary grass seed.

"What is that?" Evelyn asked.

"The Ashbloom Flower."

All four fell silent at the same time.

Lucius was the first to speak up. Lucius crouched down in front of Jeremy, one shoulder still wrapped in thick bandages, looking at the seed in Jeremy’s hand.

"Where do you plan to plant it?"

Jeremy closed his fist.

He thought of the row of magical planters on the dormitory balcony. Thought of the tree with a silver-gray trunk and pale yellow leaves that hadn’t bloomed in four years.

"Somewhere sunny," he replied.