Chapter 39: The Truth Behind the Divine Shaman Bloodline

Chapter 39: Chapter 39: The Truth Behind the Divine Shaman Bloodline

Sensing the magic power fluctuation from Jeremy’s steady strides approaching, Evelyn decisively recalled her weapon and turned around. Her flat emerald eyes swept over the battlefield littered with beast corpses as her calm voice rang out:

"This outer edge area is entirely just tier-one magic beasts. The tier-two individuals are probably hiding inside the deeper caves below."

"Mhm."

Jeremy responded indifferently with a sound in his throat. His sharp amber phoenix eyes swept toward the pitch-black cave entrance. He raised his hand; magical threads extended, proficiently wrapping up a series of Nightmare Beast corpses and stuffing them straight into his spatial ring.

"This beast pack was definitely terrified by the Phantom Shark’s murderous intent earlier, and their defensive formation is in chaos. While they haven’t had time to organize a counterattack, let’s just retreat first to be safe. As for Moonlit Stones, there is no shortage of places to search in other areas on the island."

"There are Moonlit Stones on this side." Evelyn suddenly spoke up.

She took long strides treading water, heading toward a coral cluster dyed red by mottled bloodstains. Her fingertips flared with a magic fire, roughly burning away the entire layer of obstructing coral branches and leaves on the outside.

Jeremy slipped closer to observe. Indeed, hidden deep beneath the layer of ashes, pure Moonlit Stones were radiating a gentle, silvery light amidst the dark water. The corner of his lips curled up slightly into a satisfied arc: "It seems our hunting trip isn’t completely unlucky."

Evelyn lowered her eyelashes, falling into a short silence. Her pale lips pressed together slightly as she suddenly spoke in a dry voice: "... The Phantom Shark incident this time, it was me implicating you. I’m sorry, Captain."

Jeremy’s action of storing the Moonlit Stones into his storage ring did not pause at all. The youth’s expression remained faint and flat like the surface of an autumn lake. He replied casually, not carrying any judgment or blame: "What nonsense are you talking about? What implication, aren’t we nominally teammates fighting side by side under the same contract?"

Evelyn was slightly stunned. Having been so accustomed to a dog-eat-dog world, accustomed to the stereotypical extreme rhetoric about the strong preying on the weak, or rather perishing together than burdening others that the aristocracy always hung on their lips, this was truly the first time in her life she had heard a sentence containing such a pure and steadfast sense of responsibility.

Even though the other party was wearing the title of captain, the natural protectiveness radiating from this young man... gave her an incredibly unfamiliar feeling, completely incompatible with the arrogant, wicked young master facade that rumors spread.

Evelyn lightly lowered her eyelashes, deciding not to say another word. However, right at the corner of her lips where a streak of dried blood lingered, an extremely faint, almost imperceptible smile quietly bloomed.

As for Jeremy, that sentence was actually just a blurted-out reflex of someone who had been a mercenary accustomed to covering for teammates in his previous life, and he fundamentally didn’t take it to heart at all.

After firmly locking the storage ring’s spatial dimension, Jeremy jerked his chin signaling toward the ocean current: "Let’s go. On the resource list for this sea region, only the Illusionary Moon Fruits haven’t been fully collected yet. Once we handle this final target, we can leave this stifling, hellish place."

Retreating from the staghorn coral reef, Jeremy and Evelyn continued to swim and scour around the seabed area for more than half a lap.

They had to wade until the medicinal properties of the Water Repellent Pill were nearly exhausted and cracks began to appear in the air membrane barrier before they successfully found the growing location of the Illusionary Moon Fruits. Cleanly harvesting the spoils, the two did not dare to delay for even a single second, immediately channeling magic power to tread water and swim straight to shore.

As soon as they surfaced from the water, the brilliant scenery of the island immediately enveloped their vision. The most shocking difference between the boundaries of day and night at Moonlit Island was precisely the night sky. A sky dome that was not dark at all, but densely inlaid with tens of thousands of stars, as brilliant and magnificent as a milky way stretching across the universe.

Having their combat and swimming stamina drained throughout nearly two long days under seabed pressure, even a machine would eventually fall apart, let alone a human body. Jeremy clearly felt every single muscle fiber screaming in protest. He completely threw what were called aristocratic rules to the back of his head, decisively collapsing and sprawling out on the sparkling silver-covered sand. His chest heaved violently as he let out an exhausted sentence:

"I’ll lie down and rest for a bit first."

Evelyn gave a simple "mhm," then adjusted her soaking wet clothes, taking long strides toward a rocky outcrop quite a distance away to set up a perimeter barrier.

Jeremy was also too lazy to waste a neuron caring about what his teammate intended to do. He lay on his back on the cool sand, hands pillowed behind his neck, his still phoenix eyes staring blankly at the deep sky dome. The stars flickered continuously, radiating a dazzling and eternal light. Compared to brilliant fireworks that only tore through space for a moment and then faded, this ancient starlight brought a tranquility, clarity, and steadfastness many times greater.

Suddenly, the scratch on his right bicep transmitted a piercing ache as if a needle dipped in acid had stabbed deep into the marrow. Jeremy frowned slightly. Recalling when harvesting the Illusionary Moon Fruits under the underwater rock trench, he had carelessly let a venomous water snake bite him, grazing his skin.

Jeremy was inherently a lazy person, extremely wanting to close his eyes and ignore this persistent pain to catch some sleep. But his rational brain immediately splashed a bucket of cold water: if this toxin were allowed to run along his blood vessels and invade his heart, then at that time even if he drained a dozen vials of holy recovery medicine, it would just be a drop in the ocean, beyond saving.

Having no other choice, Jeremy had to grit his teeth and force himself to sit up. He pulled a razor-sharp dagger from his waist, ignoring anesthesia, directly pressing the freezing blade into his bicep, ruthlessly carving away all the flesh and blood that had turned a thick black color due to necrosis.

The blade sliced along the muscle fibers. Jeremy’s forehead immediately broke out in beads of cold sweat, soaking his bangs. The nervous system frantically transmitted warning signals to the cerebrum, screaming that the body was enduring heaven-piercing agony. But the youth’s face did not show any distortion. The years of snatching his life from the jaws of death in his previous life had long forged him into someone numb to these flesh-carving, bone-drilling punishments.

Right at this moment, the phantom, which had been locked away in silence for the past few days, suddenly condensed its remnant soul, slowly poking its face out from the sea of consciousness space. It hovered right in front of his face, dropping an exclamation reeking of pity:

"Hey Big Boss, why do you keep torturing yourself, letting yourself get injured to the point of being covered in blood all the time? Your appearance right now looks too miserable and short-lived."

Facing the nagging voice that suddenly rang out, Jeremy was not startled at all. He nonchalantly flicked the blade to toss the chunk of rotting flesh onto the sand, blandly retorting with a pragmatic joke: "Who knows, maybe it’s because my luck was completely robbed by some brat."

Jeremy was clearly just casually mocking his own cannon fodder fate, but the phantom believed it wholeheartedly. It crossed its two stubby arms over its chest, nodding as if serious: "You saying that... makes me feel that hypothesis is extremely highly possible! Who in the world has such salt-rubbing bad luck like you? Let me open my heavenly eye and re-examine your lifeline path."

The phantom had previously been roughly tied up and locked firmly in the corner of his sea of consciousness by Jeremy using magic chains. But after the spiritual power training transaction was finished, he had loosened the seal, allowing it to freely condense its remnant soul to appear outside.

The stark white entity flew in circles around Jeremy twice, pretending to carefully observe the invisible halos of light. A few seconds later, it replied with an incredibly serious tone: "Not right. Although the band of luck clinging to you is fragile and far below the average level, the structure of your soul roots is still intact, with absolutely no traces of being forcibly robbed by someone else’s forbidden arts."

It raised its doll-like hand to rub its chin, pretending to ponder for a moment, then came up with a blatant conclusion: "It seems... you truly are the type of person born bearing a pathetically unlucky fate. Speaking in the specialized terminology of the spiritual world, the energy field radiating from you... looks a bit like a disastrous combination between the two worst destinies: Heavenly Slaughter and Seven Slaughters."

"?"

Jeremy’s bandaging motion immediately froze. Originally, hearing the first half of the sentence, he had a bit of interest to eavesdrop on how this magical world explained fate, but right at this very second, he had an extremely intense urge to kick this blabbermouth ghost straight back to hell.

Jeremy curled up a cold smile; he gritted his teeth, trying to maintain his last bit of patience: "You are a bit too unnecessarily noisy. Shut your mouth and consciously scram down."

Regardless of whether it was Heavenly Slaughter or Seven Slaughters overshadowing his fate, no matter how one listened to it, they were not words carrying good, peaceful meanings. Let alone the fact that this body also bore the toxic combination of both.

Scared by Jeremy’s murderous intent into shivering, the phantom only then foolishly realized it had just spoken way too much asking for a beating. It frantically waved its two hands to explain, hastily adding: "Hey, don’t misunderstand! I am giving a highly professional analytical assessment, absolutely not meaning to mock you!"

"It would have been better if you had just stayed mute rather than dropping that salvaging sentence just now." Jeremy gave a cold snort. He tensed his arm, cleanly cutting off the last piece of poisoned rotting flesh; black blood splattered onto the sandy beach. After sprinkling a layer of cooling antiseptic powder onto the bleeding wound, he casually changed the subject: "Now that you mention it. You are fundamentally just a wandering phantom bound to a deserted island, on what qualification are you proficient in divination arts, even able to see through the strength and weakness of the band of life luck?"

The phantom immediately puffed out its chest, swaggeringly replying with an extremely proud attitude, exactly as if recalling a glorious past:

"Don’t underestimate me! I am the heir of the direct bloodline of the great Divine Shaman lineage! Seeing through luck is a type of innate ability deeply engraved into my genetics. If forced to describe it using human language, then perhaps it is almost similar to the ability to see through all illusions, exposing the invisible entities hidden behind spatial barriers. Even if my physical vessel has rotted away, my soul shattered and turned into a phantom, this ability still hasn’t completely disappeared."

Divine Shaman huh...

Jeremy’s fingers wrapping the gauze halted slightly. He suddenly realized, he had taken in this ghost to act as a compass for quite some time now, yet up to now he still hadn’t interrogated its true identity: "In the end... what is your name?"

The phantom was slightly stunned, hovering dazedly in mid-air. It completely didn’t expect that, after more than a century of being a lonely ghost no one paid attention to, it would have the day to speak and recall its own glorious name in front of someone else.

It slowly curled the corners of its smoky lips into a smile, its tone carrying a solemnity full of nostalgia: "My name is Yusha. Yusha Prometheus."

Prometheus...

Jeremy frowned, muttering the surname in his head. Inadvertently, a bizarrely familiar feeling surged up. Suddenly, a paragraph of ancient text flashed through his mind like a lightning bolt.

Jeremy’s action of tightening the gauze knot completely froze. He snapped his head up, his phoenix eyes filled with astonishment, using a tone containing three parts probing, seven parts uncertainty to ask back: "... Don’t joke with me. Don’t tell me... you are exactly the very last person bearing the Divine Shaman bloodline of the St. Lanfa Empire?"

Yusha narrowed its ghostly eyes, smiling and replying smugly: "One hundred percent correct! That is me."

Jeremy fell into silence. An endlessly long silence.

He rubbed the space between his eyebrows, a feeling welling up in his chest... that was truly too absurd and ridiculous. Based on the remaining memory fragments of the original owner, throughout the years wearing out his trousers at the Imperial Academy, all the great historical segments related to the Prometheus family were forcibly brainwashed into rote memorization as core knowledge.

Revered as the Divine Shaman family, the existence of the Prometheus house throughout tens of thousands of years had always been shrouded in an extremely mysterious veil of fog.

Clear records stated: Tens of thousands of years ago, a powerhouse descended bearing the absolute sequence number Holy Covenant - Number 1. That person standing at the peak of the pyramid was also the very first-generation patriarch who established the Prometheus family.

Legend had it that the reason the St. Lanfa Empire had the capability to unify more than half of the continent’s boundaries, developing into a powerful empire no one dared to invade like today, was half thanks to the merits of that person. In terms of political status, their throne was fully capable of sitting on par with the Duke families.

Furthermore, those bearing the direct bloodline of this family were born with extraordinary innate abilities; even after reaching a certain realm, they could directly predict the future.

Even more terrifyingly, folklore also circulated a terrifying mystery: they could directly ignore the rules, travel back in time, and change the future. How true or false it was, no one knew; in short, this family was precisely such a powerful existence.

However, their whereabouts were never ostentatious. After the continental war ended, they immediately went into seclusion. Even up to now, no one knew the specific location of this family.

As for the reason why it was the "last Divine Shaman", it was also because of the prophecy left by the first-generation patriarch.

The general meaning was, every generation of the Divine Shaman bloodline could only have one person, and the final inheritance would also eventually come to an end. The time period the prophecy alluded to fell around roughly one hundred years ago, coincidentally quite close to the time Yusha passed away.

Piecing together the entire chain of data information in his head, Jeremy threw a sharp look toward the phantom, raising his cold voice carrying a sarcastic inquiry: "The prophecy left by your first-generation patriarch... if I understand correctly, seems to be pointing directly exactly at your generation, right?"

This stab hitting the bullseye too directly caused Yusha’s entire body to freeze in mid-air. It was rendered speechless, not daring to retort another word. Exactly like a turtle pulling its head into its shell, Yusha silently withdrew its remnant soul, tucking its tail and secretly scurrying quickly deep into the dark corner of the sea of consciousness to play dead.

Jeremy let out a soft cold chuckle. If earlier the hypotheses in his head were merely at the threshold of probability speculation, then the moment he saw Yusha’s pathetically guilty reaction, he could completely and firmly affirm his conclusion.

Sure enough, the prophecy judging the roots from the first-generation patriarch was perfectly accurate without a millimeter of deviation. An authoritative bloodline that manipulated the world, ultimately broken off in a ridiculous manner simply because of the arrogance of a descendant tired of living.