Novel Full Chapter 758
“Even so, I’d like to hear the lecture material I missed.”
“What lecture was it?”
“Uh… <Divination Spells Perfect for Going Mad>.”
“Hm? That should be a third-year lecture.”
“So it seems.”
Lee Han answered the senior’s question in a bitter voice.
“No matter how many schools you’re taking, there’s nothing to gain from rushing into divination magic.”
After offering that sensible advice, the senior asked another question.
“What kind of divination have you learned so far?”
“Last year I mostly used stone divination.”
As expected, that probably won’t be enough to keep up…
The reason divination mages used divinations at all was to protect themselves.
Peering into the future placed an enormous burden on a mage.
Divination protected the mage’s mind by breaking that future into uncertain, metaphorical fragments.
Rather than looking straight at the future itself, they looked at fragments of fragments that revealed it, and in that way protected themselves.
Of course, there was a downside too. Accuracy dropped, and the difficulty of interpreting the results rose sharply.
The stone divination first-year students had practiced last year was a comparatively simple one, able to answer straightforward questions, and even then quite a few students had suffered poor accuracy or a severe rebound.
The senior seriously doubted whether a junior who had only learned stone divination ought to be studying <Divination Spells Perfect for Going Mad>.
“Senior. Before that, may I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“…Why are you in the form of a golem?”
Lee Han finally asked what he’d been holding in.
Einroguard was full of all kinds of rare races, but he had never seen a race of bronze golems.
Since the senior had been acting like nothing was strange, he had tried to stay quiet out of juniorly courtesy, but he could not hold back any longer.
“Side effect of divination magic.”
“Is there a divination spell that requires you to become a bronze golem as the price?!”
“Not exactly. You peek into the future and then have to pay the price for it, but if you take that hit in a normal body, it might kill you. It’s better to stay in bronze golem form for a while.”
“…I see.”
Lee Han felt like he finally understood why the divination magic school had so few people in it, enough to be compared to the dark magic school.
No matter how confident the upperclassmen were, surely they did not want to become bronze golems or go insane.
“Bronze Golem Sen… no, Senior. What is your name?”
“Ah. I can’t tell you.”
“?”
“This week is inauspicious for introducing myself.”
“…….”
Lee Han decided he would just call the other person Bronze Golem Senior.
He was suddenly afraid that if he learned the name, they might grow closer for no good reason.
“Golem Senior. You can still tell me the lecture content, right?”
“Of course. I honestly doubt it’ll do you much good, but since Professor Paserlet allowed you to hear it…”
The Golem Senior crooked a creaking bronze finger and beckoned him inside.
Just as Lee Han was about to step forward, the senior quickly stopped him.
“Wait.”
“?”
“Would you step with your right foot first? For the next three days, starting with the right foot will bring good luck.”
“Yes.”
Lee Han accepted it without even being surprised anymore.
By now, he was no longer so naive that one more crazy senior in his life could shake him.
As he followed behind, carefully making sure to start with his right foot every time, while the Golem Senior whistled sideways once every five steps, Lee Han cautiously asked,
“Could you explain a little more about… what you’re doing right now… all these strange… no… well, all these actions?”
“Not difficult.”
The Golem Senior kindly explained it to one of the very few juniors around.
The mages of the divination magic school practiced all kinds of complex divinations to read uncertain futures as accurately as possible, but at the same time they also studied how to use those futures to their own advantage.
One such method was to avoid futures unfavorable to themselves and move toward favorable ones.
“That’s possible? The more specifically you look at the future, the greater the price you have to pay…”
“You don’t look at the future directly. You only figure out the constraints. The actions that avoid misfortune and draw in good fortune.”
The Golem Senior was an excellent divination mage.
Every week, to determine which actions would invite fortune and help avoid misfortune, the senior used three forms of divination and five spells.
Remarkable.
Lee Han was genuinely impressed by the theory.
He already knew divination magic was one of the most unstable and bizarre schools in the Empire, but he had not expected anything like this to be possible.
“How effective is it?”
“This week I found fewer lucky actions than usual, so it’s a bit lacking…”
The Golem Senior rummaged through a pocket, found a die, and rolled it again and again. It landed on six five times in a row, and only on the last roll did it show a different number.
“Oh dear. Last week it would’ve gone further.”
“…!”
Lee Han was startled.
The luck was far stronger than he had expected.
CRACK!
The ceiling of the workshop suddenly gave way, and a brick came hurtling down toward the Golem Senior’s head.
Lee Han instinctively swung his wand and blasted the brick away with telekinesis.
“Are you all right?!”
“How did you…? More importantly, move!”
“?”
Before the words had even finished leaving the senior’s mouth, a spirit-squall erupted inside the workshop, dragging the brick the gale had flung away right back in.
The brick finally slammed into the Golem Senior’s head.
CLANG!
“Urk. I really did set too few lucky constraints this week.”
“What in the world was that just now?!”
“Luck and misfortune are two sides of the same silver coin. Use luck, and misfortune comes rushing in. Don’t worry about it. This is exactly why I became a golem. Here. This is what they covered this week in <Divination Spells Perfect for Going Mad>.”
The Golem Senior flicked a wand and drew the week’s lecture content out from a book.
In <Divination Spells Perfect for Going Mad>, we will go beyond simple and intuitive forms of divination and cover more complex, more powerful ones… (omitted)… The following are divinations worth attempting for a divination mage…
Spirit Gold Coin Divination
Five Devils Divination
Perhaps unnerved by how earnestly the junior was taking notes, the Golem Senior opened the senior’s mouth.
“You are not supposed to practice or master these all at once. This is just the stage where you first learn that advanced divinations like these exist. There’s no need to get ahead of yourself. Understood?”
“Yes. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And don’t practice them alone. Practice them here in the Hall of Imaginary Numbers. Since we’re on the subject, want to try one right now?”
The Golem Senior did not trust the junior very much.
A student hungry enough for magic and knowledge to take every school could very well return to a private room and start experimenting with those divinations one by one.
Since he had not intended to practice alone in the first place, Lee Han thought to himself,
Just what I’d expect from an Einroguard senior. Ruthless.
The ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) senior had just said there was no need to overdo it, and now was immediately forcing practice on him.
You really could never trust what Einroguard seniors said.
“I’d like to try the Five Devils Divination.”
“Hm. All right.”
Seeing the junior deliberately choose devil divination instead of the coin divination, the Golem Senior’s suspicion only deepened.
Mages naturally fell into two kinds.
Those who challenged easy magic first, and those who challenged difficult magic first!
And unlike other schools, in the divination magic school, the latter had a far higher dropout rate. The senior had to keep a close eye on him.
“Lay out the required materials like this, then summon the devil dwelling in the future. Summoning the devil itself is fairly difficult, so absolutely do not rush. Understood?”
“Yes.”
Lee Han took out the reagents one by one exactly as the book instructed.
A harlequin mushroom harvested under the dark moon, a bone fragment brought from the Demon Realm among the dimensions, the future’s name written in cinnabar…
“As the price, I offer my misfortune and seek five prophecies. Tempting devil, come forth.”
“Do it again slowly.”
Watching the junior expend mana with precise motions and an accurate incantation, the Golem Senior thought that perhaps this junior would make fewer mistakes than expected.
The senior had worried he might not be able to keep up with a third-year lecture, but now it seemed there had indeed been a reason Professor Paserlet had allowed him to attend.
“Senior. Isn’t this summoned already?”
“What?”
The Golem Senior turned the neck with creaking bronze joints.
Then, seeing the flashing devil’s mouth in the center of the magic circle, the senior nearly jumped out of the bronze skin.
“?!?!”
Incredibly, this junior had summoned the devil in a single try!
“Is there any devil’s blood mixed into your bloodline, even a little??”
“Not that I know of.”
“Does House Wardanaz happen to have strong ties to devils?”
“Uh… a little…?”
Lee Han answered uncertainly, wondering whether capturing devils and using them as slaves really counted as “ties.”
That answer did make the Bronze Golem Senior understand a little better.
Mages whose bloodlines contained devil’s blood, or whose houses had connections to devils, generally had an advantage when using magic of that type.
Just as a mage with spirit bloodline had an advantage in spiritcraft, the same principle applied here.
…That said, summoning one on the first try was still more than a little astonishing…
“I didn’t expect you’d summon it in one try. So that’s why you picked the devil divination? Smart.”
“Haha. Thank you.”
That had not actually been his reason, but since he wanted to leave a good impression on a senior from the same school, Lee Han nodded anyway.
“I thought that since you were taking every school, and even came all the way here to hear a lecture you missed, you were the type who, like the professor, threw your life on the line and charged recklessly into magic.”
“……”
Lee Han cursed the Bronze Golem Senior in his heart.
Maybe it was because the senior had a cold metal heart, but the lack of manners was unbelievable.
“Then slowly now. Ask it to tell you the prophecies.”
“Tell me the prophecies.”
-You will come face to face with an ancient being…
“……”
“Isn’t that the false one?”
the Golem Senior guessed from the side.
Even in Einroguard, encountering an ancient being was not exactly common.
-You shall not wander outside in broad daylight, nor in the dead of night…
“Hmm. That feels false too.”
That one counted as a restriction rather than a straightforward prophecy, but the content was far too harsh.
The Golem Senior looked suspicious.
Of course, the senior had personally imposed a number of restrictions to increase luck and suppress misfortune, but even so, this seemed like far too broad a restriction.
-You will mercilessly trample the mages of another cradle…
“Isn’t this one false?”
Lee Han, who had been listening quietly, asked.
The Golem Senior shook the head.
“That looks the most plausible out of the three so far. By ‘cradle,’ it probably means another magic school. You run into those more often than you’d think.”
“Even if I do, why would I trample them—”
“That’s just how mage pride works. Be quiet. You’ll miss the prophecy.”
-You will become addicted to Monument Mountain…
-A spirit shall tempt you…
“The first and second ones, then.”
“I disagree. Devil, the fourth and fifth are false!”
“?!”
-A pity… I shall wait for your arrogance and ruin…
The devil vanished back into the future, sounding openly disappointed.
The Golem Senior blinked the lenses in astonishment at the junior’s absurd talent.
So the professor didn’t leave that card behind just out of annoyance!
When Professor Paserlet had left that card saying, “The student can keep up with the class perfectly well without going out of the way to ask about a missed lecture,” the senior had assumed it was just a brush-off.
Unexpectedly, it had been true.
“Senior. I want to learn how to change the future shown in a prophecy!”
“My, my. Don’t rush. The more you rush, the more dangerous it becomes.”
“I think doing nothing right now is even more dangerous…”