Chapter 101: The Mysterious Seed

Chapter 101: Chapter 101: The Mysterious Seed

Jeremy’s footsteps halted halfway onto the balcony.

His phoenix eyes narrowed slightly. Turning on his heel, he took a few long strides to the row of magical soil planters lined up along the railing, leaning over slightly to observe.

This was the seed Lucius D’Arsy had shoved into his hand earlier. Placed next to the spiritual plants he had scavenged from the dragon’s lair at the bottom of the deserted island’s cliff, this sprout’s growth rate was clearly vastly superior. Those other plants, after months of careful tending, were still as stunted as the day they were planted, while this one had already unfurled three layers of leaves.

Jeremy had once bluntly asked what kind of exotic flora this was.

The guy merely raised an eyebrow, dodging the question with a smirk. Only when cornered did he lazily curl his lips and drop a single word: a flower.

What kind of flower, he couldn’t be bothered to say.

The problem was, up to this point, with the sprout having reached this stage, and with an entire volume of botanical knowledge crammed into his head, Jeremy still couldn’t classify that leaf vein structure into any species he had ever read about.

Asking again only yielded the same bewitching smile and a smooth reply that he himself didn’t know.

His curiosity was piqued and then left hanging. Jeremy had no choice but to let it be. After all, he couldn’t exactly put a scythe to the other’s neck just to force the name of a plant out of him.

The young leaves bore a pale yellow hue, so thin that the magical lighting shining through revealed their outlines. He didn’t touch it, merely glancing over to check the crystal core of the automatic watering magic tool, confirming the magic mist was still spraying evenly, before shoving his hands into his pockets and turning back into the room.

This growth progress couldn’t be considered slow. Whatever that thing was, its true face would have to be revealed at the latest by graduation day.

As night fell, the roster of teams representing the five major departments was fully announced by the academy board.

The notifications were directly forwarded to each student by their respective guiding instructors.

Griffin tossed it straight into the team’s communication channel, accompanied by a single period.

Jeremy tapped the magic spirit card, the light screen blooming outward, casting a pale blue halo onto his sharp jawline.

Omnia Department Representative: Class 509 — Genius Team.

Captain Asaro, the person he had faced in the freshman tournament arena.

Holy Covenant No. 16. Current realm... Intermediate Stage, Three-Star.

Linnea Department Representative: Class 401 — Wind and Rain Team.

Captain Lomita, Holy Covenant No. 12. Intermediate Stage, Two-Star realm.

Astraea Department Representative: Class 215 — Crimson Wolf Team.

Captain Fino, Holy Covenant No. 11. Intermediate Stage, Three-Star realm.

And Zenith Department: Class 016 — Sinking Star Team.

Captain Raphael, Holy Covenant No. 09. Intermediate Stage, Three-Star realm.

Jeremy’s fingertips tapped a rhythm on the glass tabletop—three beats, then a complete stop.

Just a glance at those few lines was enough to picture how brutal the upcoming matches would be. Aside from Crimson Wolf’s Fino, he had faced the other four captains before. In less than half a year, all of them had simultaneously crossed the Intermediate Stage threshold. The Lunar Eclipse Team’s win probability, if calculated coldly, was as thin as a layer of spring ice.

His gaze lingered on Raphael’s profile for a few seconds longer.

If his memory served him right, during the freshman tournament, that guy had only reached Basic Stage, Five-Star.

Truly fitting for someone holding a top-ten Holy Covenant. That leveling speed was no longer a matter of effort, but a matter of the gods dealing a good hand.

A while back, Jeremy had taken the trouble to look into the curricula of the other departments, even digging into the training schedules of other classes within the Anima department. The conclusion drawn was rather laughable: their combined intensity didn’t even amount to half of what Griffin had dumped on the five of them.

In this regard, perhaps he should write that guy a thank-you note for that utterly inhumane teaching method.

If from the very beginning they had obediently followed the standard curriculum like the rest of the crowd, forget about a spot in the inter-department tournament—even squeezing onto the victory podium within the Anima department would have been a pipe dream.

Facing a bunch of geniuses destined for greatness straight from the cradle, honestly speaking, a slight sense of imbalance did arise in Jeremy’s heart. But that feeling flashed by as quickly as a dying spark, extinguishing before it could catch fire.

Having a second life to keep breathing was, for him, a miracle enough to keep silent and move forward.

This world didn’t possess anything called absolute fairness, and fate even less so. The Covenant number had been stamped onto the fate stone from the moment one stepped onto the testing podium; if one didn’t want to forever stare at the backs of others, the only way was to put in a hundred times the effort.

Jeremy turned off the light screen.

To maintain the audience’s curiosity, this announcement didn’t reveal the entire team rosters, only the class information and the captains.

In the novel he had read in his previous life, there wasn’t a single line about the inter-department tournament either. The entire work was only a little over a hundred thousand words, with the world-building alone eating up tens of thousands. Amber’s growth process was even more sketchy, summarized in a few Chapters before skipping straight to the scene of him ascending the throne, taking a bunch of concubines, and finally, ten years later, the dark forces flooding the continent, starting an endless war.

That section of smoke and fire alone was several times longer than the part narrating the first half of the protagonist’s life.

The God of Covenants had clearly stated that Amber was neither the male lead nor a child of destiny, merely a perspective lens. This proved that the guy was also just an ordinary living being struggling among the masses.

But that very same god had also confirmed: that web novel was something the original owner had used forbidden arts to peek into the flow of destiny and shoved into his hands.

Then all the developments within it were truths that had occurred, and truths that were about to occur.

It was just, why did the original owner choose to convey all the information from Amber’s perspective, rather than his own?

On the first day he opened his eyes in this world, Jeremy had posed that question. And apart from the original owner himself—whose consciousness had sunk into eternal slumber—probably no one was qualified to answer.

But once the gears of destiny had been injected with the variable of his otherworldly soul, the events he knew in advance would definitely create a butterfly effect, twisting the flow of the future in a different direction.

Jeremy narrowed his eyes, re-examining every specific detail.

Speaking of which, in the novel, Amber’s position of empress remained vacant until the day the empire was ground to ash by the dark forces. This proved that in the original storyline, the original owner had never married into the royal palace either.

However, all plot points related to the Valmont family, along with the trajectory of the original owner’s life after the broken engagement, were almost entirely blanked out. What happened at the Duke’s mansion during that timeline was a complete mystery.

Thinking about having to pack his luggage the afternoon of the day after tomorrow and step through the teleportation gate to return to that cold mansion in the capital, Jeremy’s temples began to throb incessantly.

He reached up and rubbed his temples forcefully.

According to the old routine recorded in the original owner’s memories, the Duke, currently recovering from a coma, and his sickly wife would return from the western territory exactly one day before New Year’s Eve, just in time to attend a highly political royal banquet the following day.

And that brilliant older brother—the one who had been missing without a trace for many years and left a fatal rift tearing apart the familial bonds of this entire family—had finally recently sent news.

The Divine Temple was located significantly closer to the capital than the western lands, plus it was the New Year period.

If conditions allowed, the probability of him appearing in the capital was not low at all.

Jeremy’s fingers paused on the edge of the glass table.

He heard that direct members of the Valmont family could sense each other’s familial bloodline.

After all, this body was still entirely the original owner’s, and the soul mark hadn’t completely dissipated yet.

They probably wouldn’t notice the soul swap, right...