Anyway, Crisis Struck
Anyway, things had gone horribly wrong.
Future Sight.
It was one of the rarest authorities in existence—a power capable of interfering with time, held by only a precious few among the Celestials and the Demon Tribe alike.
Such authority could only be awakened by those born with it, and its most representative forms were prophecy and foresight.
The Celestials received prophecy. The Demons received foresight.
The direction and nature of each power differed slightly, but the two shared one fundamental trait: both gazed upon the future.
Those born with Future Sight began seeing the future from the very moment they opened their eyes and first felt the divinity or demonic energy dwelling within their bodies.
And having seen the future, they then made a choice.
Change it—or leave it be.
Throughout history, the Celestials and Demons who possessed Future Sight spent their lives either twisting the countless futures they witnessed, or pouring their strength into making those futures inevitable.
But Future Sight was, in the end, merely one useful authority among many.
One could only see the futures of beings equal to or lesser than oneself.
For those who stood on a higher plane, accuracy crumbled, and the futures they could glimpse shrank into fragmented, fleeting images.
The most representative examples were the Celestials' Eight Thrones and the Demons' Six Demon Kings.
Beings whose very existence warped every law and convention of reality.
To them, a "predetermined future" meant absolutely nothing.
Meant nothing—past tense.
"It's complicated."
Both the Celestials and the Demons had vanished.
With every being of higher rank erased from existence, future foresight had transformed into something approaching absoluteness—and right now, Drak's foresight boasted ninety-nine percent accuracy.
How many variables would I have to create before Drak appeared before me?
I'd briefly considered summoning Meteor, but that probably wouldn't work.
No matter how I cast it, he'd already foreseen that I would never actually drop it on the capital where countless people lived.
No—come to think of it, even without future foresight, wouldn't he know the moment he laid eyes on me even once?
That I could never, ever do such a thing.
Unless I went completely insane, that was never going to happen. Not in this lifetime.
"Let's head back for now."
After privately passing along information about the Frost Dragon raid scheduled three weeks from now to Vlack, I returned to the mansion.
Vlack and the ranker-led subjugation force were drawing up their plans for the assault in three weeks' time.
The reason was obvious, of course—the hatchling Sgaredo.
To be fair, there had been dissenters and opportunists hoping to score a lucky kill who came after me and Sgaredo on the first and second days, but every last one of them had been converted into a healthy serving of experience points for Sgaredo's level-ups.
"Uwaaah~"
Flap, flap.
The moment Sgaredo saw me, she came tumbling straight into my arms.
She'd grown quite a bit by now—pretty soon, carrying her around might actually get difficult.
"Have you been good?"
"Uuu!"
Sgaredo's stubby little claws pointed at the wall.
Sure enough, it was exactly what I'd seen before—a haphazard heap of debris, glued and stacked on top of itself in a lumpy mess.
That said, perhaps because she'd been scolded after smashing the wall last time, she hesitated for a moment, looking somewhat sheepish about it.
I gave a little grin and waved my hand once.
Pure white light washed over the wreckage, and moments later a pristine, flawless wall emerged without a single scratch.
With Sgaredo tucked securely in my arms, I left the mansion and took a walk through Lethes County.
The streets had changed considerably in just a week.
Far in the distance, the snowy mountain loomed, an ominous chill radiating off its slopes, and countless people turned to stare at me as I passed.
I was long used to that kind of attention, but with Sgaredo cradled in my arms, the stares gathered all the more thickly.
There were those who found her adorable, like a beloved pet; those who trembled at the mere fact that she was a dragon; and then there were the occasional greedy ones who tried to snatch off a skill or two before getting hauled away by the guards. Quite the variety, really.
"Over here, over here!"
"Uuuuu?"
"She's SO cute!"
"Eat this too!"
The female players staying in Lethes County, in particular, had gone absolutely head over heels for Sgaredo.
When I let her loose for a short while, they came running from who knows where with armfuls of food, lavishing her with local delicacies from every corner of the land.
And every single time, Sgaredo accepted without the slightest hesitation and kept right on eating.
Dragons can stomach pretty much anything, so there was no harm in it—but wasn't this a bit much, even so?
She's eating nearly twice her own body weight at this point.
At this rate, I might have to carry her out of here separately.
"Uuup."
Figuring there'd be no end to it if I let her eat any longer, I picked her back up.
She'd eaten so much that she looked maybe 1.3 times bigger than when we'd set out.
Her mouth was all greasy, too.
"C-could I... pet her?"
Just then, a man who'd been silently watching Sgaredo this whole time stepped closer and asked.
He was so nervous that he swallowed hard, his outstretched hand trembling visibly.
What's more, he was deliberately hiding his left hand.
I pondered for a moment, then nodded.
"Of course."
"Uuu?"
"......"
Slowly, the man's left hand made contact with Sgaredo's scales.
Flash!
"Huh?!"
"Teleportation?!"
"The man's gone! So's the hatchling!"
"A mage? What—what just..."
In an instant, a surge of golden light swallowed the man and the hatchling whole.
All that remained here were the countless bystanders—and me, now suddenly missing a Sgaredo.
I glanced down at my suddenly empty arms for a moment, then lifted my head.
"...Oh no. Oh no, no—Sgaredo's been kidnapped!"
"Was it a Bandit?"
"I'll report it to the guards right away!"
"Did anyone get a look at that guy's face?"
"His face? It was... completely average-looking?"
"Must've been a disguise item. The kind that makes you register as utterly unremarkable, nothing special at all. Bandits use those all the time..."
The players fussed over it as if it were their own business.
Meanwhile, I sensed a familiar golden aura enveloping Sgaredo.
Hummm...
The lingering resonance of that aura harmonized with a Masterpiece.
Specifically, the gauntlet that practically radiated fury, as if it might vent its wrath at any moment—the Red Guide.
The Red Guide furrows its brow.
The Red Guide wishes to guide the way.
So that's where they are.
Having confirmed the location, I declared it aloud, loud and clear, as if to brand the fact into everyone's minds.
"This is terrible! We have to find Sgaredo right now!"
To think something so absurd could happen in the middle of a public street.
With my own flesh and blood experience of this cruel and dangerous world on full display, my gaze remained locked firmly on that one spot.
Anyway, a truly terrible crisis had struck.
I set off at once, stride quickening.
Mmph! Mmph!
"Well done, hauling it all the way here. Good work."
Somewhere on the outskirts of town, where ordinary folk rarely ventured.
Inside a building where a perception-blocking magic scroll was actively running, the trembling man bowed his head.
Clang! Clang!
Beside him, the snow-white hatchling was locked inside an iron cage, muzzle bound shut, thrashing with all her might—yet no amount of struggling could break the shackles forged of golden light.
"But you know..."
And standing at the center of it all, the man with the golden scythe.
Reaper—master of the great Masterpiece, the Yellow Marauder, and Guild Master of the Bandit guild, Darkness—fiddled with his scythe as his eyes flicked back and forth between the hatchling and his guildmate.
"Don't you think that was way too easy?"
"Sir?"
"I mean, sure. Lily's so strong that a head-on fight is hopeless, so we target her carelessness and snatch the hatchling only."
Mmph!
"Easy to talk about, a real pain to actually pull off, am I right?"
"W-well... it worked out, didn't it?"
"It did. Just... something about it feels fucking off."
Had Lily genuinely been unable to stop someone snatching the hatchling right before her eyes?
The same Lily who'd crushed even Leo underfoot?
Reaper was Rank 1 among Bandits and an unregistered ranker—never once listed on the official rankings.
In raw strength, he could genuinely hold his own against single-digit rankers. But Leo was on an entirely different plane. An insurmountable wall.
He'd managed to push her down—so he was telling me he fumbled a kidnapping attempt against some trivial low-level nobody?
His guildmate, having just been called a trivial low-level nobody to his face, lowered his head with a hint of quiet protest.
"B-but... isn't overconfidence dangerous? Normally, no matter how strong someone is, they'd never expect to be robbed in the middle of a public street."
"Does an elephant die to an ant just because it let its guard down? Think for once."
"......"
"Whatever. It's done. However we managed it."
Just kill the thing dead before it gets loose. Simple as that.
Uuuung!
The iron cage swung open, and the hatchling clenched her jaws, glaring daggers at Reaper.
Reaper raised the golden scythe as if the whole thing were a fine joke.
"Shouldn't have given me such a convenient excuse to pluck you away."
Rest in peace.
SHRAAAK!