Chapter 182: The Pope’s Plan
“By the way, here is the scroll I mentioned before. You can take a look.
After you’re done, share it with Vivian and the others. I think they’ll be curious too.”
Kailun took the scroll from his sleeve and handed it to Isabella. He wouldn’t be stingy, considering the valuable gifts she had given him.
“What is this?” Isabella asked, taking the scroll with a puzzled look.
“It’s a type of magic that can change your body shape. If there’s anything you don’t understand, you can ask Edlin. She invented it.”
Kailun explained to Isabella and continued, “Don’t use your divination casually for the time being. I want you to divine some interesting information for me.”
Isabella tucked the scroll into her arms. “Divination information is not always 100% accurate. Being overly superstitious can lead to being misled by false information.”
“I know, but your divination can be very helpful.”
He patted Isabella’s head. “Fox will be back this afternoon. You can exchange and learn from each other then. She must have learned a lot from her trip to Kuye Town.”
At the mention of Kuye Town, Isabella glared at Kailun resentfully. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have been teleported out and missed out on all the benefits.
Isabella: “If you had let me stay in the town, I might have made even greater progress in Fate Magic.”
Kailun shrugged. “But do you know that someone turned into a bird after entering the town, and someone else turned into a dog? If you had gone in, what do you think you would have become?”
Isabella fell silent. She knew that Kailun had auctioned off a ninth-rank green-feathered bird. There were rumors that the bird was Henry from the Temple of the Celestial God.
However, she hadn’t given it much thought because the source of the rumor wasn’t reliable. Now, hearing Kailun mention it again, she was truly scared.
“Well, what do you think of the Loya Ball?” Isabella hesitated for a moment before asking the question she cared about the most.
“It doesn’t matter what choice the Loya Ball makes. The important thing is that you’re still my ally, aren’t you?”
Kailun squatted down and looked into Isabella’s eyes. “You were the one who signed the contract with me, not the Loya Ball. If they make the wrong choice, I won’t hold it against you. Are you satisfied with this answer?”
Isabella turned her head away, avoiding Kailun’s gaze. “It’s none of my business. I don’t know. I have nothing to do with those stubborn old geezers.”
“Alright, since you’ve said so, I don’t need to worry too much. You look tired. Go back and rest. I’ll have someone call you for lunch.”
Kailun struggled to stand up, using his hands to support his knees. Carol, seeing this, quickly reached out to help him.
Isabella looked at them with confusion but didn’t think much of it.
Never trust Kailun’s apparent strength. You might think he’s first-rank, but he’s actually eighth-rank. You might think he’s eighth-rank, but he could be ninth-rank.
She still hadn’t figured out the reason for his mysterious power fluctuations.
Seeing Kailun again, Isabella felt relieved. Relaxing, she felt a wave of drowsiness.
She stretched and walked towards her room in the small building as if she owned the place.
Carol watched Isabella’s retreating figure and said, “It seems she still chose you. If it were someone else, they might not have come back.”
Kailun sat down on a stone bench in the courtyard. “It was a wise choice, wasn’t it? The Loya Ball has some strength, but they’re too rigid. Just wait. There might be new developments in a few days.”
He rubbed his sore back and slumped on the table. His low constitution made him feel physically and mentally exhausted.
Carol sat beside Kailun and casually picked up a magic book from the box, starting to read.
Kailun didn’t stop her. Carol’s talent far exceeded his expectations. In other words, this was something she already possessed.
He watched Carol’s flawless profile, gradually feeling sleepy. He shifted his position and rested his head on her lap.
Kailun rubbed his cheek against her smooth thigh and closed his eyes.
Carol looked down at Kailun’s face. After a moment’s thought, she covered his face with her skirt, as if playing a prank.
She was now close to the seventh rank, her progress accelerating at an abnormal pace.
She had been having strange dreams at night, more and more frequently.
She always dreamed of Kailun, but he wasn’t real in her dreams. Comparing them with other information, she could easily find inconsistencies.
For example, in her dreams, Kailun often slept with Bella, the dragon girl, who treated him like a sibling, without any of her current desires.
It wasn’t so much Kailun, but rather someone else who had replaced him.
She already had a guess about who had been replaced.
Carol kept these abnormalities in mind. Although many scenes were blurry, they couldn’t affect her feelings for Kailun.
The current reality was the true reality. She firmly believed that.
……
Time flew by. It was already afternoon, and Fox and Shirley were on their way back.
They had sealed the tomb with a special method, making it difficult for ordinary people to enter.
Fox seemed anxious on their way back. After conquering the last magic circle, she had seen a glimpse of her past.
She seemed to understand why she had lost her talent.
Fate was a magical thing. It could be glimpsed and even altered to a certain extent, but its direction couldn’t be reversed.
Large-scale changes to fate required a huge price, sometimes even erasing one’s existence.
Fox named the last magic circle she had copied “Destiny Doll.” In a way, it had reached the limit of ninth-rank magic.
In just a few days, she had fully understood this magic. It had always been in her mind.
Unfortunately, the magic she had seen was incomplete, missing a large part.
This magic could reconstruct the complete form of an object from its remnants, but this form had no consciousness or soul.
It was hard for Fox not to think of Kailun.
“Shirley, do you think humans have past lives?” Fox asked on their way back.
Shirley looked at Fox with a strange expression. “Theoretically, they don’t exist. But since you’re asking such a strange question, I guess you must have discovered something, right?”
“I think Kailun… No, never mind.”
Fox shook her head. It was just an absurd guess, even she found it unbelievable.
She needed more clues. To get them, she needed to see Kailun.
“It’s a bad habit to stop talking halfway through a sentence, just like Kailun.”
Shirley glared at Fox. She hated people who did that. “We’ll be entering the city soon. Maybe Lord Kailun is waiting for us.”
Fox: “No way. How could that guy be willing to wait for us?”
Shirley pointed at the city wall in the distance. “Look, the city wall is quite lively today. Maybe they’re already there.”
Fox looked in the direction Shirley was pointing. With her better eyesight, she indeed saw Kailun’s figure.
Without hesitation, she teleported away, leaving Shirley behind, speechless. “These people always say one thing and do another. They’re not honest at all. I wonder what the Princess is like now. I hope she hasn’t been ‘played’ by Kailun.”
Shirley sighed and quickened her pace.
On the other side, Fox crashed into Kailun’s arms, almost knocking the wind out of him. Seeing that she was fine, Kailun withdrew his attribute points and allocated them to constitution, feeling much better.
“I didn’t expect my Miss Fox to act so spoiled in front of so many people. It’s quite unexpected.”
He chuckled, stroking Fox’s ears. She was trembling in his arms, clearly upset about something.
“Don’t talk nonsense! I want to punch you, you exploitative bastard! I worked so hard for you, and you didn’t even bother to send me a letter.”
Her emotions were still unstable, so Fox didn’t want to lift her head from Kailun’s arms and let everyone see her losing her composure.
Seeing Kailun standing in front of her, safe and sound, the weight on her heart finally lifted.
Bella, watching from the side, wagged her tail, her eyes fixed on Fox. She suddenly felt that Winnie’s “playing hard to get” theory was useless. If she kept waiting, this cunning fox might overtake her.
She glanced around and, using everyone’s blind spot, swatted Fox’s butt with her tail.
The slight pain made Fox lift her head from Kailun’s arms. She saw Bella glaring at her.
She gave Bella a provocative look and then swatted Bella’s tail away with her own fox tail.
Kailun naturally saw their playful banter, but he didn’t interfere.
He looked outside the city and saw Shirley running towards them, carrying a large chest. He turned to Hilna and said, “Princess, go and welcome your knight. Don’t forget about our bet.”
Upon receiving Kailun’s order, Hilna quickly ran down the city wall, instinctively ignoring the so-called bet.
If Kailun really wanted to do something to Shirley, he wouldn’t need to use her. He was just trying to mess with her.
Hilna sighed. She had occasionally hoped that Kailun would treat her as gently as he treated the others.
But unfortunately, hope was just hope.
Hilna patted her cheeks and ran towards the city gate. They soon met outside the city.
“Greetings, Your Highness. I’m relieved to see you safe and sound.”
Shirley placed the large chest on the ground and greeted Hilna.
Hilna: “… Are you still Shirley? I feel like you’ve become a stranger.”
Shirley curtsied to Hilna. “Of course, I’m still Shirley. I will always be your knight. The changes you see are normal. Everyone grows, and I’m no exception. However, Your Highness doesn’t seem to have grown at all after such a long time. This worries me. To improve Your Highness’s competitiveness, I will be your emotional strategist from now on.”
Hilna was stunned. “Compete for what?”
“Of course, to compete with the others for Kailun. This is your only chance for the future.”
Shirley smiled gently at Hilna, but Hilna felt that her smile was very dark.
Hilna: “???”
She was completely confused. The traitor was beside her.
Shirley placed her hand on Hilna’s shoulder. “You seem confused, but please don’t doubt my judgment. This is a necessary step for you to regain your pride.”
Hilna: “…”
“Please don’t look at me like that. You need to learn many new things, such as how to dress beautifully and how to seduce Kailun.”
Influenced by Kailun, Shirley had developed a desire to “bully” Hilna, but it was a different kind of bullying.
“Crazy! You’re completely crazy! You must have been brainwashed by Kailun!”
Hilna shook her head and tried to escape.
But Shirley grabbed her hand first. “Your Highness, if you don’t want to be a pet forever, listen to me. If you continue like this, you will only ever be his plaything. Is that what you want?”
“You’re broken! Shirley, you’re completely broken! Is pleasing him really a good future? Your ideas will only make me lose myself faster. What’s the difference between you and Kailun?”
Hilna didn’t understand. This world must be broken.
“You’re right… I think I’ve been greatly influenced.”
Shirley belatedly realized that her way of thinking had, to some extent, become synchronized with Kailun’s.
Sometimes, she even found herself taking his side.
She looked up at the city wall and saw Kailun smiling at her.
……
“Maintain your disguise. I’ll be leaving the Temple for a while.”
The Pope instructed her trusted confidante while organizing documents.
“But didn’t you say that leaving now would make you vulnerable to being usurped?”
The one who asked was an old woman, hundreds of years old. She also possessed a ninth-rank aura and was one of the pillars of the Temple of the Celestial God.
“Therefore, we must conceal the fact that I’m leaving the Temple. I’ll leave this matter to you. In addition, you need to closely monitor the Empress’s movements and emphasize the threat posed by the miners repatriated by Kailun, forcing the Empress to keep her forces within the Empire.”
The Pope finished processing another document and categorized it.
The old woman asked again, “Should we recall Saint Chrissy and Lord Charles?”
The Pope’s pen paused. “No need. My destination is the Xiya Kingdom. Since Kailun sent forces to support the Abyss, the Xiya Kingdom must be vulnerable now. With my strength, as long as I conceal myself well, I can successfully assassinate him.”
In fact, the key factor that had made her decide was the result of her divination.
Before making this decision, she had borrowed the divination device from the Empress for a day and received a prediction that her trip to the Xiya Kingdom wouldn’t lead to the destruction of the world.
She was curious if the so-called Kailun could defend against an assassination attempt from someone like her.
……
“So she wants to go to the Xiya Kingdom. Interesting. Then the Holy Temple will be mine.”
The Empress stood before the massive Destiny Divination Device, reviewing the events the Pope had divined.
The rewind function was the Empire’s latest research, and the Pope, who was always focused on external affairs, was unaware of it.
Compared to the Pope, the Empress knew much more. She had a unique aura, unlike that of an ordinary ninth-rank mage.
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