The Young Master in the Shadows

Chapter 214: Fates

30 Minutes ago Victor suffered the consequence of a very serious miscalculation. He thought he knew everything. He was mistaken.

He expected that his fate shield skill would be sufficient to protect him from the backlash of confronting Sebastian, especially since his level was now high enough. And he was right about that, the shield withstood the backlash… What he didn’t expect was the system notification that appeared a moment later.

All That happened when a light backlash hit, then a flash of black lightning hit Victor’s soul directly…

If he was a normal human, he would have completely died due to the tribulation that targeted his very soul. But he was not, he had already used many soul-protecting talismans after he split his soul, just in case.

Like every tribulation, if it didn’t kill you, it would make you stronger. So Victor’s system used the energy of the failed tribulation to perform the class upgrade.

Victor should have been unconscious due to his soul being preoccupied with the update, but he wasn’t, as he had a spare soul being carried by Lily far away. It was monitoring everything.

Unfortunately, It could not activate any of Victor’s main body skills as the system was preoccupied, but it could read his logs and send energy to him. Souls that belong to a single being are always connected in a mystical way.

So after the tribulation, when Margret was panicking over what to do, Victor was about to lose his mind reading the barrage of logs that was thrown at him as the system updated.

Victor didn’t know where to begin at this… WTF! Was the only thing he could think of. What’s wrong with Margret? Who the f*ck was Claricia? Why was Lily’s fate so overbearing?

Who is Jerry? Why was his destiny S? Another Scion? When did he meet him? Why does he want revenge?

Ohh... That Oliver wanted Revenge too… Let him come. Victor shook his head and continued to read.

Nex was a Malcolm. Who was this one too? Two scions out of nowhere? Wait… Wasn’t that guy he killed a while ago named Malcolm too? Was he another Malcolm?

Victor quickly pressed on the name… it expanded.

Yes, it was another Malcolm. This one had no last name… But a nick name. This one didn't want revenge, but Love. What did his love life had to do with Victor? Was he gay? Did Victor need to start protecting his chastity?

Although Victor didn’t fully understand this list, he realized for the first time that he had made a big mess since returning. He had been creating enemies and changing things all around.

He should have acted more low-key… As if that would work.

Victor decided to take things slowly. He had to understand what all these terms meant: World, Selfset, Overwritten… What does that mean?

Suddenly he could feel a stream of information fill his mind. It made his soul scream in pain, but when it was over, his skill had fully upgraded. He had additional data in his mind… It was how fate worked, and it made him realize that he was scammed big time. Everyone was scammed... The information he got was not only partial, it had mistakes!

After the reckoning, there was a sect that appeared, preaching about scions and warning people about them. The Fate Sect. They held the primary knowledge about all the info about Scions, fates, and dark Scions.

Many world powers ignored them at first, but as time progressed more and more chose to believe them. Especially after some unlucky powers perished under the hands of scions.

After that, most of the world powers had advisors from that sect, they requested them to make sure that they attacked no scions… Even when von Krone united the world, they didn’t dare to interfere with them. They just ignored them as they believed that they had no real power anymore.

Victor now realized that those guys were more dangerous than every other power combined. They were controlling destiny itself. He was not sure if it was a skill or an artifact though.

Victor had now a clear idea of how fate worked.

Every creature had a fate list. It is like a list of effects of threads and destinies.

The first one was a creature’s own fate power. It is the power to set its own destiny… It can affect everything around them, from luck, to love to even death.

The stronger it is, the more changes it can make to the world, and to other destinies. It is also the main defense against others’ fates.

Creatures with S-ranked fates are the strongest. They can change the fates around them to suit them… Those are the Scions.

The second point is Birth Destiny. It is something that is given at birth, be it greatness or poverty… There are many of those, Death is the birth destiny that everyone has, it cannot be removed (not easily anyway) It can only be overwritten.

A Self-set Destiny is the one a person creates, many through hard work, others through luck and Fate strength… It is rare to have a self-set destiny. However, once it was set, the fates of those around him would converge to make that destiny happen.

A World Destiny is the world's plan for a certain individual… This can change. For example, a good person might get a better world destiny if he keeps helping others, while a killer would get a bad one. It’s like Karma but with one distinction. The world would always prioritize its own survival.

That’s when Scions comes into the picture.

A Scion is a person that has an S fate. The world would start guiding this person for its own good…

Sometimes though, that person would have another destiny that is conflicting with the world, like a birth fate to destroy the world, or a self-set fate to kill some very important character.

If that fate couldn’t be removed, the world would stop helping that scion and add a DEATH and a MISERY destiny to his Fate List, turning the Scion into a dark Scion, making him focus on survival instead of fulfilling some destiny.

Like what happened to Oliver… Victor needed to look at his list to know for sure, but he must have decided on some really crazy self-set destiny, that the world decided he was no longer worth the effort.

Now to the juicy stuff, The name (ID_X_147337) seemed to refer to a certain fate-controlling artifact or skill… Victor believed it belonged to that Fate Sect.

Those people were not acting by themselves, they were changing the fates of certain powers in secret. He never expected them to be this active. For example, they must have been the ones behind the poisoning of his grandmother… They didn’t do it directly but by influencing her fate, they made one of her enemies do the dirty work.

Thankfully, he was no longer affected by fate. And he could freely change things.

For him, Scions are no longer an undefeatable enemy, because as long as he stayed hidden and didn’t interfere with the world plan, he would be easily able to avoid backlashes. And as long as he raises his own fate power to X, he would be able to kill them.

The question was, could he add fates to others too? Of course, he could, but not yet. He needed to level up his fate weaver class, and now he knew how. He had to do it. He just needed to mess other fates up. The stronger the better.

Another disturbing thought struck Victor. Now, he was pretty sure that the fate sect guys would soon be searching for him… Wanting to know who was the one interfering with their plans.

But those guys would not be able to find him. Not with his authority would render any predicting skill useless.

So what he had to do was to increase his influence and spread it as far as possible, while staying low key… Acting according to others’ fates on the surface.

And maybe use some puppets…

Victor smiled evilly, but that smile quickly fell as a new notification, ruining his good mood.