Chapter 500: How to Spend the Last Dregs of Life

"I'll lock you away somewhere. I'll make it absolutely certain that no one can kill you!"

Black Rose's words left Ambrose momentarily stunned. Was that actually a viable option?

But in the end, all he could do was refuse.

"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. The future I've foreseen for myself isn't exactly dignified. I don't want anyone to witness it."

Black Rose still wasn't ready to let it go. She pressed even further. "Then just tell me who exactly will kill you! I'll go deal with the culprit myself, right now."

Milena shot to her feet as well, worked up. "That's right, Father! Together, the two of us can even take on a god!"

They simply refused to believe him.

Ambrose could only smile. "All right. Since the two of you insist, I'll make an effort. I'll analyze everything I've seen of this future, and once I've worked out every last detail of the prophecy, I'll come to you both for help."

Hearing this, Black Rose finally relaxed a little. Her one real fear had been that Ambrose would simply give up on himself. As long as he held onto his resolve, she was certain his intelligence alone could allow him to solve just about anything.

After extracting repeated promises that he'd stay in touch, Black Rose reluctantly returned to the Umbral Depths with Milena in tow.

But no sooner had Ambrose sent the two of them through the teleportation array than a new figure appeared: a middle-aged man with a weary, world-worn air about him.

He wore a bard's attire and was idly plucking at the strings of a lute.

Ambrose was about to speak when the man broke into song.

"Oh, my dearest friend, you are soon to leave me behind, and here I'll sit, alone, strumming a song no one will ever hear..."

The lyrics were painfully on-the-nose, almost embarrassingly so, and the chords were downright unpleasant to the ear. There was no mistaking it. This had to be Poet.

Ambrose waited through the entire farewell ballad with a fixed, awkward smile on his face, then applauded with about as much sincerity as he could fake.

Poet gave a courteous, formal bow of thanks, folded his lute down into a pool of black shadow, and only then said to Ambrose, "Your life's nearly over, and you still can't bring yourself to tell the truth? To your ears, that song was terrible, wasn't it?"

Ambrose said, sheepish, "I suppose my acting needs some work."

Poet dropped the playful expression and clapped Ambrose on the shoulder. "You're a lich. You don't even have a face to make an expression with, let alone act with. But it wouldn't have mattered how well you performed anyway. I know perfectly well my music sounds terrible to your kind. My soul is built differently from yours. The music I love is nothing but noise to everyone else."

That only made Ambrose more embarrassed. He'd gone out of his way to praise Poet's "musical taste" earlier, but the man had known the truth all along.

Poet didn't seem interested in dragging out Ambrose's embarrassment any further, though. "I heard everything just now. You've been lying to Rose and your daughter, haven't you? You've already given up. Am I wrong?"

Ambrose was resigned, "Outsiders can never truly grasp the power of fate. My death is unavoidable, and stalling for time would only make things worse. Since I reclaimed my power over fate, I've actually made a few preparations. I just didn't expect death to arrive so much sooner than I imagined."

"You still have one resurrection left," Poet reminded him.

The last time Poet had blessed him, Ambrose had gained three chances at resurrection. He'd already burned one getting the better of Loss, and a second getting the better of Shara. The final resurrection was still active.

But Ambrose only smiled. "Then it seems even you, Poet, don't fully understand what fate actually means. You could hand me ten thousand more blessings and it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Poet seemed genuinely surprised by Ambrose's calm acceptance. It was a far cry from how the lich usually carried himself in the group chat.

"I'm curious what future you actually saw."

"Honestly, it's a bit humiliating. I'd rather not describe the scene in detail."

"Even knowing you're going to die looking like a complete fool, you'll simply accept it?"

"It's not a matter of acceptance. It's simply the truth of things. But don't worry, I won't let my life end in some careless, sloppy way.

"My senior—his whole life, all he ever wanted was to restore his family's honor. And when death finally came for him, he chose to sacrifice himself to save an entire kingdom. Selwyn spent his whole life hiding from fate, but he never once stopped fighting it, and even in his final moment, he made sure to leave me his last hope. I'm a diviner too. I can hardly afford to fall short of the two of them."

"Fair enough. I'll admit I'm no follower of fate myself. After all, when I was born, this world's fate was still nothing but a formless swirl of chaos. Here, this is for you. Shara asked me to pass it along. I honestly wasn't planning to rush it over to you, but then you go and suddenly... well. Maybe this can turn things around for you."

"Something from Shara?"

Ambrose took the wisp of pitch-black smoke from Poet's hand, puzzled. The instant he sensed what it was, his expression shifted to open shock.

"This is the complete knowledge of the dark Weft? Why would Shara ever hand this over to me?"

Ambrose understood exactly what this was worth. Calling it the equivalent of an entire divine domain wouldn't be an exaggeration. Shara had spent the better part of her existence trying to seize the Goddess of Magic's position, and this was the sum total of her life's research. And she was just... giving it away?

The instant Ambrose absorbed the knowledge contained within, it would be as good as handing the Goddess of Magic that same knowledge too, meaning Shara would never have a chance at her goal again.

"Wait, this is... Karsas's Ascension!"

Ambrose's hands were trembling. The spell was infamous. Legend held that it could turn a mortal into a god in a single instant. It was far more potent than a Wish spell, because Karsas's Ascension didn't just grant divinity: it seized the Goddess of Magic's own position outright. What made it even more absurd was that the last person to attempt it had actually succeeded.

Only for a single fleeting moment, but Karsas truly had displaced the Goddess of Magic and become master of the Weft—right before he and the Weft itself were both blown apart together.

After that, the second Goddess of Magic had sealed the spell entirely, and it had become forbidden magic never to be used again, under any circumstances.

Ambrose said, baffled. "Shara wants me to cast this spell and take out the Goddess of Magic for her? Has she lost her mind? Why on earth would I ever do something like that?"

Poet only smiled. "I thought the same thing at first. But now, maybe it's not so far-fetched after all. Aren't you about to die anyway? What death could possibly be more memorable than going out while taking down the Goddess of Magic with you? Who's to say this isn't the design of fate?"

Ambrose tucked the wisp of dark essence carefully away. Poet's suggestion left him lost in thought.

Not that he wanted to blow up the Goddess of Magic. Leaving aside whether it was even possible, he had no quarrel with her whatsoever. Why would he go picking a fight with a god that powerful for no reason?

But the sudden appearance of Karsas's Ascension left Ambrose with a strange, nagging feeling. In the future he'd glimpsed, he seemed to have died atop the very magic circle this spell required.

Originally, Ambrose hadn't been able to identify what kind of magic circle had appeared in that hazy, indistinct vision. But now, having just skimmed the contents of Karsas's Ascension, he felt an unmistakable similarity between the two circles.

"I would never be reckless enough to cast this spell myself. So why, exactly, would it show up there?"

While Ambrose sat lost in thought, Poet couldn't help but ask, "So, what are your plans going forward?"

"Plans?"

"You're about to die. Surely you're not just planning to do nothing at all?" Poet asked, puzzled.

The lich had just said that he wouldn't let his life end sloppily, and both of the diviners before him had left the world with their own dramatic, memorable final acts. Surely this lich ought to learn something from them.

Would he spend his remaining time recording everything he'd ever learned, so it could be passed down to future generations?

Or would he use Terraform to leave behind some grand world wonder, something on the scale of the Golden Kingdom's endless desert?

Or would he abandon everything he currently possessed, change how he lived his life entirely, and make some genuine sacrifice for world peace at last?

Poet found himself genuinely eager to see what Ambrose would become. He was desperate to witness the transformation.

He truly liked this lich, far more than he'd expected. Even though the lich understood nothing at all about music, Ambrose was, without question, the most entertaining "friend" the Poet had come across in years.

The old sayings always praised heroes for "standing as mortals among gods." But applied to Ambrose, that phrase felt a little off. It should be more like "a mortal talking circles around the gods themselves."

As long as this lich stayed alive, the world would remain interesting.

Poet badly wanted to give Ambrose a hint: that if he could just transcend his own desires, the President would hand him the domain of death itself.

If this lich became the God of Death, the world would surely become a great deal more entertaining.

And the moment he accepted the domain of death, the very concept of a fated death would no longer be able to touch him at all.

How could Death himself ever die?

To hold dominion over the concept of death itself meant existing as countless simultaneous fragments, each one occupying a different stage of dying at once—or else standing entirely above the concept, untouched by it in any form.

Every God of Death throughout history had understood death differently, but every single one of them had, without exception, achieved true, unassailable immortality.

But Poet also knew exactly how the President, Yeger, operated. The moment he gave Ambrose a hint, Ambrose would lose his qualifications. "That Yeger and his old-fashioned insistence on riddles and roundabout games... I really don't understand what's so fun about being an enigma."

For now, all Poet could do was hope Ambrose would work it out on his own.

Death was close now. Surely it was time for this lich to finally have his moment of enlightenment.

"Come on. Rise above your own desires. Rise above that greedy nature of yours. Think about a life with real meaning for once. You'll gain far more than you think... and you might just avoid this death entirely," he whispered to himself.

"How much time do you have left, and what do you plan to do with it?" Poet pressed.

"I'm planning to speed up construction on the alchemy factories, pull in as much capital as I can, then squeeze extra funds out of my other ventures and make an absolute killing. As for the World Peace Summit, that needs to move faster too. I'll have to get all those kings here as soon as possible, lock down every deal I can, and make an absolute killing off that too..."

Ambrose rattled on and on. Poet stared at him, dumbstruck.

"Hold it. Hold it right there. I wasn't asking how you plan to handle your businesses. I'm asking about your life. Your entire existence is about to end. What are you actually going to do with it?"

Ambrose said, perfectly calmly, "Make an absolute killing."

Poet: "..."

This lich... All he could think about was making money. There was simply no saving him.

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