Check out my entry for the WPC August: Beyond the Bloodline.??
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But in the end, there was still a maximum limit to the amount of power a Master Level existence could ever possibly have, and no matter what Evan did, or no matter what cheat ability he had, it was simply flat-out impossible to go above it.
And the current Evan had reached that Maximum Limit.
As such, no matter what happened now, Evan's stats cannot go above 'S- Level 1' until he becomes a grandmaster.
Going back to the man's orders;
"Any members at the Intermediate Grandmaster Level and below, basically anyone below Level 425, is authorized to flee upon encountering Evan Eris.
We can't have our members dying and becoming fodder to make the boy even stronger than he already is.
As for the Epic Senior Members, if you do encounter this Irregular boy, you are to kill him on sight.
Do NOT use any convoluted means against him."
He placed a hand on his chin and thought for a few seconds before speaking once more.
"Do the same for Laurene Hayes too. If Evan Eris' track record is anything to go by, someone he's closely connected to would definitely NOT be normal."
After speaking, he turned his attention towards the fifth finger and asked.
"How are the plans for Tarse coming along? Have you managed to locate which Hero is there?"
"Negative. Whoever the Hero in Tarse is, they're hiding quite deeply.
We tried searching with the known Heroes' special characteristics, and the data we know about their mystic eyes, but we have not found anyone among High Nobility or Royalty that fits the criteria."
The suit-clad man sighed softly upon hearing this before asking another question.
"What about 'Her' then? What about the Master of 'Dragondune'?"
He spoke of the Desert Country's Guardian Beast, one of the top 'Living Legends' with power on par with people like Zestari, but the Fifth Finger's reply was also negative.
"We managed to send in a few Dragonkin spies into the Dragondune, but none of them was able to discern the true locations of Both the Master and the other Legendary Level High Dragons there."
"That is upsetting to hear.
Search harder and find them, for our plans in Tarse cannot come to fruition If they interfere.
When you do locate them, inform me. I would have 'That Person' go after them."
Without even needing to ask, all the Senior Members present knew exactly who 'That Person' was.
The suit-clad man was about stand up, but an inadvertent glace at the Senior members in the room who were lined up in Seven rows tossed his mind back to the last place he heard the number 7 today.
He dwelled on it for a few more seconds before a grin appeared on his face. Standing up from his Chair, he spoke.
"I'd be returning to the Lab."
"Huh? You're not scrapping the Fake Hero project?"
"No, as a matter of fact, I'm even more motivated now, after all, it seems the path I have been following is the right one."
The Fifth Finger was genuinely confused as to how the loss of eighteen Fake Heroes seemed to somehow motivate the man even more, and seeing his confusion, the man who was in a quite happy mood decided to explain.
"Evan Eris was trying to mislead me.
The Fake Hero Project has high prospects of success, enough to make the current leader of the Seven Heroes feel threatened by it."
While the Fifth Finger was feeling surprised by this, the man's words continued as thoughts in his mind.
'There might actually just be more than Seven Hero slots in this world.'
He got to his feet and turned around, commanding them to make his earlier orders known before once again informing them that he'd be returning to his lab.
"Greater Teleportation."
He casually cast Fifth Tier spatial magic with only the activation words, causing a magic circle to appear on his feet, which then wreathed his body in light and warped him to his destination.
◇ ◇ ◇
No one present in the room had realised it, not the suit-clad man, not the dozen-plus Epic Level Senior members, nor the Fifth Finger even with his powerful spatial perception.
He could only perceive things within three sets of spatial coordinates, after all.
Hidden in plain sight, this heterochromatic-eyed man observed the unsuspecting Demonic Hand members with a subtle grin on his face while seated at the chair flanking the Head Chair where the suit-clad man was.
"Time, Fate, Destiny, and Karma."
The energies of the world laws whose names he called trembled as if responding to him, something that every being who had stepped on the path of comprehending those laws on Aidos should have felt…if there were any.
"Although you have only solved two of eight disasters, you have prevented Tens of Millions from dying and changed the course of the future way too much.
Merdin was not destroyed, the Epic Level existences of the GWE did not die trying to stop the Demon of Pride, and the Seven Deadly Sins did not wreak havoc across Aidos.
Cheverton was not run over by Undead, Dullahan King Vazgan did not wipe out Bultom, before going on to destroy a good chunk of the surrounding countries together with the Flesh Golem."
The man spoke of the positive changes Evan's actions had brought to Aidos with a smile on his face, a smile that disappeared immediately after.
"But changing the future is not something done so easily.
You tried to prevent something that only had a 30% chance of happening far off into the future, but your actions have only spurred on the involved parties and increased that probability to 80%.
Then again, I can't blame you, as you did not know that the event you were scared of, the Demonic Hand's Fake Hero Project succeeding, was something that belonged to the 15% of events that were not guaranteed to happen in Aidos' future due to Artemisia's variables."
Turning his gaze towards Duscon's direction, he continued.
"You have interfered in two events that should have been major turning points in Aidos' History. Preventing the Seven Deadly Sins Massacre from ever happening was already 'wrestling' with the law of time.
And to correct that, the laws of Fate and Karma were spurred on and intertwined, making Rathal encounter the Tenth Finger in Cheart, leading him to wipe out the Tenth Division and causing the Demonic Hand to bring up their plans for the Dullahan Attack, making it happen before you could try to prevent it from happening in the first place.
This was the law of Time, Fate, and Destiny, trying to 'correct' the events happening."
"If you succeed in stopping two more disasters before they could even begin, then the next disaster on the list would become an irreversible Nexus Event that you would not be able to stop from happening, no matter the means you employ.
It would progress as it did in 'Aidos Online,' and the number of people who were supposed to die would have died. The Correctional Universal Laws would have made sure of that."
His voice resonated as he spoke to no one in particular, expounding upon the intrinsic nature of the universe.
He spoke of the profound truth, that the Correctional Laws of the universe, including the 'son of a bitch law' that is causality, aren't going to sit back and watch as one mortal existence changes the fate and destiny of an entire planet, teeming with billions of other existences.
The correctional laws steadfastly resist the notion of a solitary force with a low causality index, driving a cascade of events that would irrevocably alter the course of a world.
Yet, he revealed an intriguing caveat about 'Irregulars,' existences who could weave through the binding chains of causality, at least on a limited scale.
They had the power to elude the strict dictates of cause and effect and carve a path through the webs of fate, but in the end, they were not entirely impervious to the bindings of causality.
"Sure, one may think it was just one planet in the grand scale of the entire universe with hundreds of billions of planets.
However, if you do not possess the necessary qualifications to change things on such a scale, then causality would not let you. The delicate balance between free will and the constraints of causality dictates the extent to which one can mould the course of events.
Especially if it concerns a High-Level World like Aidos.
Changing the future is fine, but you have to be careful about how you do it; otherwise, time itself would mess with you. We still have an 80% Guarantee of the events of Aidos Online happening in reality, after all."
After he finished speaking, he heaved a soft sigh and touched his neck.
"My throat feels parched after talking so much.
How about I go see if those Dwarven Deities still have the best wine in the area? It's been a while since I've been to Bracken."
While he spoke, his body slowly faded from view, the lines that delineated his form softening and becoming translucent like faint mist as he seamlessly withdrew from the world.
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