After thinking for a while, she opened them and looked at her friend with a seriousness she had not shown before. "All right, tell me about your new plan. Also, how did the other half of the name I left with you run off on its own?"
"That is why I am stuck with a name like Ham, which sounds like a joke character." "Uh… if I say it was an accident, would you believe me?"
She looked helpless. From Ham's eyes, it was clear she did not really believe it, but that was the truth. She had rushed to the the Northlands to check the seal, and right after that, she sensed the other half of the name, stored in an egg, suddenly running away. When she rushed over, she found it had hatched into a strange black lizard.
Worse still, the lizard had intelligence and self-awareness, and it even chose a god name as its own. The name became fixed and impossible to change. She could only follow behind, waiting for the day it died so she could take the name back, only to watch it slaughter monsters and freaks everywhere in the most absurd way.
It killed its way to the the Northlands, somehow bypassed her hinted Barrier barrier, broke into the seal, smashed the jointly set seal into Shard, and ate the core and gatekeeper of the seal. She was already thinking about how to end it, but the dragon became even more outrageous, forcing that decay she had failed to handle for several cycles to explode together.
She finally retrieved the heart, but only a few years later, it grew back on its own and then disappeared again. She followed along, occasionally cleaning up, mostly watching monster blockbuster shows from the side, until now.
"You want me to piece together that Fate I smashed until my hand went numb? Do you hear what you are saying?" "The remaining half of the name is with that dragon. If we do not do this, even if Edward dies, he will never become the Fate. Belial has blocked the path completely, so this is the only way."
"And this is a good chance, is it not? Instead of you reincarnating again and again and dismantling the Fate, why not find a substitute this time and let it die together with the Fate?" She showed a sly smile. In the past, she would have tried to block or delay things, but this round was different.
If you do not play fair, then it is fine for me to use cheats too.
Fate cannot kill Fate itself. When Ham first made up her mind to try, she understood this truth, because even if she went all out, she could only shatter it into a Shard for a short time, and it would reassemble and revive after a while. At the beginning she refused to give up, repeating the same cycle from the earliest days, reincarnating again and again, returning to her position, striking at the shattered Fate once more, then falling into sleep until the next round.
She had thought of many methods, but by now the result was clear. She could not even completely kill herself, let alone Fate. To be blunt, it was nothing but pointless torment that only made her suffer, with no real use at all.
She could not even be sure that such actions could bring the slightest change to that dark future that was already locked in place. Worse still, that faint and uncertain hope might have been erased precisely because she observed Fate, causing the future to collapse into a single version that only she had seen. And in those futures, there was not a trace of hope.
It was laughable. An infinite future of possibilities had been locked shut by a past and present she herself had confirmed, even though Laplace's Demon had long been overturned. Yet in the end, this was what remained.
"This is real? You mean that Belial who somehow ran into the other half of my body, and is my younger brother in name?" "I think it might not be just in name."
After all, the two of them were alike in many ways. From long years of observation, she could confidently say that both were the same kind of foolish troublemaker who enjoyed chaos. Their ways of thinking were not just similar, they fit together perfectly, equally shocking in their choices.
"…Really?" Ham thought it over seriously. Since this was said by her friend, she believed it, for a simple reason. If there had ever been a way to truly kill Fate, it would have been used long ago.
"Yes, the sibling bond between you two…" "Get lost. You know that is not what I mean." "All right. You should also remember the other matter, the sword you and I forged together back then."
Ham turned it over in her mind and remembered. It was one of the backups she had created to face the future, forged together with her friend using the Fate's Authority, and buried in the other party's temple. Its effect was simple and extreme.
It rejected everything and overwrote rules. It even rejected Fate itself, restoring a fragment of the complete rules of the old world, becoming a sword-shaped suppressor that could restrain even beings like Crimson God. And the condition she had set with the Authority of Fate for drawing it was only one thing.
"You are saying that dragon is the Chosen Hero? Do not joke around. The chosen one was clearly not…" "But it really was drawn. Just not in the way you imagine, as someone with the proper qualification."
She smiled faintly at Ham's puzzled look. "That is why I say that this time we might truly press Fate into a coffin, instead of letting it keep getting back up."
"He pulled the sword out simply because, to him, it was just an ordinary sword. When he is not interfered with by the Fate on the sword that is destined to be drawn only by someone specific, why would it be strange that he could draw it?"
Looking at a leopard through a tube. Fate cannot be killed because that possibility itself exists, and that part is also destined by Fate, making it no more than Fate killing itself. But this behavior only proves that Fate still exists, so it will always be killed yet never die.
Nothing and no one can kill Fate, because from life down to the most basic particles, existence and motion are all expressions of Fate. Unless there is something that has never appeared, that should not exist at all, and is naturally excluded from Fate. And it would also need a scale large enough, like a star pulling other celestial bodies, using a gravity so strong that even Fate could not reverse it, to smash it completely into a Shard.
"It is like a snowball rolling downhill. The range of chaotic Fate beyond control is getting larger and larger, including Luna, Nefit, Chloe, Lilith, and Bella." "Fate is already this disordered. We are just one step away. This chance might come only once. Do you want to try? It cannot get much worse anyway."
"…" "Looks like you are also planning to clock out. When will it be?"
Ham raised her head slightly. She understood her friend too well. If she said she was creating an opportunity, it would not be just for herself, and this friend probably did not have much time left either. So this must be it.
"Yes. One last push, and then I leave the stage. I will also lose all my current memories, and probably return to my original state." She said it lightly, but there was clear fatigue and an almost relieved sense of release. It was time again, but this time felt the easiest.
"You have said this much, so you must have everything arranged. That works out, I will clock out too." "Since Abyss and the lot around Edward want Fate so badly, let them have it. With the attraction of my divine name, once he gets it, Edward's end should not be far off."
Ham understood her friend's feelings well, because she felt the same. Being something like Fate or Bahamut was exhausting. It was better to just be Ham. In short, everything was clear, and whether the two of them could escape endless overtime depended on this opening move.
As she thought of this, Ham suddenly touched her chin in thought and asked, "About Belial… He is a young god, so why give him another daylight Divine Kingdom? Does he not have a Divine Kingdom of his own?" "That is what I find strange too. He has none at all, not even a trace. Even we cannot avoid being tainted by the crimson path."
"After reviving in the Northlands, he kept consuming souls along the way. I thought he had been polluted by decay, but it turned out he was only eating memories and resentment, leaving the core soul untouched. It is too strange."
Even stranger was that his divine status looked as if he had picked it up for free. There was no crimson taint, no Divine Kingdom, no faith, yet no decline at all. If other Crimson God were like deformed creations elevated after the fact, then he was like something born straight from stone, a pure natural creation on a completely different track.