"So he chose to put it on after all. Well, looking at him, he never intended to reject this power anyway."
Zenith drank his cola, staring at the numerous monitors like a total creep.
The Seven Curses series of items had massive side effects, but the power they provided was immense—it had a certain beauty of raw stats. Among the Minecraft modding community, quite a few players of the Enigmatic Legacy mod chose the Seven Curses route.
Zenith looked down on it because he had better options. Moreover, the penalty of lowering everyone's initial disposition was far too fatal for a guy who traveled all over the world.
"But speaking of which, if he's planning to use this power to protect the city-state and earn a noble title, I get the feeling he's going to turn into a dark boss later on..."
There seemed to be a noise. Zenith took off his headphones and turned his head. He was currently monitoring all the dungeons from a secret base two thousand meters in the sky. At this altitude, not even monsters could fly up here. Who could it be?
*Knock, knock, knock.*
They even knocked. How polite. Zenith raised an eyebrow, stood up, and opened the door. Looking down, he saw a blonde elf with a world-weary expression.
She wore a white robe draped over her body, exposing her left shoulder, and a necklace strung with five green gemstones rested on her chest.
"Since you know this power corrupts the hearts of men, why do you still spread it?"
*Uh, a loli body with a mature woman's voice?* Zenith remembered who this person was. Frieren's grandmaster, the great mage who possessed nearly every magic in the world, an elf who had lived for thousands of years—Serie.
"How did you find this place?"
Serie tilted her head. "Magic is the power of imagination within one's heart. I believed I could find you, so naturally, I did."
*Bullshit. Magic is clearly advanced mathematics, Euclidean geometry, non-Euclidean geometry, and calculus. If it was just about imagination, why couldn't I cast anything?*
Zenith curled his lips, noncommittal.
"You haven't answered my question, Sir Zenith."
"That was his own choice, and I believe in him," Zenith replied. "Of course, what I actually believe in is my companion. That old geezer has a pretty good eye for people. Since he let the guy in, it means he thinks this person has enough willpower to resist the Seven Curses."
Zenith looked the great mage from the Mythical Era up and down. Barring any surprises, she should be the strongest in this world.
"Wanna fight?" Zenith invited. Always playing in low-tier lobbies would make him rusty; he needed to spar with an expert occasionally. The power of the Time in a Bottle was invincible unless he encountered an opponent with an equal mastery over time.
But if he kept relying on such cheating methods in high-tier matches, Zenith worried he would get wrecked when facing a similar opponent in the future. He still needed to practice and fight properly.
The mages of this world maintained the traditional characteristics of magic classes: high attack, low health. They were genuinely squishy, but also genuinely powerful.
Unexpectedly, Serie refused. She found a spot to sit cross-legged, curiously watched the monitor screens for a moment, and then turned back to look at Zenith. "I have no desire to fight a monster like you."
Powerful mages could conceal their mana so outsiders couldn't see through them, but Zenith was different. His mana was just blatantly radiating outward.
Average mages would think he was an expert who had been immersed in the field of magic for a long time. First-class mages would suspect that an even more terrifying power was hidden within him.
But someone like Serie, who could practically be considered the god of magic on the continent and had studied magic for thousands of years, could faintly see the much deeper, profound existence hidden behind Zenith's mana.
To glean the whole picture from a single leaf—with Serie's abilities, she could only see a fraction of it, but even that tiny glimpse was enough to make her lose any desire to investigate further.
"What are your thoughts on that child, Frieren?"
Serie acted very casually. Even knowing that Zenith was incredibly strong, she didn't appear particularly reserved. This was the confidence she had accumulated over thousands of years, as well as her confidence in her own magic.
Since Serie refused, Zenith wasn't too disappointed.
"Do you really call an elf who's almost a thousand years old a child...? If I had to say, a genius mage, I suppose. That's what I think. And honestly, white hair looks better than blonde."
Serie raised a hand and instantly changed her hair color to white. After a moment, she changed it back. "I don't understand you humans' aesthetics. However, I suggest you don't interfere too much in her life. That child bears the mission of defeating the Demon King."
Frieren defeating the Demon King was an inevitable destiny. Hundreds of years ago, when Serie's disciple, Flamme, brought Frieren to meet Serie, she had mentioned this idea, though she used a more subjective phrasing.
That phrasing was not the same as Serie's absolute certainty that "Frieren bears the mission of defeating the Demon King."
Zenith thought of the one thing in this world connected to time, a magical artifact capable of sending one's consciousness back to the past—the Goddess's Monument.
"How many years in the future are you from, Serie?"
Serie froze for a moment, then finally curled her lips into a smile. "How sharp. Although I don't know exactly who or what you are, the Goddess asked me to pass on a message to you."
*There's so much to unpack there.* Zenith choked on his own saliva. *Is the Goddess a mob boss? What's with the "pass on a message" routine?!*
In Frieren's world, legend spoke of a Goddess of Creation who made the world. She was a gentle-looking elf with a pair of pure white wings.
The divine magic used by priests was cast through the Goddess's scriptures.
"What did the Goddess say?"
"...She said that if the world gets broken, it's very hard to fix. She's begging you to take it easy, as this place wasn't designed with that many parallel timelines."
*Unbelievable. Just what exactly did I do in the future to make the Creation Goddess send a future Serie to deliver a message? Besides, no matter how I look at it, I'm no match for these creator gods, right?*
Minecraft mods had many absurdly overpowered artifacts that could genuinely destroy worlds. The most representative ones were Equivalent Exchange and Avaritia. But Zenith hadn't unlocked mods of that caliber yet.
"Hmm... I suppose it's not like I *don't* have any world-destroying items."
Subconsciously flipping through JEI, Zenith discovered something in the crafting recipes called the "Non-Euclidean Cube".
Its description had a section in bold red text: "When this item's active skill is used on a server, it will cause massive lag. In severe cases, it can directly crash the server."
In Zenith's Minecraft logic, a world was equivalent to a server. Did that mean using this Non-Euclidean Cube had a chance of destroying the world? He wasn't sure. He'd have to try it if he got the chance.
Watching Zenith's expression grow increasingly excited, Serie inexplicably felt a twinge of palpitation. "What kind of terrible things are you thinking about?"
Zenith shook his head, denying it. "Nothing. I just want to find a world to blow up and test something."
A drop of cold sweat rolled down Serie's forehead. *It's over, Lady Goddess! I'm totally gonna fail this mission!*
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