The crimson moon hung high in the sky, bathing all of Backlund in light. Yuan Zhuo, who was now Kevin Adams, looked up at the moon for a few seconds before glancing back down at his hands. In his left hand was a glass of pure red wine, produced locally in Backlund, though through illegal channels. In his right was a newspaper, its columns discussing air pollution due to production and potential wage increases for the lower class. However, what was most important was the date on the upper right side of the newspaper, which showed the year 1347. Looking at that date, he felt a sense of ease in his heart. It was not that he felt no sense of danger—on the contrary, it was the opposite—but knowing what he knew gave him a sort of safety in his mind.
Looking at the moon, he felt at ease as he began to recall his time on modern-day Earth and the last few months in this time. Within his mind, he forced himself into a state of cogitation, seeing fond memories of his time on Earth—his birthdays, graduations, and general celebrations—until he found himself in a particular memory, one that made his heart ache.
In a moderately sized room, a man who looked quite young but held the bearing of age sat on a gaming chair, playing a violent game that included guns and chats. Behind him were two individuals. One was a man with slightly graying hair mixed with black, blue eyes, minor wrinkles from age, and a gentle face. The one next to him was a woman with black eyes, blonde hair, and delicate facial features. She clearly took great care of her appearance. These two individuals were his parents: Adam Grayson, an American national who moved to China for personal reasons, and Yuan Xīn, his mother. Their marriage was overly contested and outright shunned due to stereotypes, but they persevered in the end, building relationships and connections.
Yuan Zhuo, who was in his livestream, continued playing as his parents cheered for him from behind. 3-5-6-9-13—the number of kills Yuan Zhuo had in his game continued to rise as the number of players fell until he was the only one left in the lobby, winning the match. Afterward, he let out a breath of fresh air before slowly turning to look at his parents as he turned off his live chat, donations flooding in.
"Mom, Dad, as you can see, I am perfectly able to make a living from streaming, so as promised, can I not attend university?"
Yuan Zhuo's parents looked at him for a few seconds before his father let out a loud sigh and spoke. "Yuan Zhuo, though you can make a living from streaming and I can feel your love for it, in the end, it is unreliable at best and destructive at worst. In the real world, you need to be present. You need to socialize, make friends, and find a lover. I know it is hard for you due to your trauma, but please bear with it for now. As long as you can go through university and graduate with any degree, I will support you in going down this path. But for now, I cannot give you my support."
After finishing his words, Adam looked at Yuan Zhuo, who appeared shocked as his parents left his room. In Yuan Zhuo's eyes, his future crumbled. He felt no support in his heart. He wanted to curse. He wanted to break something. But he did nothing for a few moments before going onto his computer's browser, reading gaming comments, and then moving to a novel subreddit. He scrolled until he found a page that attracted his attention. The page title read: "Create Your Own Pathway: Complete with Acting Method, Rituals, Abilities, Mystical Creature Form, Sefirot, and Above the Sequence Name for a Pathway."
Yuan Zhuo, seeing this, found it interesting. He had read the novel Lord of the Mysteries in the past and remembered all the details dearly. As such, he took the initiative to create a complicated and overly powerful pathway that could serve as the cornerstone for one to rise above the level of a Great Old One. After creating the pathway, he went through other subreddits, doing other things before going to bed—seemingly normal. But now, watching himself through divination, he could clearly see the truth. After completing the pathway and all related work, his eyes instantly rolled back into his head as his body moved on its own, seemingly on a predetermined path—going to bed and then awakening in the body of Kevin Adams.
As he saw this once more, Yuan Zhuo left the divination and began performing cogitation to focus his mind. Through the past three years, he had properly learned his Sequence Nine abilities along with different types of divination and cogitation. His Sequence Nine characteristic had long been digested due to a limited need for acting, as these Beyonder characteristics did not originate from the original creator and, henceforth, did not have his and others' lingering wills within. This made the acting necessary mostly for understanding the pathway rather than for reducing unnecessary influence from long-gone beings.
The pathway Kevin currently found himself on was the same one he had created, which brought many pros with it—though, at the same time, many cons due to the ritual needed to advance from Sequence Five to Sequence Zero. The current abilities for Sequence Nine were as follows:
Static Veil: Generates minor interference in supernatural senses, making detection slightly harder.
Whispered Influence: Can cause small disturbances in fate, such as making someone misstep or drop an item.
Thread Perception: Gains the ability to perceive faint "threads of fate" connecting people, objects, and events.
Subtle Theft: Can steal minor intangible concepts like luck, emotions, or fleeting thoughts without the target noticing.
With the Acting Method being:
Engage in theft not for material gain but for the act itself, subtly altering fate in small ways.
Sabotage minor events, causing ripples in fate that grow over time.
Acting upon this method was a crude and dangerous thing, which was also why advancement for this pathway needed to be slow and calculated. Each digestion and acting ability from this pathway stirred the river of fate. Though at a small degree, it was still very dangerous, as most angels of any pathway that strongly dealt with fate could use him as a free path towards becoming a Pillar or, at the very least, a Great Old One.
In the end, Kevin decided to advance slowly until the opportunity of Klein's transmigration to bind their fate or to use the disturbances he caused to rapidly advance through the sequences. Any other method of advancement would be ineffective or borderline suicidal. Hence, slow advancement and proper waiting were the most suitable methods. Currently, his Sefirot was doing its best to distort his fate—making tracking and divination more difficult and blocking corruption from the cosmos.
With a sigh, he finished his glass of wine before closing his window and returning to his bed, resting for work tomorrow.
[End of Chapter]