Who Says I’m Not a Legitimate Adventurer?

At the same time, Lance also learned from these secrets that Buck truly had spent all of his liquid assets in order to assassinate that mage named Syndien.

All of this proved that his previous plan of provoking gang warfare through information disparity had been extremely successful.

The only accident had occurred because of this Curious Object of Fire Theft.

Lance originally believed he had cleaned things up thoroughly enough, yet he never expected this kind of oversized supernatural item to secretly track him down anyway.

It seemed that in the future, he would have to become even more cautious and careful when doing things in this world.

All kinds of bizarre classes, miraculous Source Essences, and impossible-to-guard-against Curious Objects of Fire Theft endlessly emerged across this continent.

Encountering strange and mysterious powers in the future would hardly be surprising anymore.

Just as Lance was about to close the panel, he suddenly noticed different information in the very last line of text.

【Buck’s Secret Five: Some time ago, several nearby strongholds of the Dark River organization suffered extremely severe joint strikes, causing their recent underground slave-trading business to become disastrously sluggish. They are now in urgent need of new Demi-Humans to fill the massive market shortage.】

【Buck heard that a batch of cargo originally being escorted by Dark River recently escaped by accident and is currently wandering among several towns near Graystone Town.】【The liaison responsible for coordinating with Buck inside Dark River secretly revealed to him that as long as he captured wandering Demi-Humans in the wilderness, he could directly sell them as replacement cargo.】

【As long as he completed this deal, the money earned would be enough for him to avoid dirty work for several months. Therefore, Buck recently believed Demi-Humans were absolutely a guaranteed-profit booming business. No matter what methods were used to acquire Demi-Humans, delivering them would exchange for huge amounts of gold coins.】

“Dark River” again.

Lance tightly furrowed his brows.

Previously, he had already seen the name of this underground organization within the secrets of Jeff, the petty thief who tracked him.

Now, combined with Buck’s information, it seemed to be a massive black-market network specializing in human trafficking.

And they specifically targeted rare Demi-Human races for illegal hunting.

Escaped cargo?

Several thoughts rapidly flashed through Lance’s mind, but he no longer had time to think deeper into them.

The three-minute countdown had ended.

The shadow of death arrived as scheduled.

Lance felt his eyelids becoming as heavy as a thousand pounds while the scenery before his eyes rapidly darkened.

His heartbeat and breathing stopped simultaneously.

Finally, his entire consciousness completely sank into boundless darkness.

【Life signs detected as terminated. Beginning death determination……】

【Talent: Ouroboros Ring activating……】

【Determination successful: Congratulations, you have once again resisted death.】

【Several compatible Legacy Class information streams detected. Decrypting……】

【Successfully decrypted one Legacy Class pathway: Fate Player……】

……

Eastern Coast Province, Azure Harbor

The night sea breeze carried a faint salty scent.

Inside a vast private estate—

high-grade magical crystal lamps illuminated the entire building complex as brightly as daytime.

This manor consisted of a magnificent main residence along with several auxiliary buildings.

Within the enormous carefully trimmed gardens, marble fountains continuously sprayed clear streams of water.

Fully armed elite guards patrolled through the shadows while maids in black-and-white uniforms carried trays through the corridors.

Everywhere radiated extravagant noble luxury.

Inside a spacious and comfortable study—

a middle-aged man sat behind a broad oak desk, holding an expensive feather pen while writing something within a thick parchment notebook.

If one looked closely enough, they would discover that this man’s facial features were actually seventy percent similar to Lance’s.

It was simply that his appearance looked more mature, while his temperament felt more restrained and composed.

Every movement and gesture perfectly embodied the bearing of a great noble family with centuries of heritage.

He focused intently upon the paper while the pen tip emitted soft scratching sounds.

The words “Lance Lott obtained the compass” had just been written above.

Just as he prepared to continue writing—

an accident suddenly occurred.

The specially prepared ink attached to the feather pen’s tip abruptly lost control and poured out wildly, instantly soaking the entire parchment page into a black blotch.

The middle-aged man stopped moving, lightly furrowing his brows.

This situation was not the first occurrence.

As early as more than ten days ago, he had already encountered similar circumstances.

The man did not become enraged.

He slowly returned the feather pen into its silver pen holder, every movement maintaining perfect elegance.

Extending his hand, he flipped the notebook pages backward.

Among the densely packed lines of text, several extremely critical keywords could vaguely be seen leaping out.

“Rosenthal,” “Witch,” “Silence Demon Swordsman.”

When he flipped to a slightly earlier page, the writing upon it recorded: “Lance Lott left Copper Creek Forest……”

Immediately afterward came a huge mass of glaring black ink stains, completely covering the process in between.

The next sentence afterward jumped directly to: “Returned to Graystone Town together with the companion he rescued.”

This was the first time the fate-weaving power he possessed had experienced such large-scale failure.

No.

He silently denied this judgment within his heart.

The precise abnormal node should actually trace back much earlier.

Approximately over six months ago, because of secret interference from a troublesome old rival, his abilities suffered severe backlash, causing him to completely lose the ability to perform fate weaving for quite a significant period of time.

By the time he finally untangled the chaos and restored his power, Lance had already become a Scribe.

After that point, his interference with Lance’s fate trajectory began displaying bizarre inconsistencies that sometimes worked and sometimes failed.

Most fatally—

he could no longer perform detailed weaving.

Now, he could only barely establish a broad overall direction, while the specific twists that occurred and how dangerous the process became were completely beyond his control.

Compared to his original state, where he could precisely control even trivial matters like what the target ate or what tasks they performed within a single day, the difference was like heaven and earth.

This loss of control brought slight discomfort to someone with mild obsessive tendencies like him.

He attributed all of these uncontrolled phenomena entirely to interference from that old rival.

However, he soon calmed himself again.

At least the core objective had already been accomplished.

He successfully inserted “Witch Ilysia” and “Rosenthal” into Lance’s fate trajectory.

For this purpose, he interfered with the fates of two royal-capital heroes, “Necros” and “Gideon,” and had already suffered severe fate backlash because of it.

For the time being, there was no longer any need to continue weaving Lance’s fate.

Now it was time to harvest the prophecies he had planted and accumulate 【Fate Essence】.

The man closed the notebook and did not continue forcibly writing.

He stood up, carrying the thick volume toward the enormous bookshelf along the side of the study.

Upon this bookshelf that stretched all the way to the ceiling—

roughly a thousand identical notebooks were densely arranged.

He inserted the notebook in his hand into an empty gap while his fingers lightly brushed across the numbered spines.

“How exciting, my son.”

Standing within the shadows, the man muttered softly.

Within those eyes flickered completely undisguised anticipation.

But this was not the satisfaction of a father watching his child grow successful.

It resembled far more a painstaking farmer watching fruit hanging from branches approach ripeness—

quietly waiting for the final harvest.