Yes. If Ian failed to truly defeat Cthulhu, then Saruman, armed with memories spanning a thousand years, knew perfectly well that the history they had just changed would be nothing more than a fleeting illusion. It might exist for a brief moment, but in the end, it would mean nothing. History might even be pushed onto an even worse path.
Still, now that they had already managed to shake the course of history, changing it completely was no longer an impossible dream.
Saruman knew exactly what should have happened according to the original timeline. At this point, both he and Kag should have been on the verge of collapse under the pressure of Cthulhu's will, and Lina's treatment should have failed because they had taken too long.
Yet reality was different. Lina had been saved. They were battered and exhausted, but still alive, and they were steadily moving away from the core area. All of it was because of that mysterious Ian Prince, and, admittedly, because Saruman himself had interfered a little.
More importantly, in the original timeline, after the rest of their companions had died, Ian had still managed to fight his way out while taking Saruman with him. That alone proved Ian genuinely possessed the power to confront Cthulhu head-on.
For Saruman, knowing that was enough.
"He's our only hope," Saruman finally spoke. His voice trembled slightly from exhaustion and emotion, but his tone was firm. "The only thing we can do now is trust him, and make sure we don't become a burden."
He glanced at Lina beside him. The girl was still weak, but her eyes had regained their clarity. In fact, there was now something deeper in them that hadn't been there before, as though she could faintly glimpse things yet to come.
The aura of a Raven Seer around her was still extremely faint, but Saruman could detect it clearly. That only strengthened the conclusion he had drawn from his thousand years of inherited memories.
"Besides... he's already done something we thought was impossible."
A complicated look flashed through Saruman's eyes, part of it awe at having actually altered history, the rest reverence for the unfathomable strength of the man he called My Lord.
"So all we can do is believe in him."
They continued for some distance before finding a relatively intact hollow formed by several enormous, twisted green stones. Saruman signaled for them to stop, he simply couldn't go on.
The dark-silver barrier flickered several times before finally going out.
Saruman collapsed back against the cold stone wall, breathing heavily as sweat mixed with blood ran down his forehead. The Legendary power he had borrowed began fading like a receding tide, replaced by overwhelming weakness and violent instability within his merged soul.
Borrowed power was still borrowed power, even if it had been borrowed from his future self, and carrying it was no easy task. For the current Saruman, the burden had been especially severe. His present body had never undergone the transformation brought by a Legendary mark and simply did not possess the physical resilience of a true Legendary Wizard.
The only reasons he had lasted this long were the unusually high compatibility of the borrowed power and his extraordinary willpower. Had he borrowed someone else's Legendary power instead, the sheer force of it might have torn an ordinary wizard apart from the inside. That was how domineering Legendary power could be.
And now, as that borrowed power rapidly disappeared, the backlash hit. Weakness stabbed at Saruman's mind and soul like countless tiny needles.
Kag and Lina hurried to support him, helping him sit down.
"How are you?" Lina asked anxiously. She could clearly sense how terrible Saruman's condition was, his soul fluctuations chaotic and weak.
"I'm... fine. Not dying," Saruman gasped, leaning against the rough green stone. His face was pale as paper, fine beads of cold sweat covered his forehead, and his body trembled uncontrollably.
The forced fusion between a soul carrying a thousand years of experience and his young body had already been in an extremely unstable adjustment period. After repeated high-intensity spellcasting and clashes of will, the backlash had become far worse.
His consciousness felt like shattered pieces floating in freezing seawater. One moment, he was being pulled toward the abyss of wisdom accumulated over a thousand years; the next, he was dragged back into the sensations and emotions of his younger body. The two sides crashed against each other violently, threatening to tear his very existence apart.
Still, he couldn't let his companions worry too much. After absorbing a thousand years of experience, Saruman's soul had become considerably gentler than before.
"You really don't look fine," Kag said as he and Lina stayed close beside him. "Drink something."
Kag tore off a relatively clean piece of his inner clothing, dampened it with a little of their precious remaining water, and carefully wiped the cold sweat from Saruman's forehead.
Lina knelt nearby and tried using her newly awakened, still-weak Raven Seer abilities to examine Saruman's soul, but all she sensed was chaos, a vast whirlpool of confusion and bottomless exhaustion. She had no idea where to even begin helping him.
"I'm fine... I just overused my power. My soul is... a little unstable," Saruman forced out through a painfully hoarse voice. "I just need some rest."
He knew his current condition was awful, but Lina had been saved, and they had temporarily escaped the core battlefield. That was already infinitely better than what had happened in the original history.
Kag and Lina were still worried, but there was little they could do. Their own conditions weren't much better. Kag's magical energy was completely drained, and his physical strength was nearly gone, his body still carrying the fatigue left behind from his earlier battle with Ian. Lina's spiritual corruption had been removed and she had awakened a new power, but her body remained weak and she barely knew how to use her abilities.
"Let's rest for a while and keep an eye on what's happening."
The three remained hidden inside the hollow between the giant stones, making the most of the brief respite to recover. Around them stretched R'lyeh's eternal yellow gloom and deathly silence, broken only by faint waves of terrifying energy and darkness from the distant core battlefield that reminded them the danger had not truly passed.
And R'lyeh's hostility wasn't limited to that battlefield. This land had been steeped in the power of the Old Ones for countless years, long since giving birth to all kinds of twisted and dangerous inhabitants. Ian might have wiped out almost everything they had encountered earlier, but that didn't mean nothing had slipped through.
Saruman's Legendary barrier and the terrifying pressure released when Ian transformed into Dark Tiga to confront Cthulhu had been like lighting a torch and beating a war drum in the middle of a dark forest. Most creatures had been frightened away, but others were either cunning enough to stay hidden or mad enough to ignore fear entirely.
And those predators had noticed them.
Just as the three finally relaxed slightly and focused on recovering…
'Rustle...'
'Rustle...'
A faint scraping sound came from somewhere outside the hollow. It was quiet, but deeply unsettling, sounding as though something wet and slimy were slowly dragging itself across the stone floor.
"What now?!" Kag instantly snapped alert. Exhausted though he was, a warrior's instincts took over, his hand immediately tightening around the hilt of his badly damaged greatsword. He lowered his voice. "Something's coming."
"Those damned filthy things again."
Saruman forced himself to concentrate. Silver light flashed through his eyes as his senses extended outward, instantly seeing what was approaching: three strange creatures, each roughly the size of a wild dog.
Their bodies were streamlined and dark green, covered in slick, bumpy skin resembling that of a toad. They had no obvious limbs; instead, they crawled forward using countless tiny structures along their undersides, each resembling the suckers of an octopus. Their heads were flat, with no features except a constantly opening and closing mouth filled with spiral rows of razor-sharp teeth. Above the mouth were several pairs of compound eyes that rotated independently, giving off a faint phosphorescent glow.
They were truly disgusting creatures of corruption. The aura coming from them was clearly of the same origin as R'lyeh itself, though far weaker and more chaotic, likely scavengers native to this region, drawn here by the earlier energy disturbances and the scent of living beings.
"Stealth Devourers," Saruman said quietly, recognizing them from the knowledge left behind by his older self. "Common low-level spawn of R'lyeh. They move using suction pads, they're fast, and they specialize in ambushes. Their mouths can spit acid and carry a paralytic toxin."
At least the knowledge from his older self meant they weren't fighting completely blind, which made things a little easier.
"Watch out for their spit and don't let them bite you. Stay away from the suction pads, too, they can latch on extremely hard."
Before he even finished speaking, the three Stealth Devourers realized they had been discovered and stopped hiding. The suction pads beneath their bodies made rapid popping sounds as they accelerated violently, shooting toward the hollow from three different directions like arrows released from bows.
Their mouths opened wide, dark-green slime reeking of acid spraying toward the group.
"Protect Saruman!" Kag roared.
Despite his exhaustion, he stepped forward without hesitation and swung his battered greatsword at the creature charging straight toward them. The blade struck hard. Kag no longer had enough strength to cut the monster cleanly apart, but the blow still smashed into its side and sent it flying into a nearby boulder with a dull thud.
The other two immediately split up. One lunged at Lina from the left, while the other cunningly slipped around Kag and went straight for Saruman, who was still leaning helplessly against the stone wall.
Lina's heart pounded, the sight of the hideous creature rushing toward her sending a wave of fear through her body. Then something changed.
Deep within her soul, the newly formed mark of the Raven Seer grew faintly warm, and a cold, incredibly clear sense of warning flowed through her mind. For an instant, she could almost see the monster's attack trajectory, she even noticed the tiny preparatory movement it made immediately before spitting its acidic slime.
'My Seer ability got stronger? No... I'm not predicting the future. I'm looking directly at fate!'
There was no time to think about it. Lina threw herself into a roll to the right.
'Sizzle!'
The dark-green acid missed her by inches, brushing past the edge of her clothes before striking the spot where she had just been standing. A small crater immediately formed in the stone floor, white smoke rising from it.
Meanwhile, the creature attacking Saruman was about to succeed. Saruman didn't even have enough strength left to raise a finger; all he could do was watch as the circular maw filled with teeth rapidly grew larger in his vision.
"No!"
At that critical moment, Lina had just finished rolling away from her own attacker when something like a cold raven feather seemed to brush across her mind. She wasn't even looking toward Saruman, yet somehow, she sensed the danger around him.
More than that, she sensed certain weak points in the surrounding spatial structure. Places where the flow of energy could be guided.
The authority of the Raven Seer, an ability connected to glimpsing fate and partially perceiving space and time, activated instinctively under the pressure of life and death.
"Die!"
Lina didn't even have time to stand. Still half-kneeling on the ground, she slammed both hands against the floor.
She wasn't casting any spell she knew; she simply followed the guidance of the unfamiliar power branded into her soul. Her faint Raven power, together with her will, was driven into a specific spatial node she could somehow perceive.
'Shift.'
There was no incantation, no flash of light, but just as the Stealth Devourer was about to reach Saruman, its trajectory seemed to be gently nudged by an invisible force. Only slightly, yet that tiny deviation was enough to completely change the outcome.
'Bang!'
Instead of biting into Saruman's neck, the creature's mouth scraped past his shoulder and slammed violently into the stone wall behind him, cracks spreading across the hard green rock.
"ROOOAR!" The monster reeled, clearly dazed by its own collision.
"What just happened?!" Both the creature and Saruman froze for a brief instant.
"You damned corrupted freak!" Kag had already finished off the one he had knocked away. Seeing the opening, he spun around with a furious roar and brought his greatsword down on the monster pinned against the wall.
'Crack!'
This time, the strike carried enough force. The Stealth Devourer was split in half, dark purple blood and foul organs splattering across the ground.
"Screeeech!" The last monster, the one that had missed Lina, saw its companions die almost instantly. Apparently deciding it had had enough, it let out a shrill cry and turned to flee.
"Trying to run?"
Lina was already back on her feet. Fear still lingered in her eyes, but now it was mixed with excitement and a growing sense of calm. She had successfully used her new power.
She raised her right hand and pointed at the fleeing creature, deliberately trying to guide the ability this time. Her concentration sharpened, and deep within her soul, the mark of the Raven glimmered faintly.
"Feather Fall - Stasis!"
An almost invisible ray of dark-silver light shot from her fingertip like a feather shed from a raven's wing. It was incredibly fast, catching the fleeing creature almost instantly and sinking into its body.
"AAAAH!" The monster suddenly stiffened as though invisible ropes had wrapped around it. Its speed dropped dramatically, every movement becoming sluggish and clumsy, and even the suction pads beneath its body began slipping against the ground.
"Perfect! Leave it to me!"
Kag wasn't about to waste the opportunity. He rushed forward, raised his sword, and ended the creature with a single strike.
The battle had begun in an instant, and thanks to their sudden teamwork, it ended almost just as quickly.
Silence returned to the hollow. Only their heavy breathing remained, along with the stench of the three corpses as they rapidly lost their shape and began dissolving into foul sludge.
"What was that ability you just used?" Kag leaned against his sword and stared at Lina in surprise.
Her two attacks had completely overturned everything he knew about her abilities. First, she had somehow altered a creature's movement through space without any visible spell; then she had fired a strange ray that slowed another monster almost to a standstill. Neither had anything to do with the water-based healing magic or support spells Lina used to know.
"Lina, that was..." Even Saruman couldn't help asking.
Lina stared down at her own hands. Her expression was just as surprised as theirs, though there was also a trace of excitement in her eyes.
"I... I'm not completely sure either," she hesitated, trying to explain what little she understood. "Lord Prince gave me this power when he saved me. He said I'm his Seer now. I think... I can vaguely sense warnings before danger happens, and I seem to be able to interfere a little with how smoothly space flows around me. What I did just now was mostly instinct."
Only then did Lina begin to understand. What Ian had meant by 'Raven Seer' might not simply be another kind of wizard.
It might be some form of priesthood. What she had just used wasn't magic, it was divine power.
(End of Chapter)
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