Wizard: My career panel has no upper limit

Gray, the most ordinary kind of gray.

Like a long, overcast sky, neither clear nor gloomy, it is neither easily remembered at first glance nor easily forgotten.

Valdis watched as she opened her eyes, those grey eyes now reflecting his own shadowy silhouette.

For many years, silk has always been a form of self-protection, preventing her from seeing too many things she shouldn't have seen.

Now, this protection is no longer needed.

“I have seen my prophetic self die,” she said, her voice even softer than before:
"More than once, and in more than one way."

"The first time I was at the academy, I was fourteen years old and just started practicing expanding my senses. I couldn't control it well, and too many things rushed in at once."

"In those images, I died in all sorts of places... lying on an unknown road, sinking into water I'd never seen before, being killed in battle..."

"I was terrified at the time," she recalled with a touch of nostalgia. "I was even afraid to sleep alone at night."

"And then?" Valdis asked.

“Later,” Chloe’s grey eyes brightened, “I realized that those images weren’t telling me ‘you’re going to die.’”

They were telling me, 'You will live, live to the very last second before those moments.'

"so……"

"So every death is actually a path to coming back to life, only one step further than the original path."

She picked up the cards again and began shuffling, her movements becoming steady again.

"Lord Valdis, you have spent thousands of years trapped in the superposition of all moments."

You know better than anyone that death isn't a wall, it's a door.

"The view behind the door," the old man said, "is not necessarily better than this side of the door."

“But at least,” Chloe placed the deck of cards on the table, “it’s somewhere else.”

“Okay.” Valdis stood up.

“You’re not really willing, just like me,” Chloe glanced at him.

The old man spoke again: "I'm sorry."

"No need to apologize, you have already given me plenty of time to prepare."

The gray-eyed witch placed her staff beside the table, letting it stand against the table leg.

She too stood up, with an elegant posture, to attend a banquet she had to attend.

"Let's begin then."

The phantom of the Weaver Girl quietly appeared behind her.

The shuttle of the textile machine rotates at a low speed, moving step by step at first, and then gradually speeding up.

At this very moment, Valdis's "time" began to pour down on Chloe.

If the witch hadn't known beforehand what was going to happen, she would have almost thought it was just a window that wasn't closed properly, causing a slight airflow.

The lingering aura of time was slightly stronger than usual, and her threads of fate trembled collectively the moment they were touched by the first wave.

Someone grabbed her completely, pulled her sharply to the left, and then to the right.

She lost her sense of balance, and her vision began to blur.

Valdis abruptly asked, "How are you feeling now?"

Chloe's handkerchief, which she was covering her mouth and nose with, was stained dark red.

Upon hearing this, she honestly thought about it for a second.

"It's about the same as being thrown into cold water. Although it soaked for a long time, it didn't drown."

"This is just an appetizer." Valdis shook his head.

"People's perception of the 'present' is actually a very fragile consensus."

The reason you feel that 'this moment' is real is because the past is fixed, the future has not yet arrived, and 'now' is the only point between the two where you can stand.

"If that spot starts to shake... then there's nowhere to stand."

He wanted to say something more, but at that moment, a will arrived in this space.

The shuttle of fate paused for a moment.

Valdis lowered his eyes, a look of regret in them.

"..."

"Your Excellency?" Chloe asked softly.

Valdis, in his old-man form, looked up at her.

"I'm sorry, He has lost patience and doesn't want to give you time to adjust."

He went all out.

There was no warning, no transition.

Chloe could feel something grabbing her consciousness and pulling her in countless directions.

Yesterday, she was sitting by the window washing the tarot cards, the lamp wick curling and the light flickering.

Tomorrow, she will stand in a place she doesn't recognize, with the wind at her side and stars overhead.

Five hundred years ago, on a morning before I was born.

An ancestor made a decision under an unfamiliar tree, a decision that, through an extremely circuitous path, became one of the reasons for her birth.

Two thousand years later, a line of fate that she could not be sure belonged to her, in a color she had never seen before, intersected with another line at a certain node in a certain dimension.

These points in time were simultaneously open to her.

The threads of fate began to spread wildly in all directions within her perception.

The future and the past, the moments she experienced and those she didn't, all crashed down on her with equal realism.

At this moment, three years ago, fifty years later, a thousand years ago, a second before her birth, a minute after her death... all simultaneously.

At that moment, the spinning wheel of fate overloaded.

Amidst the chaos, Chloe searched in an almost instinctive way.

She is looking for a fulcrum.

The shuttle of the textile machine began to spin at high speed, exceeding the speed of any previous highest-intensity combat situation.

The nascent ethereal form instinctively received the surging timelines, one after another.

Chloe struggled to stay clear-headed amidst that whirlpool.

This was the only truly useful thing she learned after that "feast of sharing" at the amusement park.

When information is beyond the scope of processing, forcing it to be digested will only lead to a dead end.

Find an anchor point in that chaos, hold on to it tightly, and let that anchor point decide for you where you are now.

She is looking for it.

Among those countless overlapping timelines, she was searching for the one that belonged to "this moment".

She found it very quickly.

That line was thinner than all the others.

It was as thin as a spider web bent by the wind, almost negligible among the other heavy lines of fate.

But it was there, quietly existing in the deepest part of that whirlpool.

Chloe focused her perception of the thread of fate on that thin line, and saw clearly where it led.

That line connects "now" and "very briefly afterward".

The end of the line is destined death.

Sometimes, people make distinctions about things that are destined to happen.

Distinguish between something that "I had to accept" and something that "I chose to accept."

For most people, the difference between the two lies only in the way they are narrated.

The outcome is the same, but the tone is different; in the statement, the former is a tragedy, while the latter is closer to reconciliation.

Chloe didn't linger on that thin line for long.

She quickly confirmed three things:
First, this line is real, not an illusion caused by a time vortex.

Second, there is no other way to bypass it.

Third, if she chooses to commit to this line, she can leave behind far more than if she chooses to avoid it.

Having thought it through, she made her decision.

At that moment, the threads of fate, like those of a weaver, abruptly changed direction.

Originally, the goal was to "catch" the influx of time and place it into the warp and weft of the illusory structure.

But now the needle and shuttle direction has reversed, and they have begun to actively weave outwards those timelines that have already been gathered in.

She wove those timelines about the "past" and the "future" one by one into the loom of her own destiny.

Let them become part of the ethereal structure, become part of yourself.

From now on, "time," like "space," will be one of her dimensions of perception.

The cost of this process is extremely clear.

One's soul must first leave this body.

This is a true death—the physical life characteristics will truly return to zero in this process.

Chloe closed her gray eyes that had been hidden for decades.

In the end, she didn't think of Grandma Astraea, Ron and Eve, or the upright card of the Traveler.

What she was thinking of was the Bauhinia tree planted in the flowerbed.

It looks like this in the through-draft: its branches are soft and its leaves are small.

When the wind blows, they become inexplicably carefree, completely unconcerned about whether they are seen or not.

Zijing doesn't need to know whether her existence has any meaning.

It lives like this, making living as authentically as possible.

She thought: This is actually quite good.

Then, he threw himself into that line.

………………

Meanwhile, in the kitchen of the King of Absurdity.

The clown was standing in front of the table, an apron tied around his waist.

On the counter was a lump of dough, an unusual off-white color, mixed with a few drops of luminescent liquid taken from the "Shiran Sea".

He is using an ivory knife as fine as a hair to perform micro-carving, and the dough is quickly taking shape in his hands:
First, there is the general outline: a slender, dignified female figure.

In terms of details, the length of the fingers, the curvature of the neck, and the direction of every fold on the astrology robe that he never changes are all exactly the same.

Finally, they carved those eyes.

The King of Absurdity paused here, seemingly deep in thought.

After thinking for a while, He still did not carve the silk covering the eyes onto the dough.

Using only the tip of an ivory knife, two shallow indentations were gently pressed out.

"Well carved, as expected of me."

After completing his work, the King of Absurdity took a half step back, examined his creation, and boasted to himself:

"Although it is smaller than the real person, it captures the essence perfectly, and it would be hard to find a better version."

He carefully moved the dough, Chloe, onto the long, white porcelain plate.

Then, four finely hand-carved wooden frames were taken out and used to steadily support the dough at a very precise angle.

The wooden frame is not randomly pierced; it has the fixed, ritualistic posture typical of traditional ritual wooden frames depicting human figures.

The wood used for the frame comes from a dead tree that grows in the spirit world, and it inherently possesses the property of transmitting energy across the two realms.

He then took a regular wooden stick from the tool rack.

The bell rang softly, and the King of Absurdity pinched the wooden stick between two fingers and turned its pointed end over.

"The end of death."

He spoke in a casual tone.

"Your time estimates are very accurate, as always."

"But estimation and actual occurrence are ultimately not the same thing."

Having said that, He plunged the wooden skewer into the very center of the head of the dough-shaped Chloe with precision and without hesitation.

At the very moment the wooden stick pierced through, the Weaver Girl of Destiny had just started the shuttle of the spinning machine.

Chloe's senses expanded outwards, touching and evaluating each of the converging timelines...

Then, in the instant the piercing wound touched her, she sensed only two things:

First, this is a conceptual piercing; it bypasses the logic of defense and tells itself at the conceptual level: you are already dead.

Secondly, the certainty is suffocating, yet at the same time carries an absurd and dramatic quality.

That's not the style of the end of death; the feeling when the power of death descends should be silent and irresistible.

The tide is rising, and the light is blocked by the curtains; it's all a gradual fading away.

But this seems like a prank.

Someone gives you a hard push on the back, sending you down the steps, and then looks completely innocent: Oh, you fell down.

Chloe almost laughed when that thought crossed her mind.

But the pain is real.

The wooden stick was passing right through the core of her consciousness.

Chloe clenched her back teeth.

The intensity of the pain was unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life.

She's someone who's seen a lot of "all sorts of ways to die in the Fate Line," so her pain tolerance threshold isn't low to begin with.

This time, she nearly lost consciousness in the very first second. Hector…

The calculations for the end of death are meticulous.

He calculated the timing, manner, and intensity of Chloe's death so that the pull could be completed as her soul left her body, making her immortal.

But the king of absurdity moved this point forward.

Before the torrent of time completely overturned, Chloe had already taken the first step, walking towards death in a way that was outside the script of the end of death.

Most importantly, the King of Absurdity added a concept to this death.

The concepts of drama and martyrdom confine the nature of death within a specific framework:

A female astrologer, at a crossroads of fate, completed her "testimony" by voluntarily sacrificing her life.

This narrative falls far short of the kind of immortality required at the end of death.

The end of death requires a extinguished will, a soul stripped of the possibility of resistance, and a remnant that remains even after the complete loss of self.

The King of Absurdity imbues Chloe's death with a "dramatic, deliberate choice."

He rendered the death of the female astrologer ineffective.

If someone were standing nearby observing, they would see Chloe as if struck in the head by an invisible arrow, collapsing completely to the ground in a short time.

Breathing stopped, heartbeat stopped, and magical fluctuations returned to zero.

The process was extremely quiet, so quiet that it was like a light going out on its own without any warning.

The phantom of the Weaver Girl did not dissipate the moment her body ceased functioning.

It remains suspended there.

The textile machines are still running.

The shuttle continues to travel through that timeline, weaving each needle into that fabric that can never truly be finished.

The soul began to slowly descend into the spirit world.

Slower than gravity, slower than water, even slower than some people's forgetfulness, yet it is unstoppable.

Meanwhile, at the northern manor, Ron was already moving the instant he sensed the distress signal.

The light from the teleportation faded, and he stood in the corridor outside the divination room.

The door was open, so he went in and quickly completed the assessment.

The witch's body slumped to the ground, still warm, but her vital signs were almost nonexistent;

The phantom of the Weaver Girl of Destiny hangs in the air, and the spinning machine operates at a speed far exceeding the phantom's capacity.
The room contained decay, dust, and a kind of dissipated consciousness.

Valdis has been here.

He walked up to Chloe, knelt down, and placed his hand on the witch's hand.

The work of ancient alchemists never included turning back death.

The core of alchemy is transformation: acknowledging one state and guiding it towards another.

Chloe's soul is currently descending into the spirit world.

That subsidence cannot be forcibly stopped.

Truncation will abruptly revert a process that has already completed a state transition.

So what he had to do was catch it.

Before the soul fully sinks into the spirit world, before the sinking process crosses the critical point, give it a new anchor point.

Let it find a stable place between "here" and "there".

Keep the people you want to save in a state of semi-death.

The doors of the [Threshold of Darkness] opened silently.

"Chloe, can you hear me?"

Chloe's consciousness lingered within that aura.

She sensed that anchor point.

“I heard you.”

"it is good."

As Ron spoke, [Dark Threshold] threw a "rope" towards the edge of the spirit world.

Chloe caught it.

The Weaver Girl of Destiny completed her weaving at that moment.

The last timeline of the textile machine fell into the warp and weft.

The illusory image of the Weaver Girl began to coalesce from the hazy mist below her waist.

When the light mist finished gathering at his toes, the complete form of the illusory body appeared in the divination room.

It will take Chloe some time to fully understand all the changes.

But there was one thing she sensed in the very first second of its complete formation:
From then on, the fabric of fate contained both the weft of space and the warp of time.

Valdis also began to completely dissipate the moment the complete form of the Fate Weaver appeared.

"If you can, remember those people for me." His voice trailed off.
"The losers at the feast of sharing."

"The one who has been trapped in the eternal present moment for thousands of years, the one who found pure ecstasy in fear, and the one who has extracted all his emotions and laid them out on the table..."

"They...should not be forgotten."

“I’ve got it,” Chloe said.

The outline vanished completely after that sentence.

In the divination room, only Chloe, Ron, and the Bauhinia tree by the windowsill remained.

"how do you feel?"

Ron sat across from him, his tone almost as if he were asking if someone's headache was getting any better.

"strangeness."

Chloe's reply came much later:

"It's like... someone added a window to my consciousness."

That window wasn't there before, and I didn't know there could be a window in that location.

But now it's there, and I feel it should always be there.

You'll get used to it.

"You should have experienced what it feels like after breaking through to the level of a Grand Wizard, right?"

"of course."

“That’s the feeling,” Chloe said. “Just with an extra layer.”

She looked down at her hands; they were a little lighter in color than usual, and her fingertips felt slightly cool.

"How did you perceive it?" she asked.

“There will be signals when the life state changes,” Ron replied as briefly as possible.

“Ancient alchemist.” Chloe smiled slightly. “You’ve advanced. Congratulations.”

"You too, congratulations on your promotion to Grand Wizard."

"Thank you."

It was only then that Ron realized that the black silk that had always covered the other person's face had been removed.

Chloe's unhidden face and her grey eyes intrigued him.

Chloe noticed the gaze but didn't tie the silk back up.

She folded the silk and placed it next to the wooden box.

"I want to have a second divination."

Ron didn't ask why, and began to wait silently.

This time, there's only one card.

Chloe carefully shuffled the seventy-eight cards twice, silently pondering a question:
The amusement park has completely collapsed. How much time do we have left?
She placed the deck of cards on the table and, without any ceremony, drew the top card.

Turn it over: [Red Moon - Reversed]

The card depicts a moon hanging in the sky, its color extremely deep, almost like a blood-stained crimson.

The moon's outline was not a complete circle; part of it was obscured by thick clouds.

A halo of light seeped from the edge of the clouds, making the moon appear to be being soaked in something unclean.

Below is a body of water, on which the moon is reflected.

The reflection is clearer than the moon itself.

This is the part of this card that can never be clearly explained.

The reflection is not a mirror image of the moon; it is something more real.

Reversed, the moon's direction is reversed, and the reflection is thus straightened.

Chloe's hand lingered on the cards for a long time.

Her multidimensional perception of fate, the Weaver Girl, after encountering this card, did not give her a specific number or a clear timeline.

"The collapse of the amusement park is coming to an end."

Ron frowned: "How much longer will it take you here?"

"Let me stabilize my physical condition," Chloe said. "Two days."

"it is good."

"There's one more thing, I got the Traveler card."

Which direction?

"Upright position".

“We need to go to the Craftsman’s Labyrinth,” Chloe said.

"Ah."

"And the timeframe is tighter than we imagined."

She gently placed the "Red Moon" card back on the table, pressing its edge with her index finger.
"Red Moon reversed, I can't give you a number."

But I can tell you that the time left for the park to collapse is far more urgent than the realization itself that 'it's urgent.'

………………

The perception of the end of death comes from a very distant place.

In His view, the task was outwardly accomplished.

Chloe experienced a real death; the break in that fateful thread was something that actually happened.

She is no longer the same as before; the "variable" that once disrupted the game can no longer create interference in the same position or in the same way.

However, the other party did not die completely, but became a new immortal in His hands. Instead, He benefited from the misfortune and was promoted to a high wizard, which was something He had not expected.

Having considered this point, he did not immediately take any further action.

There are more pressing matters that require His attention.

The countdown is accelerating, and more pieces need to be moved.

There's also a certain clown who keeps ruining his own plans; he needs to be dealt with.

But He remembered it.

The moment Chloe's soul sank into the spirit world, someone extended the power of "transformation" into the realm between life and death.

That will, which belongs neither to "judgment" nor to "concealment," defines the boundary of death in another way.

This generation of ancient alchemists can open up a third possibility between life and death.

He summarized this matter in extremely simple terms:
"Variables that need to be taken seriously."

Hector sensed the end of that collision; He was flipping through a stack of "unfinished histories" of various civilizations that He had never intended to finish writing.

The bells rang occasionally as the table was turned, like random applause.

Then, the ending arrived.

The bell rang for a few moments, then gradually quieted down.

Hector typically had a great deal of "entertainment interest" in these kinds of things.

A prisoner is sent on a mission, and an astrologer, on the verge of death, makes a reaction that goes beyond the game's expectations, causing his favorite to be killed... This was supposed to be a well-paced and exciting drama.

But this time, he couldn't muster the energy.

There's no reason, I just can't bring myself to do it.

He rearranged the stack of historical documents and put them back in their place:

"Valdis, you won your last gamble."

He put his hat back on, and the bell jingled once with the movement, which was a kind of ending.

Then, the King of Absurdity walked out of the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

The dough, subjected to the torture of piercing, stood there on the white porcelain plate in the empty kitchen.

A tiny flame formed on the wick, its faint light flickering.

In the soon-to-collapse amusement park, the bells of the "Feast of Sharing" have also disappeared.

Everyone reacted differently upon sensing the complete dissipation of Valdis's aura.

Someone suddenly stopped, their hand raised in mid-air, forgetting their next step;
Someone glanced down at their hand and then didn't raise it again;
Some people did nothing; they simply remained still.

Beside that long table, a dozen or so incomplete beings remained still.

After a long time, I don't know how long, the prisoner closest to the head of the table spoke.

He only said one sentence, and his voice was not loud:
"Don't 'control time,' choose the moment."

These were Chloe's last words as she left the "Feast of Sharing".

A sliver of light shone through the crack in the window outside the door. (End of Chapter)