Arknightcraft Modpack
Chapter 469: A Lineage of Riddle-Speakers
At the very moment when the scorching heatwave was about to engulf the middle-aged man—who had already abandoned resistance, or perhaps no longer had the strength to resist—the entire world suddenly seemed to slow down, as though time itself had been tampered with.
Of course, this wasn't Steven activating some kind of Clock Up–style special ability.
Rather, it was because he had gradually grasped the structural framework of this world. In doing so, he had gained the ability to exert a small degree of control over it.
After all, this world had been generated on the foundation of his dream. Even if someone else was trying to manipulate what he saw, they couldn't stop him from controlling his own dream.
"Good thing I've gone crazy so many times already," Steven muttered to himself. "My grasp over mental power isn't half bad. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have been able to take control of this dream so quickly."
After that quiet remark, he snapped his fingers.
The world—already slowed to a crawl, as if time itself had been stretched tenfold—came to a complete halt.
"That's enough. There's no need to keep playing the rest of this out," Steven said flatly. "Even if I know this isn't real, watching my friends die right in front of me is still pretty damn unpleasant."
"So then, what exactly are you trying to tell me by showing me all this?" he continued.
"That if I don't step in and deal with Talulah, this kind of future is inevitable?"
Steven didn't spare another glance at Talulah frozen before him. Instead, he lifted his head and looked toward the sky, where thick clouds churned endlessly, refusing to disperse. The approaching Catastrophe dyed them an eerie orange-red hue.
Yet Steven narrowed his eyes, as if he could see straight through the clouds and whatever lay beyond them, and spoke in a low voice.
"From the very beginning, I knew this was my dream—but not entirely my dream. It feels more like something hijacked it, using it as a medium to show me all this."
"If we're being honest, there's only one being I can think of who could drag me into a dream like this without me noticing at all."
"That would be the one who can send warnings straight through my MC chat system… the one who can truly be called an 'admin' of this world—"
"The Will of the World."
Still, Steven couldn't understand her motive.
She had gone to such lengths, even invading his dream, but for what?
To get him to change a future that was supposedly set in stone? Or simply to issue a warning?
Until he understood her true intentions, he had no desire to continue dancing to her tune.
Unfortunately, his questioning of the sky was met with nothing.
The frozen world remained deathly silent, as though it had truly died. Steven couldn't help but frown.
"My time is abundant," he said calmly.
"I've already stared at the sky in silence for thousands of years without doing anything. I can sit here and waste time with you all day if I have to."
"You do understand that… don't you?"
Steven instinctively reached back, intending to pull out one of his familiar plastic chairs from his inventory—only to grab at empty air.
Then he remembered.
This was his dream.
With a soft chuckle, he simply leaned back and sat down in midair, as if the ground itself were there to support him.
"This was meant to be a predetermined future…"
No one knew how much time passed—or perhaps, within this frozen world, time itself had already lost all meaning. In any case, a voice whose gender was impossible to discern finally sounded from behind the Minecrafter, shattering the cursed silence.
Steven, who had been sitting there with dull, unfocused eyes as if his brain had gone idle, reacted instantly. Once he confirmed that this voice was not a hallucination, he slowly turned his head toward the source—the true culprit behind everything unfolding before him.
Steven himself wasn't entirely sure whether his guess had been correct, but the other party's words all but confirmed it. This dreamlike scene had indeed been deliberately shown to him.
"If that's the case," Steven said calmly, "then shouldn't you, as the highest will of this world, be protecting its future and guiding it toward the 'correct' path?"
As he voiced his question, he narrowed his eyes, carefully examining the being before him—one whose gender, age, and even state of existence were all impossible to define.
It possessed a vaguely humanoid, upright silhouette, yet lacked anything resembling proper limbs. Its entire form was shrouded in what looked like a tattered cloak, hovering almost weightlessly in the air before him, while exuding an unmistakably mysterious aura.
To put it simply, it felt like the combined "riddle-speaker" energy of a hundred Kal'tsits mashed together.
If there was anything he could describe in concrete terms, it would be the creature's head.
A mask shaped like an eagle's visage covered its face, and from either side of its forehead extended long, strange horns—part dragon, part stag—adding an extra layer of unsettling peculiarity.
Of course, more interesting to Steven than any of that was the nameplate hovering above its head.
Where its name should have been, there was only a string of bizarre, garbled symbols—pure visual noise.
Yet when Steven focused his mind on that line of gibberish, the symbols rearranged themselves, automatically forming one word he could understand.
— [Hypergryph]
"…Huh. Looks like the Will of the World leans toward the 'cute girl' category after all."
He silently tossed out the thought as a mental jab, then turned his attention back to the so-called Hypergryph, waiting for her response.
If what she had shown him truly represented Talulah's destined future, then her appearance here meant there was a motive behind all this—one worth scrutinizing.
"Why…?"
The thing known as Hypergryph softly echoed the word. It didn't sound like an answer to Steven so much as a question she was asking herself.
But soon, her strange head lifted slightly. And within those hawk-like eyes, a burning emotion—like living flame—suddenly ignited.
"Just like you," Hypergryph said, meeting Steven's gaze with a meaning-laden look, "I have witnessed the future repeat itself tens of thousands of times. And now, all I desire is to see a stage—one where fate can no longer be predicted."
With that, she said no more.
Her figure vanished from before the Minecrafter without warning, as if she had never existed at all.
Steven could only stare blankly at the spot where Hypergryph had disappeared. In the end, he tugged at the corner of his mouth and let out a rather helpless sigh.
Honestly… his intuition really hadn't been wrong at all.
The level of riddle-speaking on display here was even more outrageous than Kal'tsit's. What did "a future repeat itself tens of thousands of times" even mean? And what the hell was an "a stage—one where fate can no longer be predicted"? Was she filming some kind of abstract boys' opera with him or something?
That answer was worse than useless. It not only explained nothing, it somehow made everything more confusing.
If he had known this would be the result, Steven felt he might actually regret exposing her identity so early.
Just as he sat back down and began seriously chewing over Hypergryph's cryptic words, the world—which should have remained frozen—suddenly started moving again.
But this time, something was wrong.
Sitting squarely on the trajectory between Talulah's attack and Ace, Steven abruptly felt an intense wave of heat wash over him. He could even feel the bangs on his forehead beginning to twist and curl as they were scorched.
"…Huh?"
Sensing something was very off, Steven frowned. Before the searing heat released by Talulah could completely engulf him, a plain, door-panel-like shield abruptly materialized in front of him.
Boom
With a dull, heavy impact, the scorching torrent—hot enough to melt the world itself—vanished into thin air.
Everyone present froze.
Talulah, who had just unleashed the attack.
Ace, who had already braced himself to face death head-on.
All of them could only stare in stunned silence at the black-haired young man who had appeared out of nowhere on the streets of Chernobog.
"What is this supposed to be now?" Steven muttered, clearly bewildered himself.
"Did this turn from a 4D movie into a live-action murder mystery? Or am I supposed to personally experience this so-called despairing future?"
The feeling was exactly like switching from spectator mode to survival mode in an instant—only to spawn right in the middle of a mob.
Noticing the way everyone was looking at him as if he were some kind of monster, Steven could only awkwardly scratch his head and look toward Talulah, who stood directly in front of him—now feeling strangely unfamiliar.
"I get it."
At that moment, Hypergryph's voice—supposedly long gone—once again echoed in Steven's ears.
In response, Steven rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, yeah. You get jack shit."
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Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/collection/55713?view=condensed
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/156361807?collection=55713
[3] https://www.patreon.com/posts/156361807?collection=55713
[4] https://www.patreon.com/collection/55713?view=condensed