The world doesn't need succubi to save it.

"I, Merlin VI, the last surviving member of the Merlin family, hereby make this prophecy!"

Andrew held the parchment book and turned to the last page.

card.

The turned pages shattered in his hand, and before Andrew could be shocked, he felt a lightness in his hand.

The book, which had been wrapped in sheepskin, began to rot rapidly, and torn pages dripped from between his fingers.

Like a treasure buried underground for thousands of years, time, which was originally frozen, began to flow again after it came into contact with the outside world, and it returned to its original form within half an hour of being unearthed.

All the other pages turned to ashes, except for the last page, which floated up, its prophecy glowing with an ominous dark red light.

Following his intuition, Andrew slowly read aloud the prophecy written in blood:

"The Fool is the beginning of everything."

The magician deceived everyone.

The self-righteous priestess ultimately trapped herself in her own cage.

The weak and incompetent Empress could only watch helplessly as everything unfolded.

The emperor who murdered his father will ultimately live on in the past, wearing his shackles and crown.

The Pope has lost his faith and is constantly falling into the abyss.

The lovers fell in love amidst war and parted ways in peacetime.

The king's chariot will crush everything.

Power that does not belong to oneself will inevitably go out of control.

The hermit hides in the shadows, watching the ignorant masses dance wildly.

Guided by the Wheel of Fortune, we will head towards destruction.

Ineffective justice is not justice at all.

The Hanged Man looks at the world upside down, forgetting the sacrifice.

The Grim Reaper fairly surveys every soul.

People no longer exercise restraint, and the balance has long been broken.

The devil whispers in the depths of people's hearts, tempting the ignorant to their deaths.

The tower holds a secret deep within.

The star that everyone chases is hidden in the shadows.

The ignorant worship the moon, attempting to gain power under its light.

The benevolent sun obscures everything, giving false life.

The judgment that belongs to all will surely come.

The world is the end of everything.

As Andrew finished speaking the last word of the book, a chilling wind suddenly swept through the hidden chamber.

!

Andrew quickly closed the book and cautiously looked in the direction the wind was coming from.

It is the entrance to the secret room.

Fearing being locked inside, Andrew removed the old bed frame to block the entrance when he came in.

The cold wind just now was just a normal phenomenon caused by air convection.

You're scaring yourself.

Relaxing, Andrew shook his head, a self-deprecating smile playing on his lips as he sighed softly:

"How pathetic! You have no aristocratic elegance at all."

Looking down at the book in his hands, Andrew's expression turned slightly strange. After a pause, he whispered:

"...It's called a 'prophecy,' but every single word between the lines is filled with 'curses'!"

The last prophecy made by the last member of the "Chosen One" family was such a vicious curse.

This situation made Andrew sigh silently, but he also felt a sense of empathy.

Both were born into declining noble families and both faced a family on the verge of complete collapse; the only difference was the decisions they made.

After a symbolic struggle, Merlin VI resigned himself to his fate and ultimately uttered a curse in despair.

But Andrew was different. Unlike Merlin, who was a complainer and waited to die, he was an absolute hard worker.

Andrew was in a better position than Merlin; his talent allowed him to put up more substantial resistance rather than resorting to impotent rage and writing curses to complain.

Talent combined with hard work has enabled Andrew to reach his current position step by step.

Given his abilities and position within the organization, he would not have needed to risk participating in such a competition long ago. However, Andrew was burdened with the mission of reviving his family, so he had no choice but to come.

This wasn't the first time they'd participated in such a competition, and everyone was trying their best to win a prize.

In addition, he also tries his best to make friends with some powerful people and invest in some promising individuals.

Everything is for the future revival of the family.

Andrew always tries his best to do everything well, no matter how it ends up, at least he tried.

This is Andrew, a young nobleman burdened with the mission of reviving a declining family.

The pages of the book, which had been floating in mid-air, slowly drifted down and landed safely in Andrew's hands.

The poems written in blood have long since lost their original color, leaving only chilling dark red spots on them.

Even in the dark and cold confined room, it is itself the source of the chill, with a thick, almost tangible curse swirling around it.

Even just holding it in his hand, Andrew could feel a chilling power coursing through his entire body from his fingers.

A terrible curse.

Merlin VI, no, the entire Merlin family's resentment is gathered here.

"Furthermore, is this prophecy... derived from the Major Arcana?"

Tarot cards are an ancient divination tool that has been used since before the Dark Ages.

The exact origins of Tarot cards are unknown, and many experts in the field of mysticism have tried to find clues in documents from the Dark Ages.

A complete tarot deck consists of twenty-two Major Arcana cards and fifty-six Minor Arcana cards.

The Major Arcana is used to explain the general fortune of one's destiny, while the Minor Arcana is used to supplement the former.

For ordinary people who just want to try their hand at divination and seek thrills in these mystical events, they generally only use the "Major Arcana" cards for divination.

Tarot cards are widely used, not only in the world of the enlightened, but also in the world of ordinary people.

They offer their own divinations for different areas such as love, interpersonal relationships, and work.

However, ordinary people without magic don't need to worry about actually triggering any mystical events.

Ordinary people's spirituality or magical power is insufficient to support the thorough conduct of a ritual, and in the end, nothing usually happens; they just seek psychological comfort.

Even if some extremely special circumstances occur by chance, they will be detected and stopped early by the Watchers' alert.

In the world of the Awakened, however, the effects of Tarot cards are entirely different.

For ancient alchemists, the Tarot cards contained the secrets of nature, gathering the secrets that constituted and explained the universe.

For some spellcasters who specialize in divination, tarot cards are the preferred method of divination for many and an alternative method of attack.

[Prophecy] is not some profound and mysterious magic. There are spellcasters who specialize in it, as well as some people who are born with prophetic abilities such as an extraordinary sixth sense.

Furthermore, the effect of prophecy is not as powerful as predicting the future.

The correct way to say "prophecy" is "to predict the uncertain future to a limited extent".

First of all, the currents of fate are not static; they are constantly changing.

The future you see in the previous moment is not necessarily the final future; everything is constantly changing.

Even if a prophet sees a seemingly certain future, he can only say that there is a possibility that things will develop in that direction.

No one can predict exactly how the future will unfold.

nobody.

Moreover, prophecy does not come without a price.

The most common and obvious method is to deplete the prophet's lifespan.

Skin becomes aged, hair turns gray, symptoms of serious illness appear, or even one suffers extreme physical pain.

This is only the surface backlash; the harm brought by the prophecy is more insidious.

Consuming personal luck could turn a prophet from a lucky person into a cursed lone star.

In severe cases, it can even deplete the fortune of the practitioner's relatives or even the entire family.

According to Andrew's conjecture, the Merlin family in this world should be the kind of mortal family that is born with a certain ability to predict the future.

With this ability, they did indeed gain a certain status and wealth.

However, in the hundreds of years of development after tasting the sweetness of talent, they recklessly used this power without regard for the consequences, ultimately exhausting the entire family's fortune.

They ended up in the tragic situation of their families being destroyed and their loved ones dying.

Those who manipulate miracles will inevitably be devoured by them.

This conclusion has been reached after countless people and events have confirmed it.

Stopping thinking about the family that Andrew felt was both guilty and somewhat pathetic, he continued to consider the current situation.

"This prophetic poem mentions twenty-two cards, twenty-two different meanings... what do they represent?"

Not being a specialized divination practitioner, Andrew didn't know much about Tarot and the Major Arcana, and couldn't directly divinate anything from them.

Holding the prophetic paper, he could only use the most basic methods of thinking and reasoning.

The most reasonable explanation Andrew could think of was that the prophecy symbolized something or someone.

"The possibility of things is smaller; the most likely possibility is people."