YM778.TV Chapter 424 - The Fortune Teller
"A… Fortune Teller?"
\'A player?\'
Hearing the words that seemed to belong to scammers from reality, I couldn\'t help but jump to conclusions.
\'Or just the first scammer of the domain?\'
However, upon thinking it through, that wasn\'t enough to even consider it as a strong possibility. After all, these words were still spoken in the language of the \'Lost Realm\', just because both \'profession\' names coincided didn\'t mean it had to be \'plagiarized\'... It was entirely possible that the guy was the first \'original\'.
Most importantly, if he was the source of the information about me, then it was really possible that he was a true Fortune Teller. Something like this wouldn\'t go through my thoughts if it was back in reality, but with the various magical \'Innate Abilities\' that I have witnessed in the domains, it wasn\'t that far fetched at all.
Finally, taking the instance of the Green Earth\'s sect master, \'Innate abilities\' and the like weren\'t a limited property that only players had, so obviously more clues would be needed to ascertain the identity of the \'Fortune Teller\' as that of a player…
"Well, the name Fortune Teller is said to be only a nickname that the man himself joked about but ended up becoming what most people called him by. Of course, that\'s only second to his most famous \'Scammer\' nickname."
\'Let\'s see…\'
"If you seem so familiar with his existence, does that mean he has been around for a long time?"
Naturally, the first possible clue that would point towards one\'s identity as a player would be the time of their arrival to the \'Lost Realm\'. After all, we all spent slightly over one year at most, if he was someone who had a long history behind him then that would certainly lower the possibility of him being a player, though it wouldn\'t completely eliminate it.
"He is indeed quite familiar with most people due to the way he does his \'work\', but in all truth, it had been only half a year since he started \'it\', though there are rumors that he did it long before that but in a more hidden manner."
\'What an excellently vague clue…\'
With an appearance that started after quite a bit of time after our arrival, and rumors that went past that, the whole point of using time as a clue to determine a higher or a lower possibility proved completely useless.
\'It wouldn\'t be strange if someone else did the same thing I did back at the Nature Domain and used the name of an older person to scam others…\'
The rumors and whatnot reminded me of using the illusory background of having a hidden great master to hide behind, but they still only served to prove nothing.
"Hmmm, what would his way of working be then…?"
The seed of doubt that made me think this much was actually the name of the quest that I received as soon as I landed, the words \'Player Initiated\' had a meaning that could go both ways. Either that I was the one who \'initiated\' it or it was actually done by another player, and since Long didn\'t provide any help at pointing at one meaning of the two, I could only take precautions toward the worrying meaning.
As such, the last way to check the identity of the \'Fortune Teller\' was to question his methods of doing things and consider the possibility of him being capable of \'creating\' quests through it as the method of pinpointing his active time proved useless.
"The first appearances of the Future Teller as he formally calls himself were told to be of giving free advice to various unfortunate people, and as far as our information collectors know, these advices actually turned the lives of these people around. It only took a little more than a month before he had a team of these people who swore to follow him and he started using them to send his advice to a few people instead of going over himself…"
\'If it has that much of a success rate…\'
While knowing the place where I would land seemed completely magical, it could have been possibly a scheme of someone who happened to have knowledge of the natural spatial node where I appeared as well as had methods of monitoring it.
On the other hand, having multiple occurrences of giving actual live turning advices made me lean towards the fact that it was really some \'Fortune Telling\' ability because the only one who could do the same thing without knowing the things that had yet to happen would be either a wealthy man who kept throwing his wealth and treasures around to play an unbelievable role or an extremely smart schemer who was too bored that he started risking his neck to experience the pleasure of roleplay.
"That was also how we received the \'advice\' about you and your \'role\' in the future according to the message of his follower."
"And you choose to risk your people while believing in it even though most of those who I met before coming in seemed to completely believe it\'s a scam?"
What he explained of the doings of the \'Future Teller\' might have seemed to be convincing enough, but that was nothing but simple talk judging from how the Dragon Clan\'s people seemed to be biased against it.
"...We had our reasons to trust in his words even though we did have our doubts. Unfortunately, I\'m unable to tell you why due to a matter of extreme confidentiality…"
\'Huh?\'
Looking at the apologetic expression of the Clan Leader, he appeared to be quite sincere that even he didn\'t have the authority to share that part of the information, which only showed that the Dragon Clan wasn\'t as simply structured as it seemed to be…
\'In that case…\'
"Alright, it doesn\'t seem right to ask more than once for your own reasons, but I believe it shouldn\'t be too much to ask for the location of the \'Future Teller\' or at least his followers…"
"That…"