"I'm surprised you still came here after all of that." Lotus sighed, "Especially right now?"
"If I don't, won't that make your little performance reviewed poorly?" Malleus sneered.
"Does my little performance needs your review as well? Just having granny's review was already pretty good." Lotus huffed.
"Grandmother allowed you to do this?" Malleus looked to her in surprise.
"Sure. Even got my father to agree to put a memory suppression spell on me for a good few months. Thanks to that, my memories became jumbled for the first few weeks." Lotus sighed.
"She went that far for you?" Malleus frowned.
"What do you mean that far? I don't do things for free either." Lotus huffed, "Naturally, there's something in this for her too. As long as I am here, I naturally have to do as she asked."
"Then, I'll ask her to take you back."
"Hmm… Your request will definitely make her hesitate…" Lotus played a troubled look on her face.
"Hesitate?"
"After all, she seems to be rather pleased with the 'rent' I've payed her so far."
Malleus narrowed his eyes in suspicion and frowned, "You… What are you playing now?"
"I don't know. Maybe you should ask Granny about it."
There was a sudden flash of lightning outside followed by rumbling as Malleus scowled, "This is no time for jests. If you want to keep your identity hidden, you would do well to listen."
Lotus laughed and snapped her fingers. Almost immediately, it began to become foggy as the black clouds instantly dissipated. She sneered, "Prince Malleus. Is this a threat or a jest from you? You may have saved my life, but going against your grandmother's wishes isn't different from going against her. Besides, I've already let you keep your memories, compared to others. Isn't that already me letting you off?"
"You've already raised a hand against defenseless students?" Malleus frowned, "Princess Peony."
"Raised a hand? Or do you mean self defense?" Peony sighed, "The down side of traveling too much is that others will remember who you are, how unfortunate that there turned out to be people here who still remembered my younger self yet still dare to threaten me."
"What are you going to do?"
"Attend Coach Vargas's second camp, of course."
There was a rumbling sound as the earth slowly began to shake. However, a wave from Lotus settled it all down, much to Malleus's surprise. He certainly wasn't surprised when she quelled his fury the first time around, but he doesn't recalled giving her enough mana for her to quell the second. Still he continued, "You know that's not what I mean."
"You never specified." Lotus chuckled as she played with a spiritual fruit in her hand.
"Just how shameless are you?"
"Between you and me, who is more shameless right now?"
He paused. She was right. Now that he knew she was a girl, he is currently more shameless than her having stepped into a lady's room and without permission or other ladies in attendance. Malleus sighed in frustration as he gave up and turned to her, "Forget it, I'm here for the prophecy."
"That? Didn't we just talked about it?" Lotus raised a brow.
"What? You don't want to talk about it then?"
"Can't you tell, Prince?"
Malleus frowned, "Cut the act, please. It's getting to my nerves."
Hearing this, Lotus paused with a raised brow and turned to Malleus, who seemed rather confused at the sight of her reaction before realizing his err! Lotus laughed, "Haha! All right, all right. But I'll warn you. Even I do not know much about prophecies."
"Is it different with your blood lineage?" Malleus raised a brow.
"It is." Lotus replied as she munched on another fruit, "Prophecies in my birthplace are direct and to the point. There's no colorful words and such. If they claim the world will end then the world will end. If they say the world will be reborn then it will be reborn. Some like to leave out details that lead up to the event. But that prophecy was like a loosely put together metamorphic poetry. Hence there are some parts which I do not understand."
"Then how would that make it a prophecy if it omitted some parts?" Malleus raised a brow upon hearing those prophecies she spoke of.
"Because the whole purpose is to pass the message along." She finished the fruit and took out a book from her ring much to Malleus's surprise, "Making us wonder and guess the message is time consuming and defeats the whole purpose of a message. Unless the one who sends out the message is delirious or has cloud vision, there's no point in giving out a vague message to begin with. Yet, even knowing the big picture, you can't predict what will happen in the smaller picture leading up to the same end."
"How can that be?"
"It's easy." Lotus sighed as she continued reading, "The king of beasts and Leona are the perfect example."
"Kingscholar?" Malleus hummed to himself, "I do recall him overblotting once."
"You were the trigger he needed to begin his overblot."
"Me?" Malleus looked to her in confusion.
"There needed to be a goal. Because you are so much stronger than him, you've beaten him and his dorm again and again without giving his dorm a chance to show the skills they painstakingly hone all those weeks and months prior to competition. All crushed by one single individual…"
"Is that how it looked like to him?" Malleus' eyes widen in surprise as he hummed to himself, "Did I go overboard in the end?"
Lotus chuckled, "It doesn't matter if you held back. The moment you use your magic, it's already overpowered everyone else. If you apologize to them now or back then, it'll be like a slap in the face to them and telling them they're weaker than you even if you hold back all your strength. Sounds very like belittling them."
"I see…" Malleus sighed, "No wonder he continued to glare at me at each magift game. I thought it was all just competition."
"Naturally, it is." Lotus turned a page and brought out a paper and brush next, "He doesn't care how the rest of the students end up, but he still has a reputation of the dorm to hold up. You blew the roof off of them from day one. Naturally he will start to see you as an obstacle to overcome by all means. He's no different from the king of beasts back in the day."
"What?" Malleus raised a brow, "The king of beasts was such a person similar to Kingscholar?"
"Not just person, but their family structure are very alike down to their positions." Lotus replied and shot some pictures over to him with a wave, "I've uncovered these in ruins of the king's rock and a super old baobao tree native to afterglow Savannah. Piecing together the fables of the past, I've surmised that the king of beasts was once just a second born lion ridiculed by others for his lack of strength but admired and respected by his elder brother for his wisdom and wits. He was neglected by his parents for being weak and often snuck to outlawed lands to be away from it all. That place was called the elephants graveyard which was home to outlawed hyenas. Being stronger and smarter than the hyenas, he found himself at the top of the food chain for the first time and relished in that position as well as befriending the hyenas. As he grew older, many grew to respect his elder brother as they grow to despise and become wary of himself. The graveyard was leaking with a poisonous miasma only effective to outsiders and hyenas have grown an immunity to the poison. However, the poison has slowly sapped away the vitality and mental health of the king of beasts. He grew to despise those who did not respect him and, although he still did as he would to support his brother, he also began to grow jealous of his brother who had everything he ever wanted. Admiration, respect, status, and love. Later they had a duel for the throne to determine the heir. Although he seemed to have used a trick disapproved by others, his brother, not only won, but didn't have the heart to cast him out just as those before them had with their ancestors."
"His brother is surprisingly open minded. I never thought the king of beasts had such a dark side to him as well." Malleus folded back the papers after having read it all, "Yet, if your information is correct, he still killed his own brother."
Lotus nodded, "Not only the battle brought him down, but the one love he had admired decided to accept his brother's proposal and rejected his. Disheartened and defeated, the hatred began to cultivate itself. Yet he still had to help this naive brother of his as he ascended the throne. Once his nephew was conceived, he gave up and just begin to laze around as he plotted his brother's death in secret… now doesn't this part sounds familiar?"
"It does…" Malleus frowned as he admitted reluctantly, "However, there is one flaw. If he killed his brother, his nephew will be the new king according to the system back then, correct?"
"Is it really impossible for him to be king? Didn't he become king in the end?" Lotus pointed out, "Think. How would he accomplish that?"
Malleus hummed to himself before his eyes widen in disbelief and frowned, "He plotted to take the life of his own nephew as well."
"Quite ambitious when you think of it." Lotus huffed a laugh, "However, like Leona, he was careless due to his own laziness. He used his nephew's ambition which was to reach everyone's expectations and his own ambition to plot an assassination for his brother using a rampaging herd of wildebeests, proven to be capable of killing lions if they wished, to create a scene of accident started by his nephew's one innocent act and crime. Even if his nephew lived…"
"All he had to do was pin the crime on his nephew and take advantage of his guilt for causing the death of his own father." Malleus nodded, "I see, it was an evil yet smart plan."
"Smart for sure, but he was careless." Lotus explained, "His nephew did return once he reached adulthood and he pinned the crime on his nephew as planned, but, when he was about to enact the same scene that cause the death of his brother onto his nephew, he decided to reveal the truth secretly to him on a whisper with his nephew dangling at the edge of pride rock. He had forgotten his own lack of physical strength and was overpowered immediately with a single pounce giving his nephew a comeback from the demise. His nephew forced him to speak the truth out loud."
After explaining the ending that Leona and the others have learned, Malleus' eyes widen in surprise, "Wait… if the story mirrors with what happened between Diasomnia and Savanaclaw…"
"From the rampage down to the drought. Even if it's not exactly the same, the results matched their errs without any problems. Leona was overthrown just as Scar was overthrown from his high horse by the very ones he cast out of the games." Lotus explained.
"So this is what you mean when you said some facts were omitted." Malleus frowned, "Even if we changed one aspect, it will always finds it way back to the main purpose that was prophesized."