365 Chapter 365: It came from 20,000 Leagues (2/2)

Attempting to predict the future under battle conditions and combat stress was not very advisable, but since this was the only thing Ding Ke Po could do, he had little choice. Sighing, he glanced up at the broken window and saw a volley of spears hurtling toward a cluster of mages, who conjured a shimmering barrier to deflect the lethal projectiles. Seeing the small group of mages who had banded together temporarily to form a formidable alliance, Ding Ke Po couldn't help but clench his fists.

”If only I was able to ally with somebody…” he muttered under his breath. It couldn't be helped. Most people didn't take divination mages seriously, especially in a match like this. With very little combat ability, there was little that he could offer them. normally, fortune telling would usually only be useful before the battle, where he could predict what the enemy would do in advance and thus allowed his teammates to set up traps and ambushes at possible routes of advance or paths that the opponents would take. They were extremely useful in a support role, but they were pretty much dead weight in the middle of battle when the future came to pass, and the mages were all already embroiled in furious combat, too busy to listen to predictions and speculations. Additionally, everyone knew how fickle fate was, and how the divination mages' predictions were not always 100% accurate. There was no such thing as certainty when it came to forecasting the future, after all.

That was in part the reason why Ding Ke Po's Divine Divination Academy fared so badly in the qualifiers. While they could easily make use of their divination abilities to avoid danger, monsters and bad weather, and plot the safest route possible through Aurora Forest during the first part of the qualifiers, those fortune-telling skills weren't as helpful now that they were in the thick of actual battle. Especially since they were not allowed to use their divination spells before the stage or matches started, out of fairness. I mean, if they could predict the types of matches, the venue of the matches, and the movements of all their opponents beforehand, and make their preparations, they would have an overwhelming advantage – thus, just like every other spell such as summoning magic or ultimate spells, they were obviously not allowed to cast divination spells before the match. This ended up gimping them quite a bit.

While they couldn't directly cast divination spells to predict the matches or their opponents directly, they could do other stuff with their fortune telling spells. So, avoiding anything to do with the tournament, they cast a different type of divination spell to measure luck or success, and calculated that Ding Ke Po would be the one with the highest odds of success for this particular qualifying round. However, that was the limit of what they could do – any more direct, and they would be breaking the rules and would end up being disqualified for casting spells for the match before the match. So all they knew was that Ding Ke Po would have the highest probability of making it past the qualifiers. The issue, of course, is that the forecast was still pretty bleak. Just because he had the highest chances didn't mean the chances were actually high. 2 percent of winning was still higher than 1 percent, especially if that was the scores for everyone else's. Even so, the other members of Divine Divination Academy decided to stake everything on him.

”We have nothing to lose,” the captain told him with a shrug.

And thus he was here, cowering in fear from the aggressive and powerful spells from all the other participants. Cursing his breath and wondering if he would eventually be ignominiously eliminated without even knowing what hit him, Ding Ke Po continued to trace the astrological circle with his finger and muttered incantatons under his breath. He could see several paths open to him, none of which looked promising. Stay here, and he would eventually be eliminated when a powerful spell destroyed the ship he was taking shelter on. Leave his refuge and he would be taken out by a stray shot. No matter what action he took, it seemed that he was doomed for failure…

…until he saw a single narrow strand of time that offered him a tiny hope of salvaging his situation and preserving some dignity. His face fell when he saw it, but he steeled his resolve, realizing that he had little choice.

”Time to convince him to ally with him,” he muttered. Then the ship he was on rocked, a massive fireball disintegrating a huge part of the ship. Rolling away from burning metal and blazing debris, Ding Ke Po coughed and gagged on the smoke as he ran off, swearing at himself for jumping ship a second too late.

”!!!”

As he did so, landing clumsily on the pier that was next to the docked ship, he realized that a barrage of earth spikes was raining down upon his position. There was no way he would be able to evade those in time…

Splash!

At that moment, a colossal tidal wave swept up, inadvertently washing away the bombardment of earth spikes in its fury. The small tsunami poured dowh on the mages in the shore, and while most of them were skilled enough to withdraw and leap out of the way, there was still a good number who was caught by the wave, which immediately froze once it touched the ground.

In just a few instances, a dozen or so mages were frozen solid, encased totally in ice. They weren't knocked out or eliminated yet, judging from their mana signatures that flared up viciously as they sought to break free of their ice. Even so, it would be quite the strenuous endeavor that consumed a huge chunk of their mana.

But they still broke free.

Everyone spun around and stared in my direction as I emerged from the waves, standing atop Cetus's head. The gigantic whale almost flailed about, leaving a massive trail of frozen ice in his wake, and encasing the imprisoned dudes once again.

Having been forewarned and sort of predicting my entrance, Ding Ke Po was able to seek shelter somehow. Just before the wave hit, he had jumped into another ship, seeking refuge inside one of the cabins. Once Cetus was done with his second spell, he slowly poked his head out of the frozen cabin, breaking a small hole in the wall of ice that coated the door. He watched me, stunned, but not as stupefied as everyone else in the docks, almost all of whom were staring at me with their mouths hanging wide open.

”Hey, everybody,” I greeted them with a wave of my hand. ”I was hoping that I would make a big splash with my entrance…did I succeed?”