The stone house was filled with the strange fragrance of roasted phoenix egg.
A peculiar, warm aura permeated the air. Inside the furnace, a mass of white flames burned; as the fire leapt and danced, it released a mysterious energy that lay somewhere between magic and technology.
An oddly shaped egg was slowly roasting above the flames. Runes flowed across the shell, trembling occasionally as if in response to the fire's temperature. The entire room was wrapped in this faint aroma, neither the smell of ordinary food nor the feeling of something being incubated.
In short, it smelled amazing.
It was so fragrant that even Ian felt his mouth start to water just from smelling it.
From time to time, he glanced at the fireplace. Fine cracks spread across the inside of the eggshell in the fireplace, and the seeped-out egg liquid shimmered faintly like molten gold.
The atmosphere was quiet. The female Titan's loud button-pressing noise competed with the crackling of the flames in the fireplace. The firelight cast flickering shadows across Ian's face as he stared at the dancing flames.
"This is my exclusive recipe, roasted Phoenix egg. Everyone who's eaten it says it's good," The female Titan said in a low voice, still operating the video game in her hands.
"It's said that people who eat it will dream of the future."
Her words made Ian frown involuntarily.
"What do you mean, 'it's said'?"
Ian was quite surprised. If this were the female Titan's exclusive recipe for roasted Phoenix egg, he felt that she should have known its effects long ago. Why use such uncertain wording?
Just as Ian was feeling confused, the female Titan seemed to alter the island's terrain again. A huge rumbling sound like a hōng lóng came from outside the house, accompanied by chaos as various Pokémon and Digimon were sent scattering in all directions.
"Because I myself am a seer. If I want to see the future, I see the future, so of course I don't need to eat Phoenix eggs. And that means I can't tell whether eating a Phoenix egg actually has that effect or not."
"Anyway, I've set it that way. Spaghetti code is still code," The female Titan explained to Ian. The way she spoke really did make her seem like a cross overer.
Her response reminded Ian of a boat game he had played before crossing over. In that game, there were two kinds of identities: werewolf and civilian.
Since werewolves had eaten human flesh long ago, they couldn't tell the difference between human flesh and lean meat. The female Titan was in a similar situation. A seer wouldn't know whether seer medicinal cuisine actually worked or not.
How should one put it?
If this female Titan wasn't a crossoverer, then she must have had a lot of contact with them. Ian more or less began to believe that she really did know him.
Of course.
This was based on the premise that he had once truly been a raven.
"I really want to know the answer." Ian suddenly spoke up.
His voice sounded especially clear in the quiet room.
He didn't specify which answer, but the female Titan, knew which one he meant. Without lifting her head, she replied, her fingers continuing to press rapidly on the video game.
"No, you don't."
The female Titan's tone was firm.
The pixelated world on the screen changed with her actions.
Ian frowned. "What did you say?"
"I said you don't want to know." She repeated it, her tone as calm as if she were stating a simple fact. This act of answering on his behalf truly left Ian at a loss for words.
"…"
Ian fell silent for a few seconds, then continued with added emphasis. "No, I do want to know. I really do."
"You don't."
Claire shifted her posture. Her long, silver-white hair slid down from her shoulder and covered half her face. She still wouldn't look at Ian, as if the matter were no longer worth discussing.
Ian took a deep breath.
"Whether I want to or not... isn't that something I would know myself?"
There was a hint of helplessness in his tone. He felt the other party was being completely unreasonable. She was only a seer, not a mind reader, and even a mind reader wouldn't be able to read his mind.
"There's a reason I'm saying this. I'm not messing with you. I'm very old and past the age of fooling around." Claire finally raised her head. A trace of sly light flashed through her violet-gold eyes. "As long as you can't remember it, that means you don't want to. I think you should understand that logic."
After saying that, she lowered her head again and continued playing her game. On the screen, a tiny pixel character was building a strange tower. Hearing this, Ian was momentarily speechless, suspecting that he had walked straight into a philosophical trap.
"That's sophistry."
Inside the fireplace, the phoenix egg let out a soft crackling sound, and a wisp of smoke carrying a caramel-like aroma slowly rose. Ian rubbed his temples and decided not to get tangled up in this unsolvable problem any further.
"Then you can help me remember," He said, changing his approach.
Claire's movements paused for a moment. Then she shook her head. "I don't know. I'm just the Raven's student, and like many of his students, I'm merely one of your chess pieces."
Those words made it sound as though she truly understood the Raven.
They reminded Ian of Merlin's experiences with the Raven when he was young.
That bird!
It seemed to be plotting something.
So it scattered pieces everywhere.
It performed all kinds of mysterious maneuvers and trained talents in secret.
"But aren't you a seer?" Ian asked, lost in thought yet still pressing the question.
"Even seers have limits." Claire sighed, her fingers unconsciously tracing the edge of the video game. "I can only see possibilities. I can't see everything."
"Human wizards can only glimpse fragments of the future. What I can do is no more than interpret the scattered pieces of fate."
She suddenly stopped speaking and turned to look out the window. Ian followed her gaze. Outside, several Pikachu chased a Gabumon as they ran past, their shadows stretching long under the moonlight.
That scene stirred Ian's curiosity once again, something he had forgotten to ask earlier.
"What's going on with those alchemical artifacts outside?"
Ian changed the subject.
He truly felt that this strange island was absurd, though the female Titan might find it amusing. At the mention of them, Claire's eyes suddenly lit up. She put down her video game and became much more animated.
"Ah! I can tell you about those!"
She excitedly patted the bed beside her.
She gestured for Ian to sit down. He hesitated for a moment, then walked over and sat down. The bed was softer than he had expected, stuffed with down and almost swallowing him whole.
"Do you know?" She asked softly. "When I was little, I was also a young Titan."
That was undoubtedly a pointless statement. Still, Ian nodded to signal for her to continue.
"So, this was something from my childhood." Claire's voice suddenly became gentle and nostalgic. "Back then, I was still a little Titan, about...this tall?" She held her hand out to indicate a height of about two meters.
It was obvious.
Over all these years, she probably hadn't grown much at all. Even as a child, being two meters tall would have made her an outlier among her peers, different from other Titans.
As for that...
Ian didn't ask any more questions.
Because he was a wizard with decent emotional intelligence, and he knew that commenting on someone else's height wasn't very polite. He himself had once been considered short for his age.
Of course...
He is not as conspicuous as a female Titan among Titans, but he was little enough to make him feel a tiny bit empathetic about the issue. Fortunately, the food at Hogwarts allowed him to grow quickly.
By now, he had reached a perfectly normal height for his age.
"One day, I secretly slipped out to play, and at the edge of the Astral Realm, I found an injured Raven. Black feathers, golden eyes, it was especially beautiful."
Claire's eyes narrowed slightly as if she had returned to that moment.
"I originally wanted to roast it and eat it..."
She wasn't sure if she was reminiscing about the past or regretting never tasting raven. In any case, the way she licked her lips made Ian's scalp tingle.
He couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.
"Do all Titans like roasting things that much?"
He thought that Titans were basically barbarians.
Claire nodded without hesitation.
"Of course! Roasted food tastes the best!"
She pointed at the phoenix egg in the fireplace as proof. "But that raven was especially smart. It could talk. To avoid being eaten, it started telling me stories."
Her voice gradually grew gentler. Her fingers unconsciously traced circles in the air, and specks of starlight appeared, forming a vague silhouette of a raven.
"At that time, I didn't know how to control my power, and I couldn't use magic. I was just a little girl who liked to draw." The female Titan's memories were clearly from a very long time ago.
"That Raven looked just like an ordinary bird. It wasn't a magical raven yet, or rather, it had lost its magical abilities. The only special thing about it was that it could talk."
The female Titan's recollection made Ian raise his eyebrows.
"A Raven with no special abilities that could talk?" Ian was doing his best to gather as much information as possible.
Hearing this, the female Titan nodded.
"It would shout every day that it was about to become human again." There was something amusing about it; even as she said this, the female Titan couldn't help but smile.
Hearing that...
Ian froze slightly.
The sentence the female Titan had just spoken kept echoing in his mind: "Every day, the raven wanted to become human again."
He turned that line over carefully.
Ian fell into thought.
It explained why the female Titan hadn't seemed surprised to see him earlier and why she said he had achieved his goal. Could the Raven's goal have been to simply become human again?
"No, that can't be everything." He slowly sat up. His gaze shifted toward the female Titan, who was still playing games even after finishing her story.
"If it were only about becoming human again, he wouldn't need to leave behind so many contingencies. Merlin, the Titans, the gods, these were all carefully considered arrangements."
Ian analyzed it step by step in his mind.
"Someone who merely wants to 'become human again' wouldn't be so obsessed with laying out plans like these."
He thought about how the Raven had once taught Merlin magic and passed on knowledge. It hadn't just been a bird trying to curry favor with Merlin to save its own life; it had been sowing the seeds of something far more far-reaching.
"Perhaps becoming human again was only one of the means by which he achieved his goal," Ian murmured. "And not the final purpose."
It was a very solid line of reasoning. He looked out the window. Starlight spilled over the island, and the silhouette of a phoenix circled in the distance, silent and solemn like a guardian.
"Then the question becomes..." Ian quietly asked himself. "What is the raven's true objective?"
No matter how much he wanted to know the answer, he still couldn't do what the female Titan said, know the answer simply by wanting to know it. After all, how could he not know what he was thinking?
Just at that moment, the female Titan continued speaking.
"To avoid being caught by me and turned into soup, the raven did many things."
"It told me so many stories about wondrous creatures from different worlds: A yellow mouse that can discharge electricity, digital lifeforms that can evolve, talking cars, and transforming robots." Claire's eyes lit up. "It even taught me how to draw, saying that this way, I could record the things I imagined."
As she spoke, she suddenly jumped up and ran to a large chest in the corner of the room. She forcefully lifted the lid. Inside were tens of thousands of drawings, stacked neatly and preserved as if new.
"Look! These are all the things I drew when I was little!" She carefully lifted out a stack and handed it to Ian as though it were a priceless treasure. Who would have thought she had kept things from her childhood?
Ian could no longer remember what had happened to his own childhood belongings.
In this life…
Or in his last life…
It seemed he had never really had the inclination to hold on to such things.
"They're drawn pretty well," Ian said as he accepted the sketches. A faint magical fluctuation traveled through his fingertips.
The first drawing was of a Pikachu. Though the lines were childish, the drawing was full of spirit. The second was MetalGreymon and the third was Doraemon. In the corner of each drawing was a date and a messy signature: Claire.
"Did you draw these?"
Ian spotted a Cthulhu among them.
"Yes." She smiled and a trace of nostalgia surfaced in her eyes.
"I drew that before I ever met the raven."
It had to be said that she truly possessed remarkable artistic talent, and there was an air of "the origin of all evil" about it. Who knew? Her very first creation might now be wandering around somewhere in the universe.
Who could say?
No one really knows.
After all, this female Titan had even created Pokémon and Digimon. From a psychological standpoint, there was a very high probability that she had gone on to manufacture her earliest creations as well.
If that were the case, who knows?
Who knew whether people in later generations might actually encounter Cthulhu in the starry void? What if those novels about the Cthulhu Mythos were not merely fiction?
Ian's thoughts churned endlessly.
Meanwhile, the female Titan continued flipping through her drawings. She turned the pages one by one; each illustration told a small story: Bulbasaur rolling in a bed of flowers, Gomamon lying by a stream to drink water, and Flymon circling in the sky. These creatures didn't exist in reality, yet under her pen, they were vivid and lifelike.
At least, long ago, they had been lifelike.
Now, they truly existed.
"Since I was little, I swore that I would make these little creatures real." Claire's voice was filled with pride. "That's why there's this island and that human tribe you saw."
It had to be said that at this point, Ian had already guessed as much.
He just hadn't known where she had obtained the information from. He had originally thought it was another crossoverer traveling alongside her. Now it seemed that, at the very least, she was a student of a crossoverer.
Whether that raven was truly himself or not, in any case, knowing all this, there was no doubt that the raven could be classified as a cross overer.
(End of Chapter)
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