Hanging Gardens

"Adam, even if you divine the same thing twice, the result won’t change! It might even get worse!"

Suppi couldn’t help trying to persuade Adam.

"I want to divine how I can save Eugene’s parents."

"Isn’t that still divining the same thing?"

Kero couldn’t help snarking.

"True, but even if things get worse, it won’t make much difference anymore, right?"

Seeing Adam converse normally with the two cats, everyone had long since stopped finding it strange. Uther, who could hear what Kero and Suppi were actually saying, had also gotten used to the fact that they could talk.

Ignoring the two Sealed Beasts’ advice, Adam still planned to begin a second divination.

"Adam, wait!"

Suppi suddenly called out to stop him.

"I still want to try."

"No, what I mean is… maybe you could ask Amon?"

"…What?"

"Amon Fix, that Ravenclaw you asked me to keep an eye on."

Suppi jumped onto the table and crouched before Adam.

"’When Adam stubbornly insists on his course and is about to make things irreversible, bring him to me. I’ll be waiting for him in the library.’ That’s what he said."

"How come you never told me about this?"

Kero looked at Suppi in surprise. They had clearly agreed to share any information they found with each other!

Suppi secretly rolled his eyes. You brat couldn’t find out anything besides harassing Wrackspurts and Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, yet you wanted to freeload off my results?

This was intelligence I had painstakingly obtained with my body, damn it!

Still, when he thought back on it, Suppi frowned. Until the moment he spoke up, he had not remembered this matter at all.

That thought, and that memory, seemed to have sprouted from his mind out of nowhere…

The five of them exchanged glances. In the end, Adam stood up.

"I’ll go take a look."

At worst, he would just make a trip to the library. If Amon was merely putting on an act, there would still be time to divine afterward.

When Adam found Amon, he was building a pyramid out of Tarot Cards.

Seeing Adam sit down across from him, Amon lightly raised a hand to signal for him to wait, while speeding up to finish the pyramid.

Looking at the completed pyramid, Amon let out a breath and looked at Adam.

"What do you see in this pile of cards?"

Adam glanced at the Tarot Card pyramid. The craftsmanship was decent, but not good enough; it looked as though it would collapse at the slightest breeze. Every card faced down except one.

"The Wheel of Fortune."

Amon’s eyes lit up as he looked at the only upright card in the pyramid—the Hermit.

"You really are different from everyone else… Do you want to learn divination from me?"

Adam: "?"

"You had Suppi bring me here just to tell me that?"

As he spoke, Adam got up to leave.

"No, no, no! Sit down first. What’s the rush?"

Amon hurriedly reached out and grabbed Adam’s sleeve.

"I want to tell you a rule of divination: any observation you make of the future will genuinely affect the future."

Adam paused in the act of leaving and looked at Amon.

"What exactly are you trying to say? Be clear."

"The past cannot be changed; things that have already happened are the past. The present is being determined; things that are happening are the present. The future constantly changes; things that may happen are the future."

Amon was still speaking in riddles, saying things that sounded profound and unfathomable.

"When you see the future, things that may happen become things that have already happened, and the ever-changing future becomes unchangeable… What are you doing?"

o_Q→o_o?

Adam suddenly reached out and removed Amon’s monocle, making Amon freeze in surprise.

"Nothing. I’m just taking these glasses off for you first."

Adam wrapped the metal chain around the monocle, neatly placed it on the table, and pushed it farther away. Then he reached out and touched Amon’s face, moving his hand back until, before Amon could react, he firmly held the back of his head.

"Otherwise, if the lens shatters and gets stuck in your eye later, it’ll hurt."

Amon: "O﹏O???"

Seeing Adam raise a fist the size of a sandbag, Amon hurriedly changed his tune.

"Don’t divine it, or something’s definitely going to happen!"

"What will happen?"

"Anyway… something terrifying! Aah, aah, I’ll tell you! Let go of me first, Madam Pince might come over any moment!"

"It’s fine. Let’s go to an abandoned classroom and have a proper talk."

"So divination causes the future to inevitably converge toward the divined result…"

Adam stroked his chin as he pondered this information.

He hadn’t expected Amon to actually know his stuff… Come to think of it, why had he naturally assumed that Amon was lying before?

Forget it. He should solve Eugene’s parents’ problem first before dwelling on that.

"That’s right. The more skilled a diviner is, the less likely they are to seek extremely detailed results. Instead, they divine a general direction and leave themselves some room to maneuver."

Amon picked up his peanut soup and took a sip.

Hmph, he wouldn’t fall for this sort of slap-and-a-sweet-date tactic!

Still, he had to admit, the date was a little sweet…

After thinking it over, Adam gave up on using divination to learn how to save Eugene’s parents. Instead, he planned to divine where Eugene’s parents currently were. But on second thought, when it came to information such as geographical locations, he seemed to lack the ability to interpret the divination results.

But…

Adam, whose knowledge of divination was practically nonexistent because he had neglected Divination classes after obtaining the Clow Cards, raised his eyes.

Wasn’t there a ready-made diviner right here?

"Divine Eugene’s parents’ location? What happened to his parents?"

After asking that, Amon received Adam’s look of Go on, keep making things up, and immediately got angry.

"What do you take me for? Divination isn’t omnipotent, okay? Besides… my divinations aren’t always that accurate either… Ahem!"

Amon mumbled the latter half somewhat indistinctly, but after an awkward cough, he still declared firmly.

"I can give it a try!"

"To the left of the mountain, to the right of the water, above the tree, beneath the earth?"

Hearing the prophecy Adam brought back about Eugene’s parents, Klon couldn’t help questioning it.

"What kind of place is that? Is there really a place that’s both in a tree and underground? That guy wasn’t just talking nonsense, was he?"

"Probably not. Amon isn’t that kind of person."

With lives at stake, Adam still trusted Amon’s credibility.

"Perhaps… there really is."

Eugene’s expression was somewhat strange.

"Have you heard of the Hanging Gardens?"

"What?!"

"You mean… the Hanging Gardens of Ancient Babylon?"

"Actually, they should belong to the Assyrian Dynasty."

Adam’s expression turned strange.

"But weren’t the Hanging Gardens a misunderstanding caused by a mistranslation? They were actually supported by pillars…"

Adam had been about to say that a garden floating in the air would practically challenge Newton’s law of universal gravitation. But considering that a single Levitation Charm from him could blow the lid off Newton’s coffin, he could only fall silent and silently praise Newton in his heart.

"The Hanging Gardens really existed, but they have long since been buried underground."

Eugene stood up and pulled out a well-preserved sheet of letter paper from his bedside table.

"My parents received news of the Hanging Gardens ruins before, which was why they never came back."

Adam took the letter and glanced at it, his brow twitching slightly upward.

Could those smudged marks on the paper be…

Meeting Adam’s appraising gaze, Eugene noticed the anomaly on the letter. His expressionless face slowly turned red.

Only after noticing that Eugene’s body had begun trembling from embarrassment did Adam hurriedly return his attention to the letter.