William Harvey's life could be summed up in a single capitalized word: miserable.
From birth, Harvey had been an abandoned infant. Though someone took him in and raised him, it wasn't out of kindness, but to use him like livestock. A dozen or so abandoned infants grew up alongside Harvey, but in the end, he was the sole survivor.
Nor did Harvey turn the tables through his own ability; it was simply that the old beast drank himself to death.
Locked in a cage, Harvey stripped off all his clothes to braid a rope, hooking the key off the old beast's corpse, and only thus did he survive. Regrettably, he had still been a bit too slow, and none of the other children made it out alive.
It was as though from that point on, Harvey embarked upon a rugged path, and his survival was owed mostly to luck rather than being any cleverer than anyone else.
Having escaped the human trafficker's cage, what followed was a long stretch of wandering.
Harvey didn't even know how he had survived, tenaciously clinging to life until the age of twelve through begging and thieving before secretly slipping into a monastery, pretending that he wished to embrace the divine.
Harvey thought he had finally met a good person. That priest was truly kind to him—not only keeping him well-fed and warmly clothed, but even teaching him to read and write.
Harvey was an eager learner, studying word by word with utmost diligence, until he began having nightmares—dreaming of a demon with two baboon heads.
Harvey realized he had been duped once again.
This monastery was a sham; the scriptures Harvey had been reading were actually hymns praising Demogorgon.
Thinking back carefully, the monastery had reeked of strangeness at every turn: believers who entered but never left, a warehouse with a bizarre odor, and crows endlessly circling overhead.
Harvey was always slow to catch on to other people's deception. But it wasn't too late yet; feigning ignorance, he managed to deceive the priest and fled the monastery.
Little did Harvey know, the demon had already become inextricably bound to him.
While wandering the wilds, he would occasionally think of the words he had learned and trace his own name into the dirt.
Harvey had no idea that what the priest had taught him was not the common script of the continent at all, but demonic script.
A pack of bloodthirsty gnolls was drawn by the name brimming with sinister magic, nearly picking his bones clean.
At the direst moment, sinister energy coalesced in Harvey's palm, blasting the nearest pursuing gnoll into smithereens.
At the time, Harvey was sixteen. He had cast his very first spell—an Eldritch Blast reeking of malice, the kind that could only be unleashed by a warlock blessed by a fiendish lord.
After so many years of wandering, Harvey understood what being a warlock entailed, so he knew he was finished. He couldn't fathom how merely reciting a few evil prayers in praise of Demogorgon had drawn the demon's eye to him.
Any human targeted by a demon would come to a miserable end, let alone by the Prince of Demons.
That very night, Harvey dreamed of Demogorgon once more.
Yet perhaps because he had experienced far too many brushes with death, Harvey managed to remain calm when dreaming of Demogorgon again. He even tried to have a talk with the Prince of Demons to see if he could be spared.
All he received in return was the Prince of Demons' heartless mockery—a double mockery from both heads.
After that, Harvey had no choice but to spend some time as a warlock.
Reluctant though he was, Harvey had to admit that his time as a warlock was the most carefree period of his life.
Power brought wealth, and wealth resolved the vast majority of problems. As a warlock, Harvey ate well, dressed warmly, and was able to properly relearn languages and writing, which allowed him to acquire a great deal of knowledge.
Harvey had once thought that this wasn't so bad after all—far better than his past life living like a stray dog.
Yet deep down, Harvey could never reconcile himself to it. Was he ultimately destined to become a lump of rotting flesh cast into Hell? If so, it would have been better to die at birth; at least he could have been spared all the torment in between.
Few could maintain such an unyielding spirit under Demogorgon's influence.
Of course, few people could catch Demogorgon's eye with just a few muttered prayers either.
Harvey was a unique individual, so once he resolved to rid himself of Demogorgon, he threw himself into it heart and soul.
Forsake his warlock powers and have someone use Forgetfulness to purge all his memories of Demogorgon—that was Harvey's plan.
Only, wizards capable of casting Forgetfulness were hard to come by. Who knew how much time it took before he finally encountered a kindly, benevolent-looking old wizard who claimed he was willing to help.
And then, Harvey was duped once again.
This affable-looking old wizard was actually a necromancer. Not all necromancers were evil, but the proportion of good ones among them was pitifully small.
Harvey was a warlock favored by Demogorgon—what prime material he was! Turning him into a high-tier undead would be as easy as flipping a hand.
The necromancer had taken note of this very fact and wanted to trick Harvey into serving as his crafting material.
Harvey possessed great spellcasting talent, far exceeding Anbaixiu's, but when it came to seeing through human nature, he lagged far behind him.
He was simply lucky.
While the necromancer was preparing the ritual, Harvey casually picked up a book to read—an introductory primer on necromancy. Then, Harvey noticed something was amiss: the ritual the old man was preparing had nothing to do with Forgetfulness!
The necromancer never would have dreamed that someone could see through his disguised high-tier undead transformation ritual after glancing at an introductory primer on necromancy for merely a few moments. Harvey merely lacked a systematic education, leaving him with an incomplete understanding of many things, but so long as he was given the basic knowledge, he could always grasp the essence of magic at a glance and extrapolate from it.
Knowing he had been tricked yet again, Harvey prepared to make a run for it, only to discover that the wizard's tower had long since been sealed shut. There was no escape unless he could kill the necromancer. Hit him with an Eldritch Blast while his back was turned?
That probably wouldn't work; Harvey was well aware that he was no match for this necromancer.
Cleverness was one thing, but mana required time to accumulate, and spellcasting required time to practice. Compared to this old man, Harvey was far outmatched.
So as not to draw the old man's suspicion, Harvey had no choice but to continue pretending to read. And this time, as if by fate, he picked up an introductory primer for divination wizards, authored by the Lord of Elden.
In all his years of wandering, he had never met a divination wizard—in fact, he had never even heard of one. Once he began reading, Harvey was completely captivated. The power of fate was mysterious and formidable, the descriptions within the book arcane yet profound.
Harvey didn't know how long he had been reading, but by the time he closed the book, he had already mastered the power of fate.
A Dice of Fate manifested in his palm, and Harvey cast it onto the necromancer.
The power of fate was invisible and intangible, not even stirring a single strand of the old man's hair, but the very next second, the necromancer accidentally stepped on a greasy patch. It was human fat that hadn't been fully cleaned up, blending seamlessly into the grime on the floor so that it was completely undetectable.
Losing his balance, the necromancer crashed into a nearby potion cabinet.
With a series of crisp shattering sounds, vials of potions of various uses shattered over him, sending up plumes of smoke as he wailed in agony.
Normally, this wouldn't have been fatal; necromancers always possessed some means of self-preservation. But Harvey appeared right on cue and slit his throat with a blade.
The necromancer had assumed Harvey was coming to help him up, never expecting the brat was actually there to stab him. Silent spellcasting was an advanced technique that this wretched necromancer had yet to master, and the magical items on his person all required verbal incantations to activate. Harvey's strike had severed his only way out.
After slitting his throat came a stab to the heart, a stab to the liver, and another thrust straight through his eye into the brain.
Just like that, the necromancer was slain. The moment his soul emerged, Harvey grabbed another potion and splashed it across him, annihilating even the soul entirely.
A single Dice of Fate allowed Harvey to slay this powerful necromancer and successfully escape the wizard's tower.
Whether surviving great disaster brought future blessings or not, ever since Harvey left that wizard's tower, Demogorgon seemed to have vanished from his life.
He no longer had nightmares about that two-headed baboon, nor did he accidentally blow things up with Eldritch Blast.
Those sinister energies were completely purged from his body. Harvey had transformed from a warlock into a divination wizard. Though he could only be considered a novice apprentice, his life had changed completely.
Harvey began roaming the continent once more, only eighteen years old at the time.
This time, he had gotten smarter: whenever he encountered uncertainty, he performed a divination first. He finally experienced what smooth sailing felt like. Often, he didn't even need Detect Lie; his intuition alone was enough to tell whether someone's words were true or false.
This gave Harvey the feeling of reaching the pinnacle of life. At the height of his pride and triumph, he arrived at the City of Alchemy—a place that prided itself on the supremacy of knowledge—wishing to acquire even more knowledge.
And then, in the City of Alchemy, he crossed paths with that "Lord of Elden."
Harvey let out a sigh. His life had always been a roller coaster of ups and downs—mostly downs—and he was more or less used to it by now.
He had been captured so many times in his life that he lived quite peacefully inside Anbaixiu's castle, eventually confirming his host's identity from Anbaixiu's book collection.
Whether it had been intentional on the other's part or not, Anbaixiu's introductory primer for divination wizards had undeniably changed Harvey's life.
Harvey's feelings toward Anbaixiu were complicated. Perhaps because he had once been a warlock himself, he harbored no great prejudice against liches, feeling instead a touch of gratitude.
Harvey had thought about expressing his gratitude to Anbaixiu, but this teacher of his was simply too, too... the only adjective Harvey could think of was "greedy."
Having traveled for so many years and visited so many places, Harvey considered himself worldly and experienced, but he had truly never seen a lich so obsessed with money.
Anbaixiu's lust for money was so overwhelming that Harvey didn't even know how to communicate with him. Anything he said likely paled in comparison to the usefulness of the gold coins in his pocket. Unless Harvey could produce millions of gold coins for his teacher, perhaps only then would the lich feel his heartfelt gratitude.
And when Anbaixiu produced his phylactery, Harvey had felt touched for a time, thinking that this might be the mutual affinity between divination wizards. Yet after leaving the castle and venturing into the desert, Harvey gradually puzzled it out.
The phylactery in his hands was probably fake.
Given Anbaixiu's personality, there was no way he would hand him a real phylactery.
As a young man starved of affection since childhood, receiving his teacher's apparent esteem had left him so swept up in emotion that he hadn't noticed anything wrong at all, only realizing it several days after leaving.
Anbaixiu's tier as a divination wizard far surpassed Harvey's, blinding even his intuition. Relying purely on his own pondering, it took Harvey several days to figure it out.
Even so, having understood this, Harvey still took great care to safeguard the phylactery. What if his guess was wrong? What if Anbaixiu truly had entrusted him with the real thing?
Even if there were only a minuscule possibility, Harvey didn't want to mess it up.
Because Anbaixiu was his first teacher. Even when using him, he had never deceived him; Anbaixiu always made it plain to Harvey what he intended to do. This frankness, which couldn't even be called goodwill, was like a rare ray of sunshine in the life of someone who had been deceived at every turn.
Truly, one's childhood shouldn't be too miserable, or else one was easily duped and led astray.
Harvey was like this, and Naomi was no different.
Carrying Anbaixiu's phylactery, Harvey had trekked across great distances into the desert, hoping to avoid the imminent turmoil in the City of Alchemy.
Little did he expect that the City of Alchemy was gone, and everyone who had come from the City of Alchemy became a prime target of attention.
Chapter 216