Chapter 1367: Chapter 31: True and False Prophecy (Part 3)
Fisher’s thoughts came to an abrupt halt. He lifted his head to look at Renie, only to find that she was already gazing out toward the distant sea and the Dragon Court, so he couldn’t help but ask,
"What do you mean?"
"Fisher, do you still remember, many years ago when you met me, it was precisely because you said you were searching for the Undead Witch that I paid attention to you. I know you learned of that prophecy very early on and tried to resolve it. Even that Dragon-man Species, the Whale-man Species, and Valentina from the Northern Realm, who had just completed her Nirvana, only crossed paths with you because of this prophecy..."
"...That’s indeed the case."
"But what I want to say is: the prophecy you read had already been tampered with. Its meaning was altered by someone, which is why it became ambiguous..."
Renie turned her head to look at Fisher and continued speaking to him,
"The Doomsday Prophecy was discovered by the God of Fate, Anibatos, in the threads of fate about nine thousand five hundred years ago. At that time, they had already been trying to make contact with my Predecessor for five hundred years, but had gained nothing. He never responded at all, only silently watched this world. Until that day, my Predecessor brought a prophecy to this world—and He Himself was the omen of that doom-prophecy. He said:
’The Flames of the soul shall be the first to ignite, and will burn the world’s everything to silence in the fires of war.’
’Twisted Life shall raise up great waves and erase the rules upon which the living creatures rely to exist.’
’The Fake God from within the Boundary shall leave the Remnants of the thief with nowhere to hide and nowhere to return.’
’Your inerasable Misconception will, in song, compose an epitaph for you.’"
As Renie softly whispered, that prophecy—like a song, as if poured into the world’s future—finally presented itself in its entirety before Fisher at this moment.
A faint, blurry Whisper brushed past his ears. He and Emhardt both froze on the spot, letting that prophecy of unknown meaning crash into their minds.
"This is the prophecy we truly face. If I’m not mistaken, you have another version of the Doomsday Prophecy in your hands, a version born from the conjectures and fantasies of a lower-level existence. Hundreds and thousands of years ago, Ramasitia somehow heard this version and believed that this tampered, forged version was the key to the prophecy of the end of the world..."
Hearing this, Fisher furrowed his brows slightly. Inevitably, he compared the version Renie was reciting with the Doomsday Prophecy written in his Demi-human Girls Completion Manual. Leaving everything else aside, just from the surface alone, Renie’s prophecy sounded far more like a genuine "Doomsday Prophecy."
Perhaps because they had been together for so long, Fisher had, to some extent, come to understand that Demi-human girl control’s temperament, and thus was looking at her attitude through slightly tinted glasses.
But putting aside his longstanding preconceptions, there were two possibilities regarding the Doomsday Prophecy in his hands.
First, Renie is right. That Demi-human girl control might have somehow glimpsed a corner of the Doomsday Prophecy, but because of the level of her Life and the mental problems unique to a Transferee (especially since this particular Transferee’s mental issues were far from ordinary), the prophecy she treated as supreme doctrine was in fact a prank version of the Doomsday Prophecy.
Judging from the current situation, the few people he previously regarded as "Doomsday" truly were not the real problem. The real problem lay with those Completion Manuals that bear Chaotic Knowledge, not with those demi-human girls themselves, which is why Fisher had earlier fallen into the illusion that he had resolved the Doomsday Prophecy.
Second, Ramasitia is right. Both the prophecy told by Demi-human girl control and the prophecy told by Renie are genuine, except that the Doomsday Prophecy provided by Demi-human girl control had been retranslated. It might bear the specific events of the Destruction, or might restate the critical junctures in resolving the Doomsday Prophecy...
Moreover, Helair had just said to him earlier that the key to the prophecy of the end of the world lies in Rafael. Doesn’t that, in a sense, corroborate that the Doomsday Prophecy spoken by Demi-human girl control is real?
But that in turn raises yet another problem, because Fisher still couldn’t determine whether Helair’s words were entirely true. He couldn’t even falsify her viewpoint, and yet he was using it to support his own conjecture. That was simply unreasonable.
The crux was that there were many things Fisher currently couldn’t find evidence for. If he really dug into it, the entire chain of logic would become an infinite, recursive chain of doubt, and he would fall into the trap of "skepticism," becoming hesitant and constrained.
Yet the problems before him still had to be faced. The two Eighteenth Rank Demons that were drawing near were real, and the "Doomsday Prophecy" that seemed intangible yet had been proven from many angles was real as well. These didn’t need proof; they lay plainly before his eyes...
Fisher pondered for a moment and also caught the implication behind Renie’s words, so he asked,
"Renie, you’re saying—you want me to pull myself out of this Doomsday Prophecy business?"
Renie nodded. From the corner of her eye she glanced at those few Completion Manuals that remained conspicuous on Fisher’s body even though he was stark naked.
In her eyes, those things were not Completion Manuals, but some kind of calamity...
Thus, her tone was both worried and solemn,
"Fisher, you just barely pulled yourself back from losing control. Don’t tell me you still don’t understand how dangerous those things are? They will ruin you. Precisely because you believe yourself to be the key to the Doomsday Prophecy, you’ve kept exposing yourself to them, letting them drag you into this vortex of Destruction."
