?
The Grand Cardinal slowly stood up from his seat, glaring at William as if he was seeing a ghost, "you don't have any affinity towards fate and destiny. We already spied on you, and got to learn lots of things, none related to our business and world."
"Let's see I have a master who is quite proficient in such things."
"We don't buy that," another Cardinal stood up, "we know you have a master, but she isn't here."
"..."
This was the first time William ever got busted in his lie. This lie kept working perfectly fine in front of any master, in any situation, except for now.
"Let's say I'm gifted with a thing you know nothing about," William knew they could at most spy on little things related to him. If they were so powerful, then they'd have seen through everything and wouldn't stand here trying to get more answers to their endless questions.
"You…"
"And let's agree on another point, I'm on your side," William interrupted another Cardinal, looking at the eyes of the Grand Cardinal directly as he added, "I also want to save this world from the upcoming disaster. I don't know how much you know about the upcoming disaster, but I can assure you, this disaster is one that can't be solved by a single force no matter how strong and resourceful it was."
His words expressed the true age and experience of his, not just words coming out from the mouth of a sixteen years old youth. William stopped talking about saying these words, waiting for them to absorb and fully understand what he just declared.
The Cardinals were indeed shocked. What William said was related to an old prophecy, one that took the lives of an entire council of Cardinals thousands of years ago.
These Cardinals met something that wanted to bring the destruction of this world. They managed to stop it, and fighting it didn't cost them their lives, spying on its fate and destiny.
They found out that it came from the outer world, a seed that came from a far scarier monster. And when they spied on its future, they were shocked to see that the future was related to a huge storm that would cover up the entire world and take it down.
Such a spying mission ended up with a deadly backlash, one that took the lives of every single one of them. Yet the Grand Cardinal back then managed to return and stay alive for a few minutes. During which, he wrote down a prophecy, a warning for the future generations, speaking about the upcoming disaster in general words, while describing the marking point of its date.
And that point was related to the appearance of a similar seed, a seed that'd come from the same scary monster in the outer world.
When the Cardinals first heard about William, they were at most interested in knowing why the fate and destiny world wanted to protect him. They investigated his background as a standard procedure in the Cult, and knew that he didn't come from a fancy background or had any strong traits.
Yet almost five years ago, everything changed. This youth started to pull out one miracle after another, ending up showing to the world the scary fox spirit that made him quite famous.
Yet they didn't feel any suspicion or anything, not until their branch on the other continent sent the report about what they found out about him.
The mention of a monster that got birthed from a speck of dust that came out from another monster made these Cardinals think of the prophecy.
Like anything dangerous and important, this prophecy was locked up and not shared with anyone except for those in the Cardinal Council. And that was why the Cardinal candidate William met before didn't link anything before.
"Let's say we'll accept your knowledge about such a secret without delving into any detail," the Grand Cardinal paused, looking around to silence everyone talking, "and we agree that you are our ally, so will you share what you know about these enemies with us?"
"You are thinking wrongly about this," William sighed, "the true enemy isn't in this world to begin with. What will you do about it? Even if you know its identity, you can't touch a single hair of it at all."
"We can share the news with our superiors in the outer world," the Grand Cardinal said as if this was something trivial. And William knew he wasn't lying, "they can handle it, while we can handle the enemy in our world."
"But that won't change much," William sighed again, "that enemy is just a small wheel in the entire grand machine working to destroy our world."
"This…" What William said was something none of the Cardinals here, none of the Cardinals over the years, even knew or realised.
To them, the prophecy was everything they had. They took it like it was a sacred thing and planned everything based on it.
Yet from William's little words, they realised how deeply mistaken they were. To take down an entire world, just a single enemy wasn't enough. Even if that enemy could tamper with fate and destiny, its role wouldn't have been big enough to impact the entire world.
"Are you saying that this enemy is worthless?!!!" The Grand Cardinal didn't like what he just heard. He got what William tried to convey, and yet he didn't believe their entire lives were built over a misconception.
"It's indeed worthy," William said in a firm way, "but it's not the only enemy we have to take care of or worry ourselves about."
What he wanted to say was clear, they had all the right to worry of this enemy, of this monster. But the problem wouldn't get solved if that enemy got crushed and killed.
That meant they had to remove that enemy, and then take care of other enemies to make sure this world would be saved.
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