Chapter 253: The Prophet and the Mystic

After the easing, Rekton gradually began to find himself again, gathering his thoughts.

In his perception, the information that had swarmed into his eyes and been engraved into his mind now all materialized into countless interwoven silver-white threads, colliding, entangling, and influencing one another.

They were like the traces of all things that exist, from their birth, right up to the present, stretching onward into the future.

It seemed that one need only gaze at them to clearly see their past and future.

All the silver-white threads interwove and converged into a vast river, one that transcended time and space — a river of destiny.

A manifestation of the river of destiny? Coming back to his senses, Rekton murmured to himself.

His gaze turned toward the somewhat ethereal future, where the silver-white threads were tangled and chaotic, even spreading out into branch after branch, as though there were countless possible developments, like a tangled skein.

One could only judge the general trajectory of the future through the developments of the past and present.

Yet when he focused his attention on a single thread, or a single point, he could rely on his own judgment to untangle them and find the most likely future among them.

Withdrawing his gaze, Rekton followed his instincts and looked back; he quickly found the silver-white threads that were the extension of his own destiny.

They were strand after strand, like a fishing net cast into water, swaying and tangling ceaselessly under the wash of the current.

Because this was his own destiny, Rekton saw it with exceptional clarity; looking back at his past destiny, he felt something very abrupt and discordant.

It was as though his destiny had been severed and then grafted back together — with just a single glance, Rekton understood what had happened.

He then turned his gaze toward the future, where the densely packed, semi-illusory silver threads spread out into countless branches, making it impossible to distinguish which one was the true future.

Rekton's gaze kept reaching further into the distance, yet the trajectories of these branches of destiny were remarkably uniform — they were converging toward a fixed future, merging with an even vaster destiny somewhere beyond clear sight, just as streams flow into the sea.

What does this mean? The world ultimately heads toward destruction? That original Creator is destined to awaken? Or I will live to the end of the universe?

Rekton murmured his doubts for a moment, and soon he felt his own spirituality becoming unstable — it seemed that his act of peering into the future just now had consumed too much spirituality.

He then reined in his spirituality and his gaze; the silver-white around him rapidly faded and vanished. The desk, the walls, the wall lamps, the bookshelves — everything returned to its normal appearance, and the scenes he had just seen were as though an illusion from a dizzy spell.

"I hadn't expected that a Prophet's way of peering into the future would be like this... It feels like a combination of mysticism divination and big-data extrapolation."

Rekton leaned back in his chair and murmured, then closed his eyes, feeling the changes within his body.

The Sequence 4 Prophet only added one extraordinary ability called the 'Eye of Destiny.'

Its effect was exactly as Rekton had just witnessed: one could see the traces of destiny upon surrounding things, and through knowledge, connections, and understanding, deduce the single most likely outcome among countless futures.

Beyond that, a great deal of higher-level mystical knowledge in the domain of destiny had also appeared in his mind, though these could only be considered a byproduct of the Eye of Destiny's ability.

At the same time, the abilities belonging to his prior sequences had also been elevated to the Sequence 4 level.

Moreover, having just consumed the Prophet potion, Rekton felt that he had already digested nearly half of it.

Filled with incredulity, he opened his eyes and felt it again, confirming that it was not his imagination.

"What did I do? To have digested so much of the Prophet potion?"

As he murmured to himself, an idea took shape in his mind.

The next moment, he reached forward with his right hand and grasped at the air; a lit match appeared in his hand with a flash.

In a flash of thought, the surrounding scene changed to a corner of an alley in a small town, with large goose-feather snowflakes drifting down from the sky.

He gently blew out the match in his hand, and everything around him vanished in a flash, leaving only the extinguished match in his hand with wisps of white smoke gently rising.

"As expected?... The Little Match Girl..."

Rekton lowered his eyes and murmured in a tone of unclear meaning.

He roughly understood why the Prophet potion had digested so much already — the destiny he had glimpsed during his promotion just now was not because of the promotion to Prophet, but because it had resonated with his own Sage characteristics.

It seemed that his actions just now had also caused those characteristics to fuse with him further; he was now not only a Prophet, but also a Mystic.

Perhaps it was also because he had just used those Sage characteristics with Sasilier's help, but this was a bit too easy, wasn't it? He hadn't even felt anything — even taking into account that he had just been promoted.

Rekton frowned slightly; this unexpected development reminded him of many details he had subconsciously overlooked before:

The fusion of the Mystery Seeker pathway's characteristics seemed to have never had any effect on me beyond oppressing my humanity; I hadn't even really needed to act and digest, and I felt no burden at all... It was as if... I had possessed these from the very beginning, and the process of fusing the characteristics was merely taking them back.

On the contrary, every promotion and digestion of the Reader pathway had a very obvious impact on me.

"Why had I never noticed these before... Is this influence external, or does it stem from myself?"

Rekton frowned deeply and murmured to himself.

I feel as though I should have been an Angel from the start, but for some unknown reason the Reader pathway's characteristics intervened, forcing me to start over from the beginning... But that doesn't seem to make sense either...

The God of Knowledge might know quite a lot, but He certainly wouldn't tell me — and besides, His attitude toward me is so good it's frightening.

He might have the idea of indirectly controlling the Knowledge Wilderness through me; with His wisdom, whether it was Steam or the Hidden Sage, replacing them would not be impossible — but this should be His last resort; after all, the Knowledge Wilderness didn't have the ability to revive with a refreshed state, and forcibly switching pathways would drive one mad at best.

Phew— Rekton leaned back against the chair and let out a long sigh, reaching up to press his temples. There were too many things he couldn't figure out; sometimes he even doubted whether he was human.

He had a premonition that as long as he fused those Sage characteristics and became an Angel, he would be able to unravel all his doubts — and doing so carried no risk whatsoever; it was something that had belonged to him in the first place.

But his intuition told him that now was not the right time; he still needed more accumulation, more experience, more—

Suddenly, he turned to look out the window; the Prophet's intuition told him that the destiny of the entire city of Backlund had undergone some subtle changes — changes for the better.

"Destiny... Has he finally been promoted?"

Murmuring softly, Rekton rose from the armchair, took a step forward, and his figure rapidly turned transparent, disappearing from the room.

In the outskirts of the West District, inside an ancient underground ruin bearing the style of the Fourth Epoch.

William Augustus I, draped in a great cloak and bearing a commanding presence, looked at the man before him — a handsome gentleman with black hair and golden eyes, wearing a well-tailored formal suit, mature and refined.

He was the military demigod who had been the first to arrive at the scene when Capin was killed last time — Celt.

The gaze of William Augustus I, the founder of Loen, made even him, a demigod, feel a tremor; he clearly felt sweat already seeping from his forehead.

"The Conqueror characteristic we handed over to the Witch Cult has been seized — by two Angels of the Church of the Night and the Aurora Order acting simultaneously."

William Augustus I narrowed his eyes slightly and repeated, in a very calm tone, the report Celt had just given him.

Even though the founder before him had not displayed any imposing presence, Celt still felt his soul trembling from the other's fury; with sweat beading on his forehead, he said:

"Yes, that was what the Witch who returned to Backlund said. I conducted a certain degree of verification — she was not lying."

"We already gave the Conqueror characteristic to them; that it was seized is their own affair."

"However, since it was seized here in Loen, in the outskirts of Backlund, we ought to help them recover it. You will be in charge of this matter — do not damage our cooperation with the Witch Cult."

William Augustus I spoke in a tone without much rise and fall.

"I understand!" Saierte gave a solemn salute and then withdrew.

He understood the founder of the nation's meaning; the items were snatched after being handed over to the Witch Cult, which had nothing to do with them, but to maintain cooperation between the two sides, they had to show a clear attitude.

The Aurora Society actually has an angel hidden in Bekland; if it weren't for this attempt to seize the conqueror's trait, He probably wouldn't have been revealed. Who is that angel that the Night Church appeared in this event?

The Aurora Society also cooperated with the royal family in this great smog incident; we cannot directly investigate them, for they are a bunch of lunatics. If it were exposed that the royal family was behind the smog incident, the major churches would surely come running; we can only conduct some investigation on the Night Church, and we must also guard against provoking the Aurora Society's lunatics by the Witch Cult.

(End of Chapter)