Kapitel 44: Chapter 42: The Prophet
After the little incident, the monkeys got attached to me. A few dozen minutes had already passed since the monster had attacked the train, but the guardians hadn't moved. They were hanging around me and babbling more stuff I didn't get.
One of them had slipped away for a while before coming back with a large piece of meat. It looked like chicken or some other sort of poultry. He'd used a large stick as a skewer and a big leaf as a plate...
How are these monkeys even able to operate a steam train? Are we really going to arrive at the prophet's place in one piece?
"Tnias suoirolg, eno siht evah! Tuc tseb eht si siht!" he said, handing me the large skewer.
Was this their way of thanking me? To be honest, I didn't really wanna eat meat that had only been grilled without any seasoning. Plus, this was definitely the bird I'd just killed, right? That made things even worse.
To be fair, ever since I'd gotten this body, I didn't eat much. Back in my former body, I used to eat as much as the next person—before I got sick, that is—but I didn't feel like I needed as much energy as Ellize. I'd started eating even less after I'd learned mana circulation. Nowadays, I could easily go up to five days without eating or drinking. As a result, I didn't need to use the toilet much either.
The original Ellize, on the other hand, had been a big eater.
I took a good look at the guardian that was handing me the skewer and noticed he was quite literally drooling as he gazed at the slab of meat.
"Please share this meat among yourselves. I'm not very hungry, so there is no need to hold back on my behalf," I said.
"Tnias, ecin oot er'uoy!"
They immediately dug in at my urging. I was starting to get used to the strange language they spoke. It seemed like they were calling me "tnias."
After a few more minutes of boredom—during which I was starting to get low-key done with the weird monkeys' behavior—the train stopped in front of a forest. We'd finally reached our destination.
"Devirra ev'ew. Niart eht ffo teg uoy nehw luferac eb esaelp," one of them said, gesturing for me to get off the train.
The old man and I stepped out of the train. The guardians followed and surrounded us once again, as if to protect us from all sides.
"Yaw siht. Tnias, llaf ot ton luferac eb esaelp."
They'd said "tnias" again, so they must've been talking to me. I had no idea what they were trying to tell me, though.
The guardian that was leading the group started walking, and the old man and I followed him without a word.
The forest was...strangely peaceful. A squirrel jumped onto my shoulder before going on its merry way. Birds were chirping, and I could see big kitties—as large as tigers—peeking out from the bushes to look at us. I couldn't tell whether these animals were cats that had evolved into larger felines, or tigers that had become so tame they now looked like cats. Honestly, it didn't really matter. All I knew was that this species definitely didn't exist on Earth.
I hadn't really given it much thought before, but even though I'd seen tons of monsters, I hadn't seen many wild animals in this world.
The guardian who led the group came to a stop.
"Yaw siht thgir," he said, gesturing for us to move forward.
The prophet was waiting for us right ahead, apparently.
Let's go meet them, then.
Aiz and I stepped forward. Suddenly, a voice called out.
"I've been waiting for you. Lady Ellize, please come forward alone."
I assume this is the prophet.
I had yet to introduce myself, but they already knew my name. That couldn't have been because they'd predicted the saint's birth now, could it? After all, if they knew the name of the saint, they'd also know I was a fake. Things didn't add up.
The old geezer looked at me, his eyes full of concern. I nodded confidently to reassure him and walked toward the voice. I went past clumps of foliage and entered an unnaturally large clearing surrounded by trees. There was nothing but a lake in front of me.
What the hell? Where's the prophet? Should I just jump into the lake?
I approached the lake, and suddenly something emerged—a gigantic turtle. Its shell alone seemed to be over five meters large, so a person could easily travel on its back.
I'm supposed to get on the turtle to cross the lake, aren't I? I'm starting to feel like Urashima Tarou.
I was on the verge of stepping on its back when the turtle suddenly started speaking. "Thank you for coming, fake saint. I've been waiting for you—the one who has surpassed the real deal—to visit me for a long time. I'm Profeta, but you humans usually refer to me as the prophet."
I thought the turtle would bring me to the prophet, but as it turned out, the turtle was the prophet. I'd automatically assumed the prophet would be human. I finally got why the old geezer had told me I'd "understand when I met them."
Hang on. In this world, the only animals that can speak are monsters, and not just the regular ones—only archmonsters, actually! Isn't this guy one of the witch's underlings?!
"Are you...a monster?" I asked.
The turtle laughed. "I can see why you'd think that," he said. "However, I'm not a monster. I'm just a regular turtle who happened to be chosen by the world to pass on its messages."
A regular turtle who happened to be chosen by the world, huh? I understood what he meant, though. At the end of the day, the saint was in a similar position—a human chosen by the world to be its proxy. Profeta had also been chosen and given a mission. My only question was: why a turtle?
"Do you want to know why I'm a turtle? It's quite trivial, really. It's simply because turtles live longer than humans. My species, in particular—the millennium turtles—live over a thousand years. The world chose me so I could continue to prophesize the birth of saints for a very long time."
While the explanation made sense—the world had created a situation where it wouldn't need to change messengers too often—another question popped up in my brain. If other species had always been an option, why did they make the saint human? We weren't really built for combat. In fact, we were pretty damn weak as a species—a domestic cat could technically kill a human if it got serious. Well, magic existed in this world, so humans probably wouldn't lose to cats...but still! Even though people could develop superhuman powers by training hard enough, their base specs were pretty damn low. Most beasts were still stronger. Wouldn't a bear saint or a tiger saint be much more effective? If they were bestowed intellect and the ability to use magic, they'd easily beat ninety-nine percent of the saints who'd ever existed in single combat.
I'm pretty confident I'm an exception, though. I'm just that good. So yeah, a strong animal saint would... It would... Hmm... Yeah, no. It would never even reach the witch.
To get to the witch, the saint first had to do something about her army of monsters and archmonsters. It usually meant she had to sacrifice hundreds of knights and soldiers to clear a path for herself. I couldn't picture human soldiers giving their life for a bear. They wouldn't even be able to tell the saint apart from regular monsters.
Even assuming they believed the prophet when he told them, "this bear is the saint," I really doubted they'd willingly die for a beast. Could you give your life for a bear? A frickin' bear!You may be wondering, why would the bear seek the support of humans instead of asking other animals? Well, even if the bear saint was super smart, the rest of the animals would still be dumb. They'd never shield the bear.
In other words, if you made the saint an animal, it'd have to fight alone. Even if it was much stronger than a human, it wouldn't be enough. It'd eventually end up overrun by monsters and die.
"You just called me a fake," I said. "Does that mean you know my identity?"
"I do," the turtle answered. "You're not the saint—you're a very talented young woman who happened to be born in the same village as the real saint."
As expected of the prophet. He did know that Ellize wasn't the real deal. I would've been pretty disappointed if he couldn't tell the difference.
Still, I didn't get how he knew my name, or how he'd been expecting me.
"Go ahead and ask me any question you may have. I'm dying to converse with someone, so I'll happily tell you everything I can. You probably couldn't communicate with these monkeys, so you must be curious," the turtle said.
"How do you know my name?" I asked. "You made it sound like you were expecting me to visit today. How did you know that?"
The turtle laughed once more. "How could I have not known?" he asked. "I never leave this place, but I'm still aware of many things. I'm always watching you and your friends, and I've seen everything you've been through."
Hey, that's one messed-up power! Where's my privacy?!
If he could watch over me at all times, it made sense that he knew my name and that I'd end up coming here. This turtle was God—or rather, this world's messenger. The world obviously knew what happened everywhere and at all times. I assumed that, in turn, the world passed on this information to its messenger.
I mean, we're doing all this stuff right here on the surface of this world.
Now that I understood the situation better, I went for another question. "You said you'd been waiting for me for a long time, right?"
"Indeed. I've been waiting for you for so long. I really wanted to have a chat with you. After all, you're a singularity."
A singularity? What in the world is that supposed to mean?
I had no clue what the turtle meant.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand. Could you clarify?"
"You're right. There's no way you'd get it without a thorough explanation. What I'm about to tell you is somewhat absurd, so you can decide for yourself whether you want to believe me or not."
To be fair, the existence of magic, saints, and witches was already absurd to me. I didn't think the turtle could come up with something even more unbelievable.
What do I know, though? Maybe I'll get to hear something incredible!
"As I just mentioned, I'm aware of everything that happens in this world. However, one day...I started being able to see what happened in another world called Earth. I can't be sure, but I think it might be because my time is running out. I believe a part of my soul slipped away into this world."
Okay, I am surprised.
Apparently, Profeta could see stuff that happened on Earth too.
He shook his head slowly before continuing. "I discovered something strange there. There was this thing...a geyme—called Kuon no Sanka, I believe—that showed this world. It was all so strange. It mostly recounted what had happened around a young man named Verner. The drawings were very peculiar too. People had unnaturally large eyes, and for some reason, their noses were only small dots..."
Peculiar? Hey, turtle, are you calling manga-style art weird?! Don't you know how many artists have devoted their lives to polishing this wonderful art style? You gotta respect the pinnacle of moe culture! The main point of this style is to deform reality, you uncultured swi—turtle!
I have a feeling I'm missing the point... Oh, right! The game!
From the sound of it, the turtle knew about Kuon no Sanka.
"In the midst of it all, something stood out," Profeta continued. "That something would be you, Ellize."
"Me?"
"You're a fake, but you've surpassed the real deal. No saint has achieved as much as you have in the past. You're more worthy of this title than any of your predecessors. Don't you think it's ironic? A fake ended up being the closest thing to a true saint this world has ever seen. I still have trouble believing you're not the real deal, especially when you're standing before me," Profeta said. "And yet...the Ellize I saw in that geyme was nothing like you. She was hideous, both inside and out."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Profeta knew about the original contents of the game.
To be fully honest, the original Ellize and I weren't so different—on the inside, that is. What set us apart was that she hadn't bothered putting up a nice front. The turtle had only seen my facade and seemed to have assumed I was truly a good person—unlike Pizzallize.
Why was Profeta only able to see the state of the world before the changes I'd made, though?
It reminded me of what happened when we looked at stars. They were so far away that what we saw when we looked up at the night sky wasn't the current state of the stars—it was how they used to be. Take the sun, for instance. Its light needed around eight minutes to reach us. This meant that whenever we looked at the sun, we saw it as it had been eight minutes ago. The same went for every other star—we'd never be able to observe their current appearance. The light of any given star could take a couple of years, several dozen years, several hundred years, or even more than that to reach us. What we'd see was the star's past.
For all I knew, the same logic applied here. This world and Earth could very well be pretty far away, which would explain this discrepancy. What Profeta was seeing was the past state of Earth, and that was why he didn't know about the changes...
It makes sense, right? ...Right? Yeah, I know, it's pretty far-fetched.
If my theory was true, it meant I'd somehow returned to the past as well.
I'd played Kuon no Sanka to the end. If the game had been created by someone who was observing this world, Verner's story should've ended ages ago—back when I was still on Earth as Niito. However, I'd ended up being reborn as Ellize.
I really had gone back in time, hadn't I?
Just to backtrack on my point about stars—pretty much every sci-fi story agreed on the fact that if you could move faster than the speed of light, you could technically go back in time. Could it be that souls moved faster than light? Had my soul ended up going back seventeen years when I'd transmigrated?
That didn't make sense, though. I'd come and gone a few times already, and I hadn't noticed any significant delay. Actually, that wasn't exactly true. Niito—me—had said that there was most likely some sort of time difference between our worlds, but we'd only noticed that the first time I'd visited him. The first seventeen years had gone by in a blur in his world, but after that, the flow of time had seemed similar enough.
I hadn't checked thoroughly, but it did seem like a week in this world equated to a week on Earth.
I'd like to think I would've noticed if a few days on Earth equated to seventeen years in this world!
Another thing was bugging me. Niito—me—and I had assumed that I'd returned to Earth to collect the missing parts of my soul, but...why hadn't that happened until fairly recently? Could it be because I'd needed those first seventeen years to finally go back to the right timeline? Now that I was back on track, the flow of time was pretty much the same. Maybe that was why I could visit Niito—me...
At this point, my ideas were nothing but a theory. I'd need to confirm everything the next time I ended up there. If I was right, though...it would mean that transmigrating into another world also meant going back in time.
Still, Profeta was seeing Earth afterKuon no Sanka had come out. The game had launched four years ago—fairly recently.
So observing only came with a relatively short delay, but transmigration meant going over dimensional walls, or something. That created a larger gap, so, hmm... In short...
Yeah, no, I have no idea what I'm saying. Whatever, I'll stop overthinking this.
I'd always been an idiot. Overthinking things would only confuse me further.
I'll leave the thinking to Niito—me—and Ijuuin-san.
(2.8k word count)
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein