The instant he saw the old man, Klein thought of reimbursements, of pour-over coffee in the basement, of those few pages of Roselle's Diary that had given him his initial grounding in mysticism, and of the words on Townsend Neil's gravestone: "If you cannot save her, then go and keep her company"...
But he concealed these emotions well beneath his surface thoughts. When he raised his slightly lowered head again, the stubble on his face had disappeared, and his features had grown a little leaner and more scholarly.
Casually taking off his glasses, Klein, now wearing his Tingen-era appearance, walked forward with a smile. His gaze flicked to the sign hanging against Old Neil's chest, and he read it out in a puzzled tone:
"The apocalypse is coming. No one will be spared?"
Old Neil's somewhat lifeless expression suddenly became animated, as though those words had activated him. He looked at Klein and answered in a devout tone that sounded as though he were praising a god:
"When the stars align, chaos will rise from beneath the earth, and the great Oldest One will awaken!
"Everything in this world will cease to exist..."
As he spoke, he handed over a leaflet.
This... is pretty much the same as the doomsday prophecies I saw online in my previous life. Judging by how the Original Creator's awakening would destroy the world, those prophecies actually got everything right... Klein frowned almost imperceptibly, growing even more puzzled about Old Neil's origins.
First, this appearance had to have come from some deep-seated fixation and memory within Angel. Her regret at failing to save this old man in Tingen City, after he had helped them so much when they first entered the world of mysticism, had led her to create him in the Dream City.
But