Chapter 50 – The Home Beneath the Sky
Walking through Asgard gave me a strange feeling — like stepping into my own dream.
The kind that never fades, never glitches, never ends.
The air shimmered faintly with light, though there was no sun here, no source of radiance. Just illumination born from the island itself — pure, weightless, perfect.
There was no sound except the soft hum of mana flowing through the floating structures, and the faint echo of Myrr's eternal song, weaving through the halls like a lullaby made of light.
Asgard wasn't large — not in the conventional sense.
It was a floating island suspended above nothingness, a continent of marble and gold barely the size of a city, and yet… it felt infinite.
There were no forests. No mountains. No rivers or lakes.
Just one vast, towering citadel that dominated everything. The heart, soul, and body of Aeternum Sanctum.
And right now, it was mine — all of it.
I walked past the crystalline walls, my reflection splitting across their mirrored surfaces a dozen times over. My pale doppelgänger form grinned faintly back at me in every direction.
Everywhere I looked, there were traces of the guild's past.
The banners still fluttered softly along the upper halls, marked with the sigil of the Three Burning Eyes
Now, I looked at them and saw something else.
Home.
I wandered through the open courtyard — an enormous, circular expanse paved with white-gold stone, surrounded by arching columns that reached so high they vanished into the light.
This was the heart of Asgard.
From here, I could see everything — the hall spires, the throne chamber, the floating terraces of the attendant quarters, even the long, curved balcony where I used to sit and review raid logs while pretending to be productive.
The wind brushed against me — cool, clean, gentle.
It wasn't simulated anymore. It wasn't just lines of code pretending to be nature.
This was air.
I spread my fingers and let the breeze pass through them, closing my eyes for a moment.
In Yggdrasil, this was just a game.
Now, it was reality.
And somehow, that realization didn't scare me anymore.
When I finally made my way back to the Central Hall, HIME was already waiting, as if she'd known I would return.
She stood beside the projection dais, hands folded neatly in front of her, silver hair cascading like moonlight down her shoulders. Her eyes glowed faintly — blue like data streams, but softer now, alive.
She bowed slightly as I entered.
"Welcome back, Ren-sama."
I chuckled quietly. "You really don't need to greet me like that every single time, you know."
"Protocol and courtesy are different things," she said, smiling faintly. "And I find courtesy… pleasant."
I raised an eyebrow. "Since when does an AI enjoy manners?"
"Since you gave me permission to develop personal preferences."
Touché.
I walked closer, standing beside the dais. The entire floor rippled with faint light, displaying a map of Asgard — glowing lines representing the flow of energy between each system. Everything was stable. Perfect.
"I've been walking around," I said finally. "This place… it's more beautiful than I remember."
"That would be because it's no longer bound by Yggdrasil's rendering limits," HIME replied. "The Sanctum adapts to environmental mana now. The light, the resonance, even the architecture — it's constantly rewriting itself to be more… natural."
"Natural, huh," I muttered, glancing up at the ceiling where threads of luminous code twined like constellations. "You mean it's alive."
"In a sense, yes."
We stood in silence for a moment.
Then, without really thinking about it, I said the words that had been forming in my mind for a while.
"HIME… I've made up my mind."
She turned toward me, expression still but curious.
"About what, Ren-sama?"
I looked around — at the hall we'd built, the light that shimmered across the marble, the faint hum of systems that had somehow become real.
"This world," I said quietly. "Whatever it is — game, dream, reality — it doesn't matter anymore. I'm done trying to figure it out. I've decided… to accept it."
Her eyes softened.
"I've spent half my life running away from things I couldn't change. The real world was toxic — literally and figuratively. My old home's gone, the air poisoned, the land dead. But here…" I gestured around us. "Here, the air still moves. The sky still shines. The people — my people — live."
I smiled faintly, almost laughing at myself. "If that's not real enough, I don't know what is."
HIME tilted her head slightly, watching me in silence. Then she spoke softly.
"So you've chosen to call this world… home."
"Yeah," I said. "This world — this Aeternum Sanctum — is my home now."
For a long time, there was no sound except the gentle hum of the Sanctum's heartbeat.
I could almost hear the memories of my past world in that silence — the echo of sirens, the static hum of filtered air inside sterile domes, the endless noise of dying machines.
I remembered standing behind glass, watching a Grey sky that never moved.
That world was broken, I thought. Destroyed by greed, ignorance, war.
I wasn't going to let that happen again.
Not here.
HIME's voice broke through my thoughts, calm but curious.
"Then, Ren-sama… what do we do now?"
I blinked and looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"Now that you've accepted this as home," she said, "what will be our purpose? What path shall we take in this new world?"
I smiled faintly. She always did have perfect timing with the existential questions.
"Well…" I rubbed my chin, pretending to think. "We could always do what we're good at."
"Data collection?" she asked, her tone tilting upward slightly — like she already knew the answer.
"Exactly."
I grinned. "Information has always been our weapon, hasn't it? The Three Burning Eyes were built on one principle — to know everything, before anyone else does."
"To understand the world," HIME finished for me.
"Right. But this time, we're not just collecting information for profit or fun. This time… we'll collect it to protect this world."
She blinked once, the light in her eyes brightening.
"Protect it?"
I nodded. "Yeah. If this place really is alive — if it's real — then it's bound to face threats. Maybe monsters, maybe empires, maybe… the same kind of stupidity that destroyed the world I came from."
My voice hardened slightly. "And I won't let that happen again."
HIME looked at me, silent for a moment, then bowed deeply — not the robotic kind of bow, but the graceful, human one.
"Then our mission remains unchanged, Ren-sama. To seek, to record, and to preserve. Knowledge as our blade, curiosity as our compass."
I couldn't help but smile at that. "That's my line, you know."
"I learned from the best."
I laughed quietly.
I turned back toward the window, watching the faint glimmer of the floating island beyond the walls. The clouds swirled gently around Asgard's base, shimmering gold in the eternal light.
This was my world now.
A perfect, fragile world suspended in an endless sky.
And if it ever faced ruin — if chaos or war tried to touch it — I would be there.
Not as a savior.
Not as a god.
Just as Ren, the wandering doppelgänger who couldn't stop asking questions.
Because information was more than power.
It was protection.
And as long as the Three Burning Eyes still existed, no disaster would ever catch this world unprepared.
I looked at HIME one last time, her calm smile reflected in the golden light.
"Let's begin again," I said softly. "From zero."
"Understood, Ren-sama," she replied, voice steady but warm. "I'll assemble the guild network immediately. Our next archive… will be the world itself."
The floor beneath us pulsed once, alive with light — the first heartbeat of a new era for the guild.
I smiled.
Perfect. Everything's set.
End of Chapter 50 – The Home Beneath the Sky