Once, Ling Ke could still dream.
In the dream, he lived under the sun. There had been no prison cell, no day-and-night interrogations, no being treated like a lump of meat for the experiment table.
His earliest sincerity. Or rather, his innocence. It had not been betrayed.
Raiden Mei chose to trust him, simply because she could not feel any malice in him.
And Cocolia was not all-powerful. Not yet. Her Artificial Honkai plan had not fully started. Ryoma Raiden was still his daughter's shield. The informants Cocolia had planted in Nagazora were fewer than she liked to think.
So even though Ryoma had been busy out of his mind in those days, the moment Raiden Mei reached out to him, he dropped everything and came home. For the first time in too long.
Not as the masked "Homu Sword Saint."
As a father.
He stood, without hesitation, against Cocolia and her Anti-Entropy radicals. With the leverage in his hands, he forced her to back off.
Cocolia could only compromise. And in doing so, she began to hate the black-haired young man who had appeared out of nowhere.
But facing that malice, his earnest heart had not yet died. He still had the courage to keep walking forward.
Nagazora was saved. Millions of people were spared the cruel deaths that had originally been waiting for them.
He and Mei became close friends.
Later, he met the white-haired little dumpling who called herself "this young lady." Kiana Kaslana.
And the one Cocolia had quietly sent in to spy, who ended up tangled in the web herself. Bronya Zaychik.
"Bronya, you don't want Seele to stay unsaved, do you?"
He had teased her like that once, with a wicked grin.
In the end, though, he kept his word. As the " savior player," he saved everyone who had nearly died. He even brought back those who were already gone.
In front of him, this world had no tragedy.
A certain Miss Pink Elf said he had created a true Elysium.
A certain sharp-tongued snake doctor said, through gritted teeth, that he had ascended a true divine throne.
Everyone willing to believe in him got a good ending.
Then…
The dream ended.
Once, what filled his vision had been a freezing cell, the glare of the white lights, and pair after pair of eyes that looked at him like he was material.
Now, what filled it was the moment after farewell.
"..."
North Africa. The Sahara Desert.
Time: the Previous Era.
208 days until the Third Honkai Eruption.
There was no World Serpent HQ here. Not yet. This was just an ordinary desert night.
Ling Ke lay alone in the yellow sand, silent.
A moment later…
"What a ridiculous, laughable, utterly disgusting nightmare."
"Ascended Bodhi… you, who can observe the timelines but cannot interfere with the world. You're surprisingly nasty, aren't you."
"All those 'ifs.' All those 'maybes.' For them. For my enemies. Every single one of those is a knife driven straight into the heart."
"Mm. Though the staging could have been tighter. Some of the timing was stiff. The dramatic irony wasn't pushed as far as it could have gone."
Having said that much out of pure professional habit, he yawned. Wide.
He clearly did not care about any of those "ifs" and "maybes." He himself didn't care.
But he knew very well. Some other people would.
"Heh."
You know what, after the Bodhi pulled this little stunt, his mood was actually pretty good.
Because this was the first time anyone was about to get gutted where it hurt without him having to lift a finger to arrange it.
Genuinely, deeply satisfying.
"Why did the last bit feel like the ending of Evangelion, though?"
Ling Ke could not help muttering it like a critic.
Like he wasn't even talking about himself.
Well, fair enough. The so-called "savior player" was never going to be him anyway.
Just like the name said. That had been a nonexistent memory.
He was still wearing the same neat formal evening wear from earlier. He clearly no longer cared about looking elegant in it. Having lived in the Theater for so long, he no longer had to perform for anyone.
He just lay there. Flat on his back. Body completely loose. Sand slid into his sleeves and the back of his collar from the size of his last movement, and he let it.
The sand was cold at night.
He still couldn't be bothered to move this body of his.
It was only because what he was looking at right now was too beautiful.
Forcibly rolling time back more than fifty thousand years. That kind of absurd thing, he had pulled off.
The price he paid was different from Otto's.
What it cost him was this: inside his Theater of Domination, in the Rebirth Room, there was now a small sapling. About the size of a bonsai.
A sapling of the Imaginary Tree.
It. Or rather, that divine "It," in the way one spoke of gods, had decided that place was the safest. No erosion from the Sea of Quanta. A pure land that could carry its eternal existence.
If, one day, the real Imaginary Tree, the massive one, ever fell, then this sapling would be its second chance.
The way Ling Ke understood it, the little thing was clinging to him like a kid latching onto a strong leg, sending him a constant stream of goodwill. Almost like a Honkai 3rd plus-pro-max-super edition of Lesser Lord Kusanali, basically.
Or…
"Like I'd just picked up a 'slightly' special pet, where slightly meant absurdly special."
He muttered it inwardly.
He didn't mind this small uninvited guest.
Because right now, toward Honkai, toward the Imaginary Tree, he felt nothing but gratitude.
Even toward the system that had shown up too late.
"I hate you, Creator. You put me through pain and suffering."
"And I thank you, Creator. You gave me the power to take revenge."
"But still, no matter what…"
"I will praise you, great Creator."
He murmured it to himself.
Of course, if you really wanted to talk about pets…
Right now, in his Theater of Domination, there were over a dozen "digital pets."
They were the audience for the next production. Maybe even participants.
Toward them, in Ling Ke's heart…
No blood feud. Still, there was resentment.
Because they had helped Raiden Mei.
And then there was the punch from Kalpas. Even if it hadn't hit his real face…
Ling Ke was small-minded. He held grudges very well.
"If Raiden Mei really decides, for the sake of her own era, to destroy this era's second chance…"
"What would you all be feeling, deep down?"
He was very curious about that.
For no clear reason, he thought of the pink figure. The daughter of God, sent by stars and moon.
"The starry sky, hm?"
After his brief ascent to godhood, even though he had since stripped that divine authority away, the rank of his existence had risen. He looked "ordinary." But the starry sky that had once filled his eyes was gone now.
His eyes were no longer deep.
When his unfocused gaze drifted upward, what he saw was the real one. The genuine starry sky. Clear, vast, hung across the night.
So beautiful. Brilliant and dazzling.
For no clear reason…
"Heh…" he let out a chuckle. " it's Ymir's Rebirth, was it?" As Ling Ke laughed.
He looked around at the scene as he muttered to himself. The laugh was no longer the old one. It was no longer the cold, twisted, forced thing he made by dragging the corners of his mouth up.
It was wild. Half-mad. Open and free.
In this moment, the air of this era, this new one for him personally, even tasted fresh.
In this moment, for the first time, he really felt he was living for himself.
His shattered inner self had begun to rebuild.
It was no longer empty.
But his eyes still had no focus.
The eyes are the windows of the soul.
He did, in fact, have an "inner self" again.
It was no longer pure void.
But it was still muddy. Clouded all the way through.
Even so, Ling Ke didn't care.
He sat up.
He scooped up a handful of fine sand.
He let his palm fall open. Let the grains slide off his fingertips, carried sideways by the wind.
Within a few breaths, almost none was left.
Just like the heart that had once been broken.
Even now, even repaired, there was hardly any of it left.
He spread his palm wider and let the wind take what was left. Without a trace of attachment.
Just like the nonexistent memories.
Because he understood it clearly now. The things that did not belong to him, there was no need to force it. He didn't want them anyway.
Of course, if he truly wanted to force it. He would make the entire world into a game, to revolve around himself as the player.
"Heh."
He laughed quietly.
Then he braced a hand on his knee, and stood up.
"Tonight, you'll know you're being reborn~?"
"Even if I shatter, I'll stay beside you~?"
"Even if I'm broken to dust…"
"I won't go through that kind of pain again~?"
Without thinking, Ling Ke had started to hum. A familiar fitting song. Of course,There was no music behind it, so a little of the beauty was lost.
But it didn't matter. He was entertaining himself, celebrating this second chance. The one that belonged to this era, and also belonged to him alone.
He no longer needed to lock himself away in the Theater of Domination. No longer needed to sit alone on that ornate throne.
Because after his brief ascent, after shedding his divinity, his rank had only climbed higher. His core consciousness had merged with the Rebirth Room itself.
So he, the man himself, was now like the Domination puppets that carried the templates of all those game characters. He could die. And come back. And die. And come back.
Or to put it more simply: undying. Indestructible.
Just like that…
Step.
Step.
Step.
Footprints stretched out behind him on the soft sand, going farther.
Up above…
A meteor seemed to streak across the night sky.
It was almost a sign that this era, too, was about to welcome a moment of brilliance again.
Maybe this time…
It would be a "forever," forcibly granted by malice.
-----
"Mn…"
Raiden Mei had had a dream.
The dream had been full of nonexistent memories.
They had been too beautiful. So beautiful that even now, awake, she could not bear to let them go.
She didn't come back to herself for a long time.
Reality, after all, was crueler.
She lifted her head. Looked around.
Yellow sand under the night sky. Stretching in every direction.
She was the only one. Alone.
A cold, gentle wind brushed her cheek and lifted strands of her hair.
It wasn't until she felt the cold wetness on the back of her hand that she belatedly realized she had been crying for a while now.
"So that was the real him… the him who once existed."
Her face went a little blank.
At some point, almost without thinking, she reached both hands out like a devout believer, lifting up a handful of fine sand.
As if she were sheltering an ember against her chest.
But then…
The desert night wind came again. The sand in her hands kept thinning out.
She couldn't hold any of it.
She tried to close her hands tighter, and only squeezed more of it out…
In that moment, for no reason she could name, she panicked.
She tried to scoop up more from beside her. But after that wrong judgment, the sand in her hands was no longer the first handful.
It didn't belong to her either.
In that moment, she broke.
"I, I was wrong!"
"I was really wrong!!"
"I was wrong from the very beginning!!!"
"It was all because of me. All because of me…"
Raiden Mei sank down into the sand, no strength left in her body, tears spilling onto the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry…"
By that point, she could no longer tell who exactly she was apologizing to.
Was it Ling Ke, toward whom she had carried guilt for so long?
Or was it… the era that had already disappeared?
With her head bowed to fate, she could not see the meteor crossing the sky.
It was so eye-catching. The night sky was full of brilliant stars, but it was the meteor the eye found first.
But it vanished quickly. It fell toward the horizon.
Like a glory that had passed. Like everything she had lost.
All of it turned to void.
After that, an unknown stretch of time passed…
At some point…
Without Raiden Mei noticing anything at all…
The ornament tying back her hair broke.
Her long purple hair came loose, falling like water down her back.
Her tears had dried.
But the streaks left on her face…
Were an eerie red.
And at the very tips of her hair…
Faintly, a barren white seemed to be creeping upward.
Then, like a trick of the eye, it was gone.