“Why couldn’t we just run into some peerless powerhouse who can swat the Doomsday Beast out of the sky with a single blow?”
March 7th’s exasperated voice echoed down the metallic corridors.
She gripped her bow, glancing nervously at the ceiling as if expecting the monster to crash through at any second.
“The personnel in the Support Zone have already been evacuated, March,” Himeko replied, her tone steady and measured.
“It is highly unlikely anyone else will show up to bail us out.”
“Sigh…
in the end, we still have to handle this mess ourselves.”
Following their brief exchange, the sequence of events played out with the scripted precision of a video game cutscene.
From Himeko’s perspective, she had hurried into the Support Zone with the three youngsters in tow.
Just as they rounded a sharp corner, their path was blocked.
Sitting right in the middle of the walkway was a severely battle-damaged Herta puppet.
Its small, articulated head was tilted upward, unblinking eyes locked onto the massive silhouette of the Doomsday Beast circling in the sky beyond the station’s atmospheric shielding.
Down at the platform, the Astral Express was nowhere to be seen.
Pom-Pom had already driven the train out into a safe zone—the conductor certainly wasn’t going to risk their pristine, beloved Express getting flattened by a stray swipe of a dragon’s claw.
Given the chaos and the timing, anyone would raise their guard upon seeing a damaged puppet acting so strangely.
Himeko raised a slender hand, signaling the trio behind her to halt.
Carrying her custom toolbox, she closed the distance with slow, deliberate steps.
“Is that you, Madam Herta?” she asked tentatively.
Kazuki didn’t even bother turning his head.
His gaze remained glued to the apocalyptic dragon overhead as he tossed out a nonchalant, “Yeah, it’s me.”
Himeko crossed her arms.
Her amber eyes narrowed slightly, and one elegant eyebrow arched upward.
“Are you really Madam Herta?”
Kazuki’s heart skipped a violent beat.
A phantom layer of cold sweat broke out across his consciousness.
His mind immediately kicked into overdrive, frantically searching for a flawless alibi, yet his vocal processors delivered a perfectly flat, arrogant snort.
“Of course it’s me.
In this entire space station, who would possess the sheer audacity to impersonate a genius like me?”
Himeko’s expression softened into a gentle, polite smile, but the sharp skepticism in her voice didn’t waver for a second.
“Then, Madam Herta, would you care to explain how your puppet ended up in such a miserable state?”
The air grew thick with tension.
This intense, rapid-fire back-and-forth felt like a high-stakes mental chess match—a dead ringer for the classic psychological warfare between Light and L.
Beneath the surface, Kazuki was panicking, his brain burning through its processing power to maintain his cover.
Outwardly, he remained as steady as an ancient glacier.
He finally turned his small, scuffed face toward her, waving a hand with feigned indifference.
“Just a personal preference,” he muttered dryly.
“It’s a modified piece of junk.
An experiment.”
Himeko’s brow furrowed deeper.
She pressed the offensive.
“If that is the case, Madam Herta, why aren’t you stepping in to deal with the Doomsday Beast and the Antimatter Legion?
Surely you aren’t going to just stand by and watch your own space station get torn apart?”
Kazuki snapped his head back to meet Himeko’s gaze.
His small, delicate features fell into a deadpan droop, instantly playing the fool.
“This is a ruined shell with absolutely zero combat capability.
Right now, I can’t even out-punch a random chore-bot in the storage bay.
For the survival of this station, I can only rely on you brave Nameless.”
He was fully committing to the art of lying flat.
The words ‘I am completely useless, please leave me alone’ were practically flashing in neon letters across his forehead.
He stopped just short of physically shoving Himeko toward the exit.
Hearing this shameless declaration, the corner of Himeko’s lips twitched.
She was so thoroughly caught off guard by this display of righteous slacking that she didn’t even know how to formulate a response.
She had met the real Herta before, but she had never seen the genius act quite like this.
Taking advantage of the awkward silence, Kazuki pushed off the ground.
His short, mechanical legs carried him past Himeko in a brisk walk.
As he brushed past Dan Heng and March 7th, he smoothly extracted their Destiny Cards without breaking his stride, a phantom thief operating in broad daylight.
Finally, he came to a steady halt directly in front of Stelle.
Standing on his tiptoes and raising his short, jointed arm to its maximum height, he pointed straight at the 1.7-meter-tall Trailblazer.
With absolute solemnity, he began painting a magnificent illusion.
“If you can deal with this Doomsday Beast,” Kazuki declared, “the kind, generous, and brilliant Madam Herta will bestow upon you a reward that will leave you absolutely satisfied.”
It was a classic scam, writing checks his current body couldn’t cash and advancing a non-existent reward from the real Herta.
Stelle, suddenly singled out, froze completely.
She slowly raised a finger and pointed at her own face, her golden eyes wide with deep confusion.
Her blank, naive expression screamed louder than words: You want ME to fight that giant space dragon?
Before the corruption of trash can diving and other absurd galactic behaviors took root in her soul, this pure, foolishly bewildered version of Stelle was genuinely adorable.
“We will head out first, then, Madam Herta.” Himeko massaged her temples, finally resigning herself to the absurdity of the situation.
Too exhausted to interrogate the puppet any further, she waved her hand, leading the Trailblazers toward the platform to wait for Pom-Pom’s return.
As they walked away, March 7th clutched her bow tightly, glancing back over her shoulder.
“The more I think about it, the weirder it gets!” she whispered loudly.
“She just brushed us off?
She doesn’t care if the station lives or dies?
I’m telling you, that Madam Herta has to be a total fraud!”
Dan Heng gripped his Cloud-Piercer, his pace steady as he murmured, “…Perhaps Madam Herta has her own underlying motives.”
Yet, behind his diplomatic response, Dan Heng’s eyes were sharp.
If even the notoriously simple-minded March could sense the glaring inconsistencies, how could he possibly miss them?
At the far end of the Support Zone.
Unlike the original timeline, the Doomsday Beast hadn’t crashed onto the platform because of March 7th aggressively yelling, “Come down here!” Instead, it had been relentlessly bombarded by the agile starships of the Azure Star fleet.
Its massive wings were pierced and heavily damaged by concentrated artillery fire, forcing the leviathan into an emergency landing.
Kazuki withdrew his gaze from the retreating Express crew and eagerly opened the system interface to check his newly stolen loot.
However, as his eyes skimmed the fresh Destiny Cards, his expectant smile vanished.
[Space Station Staff • Stelle]
[Prisoner • Dan Shu]
[Photographer • July 7th]
Ah, this…
Kazuki stared at the glowing text.
Is my luck seriously this cursed?
Who the hell was Dan Shu?
Did Dan Heng use some bootleg Dragon Transformation Art and undergo a botched, scale-shedding reincarnation?
And what in the name of the Aeons was a ‘July 7th’?!
Without a second thought, Kazuki dragged all three bizarre, useless cards into the deletion bin.
While he was at it, he also selected Asta’s card, [Starry Sea Scholar], and hit purge.
He lived by a strict principle: it was better to go with empty hands than to settle for garbage.
Rather than forming lingering bonds with the echoes inside these cards and finding himself hesitating to delete them later, it was infinitely better to sever the connection before it even began.
Emotion made a person passionate, but cold reason kept them alive.
Keeping them would only clog his limited card slots and drag down his combat efficiency.
Though wiping them away brought a fleeting, inexplicable sting of guilt, it was a necessary sacrifice.
At the exact moment Asta’s card dissolved into a shower of golden light, the single strand of soft pink hair woven into his white locks lost its color.
It faded back to a pristine, snowy white, blending perfectly into the rest of his hair without leaving a single trace of her influence behind.
Simultaneously, the Doomsday Beast’s crash landing signaled the beginning of a brutal new phase in the Antimatter Legion’s general offensive.
Out in the cold vacuum of space, the Azure Star fleet clashed violently with the Legion’s warships.
Blinding flashes of artillery fire and plasma explosions tore through the pitch-black canvas of the universe.
The Herta Space Station, acting as a massive steel fortress anchored in the void, held its ground amidst the chaotic crossfire.
Every few seconds, its heavy main cannons fired, sending blinding beams of energy that shattered incoming Void Ranger cruisers into molten slag.
Kazuki found a cold metal bench near the observation deck and sat down.
Through the massive, transparent dome above, he watched the magnificent, tragic theater of interstellar war unfold.
With a single thought, he switched his active form to [Student Himeko].
He opened the sensory link, fully sharing his field of vision so the girl resting inside the card could witness the stunning, terrifying expanse of the cosmos with her own eyes.
Almost immediately, [Student Himeko]’s voice echoed within his mind.
It carried a bright, unmistakable warmth.
“Thank you.
Truly.
Thank you for letting me witness a brilliance I never dared to imagine…
and for showing me the sheer terror of an interstellar war.”
She paused, a soft, wistful smile evident in her tone.
“When I was trapped inside that card, even the wind blowing past the classroom window was fake.
Being able to see all of this now…
I’ve already won.”
Kazuki remained silent.
No sound could travel through the vacuum of space, leaving the observation deck wrapped in a heavy, suffocating quiet.
Only the dull, rhythmic thuds of kinetic impacts against the station’s distant energy barriers sent faint tremors traveling through the thick metal floorboards beneath his boots.
In such deep silence, a person’s mind inevitably drifted into dark waters.
He raised a pale, slender finger, pointing toward an Azure Star ship that had just been gutted by a plasma beam.
It drifted aimlessly, bleeding tiny, dying sparks into the dark.
His finger slowly traced the trajectory of the fatal shot, sliding across the glass toward the dense swarm of the Antimatter Legion.
“Did you know?” he murmured softly, his voice barely louder than a breath.
“Originally, they wouldn’t have died out there.”
“Just because of a few words I said, they left their home planet.
They plunged headfirst into this godforsaken meat grinder of a war, and now…
they’re dying out there, leaving not even ashes behind.”
His hand dropped back to his lap.
“You probably won’t believe me, but I don’t have a single bit of connection to them.
I don’t feel sad.
There’s nothing to be upset about.”
[Student Himeko] listened quietly.
She didn’t offer empty platitudes, nor did she try to argue the philosophy of right and wrong.
She simply looked through his eyes, watching the silent, explosive blooms of fire in the dark, and let out a light, gentle chuckle.
“There is never any need to feel sad over the choices of strangers,” she replied, her voice carrying a wisdom far beyond her years.
“They didn’t charge out there in those battleships just because of a few words from you.
They are fighting because they have things in their own hearts they refuse to lose.”
Her presence in his mind grew warmer, a comforting anchor in the cold room.
“If it were me…
having the chance to charge forward, giving everything I have for the people I love and the things I want to protect?
Even if I ended up dying in this starry sky, it would still be ten thousand times better than being trapped forever in a fake school that never changes.”
[Elysian’s Note:
Having a good time with the story?
Every single bit helps immensely: