In this vast, boundless universe, intelligent lifeforms may be different from one another, but every individual possesses one powerful ability in common.
An independent consciousness, independent thoughts, an independent personality. These independent individuals formed from subjective initiative give them the opportunity to think independently...
This is the greatest gift life has given to intelligent lifeforms. The wise, the sages, the brave, the holy... the wicked, the suffering, the base, the treacherous... Whether they achieve great success and fame or leave a foul reputation for ten thousand years, none of it can be separated from this.
The self, and the emotions born from the self, bring individuals an incomparably vast amount of power, in the course of an individual's life, there will be countless experiences, and there will always be some experiences and emotions that become deeply engraved in their hearts. They are so clear that even the power of IX would find it difficult to erase them...
"Mm."
In her memories, in that colorless land where heavy rain poured down, Acheron nodded lightly.
"Perhaps... I will pass through the place you mentioned."
"Penacony... What are you seeking in your dreams?" the old man asked.
"I don't need to seek anything. They aren't in dreams."
The old man sighed. "...I'm afraid the Family won't open its doors for you."
"Why?"
"Because the path you walk... is not tolerated by Harmony."
"Even if... this is not what I wanted?"
"Even if this is not what you wanted. Because They are different from the other Aeons. They never cast Their gaze upon anyone, nor do They need to cast Their gaze upon anyone."
"They leave behind the threads of Their Path, allowing people to walk upon them, weaving together a huge shadow... and this shadow silently covers them as well."
"There are always people who return from the shadows."
"Most of them become part of that shadow."
"In your eyes, am I the same?"
"You still retain a trace of color... but not much."
"...That is enough.
"Before they completely disappear... I will reach the end of Nihility."
Acheron opened her eyes and saw an endless rain of chips falling from the sky.
Mr. Welt and Miss Himeko both stepped forward and stood in front of Stelle.
"Wouldn't it be better not to fight? Why do this? Your move is way too dangerous. Luckily, everyone around here had already been evacuated."
Miss Noe seemed to still want to persuade the man in front of her. As she dodged fragments flying from the shattered buildings nearby, she spoke in a flustered voice.
Acheron sighed and stepped forward.
It was time for her to act.
Acheron took one step, and the rain and golden chips froze in midair in an instant, as if time had slowed down countless times at this moment.
Noe stopped talking. She blinked at Acheron, then silently reached one hand behind her and gripped the hilt of the sword stretching across her waist.
The knight's expression became serious in this instant. After falling silent, her appearance was completely different from before.
Acheron noticed the knight's movement, but she did not stop what she was doing.
She had been observing this knight for a long time. At least among this group, this knight was the only person she had paid special attention to.
A vivid red stained her arm, her long hair turned white, and blood tears slowly flowed from her crimson eyes. Acheron slowly drew her sword.
"I mourn for the departed, tears falling like rain, filling the river of passage... Surging like a tide, leading you home."
The instant the sword left its sheath, the world in Acheron's eyes lost all its colors. Only a scarlet red reflected upon herself remained strikingly vivid.
Except for the knight behind her.
At this moment, Acheron felt that she understood the Knights of Beauty a little better, because Noe standing behind her looked like a laser lighthouse with its brightness turned all the way up in this colorless world, even more dazzling than the lights in the banquet hall.
Compared with other Pathstriders, people's understanding of the Knights of Beauty seemed to be somewhat too superficial. Pathstriders of Beauty already looked unlike humans, even if they were "humans" as defined across the universe today.
Although the Self-Annihilators and Doctors of Chaos were no less remarkable in this regard.
The strange thought flashed through Acheron's mind and disappeared. It wasn't because her combat instincts were lacking, but because Beauty was simply too bizarre.
But after that, Acheron still quickly swung her sword twice.
The power originating from Nihility surged forth. The scarlet blade light seemed as though it would split the sky in two, severing Preservation.
The knight did not make a move. This surprised Acheron somewhat. After all, the other's hand had already been placed on the sword hilt...
The power of Nihility continued to spread rapidly. Acheron slowly sheathed her sword, and the heavy rain fell from the sky once again.
Noe looked somewhat puzzled in a certain direction and muttered to herself, "Did I see it wrong? I think I just saw a robot covered in flames. Its design looks much cooler than Anders's, and it looks like it was made specifically for combat."
Acheron frowned slightly.
Noe's behavior was truly impossible to understand. It even gave her the illusion that if she stayed around the knights more often, perhaps one day she might somehow be fished out from beneath IX's shadow.
Although the possibility was practically zero...
"Why didn't you attack?" Acheron asked the knight, who was one of the only two left behind, about the question she cared about.
She had been to many places and experienced many things. It wasn't as if she had never encountered the Knights of Beauty before.
But this group she had met recently had left an especially deep impression on her, the kind that was impossible to forget even if she wanted to.
Noe looked at Acheron in confusion. "Why would I attack? She's not dead yet."
Acheron, "..."
Although she had not swung her sword with all her strength, being severed by the power of Nihility meant without a doubt that the company's envoy was dead.
But the person speaking was a Knight of Beauty, and one from the group she had encountered recently at that.
Acheron found it difficult to comment.
Indeed, the company's envoy was still lingering beneath the shadows, but strictly speaking, there was no difference from being dead.
Perhaps the Knights of Beauty had a different definition of death from everyone else?
Considering that the group of knights she had encountered recently would even directly go into the shadows to fish out blood sinners, Acheron said nothing more.
And the knight in front of her was still explaining her own thoughts, "Look, she's still alive, but your sword strike successfully stopped the fight. If I rashly attacked, maybe we'd have to keep fighting later. Now I just need to tear open the shadows and take her out!"
Noe spoke with high spirits, wearing an expression that said, I'm really smart.
Acheron, "..."
She looked up at the sky. At some point, the rain had already stopped. The power of Nihility unfolded the large screen of the City of Shadows, while the blade light flew all the way into the sky, breaking through the dark clouds and leaving a savage gash across Penacony's sky.
Having someone this "silly" beside her gave Acheron a faint sense of nostalgia.
But in the next instant, Acheron's pupils contracted slightly. She saw an extremely magnificent scene.
The entire sky was changing.
Starting from the distance and following a single line, the sky began to roll toward both sides. The dream's night sky was dyed by faint purple starlight, and the entire sky was slowly turning into a beautiful purple starry sky.
Countless twinkling stars and swirling clouds appeared there, like a painting slowly unfurling across the sky.
The scarlet marks left in the sky were dyed by the purple starlight, as if gently brushed over by a pair of hands. In the next instant, they vanished without a trace, and the entire sky became a purple river of stars.
"Wow! It's so pretty!"
Noe's voice came from the side. Acheron turned her head and saw the knight pointing at the sky with one hand, speaking to her with an excited look on her face, "Looks like I don't need to split open the shadows to fish people out anymore! You know what this is, right? Feel it. We're most familiar with this power. They're back!"
"They..." Acheron lowered her eyes slightly.
The "They" in the Knight of Beauty's mouth... Would an Aeon really come here to join in the fun? And an Aeon of Beauty who had disappeared at that.
'Shouldn't Aha be the one doing this kind of thing?'
Just as Acheron was wondering about this, a sword came flying through the air and stopped here, followed by an extremely gorgeous spaceship.
On the sword, March looked somewhat dazed, seemingly a little airsick.
And on the magnificent spaceship, Argenti stepped down.
———
Aventurine's consciousness slowly returned from his daze. He saw a huge black hole, while he himself stood on a colorless sea.
He quickly regained his composure and began thinking about where this place was.
Some memories from the past surfaced in the sea, then quickly disappeared, but Aventurine did not feel that this place was some kind of realm related to memories.
After all, the Company had cooperation with the Garden of Recollection, and Aventurine had at least learned something about what the Memokeepers stored memories were like.
If he had to describe it, the memories here were somewhat too... broken.
There was no color, the sounds were dry, and it was below passing grade. That professor would definitely describe this place that way. Mm, Nero probably wouldn't like a place like this either.
After a brief moment of thought, Aventurine soon became certain that his plan had succeeded, but if the so-called "real Penacony" was this kind of place, it was somewhat disappointing.
The invitation, Robin's murder, the Family's promise, the Memetic Entity that had suddenly appeared, and...
Aventurine was not someone who acted purely on good luck. He was very clever. Aside from these main clues, he had also investigated countless other pieces of information in the dream. He could vaguely guess some things.
But those things were not important to him. The Watchmaker's legacy was not what he was after either.
That "Emanator" miss had made such a huge commotion, so it should be enough to draw fire, while the disappearance of a Company executive also provided the Company with a reason to intervene, and even to use force. Without a doubt, all of his objectives had already been achieved.
And after he died, he should be able to...
Aventurine turned his head toward the huge black hole and quietly asked himself in his heart, "Will Dad, Mom, and Sis be in there?"
A sense of release welled up in his heart, but it was accompanied by a little reluctance and inner conflict.
He had promised his sister that he would protect himself. After they met again, he would probably be scolded for a long time... What about Nero... What would happen to him afterward... He was a lonely child too.
It should be fine, right? After all, he still had so many friends around him. It was just... just that he would be missing someone who was very much like his big brother.
If he had failed to protect himself and had also abandoned his little brother, would his sister scold him even more harshly?
Aventurine suddenly stood there in a daze, countless thoughts flashing through his mind.
Even when he had wagered his own life, he had never hesitated in the slightest. Yet now, at the boundary between life and death, he began to hesitate.
Aventurine took out the capsule Dr. Ratio had given him earlier. Inside was a note, "What is impossible in a dream is not death, but slumber. Stay alive. Good luck."
"Stay alive..." Aventurine murmured.
Smack!
Suddenly, Aventurine felt as though someone had smacked him right on the forehead. He jolted violently, and the seawater beneath his feet disappeared.
The black hole beside him disappeared as well, and even Harmony's "curse" vanished with it. He began to fall, plunging toward the depths of the endless darkness.
By biological instinct, Aventurine jolted violently awake, just like anyone who wakes up after falling from a height in their sleep.
When Aventurine opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a pair of gray eyes and a clean, pale face.
The white-haired boy looked at him and smiled. There were some cracks on his face, and some incomprehensible power was slowly drifting out through those cracks. Faint purple starlight, exactly the same as the sky in this dream.
'Hm?'
Why had the sky turned into a purple starry sky?
As his consciousness gradually cleared, Aventurine immediately sat up. The first thing he did was grab Nero by the shoulders and ask with concern, "Nero, your face... What happened to these marks on your body?"
Hearing Aventurine's question, Nero blinked, then looked at the cracks on his own hand. "These? They happen when I get a little serious. The more strength I use, the more cracks there are, but they'll disappear soon afterward."
As he spoke, Nero sighed. He didn't know whether he was simply too strong or whether the body made from the fragments of Beauty wasn't very sturdy.
Speaking of which, just now, after seeing some kind of power suddenly erupt, he had sped up. He had originally been going over to join in the fun, only to discover after getting closer that they were actually fighting.
Fighting was one thing, but the person being beaten was Aventurine, and the one beating Aventurine was using power from Nihility.
Nero was not unfamiliar with the power of Nihility. He had felt it before in the Simulated Universe, but this was his first time encountering it in reality.
But he still fished everyone out. Although Stelle was fished out by Firefly, it didn't really matter. After all, the Stellaron Hunters seemed to treat Stelle pretty well.
Hearing Nero say that the cracks on his body were perfectly normal, Aventurine relaxed a little.
When he used the omnipotence of Preservation, he had even transformed. Some changes appearing on Nero's body weren't particularly unusual either.
As for the fact that he hadn't died... For the time being, it was fine. The Cornerstone had already shattered, so he just needed to hide himself afterward.
Aventurine felt a little regretful that he had failed to die. After all, that meant he couldn't meet Dad, Mom, and Sis, but at the same time, he was somewhat relieved, because dying at this time would mean he hadn't properly fulfilled his promise to his sister.
And he was actually a little worried about Nero, considering that this child had once shown his vulnerable side to him, and the two of them were rather similar in certain matters.
Only then did Aventurine ask about the thing he was most concerned about after waking up, "What's going on with the sky?"
"I did it." Nero answered without hesitation.
Although he wasn't entirely sure himself, it was indeed caused by him sprinting at full speed. It might be because the dream world was made of memoria, and the memoria here just happened to be not very sturdy.
Hearing Nero's answer, Aventurine fell silent.
His plan should have succeeded, but with Nero throwing himself into the middle of it, it seemed like it hadn't been quite as successful.
Although providing the Company with a reason had still succeeded, using Acheron to draw fire had failed. The commotion Nero had caused was much greater than that Emanator's.
...Or perhaps, she shouldn't be called an Emanator...
After all, IX, the Nihility, never casts Its gaze upon anyone. That woman was someone who had been tainted by far too much Nihility.
Since he had been slashed, Aventurine could more or less understand some of Acheron's power.
But after realizing this, Aventurine instead became worried, because Nero had fished him out, although the child didn't seem to have been tainted by Nihility.
Just as he was thinking this, Aventurine heard Nero beside him begin to lecture him, "So why did you have to fight? Fighting is a bad thing."
"And even if you were going to fight, why did you have to fight Mr. Yang and the others? You're obviously not enemies. And even if you were going to fight Mr. Yang and the others, how could you use such a powerful move?"
"When sparring, you have to know when to stop. Did you and that big sister with the sword use a little too much force? That's not right. If there's a problem, you should talk it out properly. And when you're sparring, don't lose your temper..."
Looking at Nero, who had his hands on his hips and kept lecturing him, Aventurine blinked. He suddenly felt a little dazed, but soon smiled helplessly.
If he had died, he definitely would have been scolded by his sister.
Now that he hadn't died, he was going to be scolded by Nero...
Still, this didn't seem so bad. Nero had even changed the sky of this dream, so perhaps he wasn't too afraid of being noticed by others. There probably wasn't anyone who would dare lay a hand on him.
Aventurine suddenly felt that he still knew too little about Nero, but perhaps all elders were like this with children.
Just like his sister clearly knew about his luck and intelligence, yet would often scold him because of his bold actions.
He couldn't help thinking about how Nero had once complained to him that his big brother was very unreliable. Somehow, he seemed to have suddenly become unreliable too...
This child was so practiced at it. Perhaps he had often lectured his big brother in the past.
"Mm... I know I was wrong. I won't do it again."
Aventurine smiled and raised his hand to pat Nero's head.
"Good that you know you were wrong."
Nero nodded.
As they were talking, several figures approached from the distance. Judging from the newcomers' extraordinary looks and the intelligence they radiated, they should be Argenti, Noe, and March 7th.
Of course, Black Cutter had flown over with them as well.