The white crow didn't fly away. It perched on the highest branch of the Great Oak, its eyes—two beads of polished sapphire—watching every movement in the village below.
"Archivist," I pulsed, my core humming with an agitation I couldn't suppress. "Analyze the avian entity."
< Answer: Familiar-Class Construct. Origin: Holy Kingdom of Millis. Property: High-Output Visual Relay. It is not watching us, Aris. It is broadcasting us. >
I felt a chill ripple through my membrane. We were being live-streamed to a council of inquisitors who likely viewed my "Architecture of Mercy" as the ultimate heresy. A monster who builds is far more dangerous than a monster who destroys; a destroyer can be understood, but a builder demands a change in the status quo.
"Baron!" I boomed. "The Starmetal. How long until the 'Veil' is ready?"
The dwarf didn't look up from his makeshift forge. Sparks of blue fire danced off his goggles. "You can't rush the stars, puddle! To weave Starmetal into a concealment field requires a lattice of pure mana. I need your focus. I need you to be the battery."
For forty-eight hours, I became a stationary generator. I sat in the center of a runic circle, funneling every drop of my essence into the Starmetal rods Baron had hammered out.
It was a test of endurance that dwarfed the cave. I felt my density thinning, my silver light flickering as I pushed through the exhaustion. In Mushoku Tensei, the protagonist spoke of the "Total Mana Capacity" growing through near-depletion. I felt that stretching now—a painful, burning expansion of my very soul.
By the dawn of the third day, the "Silver Veil" hummed to life.
A dome of invisible, shimmering energy expanded from the village center, passing through the huts and the walls. When it hit the branch where the white crow sat, the bird let out a confused squawk. To its sapphire eyes, the village had simply... vanished. It was looking at an empty forest floor.
We were invisible. We were safe.
Or so I thought.
"Master," Fenris's voice was a low vibration in my mind, tinged with a scent of ozone and old blood. "The forest is too quiet. Even the insects have stopped singing."
I stepped out of the runic circle, my body shivering from mana-fever. I looked toward the western treeline.
The Veil was working, yes. But the Holy Kingdom didn't need to see us to destroy us. They knew where the village had been.
"Everyone! To the stone storehouse! Now!" I commanded.
The Goblins moved with the discipline we had practiced. The mothers clutched their children, the warriors gripped their hardened wooden spears. Varg and the Fang-Pack took positions in the trenches.
Then, the sky turned white.
It wasn't the sun. It was a pillar of pure, concentrated solar mana—the "Judgment of the Morning Star."
"Baron! The Veil! Redirect to physical defense!"
"I'm trying!" the dwarf roared, swinging his hammer against the master-rod. "But that's not a spell, Aris! That's a miracle!"
In this world, "Miracles" didn't follow the laws of thermodynamics. They bypassed them. My scientific understanding of magic flickered as the white pillar slammed into our invisible dome.
The Veil held for a heartbeat. I felt the pressure through the soul-link—a weight that felt like a mountain was being placed on my chest. I saw the Starmetal rods begin to glow orange, then white, then liquid.
"Aris!" Laina's voice—the priestess from the adventuring party—echoed from the treeline. She wasn't there; her voice was being projected by the Inquisition. "Surrender the Core! The Silver Loop must be broken! If you die now, the world is spared the reset!"
"I'm not a herald of ruin!" I screamed back, my voice vibrating through the roar of the descending light. "I'm just a man who wants to live!"
"That is your sin!" the voice replied.
The Veil shattered.
The next few seconds moved in the slow-motion clarity of a nightmare.
The solar pillar touched the village. The straw huts didn't burn; they disintegrated. I saw the stone storehouse—my pride, my "Architecture of Mercy"—crack under the thermal expansion.
"Fenris!" I lunged toward the wolf, but I was too slow.
A knight in golden armor, wreathed in the same white light as the sky, materialized from the glare. He held a sword made of solid radiance. With a single, fluid motion, he swung.
Fenris didn't even have time to growl. The blade of light passed through his neck.
Through our soul-link, I felt it. Not pain. Just a sudden, sharp snapping of a cord. The warmth that had been in the back of my mind for months—the presence of my first friend—went cold.
"Master... run..." The thought flickered out like a candle in a gale. Fenris's body hit the dirt, his silver fur turning grey as the life left it.
"NO!"
My core erupted. I didn't care about thermodynamics. I didn't care about logic. I pulled every joule of energy from the surrounding atmosphere, creating a localized vacuum. I wanted to burn the world. I wanted to turn the Holy Knight into ash.
The knight simply raised his hand. "Abomination. Return to the dark."
The sword of light pierced my center.
It didn't hurt. It felt cold. A freezing, absolute zero that spread from my core to my pseudopods. I looked down at the golden blade buried in my silver heart. I looked past the knight at the burning ruins of my village, at the Goblins I had named, at the dwarf who lay buried under his forge.
I had failed. I had tried to build a life out of science and kindness, and the world had answered with fire and "miracles."
I'm sorry, Fenris, I thought. I'll see you in the next one.
The world shattered like a mirror.
[Volume 1: Chapter 5 End]