"Lady Herta's research... has come to a temporary stop."
That was how Caelus answered.
His throat bobbed.
He pulled his gaze away from Asta's soft, fair legs and looked instead at the girl's delicate face...
...which was no less astonishing.
Were anime girls really all this absurdly beautiful?
There was not a single flaw to be found in her features, and her skin was so smooth it seemed utterly immaculate. On top of that, Asta's lower lashes were long, making her pale blue eyes shine like gemstones.
"Asta, why are you so pretty?"
"Ah... huh?"
The question nearly left Asta at a loss.
She blinked.
Then, after recovering, she adjusted her bow at the collar and deliberately asked with a smile tugging at her lips,
"How pretty?"
"About as pretty as Herta, I guess."
Caelus gave the brief, impartial assessment.
In his view, after transmigrating, the women he had seen—Kafka, Silver Wolf, March 7th, Himeko... and also Herta and Asta—were all so beautiful that it was hard to do them justice in a few words.
Probably...
Once someone became beautiful beyond a certain point, it was hard to rank them anymore. Each had her own distinct charm.
And besides,
they were not the sort of same-faced internet celebrities, nor the vaguely defined kind of two-dimensional beauties.
Take Asta, for example.
She was more beautiful and more exquisitely put together than anyone Caelus could remember.
Compared with the female researchers on the space station, her little head even seemed unnaturally small. Her slender arms and legs were pale and delicate, as though they might snap with the slightest pressure. Her features looked as if they had been carved by a knight of Beauty itself, while her sapphire-blue eyes brimmed with mystery, framed by such thick, long lashes that they looked capable of holding up a pencil.
And then there was the refined air of a pampered young lady about her, lending her an especially precious sort of charm that made Asta stand out even more. Every researcher who passed her—man or woman alike—could not help but gaze at her with admiration, as if she herself were the most valuable exhibit in this sealed station among the stars...
"Heh..." Asta said happily. "Thanks for the compliment. I'm really glad to hear you say that, but what you saw was only one of Lady Herta's puppets..."
Asta was very modest.
It was almost as though she were saying that compared to Herta's true self, she herself was nothing but an ugly duckling...
"Really?" Caelus said thoughtfully. "...I've never seen what she actually looks like."
From what he vaguely remembered—
hadn't there been something called "Big Herta" after he quit the game?
Caelus had never gone out of his way to look, but judging by Herta's tsundere bad temper, she had to be flat-chested!
"I haven't seen her in person either..." Asta twirled a lock of hair around her fingertip, her eyes flickering slightly. "All right, let's not talk about that anymore. Compared to Lady Herta's beauty, shouldn't we be paying more attention to her mind?"
"Perhaps... Anyway, during the testing I couldn't understand a single thing, so I just ended up staring at Herta's pretty face the entire time."
"..."
Asta froze for a moment.
She blinked slowly, her moist lips pressing together briefly.
Then, with a smile still on her face but in a tone that sounded mildly dumbfounded, she said, "...You really are strange."
"Everyone says that."
"..."
"Oh, right..." Caelus looked around, then added, "Station Master Asta, could you show me around the space station?"
"That? Of course I can."
Seeing that Caelus had changed the subject, Asta responded with easy grace.
"The station's reconstruction is already in full swing, but for the researchers, most of it is just routine work. If I stand here supervising, they'll probably feel nervous instead... so come on, come on, let's go slack off together!"
Her tone was light and cheerful,
still carrying something of a young girl's innocence.
Caelus followed in her footsteps, while Peppy circled around Asta's pale ankles, occasionally rubbing his little doggy head against her calf.
The two of them and the dog went from the Master Control Zone to the Base Zone, then to the Storage Zone and the Supply Zone...
The space station was astonishingly large.
Every facility and corridor was far more complex than the in-game maps by who knew how much.
If someone really wanted to tour the place thoroughly, then at a girl's pace, spending most of the day on it would hardly be surprising.
There were also some sectors still restricted due to partial Fragmentum contamination. Even so, Asta cheerfully led him through every place he currently needed to know about, from monitoring sectors to daily living facilities.
"This really is something else..."
"Right~~" Asta said with a bright smile. "To keep Lady Herta interested, the company spent an awful lot of effort—and credits—on this place. I also spent an entire year's worth of allowance money, but Lady Herta still comes and goes like the wind..."
"You're something else too."
Caelus sighed in admiration.
They came to a stop at the receiving platform in the Supply Zone, with the deep expanse of the stars behind them. At that moment, the shadow of the Astral Express was already nowhere to be seen. The protective barrier that had been damaged by the Doomsday Beast's breath had been restored, forming transparent ripples high in the air.
"This is the last stop."
Asta stretched lazily, the starlight outlining her profile.
Her long fluttering lashes, the bridge of her nose—high yet delicate. A curled strand of pink hair fell beside her temple, adding depth and grace to the already breathtaking silhouette. If this were March 7th... she probably would have snapped a picture of this exact moment.
Asta said, "Sometimes I come here to look at the stars, using my naked eyes or a small portable telescope to observe the silver-white moon of the Blue..."
"Space, huh..."
Caelus shifted his gaze from Asta's fair profile to the vast, indistinct darkness outside.
He could not see clearly...
Within that immeasurable blackness were countless celestial bodies from beyond the world, and the Blue was so tiny it was nearly negligible.
And in low orbit around the Blue, this seemingly magnificent space station drifted on in silence, like a small pebble sliding slowly across the surface of a frozen lake.
"..."
"What's on the other side of the sea of stars?"
"Mm... in the direction you're pointing, that should be the Epsilon star system."
"..."
You actually know that?
Caelus felt a bit impressed, though he continued pointing into the distant depths of space.
"What I mean is... humans really are small."
"Hm?"
Asta looked puzzled and tilted her head slightly.
After thinking for a moment, Caelus explained, "The Overview Effect... Asta, I don't know whether you've heard of this kind of psychological phenomenon related to space. When humans first look upon the full image of their home planet from the perspective of a space traveler, they experience an almost despairing kind of clarity—the fragility of the planet and the grandeur of the universe, the fact that national borders do not really exist, and how interpersonal conflicts and human struggles seem meaningless..."
Put simply,
the sense of meaning one clings to is suddenly swallowed whole by the cosmic perspective.
When human vision is abruptly elevated to the scale of space, all the things that once seemed important—money, society, civilization, even the self—instantly become insignificant against the scale of the universe...
Perhaps because he was too deeply immersed to tell, Caelus did not know whether he himself had truly fallen under that kind of shock.
He only felt awe at the beauty of the cosmos.
"Ah..."
Asta pressed her lips together lightly.
She looked at Caelus in silence, and beneath her long lashes, her blue eyes shone like jewels.
Caelus had no idea what she was thinking.
Maybe she found it boring... After all, thanks to her privileged background, Asta had always possessed the means to explore the stars. Her perspective had always belonged to the universe...
"Caelus, what do you think?"
"..."
Why are you turning that back on me?
Was this clever young lady simply not going to let others easily glimpse her true thoughts...?
Caelus looked toward the universe.
The Blue hung in the darkness like a glass marble, fragile enough to shatter at any moment.
He thought of Kafka, the first person he had seen after opening his eyes; of the Doomsday Beast, of Nanook, of the photo with March 7th, and of the Simulated Universe and Herta's petite, adorable puppet...
"I'm going to the cafeteria to grab some fries."
"Huh?"
"I'm hungry."
"..."
...
Master Control Zone, Monitoring Area.
Though Asta had spoken of slacking off, she quickly returned to her duties as station master.
The area beneath her heels was the central control hub of the entire station. It looked spacious and open, but it was in fact a small vessel capable of independent interstellar flight—one that could detach from the base and travel through space on its own if necessary.
That was also why, when the Antimatter Legion attacked, Asta had gathered the station's researchers here.
Now—
the dust had settled.
The researchers were each carrying out their own responsibilities in orderly fashion.
Peppy dozed at Asta's feet, while before her hovered a pale blue, nearly transparent interface.
"Observation," "Monitoring," "Defense," "Attack"...
There were countless options.
Asta's gaze shifted over them.
The pale blue interface remained reflected in her eyes, invisible to anyone else. It resembled the "system panel" from Xianzhou storybooks, but in reality it was merely the station's main control interface and decision-making system, built with specialized optical refraction and dense data-display technology.
"..."
After a moment's thought, Asta raised a slender finger and made a motion through the air. The interface before her instantly expanded—
Live monitoring feeds from every sector of the station flickered, zoomed, and finally froze on one scene:
A young man with dark gray hair, golden eyes, and handsome features.
"Caelus..."
Asta wondered curiously:
Aside from his looks, this person said to have a Stellaron restrained within his body did not seem to have anything especially remarkable about him...
No, wait. The fact that a human body could contain a Stellaron was already strange enough, wasn't it?
Asta felt a little envious.
If only she could stuff one into her own body too...
No, forget it. That sounded painful, and she was someone who did not even dare get her ears pierced.
Shaking her head, Asta prepared to make one last inspection of the partially Fragmentum-affected sectors—
when a message suddenly came through.
It was a private message that had bypassed the station's official account.
[Hi, long time no see! Asta, how are things over at the station?]
"Topaz..."
Asta smiled slightly and began typing a reply.
[We got through it with a scare or two, I guess...]
Topaz: [Well, with Lady Herta there, I suppose even the minions of Destruction couldn't stir up too much trouble, right?]
Asta: [That said, this was my first time dealing with an Antimatter Legion incident, and I was scared to death...]
Topaz: [Even Lady Asta gets scared?]
Asta: [What are you talking about? Of course I got scared. At one point, a Doomsday Beast had already crawled onto the station platform and was breathing fire!]
Topaz: [A Doomsday Beast?]
Topaz: [That intense?]
Topaz: [So in the end, Lady Herta stepped in?]
Asta: [Not exactly. Lady Herta was far too busy and only came afterward. Another person ended up taking the Doomsday Beast's ultimate attack head-on...]
Topaz: [???]