Faced with Kiana's seemingly innocent but actually incredibly treacherous question, Shu's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty.
Kiana tilted her head, leaning forward until her face occupied his entire field of vision, completely cutting off any route of escape.
"Ahem..." Left with no other choice, Shu let out a dry, awkward chuckle, his eyes darting to the side.
"Well, Ai-chan is a super AI. Her vocal emulation unit is completely different from a human's.
"So, if a carbon-based lifeform like me actually tried screaming like that, by the time the song ended, I'd probably be coughing up blood."
"Ehhh~" Kiana drew out the syllable in a long, unimpressed whine, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the stage. It was obvious she didn't actually care about Shu's half-baked excuse.
On stage, the performance was entering its final, absolute crescendo.
Right before the last flare ignited, the music abruptly dropped.
The frantic, aggressive drumming vanished. All that remained was a low, agonizing chant. It sounded like a dying heart struggling to beat, rasping out its final breaths.
"Like glass that shattered, reaching through the darkness"
"Voices trailing fires, echo of desires"
"A world of silence, sound of Death's parading"
"Phantoms in the shadow, softly waiting..."
This whispered, low-register section completely stripped away the domineering arrogance from before. Instead, it was dripping with a heartbreaking, fragile brokenness.
The sound was as delicate as a feather just before it touched the ground, yet as impossibly heavy as a tombstone pressing against the audience's chests.
The calm before the storm. The last fleeting moment of mercy before absolute destruction.
The audience unconsciously held their breath, terrified of shattering the fragility of the moment.
And then.
The ascension!
"I'm tearin' it down! Embrace the detonation——!!!"
"Burnin' it loud! Cravin' our damn creation"
"Breakin' the chain! I'm reachin' for ya"
"Oh oh oh oh oh oh yeah!!!"
Trailing off the final, elongated note, Ai-chan slowly descended, surrounded by a swirling galaxy of data particles.
She landed on one knee, one hand resting on the ground while the other thrust the microphone high into the air. It looked like she had just slain a god.
Dead silence.
No one spoke. No one clapped. No one even breathed.
It was as if everyone's souls had been sucked out of their bodies. They just stood there, staring blankly, utterly shell-shocked.
In a trance, it felt like a golden wheat field stretched out before their eyes.
Someone stood tall amidst the swaying grain.
A passing traveler asked the weathered scarecrow: What is your dream?
"Shout till the end! This blaze is my salvation!"
"Sword in the wind! I strike without damnation!"
"Shatter the skies! No fate, no king, no god!"
In answer to the traveler's question, the scarecrow used the wind and the sunlight to deliver its reply.
"My wish is to fulfill everyone's wish."
"Fall to my name!"
"Fall to my name!"
"Fall to my name!"
"Fall to my name!"
When the absolute final note faded into silence, it was as if someone had hit the pause button on the entire stadium.
Three seconds later.
Cheers, screams, and thunderous applause instantly flooded the arena, filling the void left by the fading high notes. The sound was so immense it threatened to blow the roof off and set this crazed night completely ablaze!
Yet, amid the deafening roar, the stage lights slowly began to dim.
Like the setting sun, it was a slow, gentle descent into dusk.
The spotlight's radius shrank, ultimately leaving only a single, faint beam illuminating the center of the stage.
There, slumped sideways on a tiny stool that had appeared out of nowhere, was Ai-chan.
Burned out. Nothing left but pure white ash.
Even Ai-chan had completely incinerated her own processing core under the brilliance of a 12-key pitched-up Flare. She had officially overheated.
And so, Ai-chan once again stepped into the cycle of reincarnation.
The stage lights dimmed further until they completely swallowed her form. Then, the host reappeared on stage, awkwardly segueing into a painfully familiar, generic transition track.
In the waiting room, the group let out a collective sigh of relief as Ai-chan made her exit.
Great...
That made two completely unhinged performances in a row.
They didn't even need to talk about Shigure Kira and the Snow Wolf Band. It was all passion and zero technique. The absolute authority of the Herrscher of Deathly Vocals was beyond questioning—and anyone who did dare question it would be sentenced to listen to a 100-loop Shigure Kira solo concert.
And Ai-chan wasn't exactly right in the head, either.
Shu's pre-show premonition had been dead-on: Ai-chan had definitely been cooking up a chaotic stunt.
Except this time, she wasn't stealing electricity; she was stealing songs.
And she wasn't even stealing it for profit or any actual self-benefit. Just like Shigure Kira and Otto, she was entirely here just to meme on everyone.
Honestly, out of all the contestants tonight, not a single one had come to actually compete.
Sirin's Magical Girl Idol Group was here to share their story and casually glaze Shu in the process.
Otto had reserved a backstage slot purely to flaunt his own 'art.' On the surface, the song Fallen was humanity's grand ode to Kallen, much like the French revering Joan of Arc.
But in reality? Everyone knew exactly who was standing in Kallen's place, the true figure they were all hallucinating on stage.
It was, once again, Shu.
Then came the Snow Wolf Squad, an absolute heavyweight disaster class.
Followed by Ai-chan... This entire roster was completely high on their own artistic supply and had totally lost touch with reality.
At this point, the Fire Moth selection event had completely lost its original purpose. It had devolved into an entirely different kind of demonic freak show.
And as the next group took the stage, this carnival of madness officially hit its absolute peak.
"Please welcome our next contestants... er... Depascal!!"