Yixuan watched as Hoshimi Miyabi—rigid as ever—formally asked Eisen for a spar.
She lifted a hand, pressed her fingers to her forehead, and sighed.
"I knew it would come to this…"
Beside her, Ling and Wise stood there with their mouths half open, eyes snapping back and forth between Miyabi and Eisen, so stunned they couldn't squeeze out a single syllable.
Even Eisen—the one being challenged—paused for a beat. Then a gentle, faintly troubled smile surfaced, and he scratched the back of his head out of habit.
"Ah… well… this…"
He hesitated, and his voice carried a strange, nostalgic weight.
"Honestly, it's been a very long time since anyone asked me to fight."
He could feel it clearly: the aura spilling off the girl in front of him was pure, blazing, and clean—no malice, no ulterior motive. It was a warrior's hunger to climb higher, to glimpse the peak.
Eisen met Miyabi's unwavering gaze with calm honesty.
"I'll accept, Miyabi. But I need to say this first: you almost certainly can't win."
He wasn't being arrogant; he was stating a fact as plainly as a weather report.
"By your world's own ranking, you're around Level 6. If you could fully control that Void Hunter weapon on your waist—Wuwei—then in a normal state you might brush the edge of Level 8."
His eyes flicked to the ancient-looking scabbard at her hip.
"And me… even while suppressed by your world's ceiling, I'm a stable Level 10. More importantly—there's the gap in realm…"
His gaze returned to her, something hard to put into words in it.
"Talking about it is going to sound hollow, so—"
He extended his right hand forward, fingers relaxed and spread.
"Let's use reality. Strike this hand with everything you've got. Don't hold back."
Miyabi listened without a ripple on her face.
His declaration of her inevitable defeat didn't provoke anger, nor did it cast a shadow of discouragement across her features.
From the beginning, she'd understood: this man was something that stood above the world.
Defeating him wasn't her goal.
What she wanted was a single glimpse of the landscape above the clouds—one flash of light that could illuminate the road ahead.
So she moved.
No stance. No shout. No theatrics.
Her hand simply settled on her hilt as naturally as drawing breath.
The next instant—
The air detonated.
CLANG—!
A clear blade-cry tore through the stillness of the painting-world.
Azure fire roared from Wuwei's edge, and in the blink of an eye it became a blade of light that cut across heaven and earth. Wherever it passed, the painting-world split like fragile cloth, silently cleaving in two.
The boundary of the world itself was severed, revealing behind it a twisted, chaotic void.
The wound lingered—only slowly, like a living scar, did it struggle to knit itself closed again.
And yet…
That world-rending strike froze in place—
Against a single finger.
Eisen's right index finger had appeared there at some point, lightly resting at the tip of the annihilating blade like someone stopping a falling leaf.
There was no thunderous collision. No explosion. No shockwave.
The savage azure edge, the power that had opened the world's skin, crashed into that ordinary-looking finger as if it had struck the hardest wall in the universe.
All sharpness. All energy. All intent—
Collapsed in an instant.
Vanished.
The skin at Eisen's fingertip remained smooth and unmarked. Not even a pale line was left behind.
The towering blade-halo hung there, suspended at his finger, while the black裂 in the background slowly healed.
Miyabi held her finishing posture, eyes calm, emotion flat—almost serene.
Ling and Wise looked like they'd forgotten how to breathe, staring at that finger as if their brains had been erased.
Yixuan's brow knitted tightly, her eyes full of weight and calculation.
Eisen's voice broke the eerie silence.
"Simply put—this is what it looks like."
He opened the hand that had just stopped the apocalypse.
"Your first strike is strong enough to injure an ordinary Level 10, if they don't defend or dodge. But against me…"
He shrugged, matter-of-fact.
"It can't do real damage."
Miyabi's eyes lingered for a fraction of a second on that finger. Then, with a soft shk, she rotated her wrist and sheathed Wuwei in one clean motion.
She bowed—smooth and respectful. No frustration. No collapse. Only pure intent to learn.
"Please instruct me."
Not only her—Ling, Wise, even Yixuan stared at Eisen with intense curiosity, hungry for an explanation.
Eisen smiled slightly and began.
"In your world, I'm capped at Level 10 because the world can only bear Level 10 right now. But my nature already exceeds that limit."
"I've reached higher places. I've touched deeper laws. So between us there's a fundamental gap in realm."
"Realm?" Miyabi echoed softly.
"Yes," Eisen nodded. "Realm."
"It's the difference in how deeply you understand what the world is. Without reaching the corresponding realm, no matter how huge your outward power is, no matter how terrifying the destruction looks—you can't shake the foundation."
"Because you can't touch what's real."
He paused, searching for a more concrete example—something she'd recognize.
"Think of a symbiotic Ethereal—Niniveh."
"Even if you force Niniveh down, other Ethereals will gather and become a new Niniveh. Even if you wipe out the entire swarm, Niniveh will still walk out of Hollow Zero again."
"No matter how many times you kill her, another Niniveh appears. Why?"
"Because you can't destroy Hollow Zero itself—the source that produces her. That's a visible example of a realm gap."
He looked at Miyabi steadily.
"And the realm gap between you and me is even bigger. More fundamental."
Eisen spread his hands again.
"In your world, only the source of Ether—the Origin—can truly harm me. So sparring with me doesn't mean much for you. Every attack you make fails to break my defense."
"And if I strike you…"
His tone stayed calm.
"It's a one-hit kill."
Miyabi listened in silence, then closed her eyes.
For a few breaths, she stood perfectly still.
Then she opened them, clarity flooding her gaze as if fog had been cut away.
"So that's it…"
"I understand."
Her hand returned to the hilt.
This time, there was no roaring azure fire. No earth-splitting blade halo.
Her draw was so fast it created the illusion of slowness—clean, minimal, almost plain.
A single slash.
A thin line of cold moonlight skimmed through the air, silent and unremarkable.
And yet—
For the first time, surprise flickered across Eisen's face.
He still extended his right hand. Still didn't resist.
But at the instant the blade-light should have kissed his fingertip—
Miyabi vanished.
In the next instant, she was already behind him, several steps away, and Wuwei returned to its sheath with a crisp, ringing click.
Time seemed to freeze.
On Eisen's fingertip—on the same fingertip that had stopped a world-splitting strike without a scratch—a hair-thin cut quietly opened.
One drop.
Two drops.
Red beads of blood slid along the invisible path of her slash, flung to the side, and fell into the grass.
Eisen lowered his gaze to the tiny wound, felt the faint sting—so small it almost didn't exist—and instead of anger, deep admiration rose in his eyes.
"Incredible."
His voice carried genuine appreciation.
"Miyabi… your talent is—honestly—astonishing."
He looked at her the way one might look at an unpolished gemstone already glowing from within.
"Your potential isn't confined to this world. Give you a wider cosmos, stronger systems of power… and you'll absorb and adapt like a sponge."
"You'll climb fast—frighteningly fast—toward new summits."
Much like a certain man aboard the Astral Express.
Miyabi turned to face him. Her expression remained calm, as if that impossible second slash hadn't been hers.
"This is probably the limit of what I can reach in my current state," she said, voice clear as springwater. "Even if I exhaust myself, I've only barely tugged a thread of what you call the Origin's authority."
"Miyabi—!!"
Ling's scream nearly cracked.
She sprang up, face twisted into a chaotic mix of shock and elation, voice going shrill. She rushed over, wanted to grab Miyabi's arm but didn't dare, so she just bounced in place like her soul had caught fire.
"You—You really moved the Origin's authority?! Oh my god!"
Miyabi gave a small nod, her eyes briefly flicking to Eisen's bleeding fingertip.
"After Eisen's explanation, I realized something. But…"
She shook her head, sober.
"This is just touching the edge. It isn't control. It'll take a long time."
Yixuan clapped softly, a clear little sound, and smiled with sincere delight.
"Splendid. No wonder you're called the strongest head the Hoshimi line has ever produced."
"The only one to reach Void Hunter-level battle power without relying on Wuwei."
"That insight… that talent…"
"Terrifying."
Miyabi's eyes turned to Yixuan—calm, sharp, almost as if she could see through the surface.
"Too kind, Master Yixuan. Haven't you also gained something?"
She paused, tone certain.
"In my perception, your aura is more condensed than two days ago. Deeper. Stronger."
"Huh?" Ling and Wise both snapped their heads around.
"Master, you got stronger too…?"
Yixuan blinked once, then laughed openly, a hint of self-mockery in it.
"Yeah. Watching Eisen build a real world with a few strokes of ink… I couldn't help but feel something."
Her smile faded into a quiet, resigned calm.
"But it's all a mirror-flower, moon-in-water. No practical meaning."
"Once time is rewound, everything here—this breakthrough, this memory—will vanish."
Miyabi nodded in agreement.
No matter how precious the spark, in the face of a reset it was writing in sand—destined to be erased by the tide.
"It is a shame to let such sparks disappear," Eisen said.
After they returned to the past, if Yixuan watched him create the painting-world again, if Miyabi reached again for that extreme slash… with their talent, they could probably approach something similar.
But the exact angle—the exact path of understanding—might not reproduce perfectly.
You can't step into the same river twice.
Eisen lifted his gaze, thoughtful light in his eyes.
"I'll see if I can preserve what you both realized—somehow."
"Eh?!" Ling lit up instantly.
"You can preserve memories? They won't get wiped by the rewind?"
Eisen shook his head.
"Not memory itself. Memory is tied to the timeline and the brain. A rewind resets it."
He looked around at their confusion.
"What I want to preserve is the soul."
"Soul?" Wise scratched his head, utterly lost.
"Our world… has souls like yours does?"
"No," Eisen said at once. "Your world doesn't have the independent soul-entity my world defines."
He paused, searching for the right phrasing.
"But what I mean by 'soul' isn't exactly the same as that concept."
His tone shifted into the excitement of someone poking at a new idea.
"After Tsunade successfully fused chakra with the magecraft system from Mash's world, creating a 'reproduction technique' with absurd potential, I started thinking—could I also fuse my own system with other worlds' systems?"
"And I also became interested in magecraft."
"In my view, it's fascinating because it plays with concepts and exploits loopholes in rules."
"For example: swapping the concept of the observable universe—13.8 billion light-years—for 'the entire universe,' and then declaring the whole universe as one's omniscient domain."
"Or holding an 'Olympics,' using the concept of the event to turn the participants' and audience's vigor, passion, and hope into a magical resource—then awarding it as a prize."
"From that, I began wondering: could I stretch the concept of 'soul' into something broader, fuzzier?"
"Like when people say barbecue needs 'soul' to taste right."
"Or when an artist finishes a painting and calls the final stroke the moment they 'gave it a soul.'"
"In that sense, 'soul' doesn't mean a ghost-body made of memory and consciousness. It isn't a specific energy substance."
"It means the core essence of something—the thing that makes it it, and not something else."
As he spoke, Eisen stepped to Miyabi's side and lightly touched Wuwei's hilt.
Then, with a gentle pinch between thumb and forefinger—like plucking an invisible petal from the air—
He pulled out a thin, translucent blade-shadow.
It trembled faintly, emitting a weak yet pure light. It had no physical mass, and yet it carried a razor intent—decisive, absolute, an implication of cutting through everything.
Miyabi's pupils tightened.
She had no knowledge of magecraft or the First Flame, but in the instant she saw it, the instinct forged by endless practice told her exactly what it was.
It was the soul of her sudden enlightenment—the pure essence of that slash she'd poured everything into.
Not her own soul. Not the sealed consciousness of the Origin's power inside the sword.
But the distilled essence of that technique itself.
Ling and Wise both sucked in a sharp breath.
Even Yixuan—still smiling—had a flicker of surprise pass through her eyes.
So this was magecraft from Mash's world.
Not merely "unreasonable."
It was reality-cheating.
No wonder Eisen called it a universal wish engine.
Eisen didn't stop. He turned to Yixuan.
Yixuan, as if she'd already guessed what he meant to do, didn't resist.
She raised her hand into a sword-finger. Streams of dark ink with molten-gold sheen gathered before her, forming a talisman she'd never shown anyone.
Eisen dipped his fingers into the talisman's surface and drew out a drifting, ink-slick phantom of it.
He carefully gathered the two "souls" and folded them into his palm as two points of light.
Then his voice returned to steady calm.
"Alright. Now everything should be ready. Yes?"
He looked across their faces, confirming the final checklist.
Miyabi. Yixuan. Wise. Ling.
The four exchanged a silent glance.
No words needed.
Ready.
Miyabi stepped forward and handed Wuwei to Eisen.
Eisen accepted it, and with a flick of intent, the group-transport triggered. Wuwei vanished—sent to the far side where the Fire Keeper waited.
"Then I'm starting," Eisen said.
"When I truly rewind time, you won't feel anything. No awareness. No pain."
He glanced across them, lingering a fraction longer on Ling.
"But… when the device absorbs Ether from a Hollow, the spectacle won't be pretty."
"So I suggest you stay in the painting-world. Don't go out and watch. There's no need to burden yourselves."
Ling's lips parted as if she wanted to argue. Her eyes were full of struggle.
But in the instant she tried to speak—
Eisen appeared in front of her without warning.
He lifted his hand and gently rested it on her head, like soothing a restless child.
Ling's expression froze mid-struggle.
Her leaning posture stopped.
Even the motion of her hair paused in place.
Time—inside her—was pressed to a halt.
Eisen withdrew his gaze from the frozen Ling and looked to the remaining three: Miyabi, Yixuan, Wise.
His voice remained even.
"If you want to watch, you can. No matter what you see, that memory won't be carried back to your past selves anyway."
"But Ling…"
He glanced once at the frozen girl.
"I agree completely," Wise said at once.
"She's not watching. The pressure would be too much for her."
He exhaled hard, relief flooding his face, fists finally unclenching—his palms slick with sweat.
Yixuan nodded softly, eyes warm with pity as she looked at Ling.
"As her master, I would never do that. Even if I hope she can stand on her own sooner… I won't force growth by pulling sprouts."
Her voice was gentle, firm.
"I won't let her carry something that heavy."
Miyabi's voice was as clean and sharp as her blade.
"That responsibility was never meant to be hers."
Eisen nodded. No more words.
Then his presence vanished entirely.
The next instant, Eisen stood on a dead, barren plain—
The surface of the moon.
He walked into the massive lunar Hollow without emotion.
Inside, space was warped and gravity faint. Great slabs of stone and shattered moon fragments floated like lonely islands in the void. Far off, several dangerous high-energy reactions pulsed.
Eisen didn't care.
He opened his palm.
A basketball-sized tetrahedral device lay there—black as ink, smooth as glass.
He pressed the switch.
The moment it activated, an indescribable suction erupted.
That tiny tetrahedron became a miniature black hole.
In an instant, the Ether energy saturating the lunar Hollow surged toward it like rivers rushing to a sea.
The space inside the Hollow bucked into a monstrous storm.
Floating islands shuddered, collided, broke apart—silent screams of matter crushed by physics.
Folds of space were yanked and torn by violent energy flow, emitting a teeth-grinding creak.
The already-chaotic gravitational field collapsed into lethal vortices.
Eisen stood at the center of it all, unmoving.
He'd chosen the lunar Hollow for two reasons.
One: it was enormous, packed with energy.
Two: it was far enough from New Eridu.
When a Hollow is forcibly drained, the disturbance inevitably births new Hollows nearby.
And around the moon—
There was almost nothing.
So where would the new Hollows spawn?
In orbital space, converting dark matter into Ether?
Or straight onto the planet's surface?
Eisen was… mildly curious.
New Eridu. A noisy street.
A normal citizen rubbed his stiff neck and, out of habit, looked up at the moon.
The next second, he froze, then pointed.
"Hey—did the Hollow on the moon… get smaller?!"
A passerby, still scrolling their terminal, looked up irritably—
"…What do you mean smaller—holy shit?!"
The words died in his throat. His eyes went wide.
The Hollow's edge was visibly shrinking.
"It's—It's really shrinking!"
More heads tilted up.
Shock spread through the city like a silent disease.
Footsteps stopped. Conversations died. Traffic noise thinned and vanished.
A dead silence smothered the streets, then crawled across the entire city.
Countless faces stared at the sky—blank, confused, disbelieving.
The Hollow shrank faster and faster.
One minute.
Just one minute.
The massive lunar Hollow was gone.
Only a scarred, incomplete moon hung in the sky.
People remained frozen in their staring poses like statues.
A heavy, suffocating dread pressed down on every chest.
New Eridu sank into the breathless stillness before a storm.
And then—
BOOOOOOM—!!
Huge Hollows erupted from nowhere, one after another, like hell opening its jaws, expanding violently and devouring everything around them.
Buildings. Streets. Panicked crowds—
Swallowed whole.
Screams, sobs, desperate cries for help tore through the silence and became a living inferno on earth.
On the moon's surface, Eisen withdrew his hand.
The tetrahedron had changed. Its once purely black surface now flowed with prismatic black light, like Ether liquefied.
He turned his eyes toward the planet below.
In his sight, the world looked like it was being chewed by an invisible beast—countless Hollows gaping wider and wider.
Mountains collapsing. Seas splitting. City lights dying in sheets.
"Looks like they spawn straight on the surface," Eisen said evenly.
The apocalypse below—billions dying, civilization breaking—didn't ripple his eyes even slightly.
He turned away, indifferent.
Then he stepped forward.
First step: the moon dust vanished beneath him, replaced by the star-map of the entire ZZZ universe.
The total mass and energy of the world seemed to compress into something he could stand on.
Second step: the view surged upward and outward.
Countless similar-but-not-identical universe-shadows appeared like jeweled beads strung together into an endless line.
Third step:
Not one line—many.
Innumerable lines of universes appeared, crossed, collapsed inward, and merged—
Until a river beyond language formed beneath his feet.
A river made of infinite time-fragments: rising and falling civilizations, individual joys and griefs, births and extinctions.
Waves rolled—each spray a condensed epic, each crest crowned by the era's great movers and shakers.
The River of Time.
Eisen looked downstream, toward the theoretical far end of the future.
Through endless mist—
A tiny point of fire lit at the river's distant end.
The First Flame.
In the next instant—
It became a wildfire.
That spark exploded into a world-burning blaze and surged along the River of Time from the far future toward the present.
Wherever it passed, the river became ash.
Era after era, civilization after civilization, story after story—
Like paintings thrown into a furnace—
Twisted, blackened, and turned to dust before they could even scream.
Only scattered, hopping embers remained in the void.
The tide of destruction was unstoppable.
In a heartbeat, it reached the "now" where Eisen stood.
The current time-node of the ZZZ universe was swallowed whole.
Everything composing the present—matter, energy, information—
Including Ling, frozen in the painting-world—
Was incinerated into a trivial smear of ash on a dried riverbed.
At the instant that absolute destruction was about to consume Ling's core consciousness—
The chat group's deepest protection mechanism triggered.
It couldn't stop the First Flame from burning the physical "now."
But at the last moment, it forcibly tore Ling's consciousness out of the doomed present and flung it away.
Ling's consciousness snapped into existence beside Eisen, above the River of Time.
She drifted in a hazy, half-awake state, sensing the vast magnificence beneath her—the river made of countless universes and ages.
But her rank was too low.
She struggled to "open her eyes" and comprehend it, but it was like staring through thick frosted glass—only a grand blur of light and motion.
Eisen reached out and took the hand of Ling's pure consciousness.
Then he stepped upstream—toward the past.
Behind them, the First Flame pursued, burning away the "now" they'd just left and pushing into earlier and earlier history.
Each step Eisen took, the Flame burned another segment of the past behind him.
And then something strange happened:
Beyond a certain time-node, the River of Time began to turn translucent—fading, thinning, as if it might dissolve into nothing.
Eisen stopped at a stretch of river that still had substance.
Ahead, the river was almost gone—only a vague outline of light and shadow remained.
He withdrew the world-burning First Flame with a casual motion.
Then he took Ling—still in his grasp—and pushed her into the "now" corresponding to that last real segment of time.
At Random Play, Ling groggily rubbed her eyes and came back from a short darkness.
Across from her, Wise—who'd been watching her with tense focus—finally let out a breath and smiled.
"Ling. You're awake."
Ling opened her mouth to speak—
Then a flicker of flame flashed through her eyes, so fast it was almost a hallucination.
She went blank for a heartbeat.
When focus returned, she stared around in confusion.
"Wasn't I just in the painting-world? Why am I back in the store? I remember the group owner said he was going to rewind time…"
She jolted upright.
Realization hit her like a punch.
Hands shaking, she dug out her phone, lit the screen, and locked onto the date.
It matched.
She had returned to the moment she'd just obtained Fairy.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 150)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter190)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter105)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter225)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 195
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 170
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/5
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 225
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 210
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/30
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 115
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 130
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 105
I Can Copy Unique Skills 100
Summoning an Evil God, but the 70
Supernatural Multiverse 90
My Harem Is Indescribable 85
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 90
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 68
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 100
Still playing traditional Honk 69
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 75
What Should I Do After Switchi - Volume2/3
Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 60
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 71
Checking In in Demon Slayer 75
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 80
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 66
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 58
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 65
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 63
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 59
Why did they assign me to Uma 55
MYGO Beauties 56
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 45
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 49
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 36
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 35
The Uma Musume Who Became 30
I'm Definitely Not the King of 35
After Maxing Out Every Class 35
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