IBHJ 1339

“WHO?”

A deafening voice shook the hollow core.

“Tethys?! You again?! Trying to steal my core?! Are you kidding me?! Do I look like someone you can just push around?!”

The moment those words echoed through the space, everything broke into chaos.

BZZZZZZZ—!

The calm interior warped into a swirling storm of unstable gas and energy.

The colossal Uranus Tree flared with blinding light. Its branches shot out like lightning, twitching and twisting as if the entire tree had become a live wire. The planet itself gave a violent jolt. Even its steady rotation slowed under the weight of Uranus’s fury.

“Ahhh! This is your fault for being so slow! You woke him up!” Tethys screeched. “Grab the core, now!”

Shirou winced, shielding his face from the sudden windstorm. “Gaia’s going to yell at us for this.”

“Worst case? He files another complaint,” Tethys snapped. “But if you bail on me now, don’t expect any help when you go poking around the Lord of Salvation!”

Shirou hesitated for just a second. But deep down, he knew—Tethys would never play around when it came to their homeland. And honestly, he needed her help more than he wanted to admit. So, without wasting another breath, he rushed toward the Tree.

“Tethys! You actually sent a material lifeform to steal my Core?!” Uranus roared. “No wonder I didn’t pick up your signal right away. But it’s too late now. You’ve made a mistake you can’t take back. Gaia will be here soon… to collect his corpse!”

As his voice thundered through the core, the Uranus Tree reacted. A glowing web of tendrils burst from the trunk, twisting and lashing like the nervous system of a waking god.

“Damn it!” Tethys yelped. “Shirou, watch out! If those things catch you, you’re done!”

She wasn’t exaggerating. Shirou remembered how lethal this Tree could be—he’d seen it firsthand. But this wasn’t like before. He wasn’t standing at the South American Connection Point anymore. He wasn’t the same either.

The one who had inherited the Vortex had grown. While Tethys panicked in his mind, Shirou kept his eyes steady. There was a flicker of flame in his gaze as he stared into the storm.

[Savior of Mortal A] Activated.

The shift was seamless. He stepped into the record of Shiki, and in that moment, the Tree’s structure revealed itself. Thin threads of concept—death-lines—lit up across his vision, outlining the Tree’s real shape like a map etched in silver.

He didn’t hesitate.

His arm moved.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Each tendril that lashed out was gone before it could reach him, blown apart midair, erased from existence.

“What?!” Even Uranus faltered, shaken by what he saw.

“…Huh?” Tethys blinked, genuinely caught off guard. “You’re actually this strong, Shirou?”

“Not really. I never said I was weak though,” he replied with a relaxed smile.

“I was just being nice! Don’t get cocky,” Tethys huffed, puffing out her cheeks. “Besides, Uranus wasn’t even being serious just now. Grab the core before he gets serious!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a nod.

But it was already too late.

“You’ve angered me beyond reason!” Uranus thundered, voice shaking the very air.

The planet began to boil.

Everything—gas, vapor, bark, molecule, and atom—morphed into claws and fangs. Oxygen flared into living fire, carbon twisted into spears, sulfur spat lightning. Every bit of matter turned against him. There was no doubt now. Uranus had fully awakened—and he was furious.

Tethys’s voice cracked with panic. “Forget the core! Just run! Get out of there!”

"...Run?" Shirou tilted his head slightly, like the idea didn’t quite register. Then he reached for Caliburn.

The moment his blade swept through the air, the death-lines split open like threads unraveling.

In the blink of an eye, branches shattered. Gases broke apart. Even atoms crumbled at the seams. Everything the planet threw at him dissolved before it could touch him.

Shirou didn’t flinch. Even as the planet screamed, he walked forward. Calm. Steady. Like he was out for an evening stroll.

He reached the heart of the Tree, casually plucked the glowing core, and departed under Uranus’s despairing, helpless gaze.

“TETHYS! YOU BASTARD! AND YOU, LITTLE THIEF! I’LL REPORT THIS TO GAIA, YOU HEAR ME? BOTH OF YOU!” Uranus’s rage carried across space like a storm of static.

Shirou didn’t even pause. By the time the echoes faded, he was already back on Earth, holding out the core to Tethys.

“Hah! Finally!” she laughed, hugging the glowing core like a prize. “I can’t believe that actually worked!”

He narrowed his eyes. “What exactly do you plan to do with it?”

“To build an ecosystem,” she said, grinning like it was obvious. “Making life is easy. Getting it all to work together? That’s the real challenge. That’s where Uranus had the edge. He didn’t just make something to fight with—he wanted to turn his planet into a real, living world. Something whole.”

She paused for a moment. The pride in her voice softened into something more playful.

“He never quite figured it out, though. So I thought—why let all that effort go to waste?”

With a flick of her wrist, the Tree Core rose into the air, glowing strands unwinding from it like threads of starlight. Data and light danced between her fingers as she picked it apart, studied it, and began reshaping it into something new.

When the glow faded, a single seed rested in her palm. Tiny. Weightless. No bigger than a pebble, but pulsing with life.

She knelt down and pressed it gently into the dry, cracked earth.

Then, she snapped her fingers.

The air twisted. Time around the seed surged forward like a river breaking past a broken dam. In the span of a breath, a massive tree burst from the ground, growing fast enough to shake the wind. Its trunk stretched skyward, branches splitting and spreading wide, leaves unfurling until they blanketed the sky. A soft green glow shimmered from its limbs, drifting down like falling stars. Wherever the lights landed, the world responded—grass sprouted, vines curled across the dirt, and flowers opened one after another.

Life returned.

Shirou stared at the tree, his hand curling into a fist before he even noticed.

Yggdrasil…!

This wasn’t just any tree.

It was the same as the one he had seen at the Norse Connection Point.

No question. No mistake.

This was the same kind of being.

“Success!” Tethys threw her hands in the air. “The environment’s responding! This is it—the ‘producer’ tier of the trinary system I wanted! Once the full ecosystem’s in place, Gaia’s gonna shower me with praise!”

But then… something felt wrong.

Both she and Shirou noticed it almost at the same time.

The green particles were still spreading, but the light—was fading. The sky dimmed. Shadows thickened. What was once a vibrant bloom of life had turned eerie, like a world sealed in perpetual twilight. Then the soil began to collapse, crumbling into fine gray dust. Even the rocks fell apart, drained of whatever energy had once held them together.

Shirou narrowed his eyes, glancing up at the sky. “It’s not just absorbing sunlight. It’s pulling energy straight from the Earth.”

He turned to Tethys sharply. “…Tell me you didn’t include the aggression and predation traits from your beast prototypes.”

She tilted her head. “Wait… was I not supposed to?”

Shirou groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “I don’t know! I’m not a biologist!”

He pointed at the tree, now pulsing with unnatural energy. “But I do know one thing—you just planted a star-devouring monster!”

The World Tree towered above them, branches twitching hungrily. It was pulling in solar radiation and draining the Earth at the same time, feeding like it hadn’t eaten in millennia.

Shirou’s voice dropped. “You didn’t see this coming when you made it?”

“Not even a little,” Tethys admitted, her earlier confidence crumbling.

A low rumble shook the ground.

The tree shifted.

Then came the tendrils—dozens of them, lashing out from the canopy with frightening speed, all zeroing in on the only two energy-rich beings in sight.

Tethys shrieked, scrambling backward. “Wait, WHAT?! I’m your creator, not a snack!”