IBHJ 1336

The Arrow of Akasha and his transcendent mental faculties gave him vision far beyond the human norm. But his body was still carbon-based. Still vulnerable. Still human.

That humanity was both proof of what he was—and the source of his greatest weakness.

The Throne of Heroes couldn’t reach this far. If he died here, if his body failed, he had no idea what would happen.

So he didn’t deactivate the [Evil] field. Not even for a second.

His hand remained pressed to the cold surface. The ruins were ancient, but they hummed with invisible currents. The Earth itself might have been biologically dead, but it was saturated with energy—both familiar and unknown. Radiation like a dense fog, pulsing from deep within the crust, as if the very bones of the world still burned with cosmic fire.

Then, a voice whispered beside his ear. Calm. Casual.

“This is a relic from the material era.”

Shirou’s body tensed. “Who?” He turned instinctively, but there was no one.

No movement. No presence. Just the whisper lingering in the air like the echo of a thought.

He exhaled slowly. Another weirdo.

“Relax,” the voice said with amusement. “No need to be so stiff. I’m Moromaya. Right now I’m stabilizing radiation levels on our homeworld. You must be the future-born visitor everyone’s been talking about?”

Shirou nodded warily. “That’s me.”

“I’ve received the shared memory pool already. Fascinating stuff. They say the Lord of Salvation will destroy us all… but I’ve run diagnostics. No spatial waves, no temporal distortions, not even a blip in our domain’s particle field. It’s like he doesn’t exist.” Moromaya paused for a moment. “The strangest part is—I asked my future self. And even I had no memory of you.”

His voice turned curious. “So tell me, how did you cross time to get here?”

Shirou shook his head slightly. “I’m sorry. I don’t fully understand how your kind perceives time, so I can’t explain it in a way that would make complete sense. But I’m not lying. I have no reason to. I came to this era to find a way to defeat the Lord of Salvation... and to claim the future.”

There was a brief pause before Moromaya responded. “I believe you. Tethys believes you. Everyone… even Gaia believes in you.”

Shirou blinked. “Thanks. But… why?”

Being trusted wasn’t a bad thing, but this felt too easy. These information lifeforms were ancient, powerful, and suspicious by nature. Their trust wasn’t something that should come cheap.

Moromaya answered without hesitation. “Because our future selves, the ones in later temporal domains, told us that you can be trusted.”

“...What?”

“Do you understand the concept of a ‘timepoint’?” Moromaya asked.

“It’s a moment in time, right?”

It was a simple idea on the surface. But coming from the mouth of an Origin Era being, he had a feeling it was anything but simple.

“That’s right. But for us, it’s more than that. As beings of information, we can communicate with ourselves from the next timepoint.”

“You mean... you can talk to your future selves?” Shirou asked, trying to wrap his head around it.

“Exactly. It’s a result of the temporal vacuum properties of the spirit particle world, coupled with the structure of quantum-information spacetime. Simply put, we can only connect to future versions of ourselves that still can exist.”

Moromaya’s tone remained calm and clear, like a teacher explaining something to a student.

“For instance,” he continued, “before I met you, you didn’t exist in any of the future trajectories I could access. But now that I’ve encountered you, those older futures are gone. And in this new one—you exist. Along with a whole cascade of changes.”

Shirou frowned, trying to keep up. “So... my arrival altered your future. And now you can reach a future version of yourself who has met me.”

“Exactly.”

“So based on what you’re saying, because I showed up, your future changed... new timelines opened up that weren’t accessible before. So what happened to the original one? The one where I never appeared? Did it just... split off into a parallel timeline?”

“No,” Moromaya replied. “It gone.”

Shirou looked up in surprise.

“The moment I met you,” Moromaya explained, “The version of the future where I didn’t meet you was overwritten. That possibility was denied, and with it, the timeline itself ceased to exist. Just like countless potential universes collapse from a single choice... or even a single thought.”

“…I really can’t understand your perspective,” Shirou muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.

Moromaya didn’t seem offended. In fact, he sounded almost amused. “Well, you’re from a material civilization, aren’t you? Once your species evolves past the carbon-based stage and begins exploring other universes, you’ll gain this kind of perspective too.”

“Other universes?” Shirou blinked. “You mean… there are more beyond this one?”

“Of course. The cosmos is infinite, but not uniform. Each region follows its own fundamental laws. Those laws give rise to different base elements, which in turn shape entirely different kinds of lifeforms. We draw the boundaries of universes based on those elemental differences.”

Moromaya continued without pausing.

“For instance, this place you come from—we call it the carbon-based universe. Carbon is the root of all complex life here, including your species. But to the ‘north’ of us, there’s another universe, one inhabited by eldritch gods. Their base element isn’t carbon, and their very existence defies your biological logic. They’re extremely hostile. We were attacked the moment we arrived. Only after they realized we could strike back did they bother to negotiate peace.”

Shirou opened his mouth to respond, but Moromaya kept going.

“Then there’s the Golden Universe to the west. Its ruler, the Golden Emperor, was no different. He ignored us at first. Only after we transcended into information lifeforms did he acknowledge us. That’s when peace became possible.”

He leaned back slightly, his voice softening.

“After we shed our physical forms, we gained the ability to manipulate the rules of these universes. Fundamental elements. Concepts of reality. All of it became tools we could reshape as needed… But Gaia doesn’t allow us to go that far.”

“…”

Shirou stood there in silence. There was too much to take in, too many impossible ideas treated like simple history.

Still… at least these ancient weirdos respected Gaia enough to listen to her.

“But you just mentioned ‘parallel timelines.’ That concept is... quite interesting. I’ve always thought the way futures vanish when possibilities shift was a bit too cruel. But parallel timelines… if only those lost futures could persist in some stable, alternate form…”

Moromaya’s voice picked up, excitement spilling into his words.

“Yes! That’s it! I’ve decided—my next research topic will be developing a method to convert erased timelines into stable parallel existences! Hahaha… Thank you, Shirou. Truly. You’ve just sparked my next project!”

“No problem,” Shirou replied with a wry smile—then immediately froze. “Wait, hold on—parallel timelines? Parallel world? Limited timepoints? Connection Points? Hey! Moromaya!”

But there was no answer.

The silence told him everything. Moromaya had already vanished, probably off to bury himself in some abstract research for the next few centuries.

Shirou let out a long sigh and rubbed his temples. His head was starting to throb.

He crouched down beside the crumbling wall, letting his eyes drift to the distant horizon. A massive volcano rumbled there, coughing up smoke and lava like some beast still dreaming of the primordial era.

His thoughts refused to settle.

According to Tiamat, Heaven’s Corpse, and Gaia of the future, the entire reason the Connection Point was born... was to fuel the Origin Civilization’s interstellar war.

But what war?

Everything Shirou had seen so far suggested otherwise. These ancient weirdos weren’t warmongers. If anything, they seemed more like eccentric hermits—tucked away in their house, obsessed with idealism and metaphysical tech. Not the type to go marching into battle across galaxies.

So why would they need that much energy?

And then there was the Golden Emperor. Supposedly the destroyer-god of the western universe. According to the Origin lifeforms—and the hints dropped by Tiamat and future Gaia—it was the Golden Emperor who clashed with them. That war supposedly forced Origin Civilization to deceive the Akasha Records, give birth to the Connection Point, and trigger the creation of the Vortex and the Arrow of Akasha.

But that didn’t quite add up either.

Because now the Golden Emperor had made peace with them.

Even if he really had ambitions of universal conquest, would he seriously go out of his way to provoke ancient monsters like these? There had to be easier targets out there in the infinite cosmos.

And based on everything he’d learned about the Origin beings, they weren’t the type to strike first. The Golden Emperor attacked when they were still a material civilization. And even after transcending into information lifeforms, they still offered peace.

They had no interest in war.

Which only made things more confusing.