IBHJ 1335

Shirou glanced toward the door. "Mind if I take a walk?"

"Of course. You're still under suspicion, but these buildings were built during the material era, and their cores are all stabilized as information structures now, so it's safe. I’ll send out a notice to the others."

She paused, then added casually, "Oh, right. Just don’t approach the Star Brain unless you’re with someone. Otherwise, we’ll have to reconsider how to deal with you."

"Got it." he nodded and smiled. "Don’t worry, I wouldn’t even know where to find it."

Tethys nodded, then raised her hand.

"Wait, wait!" Shirou quickly waved both arms. "Please don’t teleport me with that white hole thing again! I’d rather walk."

Tethys slowly lowered her hand. "...Fine."

Her eyes drifted to his backpack. "By the way, can I try those things? The ones you were eating earlier. They looked delicious."

"You mean the chips?" he blinked. "But... you said you don’t have a mouth?"

"I can simulate your organs."

"..."

Shirou covered his face. When in Rome, I guess.

"I'm heading out, Tethys."

Tethys crossed her arms and pouted slightly. "So rude. You should be calling me Grandma Tethys, Shirou."

He kept walking like he hadn’t heard a thing and stepped out of the life creation room without looking back.

The moment he stepped through the door, the floor beneath him twisted, reality flickered, and he was unceremoniously sucked into a massive white hole.

“Damn it! A white hole, seriously?!”

Behind him, Tethys’s voice floated through the distortion, sounding way too innocent. “Well, no one asked if the door was connected through a quantum wormhole…”

…

By the time the disorienting swirl of light and gravity subsided, Shirou found himself sprawled on a cold, metallic corridor. He groaned, rubbing his head.

He let out a long sigh. Thankfully, he’d had the sense to wrap himself in a thin protective veil of [Evil] before ever stepping into this twisted era. Otherwise, the chaotic spatial collapse inside those white holes would’ve ripped his human body apart. Even with the Arrow of Akasha in hand, his physical form was still human.

Well—for now. He had no plans of dying to find out what came next.

He sat up and glanced around. Endless steel corridors stretched in both directions, humming faintly with energy.

“Where the hell am I now? Earth? Or did those maniacs throw me to another star system again…”

He gritted his teeth. These ancient weirdos treated teleportation like breathing, casually flicking someone across star systems as if it were nothing.

And then, as if hearing his unspoken grumbling, something—someone—answered.

A flood of information surged into his mind, bypassing even the defensive veil of [Evil] like it wasn’t even there.

[Query detected. Response: This location is Earth.]

The voice echoed directly into his consciousness. It was massive, resonant, and calm—yet carried a subtle authority that made it impossible to ignore. Shirou blinked.

"...You're that voice from before. The one that intercepted me near the solar system.”

[Correct. I am the Alaya System.]

[Welcome, honored guest from the future. All public facilities are available for use. Please refrain from entering the Star Brain sector without authorization. Unauthorized intrusion will be regarded as a hostile action.]

[If you require further assistance, you may consult me at any time. Once again—welcome.]

As the voice of the Alaya System faded from his mind, the overwhelming torrent of data receded with it, like a tide retreating back into the sea.

Shirou exhaled slowly, rubbing his temple. “This is way too much like a damn amusement park... except run by cosmic lunatics.”

He walked over to the edge of the corridor and looked down.

All he saw was clouds. Thick, pale mist that swallowed everything beneath it. Not a single glimpse of land or sea. The corridor—no, the whole structure—was suspended high above the ground.

It felt like standing in a divine realm pulled straight from ancient myths.

But the beings who lived in this vast steel sky-city weren’t the gods of stories. Not like the next-generation gods who'd been slain by Altera of the Umbral Star. Not aliens in divine clothing. These were the real thing—true conceptual gods. Entities that could rewrite physics and sculpt reality with a thought.

Tiamat and Heaven’s Corpse had both described them the same way: ancient monsters who overthrew interstellar empires and wrote the foundational laws of the universe itself. If not for the sudden rise of the Absolute Evil, they might’ve gone even further—shaping fate on a universal scale.

But in the end, even the Absolute Evil, after destroying them, had been forced into slumber by their final counterattack. Neither side won, and neither returned.

Shirou shook his head and activated [Clairvoyance EX]. His eyes sharpened, cutting through the mist like a blade.

What he saw rooted him to the spot.

No forests. No cities. No lakes or rivers.

Just yellow-brown wasteland stretching endlessly in every direction.

No life. No motion. No hope.

...

A few minutes later, Shirou stood on the surface.

"This is just too tragic..."

He wandered through the dead land, kicking up dust with every step. Not a flower. Not a single blade of grass. He couldn’t even sense the faintest microbial activity in the soil.

It was pure, undiluted silence. The silence of a world long dead.

In the distance, volcanoes erupted violently, flinging molten rock into the dark sky. Ash poured out in thick columns. Rivers of lava crawled toward the lifeless sea, hissing as they met water.

Shirou pinched his nose against the acrid stench and turned away, only to come across what remained of some ancient structure. Collapsed walls. Blackened steel beams. Ghostly remnants of what must’ve once been a magnificent city.

He paused there for a long moment.

He knew the truth—Origin Life wasn’t the result of natural evolution. Gaia had created them using data from the Mooncell and observations from the Golden Universe. They were born from perfection. From the peak of material civilization.

And yet, this was the world they had left behind.

A hollow, broken planet.

No wonder Gaia had handed the task of rebuilding to Tethys. The old system was finished. The Earth of the Origin Era needed something new. Something that could live again.

But… what did this dead, hollow Earth have to do with the True Gate? Or the answer he was searching for?

Shirou rested his hand against a piece of broken wall. A faint layer of [Evil] coated his body, a thin, transparent shield that shimmered faintly in the pale light.

It was more than enough to protect him from the extreme environment of the Origin Era.

He’d come prepared. Long before he ever set foot in Chaldea, long before facing the Lord of Salvation, he’d taken precautions. Without that layer, just entering Gaia’s territory would’ve been suicidal.

The vacuum here would’ve boiled the fluids in his body. The gases in his lungs and cells would’ve expanded, rupturing tissue from the inside out. Even if he survived that, the radiation—dense, high-energy, chaotic—would’ve shredded his DNA, mutated his proteins, and melted his nervous system.

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.