IBHJ 1334

Shirou paused, frowning as the headache deepened. What exactly were the key to opening the Gate of Truth and the method to eliminate the Lord of Salvation? The contradictions between what he had heard and what he now observed were not minor—they were fundamental. The data simply didn’t align.

Although he enjoyed thinking through problems, he recognized his limitations. He was no Holmes, and right now, he lacked not only clarity but also the information needed to form any coherent theory. In the absence of leads, speculation was useless.

With a resigned sigh, he sat down, pulled open his backpack, and retrieved a bag of chips. Stress-eating had become a minor habit after months of clean living. He grabbed a handful and began chewing in silence.

Tethys tilted her head. "What are you doing?"

"Eating," he replied flatly.

"Eating? Ah, you're replenishing your energy to maintain biological functions, yes?" She looked thoughtful. "But aren't there more efficient methods? Can’t your kind absorb cosmic radiation? Or cycle internal energy?"

He gave her a tired glance. "When you were still material lifeforms, didn’t you eat too?"

"Naturally. What other option was there?"

"Exactly. So don't judge," he said, then pointed at her face. "Wait, if you can absorb radiation now, what do you need mouths for?"

"Mouths?" she blinked, then looked slightly puzzled. "Oh, you mean oral appendages? We don’t have those."

"Let’s just call them that." he narrowed his eyes. "Then back when you were still material, how did you even talk?"

She answered without hesitation. "We communicated through thought. Gaia created us, and she acted as our mental link. From the beginning, we never needed oral communication."

He fell quiet. A species created with innate telepathy from birth—no language barrier, no miscommunication, and no physical vocalization. It was a completely different paradigm of civilization.

"So that’s why you follow Gaia’s orders so obediently?" Shirou asked.

Tethys looked genuinely confused. "What a strange thing to ask. Gaia is our mother, our creator, and the foundation of our existence. Of course we listen to her. We exist to protect her."

Shirou muttered under his breath, "Like human-shaped Zerg, huh..."

"Zerg?" Tethys tilted her head, not following.

"Never mind that." Shirou waved it off, but a thought suddenly struck him. "Wait, Tethys. If you don’t have a mouth... then why does the form you're showing me now have one? Isn't this how you looked back when you were material?"

Tethys smiled—or at least made a smile-like gesture with her currently-existing mouth. "Not at all. What you're seeing is the form you want to see."

Shirou froze.

...Mordred’s silhouette.

That’s why the shape had seemed familiar.

He shook the thoughts away, forcing his mind back to the topic.

"One last question," he said. "About your offspring. How do you even, uh... reproduce?"

Tethys blinked, then lit up with understanding. "Ah, you mean division?"

"Di—division?"

"Yes," she said brightly. "One individual splits into two. That’s how we reproduce."

After speaking with Tethys, Shirou had finally pieced together a rough, surface-level understanding of these origin lifeforms. And even that shallow glimpse was enough to shatter everything he thought he knew.

If he tried to explain them using the concepts of his own time, these beings—whether in their current state as information lifeforms or during their earlier, material phase—were essentially the highest form of primordial organisms.

They had no cells, no internal organs, no structure as humans understood it. Each one was a complete, unified entity. They sustained themselves not through food or respiration, but by absorbing high-energy cosmic radiation. Their bodies could cycle that energy perfectly, adapting to any environment. In essence, they were adaptively immortal—true Eternity in physical form.

It clicked in Shirou’s mind. The “Eternity” of the Eternal Empire, the one created by the Ideal King, was just a pale imitation of this. A simplified, weakened version of what these beings naturally were. They were the ideal material lifeform.

And their reproduction was similar to that of primitive eukaryotes: they split through division. No gender, no mating rituals, no families in the human sense. According to Tethys, this was the standard form of life in this Universe.

Even their communication bypassed everything Shirou had taken for granted. They had no written language, no scripts or records. They didn’t need them. From the moment of their creation, they could link directly through Gaia, exchanging thoughts and emotions without words. A language of pure consciousness, heart to heart. No barriers. No need for a medium.

Shirou had to admit—he really had learned something new.

These weirdos had already been strange enough as material lifeforms, but after becoming information-based entities they crossed into a whole new level of bizarre.

Back when they still had physical forms, at least there were some traces of scientific reasoning behind their existence. Steel-built structures, Dyson spheres—those were things Shirou could understand, even if they were way beyond modern human capability.

But once they transitioned into information lifeforms, they left the realm of science entirely and plunged headfirst into idealism.

The problem wasn’t just that they had advanced past technology. No, it was that they completely broke the basic concept of science.

Because science isn’t about machines, steel, or shiny tools—it’s about structure. It’s a system of knowledge built on understanding, prediction, and repeatable logic. You observe the world, establish patterns, and then form a model of reality you can test and refine.

But these weirdos didn’t just understand the patterns. They messed with them.

Take a simple example: fire and water. Equal intensity fire meets equal intensity water, and logically, the fire goes out. Everyone knows that. But these weirdos could just reach into the fabric of spirit particles with their thoughts and flip the outcome. Now it’s the fire that puts the water out.

They weren’t players in the game of civilization. They were the ones who made the game.

Worse, they didn’t care about player feedback.

They were the kind of game designers who added cheat mechanics on a whim, rewrote the rules mid-match, and told the players to "deal with it."

Still, even gods needed a chain around their necks. And for these unruly game devs, that chain was Gaia.

No matter how wild their abilities, they listened to her without question. They didn’t rewrite the universal laws of this star system, didn’t touch the core structure of the cosmos.

Because if they had decided to mess with the foundation—say, replace carbon with silicon as the core building block of life right at the birth of this system—Shirou couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of being he’d have ended up as.

"Eh? Shirou, what’s wrong? You look kind of weird. Did something happen?" Tethys tilted her head, puzzled.

"...Nothing. I’m just a bit tired," he said, shaking his head. ‘These beings are too far removed from anything I know. The more I learn, the scarier it gets. How could I not be mentally exhausted?’