The Golden Apple’s ripening got pushed back again.

After two delays, Yekase started sensing a pattern: every time she stirred up a Shadow Realm War and wrecked their terror plots, the timetable slipped.

Coincidence?

With France’s royal black history of sacrificing armies for the Golden Apple hanging like a bloodstain, it felt more than suspicious.

The Shadow Realm War looked aimless, a storm without an eye. But if the goal was to “kill enough people for the World Tree to bear fruit,” then the chaos snapped into focus.

If that’s true, this mystery cabal might be lapdogs of the French crown. Given Europe’s old knots and old grudges, they could be tangled with several countries.

With enemies in the dark and herself in the light, Yekase couldn’t play a light-novel hero and sip the fragile calm. Her heart stayed taut like a bowstring; her breath kept the edge.

She leaned on the body born of Flash Energy, and evolved sleep itself—left and right hemispheres dozing in shifts like a cruising shark. Daytime, she hit classes or lab work with the studio. The sleep she saved, she flipped into Lilim wearing faces at the Mercenary Guild, taking quick contracts to scout across Europe like a sparrow skimming rivers.

When she had no classes, she hopped to Mysidia to hang with Alicia Alicia. That discount second master always wore a permanent scowl, but never kicked her out. In a bit over a month, Yekase learned a full set of dozens of common runes from her, dovetailing them with Infinite Power tech. Together with the studio, they began edging toward a way to unify the three kinds of Infinite Power.

Runes and connection keys—the twin pillars of Ancient Alchemy—were the road to “magify” the basic forces of the material world. In other words, a super filter that turns a no-magic world into a high-magic one, like shifting a lens and watching stars bloom.

Because of that, it could serve as the bedrock to unify Infinite Power, the language of the cosmos.

Paying grace with grace, Yekase built a few runic printers for Alice. She was almost booted from the sect on the spot. But on her second visit, she spotted a traditionalist alchemist sneaking that printer in a backroom, fiddling like a kid with a forbidden toy.

Summer of 2022 flowed past in busy, tide-like days, sun to moon to sun again.

…

…

Then on a cool September afternoon, a small parcel arrived from Siberia.

The signature read “Aflessgosa.”

Inside was a ring-shaped stone, ink-black and smooth as jade in the palm. There was also a handwritten letter.

To Miss Yekase—

The Tunguska Cosmic Bubble had a rare regurgitation. It’s a wrap-up-stage fluke: matter that didn’t disperse with the Bubble’s rupture collapses a second time, condensing into a palm-sized crystal—namely, the piece in the package.

A remnant already, and yet a remnant of that remnant—endless, isn’t it? Folks in the Cosmic Bubble industry are superstitious; they take it as a bad omen that won’t let go. I figure you won’t care. You might even like it.

After all, it’s proof a world once existed.

I’m bad at romance. Down to business.

Most of my territory lies within the Arctic Circle. A young dragon reported suspicious human activity on some tundra. It might threaten dragonkind.

Sandryon says you’re good at handling this sort of thing. I want to hire you to investigate, and if needed, wipe them out. Don’t worry about payment—from a Dragon Lord, it’ll be proper.

What do you say? If you’re interested, come to Dragonkeep. Even if not, drop by as a guest. Sidnia always welcomes you.

Sincerely, Aflessgosa

…

“The world’s remains… of remains.”

Yekase finished reading. The way she looked at the stone shifted, like clouds pulling off the sun.

By Aurora’s account—which had been her own guess back then—Solar-3 was the last leftover of a dead world. And this… this patina-dark stone was the last leftover of Solar-3.

The birth and ruin of a civilization, the thinking and feeling of countless minds, their footprints between the stars, their mirrors held to themselves, their search for the past, their gaze tipped toward the future—then the cold prison named cosmos that bound them, and the aeons of silence before and after.

And what’s left is just this sliver.

It weighed in the hand like an apple…

“—Big Sis!”

“Big Siiiis ❤️”

Two figures whooshed in without knocking. The smaller one went straight for the bed and bounced.

Dragged from a nameless sadness, Yekase blinked, as if waking from underwater. “Beelzebub and Mostima? What’s up?”

Ever since Yekase named the four little ones, they treated her as a big-sis-of-big-sis-of-big-sis, outranking their own boss. Was it because she welcomed them? Or because they decided “Luciferin = Lucifer, so she’s the archdemon-in-chief”?

“Our Slackfish Cult, our Slackfish Cult…”

Beelzebub’s voice trembled, like a kite in a gust.

Yekase’s gut tightened. Crisis? Church knights purging them? Shadow Realm War making moves again? Or a spy—

“—Registered students just passed ten thousand! ❤️” Mostima declared, smug as a cat.

“…Uh?”

They tackled Yekase and stared up with big dewy eyes. “We four sisters worked really hard. We handed out flyers. We chased off priests selling indulgences. The Infinite Power engineering textbooks you compiled—we distributed them free through the oil-painting portal to so, so many people.”

“Ah…”

Words jammed in Yekase’s throat.

She’d founded the Slackfish Cult as a spur-of-the-moment jab at the Church. She had neither the manpower nor the funds. She never expected Europe’s magic-complacent commoners to accept, understand, or join the march of Infinite Power.

But the four pint-sized painters… they actually did it. And made a name for it.

“…Wait, the printing costs?”

“Of course we diverted them from your little stash. ❤️”

“…”

How did you get the password to my little stash?

Blood rushed to Yekase’s head. Was she happy for the Cult, or grieving for the stash? She covered her forehead with a hand and didn’t know where to start.

“Big Sis is so moved she can’t speak,” Beelzebub concluded on her own.

Mostima hugged Yekase’s arm and rocked. “A day worth remembering! Let’s celebrate with cake tonight. ❤️ Of course, Big Sis is treating. ❤️”

“I’m paying?!”

“But we… worked really hard…” Mostima flinched at Yekase’s bark and dropped her head, all wilted petals.

Yekase’s one weakness—she sighed and surrendered.

“—Fine. I’ll treat.”

“Yay! ❤️ Cake, cake! ❤️ Fruit cake! ❤️ Ice-cream cake! ❤️”

Granted, Mostima hopped away like a spring.

Beelzebub nodded to Yekase, ready to go too, when her gaze caught on the stone in Yekase’s hand.

“Big Sis, what’s that?”

“This? A remnant of a world.”

“Hm… it holds an incredibly dense concept. Like a compressed concept brick.”

“Concept brick?”

Yekase handed it over. Beelzebub took it with both hands, fingertips tracing the grain, as if reading lines in an old tree.

“…I believe it. It really is a world’s remains.”

She hadn’t seen the Tunguska Cosmic Bubble, yet sorrow colored her voice like dusk.

“Maybe because I’m a magical lifeform, I’m sensitive to the feelings inside Infinite Power. From this relic, I can feel countless lives facing the end with despair…”

“…And yet there’s hope, too. If it’s possible, Big Sis, could you entrust this relic to us?”

Yekase felt no urge to hoard such a memorial. But she wasn’t going to throw or gift it lightly either. She held Beelzebub’s gaze. “What will you do with it?”

“I want to grind it into an ink-black pigment, and paint the cosmos in the Painted World.”

“The cosmos… of the Painted World.”

“Our paints aren’t physical pigments. They’re concepts themselves. This relic holds such rich concept. We could paint a starfield vast, deep, and beautiful—maybe even rival the true universe.”

They met eyes.

“…Ah! If you want the practical angle, an expanded Painted World can host more visitors. We could build the Slackfish Cult’s sanctuary—”

“Say no more. Take it.”

Yekase smiled and folded Beelzebub’s fingers, wrapping the world’s remains in her hands.

“Let them live forever in your paintings.”

“…Yes.”

“Souls that set out for the cosmos, at last becoming the cosmos itself. Flesh may perish, but conviction endures—that’s a good story.”

Heaven dark and bright, cosmos ancient and wild.

The ancients must’ve known the universe wasn’t sky-blue, but a fathomless black. Souls unwilling to be chained by gravity have been lifting their eyes to the stars since then.

Yekase and Beelzebub left the faculty apartment and returned to the deck of the Ambition Divine Ship.

The simulated dome was off, and dusk spilled unfiltered. A red sun sank into the Atlantic, dyeing the clouds in a gradient from amber to tangerine.

Liu RuoYuan and XiaoLei were on deck, fussing over a winter batch of scallions in the little nursery plot. In sync, they looked up as the two stepped out of the portal.

“What’s for dinner?” Yekase asked.

“Food,” XiaoLei shot back, deadpan as a flat sea.

“What dishes?”

“Sweet-and-sour ribs. Hot-oil drizzled lettuce.”

Liu RuoYuan added, “I got an air fryer the other day. If we’re lucky, we’ll even have a plate of popcorn chicken.”

“Why ‘if we’re lucky’?”

“The voltage’s flaky.”

“I’ll get Labyrinth City to honor the warranty.”

Beelzebub dashed into the living room and dove headfirst into Cabin Beneath the Waterfall. Liu RuoYuan stepped out of the plot, came to stand by Yekase, and watched the sunset with her. Her lips parted slightly…

Yekase braced for the lit-teacher’s poetic flourish—then she asked, “Who was that? She looks younger than middle school. Should I call the cops?”

“…What do you take your brother for?”

“A Blue Archive player?”

“How dare you smear my good name out of nowhere!”