The gate to the Time Ruins frontline was a busy crossroads, a hinge of iron and dusk where lords and the Demon King Army checked a mountain of details.

First came the hero roster, a tide of names like pennants in the wind. That we could tally. The “Undying Obelisk” work sat with the Demon King Army’s fortress, a granite promise the lords didn’t need to carry.

The portal’s theory was trickier, a mirror of Swordgate’s door, a thorn of Demonfolk craft. I wasn’t sure humans could recast it with magitech, so I handed them manuals and care rituals, like lanterns passed down a river.

You want the juicy specifics? Open your purse like a vault and pay.

Once Endless City stood, once lords and the World Saving Demon King made formal ties, we sold “knowledge” as a courtesy gift, like porcelain wrapped in silk. Us agreeing to sell was face enough.

I finished registering an orc hunting captain and his fighters, blew out a breath like mist off a lake, and called for the next. A bell rang, thin as silver rain.

The off‑work bell felt like wind under a bird’s wings, liberty in chime and air. Everyone was happy—except the boss left holding the ledger.

Dusk slid down like ink. The gate’s registry closed. Volunteers herded arrivals to rest and resupply, so tomorrow they could stride into the field—into the cold mouth of death.

The entrance camp—still just a camp, a nest of poles and canvas. The Obelisk rose by “not science and not magic,” a needle of impossible stone. We’d only settled four days ago. Raising a camp for a thousand in four days was a bonfire miracle.

A pyre at the center leaped five or six meters high, a tower of flame under constellations. People gathered like moths and danced in rings of sparks.

Most lords came with a dab of doubt, sending feelers instead of armies. Then Vega opened the door. Dulan and Berenz led the investigators through. Their SAN ticked down like sand in a glass, and they saw the crisis held the weight of apocalypse.

The next day, messages climbed like sunrise. The collective of “human” lords issued a Hero Summons, a trumpet call for every idle hero to aid the Time Ruins.

I felt a flicker of respect, a gust of surprise at human speed. I slid into the villain’s boots and weighed a sudden war, a blitz under closed lips. The advantage looked thin, like a blade’s edge in rain.

All day, mages broadcast the summons in every human city, a chorus in the air. Slogans papered boards and walls like autumn leaves. But the standing hosts stayed at their posts, iron at the gates. The call could only tug at free blades.

Heroes answered “guard the world” with zeal like spring fire. A corner with only Vega’s chair and one table spread in three days to a camp spanning kilometers, a hive that kept building outward.

More than a thousand heroes arrived, a constellation of wills in leather and metal. Half of them heard “a crisis,” not the Divine Being’s “heroes’ destined end.” Explaining the Time Ruins as “certain death” to visitors ate our hours, like a river eating banks.

The forest was Helena’s domain, green as a shawl. So aside from the investigators without their second wave, most faces were Helena’s volunteers, bright as dawn bread.

Some knew they weren’t fighters. They weighed their hearts like stones and asked what else they could carry, what rope or cup they could hand to those who would fight.

The first three failed heroes, noses for plots like wolves for smoke, were the strongest in camp. They didn’t sleep for three days, holding back high‑tier monsters like a dam in flood. Blood stained kilometers of soil, a red map under moonlight.

Volunteers and volunteer troops arrived in waves. They raced the sun to raise walls, lay houses, cut a line of defense, hammers beating like drums.

Those who could fight lifted blades, steel like cold lightning. Those who couldn’t fought with tools, wood and rope like earth’s fingers. The trained directed like shepherds. The untrained followed like a river finding its bed. The shared goal glowed, clean as frost, and every time I watch that, it looks beautiful.

Strip away the mud of pessimism and the smoke of ignorance. What remains is a simple, clear beauty, a white bird over dark water.

Helena’s volunteers, a flock from home, circled the fire and danced a Pengqia dance, feet like sparrows on grain. Others roasted caught beasts, fat sputtering like stars. The whole camp felt festive, a lantern night before storm.

“Looks like a festival,” I said, words like a pebble in warm soup.

“My benighted master, it’s obviously a send‑off,” Vega said, voice like a ribbon with a thorn.

“That’s why I said it ‘looks’ like one.”

I clocked out and vanished like a fish into reeds, so the three failed heroes wouldn’t corner me. Chatter I could suffer. If I accidentally stoked their fighting spirit, that would be a wildfire.

They’re on my to‑kill list. Better not meet before the blade’s date.

The Obelisk loomed inside the Time Ruins, a needle in a skeleton sky. I sipped tea and watched Berenz and Dulan lead a swarm of heroes against beasts, steel against shadow.

Soon I grew sick of blood—green, purple, blue, hues beyond names, slick as oil on stone. I drifted my gaze past the Ruins to the dancers and eaters, the ring at the fire.

“Monsters and beasts differ like winter and summer,” I said. “Monsters lack ‘seeking fortune, avoiding misfortune.’ They crave flesh and power, hunger without horizon. They don’t see the future. They don’t hope. Their fate is to kill or be killed.”

“Fate?” Vega asked, her voice cool as night water.

“Oh, I forgot the Silver Era lacks that word. Treat it as ‘a set future.’ My point is, monsters don’t flee. Strong or weak, if they smell flesh, they leap like sparks on dry pine.”

Vega can pull tea from the Shadow any time, leaves like curled tongues. But the frontline already fed us enough stimulus—blood, slaughter, ruin, the Demonfolk’s bitter feast. My spirit was sated. I wouldn’t waste my rare tea.

New tea in the reclamation gardens hadn’t sprouted. The Demon Realm’s holdings had all been sold to devils over Nivifar. Changing lands turned luxuries scarce for a spell. Tea was a big loss, like rain withheld in spring.

“So, my fickle master has some towering insight?” Vega teased, a smile like ink. “I wouldn’t doubt you even if you pitied them.”

“It’s not insight. It’s… Vega, do you see them dancing, eating, singing at the bonfire? Their revelry flashes like sparks.”

“My blind master, their feelings rise from the heart, like water from a spring.”

“Do you see them fighting, killing, guarding on the walls? Their solemn faces are iron under frost.”

“My foolish master, those feelings also rise from the heart, steady as stone.”

“That’s the charm. Some are joyful. Some face death. These opposite sides hold no grudge, like night and day sharing the horizon.”

“Isn’t that right?” Vega asked, words pausing like a held breath.

She was struck silent. To her, this was normal, a habit worn like a cloak.

On the walls, warriors fought so the people behind the fire could laugh, laughter like bells in rain.

By the fire, hands worked and clapped so the people on the walls could fight, rhythm like a forge’s song.

No one was forced. Someone arranged. No one groused, not even under cold wind.

“Right. It’s right. In this era, it’s natural. People remember they fight for smiles. People remember others will fight for their smiles. ‘We’ stands above ‘I’; most days, ‘I’ can rest content inside ‘we.’”

Humans still had such a beautiful age, a clear stream before the Ocean of Darkness.

Even though good and evil are divided, justice and wickedness are named, and chaos spreads like smoke in hearts, humans still remember trust and goodwill.

“Beautiful,” I said, like naming a quiet star.

I savored this last scene. Then I said goodbye to it like a traveler turning from a cliff’s view.

“Vega, do it.”

She dragged a coffin and wooden stakes from the Shadow, like pulling a boat from black water, and walked to me.

“You lying down yourself, or shall I join you?” she asked, voice bone‑dry.

Clang. She dropped the coffin onto the Obelisk’s top, a hollow echo like thunder in a shaft. The stakes’ tips looked wet and russet, like autumn leaves sticking to iron.

Vega licked her lips, a fox over grapes, half eager.

“I didn’t call you for storage‑locker play…” I grumbled. Then I lay down myself. No ceremony. These clothes wouldn’t survive my next rising anyway. “Aim for brain and heart.”

“To make me seal my beloved master with my own hands—my fate must be cursed,” she said. Her tone stayed prim. Her hands had no mercy, winter‑sharp.

The first stake hammered through my brow. It shattered bone like brittle ice and churned my brain like mud.

The second punched my left chest. It pierced rib, heart, and lower plank in a straight line, a hot spear through meat.

The third went for the stomach. The fourth pinned a hand. The eighteenth, the nineteenth—each thud a drumbeat in a tomb.

“What do I look like now?” I asked, failing for a word like a man reaching underwater.

No, I couldn’t speak. I sent meaning through a ripple in the Shadow, a silent bell.

“My garbage‑like master, you look like garbage,” Vega said, deadpan as stone.

“Don’t say it twice! Hah… fine. I’m offstage for days. If anything strays off script—”

“I’ll wake you,” she said, calm as a closed fan.

“No. Stick to the plan. Whether Stini lives or dies, flees or kneels, you say the written lines and only do the written deeds. Don’t improvise. We went too far, this time.”

I fixed my last eye on Vega, trying to nail a vow into wood.

She tilted her head. “Is your stomach hurting? Do you need the toilet?”

Message not received at all.

“Enough! You’re impossible!”

Catherine’s last‑minute arrival forced changes. To keep the stream flowing, we had to bend branches and let some reeds bow.

Like now.

“If your heart’s set, I’ll stay with my stubborn master on stage,” she said. “But I must note it’s foolish, a self‑deceiving act.”

“‘Seal Andor’s appearance to prove it’s not your scheme.’ I won’t deny it’s like covering your eyes to steal a bell. Heroes need proof of innocence. Villains don’t. If people can’t find proof, we walk away clean.”

Justice is strict and rigid, a bronze law. Evil is forgiving and deep, a black river. That’s the way of it.

If I, as Savior Demon King Andor, don’t move or speak, then even if I write the script and predict the future, no one can pin blame, like trying to catch smoke with nails.

Even without me, everything would happen, tinder meeting flame on its own.

I just swap the order, shift the place, and let some people see “what’s real,” like a mirror held at a new angle.

Once the Time Ruins handover finishes, the three failed heroes will come causing trouble. Instinct or luck, under the gods’ gaze, they’ll walk to our door.

As for the answer—I already taught you the counter, like a step in a dance. Now let me sleep.

Until the one in the orphanage, sunning lazily like a cat, the one people call the Savior Saint, steps on stage. The saint walking the human world breaks all falsehood and malice, gives children smiles, gives the world peace. He will win and win again, a banner that keeps catching wind. He stands for the hymn of human civilization. Speak of evil alone, and it can never, in any number of tries, defeat that pure justice. At that time—

Wake me.

Only that absolute justice can defeat the greatness that lies beyond human shallow sight, a mountain above clouds. Only greatness beyond human shallow sight can defeat that absolute justice, a storm that carves stone.

“Front and back are two faces of the same moon—nemesis and fate share one truth.”

“Your will. Anything you want to leave for Miss Stini? When you wake, you might never see her again.”

Vega’s reminder came like a cool wind—not warm, yet oddly kind.

Anything left to say—sweet words like blossoms, or an apology like ash?

—No.

…No; the well is dry.

“Seal the coffin; let the lid fall like winter ice. The rest is yours, Vega.”

“Exactly so, my dear master—sleep and dream well, like a petal drifting on night water.”

A wooden stake pierced my last eye; in the world of flesh, the night slammed shut.

My spirit sank into the Ocean of Darkness, like a stone through black water; I rest a moment, waiting to return to the living.