"Without light, even a shadow's very existence became a long torment."
Within the Steam Furnace's Quantum Space, Tiandao watched Caroline's desolate back on the Dimensional Screen, along with those words that appeared at the end of the Extra Chapter. His emotions were exceedingly complicated.
Heartache?
Guilt?
Or remorse?
Perhaps all of them.
The sudden "knife" thrown at him by the Stellaris Production Team had unexpectedly "stabbed" even him—the man who had personally written the script and directed all of this.
Even if he believed he had done it out of "good intentions." Given Caroline's personality, if he had not temporarily sealed that "memory" back then—
Tiandao had truly feared that, by the time he woke up, Caroline would have already gone to the Iron Dome Family and blown herself up.
But leaving behind a her who could not even remember why she lived—wasn't that another kind of cruelty?
For a time, Tiandao could not give a satisfactory answer to that question.
Fortunately, that cruelty would not last much longer.
Because once he completed what came next, he would be able to appear openly before Caroline.
When that time came, Tiandao believed Caroline would understand him as she had when they were children, and forgive his little act of willfulness back then. Probably.
"Mr. Tiandao?"
Just as Tiandao was immersed in his thoughts, Danika beside him pulled him back to reality.
Coming back to himself, Tiandao saw that they had already passed through the Brass Path and arrived before an enormous gear.
It was a brass gear as tall as a three-story building. The gleam of machine oil, unextinguished for a century, still lingered between its teeth, making its extraordinary nature obvious at a glance.
Around the Brass Gear stood twelve figures as solemn and unmoving as metal sculptures.
They were