The Final Volume: A Tiny World in the Dust - Fate (Part One)

Orange-red fragments of rock drifted through space, free of gravity.

One piece, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million...

Anyone looking up from the night side of Spirit Star would have seen that the orange moon had become a ragged, incomplete shape.

It was no natural crescent, but something far more shattered.

A third of the orange moon had already broken apart into countless rocks, interstellar dust drifting without anchor.

The remaining two-thirds were riddled with cracks, as if they might break apart in the next instant.

The two culprits faced each other on that remaining portion of the orange moon.

Neumann adjusted the concentration and reactions of the elements, filling the space around her with thin air. She also set the air pressure, temperature, and humidity to match Spirit Star exactly. Only then could she barely survive here.

Jili, on the other hand, had recreated Earth's environment around himself. He looked far more at ease than Neumann.

Neumann felt that just staying conscious was a miracle. She had pushed past her limits too many times; it wouldn't have been surprising if she died at any moment.

Jili, however, would never tire—this was a fact. Jili could recreate "expended stamina" and fight tirelessly like a perpetual-motion machine.

If he could do it, so could she—

(Group muscle strain, mental exhaustion, and the like under one category, and treat them all as "stamina loss." Then represent my current physical condition as a single value and display it as a bar graph!)

A long bar appeared before Neumann. More than ninety percent of it was transparent; less than a tenth remained a vivid red. This was Neumann's current "stamina."

(Good, now... change the value!)

The red bar surged upward from 8.41%, soaring past 90% in the blink of an