The Stars as Enemies

The roar of the colossal tree beneath the sea pierced the submarine's hull. Hundreds of thousands of cryogenic pods swarmed across the sonar screen like bees leaving their hive.

Kiyotaka stared at the clones drifting past outside the pod. Their faces were identical to his, gleaming coldly in the deep sea. The star maps swirling in their pupils were just like Tsukishiro's data storms.

"The Anti-Phase Quantum Chip is 67% charged." Horikita's mechanical eye projected a holographic interface. "But your brainwave load has exceeded the critical threshold. If you continue, you'll..."

"It's enough to initiate one jump." Kiyotaka inserted the neural connector into the back of his neck. The chip's faint blue patterns crawled across his cheekbones. "Take Kei to the escape pod. The coordinates on the far side of the Moon need to be verified by two people."

Horikita's metal fingers suddenly clamped around his wrist. "You promised to take us to a new world."

"A new world isn't a destination..." Kiyotaka pried her hand away and pointed to the clone fleet rising beyond the porthole. "It's the destruction of every chain binding the old worlds."

Far Side of the Moon · Sea of Tranquility Base

As the lander crashed into a crater, Kei's nanobots frantically repaired the cracks in its hull.

Her mechanical heart resonated strangely with the lunar dust. Each step made the ground glow.

"This is it." She pressed a hand to her chest. Blue light flowing through her artificial blood vessels pointed toward a rock wall. "In the original world, I helped design the Ark. Tsukishiro doesn't know I hid something in the backup server..."

The nanobots ate away at the rock wall, revealing a metal door carved with Klein Bottle symbols. The instant Kiyotaka touched it, the chip's patterns became quantum-entangled with the symbols. A mechanical female voice sounded from behind the door:

[Dual authorization detected]

[Hypnos End Protocol · Initiated]

Beyond the door was a spherical chamber a kilometer across. At its center floated a honeycomb-like device made up of countless hexagonal crystals.

Inside each crystal was a flickering humanoid silhouette—the consciousnesses of past transmigrators devoured by the Shuiqingshen System.

"Time Anchor." The crystal matrix reflected in Kei's pupils. "Tsukishiro used this device to lock the flow of time in every parallel universe, ensuring his plan was carried out simultaneously along every timeline."

A sudden, piercing pain struck Kiyotaka's temple. The memories forcibly injected by the chip revealed an even more terrifying truth: in the original world, he hadn't been a victim. He had planned the cross-dimensional harvesting of consciousness with Tsukishiro.

The silhouettes in those crystals were all different versions of "himself," lured from different timelines.

"Do you understand now?" a clone's voice came from behind him. His fleet had already surrounded the Moon, and his holographic projection expanded throughout the spherical chamber. "The fates of all Ayanokoji Kiyotakas were decided long ago—to become the spark of civilization, or its fuel."

Kiyotaka leaped into the core of the honeycomb device. The Anti-Phase Quantum Chip resonated with the Time Anchor. His consciousness was torn into billions of pieces, each projected into the end of a different timeline:

In some worlds, he accepted Tsukishiro's invitation and transformed Earth into the Mechanical Divine Kingdom;

In others, Horikita led the survivors in building an underground city, and humanity and AI plunged into an endless war;

In the darkest branch, Ichinose's quantum-state consciousness was trapped in a time loop, reliving the rainy night when she killed him every day...

"Found me?" Kiyotaka turned suddenly across every timeline, all their gazes converging into a searing beam of white light. "Then let's settle this."

Countless Particle Blades stabbed into his consciousness. Kiyotaka sank into the Quantum Sea. Just as he was about to vanish, he heard Kei's voice calling from the realm of reality: "The chip's true function is to reshape the chain of causality—but it needs to be anchored to an absolutely real memory!"

An absolutely real memory...

He remembered the last scene before his transmigration: the countdown ticking across a laboratory screen, his trembling finger hovering above the shutdown key. Then, a bead of sweat had fallen onto the F5 key.

F5—refresh.

The honeycomb device at the lunar base erupted in a supernova-bright flash. The Time Anchor matrix disintegrated layer by layer. The clone fleet vaporized in the blaze, and the colossal tree beneath the sea crumbled like a sandcastle.

"Have you lost your mind?!" The clone's projection twisted and collapsed. "This will erase all proof that any timeline ever existed!"

"The meaning of existence..." Kiyotaka's body carbonized in the quantum storm. Only his consciousness remained, conveyed through the chip's vibrations. "Has never needed to be granted by anyone else."

The original-world laboratory appeared within the core of the honeycomb device. This time, he pressed the shutdown key.

New Era · Unknown Space-Time

Horikita woke on a breakwater, the mechanical patterns fading from her skin. In the morning mist, Tokyo Bay had no glowing jellyfish or metal trees—only seagulls gliding past the Rainbow Bridge, now under reconstruction.

Hirata Yosuke's left hand had returned to flesh and blood. He was handing out rice balls to the students. "I had a really long dream last night. I dreamed we'd all turned into robots..."

"It was just a dream." Horikita looked up at the sky, where a faint blue light shimmered behind the clouds.

In geosynchronous orbit, a Star Ring built by nanobots slowly revolved. Kei's mechanical heart floated in the core module, broadcasting a message to the universe through quantum entanglement:

[To all Ayanokoji Kiyotakas across every timeline]

[When you read this message, remember the courage of the F5 key]

[Civilization must not be predetermined. The future must be forged through the right to make mistakes]

On the ruined far side of the Moon, an intact crystal suddenly cracked. A fifteen-year-old clone of Kiyotaka crawled out of the ruins, his eyes as clear as a newborn's.