"My dignity was utterly shattered in the battle with Serfoshe, and my life lost all direction."
Mikun continued recalling the hardest years of his life.
"After escaping from him, I was too ashamed to return to the Holy Light Pure Land, too frightened to face anyone. Yet at the same time, I was unwilling to simply die. So I began wandering aimlessly through the labyrinths, drifting, sinking, whiling away my time, and fleeing from reality."
"Several years passed just like that."
"Ah, looking back now, that truly was a muddleheaded, self-abandoning, utterly meaningless time."
"However, one day afterward, fate suddenly changed without warning."
"And with it came a turning point in my destiny."
"I still remember it now. It was a cloudy afternoon."
"When I wandered into a seemingly ordinary mountain range, a strange sensation inexplicably arose within me. It led me all the way to an underground cavern deep in the mountains."
At this point, Mikun's eyes immediately lit up.
"And waiting for me at the very bottom was a vast underground ruin."
"No, to be precise, it should have been the phantom of a ruin."
"Although everything there glittered brilliantly, none of it had any substance and thus could not be touched. It truly was an incomparably wondrous place."
"Except for the treasure at the very heart of the ruins."
Kuize spoke with a calm expression.
"So this was your encounter with the forty-seventh Divine Artifact?"
Mikun smiled faintly.
"That's right."
"It was the wreckage of an ancient, colossal vehicle."
"'Sky Train.'"
"It called to me, chose me, led me to itself, and decided to make me its master."
"Of course, what came afterward was not easy."
"The pain of coming into contact with and accepting the Divine Artifact's true body was utterly beyond comparison to an ordinary