61 Reclaims Hope (18, 10,000) (There Were No Updates Earlier Because I Had Pneumonia, Sorry.)

Orikan clenched both hands and struck with all his might, finally punching through the snow piled above and behind him.

Dazzling light spilled through the not-so-large opening, drawing a strange, hollow chuckle from the Astromancer—he himself had no idea what was so funny, but for the moment, he had lost control of himself.

Half a minute later, he laboriously dragged the remaining half of his body out of the snow pit. Looking around, he saw not a single soul.

"You idiots!" he immediately cursed. "I told you long ago—"

Before he could finish, he shut his mouth again. So what if he had told them long ago? Given the circumstances at the time, even if they had prepared to flee an hour earlier, that world-ending avalanche would have buried them all the same. At most, they would merely have been swallowed by death's gaping maw a little later.

The Astromancer shook his head and wiped his face. The sensor arrays in his fingers fed back only icy coldness. Suddenly, an impulse arose within him, driving him to let out a long sigh as he had when he was alive.

He had completely abandoned that habit long ago, after being locked inside this immortal coffin. The reason was obvious: he was already dead, so why keep up the habits of the living? Was he supposed to deceive himself like the others, proclaiming that he was still alive and merely blessed with eternal life?

But now—

Orikan fell into thought. Questions of life and death, philosophy and self flashed one after another through his brilliant mind.

Before their extinction, Necrontyr society had explored such questions deeply. Every year saw new works and theories published. He had carefully read each one, hoping to find some answers within. Of course, in the end, he