The year Ash graduated from high school, his older brother happened to be a senior in college and had found a job back home early, with one month left before he started. The two energetic Social Loafers hit it off at once, spent all of his brother's scholarship and part-time earnings, and went traveling to XZ together, because those fresh, soul-cleansing essays about XZ were very popular at the time.
Actually, it should have been his brother going with his girlfriend, but Sister-in-Law was looking for a job and wasn't in good enough health to risk going somewhere high-altitude, so the opportunity fell into Ash's lap. The scenery along the way was indeed beautiful, but what left the deepest impression on Ash was Dark Night Park beside Ali Observatory.
That was the moment Ash had come closest to the starry sky. There were no city lights; the night was pure, dark, and mysterious. He felt as if he were standing in a dark kingdom, with only the stars flickering on the stage, their light seeming to fall all over his hair, close enough to touch. He was deeply shaken by the magnificent grandeur before him, and deeply lonely because of his own smallness. Two utterly opposite emotions, heat and cold, existed at the same time. That was the charm of the starry sky.
After so many years, he once again felt that same shock and loneliness. The only difference was that the starry sky was no longer a treasure shared by all life. It was the private collection of the Artifice Supremacy!
Illusion Hell was covered by boundless starlight. Ash and the others were instantly transported from hell into the vacuum of the universe. Fortunately, they were all battle-hardened Demigods and quickly adapted to zero gravity and vacuum. There was