The Wasteland had become an ocean.
An ocean of dark gold.
Endless, boundless motes of dark gold light streamed into his hands.
[So heavy...]
At that moment, the core in Ye Qiyan's hands seemed like a world he was holding aloft.
Yet he was perfectly certain that, in physical terms, the core itself weighed only 200 grams.
Its weight was not a physical weight.
It was the weight upon his soul of [everything] he was constantly gathering, everything that would be expended for Eve.
Monsters kept appearing.
Endless and innumerable, they filled every corner within the horizon in the mere blink of an eye.
Yet the monsters did not attack.
They only chased desperately along both sides of the ever-accelerating Transcendent Order Anchor.
Even if the chase shook loose their long-desiccated hearts, shattered their fragile bones, or left them scattered by the gale whipped up by the train.
Still, they kept chasing.
As though chasing a beautiful dream that did not belong to them.
The monsters howled and wept.
Then they turned to ashes, sweeping themselves beneath the Imminent Demise Drill to become fuel for the train's acceleration.
[It's getting heavier...]
But...
"For a heart, it's too light."
Whoosh-!
A pair of "wings" suddenly spread.
They were Eve's seventy-two weapon slots.
Rather than unleashing their formidable firepower as usual, they kept expanding, as though to envelop everything in sight within the horizon.
And beyond those seventy-two weapon slots.
Only two special weapons floated silently beside Ye Qiyan and Eve.
[The Eternal Cutter] and [the Space-Eroding Spear].
Eve possessed three weapon slots.
What they held had to be weapons Ye Qiyan had used.
All this time, only two of those three weapon slots had been occupied.
"You greedy thing."
The core in Ye Qiyan's hands gradually solidified.
Yet it was still