Chapter 230: You and My Engagement
Pure white radiance engulfed the entire world.
The scenery before his eyes—whether it was the simple furnishings in the wooden cabin, the serene night of Frozenwater Town, or the boundless dusk on the far horizon...
Everything froze in that instant, as though captured in a still oil painting.
And then—
Crack—
Accompanied by a crisp sound, the entire world began to shatter.
It broke into countless crystal-clear shards, scattering into the endless darkness.
This was the truth of [Canaan].
This sanctuary of the heart that Brother Rast had always held dear, seemingly an idyllic land detached from the world… was in truth, another kind of special historical echo.
Like all the other echoes of the past, known as the “Reflections of Bygone Days”, it drifted alone within the infinite Night World.
From the very beginning, this was a lie jointly woven by Grey and Little Ai—
A vain illusion built atop bubbles.
And since it was a dream, then one day, it was bound to collapse.
Now, the dream had ended.
……
“The world is false, but love is real.”
By Brother Rast’s ears, Aimeith’s words still seemed to echo.
And thus he relaxed both body and mind, letting himself sink into the boundless Nightfall.
His consciousness resembled a flickering bubble, rising and falling within a sea of nothingness.
Until, in a certain instant, the bubble burst.
The sensations of his five senses gradually returned, and Brother Rast opened his eyes. What entered his vision was a towering spire ceiling that stretched endlessly upward.
This was a tall tower—not the Watchtower that had already been destroyed by the rampaging Judgement Angel, but the Arcane Tower.
In other words, he had finally escaped the Night World and returned to the real world?
Though in truth, the time Brother Rast had spent in the Night World this time amounted to only a few days...
Yet having uncovered so many secrets, unraveling so many mysteries about his own origins, Brother Rast couldn’t help but feel as though lifetimes had passed.
Just as this thought emerged—
The next moment, Brother Rast felt something damp against his palm.
He lifted his gaze slightly, only to see a fluffy white mink crouching beside him, sticking out its tongue and gently licking his palm.
In those ruby-like beast eyes, a worry distinctly human flickered within.
It wasn’t until Brother Rast awoke that the worry in those beast eyes faded away, replaced by a nearly imperceptible delight.
“Dean Silver... to be honest, your behavior is becoming more and more like a dog. Don’t tell me you’ve reverted to ancestral traits?”
Brother Rast withdrew his hand and sat upright.
“I mean, we clearly left the Night World together, but I’ve been awake for ages now, and you still showed no signs of waking.”
“I was worried some angel intercepted you on the way out, so I had no choice but to resort to this Rast measure.”
“Isn’t this how it goes in those novels and anime? The unconscious male protagonist gets licked awake by his own pet…”
“Dean Silver, did you just use the word ‘pet’?”
“You damn brat! Memory Erasing Punch! Forget it, forget all of it!”
Brother Rast raised his hand just in time, blocking Dean Silver’s frenzied claws as she exploded in fluffy rage.
Then with a flick of his wrist, he grabbed the scruff of the little mink, holding her mid-air where she flailed but could not reach him.
“Well, anyway…”
“You made it back safely after all, and in one piece too. That’s already way better than the worst-case scenario I had in mind.”
After flailing for a while in the air, Dean Silver finally calmed down, leaping lightly onto Brother Rast’s shoulder.
“If you’d ended up like before—covered in wounds, unconscious, and back in the campus infirmary—I’d really be worried about Little Hiltina, Little Sisel and the others…”
Dean Silver’s tail swished with a hint of lingering fear. “If your old flames found out—”
“That I entered a historical echo with you, only to let you get seriously injured again, they’d probably skin me alive and turn me into a mink coat.”
“Only at times like this do you remember that you’re a mink, huh, Dean Silver… Just like that talking white dog in some anime, who only remembers it’s a dog when its owner falls into a pool.”
“Little Brother Rast, when did you become so snarky, so fond of sarcasm?”
Dean Silver squatted on Brother Rast’s shoulder, scrutinizing the boy below with suspicion.
Even she had to admit: compared to the first time they met on the high-speed rail to Star Cluster University, the black-haired boy before her had changed quite a bit.
She narrowed her eyes. “So all of this... is Little Ai’s doing?”
“Wait... you clearly returned to reality at the same time as me, yet you slept for so long. Don’t tell me that’s related to this too?”
Dean Silver asked, testing the waters.
“Could it be that thing you and Little Ai mentioned... ‘Canaan’?”
Though she had gone through this historical echo with Brother Rast, and although Grey and Aimeith didn’t deliberately hide things from her during their talks with Brother Rast...
Many things—especially those regarding Canaan—still remained an unspoken bond solely shared between Grey, Aimeith, and Brother Rast, the three people tied to Canaan.
To Dean Silver, she had only heard fragmented bits and pieces and couldn’t piece together the complete picture from them.
“BINGO, correct answer, but no prize.”
Brother Rast tossed Dean Silver back onto his shoulder, stretching his limbs that had gone slightly numb from prolonged sleep. Then he began walking toward the exit of the Arcane Tower.
……
“Professor Barbarossa, farewell.”
Brother Rast called out toward the empty depths of the Arcane Tower.
“I probably won’t try entering another historical echo anytime soon, but I’ll remember to visit you often. I won’t forget to bring the good liquor you love.”
“Haha, then I’ll be waiting for you to bring all kinds of fine wines. When the time comes, we’ll share a drink or two.”
A hearty voice echoed from deep within the Arcane Tower.
After receiving the response from Professor Barbarossa, the guardian of the tower, Brother Rast did not hesitate further. He stepped out from the bounds of the Arcane Tower and embarked on the road back to Star Cluster University.
“Wait, with those swift, decisive steps of yours… not a shred of hesitation…”
“You said you wouldn’t enter a historical echo for a while, so what are you planning to do next?”
Dean Silver crouched on Brother Rast’s shoulder, speaking in slight confusion.
In his impression, ever since meeting Brother Rast, clearing the Night World and historical echoes had been this guy’s only objective.
From dawn to dusk, he was either exploring the Night World or on his way to explore it.
Now, hearing Brother Rast say he wouldn’t enter a historical echo for a while truly made Dean Silver a little unaccustomed.
“Of course, it’s to prepare and accumulate for the final push to ascend to the Legendary rank.”
Brother Rast answered directly without concealment.
He hadn’t forgotten the final words Little Ai had left him before the illusion known as “Canaan” shattered.
Aside from the historical echo where Aimeith’s Angel-grade self was sealed in slumber, and its precise spatial coordinates—
There was also the intelligence about the deepest self-sealed historical echo of Little Ai, an extremely dangerous place.
Although the “Night World” itself had been created due to the final wish of Grey—
The true root sustaining the long-term existence of the Night World was in fact the “Eternal Night Stele,” left behind by that nameless “Nameless Fool” of the Age of the Gods, long regarded by the Gravekeeper as the ultimate foundation.
It was the tomb of eras, the gravestone of civilizations, and the true origin behind the title “Gravekeeper.”
From the Age of the Gods until now, all that each era had experienced—germination, development, flourishing, decline, dusk—every stage of human civilization, every piece of history, every stretch of time, was recorded on the Eternal Night Stele by the Gravekeeper of that age.
All the fragments, remnants, and traces of those histories were engraved upon that stone.
“Brother Rast, sounds amazing, right?”
“With today’s advanced storage technology, a single grain of rice can hold the data of a massive library. Yet, those quantum storage devices won’t even Rast a hundred years before failing due to internal decay.”
“Those now-obsolete external hard drives are more reliable; if well-made, they can preserve data for centuries. Printed material made with special paper and ink would be even better, possibly Rasting tens of thousands of years.”
“But ten thousand years is already the limit of these conventional storage methods… Disk read heads will rust, paper will eventually weather.”
“To reliably preserve complex data and stored information for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years—spanning not just one era, but from the Age of the Gods until today—there are only two ways—”
“The first method: knowledge passed down verbally from person to person. As long as human inheritance doesn’t break, the accumulated wisdom of generations will not disappear, passed down like a torch.”
“The second method: just like prehistoric humanity did—『carve the words into stone』.”
“Words carved into stone may still survive even after millions or tens of millions of years.”
“This was the viewpoint proposed by that nameless Nameless Fool of the Age of the Gods.”
“And the The Fool’s Library and the Eternal Night Stele are the two paths he pursued—his final gifts left for humanity.”
“Now, the The Fool’s Library and the Eternal Night Stele have become the symbols of the Shoreguard and the Gravekeeper respectively.”
“The The Fool’s Library, passed down from generation to generation, the fire never extinguished… while the Eternal Night Stele silently etches the passage of time into stone.”
This was the content explained in the recording that Grey had left for Brother Rast in the Watchtower.
And the Night World that Grey later opened, its root was precisely the Eternal Night Stele. Because the stele had engraved the memories of bygone times, the Night World could simulate those vivid, lifelike historical echoes.
After the Night World was established, under the power of the Eternal Night Stele, it underwent natural evolution, forming new rules and orders.
Even Grey, the very one who had opened the Night World, could no longer interfere much.
Let alone the fact that, as the Price to Fate, Grey had already fallen from the status of Angel and now wandered in the deepest reaches of the Starry Sea.
That was why Brother Rast had become trapped in the hopeless cycle of Deep Blue Harbor—not by Grey’s intention, but due to the Night World’s autonomous evolution driven by the Eternal Night Stele.
And the bottom-most historical echo where Aimeith had self-sealed herself, over time, had also changed drastically, becoming extremely perilous.
Since Aimeith had said, “Only after becoming Legendary can you attempt it”...
Then Brother Rast believed that Little Ai would never lie to him.
Until he reached Legendary rank, he would never recklessly make the attempt, nor squander the chance to awaken Little Ai.
On the contrary—until he brought Little Ai back from the historical echo—
Advancing to Legendary became Brother Rast’s only goal.
……
After returning to Star Cluster University, Brother Rast resumed his back-and-forth routine between the dormitory meditation room and the Ashes College of Star Cluster University.
Just like he had experienced countless times before.
Only, no matter how much he meditated, how much he trained himself… Brother Rast could still feel his current position stuck, bound at the very peak of the Sixth Rank.
No matter how much more he accumulated, it was merely inching forward on top of a summit.
But he could never break through that final barrier into the realm known as Legendary, never pierce that Rast layer of glass and complete his ultimate transformation.
Since becoming a transcendent, this was the first time Brother Rast had been stuck for so long at a single rank.
“How does it feel, genius that you are… finally tasting what it’s like for ordinary people, struggling helplessly at a bottleneck?”
On the road from Ashes College back to the dorm, Dean Silver watched the pensive Brother Rast and flicked his fluffy tail.
“But this is only natural.”
“This is the threshold of becoming Legendary… a leap from human to non-human, toward the divine.”
“Since ancient times, the barrier between Sixth Rank peak and Legendary has blocked countless peerless transcendent beings… Even someone like Little Grey, who later became an Angel, took several years to break through—”
“In some ways, ascending from Legendary to Angel isn’t even as hard as breaking through from Sixth Rank to Legendary.”
“At this point, I can tell you: while the Western Continent may not show any Legendary walking its lands on the surface—”
“In reality, each great nation, whether it’s our Granville Empire, or the Theocracy and the Holy Kingdom, all have Legendary-level powers guarding them.”
“If not, war would have already broken out among them, and that fragile surface balance wouldn’t have Rasted this long.”
“Even so, taking the most optimistic estimate, the total number of Legendary beings across the entire continent would not exceed the count of two hands. The actual number is likely even fewer.”
Dean Silver gently brushed Brother Rast’s neck with his fluffy tail.
“If you continue like this—burying your head in relentless training, relying solely on roleplay-based cultivation—you’ll never ascend to Legendary.”
“You need an opportunity. A chance that aligns with the true essence of your own sequence… to open the path to your own legend.”
“I understand, Dean Silver.”
Brother Rast walked along the small path between the maple trees on campus.
He casually extended his hand.
The next moment, a cube formed from countless particles of liquid metal manifested in his palm.
Though clearly a creation of metal, this Mechanical Core seemed to possess life itself. The liquid undying metal changed forms with Brother Rast’s intent.
At times, it became a revolver sharp as frost; at others, a jet-black sniper rifle.
This was the very reason Brother Rast persisted in visiting the Ashes College of Star Cluster University each day. With the help of Dean Agatha, a skilled machinist, his synchronization rate with the Relic he had obtained in the Night World—“Mechanical Flame Source”—rose steadily every day.
And in accordance with Brother Rast’s preferences, the “Flame Source” had been modified many times, making it increasingly suited to his personal combat style.
“As for the path to legend Dean Silver mentioned, I’ve more or less found a general direction—”
“I’m merely waiting… for the moment everything is perfectly aligned.”
Brother Rast’s footsteps paused at the door of his dorm, but he did not open it.
Because he saw a pure white envelope in the mailbox outside his dorm.
There was no sender’s name written on the envelope—only three sharp sword slashes: two long, one short.
“A letter from Hiltina?”
Brother Rast recognized the sender based on the agreed-upon markings.
In fact, now that everyone carried a smart terminal, most communication among transcendents was conducted through messaging software.
Among the people Brother Rast knew, only Hiltina still preserved the habit of handwritten letters.
『Brother Rast, as it’s inconvenient to talk while you’re training at Ashes College, I’m writing to inform you:』
Upon opening the envelope, the letter contained only a few short lines.
The handwriting was delicate and elegant, yet each stroke carried a sharp edge, making one instinctively think of that gallant rapier wielder.
『My father has sent you a formal invitation today via the official channels of Star Cluster University, requesting your presence at the palace of the Arandel Empire tomorrow.』
『The intention is to discuss…』
That stern and rigid script suddenly showed an unnatural pause.
『…to discuss the engagement between you and me.』