Buzz-!

  “...Aleph! Wake up! What’s going on..?! Why did you suddenly faint! Hey!”

  “Ugh…”

  Aleph used his arm as a support on the ground. He opened his eyes and saw the familiar GUI.

  “Huff…”

  “Hey, what happeo you? Are you alright?”

  “...Wait…”

  His voice was quite hoarse. His throat felt dry. When he fully woke up, he saw his surroundings.

  It was the same farm where the fourth Herrscher’s corpse fell. He looked at his hands and saw a viridest green crystal grasped by him.

  Instinctively, he threw it away.

  The purple light mixed with green traces flew along the trajectory. His elemental sight was active until now. He could see the hundreds of honkai beasts that surrounded him.

  Sou-!

  “Hey… You suddenly colpsed! Are you really fine?”

  “...Yes.”

  Aleph’s heart skipped a beat. It was an unfamiliar yet familiar voice.

  He focused on standing up first.

  ‘So that’s how it is…’

  Fht months, he lost most of his memories. He only acted acc to his ‘intuition’, or rather, subscious. He trusted Mei, Keviein, Mobius, and Vill-V due to his ‘future vision’. He said those encing words to Hua because he knew her future.

  Aleph grabbed his ned rubbed it, only to realize he was still wearing the iron suit.

  ‘My amnesiac self is too simir to me in the uy. I am grateful that I never became that naive.’

  At this moment, he fully recalled everything. Be it his trauma or emotional baggage, he pletely recalled everything.

  ‘Ugh… I o take a moment tanize myself.’

  Aleph felt like he woke up from a long a. His body doesn’t feel weak, yet his mind feels extremely exhausted.

  ‘Great Sage, are you there?’

  {Answer: Great Sage will be on-standby for your and.}

  ‘Alright… Thank you.’

  It didn’t give a response. Aleph didn’t dwell on it further and snapped back to reality.

  Unlike his expectations, Aleph was able to smoothly run his iron suit.

  “Be careful. Three fighter jets are headed your way.”

  Zoom-!

  A sense of ‘prig’ came behind Aleph’s neck.

  [Name: Johnson]

  [Location: First Institute…]

  [Name: Greg]

  [Location: First Institute…]

  A long line of names appeared in his sight. It was the result of [Informatioribution] taking effect.

  “I was locked in.”

  Aleph tried to ‘activate’ the [Tattered Robe] and [Sphere Boundary]. Much to his surprise, it felt like there was something preventing him from doing so. That sensation was akin to a needle pierg through his cloak.

  ‘Rule-based items… Nothing less from Fate.’

  His full recovery allowed him to see through the nature of some things. The [Tattered Robe] looked simir to an attire worn by an Assassin within a game. She had the ability to ‘ceal’ her preseo a bare minimum.

  “Mn…”

  “It’s bad. You’re locked on.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Without expining, Aleph used the thrusters and flew to the barn at aremely fast speed.

  Bam-!

  The entrance was broken. The sound of cows and chis greeted his ears. The ‘prig’ feeling on his neck disappeared.

  “What do you pn to do?”

  A tinge of excitement was heard in Vill-V’s voice. It was hard to imagine hoh would shake off Fire MOTH’s surveilnce.

  “There’s also that Herrscher Core. You’ll just leave it there?”

  “That’s fi will e back to us anyways. There’s o waste time hiding it.”

  For him, it was easier to gain access to the Herrscher Cores legally. There’s o hide and study it himself. Moreover, he was still wary of it.

  That white space...

  'If I'm not mistaken...'

  He didn't dare touch it again.

  Aleph walked to the other barn door a.

  Under Vill-V’s surprised looks, he simply flew out to the sky. In Aleph’s perspective, he was out in the open. However, iellite’s view, it was as if he wasn’t there.

  She knew about his ‘stealth system’ that made his suit transparent, but the most advanced satellites not catg any of his traces was another matter altogether.

  A few mier, Aleph made sure that there wasn’t anything trag him.

  “Sigh…”

  “How anticlimactic.”

  “It is. Though, it’s much better than fighting her head-on.”

  The pair’s versation sighe end to a long night.

  *****

  Tap.

  Tap.

  Tap.

  Mei’s remained rested on her hands. She was staring bnkly at the rge s within the first institute. It was the monitor for the satellite readings.

  Just now, they witnessed an inprehensible thing.

  “It’s ive! The target is not inside!”

  “Rewind the feed. We missed something.”

  “Where did it e from? Did the third institute create an exoskeleton suit like that?”

  “It’s not impossible…”

  The chaotic yet somewhat anized noise formed a umosphere.

  ‘Aleph… You killed a Herrscher…’

  As one of Aleph’s trusted people, Mei kneas in the “exoskeleton suit”. Everyone saw how he seemingly came out of nowhere, severed the fourth Herrscher’s body into two parts, and disappeared.

  ‘Nevermind. I’ll call him ter.’

  It wasn’t just Mei who was affected by the huge shock.

  “Just like her… right.”

  Mobius had an idea.

  “He must have some samples. But…”

  Their retionship, irospective, was that of a give-and-take. They studied Aleph’s ‘physical mutation’ together. It didn’t take long before nearly everything was uncovered.

  Even so, Aleph carried on their scheduled meetings. It was as if he fot why he was helping her in the first pce.

  Mobius was used to havis. She would ake them on without being fident in her ability to repay them.

  However…

  “How should I do it?”

  *****

  Swoosh-!

  The bck iron suit nded smoothly into the ground. Its front parts were disassembled, paving the way for Aleph to e out of it.

  "It was a risk assessment. I didn't expect you to truly front the herrscher alone."

  The first one who greeted him was her thaein. Her arms crossed as she gave a calm look at him.

  “Things happened. It ’t be helped, doctor.”

  “You…”

  Einstein was startled by his new way of addressihere was only oime when he called her as such.

  “Your amnesia was cured?”

  “Yeah. It happened all too sudden. I’m sorry to have made you worry for months.”

  “...It’s not a big deal.”

  For a moment, she was at a loss on how to address him.

  “You keep calling me Aleph, doctor. It doesn’t matter if things ge or not. It’s just that… I need some time tanize myself.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  The two talked for a while before Einstei him alone.

  Aleph sat on the sofa as he rubbed his eyes.

  “My head’s too messy. It’s like I've gained a bunch of worries…”

  Unlike his amnesiac self, the past Aleph was burdened with too many things. Be it his memories of the war, his initial excitement to this world, the gradual disappoi of not being able to do much…

  Everything mixed like a bunch of fruits inside a blender.

  “This [Achievement Hunter]... rather, my system…” He looked at the panel bnkly. “I could’ve interfered more in the past with it…”

  He thought of the event when his parents died. It came too abruptly. He reparing for the honkai, yet never had he thought that his parents' life would fall due to them.

  Aleph was pletely helpless at that time. The teology inside his head couldn’t be realized due to the honkai’s tendency to grow stronger with the civilization. It left him with no choice but to anticipate some future events and wait. He could’ve grasped the initiative, yet he didn’t—

  For fear of the world’s end.

  He was self-aware. There were many brilliant people in the Previous Era yet they all failed to save the world. The best they could do was to pass oorch to the geion.

  Even if his world’s iron suits… even if the dark energy reactor was realized, they still fell short to the peak of this era’s teology.

  Sp-!

  “There’s no need for bad thoughts. I came back from the dead. I have this system…”

  It didn’t take long for his worries to be wiped away.