There's a saying: "Everything comes in threes"—referring to the tendency for things to present themselves in three possibilities, forms, or situations.
Whether this ancient wisdom, derived from numerous daily observations, is always accurate is debatable. But human reactions to sudden panic do indeed typically fall into three types.
Hysterical screaming to vent emotions, aggression triggered by stress response, and lastly—when the impact is too violent, causing feedback function to shut down—rigidity.
A simple example would be creatures that rely more on spinal reflexes than their tiny brains for "thinking."
The hissing aspect, the breakingdancing aspect, the spinosaurus aspect.
Authority has spoken. Authority.
And Akane's current state was clearly the third type.
One moment, she was struggling in Hii Kōri's sudden embrace, issuing shy whispers about such impropriety, demanding to be put down, trying to maintain the last vestiges of a queen's reserve over his excessively disrespectful intimacy.
The next moment, the instant Hii Kōri effortlessly crossed the boundary of the spiral staircase and unhesitatingly leaped down through the deep void at its center, that rosy little mouth—suddenly covered with pallor—could no longer utter a single sound.
The plummeting sensation almost seized her vital organs. The ever-burning lamps meant for illumination blurred into a twisted ribbon of light.
The howling wind filled her ears, drowning out all other sounds—even her own heart pounding like a war drum. Yet the tickling sensation of flying hair strands brushing against her cheeks was exceptionally clear... All of Akane's senses were filled by this blur and violence. Her brain didn't even have room left for thought.
The familiar world seemed, in an instant, completely overturned and shattered. All unspoken words and struggles turned into a suffocating gasp caught in her throat.
Her entire body stiff and nestled—or more accurately, curled up—in Hii Kōri's arms. Those beautiful dark green pupils involuntarily dilated, reflecting the rapidly shifting light and shadow, losing focus. Her arms, which moments ago had been beating against his shoulders, now tightly wrapped around his neck like a drowning victim.
A hundred meters of free fall. Terrifying?
Yes. Very terrifying.
Even after Hii Kōri landed lightly and steadily set her down, letting her personally feel the infinitely precious solidity of the stone slabs beneath her feet, Akane still took a long while to recover.
Her legs were weak; she could barely stand. Leaning against the cold wall behind her, she gasped heavily, as if just pulled back from the brink of drowning.
"How do you feel?"
Seeing this, the culprit himself acted like nothing had happened. Leaning against the huge stone door, he watched the queen, who was propped up on her knees, gasping pathetically, smiling brightly.
"This kind of vertical drop isn't exactly commonplace for ninjas, but it's not a particularly rare scenario either."
I don't know what she was agonizing over before, but now she doesn't have the mind to care about those things, right?
Mm, miraculous healing, Doctor Hii!
"Hah... haah... d-don't think you can fool me... I've seen... how ninjas move—"
The patient, however, didn't seem very appreciative.
Having barely caught her breath, Akane—her face still pale, shot Hii Kōri a fierce glare and rebuttal through gritted teeth.
"Even at this height... you normally jump back and forth between sides!"
"That's ordinary ninjas. Under my command as a super Yang Release user, of course you get a unique experience."
"Your sense of self-affirmation is truly overwhelming!"
Furious at this unapologetic response to the point of almost forgetting her recent terror, Akane wiped away the few tears squeezed from her eyes due to physiological phenomena, and angrily walked forward, no longer looking at him.
From her robes, she took out an ancient key, kept close for nearly two thousand years, and inserted it into the lock of the stone door mechanism. Turning it with effort, she grumbled without good humor.
Even she herself seemed unaware that her tone now was much more relaxed than back in the office and corridor.
Awe, fear, responsibility, self-blame... those heavy emotions pressing on her heart seemed to have evaporated with that breathtaking leap.
Leaving only the purest, most vivid irritation at this utterly unpredictable guy.
"Isn't that taken for granted? Not treating oneself as special—well, that's the right way to conduct oneself. Because no matter how much you believe you're special, there are still many things you cannot do."
"But conversely, if you can't even trust yourself, even things you could originally do become difficult to reach. One shouldn't be too extreme. Even if you realize your abilities are lacking, there's no need to lose legitimate confidence, you know."
"What kind of logic is that... an optimist's rhetoric?" Akane continued her movements, humming twice in response.
"Hmm~ An optimist? I wouldn't say so."
Hii Kōri walked beside her, steadying her hand to help her apply force together. "On the contrary, everyone says I'm quite pessimistic—to the point of having self-destructive tendencies, even."
"I can't see any so-called self-destructive tendencies in you."
"Exactly. I don't think I'm truly that pessimistic either. So, just
take it as life experience. Though you're older in years, when it comes to experience and experience, I daresay I'm far richer than you."
"Ha?"
This remark precisely struck the queen's most sensitive wound. She turned her head angrily and glared at Hii Kōri. "Are you saying I'm just a woman who's spent her whole life cooped up in this little place with no insight?"
"Suddenly saying that? Even if you're acting coquettishly, you can't deny the fact."
"Who's acting like a baby?!"
This scathing comment instantly made Akane's cheeks flush crimson—whether from shame or anger, it was hard to tell.
A series of nearly overlapping mechanical sounds masked their gradually lightening chatter. Gears engaged, chains tightened, and then the heavy multiple stone doors opened in sequence, revealing the spacious area hidden behind.
It was a large circular space. Looking up, one could see this was a tower, with nothing inside. The dome was high and distant; light transmitted through a design similar to the courtyard, illuminating this darkness beneath Rōran alongside the ever-burning lamps below.
From the tower's edge extended inward a large ring-shaped platform. Within the platform was a deep hole—so deep that falling in would surely mean no rescue. At the very center of the hole was a comparatively tiny platform.
Four life-sized stone statues stood around the circular platform. These were perhaps the images of Rōran's founders.
The statues' heads tilted slightly forward, their gazes converging on the hemispheric mechanism at the platform's center, surrounded by intricate runes. The hemisphere's surface was smooth, its material neither metal nor stone, divided by a slender gap into two halves, as if it could be opened.
Directly opposite the entrance, a bridge extended from the ring-shaped platform to that central platform rising from the deep hole like a sea-anchoring pillar. The bridge had no railings. Though wide enough for several people to walk abreast, it appeared quite narrow against the backdrop of the huge hole below, as if at any time it would be Devoured by the darkness.
This place was the vent where the Dragon Pulse neared the surface.
"Oh... so this is the Dragon Pulse... Star Blood."
Hii Kōri walked to the platform's edge and softly marveled. At this proximity, even without relying on Kagura Mind's Eye, he could clearly sense the Dragon Pulse's power beneath.
"Star Blood? What does that mean?"
Walking to Hii Kōri's side, Akane tilted her head slightly in doubt. Through the power inherited in her bloodline, she could manipulate the Dragon Pulse's power to a certain extent. But having never activated it, let alone personally touch the Dragon Pulse, she naturally wouldn't know what Hii Kōri's term meant.
"Explaining it will be somewhat troublesome. This isn't something that can be clarified in a few words." Hii Kōri's gaze remained fixed on the deep darkness below. "After I finish handling the 'work' here, how about I answer you in detail?"
"...Do you need me to awaken the Dragon Pulse?"
"If needed later, I'll call you. But for now..." Hii Kōri said, pacing toward that slender bridge, his tone gaining a note of seriousness.
"Let me try first."
Perhaps feeling that if she merely let Hii Kōri act alone—unable to uphold her ancestors' responsibility, yet unable to personally sever it herself—then her sense of duty would remain forever half-hearted, stuck in between.
After hesitating a moment, Akane also pursued, wanting to follow him onto that dangerous bridge.
But before she could step onto it, Hii Kōri stopped her.
"The movement might be a bit large. I probably won't have the energy to mind you then. Wait over there for a while, okay?"
"...Mm."
Akane looked into his eyes, and finally nodded. She obediently retreated a few steps, returning to the relative safety of the edge of the ring-shaped platform.
Withdrawing his gaze from behind, Hii Kōri walked to the small platform at the center of the void. He didn't activate the hemispherical device, but instead swept his gaze over the four silent statues around him.
Then, he exhaled a breath of Zhuoji, and his hands formed the Īśāna Seal.
Yin Release output rapidly increased. As an extension of his will, Spirit Thread Nerves—like the spider thread touching Buddha lowered into hell, carrying a faint shimmer—rapidly extended downward into the bottomless void beneath, in an instant that dim bottom.
Then, the threads didn't pause. Like the most slender yet tough drill bit, they pierced through the hard rock layer at the bottom, continuing deeper into the earth.
Penetrating dozens of meters of thick rock, Hii Kōri's consciousness once again connected, through the extended Spirit Thread Nerves, with that dying star blood.
This time, what he "saw" was not the past memories he had perceived in the Great Sand Sea, but an empty consciousness.
Soundless, formless, thoughtless—indescribable, yet truly existing. A weary yet gentle consciousness.
Even though already dying, with no chance of hatching, the star soul would still gladly offer the remnant of its remaining power to those who could reach and feel it.
The land that, though dipped with its bloodstains, could still give birth to li
fe was so. The natural energy that thrived in the so-called Three Sacred Lands was so. The animals that relied on this land to survive and evolve were so. The humans born upon it, walking upon it, were so.
Only wishing that the life born upon this body may blossom and bear fruit, and fly into the distance.
And so, he asked.
[Child of Man, what do you seek?]
What do I seek?
What I seek is only true wisdom.
Without the slightest hesitation, Hii Kōri lowered his gaze and spoke the ideal he had never wavered.
In his previous life, people often said that the limits of technology might arrive sooner than imagined.
Perhaps until humanity's extinction, it would never leave the bounds of the solar system.
He utterly despised this.
Exploring the boundaries of technology should be a romantic endeavor. The unlimited imagination of tomorrow is the very driving force.
Groping forward into the unknown—perhaps one might hit dead ends, encounter obstacles everywhere, perhaps truly reach a limit someday. But before that, to draw an earth as a prison and self-restraint—what kind of logic is that?
I wish to save you. I wish to return to this planet everything the Ōtsutsuki plundered. But that is not for the sake of saving this world.
I don't care about how the people of this world live, what dilemmas they will encounter, whether they'll have enough to eat, whether they have dreams or hopes. I don't care about such distant futures.
People who have no place in my life—I don't want them affecting my heart.
What I pursue hatch is only the possibility of saving you, of making the star soul again—the very act of proving whether my "technology" can reach the limit.
"So, become my accomplice."
The incantations inscribed beneath Hii Kōri's feet all dissipate. The hemispherical device split in two from the gap like an opening eye, revealing a blue-purple glow like a Eyes.
Faint fluorescence rapidly spread upward along the Spirit Thread Nerves from the Dragon Pulse, all flowing into Hii Kōri's body.
It was not a particularly vast power—not even enough to compare with the One-Tail chakra Shukaku had shared with him. Yet this tiny thread of natural energy was merely a wedge, a seed.
Likewise, it was a symbol of a contract achieved.
The "Dragon Pulse Eye" slowly closed. Having achieved his purpose, Hii Kōri slowly exhaled, then intended to discuss with Akane the future development of Rōran and the handover work for her to join his chamber of commerce.
But as he just turned around, before he could speak, he saw Akane, who had been waiting on the outer platform, collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
And beside her stood quietly a figure draped in a pitch-black cloak, his face indistinguishable.
A figure who did not exist—even in Hii Kōri's perception.
***
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