The retreat of the Holy Legion was not a tactical withdrawal; it was a panicked rout. When the first Starmetal slugs broke the sound barrier, the "Holy Protection" of the Paladins didn't just fail—it detonated. The electromagnetic interference from my railguns scrambled their prayer-circuits, turning their enchanted armor into electrified ovens.
But I didn't watch the carnage. I was looking at Kenji.
The Hero lay in the mud, his white tracksuit stained with the dark, copper-scented reality of his own blood. The Sun-Eater blade lay a few feet away, its light guttering like a dying candle. He looked at me—not at the scholar, but at the Silver Sovereign—with a look of hollow betrayal.
"You... you really are him," Kenji rasped, his voice bubbling. "The Demon Lord."
"I am a scientist, Kenji-kun," I said, my humanoid form flickering as I adjusted my internal mana-pressure. "And you are a victim of a very old, very cruel experiment."
I signaled to Fenris. The Great Wolf stepped forward, his obsidian claws retracting. He didn't growl; he gently nudged Kenji with his nose, the "Vanguard" mana from his fur acting as a stabilizing field for the boy's fluctuating heart rate.
"Take him to the mountain," I commanded. "And bring the Priestess. She needs to see the bill for her 'Miracles'."
The Iron-Crag was no longer a secret. As we ascended, the camouflage veils fell away, revealing the sheer scale of the industrialization. Kenji, draped over Fenris's back, stared in a daze at the glowing blue tubes of the mana-conduits and the Goblins operating massive, steam-hissing pneumatic presses.
"This... this isn't magic," Laina whispered as she followed behind us, her staff held tight. "This is a violation. You've turned the earth itself into a machine."
"The earth was always a machine, Laina," I replied, my voice echoing through the metallic hallway. "I just finally bothered to read the manual."
I led them to the Heart of the Forge, a restricted laboratory deep in the mountain's roots. This wasn't where we made weapons; this was where I had been dissecting the "Miracles" I had captured from the previous loop.
In the center of the room was a glass cylinder. Inside it, a single "Miracle" spell—a Fragment of the Morning Star—was suspended in a magnetic field.
"Do you know how your 'Hero System' actually works, Kenji-kun?" I asked, gesturing to the glowing fragment.
Kenji struggled to sit up on the medical cot. "The Goddess... she chose me. Because I had a 'brave soul' or whatever."
"The 'Goddess' is a planetary-scale mana-collector," I said, my cobalt eyes projecting a 3D hologram of the world's ley-lines. "And your 'brave soul' is nothing more than a high-capacity capacitor. The Holy Kingdom doesn't summon heroes to save the world. They summon heroes to charge the world."
I tapped a command into a Starmetal console. The hologram shifted, showing a silhouette of a Hero. Every time the Hero performed a "Heroic Deed"—slaying a monster, 'liberating' a village—the mana released by the conflict was absorbed by the Hero's soul, then filtered back to the Church's central altar in Oros.
"It's a closed-loop economy of violence," I continued, my voice cold and clinical. "You are a vacuum cleaner for the world's suffering. The more 'Evil' you defeat, the more power the Church gets. And do you know what happens when the 'Hero' is fully charged?"
Kenji's eyes widened. "The... the Return Home?"
"The 'Sacrificial Miracle'," I corrected. "They don't send you back to Tokyo, Kenji. They detonate you. Your soul is shattered to provide enough mana to reset the timeline and maintain the Church's status quo for another thousand years. That's what the 'Silver Loop' is. You aren't the Savior. You're the fuel."
The silence in the laboratory was heavy, broken only by the hum of the mana-batteries. Laina's staff clattered to the floor. She had spent her life praying to a source that viewed her as a cog in a power plant.
Kenji looked at his hands—the hands that had been promised glory and homecoming. "They... they lied. About everything."
"They had to," I said, walking over to him. I didn't offer a hug; I offered a data-slate. "A Hero who knows he's a battery doesn't fight with 'Righteous Fury.' And without that fury, the [Plot Armor] doesn't activate. I had to break your faith to save your life, Kenji."
"Why?" Kenji asked, his voice trembling. "Why save me? I was sent here to kill you. I wanted to kill you."
I looked at the "Heart of the Crag," the violet stone that hummed with the mountain's life. "Because in Loop 01, I saw my friend die for a 'Hero's' whim. I saw a village burn for a 'Prophecy's' quota. I realized then that the only way to stop the loop isn't to kill the Hero—it's to kill the Script."
I turned to the Archivist, my internal interface glowing. "Archivist, is he ready?"
< Answer: Sato Kenji's Narrative Density has dropped to 'Civilian' levels. The World-System can no longer track him as a Protagonist. He is 'invisible' to the Church's Miracles. >
"Now," I said, looking at Kenji. "You have a choice. You can stay in this mountain and help me build a world that doesn't need heroes. Or you can go back out there as a 'False Prophet' and help me tear the Church's altar down."
Kenji looked at the glass cylinder, where the "Miracle" flickered like a trapped firefly. He stood up, his legs shaking, and reached out. Instead of the Sun-Eater, he grabbed a simple Starmetal wrench from the workbench.
"I think I'm done with swords," Kenji said, a small, jagged piece of his old Shonen-resolve returning—but this time, it was tempered with the cold steel of the Iron Sovereign. "Teach me the science, Aris. I want to learn how to break their machine."
I felt a genuine ripple of satisfaction. The "Hero" was dead. The "Engineer" was born.
"Baron!" I shouted toward the forge. "Clear a workspace! We have a new apprentice, and he knows a lot about the 'Sun's' output!"
[Volume 3: Chapter 4 End]