"Now, let us begin Dream's Twilight."
"Yes, Lord Captain!"
Rosemary's heart was pounding wildly. Her delicate body trembled faintly. Even someone as mature and composed as her could not help feeling anxious and nervous about what she was about to do.
After all, she was about to set an entire world on fire.
She was not Elias. She had never witnessed anything on this scale in her entire life.
"Do it, Rosemary. Salvation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Sometimes, to save something, we must first destroy something else."
"...Lord Captain, you even have experience with this?"
"More or less. Although I wasn't the one who personally did it, I once allowed a beautiful and powerful goddess to utterly destroy the world so that a new era could arrive."
Elias shrugged. His only regret was that he had not witnessed Finality destroy the world with his own eyes. He imagined it must have been an incomparably magnificent sight, terrifying to the point of seeming sacred.
He saw Rosemary's nervousness and gently took her hand before speaking considerately.
"If you can't bring yourself to do it, I can handle it instead."
"Thank you, Lord Captain, but Rita should be the one to do this. One should naturally save one's own world. Besides... what I must do is actually quite simple."
"Is that so? Then do your best."
"Yes."
Rosemary nodded firmly, then took a deep breath and threw the lantern in her hand onto the ground.
In the next instant, the ghostly blue flame lost its restraints and began burning freely across the land of the dream world. Before long, the flames ignited the sky, the sea, and the [Nightmares].
After Rosemary infused the Ether Anchor with the wish to burn down the world, it faithfully carried out its wielder's final command, bringing an end called conflagration to this dream shared by all living beings!
It transformed into the concept of [Burning].
A flame that nothing could extinguish.
If it encountered mountains, it burned the mountains. If it encountered seas, it burned the seas!
It was like setting a colossal painting ablaze. Even if that painting depicted rivers, streams, and even oceans, none of them could extinguish the fire consuming it.
After all, how could something false extinguish something real?
"It's still a little too slow. Let me speed things up!"
If this dream world were compared to a painting, then the painting was simply too vast. Even world-destroying flames could not burn it away quickly.
Thus, Elias decided to summon a gale!
"Tempest, submit to me!"
Just as the false waters of the dream world could not extinguish the flames consuming it, the wind within the dream could not spread those flames.
But this was the Herrscher's wind from beyond the world!
The Gem of Desire embedded in Elias' wing radiated emerald light. In the next instant, hurricanes carried the ghostly blue flames across the world. Everything in their path burned to ashes, and the world became a sea of fire in the blink of an eye.
"May the Wings of Desire shelter them in love and grant them the fervor of a thousand winds! This is the destruction of the world—and also its rebirth!"
The moment the ghostly blue flames spread across the entire world, this dream shared by all living beings finally became impossible to sustain.
The world dissolved into darkness. Without the dream to serve as a vessel, humanity's souls scattered in every direction.
At that moment, a ray of white light appeared. Countless souls abruptly froze, then raced toward the light as though they were moths flying toward the sun.
Beyond that white light lay the world called reality. Every one of those souls would eventually return to its body in the real world.
The witch who had saved the world took in the entire sight.
"With this, everything is over."
"That's right. Rosemary, how does it feel to save the world?"
"...Far too heavy."
"Haha~ You'll gradually get used to it. It may feel a little heavy at first, but after saving enough worlds, it'll become as simple as eating or drinking."
Elias raised a hand and patted Rosemary's fragrant shoulder, only for it to pass straight through her as though he were touching a ghost.
Elias: "Oh, right. Your body in the dream is fake as well. You should return to your real body soon, Rosemary."
Rosemary: "Very well. Then let us meet again in reality shortly, my dear Lord Captain."
Ai: "Don't forget about me~"
The three exchanged smiles, then walked toward the white light together.
...
In the real world.
"So that's how the rules work."
Elias opened his eyes on a grassy plain. He looked at the Hyperion, which still stood embedded in the earth before him, and sensed time beginning to flow around them once more. In an instant, he understood everything.
Everything within the dream had been false.
That included himself, Ai, and the Hyperion.
The instant he and Ai had warped into this bubble world, its rules had affected them and caused them to fall asleep. Their souls had then entered the dream world in the same manner as everyone else's.
The Hyperion within the dream had actually been something he and Ai imagined. The real Hyperion had remained in the real world of this bubble world the entire time, which meant...
The battleship had not been repairing itself at all!
Even automatic repairs needed to be switched on first!
Looking at the Hyperion with its deck buried facedown in the earth, Elias could not help covering his face. Ai also awakened from the dream and looked around with a helpless, bitter smile.
"Captain, what should we do now?"
"Ahh~ We'll have to repair it slowly. I'll help too."
Elias sighed, then activated the authority of the Herrscher of Reason and began analyzing the Hyperion. This time, he truly could not directly use the authority of Reason to reconstruct it.
Without understanding the battleship's design, using his imagination and allowing his authority to repair it automatically would undoubtedly fill the Hyperion with countless bugs.
The repaired sections would inevitably differ from the original design. Therefore, he first needed to analyze the entire battleship's structure, then faithfully reconstruct it according to the original blueprints.
This vessel was even more complicated than a star destroyer. Heaven only knew how many thousands or tens of thousands of functions Vill-V had installed in the composite Divine Key known as Hyperion: Moonlight Throne ARK.
Even with the authority of the Herrscher of Reason, analyzing and reconstructing it would take roughly one or two hours in total.
Elias: "Let's chat while we wait. I suppose this really is a medieval-style bubble world. No wonder we saw almost no advanced technology within the dream."
Ai: "Human imagination is limited by the era people live in, after all. A bubble world with only medieval civilization naturally wouldn't have phones, the internet, airplanes, or anything like that."
Humans could not imagine things that did not exist. Within the dream, civilization's development did not merely stop. It even regressed.
That was precisely why the dream world had become so fantastical. Since technology could no longer develop within the dream, people began imitating the fairy tales they had read as children and imagining magic.
As a result, Elias and Ai had encountered plenty of "archmages" within the dream world. They could breathe fire, spray water, summon wind, and freeze things. Every one of them was as absurdly powerful as a Herrscher with numerous Cores.
But after returning to reality, those archmages had all lost their magic. From now on, everyone would have no choice but to climb the technological tree honestly.
"But Captain, is this really all right?"
"Hm? What are you referring to, Ai?"
"Now that they've returned to reality, won't everything be the same as starting over for the residents of this bubble world? Can they truly accept that?"
Ai asked worriedly.
"They probably won't accept it easily, but even so, they can only adapt to reality. I believe they'll eventually get back on track. The Previous Era is an excellent example."
Fifty thousand years ago, Elias had initiated the bubble-world plan, relocating the entire population of the Previous Era into the supermassive bubble world he had constructed so they could evade the judgment of the Herrscher of Finality.
That was no different from making everything begin anew. Everyone had to struggle from nothing. Elias had expected the process to be extremely difficult, yet it had proceeded surprisingly smoothly.
At that very moment, the people within the Previous Era's bubble world were methodically rebuilding the glory of their civilization. Everyone knew what they had lost, but they also knew something else.
They had successfully survived.
Their civilization had continued.
Starting over was indeed difficult. But under the leadership of their great savior, they themselves, the people they loved, and the civilization that should have been destined for destruction had all survived.
Was that not already enough?
...
A long while later, Elias manipulated gravity to pull the Hyperion from Mother Earth's embrace, then used the authority of Reason alongside the battleship's automatic repair systems to restore it.
He even washed the car—no, the ship—while he was at it.
"Ai, give it a try."
"Yes! Hyperion, engines online!"
Vroooooom!
Accompanied by the roar of its engines, the Hyperion, the "Eternally Unsinkable Ship," made its glorious return!
"Hyperion startup successful! Beginning system diagnostics. Weapons systems normal. Honkai energy reactors one through ten normal. All engine outputs normal. Battleship warp system normal. Radar system normal... System diagnostics complete. Everything is functioning normally. Captain, the Hyperion is ready to set sail at any time!"
Elias: "There's no hurry. Let's find Rosemary first."
Ai: "Yes!"
Elias: "And prepare a sack so we can abduct her onto the ship. A melon picked by force may not be sweet, but it still quenches thirst~"
Ai: "???"