At last, the heavy topic of the world's essence and "crossing beyond the End" was set aside for the time being, and the atmosphere on the bridge seemed to loosen—just a little.
Aisen gave Kafka a look, signaling that there was something he wanted to discuss with her privately.
Kafka caught the meaning at once and led him to a comparatively secluded corner of the bridge.
Once they were in place, Kafka lifted an eyebrow and made a small, questioning sound.
"Hm? What is it?"
"Let's talk where fewer people can hear," Aisen said, lowering his voice. He worked hard to keep his expression solemn—like he was about to discuss something that would decide the fate of interstellar peace.
But the way he kept sneaking glances toward Sam and Silver Wolf made him look more like a man doing something shady.
"What I'm about to say… to anyone who isn't a group member, it'll probably look a bit… not exactly proper. So we're doing this in private."
Kafka watched him act like a thief in broad daylight. Her smile stayed in place, but her eyes couldn't hide the confusion.
Aisen cleared his throat.
"So… about those Word-Spirit Pantyhose. Yesterday I didn't warn you before placing the order in the group shop. I didn't cause you any trouble, did I?"
Kafka's expression shifted to understanding. She looked at him with a half-smile that wasn't quite a smile.
"Trouble? Not really. It's just…"
She paused, and her tone picked up a hint of helplessness.
"After you bought yours, Tsunade immediately bought one too. Not long after that, Sakiko Toyokawa purchased one as well. So yesterday I ended up having to wear pantyhose four separate times. It was… mildly inconvenient."
Aisen wasn't surprised by Tsunade at all.
"Tsunade's perfectly normal. Her ninja world is at war year-round. An item that can force commands onto people—she'd never pass that up."
Then his brow furrowed slightly.
"But Sakiko… I've been to her world and met her. From what I observed, she doesn't seem like the type who enjoys controlling others with a Word-Spirit tool."
"She doesn't," Kafka agreed. "She mentioned she bought it on behalf of someone in a sub-group."
"I see." Aisen nodded. A proxy purchase for a friend—now that made sense.
With the preamble laid, Aisen drew in a breath and finally got to what he really wanted.
"Back to business. Kafka, yesterday I had a sub-group member try the Word-Spirit Pantyhose. The effect was excellent, but it only comes in one single purple style. That's just too monotonous."
"The elegant, mysterious purple suits your temperament, but it doesn't fit every group member's personal vibe. We should satisfy everyone's needs as much as possible."
Aisen kept his face serious, inflating his own preference into a "group welfare" issue to make it sound more legitimate.
Besides—looking good really was important.
How many players turned Elden Ring into Elden Fashion?
How many people put on the "Luminous Horn Headband" and never took it off again?
Kafka tilted her head. Watching him argue—dead serious—about the necessity of diversifying pantyhose colors, her gaze became… complicated.
She tapped her lips lightly with a forefinger, as if genuinely thinking.
"Mmm… that's quite reasonable," she drawled, lazy and unhurried.
"So, Group Owner Aisen's suggestion is… that I stock up on other styles and colors? Black, lace trim, maybe some cutout patterns?"
Under her stare, Aisen's expression didn't change. He shook his head solemnly, as if he hadn't noticed the amusement in her eyes at all.
"No. That wastes too much of your time and energy. And tastes differ—there's no way you can precisely pick designs that perfectly match each group member's unique aesthetic."
"Then?" Kafka really was curious now.
Aisen leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice even more.
"I'm going to ask this as seriously as I possibly can: in your universe, is there any kind of pantyhose that can automatically change its own style, pattern, and color according to the wearer's thoughts?"
"It has to be an ability the pantyhose itself possesses—not something transformed by outside force."
Aisen shrugged, resigned.
"I tried using a disguise illusion yesterday to change its appearance, and the Word-Spirit effect immediately failed."
Kafka… actually followed his line of thought and began considering it.
"Hm," she murmured.
"Changing clothing forms through Path powers or special abilities is common enough."
"Masked Fools of the Elation can use illusions to become anything—they can change the look of clothing as easily as breathing. Or Silver Wolf's Aether Editing can directly modify an object's appearance attributes at the level of reality. But…"
She looked at Aisen and shook her head.
"Whether illusion or data modification, those are external changes imposed on the item. That's not the same as an item itself reading the wearer's thoughts and responding in real time."
"If I had to name something similar…"
Kafka paused, as if recalling an idea.
"Nanite armor? Or certain bio-civilizations' living armor? Those can change form based on environment or commands."
Aisen immediately rejected the second option.
"Living armor won't work. The group's product rules explicitly require pantyhose. Anything alive definitely doesn't meet the standard."
He rubbed his chin.
"As for nanite armor… if we set its default form to purple pantyhose, it should qualify, right? Lock in the initial shape, then let it morph freely according to the wearer's intent."
"In theory, yes," Kafka said, nodding. Then she teased him lightly.
"But as far as I know, there isn't any off-the-shelf nanite armor designed specifically in a pantyhose form and possessing that level of intelligent autonomous morphing."
"If you commissioned something like 'nanite pantyhose' from scratch—concept, design, modeling, materials compatibility, small-batch testing and production… that's multiple top research teams working together."
"Even with the Interastral Peace Corporation's R&D efficiency, conservatively, you'd need one to two weeks just to see a prototype. Independent labs would take even longer."
"Tch." Aisen clicked his tongue, brows knitting.
"One to two weeks? That's way too long. Efficiency this low?"
Then he waved a hand, decision made instantly.
"Forget it. For the benefit of the group, I'll handle it myself. Tonight… no, at the latest by tomorrow before dawn, I'll bring you the finished item."
A flicker of surprise crossed Kafka's eyes, but she didn't press for details. She simply inclined her head.
"Alright. I'll wait for your message."
"Then I'll take my leave."
Aisen moved cleanly and decisively. Once he got her response, he wasted no time—vanishing from the spot.
Kafka looked at the place he'd disappeared from and said blandly:
"Safe travels. I won't see you off."
Aisen didn't return to his own world.
Instead, within the vast Star Rail cosmos, he carefully selected a broad, dead, desolate star system.
There were no life signatures, no traces of civilization—only cold rocky planets and a senescent star whose light had already begun to dim.
"Mm. This will do." Aisen scanned the surroundings and nodded in satisfaction.
The world's "strength" in this universe far exceeded that of most other group members' worlds. Here, it could support him prying open a sliver of his true power.
The four great Authorities derived from the First Flame—
Life, Death, Time, Space.
Authority of Life: the warmth the First Flame grants all things to endure, bearing the great power of creation and nourishment.
Authority of Death: the blaze that burns all to ash, holding dominion over endings and the rule of death.
Authority of Time: the light that pierces the river of time itself, able to smear and rewrite the trajectory of time at will.
Authority of Space: the shadow beyond the reach of the Flame's light, the Authority that opens worlds, shapes the void, and weaves the architecture of the cosmos.
Aisen's objective was extremely clear:
Forge an item whose default form was purple pantyhose.
It had to exist stably under the rules of the Star Rail universe.
It had to respond to the wearer's intent, freely reshaping itself.
It had to possess self-replication so other group members could conveniently purchase and use it.
And it had to be non-living.
There was also one extra requirement:
Make it in as little time as possible.
Individually, none of those demands were outrageous. Put together—especially with the time constraint—they required… unconventional methods.
For Aisen, who had studied under the Lord of Cinder Ludus and long since surpassed his teacher, perfectly mastering the art of soul-forging—
As long as he had the right soul as a core material, in theory he could forge an object of any shape, with any function.
What he needed now was to create a soul on the spot—
A soul that perfectly matched every one of his requirements.
He opened his palm. A small orange flame burned quietly there—
The Flame of Life.
With a flick of his finger, the flame shot like a meteor toward the dying star at the system's center.
The moment the orange spark touched the star's surface, the senescent star abruptly swelled.
The blinding brilliance that followed wasn't the star's own light anymore—
The star itself became fuel as the Flame of Life began to burn madly.
Orange fire expanded like a ravenous beast at faster-than-light speed, igniting every celestial body within sight.
In an instant, the entire system became a boiling, roiling life-furnace spanning multiple astronomical units.
The forge was ready.
Aisen began adding materials.
"First—use the Dark Soul as the base."
He murmured under his breath. A thin cut silently opened on his left palm.
What flowed out wasn't blood.
It was a strand of darkness so deep it seemed to devour light itself—
The Dark Soul.
A cornerstone of a world's prototype. A universal substrate born of the First Flame, sufficient to sketch all things in existence.
Aisen gently tossed it. The darkness sank into the boiling life-furnace, forming the skeleton and foundation of the newborn soul.
"Next—make it understand the human heart."
Aisen made a grasping motion with his left hand. A mass appeared—similar to the Dark Soul, but thicker, more viscous, like heavy black sludge.
It exuded a complex stench of desire, fear, love, greed…
A mixture of the Abyss and human nature itself.
Inspiration drawn from those Drangleic statues that reflect the deepest cravings of the heart.
Without hesitation, he threw that mind-tainting black mire into the furnace as well.
This was to grant the newborn soul the trait of sensing hearts—and responding to the wearer's intent.
"Then—self-replication."
With a thought, a knightly phantom flashed before him: a figure holding a massive mirror-shield, shimmering with silver light.
From the Mirror Knight's imprint, Aisen precisely stripped away the rule of "copy" and "reflection."
Like a crystalline mirror shard, that rule fell into the life-furnace, granting the newborn soul the ability to replicate itself—to split and multiply.
"Time has to be quick," Aisen muttered.
Suddenly, the entire boiling furnace was swallowed by a layer of pure white radiance too bright to look at.
The surge of flame seemed to be slammed into a ten-thousand-times fast-forward.
Time inside the furnace was violently accelerated and compressed.
A soul's long gestation was forcibly squeezed into a fleeting crack of time so short it was almost absurd.
At the same time, the Authority of Time seeped into the rapidly forming newborn soul itself.
Deep inside the furnace, a pure, powerful soul was taking shape at breakneck speed—
But its power source was entirely based on Aisen's First Flame system.
If he forged an item directly from it, running it under Star Rail's rules could lead to failure—energy dissipation, partial malfunction, or even the universe's laws recognizing it as an alien body and collapsing it.
So the soul had to integrate into Star Rail's system first.
And what better way to fuse into a universe's underlying rules than—
Ascending as an Aeon?
Thus, Aisen continuously split off pieces of his own soul and fed them into the furnace, forcibly increasing the newborn soul's "mass" until, at the moment of birth, it would be vast enough to cover the entire galaxy—and possess the qualification to strike at Aeonhood.
Naturally, at the final instant, just before it truly ascended—
Aisen would personally end it and seize its soul, now perfectly adapted to Star Rail's rules.
"The Stellaron Hunters have been running themselves ragged trying to cross beyond the End," Aisen said to himself. "If I show up and immediately create a new Aeon to tear their script apart, that'd be… pretty rude."
Reviewing his plan, Aisen nodded with satisfaction.
He had deliberately avoided domains that might give birth to a brand-new Path. Instead, he targeted the intersection of already-existing Paths:
Harmony, Propagation, Remembrance, Preservation.
Even if he didn't kill it, this newborn Aeon-infant would likely be beaten to death by other Aeons anyway—unlikely to truly disrupt the fragile balance among them.
The white radiance outside the furnace abruptly contracted, as if reaching a critical threshold.
The gestation was ending.
Aisen smiled.
"Not bad. Not too slow."
Then—
A thunderous roar.
The endless Flame of Life that had ignited the whole system suddenly collapsed inward, as if drawn by a black hole.
All light.
All heat.
All life-energy—
Compressed into a single point.
In the next moment, the brilliance was gone.
And something immense appeared.
A black square mirror—spanning multiple star systems—manifested in space.
Its body seemed made from solidified cosmic night: dark, cold, bottomless, as if it connected to the end of nothingness.
Its frame was a twisted patchwork of countless black metal armor plates.
At the top center of the frame stood a colossal black helmet.
An Aeon embryo—
Born.
The instant the black square mirror manifested in the material universe—
Click.
It was as if an invisible finger pinched the universe's clock hand.
Time in the physical world… halted.
Starlight froze.
Planetary rotations stopped.
Cosmic dust hung motionless.
All life beneath the Aeons—no matter where they were in the galaxy—had their consciousness forcibly wrenched out in the same instant by an irresistible, unseen power…
And dragged into the black mirror—
Into a newborn world constructed purely from the mapping of minds.
Within this mirror-world, every living being faced the deepest, truest demand of their heart.
Craving for power.
Unfinished dreams.
Bone-deep hatred.
Love they could never obtain…
All of it was reflected mercilessly by the mirror's surface—amplified, forcing them to look.
This was the interaction mechanism Aisen had designed.
For those who had already set their resolve and walked a defined Path—Pathstriders—facing their true heart was nothing more than reaffirming the road they had already chosen.
So the instant they entered the mirror-world, they had already "cleared" it.
Their consciousness was ejected back into their bodies immediately, as if they had simply spaced out for a heartbeat.
For the countless masses who drifted through life, unable to step onto any Path—
Even if they confronted their strongest desire, they would still feel helpless and pained, trapped by weak will or the shackles of reality.
In the end, they would sink into the mire of their own wants, struggle pointlessly, and be judged as failures.
When they were ejected back into reality, all they carried was a faint emptiness and confusion—
Then life went on.
At most, on a few suffering surface worlds, perhaps there would be one or two "heaven-sent monsters" who, upon facing themselves, saw their road clearly—
Igniting the spark of a Path and leaping from ordinary human to Pathstrider, gaining power enough to reshape their civilization.
But on the scale of the galaxy's grand chessboard, that was merely one or two insignificant pieces shifting position slightly.
The galaxy's overall situation, after this momentary upheaval, didn't budge at all.
As for the Aeons above?
Not a single one cast a meaningful glance at what had just happened.
Existing simultaneously in past, present, and future, they had long foreseen that this farce of birth and death would not create any true variable.
A carefully manufactured soul, newly born, dying at the threshold of ascension?
So empty.
So void.
IX, by nature, would never offer an opinion.
Perhaps only Aha would laugh when the curtain fell.
As the Pathstriders returned to reality in an instant, their cognition acted as a certification stamp bearing the Star Rail universe's imprint.
The newborn soul was gradually accepted by the universe's own rules.
Drawing concepts from Harmony, Propagation, Remembrance, and Preservation, it began to condense its own brand-new Path—
A stairway to Aeonhood, preset by Aisen and briefly supported by the recognition of countless beings.
The Aeon embryo—the Mirror that reflected hearts—
At this moment began its climb toward the unreachable throne of Aeonhood…
A climb doomed to fail.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 150)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 110)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter100)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 60
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 50
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 50
The Way the Umamusume Look at 31
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 26
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 26
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