Ark Valheit's core pressure crushed Minato's left arm from the inside. The bone broke. The sound of it reached Minato's own ears. The air was heavy as lead. His lungs felt like they were being flattened. The pain arrived a moment later. Hot. The inside of his arm burned, as if packed with scorching stones. Beneath the skin, bone fragments ground together with a sickening, wet sound. "—Ah." What escaped Minato's mouth was barely a breath, too faint to be called a voice. His vision burst white. Before him, Ark Valheit did not draw his sword. He simply held out his right hand. That alone was enough—the pressure of his core output crushed Minato's body like an insect. Ark's platinum-white long hair shimmered in the light of the gate's remnants. His golden eyes were cold, inorganic, utterly devoid of emotion. *(He can't control his power output.)* Limit Break. Having absorbed thousands of copies of himself, having layered his ego too many times, his body control had become excessive. Ark wasn't trying to kill Minato. He was simply removing an obstacle. That was all. Believing that as a ★5, that was how he ought to be. Minato collapsed to the ground. Almost simultaneously, three of Lect Orphas's subordinates latched onto the beacon. Everything Shigure had assembled, Rin had precisely calibrated, all the preparations they had built up from installation to connection signal verification. Its core. The sole key linking the distorted space of the Gate Graveyard to the second layer, Mediaram. A member of Vanagloria tore out the device's core reactor with their bare hands. The shrill shriek of metal being ripped apart. Fine wiring snapped, sparks scattering. The man casually slammed it against the ground and crushed it underfoot. *Crack.* A final sound, absurdly small. The light went out. "...Ah." Clutching his broken left arm, Minato could do nothing but lie on the ground and watch the scene unfold. He couldn't run. Couldn't scream. Couldn't resist. This was the reality of being a ★2. —It was right after that. With the beacon destroyed, the residual energy of the failed gates began to run wild. The air screamed. Spatial distortion intensified, the scenery at the edges of his vision warping and twisting. Hundreds of ghost-like gate remnants flickered in unison, their light beginning to spiral and converge toward a single point. Toward where Shigure stood. "—Shit—" Shigure's left eye began to emit a deep violet phosphorescence. She pressed her hand over it, but light leaked through the gaps between her fingers. Fourteen failed gate approaches. Each time, she had been bathed in gate energy, and her mutated organ was now, in this moment, resonating completely with the rampaging residual energy of the gates. "[serious]Illogical... My left eye has become... a connection point..." With her rational mind, she understood precisely what was happening to her. The beacon's runaway was the trigger, but fundamentally, her own body had adapted itself as a connection point to the second layer, Mediaram. From the edge of the failed gates, arms of light extended. They were briars of light, stretching in reverse, deeper and deeper into the interior of this world. Countless arms of light enveloped Shigure's entire body. Her waist-length emerald hair floated upward, as if standing on end. "Run—" Minato forced the word out. He pushed against the ground with his broken left arm, crawling with his right. He tried to raise his body. But he had no strength. His fingertips merely scraped at the dirt. The light intensified. Shigure's body began to grow transparent, as if her shadow were fading. The light spilling from her left eye seemed to be dissolving her entire form. In that instant, her eyes unmistakably looked at Minato. Her silver right eye remained calm. Her violet left eye flickered violently. But what resided in those pupils was neither despair nor resignation. It was simply the light of calculation, trying to process an immense volume of information. Until the very last moment, she strove to remain an observer. "Minato—" Her voice resonated. But it wasn't a sound that vibrated through the air—it was a strange echo, as if flowing directly into his mind. "—The final coordinates of the data. The Waste Generation Hole. Grey Haven. There, a reverse-flow pattern identical to the failed gates—" The words never reached their end. The light reached its peak. And then, it vanished. Where Shigure had stood, there was nothing. Only the wreckage of the measuring instrument she had always carried lay shattered pitifully on the ground. The sole recording medium, accumulated with fourteen failures and vast amounts of analysis data. It had been cleaved in two by Lect's sword, now nothing more than scraps of metal. The air regained its former weight. Silence returned to the Gate Graveyard. Minato couldn't even make a sound. Lect Orphas walked over. The sound of his leather shoes echoed unnervingly in his ears. He stood before Minato and crushed the beacon's remains lying on the ground beneath the toe of his boot. A tall figure with silver hair. Absorption-scar fissures on his left eye. The most dangerous ★5 in the Summoning Sphere, having returned from three Limit Breaks. He didn't look down on Minato; he met his eyes as he spoke. That, in itself, was crueler. "[cold]Leave behind everything a ★2 has built up." A voice devoid of anger or contempt. There was only confirmation based on experience. He was a man whose hatred for this system had been carved into his body through three Limit Breaks. That was precisely why he understood, more accurately than anyone, the helplessness Minato was feeling as a ★2. "[cold]Even if you stay here, you'll just disappear at the next gate. Follow our methods, or simply die. A ★2 has no other options." Each of those words gouged precisely into the deepest part of Minato's resignation. The fact that he was a disposable ★2. The irony that the one who knew this best was the most successful rebel in this world. The moment Lect finished speaking, Ark Valheit averted his gaze from Minato. In his golden eyes, there wasn't the slightest interest in Minato. Ark walked silently toward the outer edge of the Gate Graveyard. No pursuit. No confirmation. Because he had judged that a ★2 copy posed no threat, even alive. That complete indifference wounded Minato far more deeply than Lect's contempt. Over thirty of Vanagloria's subordinates withdrew in orderly silence. Before long, only gray silence remained in the Gate Graveyard. For a while, Minato couldn't move. The searing pain of his fractured left arm. The vertigo from his damaged core. And the fact that Shigure had vanished. All of it pressed down on him at once, pinning him to the ground. How much time passed like that? The phosphorescence of the base light flickered slowly. Was the dimming phase already ending? Or had it just begun? His sense of time was a tangled mess. —Shigure was gone. Only that fact echoed repeatedly in his head. "...Shigure-san." His voice trembled, hoarse. Swallowed by the spatial distortion of the Gate Graveyard, even his own voice sounded distant. He struck his broken left arm against the ground. Once. Twice. The pain pulled reality back. His bones creaked. His flesh screamed. But this pain alone was proof that he was still alive. —He couldn't protect her. He, a ★2, had arrogantly thought he could protect Shigure. —He had thought he couldn't let her research be erased. He hadn't been able to do anything. For the first time in his life, Minato felt a pure anger that transcended cowardice or resignation. It was anger directed at himself. A feeling of simply, utterly hating his own powerlessness. But there was nowhere left to direct that anger. He pressed his forehead against the rubble and trembled. He didn't cry. He didn't even have the strength left to cry. He just lay collapsed on the ground, staring vacantly up at the weak phosphorescence of the base light. The grayish-white canopy stretched infinitely high, cold, simply there. *(...It's over.)* He had lost everything. The beacon. Shigure. Her research. His own arm. Nothing remained. How much time had passed? In his stupor, Minato's right hand crawled unconsciously through the rubble. His fingertips touched a cold piece of metal. The wreckage of Shigure's measuring instrument. He picked it up. It's just metal garbage, he thought. But he felt an unusual unevenness on his fingertips. *(Something's... burned onto it.)* Minato lifted the fragment to eye level. The internal recording element was exposed on the surface from the impact that shattered it. Characters were etched onto the surface of that element. A final record, burned in by heat. In that instant when Lect's sword pulverized the measuring instrument, the coordinate data Shigure had observed last had been imprinted onto the element's surface by the impact and heat. Minato strained his eyes, trying to decipher the characters. A list of specialized data. Many symbols he couldn't understand. But— "Grey... Haven." There was a place name. "Waste... Generation Hole..." Words surfaced. "Reverse-flow pattern... identical to the failed gates." Something leaped in Minato's chest. Episode Three. In the ruins of the Lumina Remnant Zone, Shigure had said it. That the junkyard in Grey Haven would be their next destination. Rin's workshop. But that wasn't all— Dustbowl. The gathering place that served memory water. Beyond it, the Waste Generation Hole. That place exhibited a reverse-flow pattern identical to the failed gates. Which meant—there was a connection point to the second layer in Grey Haven, just like the one they had been trying to open in the Gate Graveyard. Shigure's research wasn't dead yet. It wasn't something she had intentionally left behind. It was the remnant of her final observation record, accidentally burned into existence the moment her measuring instrument was destroyed. But it was undeniably here. "...Haha." Minato let out a dry laugh. No tears came. But he couldn't help laughing. It was ironic. Lect's sword, trying to erase her research, had instead permanently etched the most crucial data. With his trembling right hand, he pushed the fragment inside his clothing. Close to his own core. The last piece of the data Shigure had accumulated through fourteen failures. *(Alone... I can't do anything.)* He knew that. There was no way a ★2 with a fracture and core damage could accomplish anything on his own. *(But.)* He pressed his left arm with his right hand and slowly raised himself to his knees. The damage to his core made his footing unsteady. Just standing up made every bone in his body creak. The pain in his left arm cut into him from the inside. —Even so. Minato turned to face the direction of Grey Haven. Approximately 170 kilometers from the Gate Graveyard. A distance that would normally take over two days to travel. For his current self, burdened with a fracture and core damage, it would take even longer. He might collapse from exhaustion along the way. If Vanagloria's patrols found him, it would be over. But he had no choice. There was no other path. This wasn't a heroic awakening. It was simply the survival instinct of a ★2. Someone who had lost what they wanted to protect, clinging to the sole mission that remained—a pitiful, shameful act, but for him, an absolute one. "...I'm sorry, Shigure-san." He murmured quietly toward the gray wasteland. "I... still can't give up." Behind him, the ghostly light of the failed gates in the Graveyard flickered. Pressing his nearly severed left arm with his right hand, Minato took a single step forward. His retreating figure was far too small, too faint, as if it might vanish at any moment. But inside his chest, Shigure's final data was undeniably etched.