Volume 4—Chapter 111: The Vessel
In a place between dimensions, far removed from space and time as mortals understood it, three figures stood in silence, watching the chaos unfold on Earth.
Before them hung a vast projection of the world below. Cities fractured. Skies stained violet. Cracks are spreading across reality like veins through fragile glass.
“What’s the situation down there?” a man asked, his figure obscured in shadow.
“Not good,” a woman replied calmly. “That world should have already collapsed. By all logic, it should have been destroyed.”
She paused, studying the image.
“But it hasn’t.”
The man narrowed his eyes.
“It’s being held together by divine power… Someone is controlling the law of causality.”
“No,” the woman corrected. “It’s more than causality. It’s reality itself. The structure that determines what is allowed to exist.”
The man exhaled slowly.
“Then it’s worse than I thought.”
He turned slightly, his gaze drifting to their surroundings.
They were not standing on ordinary ground.
Beneath them stretched the crown of a colossal tree, its branches spreading endlessly into layers of existence. Worlds shimmered like fruits hanging from its limbs, each glowing with its own colour and pulse.
They stood atop the World Tree.
“This world…” the man muttered, looking at one particular sphere trembling faintly on its branch. “It looks like a rotten fruit that refuses to fall.”
The surface of that world flickered unnaturally, its glow unstable compared to the others.
“It has become a parasite,” he continued. “The only solution may be to cut it off from the World Tree entirely.”
The woman shook her head.
“Easier said than done. Severing a world is not the same as pruning a branch. All we can do for now is contain the corruption. Prevent it from spreading through the Tree.”
The man’s expression hardened.
“So finding the vessel is the only option.”
A small voice interrupted them.
“The vessel, huh? Is there really no other way?”
A little girl stepped forward, her presence deceptively light compared to the gravity of the conversation.
The man looked down at her.
“I wish there were. But without the vessel, cutting away that rotten world is impossible. Unless someone possesses enough divine authority to erase it entirely.”
The girl clicked her tongue in annoyance.
“Tch. And those two? Where are they?”
“Who knows,” the woman replied. “ For now, we focus on what we can control.”
The man crossed his arms.
“There’s nothing we can do directly. Not yet. We wait until things settle.”
“Geez,” the girl muttered. “I thought everything had already been settled last time.”
The man’s gaze shifted toward her.
“Once this settles, you will return to your assigned role.”
“Are you serious?” she shot back. “I would rather not. And besides… are we even sure she’s the vessel?”
Silence lingered for a moment.
Then the man spoke, his voice steady and certain.
“There is no doubt.”
He looked back at the trembling world suspended among the branches.
“That Miyazaki girl.”
Elsewhere.
Inside the Miyazaki residence, inside a room that looked more like a private studio than part of a family home. The walls were lined with soundproof panels. Soft lighting framed the space in a gentle glow. A wide desk held a high-end computer setup, four monitors arranged in a careful arc, each serving its own purpose. Camera rigs and motion sensors were positioned with deliberate precision, calibrated down to the smallest movement.
Seated before it all was a young-looking woman.
Miyazaki Aira.
Mother of three siblings. Aria. Irana. Yuji.
On the central monitor, her Vcuber avatar smiled brightly, animated with perfect tracking. The model’s eyes shimmered with artificial life, responding flawlessly to Aira’s slightest expression. Thousands of viewers filled the live chat, messages streaming upward in colourful waves.
Currently, she was doing what she always did at this hour.
Streaming.
In the family, she was the only one that not an esper. Just a mundane streamer without the power of an Esper.
There was nothing incorrect about that statement.
It simply did not account for everything.
“Hello chat… how's your day-to-day?” Aira was greeted warmly.
Her voice carried an easy charm, familiar and practised. The avatar mirrored her smile as hearts and greetings flooded the screen.
She responded casually, reading usernames, teasing regulars, laughing softly at comments that scrolled by too quickly for most to follow. One monitor displayed stream analytics. Another tracked audio levels. The third showed the live broadcast feed. The fourth held something else, minimised beneath layered windows.
Outside the house, something was changing.
The sky above the city had taken on a faint violet tint, subtle but unnatural. The air pressure felt different, heavier, though no one inside the house seemed to notice.
Inside the studio, everything remained stable.
The chat continued scrolling at its usual pace, filled with laughter, emotes, and casual complaints about work and school. It was as if the world beyond their screens had not changed at all.
Aira watched the flow of messages for a few seconds longer than necessary.
Unlike them, she was not unaware.
She was simply unbothered.
“Alright, everyone,” she said gently, her avatar tilting its head with a soft smile. “I think we’ll wrap it up here for today. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”
A chorus of goodbyes filled the chat.
She ended the stream.
The avatar vanished. The recording stopped. The room grew quieter, left only with the low hum of hardware.
Aira leaned back in her chair and let out a small sigh.
“What exactly is my precious daughter doing now…” she murmured. “Was this the third time? Or maybe the fourth?”
She tapped her finger lightly against the desk.
“Well… I just hope it ends quickly. Still… turning her into a Vcuber to keep her away from the outside world clearly didn’t work.”
Her tone was calm, almost amused at her own failed strategy.
She raised one hand and made a small, deliberate motion in the air.
A faint glow formed before her. A translucent holographic interface unfolded, layered panels spreading outward like petals opening. Lines of light connected to multiple points across the globe.
“Let’s see…”
Several scenes appeared within the projection, each one like a live surveillance feed.
“My husband is in Belgium?” she muttered, adjusting one panel with a flick of her finger. “Hmm… and who is that little girl beside him…”
Another panel shifted.
“How about Irana… ah, still at school.”
The image showed chaos around the campus perimeter, though the internal feeds remained partially obscured.
“And Aria…”
She paused.
The panel meant to display Aria remained blank.
Aira narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Huh? Why can’t I see where Aria is?”
She expanded the interface, layers of data unfolding in rapid succession. Signals pulsed, coordinates recalculated, search parameters widened.
Then...
“Hm.”
Her voice lowered by a fraction.
“Out of reach? How is that possible? This system can monitor anywhere in the world.”
She tried again, adjusting the scope, expanding beyond conventional boundaries.
Still nothing.
For the first time that evening, her expression shifted, just slightly.
Then she exhaled.
“Well… whatever.”
The hologram shifted again.
“Let’s check on Yuji.”
A smaller panel displayed Yuji sleeping peacefully in his bedroom, completely unaware of the instability creeping through the sky above the city.
Aira watched him for a moment, her expression softening.
“Oh well,” she said quietly, closing the holographic panels one by one. “I suppose I’ll sleep too.”
The room dimmed as the projections vanished.
Outside, the violet hue deepened.
Inside, the studio lights turned off.
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