Chapter 92: If the Future Cannot Be Changed, Then “Seeing” Has No Meaning

Chapter 92: If the Future Cannot Be Changed, Then “Seeing” Has No Meaning

Inside the underground drainage space of the Embers Base.

At this moment, both Tendou and Benjamin had completely abandoned any notion of defense.

They were trading blows recklessly—one punch for one punch—without regard for their own lives.

The brutality of this battle far exceeded anything the dimensional viewers had imagined.

As both Benjamin and Tendou’s bodies reached their respective critical limits, serious problems quickly began to manifest.

Bang!

After Tendou and Benjamin each landed another punch on the other, they both retreated a short distance and, without prior agreement, chose to take a brief rest.

Crack… crack.

Accompanied by the sound of metal fracturing, the nanometal on the right side of Benjamin’s face first erupted with spiderweb-like cracks.

Moments later, large sections peeled away, revealing the black-sheened mechanical bones beneath.

At this point, there was no trace left of the cold, high-tech aura he had possessed at the start.

He now looked unmistakably like a “metal monster” that had been flayed of half its human skin—an unsettling sight.

Beyond the damage to his face, the power core embedded in Benjamin’s chest was also in serious trouble.

The prolonged Overlimit state had driven his power core into a clear overload condition.

This not only melted part of the metal body around his chest—exposing roughly one-third of the power core to the damp air—but also caused several fractured pipelines nearby to tear loose, spilling large quantities of blue energy fluid.

When this energy fluid dripped into the pooled water on the ground, it quickly spread out in layers of eerie fluorescence.

Every sign pointed to a single conclusion:

If Benjamin could not end the battle soon, he would not be able to hold on much longer.

However, compared to Benjamin, Tendou’s condition was hardly any better.

He was slumped beneath a broken concrete pillar, head lowered, his face pale from excessive blood loss, coughing lightly from time to time.

At the same time, Tendou’s left arm hung limply at his side like a broken branch—its bones clearly shattered beyond repair.

And all of that was still a minor issue.

The truly serious problem was the “starlight” in Tendou’s vision, which was steadily dimming.

His once starry, deep, and brilliant azure eyes—now retained only a faint, barely-there pale-blue Glimmer at the center of the pupil.

The rest… had been completely swallowed by profound darkness.

Like a candle flame flickering in the wind, it could be extinguished at any moment.

Yet Tendou didn’t seem particularly bothered by this. Instead, he jokingly mocked himself with a relaxed tone.

“Cough, cough… I really look… pretty miserable right now.”

“Good thing Caroline isn’t seeing me like this—otherwise she’d definitely be furious and scold me for pushing myself again…”

“After all… when I’m in front of her… I’m always going on about being the strongest…”

“Cough, cough… But still…”

Tendou coughed a few more times, then lifted his head to look at Benjamin not far away, his voice filled with emotion.

“You’ve got a full nanometal body and a high-grade power core.”

“I don’t know how many resources Iron Dome House poured into you, but I do know that if all of those resources were taken out, it would probably be enough to fully equip a full squad of third-order Machina Type Starbearers.”

“All this, just for the Miraculous Stone in the Doctor’s hands—you people from the Iron Dome House really are willing to spare no expense.”

Hearing Tendou’s words, Benjamin calmly mobilized what little star energy remained within him as he replied:

“Yes. After all, high-ranking Starbearers above the third order—every word they speak and every move they make—are closely watched by the other houses.”

“Therefore, if it were only Lord Byron, that would be one thing. But if others were to discover that, in addition to Lord Byron, we had also dispatched other high-ranking Starbearers…”

“Then the secret of the Miraculous Stone would no longer be so easy to conceal.”

“After all, in the world of Starbearers, there are very few who are truly fools.”

After answering Tendou’s question, Benjamin posed one of his own.

“Vector Control and the Star-Eclipse Eye, although I don’t know how Gorynych managed it, being able to place both of them on you means he must have invested a great deal of effort in you as well.”

“But judging from your current state… your eyes should be about to lose their sight, shouldn’t they?”

Hearing this, Tendou smiled noncommittally. He then pushed himself away from the pillar he had been leaning on, stood up, and looked at Benjamin.

“They’re about to go blind, yes—but before that, killing you… is more than enough.”

“Is that so…”

Benjamin and Tendou fell into a brief, wordless silence, as if by mutual understanding.

The next second, it was as though neither of them were injured at all.

They instantly turned into two afterimages and collided once more.

Bang!

Almost simultaneously, their fists tore through the curtain of water in the underground drainage space and slammed into each other.

Benjamin’s iron fist, covered in dark-red patterns, smashed heavily into Tendou’s face.

Limited by his dwindling star energy, Tendou was unable to fully repel the blow. He could only partially offset it.

As a result, his head was forcibly knocked to the side by the heavy punch, fresh blood seeping once again from the corner of his mouth.

But Tendou was not one to merely take hits passively.

Because at the exact instant Benjamin’s punch landed, Tendou’s own fist also struck Benjamin’s face.

Vector Control · Tenfold Compression!

The compressed vector energy flashed past as a streak of black light, causing Benjamin’s already severely damaged facial components to twist and deform completely under the blow, erupting in showers of sparks.

【Warning. Warning. Severe damage detected to core components. Severe damage detected to core components.】

Even as the warning alarms rang incessantly within his mind, Benjamin paid them no heed.

Because at this very moment, he had one—and only one—thought:

To kill the monster before him, who was clearly only a first-order Starbearer, yet terrifyingly strong.

One had to know—forget first order. Even a legendary Perfect Second-Order Starbearer, under his current Overlimit state, would still be defeated by him in just minutes.

And yet, someone like him was now utterly unable to bring down a mere first-order.

This not only shocked him deeply, but also gave rise to an intense sense of crisis.

That if he could not kill this man now—if he allowed him to grow—then the entire Starbearer world would be turned upside down by this person’s arrival.

And for Iron Dome House, this would undoubtedly be extremely bad news.

Because as the current beneficiaries of the Starbearer world,what they feared most were variables.

Bang—bang—bang!

In the dim underground drainage space, Tendou and Benjamin—both already at the end of their ropes—were like two marionettes on the verge of collapse, yet stubbornly refusing to fall.

They continued to hurl punch after punch at each other.

And after more than ten consecutive exchanges, Benjamin seized the moment when Tendou suddenly staggered and drove a punch into his abdomen.

This time, Benjamin did not feel the characteristic “resilience” of Universal Repulsion.

The feedback he received was clear and unmistakable—

He had truly struck Tendou’s flesh.

And this was the first time since fighting Tendou that he had experienced such a sensation.

As a streak of black light flashed past, Tendou’s body was sent flying like a kite with its string cut.

He skidded across the pooled water, leaving behind a long trail, before crashing through three concrete pillars in succession and finally being slammed hard into the wall beneath a massive drainage outlet.

Rubble and dust rained down, completely burying him.

As the camera zoomed in, the dimensional viewers quickly saw Tendou’s condition.

He was slumped against the shattered wall.

His silver-gray hair was coated in ash-colored concrete dust.

Blood from his abdomen had soaked most of his clothes.

He looked every bit like someone on the brink of death.

Yet what was strange was that Tendou showed not the slightest trace of despair befitting a loser.

Instead, he was smiling—and smiling very happily.

As though he were pleased with something.

At the same time, some of the dimensional viewers noticed an easily overlooked detail.

Every time Tendou smiled, fresh crimson blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

It seemed as though a large amount of blood had pooled inside his mouth.

And at that moment, Benjamin’s voice suddenly came from off-screen.

“W-when… did it… happen?”

As the anime camera shifted, Benjamin re-entered the viewers’ field of vision.

But they were shocked to discover that at some point, a large hole had appeared in Benjamin’s chest.

In response, Tendou slowly lifted his head and explained with a smile:

“From the moment you devoted all your attention to trying to kill me.”

“Is that so…”

After Tendou said this, the scene cut to the final exchange between Tendou and Benjamin.

In the footage, although Tendou was caught off guard and struck in the abdomen by Benjamin’s punch—at that very moment, Tendou suddenly opened his mouth.

And there, resting on his tongue, was a small object radiating a deep, eerie black light—

Stellar Technique—Dark Grey.

In the instant Tendou was sent flying, that Dark Grey transformed into a streak of black light, piercing straight through Benjamin’s chest before he could evade.

This outcome was something Benjamin never anticipated.

And neither did the dimensional viewers watching from outside the screen.

Because ever since Tendou had mastered Dark Grey, he had always released this special Stellar Technique with his fingertips.

But using it that way did not mean that he could only use it that way.

In theory, Tendou’s Vector Control could be activated within a nine-millimeter range from any part of his body.

Benjamin was actually aware of this fact.

It was even stored within his Machina Type database.

However, because Tendou deliberately exposed a flaw at the very end, Benjamin’s attention was completely drawn to that opening.

As a result, he failed to notice the Dark Grey hidden in Tendou’s mouth, overlooking this low-probability possibility.

Yet it was precisely this low-probability event that became the final straw that crushed him.

After explaining everything, the scene once again returned to Benjamin.

He lowered his head, staring at the gaping hole in his chest, his expression calm—as if the body on the verge of collapse did not belong to him.

After a brief silence, Benjamin spoke slowly in a cold, emotionless electronic voice:

“Mission… failed.”

Splash

After uttering those final words, Benjamin’s body fell backward, crashing heavily into the icy pooled water.

And amid the splashing droplets, the last thing Benjamin saw was Tendou leaning against the wall in the distance—slowly lifting his face.

The boy’s once-brilliant Star-Eclipse Eye had now been completely swallowed by darkness.

Yet the smile hanging on his face was brighter than it had ever been.

Seeing this, a thought surfaced unbidden in Benjamin’s mind—words Tendou had spoken not long ago.

Miracles… will never descend upon cold, unfeeling machines

With that thought, Benjamin seemed to arrive at a certain realization.

Unfortunately, that realization came far too late.

Drip… drip…

As droplets from the ceiling fell onto Benjamin’s silent corpse,

This being from Iron Dome House, whose entire body embodied the New Federation’s most cutting-edge intelligent-mechanical technology, an over-spec Machina Type Starbearer whose power in Overlimit state came infinitely close to Perfect Second-Order now lay quietly in the underground drainage space of the Embers base, like an industrial scrap no one cared about.

Not long after Benjamin fell, Tendou seemed to finally loosen the breath he had been holding, slumping back against the wall behind him.

What made the dimensional viewers’ hearts ache was this:

Tendou’s signature light-blue eyes had completely vanished.

In their place was a pair of pitch-black eyes, devoid of even the slightest trace of glimmer.

It was painfully obvious that although Tendou had defeated Benjamin, he had paid a tremendous price as well.

His eye had most likely lost its function entirely.

And for many viewers who had followed the story all this time, this was simply unacceptable.

Because although Tendou was not the “protagonist,” among all the anime’s screen time so far, he ranked second only to Chen Kong.

Coupled with his overwhelming strength and unexpectedly gentle personality, many viewers felt that—even if he wasn’t the protagonist—he was the one who truly felt like the protagonist.

This was evident from Tendou’s runaway lead in character popularity rankings.

And yet, here was such a high-popularity, high-exposure, high-budget character, now radiating an unmistakable sense that he was about to be written out.

And in such an unbearably desolate manner.

How could the dimensional viewers possibly accept this?

Soon enough, an even more heartbreaking scene appeared.

“Come to think of it… I’m kind of hungry.”

Tendou suddenly murmured softly, his only remaining right hand trembling as it fumbled through the pockets on his body.

When his fingertips touched something familiar, a childlike joy immediately bloomed across his pale face.

“Found it! This last one—”

But before Tendou could unwrap it, the once-quiet underground drainage space suddenly began to shake violently again.

It seemed that some great battle elsewhere had affected this place.

Under the intense tremors, the single candy in Tendou’s hand slipped from his fingers—

Plop

—and fell into the murky water beneath him.

“Wait—”

Blind now, Tendou hurriedly bent down, groping through the water.

But without his sight, no matter how hard he tried, he could not find the “candy” that had disappeared into the pooled water.

At the same time, the anime deliberately gave this “candy” a close-up shot.

After brushing past Tendou’s fingertips several times, the candy drifted away with the current, toward some unknown place.

“…Forget it. If I can’t find it, then I won’t look anymore.”

After confirming that his last remaining “candy” was truly gone, Tendou let out a regretful sigh and staggered to his feet.

Then, he clenched his teeth around the black blindfold wrapped around his right hand, biting down hard as he prepared to loosen and remove it.

And during this process, some sharp-eyed dimensional viewers noticed that beads of sweat poured from Tendou’s forehead.

His right hand trembled uncontrollably, as if he were enduring something with great difficulty.

Only then did the dimensional viewers suddenly recall a line from Tendou’s childhood flashback—when he first met Tachibana.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s fine. It hurt a lot before, but after eating some candy, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Remembering this, some of the viewers finally understood.

Perhaps Tendou wasn’t suddenly craving something to eat at all.

He was just… in pain.

Under the viewers’ aching gazes, Tendou finally managed, with great effort, to remove the blindfold from his right hand and put it back on properly, covering the eyes that now held nothing but endless, abyssal black.

After finishing this, Tendou said with satisfaction, “Yeah. This way, when that cat wakes up, she probably won’t notice anything strange.”

“As for this hand… well, something similar happened once before. I’ll just lie and tell her I hurt it during training.”

“And with how airheaded that cat is, she definitely won’t doubt anything I say.”

After he finished speaking, the small dolphin pendant around Tendou’s neck—a gift from Caroline—suddenly released a faint yet unmistakable glow.

In the next instant, a special echo reached Tendou’s ears—a voice from the Quantum Center, one that only he could hear.

An echo unique to him and Caroline alone.

Guided by that sound, even though Tendou was now completely blind, he still found his way home with unerring accuracy.

What should have been a one-minute walk took Tendou a full ten minutes this time.

Because along the way, he tripped over rocks on the ground several times.

After all, the earlier battle between him and Benjamin had utterly reshaped the underground drainage space.

Many paths that had once been passable were now completely blocked.

Even so, amid all the stumbling and falls, Tendou eventually made his way out of the damp, shattered ruins and returned to the futuristic, technology-filled Quantum Center.

Throughout this journey, the viewers noticed something—

No matter how many times Tendou fell, he never once let go of the necklace around his neck.

Even when gripping it worsened his injuries several times over, he didn’t care in the slightest.

Under the viewers’ complicated gazes, after finally reaching the Quantum Center, Tendou, for reasons unknown, chose neither to enter the control room, nor to go to the quantum computation center behind it.

Instead, he stopped outside the control room doors and sat down, leaning against them.

Beneath the red warning lights, Tendou lifted his head, gazing at lights he could no longer see—and suddenly laughed.

“Even if I won’t ever be able to see again… that’s fine.”

“Because if the future can’t be changed, then what meaning does ‘seeing’ even have?”

“And likewise, since I’ve already changed the future, it doesn’t matter if I can’t see it anymore.”

“After all… someone else will see it for me.”

“Besides, someone as smart as me only needs to hear their descriptions to imagine how beautiful the scenery is.”

“So really… whether I can see or not—what difference does it make?”

Tendou’s tone was light and casual.

Yet to the viewers’ ears, it carried an inexplicable sadness.

After all, this was the same person who had once declared, right in front of the Doctor, that he would stand at the highest place and see the farthest view.

He said that being unable to see didn’t matter.

But the viewers understood—

To him, being unable to see mattered more than anything.

It was just that, for Tendou, compared to losing his sight, he was far more afraid of losing everything else.

Watching Tendou sit alone outside the doors of the Quantum Core control room, silently resting, the dimensional viewers found it impossible to reconcile the image before them with the person in their memories who always talked about being the strongest, whose eyes forever brimmed with confidence and arrogance.

That pale, thin, and fragile figure beneath the red warning lights… simply did not seem like the same person.

After all, throughout every prior arc of the story, no matter what kind of trouble the protagonist Chen Kong and the others ran into, no matter how powerful the enemy standing in their way was, Tendou would always appear like a savior.

And with absolute, overwhelming force, resolve everything flawlessly.

Yet this very person—

The one who had always been helping others, the one who had always been looked up to, relied upon—

Once stripped of his confidence and swagger, revealed nothing more than a slightly brash, sweet-loving twelve-year-old boy.

Those watching from outside the screen—just like Chen Kong and the others inside it—had naturally piled problems and responsibilities onto the shoulders of this twelve-year-old, problems so heavy that even adults would struggle to bear them.

And they had all simply assumed he would resolve everything perfectly.

But in reality, from the moment Tendou first came into contact with star energy, to obtaining his Star Origin, to fully developing it—

The entire journey added up to less than three short years.

And yet, this twelve-year-old who had trained for less than three years, faced enemies that far surpassed what anyone his age should ever have to confront.

Let alone this time, when his opponent was a perfect weapon, personally refined and supported by a major family solely for this mission.

And still—

Tendou used every advantage he could grasp, pushed every strength he possessed to its absolute limit.

Despite being outmatched across the board—in training time, resources, and base level—he answered everyone’s expectations perfectly.

Yet when everything finally began to settle, the dimensional viewers suddenly realized something—

Those expectations were never what they truly wanted in the first place.

Because compared to that thin, lonely figure beneath the red warning lights,

They preferred the Tendou from the opening of Season One. 

The one who constantly boasted about being the strongest, whose eyes overflowed with confidence and reckless pride.

Even though countless hints throughout the story made it clear that everything that happened today was a choice Tendou had already made long ago, a decision he had already accepted—

The viewers still couldn’t help but harbor a selfish thought.

If they had been given the choice, they would rather the one sitting beneath the red warning lights be Tachibana.

Not this frail boy.

Because from the very beginning of Season One until now, it had always been Tendou helping others.

But when Tendou himself finally needed help—

Why did no one come for him?

Was that fair?

As if in response to that very question—whether by narrative coincidence or cruel fate—the massive doors outside the Quantum Center suddenly opened.

But what enraged the viewers was this—

The ones who appeared were not the people who should have come to help Tendou.

Instead, they were a group of despicable enemies, here to take advantage of his weakened state.

Stellaris Production Team!

Do you really enjoy pouring salt into open wounds this much?!

In the anime’s frame, after resting for quite some time, Tendou heard the chaotic footsteps echoing from the end of the corridor and couldn’t help but sigh.

Even though he could no longer see, he still had many ways to tell whether those approaching were friend or foe.

For example, the weight of their footsteps.

And these heavy, uneven steps… didn’t sound like friends at all.

“Sigh… I was hoping to rest a bit longer,” Tendou said softly, “but I didn’t expect new guests to come knocking so soon.”

“But it doesn’t really matter.”

“Since you’ve come…”

“None of you are going back.”

“After all, this is Embers.”

“Not a place you can come and go from whenever you feel like it.”

Hearing Tendou’s words, the several first-order Association Starbearers who had arrived at the scene exchanged glances with one another—yet not a single one of them dared to respond.

At the same time, the Quantum Core control room that governed the Infinite Labyrinth stood right before them, separated by nothing more than a single door—and yet, not one of them dared step forward.

Because although Benjamin was dead, in his final moments, he had transmitted everything.

All of his memories of fighting Tendou—everything except the Miraculous Stone—and every memory of him killing other Starbearers to every Association Starbearer within the underground core sector.

And it was precisely those memories that guided them here.

Otherwise, relying solely on a handful of first-order Starbearers—especially after being separated from Isaiah and William—there was no way they could have found the deeply buried “Quantum Center” at the very heart of the labyrinth so quickly.

Fear aside, however, If they failed to shut down the Infinite Labyrinth of the underground base, they would be trapped here forever.

Thinking of this, one of the Association Starbearers clenched his teeth and stared at Tendou, who was leaning against the control room door, his left arm hanging limply at his side, his breathing shallow.

“Don’t be scared,” he said through gritted teeth.

“This brat may be strong, but he’s clearly at his absolute limit now.”

“As long as we kill him, we can break into the control room, shut down this damn maze for good, and then guide Isaiah and William here!”

Hearing this, the hesitation on the faces of the other Association Starbearers gradually gave way to a desperate will to survive.

Even so, no one dared be the first to step forward.

Because Benjamin’s corpse outside—and the combat memories he had transmitted to them—were simply too shocking.

So much so that even when facing a severely wounded, dying Tendou, they still couldn’t overcome the fear in their hearts.

It felt as though the boy before them wasn’t someone who would collapse with a single push, but rather a terrifying humanoid monster that devoured people whole, bones and all.

But while they hesitated, Tendou would not.

Because if they truly entered the control room and shut down the Quantum Center, Caroline’s quantum computation would be forcibly terminated.

With that thought in mind, Tendou, who had been leaning against the door, shakily forced himself to stand up.

And that single, simple movement was enough to make the Association Starbearers in the corridor retreat half a step in panic.

Tendou couldn’t see the expressions on their faces.

But from the brief yet unmistakable disorder in their footsteps, he instantly grasped their state of mind.

And that realization caused his pale, blood-drained face to slowly curl into that familiar, arrogant, invincible smile.

At that very moment, the dimensional viewers suddenly realized that the man who once believed himself unrivaled beneath heaven and above earth… had returned.

Tendou faced the group of halted Starbearers ahead of him, and his words brimmed with that uniquely his brand of overwhelming arrogance.

“Kill me? Please. I’m the peak. I never relied on anyone in the past, and I certainly won’t rely on anyone in the future.”

“Even if I’ve only got a single breath left, that’s still not something trash like you can casually provoke.”

“If you want to pass through here, that’s fine. But you’ll have to step over my corpse first.”

“So—who’s coming over to die first?”

Although the Association Starbearers present couldn’t quite understand why Tendou was saying this.

Those who had followed the story all the way here—and especially the largest CP faction of all, the “TenCar” supporters—knew exactly why Tendou was standing guard here.

And perhaps as if to answer the thoughts in their hearts, the anime suddenly cut back to an ordinary, everyday scene that had briefly appeared in the early episodes of Stellaris: Embers.

—

“Tendou… will you ever grow up? Honestly, how old are you? Snatching someone else’s dinner like a child. Are you really so lazy that you can’t even walk a few steps to get your own?”

“Caroline, how can you say I’m stealing? You were just being thoughtful and got this for me ahead of time, right?”

“And besides… today you get me dinner, tomorrow I’ll take a bullet for you.”

“If anyone dares to lay a hand on you, then they’ll have to step over my corpse first.”

—

Whether it was Caroline back then, or the dimensional viewers watching from outside the screen, aside from a handful of more emotionally sensitive TenCar fans, almost everyone else failed to take Tendou’s words seriously.

They simply thought that at the time, Tendou was using exaggerated bravado as an excuse for his laziness and pranks.

But now, it seemed they had been wrong.

Perhaps the “dream” Tendou had seen hadn’t begun on the day he sought Liuli to interpret it, perhaps it had started much earlier.

Only, that “dream” may have been far too heavy.

So heavy that Tendou chose not to tell anyone about it, instead, he chose to quietly bury it deep within his own heart.

As for that moment when he went to see Liuli—

Perhaps what he was really seeking wasn’t a dream interpretation at all, but a way to steel his resolve, to affirm the answer he had already chosen.

Bang!

A gunshot echoed through the silent corridor, tearing apart the brief calm.

---

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