Chapter 49 — The Stargazer's Death-omen

The night wind was like a knife, drawing out sharp howls as it tore through the steep lava cliffs of the canyon.

Deep within the blind spot, Emberfall Camp lay dormant in silence. Only the muffled roar of the geothermal furnace occasionally drifted from the direction of the smelting cabin. On the outskirts of the main control cabin, inside an observation post modified from a half-sunken abandoned shuttle cargo hold, dark red, low-energy indicator bulbs emitted a dim and damp halo.

The iron walls of the cargo hold were covered with yellowing old star-maps, the dense ink lines weaving into a massive net of causality under the faint light.

Wrapped in that frayed star-map cloak, Lyra's petite body was almost entirely shrunken into the cold metal chair. Her fingertips, stained with silver graphite and astrolabe crystal powder, were rapidly flicking across a portable astrolabe. Her messy black hair hung over her forehead, and her gaze was so sharp it seemed to be aligning every inch of the space before her onto some invisible grid of latitude and longitude.

On the ammo crate opposite her, Orion sat quietly. His tall and imposing physique felt somewhat oppressive in the narrow cargo hold, and rough lead-ash ointment marks still remained on his bronze skin. He was patiently tightening the leggings of his high-top combat boots with a leather strap. The star-map tattoo representing [Orion] on his collarbone faintly glowed with a dark red light, like an ember, beneath his skin in time with his steady breathing.

"Don't move," Lyra suddenly spoke, her voice crisp but carrying an unquestionable tension.

Orion paused his movements and looked up at the mortal girl before him, pulling a broad, self-deprecating smile at the corner of his mouth. "Little stargazer, my body can take a lot more tossing around than your camp's transmission shafts. Nova used a whip to rush the work in the smelting cabin last night, and this demigod did his fair share of lifting lead plates."

"I'm reading your fate-track," Lyra didn't look up, her fingertips pressing gently on the pulsating dark blue crystal core at the center of the astrolabe. As she adjusted it, the twelve zodiac markers around the edge of the astrolabe began to emit a faint fluorescence. A slender brass star-needle slowly suspended in the air, pulling out an illusory star-track composed of countless minuscule points of light.

That star-track twisted violently in mid-air. As it slid past the middle section of the heavenly zodiac, it suddenly let out a faint, piercing sound of energy friction.

Lyra's breath suddenly caught.

She saw the brass star-needle begin to vibrate frantically in an instant. The originally smooth, ice-blue light-track was deadlocked at the western and eastern ends of the astrolabe by two heavy, cold, and dim lights that were almost solidified. The symbol of Saturn, representing ruthless order, and the symbol of Pluto, representing absolute annihilation, pulled out a dark red string of light like dried blood across the diagonal of the projection.

"Saturn-Pluto opposition... a heavy-penalty death-omen."

Lyra's fingertips turned slightly white from excessive force. She slowly raised her head, her eyes, reflecting the starlight, staring dead at Orion: "In the law calculation of the LinBoo Astrolabe, your natal orbit line has been completely locked onto the inauspicious phase of the 'Saturn-Pluto Heavy Penalty'. Saturn represents the absolute causality iron cage of the Divine Court's cabinet, while Pluto represents the cold underworld of the physical plane. The gravitational orbits of these two planetary gods are converging at the center of your destiny house with an irreversible physical tension."

"This is a dead knot." Her voice was very low, yet it carried a certainty and desolation unique to the wasteland. "In this upcoming cycle of sector handover, your life trajectory has been marked red in the Star-network. The vanguard fleet's main cannons of Aries, or the purification field they weave, will be the physical carrier of this law's dead knot. Orion, in this breakout battle, you are destined to die."

Orion looked at the dark red string of light suspended in mid-air, his expression completely devoid of shock. He slowly stood up, his massive, tower-like body casting a heavy shadow under the red light, the Orion tattoo on his collarbone glowing slightly.

"I know." Orion reached out a rough finger, nonchalantly passing it through that illusory death-omen projection, instantly crushing the cold-radiating red light into powder. "This isn't the first time I've seen this phase. Even earlier, when Astra, the God of Light, secretly plucked a leaf of light from the starlight spindle, trying to cover the death-omen star above my head, I already knew where my dead knot was tied."

He turned his head, looking toward the rusty iron window of the cargo hold. Outside, the lead-grey night sky, distorted by the purification field's polarized gravitational waves, looked oppressive and hollow.

"Those planetary gods of the Divine Court—whether it's the Chief Minister Jupiter, or that ruthless auditor Saturn—they treat all life in the universe as mere data points to be filled and erased at will on the astrolabe." Orion's voice was muffled and majestic, like low thunder rolling through the canyon. "They think that as long as they write a line of code in the Star-network, I, the son of the sea god, must kneel on the ground and wait like a dog for the Aries Lord's butcher knife to fall."

"But I am a hunter, little stargazer." Orion turned back, a wild and rebellious sneer emerging on his bronze face. "When a hunter falls into a trap, he never begs for mercy from the steel teeth that clamp his bones. Since they want to use the 'Saturn-Pluto Heavy Penalty' to crush these old bones of mine, then right here on this wasteland, I'll let them see just how hard this mortal iron nail really is."

"This isn't a good deal at all." Lyra bit her lip, the silver powder on her fingertips leaving a few dull fingerprints on the brass edge of the astrolabe. "In astrological physics, a planetary god's gravitational orbit weighs hundreds of millions of causality energy levels. Your divine core is already seventy percent cracked, and the Bow of Orion is shattered. What will you use to contend with the gravitational anchor of the entire Aries? If you act as bait to grab their fire control priority, you can buy the camp at most less than three minutes. Trading the fall of a demigod for three minutes does not conform to basic causality conservation."

"In the formula, it is indeed a losing proposition."

A low voice came from outside the cargo hold door.

The iron door was slowly pushed open, and Elias stepped in. His blonde hair still bore the wet ionizing sweat from the smelting cabin, and his lake-green eyes looked exceptionally calm in the dim red halo. He held a worn metal oil can in his hand, and blue powder from smashing star-marrow ore was still stuck to his knuckles.

He walked to the stone table, looking at the slightly trembling astrolabe in front of Lyra.

"But I didn't lead them to rebel against the Divine Court to settle an account of causality conservation with them." Elias looked up, his lake-green eyes devoid of the slightest wavering. "If we only looked at the probability calculations of the astrolabe, mortals should have obediently kneeled in the mines on the very first day, burning themselves as fuel for the divine cores. There is no space for our survival in the Divine Court's algorithms, so their formula is wrong."

"I don't believe in fate, Lyra." Elias's voice was calm, but possessed an unshakeable hardness like a steel rail. "The Aries Lord's fleet boasts of being the high-and-mighty enforcers of the law, so we'll use these three Orbit-breaking Meteor Shells to smash three physical holes into their gravitational orbits. If the stars in the sky insist that Orion must fall, then we'll shoot the stars out of the sky."

Lyra looked at the blonde youth before her, looking at that almost paranoid calmness on his face. In her sight, although Elias's body was thin, the causality trajectory within him was a black hole of absolute nothingness—on her portable astrolabe, Elias could not be read for any phase whatsoever. He was an 'Anomaly', an absolute variable drifting entirely outside the loom of the LinBoo Star-network.

"You're a madman, Elias." Lyra stood up abruptly, a trace of trembling slipping into her previously tense voice that even she hadn't noticed. She subconsciously raised her hand, her fingertips twitching as if she wanted to grab the boy's sleeve, but she pulled back abruptly in mid-air, only gripping the hem of her star-map cloak tightly. She stared fixedly at the ore's blue light on the boy's face; the grid-like calmness in her eyes had long since shattered into a charred anxiety. "Your fate-track is completely blank. The astrolabe can't find your orbit, which means that the moment you step out of the blind spot, the Divine Court's Star-network will instantly define you as 'system redundancy' that must be completely erased. This is even more terrifying than the Saturn-Pluto Heavy Penalty, because in their eyes, you don't even have the right to be a dead man, you are just a code error that must be deleted. Are you... really not afraid of dying?"

"That's exactly what I want." A cold arc curled slightly at the corner of Elias's mouth. "Since they see me as a Null Error in the system, then I'll be the hard power surge that completely burns out their main control board. Orion, all the combat detonator coils are fully assembled, Nova is doing the final round of lead sealing."

Hearing this, Orion burst into laughter, his thick palm slapping heavily onto Elias's shoulder, rattling the oil can on the boy to make a crisp metallic clatter: "Good! I just love this tough backbone of yours, kid. When those Aries hounds rush into the pass, I'll stand on the most conspicuous high rock. I will release all the Orion origin energy within my divine markings, welding all their causality radars dead onto me. Those three minutes will be your only chance to pull the trigger."

"I will pull the trigger right on time, Orion." Elias looked into the demigod's eyes and said, enunciating every word.

The iron shell of the cargo hold made a harsh clanging sound as the night wind slammed against it. The faint vibrations of the geothermal furnace traveled along the metal floorboards to everyone's feet, like a massive heart, beating heavily and stubbornly at the bottom of this pitch-black radioactive blind spot.

And in the deepest shadows, Vespera (Umbra) leaned silently against an abandoned transmission shaft. She hid most of her face in the dark shadows of her hood, and within those deep violet eyes, an extremely cold light was slowly flashing.

She looked at these two mortals and the fallen god.

In a leaky scrap iron cabin, holding the crudest astrolabe, they were discussing how to use scrap metal to overturn the net of destiny woven by the cabinet's planetary gods over thousands of millions of years. Within the bottommost logical architecture of the astrolabe, this was supposed to be an absurd error that wouldn't even have a one-in-a-thousand chance of passing.

But for some reason, looking at that blonde youth whose fingertips were stained with the blue light of star-marrow and whose eyes were as cold and clear as ice, deep within her icy divine core, a trace of indescribable trembling and anticipation was faintly rising.

I don't believe in fate, huh...

The corners of her mouth beneath the hood turned up silently, bearing a trace of a cold and mad arc.

Then let me see, when the crushing weight of Saturn's ruthless law descends upon this wasteland, whether you, this 'Null Error' drifting outside the system, can actually smash this man-eating astrolabe to pieces beneath that golden starry sky.