The Stars Beyond - Chapter 97: His Old Flame

Darkness is coming, and crisis is everywhere. In this long dark and desperate night, do you want to see a bonfire with warm words? We are that light.

We don’t want to be the little bully who guards one-third of an acre and eats canned food.

We don’t want to drive the harem on a great escape from east to west.

We don’t want to be a bunch of rats guarding rancid cheese in the gutter.

We don’t want to see the panic on your faces and the desperation in your screams.

So we stand up, fight for ourselves, fight for you, fight for humanity!

As long as we are here, the flames of war will never be extinguished.

We light a warm bonfire in the dark night, and watch the dawn with the brilliance of life.

We are the shield of the earth, the patron saint of mankind!

- Description from novelbuddy

The summer I was 17. A painting I created was sold. For 1.4 billion won.

I’m a high school student who became an author after debuting at Dengeki Bunko. After taking a year of hiatus from school to write my work, I transferred out to another high school to study, and met a girl called Eri Nitadori in school, a rookie voice actress cast as a character in the anime adaptation of my work.

In school, we treat our professions as a secret. However, Nitadori’s very popular in class, and I’m a loner…the only chance we get to talk to each other is when we take the Limited Express train together every Thursday, seated side by side as we head off for an anime, After Recording.

To improve her skills, she asked me questions regarding the profession. While I was answering the questions regarding the process–how did it end up like this.

This is what I last remembered before I lost consciousness, and the story of my near-death experience.

Until he became the lowest-ranked master, his lonely and luckless life never changed.

Suddenly one day, a descendant injected him with a nanomachine, and the machine started ‘speaking’ to him.

“What? What are you talking about?”

This was beyond the boy’s knowledge, he turned pale.

The Nanomachine linked to his cerebrum realized the User was not understanding a single word it said.

“Who are you, and why are you doing this to me?”

“Nano Mashin?”

The boy’s face hardened.

Mashin was the deity the Mashin Religion worshipped, along with the Sacred Fire.

The religions’ Master communicated with Mashin.

“Um, are you really Mashin?”

The boy knelt down and asked with a trembling voice. At this, the Nanomachine attached to his cerebrum realized it had been misunderstood.