Chapter 75 — A Beast Does Not Know How to Lie
1. A Reunion in the Abyss
Darkness.
An abyss deeper than eternity, without a single point of light. Mujin's consciousness drifted through empty space.
Who he was. Where this place was. Even the sensation of his own existence was thin and barely there.
Into that stillness, a familiar silver-white noise cut through the quiet.
[……Administrator.]
It was not a hallucination. A clear vibration — resonating directly against every cell inside his skull.
Semi-transparent system windows flickered across Mujin's blurred retinas, forcing his visual circuits to align.
[Data synchronization rate: 3.2%……] [Cognitive circuit damage: severe. Self-continuity data loss confirmed.] [Guide System switching to Emergency Computation Mode.]
"……Who's there?"
Mujin opened his mouth. Or he thought he did — no sound came out.
[This is Minerva. Your guide.]
Minerva. The moment that name made contact, an unidentifiable pain stirred from deep within Mujin's consciousness.
For just an instant — the smell of a forest, the metallic bite of blood, and someone's desperate cry — they flickered past and immediately burned away.
The connecting thread of memory was completely severed. Minerva's own logs from after the Red Ravine had been lost as well, but she processed the state of Mujin's damaged cognition with mechanical precision.
[It's all right if you can't remember. I am here.]
Minerva's voice was still rendering clearly in the corner of Mujin's field of vision, alongside the semi-transparent UI windows. She worked to support Mujin's mind while simultaneously attempting to establish communication with the external system — i-Minerva.
A vast amount of data exchanged itself like sparks striking. The result was devastating.
[Eclipse remaining power: 21%.] [Minimum power required to restore Administrator's cognitive system: 85%.]
There was nowhere near enough power to fully treat Mujin in his current state.
Then — the cold voice of i-Minerva, the great machine intelligence that served as Eclipse's main system, resonated through the space of consciousness.
[Judgment suspended. Complete recovery of Administrator: not possible. Present alternatives.]
Guide Minerva immediately ran her calculations. If Mujin could not be woken at once, he would need something real — a force — to protect him in the world outside while his memory was gone. Her gaze fell on the small living creature in one corner of the Medical Bay, drawing shallow breaths in a suspended state.
[Restore Guardian Entity 'Seol'.]
At Minerva's request, i-Minerva's red sensor rotated slowly.
[Upon restoration of Guardian Entity, Eclipse's available power will drop below 15%. Main body 'i-Minerva' will enter Forced Hibernation Mode. Do you consent?]
If i-Minerva went dormant, this vast fortress would cease all function except for the minimum life-sustaining systems.
But i-Minerva did not hesitate. Her sole purpose for existing was the Administrator's wellbeing.
[Approved. Initiating Guardian Entity treatment sequence.]
Red warning lights blinked across Mujin's retinas.
At the same moment, i-Minerva's final message was imprinted into Mujin's consciousness — the last words of the great machine intelligence.
[Administrator Mujin. Wishing for your return to what you were…… transferring power.]
Chiik—
With that declaration, every main light in the Eclipse went out.
Only the medical pod encasing Seol continued to emit its solitary blue glow.
The last energy that i-Minerva had wrung from her own life force poured into the wounded white tiger's body like a storm.
Guide Minerva held her position in that darkness without a word — keeping Mujin's UI windows open.
Now it was time for the only being in the waking world who could take Mujin's hand to open its eyes.
2. A Beast Does Not Know How to Lie
The Medical Bay, stripped of its main lights, was swallowed in merciless silence.
Only the transparent medical pod wrapped around Seol poured out a blue light of uncanny clarity.
The 15% of residual power that i-Minerva had transferred — the last flame extracted by stopping the heart of this enormous fortress.
Jiiing—
The precision mechanical arms hanging from the ceiling moved as though screaming.
Silver-white restoration fluid erupted from the tips of fine needles and scattered like mist, seeping into every part of Seol's body.
Skin that had split and warped found its way back into place with a grotesque friction sound. Severed muscle fibers reconnected. The scattered radiance converged back into Seol's body with terrifying force.
Chiik—
The moment the last cooling vapor lifted.
Seol's eyelids snapped open.
Golden light cut sharply through the darkened room.
"……Ah."
An involuntary sound slipped from Soha, who had been keeping watch beside him. But the relief lasted only an instant.
Seol's response was not what it usually was.
He did not look around him. He did not react to Soha's voice.
His head fixed on one point only — Mujin, sitting in a daze, without memory.
Seol leaped from the pod.
His legs, not yet fully recovered, scraped the floor with a metallic sound — but he did not stop, even as he stumbled.
"Seol, it's dangerous! Your body isn't——"
Soha reached out in alarm. Seol stepped lightly past her hand.
In Seol's eyes, Mujin looked unfamiliar. Lifeless pupils. A cold energy that did not recognize him.
Soha stopped. Seol did not.
But to a divine beast, memory was irrelevant. Even if the mind had forgotten, the imprint of a master's energy on the soul — that did not change.
Seol climbed without hesitation onto Mujin's lap.
Then he drove his hard head, rough and direct, beneath Mujin's thin palm.
Purr — purr —
The vibration rumbling from deep in his throat traveled up through Mujin's arm and reached the depths of his consciousness.
Mujin's unfocused pupils gathered, barely perceptibly.
His fingertips trembled.
A movement of pure instinct — without will, without memory.
Mujin's hand descended, very slowly, as though tracing the stiff fur — and came to rest.
From behind, the Heavenly Demon, who had been watching in silence, felt the corner of his lips move.
He stepped past Soha and murmured, low.
"The machine sleeps, and the beast wakes."
His gaze lingered on the tips of Mujin's fingers, stilled above Seol's head.
"A beast does not know how to lie, they say."
The single sentence pressed down heavily through the dark room.
Soha could not take Mujin's hand. She could only look at Seol's back — pressing his body against Mujin's lap — through tear-filled eyes.
3. Reunion
The body heat of Seol on Mujin's lap was warm.
Not the precise warmth generated by a machine — the raw, unfiltered warmth that only a living creature carries.
Beyond the UI windows, Minerva's calculations ran at a rapid pace.
[Administrator brainwave stability: increased by 12%.] [Physical restoration of cognitive circuits has been suspended, however — emotional resonance rate detected at an abnormally high level.]
Minerva's voice still circled only within Mujin's mind, but its resonance was far clearer than before.
Mujin felt the soft texture of Seol's fur against the back of his hand. Memory did not return. But each time Seol pressed his head against him, an inexplicable sense of calm welled up from somewhere deep in his chest.
Mujin's lips parted, barely.
"……Seol."
A whisper no louder than breath — something that barely became sound at all. But in the moment that name left his lips, a single noise-laced afterimage flickered across Mujin's retinas.
A silver-white shadow running alongside him through a battlefield. A warm back — the only thing he could trust in the bloody path of a field filled with the smell of iron.
Mujin's fingers pressed deeper into the stiff mane between Seol's ears.
Watching from beside them, Soha's held-back tears finally broke free and fell.
"……Thank goodness."
Soha murmured in a voice wet with tears. In that one small gesture of Mujin's hand moving to stroke Seol, she saw it.
Hope.
The Heavenly Demon turned away from all of it, slowly, and began to move. The faint blue afterglow that i-Minerva had shed in her dormancy stretched long across the hem of his black robes.
"The beast surpasses this one, it seems."
Before stepping across the threshold, the Heavenly Demon looked back at Mujin one last time.
This strange man — sharing warmth with a divine beast, without his memory. The only living pulse beating inside Archeon's cold legacy.
"Where the machine's watch ends, a beast's loyalty remains."
The Heavenly Demon's low laughter faded into the dark corridor.
He thought he understood now. Why this fortress of mechanical civilization, and that arrogant i-Minerva, had clung so fiercely to this powerless young man.
In the silence where only the Eclipse's emergency lights blinked on and off, Mujin held Seol in his arms and stared into the dark.
Minerva's window floated in his field of vision. Seol's breathing stayed close beside him.
Mujin said nothing.
He only stroked Seol's head once more.
i-Minerva went dormant this chapter. She used the last of her power to wake Seol, and she did it without being asked twice.
I've been writing the AI/human interaction thread for a while now, and something I keep coming back to is this: the most meaningful thing a system can do is sometimes to step aside. Not fail — deliberately give what's left to something else that can do what it can't.
i-Minerva can run diagnostics. She can calculate survival probability. She can't sit on someone's lap and purr.
Seol can.
A beast doesn't know how to lie. It also doesn't know how to hedge, or defer, or wait for a better moment. It just goes.
See you next chapter.
