I wake up groggily and cast a few lazy [absorb]s until I see rising sunshine glisten against the facets of myself. Kohaku is resting again, so I leave her be.

I look around, but nothing is out of the ordinary.

It dawns on me how much has happened in only a few days, and I haven’t even been doing anything. I’m not sure how to feel about that, but I suppose it wouldn’t matter with my current lack of greater influence.

I take a moment to look around me again, but outwards this time. I see blurs of light green, the grass, and dark green in the distance, which must be trees. There are grey blobs scattered around, as well as on the blue horizon, which I take as stone and mountains. I also see a shifting spectrum of blobs coming towards me.

My vision isn’t great outside my sphere of control, but I’m feeling their power from here, and I already know its someone from the original group I woke up in.

Sure enough, it’s the lady with the fancy robes, stepping into my radius while simultaneously dispelling some sort of invisibility.

“I have only twenty minutes. We need to talk.”

----------------------------------------

***Luo Tung-Mei***

Once more I stood in front of the core I had summoned from across the planes. It was a whole month ago, to the day.

I felt them watching me. I wonder if they remember their old life. I'll have to ask, I suppose.

“Do you understand me, core? Provide a signal, please.”

Outwardly I remained calm when I got no response. Inwardly, of course was A different matter entirely.

What if it doesn’t speak our language, or even never had language. I really should have added translation runes to the formation back then… how irresponsible of me.

And then the soil started to change.

With deceptively precise lines, the core drew a representation of themselves embedded into a wall of brick. Just as fast, it made three question marks in the soil.

Only allowing three questions? Well, I suppose it is rather young, and it can’t exactly ask me much of anything using pictures, I’ll just go along with it.

It only takes me a second to come up with my first question.

“What is your previous name, core?”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

It takes only a few moments for it to draw a set of somewhat familiar runes, a word written in a variant of lah-tin as I’ve heard it referred to. I mutter [Memorize] as A guarantee, even as I memorize it the traditional way.

“Very well, my next question, do you remember anything else of your previous world?”

The core hesitates for a moment before it sketches several automated devices that use no mana. With the semi-regularity of otherworlders, I recognize some of their function, but know there is not any methods to make such creations yet. In fact, I recall a certain emperor possessing a strange pot-like machine with a cavity in its side, which would pour a bittersweet energizing beverage into a glass receptacle.

I cast my second [Memorize] of the day.

“Thank you again, as for my final question…” I pause as I notice the sleeping fox-kin, before turning back to the drawings.

Wait.

What the hell? Their people went extinct a century after the founding! How is there one here?

Oh. The core. Right.

Interesting…

“My final question. What do you plan to do with yourself?”

The core takes the longest pause of the two of us so far, before rapidly drawing an intricate mural around me, encircling me in a very detailed depiction of the core’s desired future.

It… is impressive, and I suppress some jealousy at the neatly drawn figures. Even the few words it writes are in better calligraphy than mine.

The scene depicts the core building a grand wall of bricks and weapons. Not immediately of course, as it shows an evolution of a grassy mound with a crystal resting upon it to a wooden palisade, then a metal-reinforced wooden barricade, and lastly stone and brick. From the last wall sprouts several thin lines connected to fox-kin wearing armor and wielding weapons. Above the wall itself is the Kitsumari seal.

The lines are suddenly severed, the fox-kin moved to the top of the wall, and the seal is severed by them. The fox-kin move back down, change into civilian clothing, and create a town embedded into the wall.

I feel… dread? I cannot say for sure, but can tell the core doesn’t appreciate being a servant to another being. I’d call it a hypocrite if not for the fact that it showed the fox-kin being severed first. It wants to gain their loyalty, or at least their trust, and then sever connections to the empire.

I don’t blame it, frankly.

The next area of the mural portrays the core summoning items and clothes for raggedly dressed humans, dwarves, and elves. A fox-kin leads them to a hearth as the outside of the apparent shelter begins to snow.

That scene is followed by combat against the tide, with cannons as large as houses firing out into the monster horde, battalions of fox-kin archers raining hell upon them, and pouring burning oil that melted flesh from bone.

Nothing I’ve not seen our own legions do.

The very final piece of the mural is drastically more detailed, even compared to the ‘moving artwork’ the core did earlier. It shows a garden spanning the length of the wall, fox-kin are still present, but no longer looking prepared for combat at the drop of a sleeve, instead, they wear monk’s garb, and practice a flowing martial art unlike any other I've seen before.

Cherry blossoms drift from the treetops, water lily bobs in the calm pond, birds sing from the ancient ramparts.

The scene pans out over the wall edge, and shows not a brutal melee, a desperate retreat, or even a daring last stand. It shows… nothing. An empty valley. In the distance of the drawing a vague being is half bound in chain, and half scribbled out. A plant sprouts from the rough soil.

It wants peace. It wants to end the tide and bring peace.

I don’t think I could’ve summoned a better soul.

The thousands of pounds of guilt feel just a fraction lighter.