The silence that followed was not peace. It was the silence of a grave that had just realised it was alive.
The vein of mithril pulsed in front of her like a second heart, vast and indifferent. Amanda stared at it, chest rising and falling in perfect, arctic calm.
(How do I weaponise a miracle?)
Her mind had already sketched the pretty picture: herself in Duke Randel’s throne room, palm open, a sliver of moon-metal catching the torchlight. “A pledge of alliance. The key to your victory.” Clean. Elegant. A winning move.
Then memory stabbed her, sharp as a scalpel.
Not from the Chronicles.
From before the rebirth. From the body that had once been Yamada Light.
Late night. Blue monitor glow on a tired face. The infamous pinned thread on the Chronicles forum:
“EXCLUSIVE! Drunk Kageyama stream transcript – SPOILERS EVERYWHERE!”
The comments were pure rage. Ruined endings, butchered arcs. Everyone tearing the author apart.
But she—she had read differently. Like a forensic pathologist dissecting a corpse, hunting for contradictions, hints, anything salvageable.
Amid the slurred rambling, one line had slipped out. A line the thread had laughed into oblivion as the ramblings of a drunk genius.
“Hey, listen… Roxana, the alchemy queen in book five… she could’ve ended everything way earlier! I dropped hints… mithril and orichalcum… mixed in the right ratio… what? Can’t say? But it would’ve worked! Armour like nothing else! Invisible! Day and night! The ultimate armour—completely invisible to the enemy! Ahahaha!”
Invisible armour.
Amanda’s heart stopped.
(Mithril… and orichalcum? Together?)
The memory detonated behind her eyes like magnesium.
(Is that even allowed by the laws of this world?)
Her fist closed around the mithril shard. Its warmth now felt like voltage crawling under her skin.
Back then those words had been meaningless. Drunk nonsense. A flailing excuse about “unrealised potential” and “balance issues.”
But now…
A legendary vein of mithril at her feet.
An ancient cavern swallowing every sound.
And one idiotic, discarded sentence from a creator who no longer cared about his own universe turning into a live grenade rolling across reality itself.
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First came paralysis. Absolute, suffocating shock.
(…What?)
Then, from the deepest pit inside her—where despair, fury, and lunatic hope had been fermenting for two lifetimes—something erupted.
Not laughter.
A war-cry.
“A-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”
The sound slammed against the glowing vein, multiplied, became a chorus of mad spirits. She threw her head back, fingers digging into her own scalp as if to keep her skull from exploding.
“YES! FUCK YES, WHY THE HELL NOT?!”
(Even my own madness doesn’t believe itself!)
Orichalcum. The Empire’s cursed, unstable alloy. The source of the “phantom corrosion” she had so brilliantly offered to neutralise—without a shred of real proof. She had been frantically searching the library for a stabiliser, treating it as her master card.
But this… this was not stabilisation.
This was transfiguration.
The two greatest metallurgical secrets in existence. Two substances everyone assumed were mutually hostile.
And the god who wrote this world, drunk and careless, had let slip: mix them and you get the impossible.
Invisible armour.
Not illusion. Not camouflage.
Molecular-level invisibility, day and night. A property of the material itself.
- The perfect spy walking through cordons like smoke.
- The assassin whose blade is seen only when it’s already in your heart.
- The commander watching the battlefield unseen by archers or mages.
- An entire army that can vanish, reappear, and strike from nowhere.
This wasn’t tactical advantage.
This was ontological supremacy. A cheat code soldered into the source code of reality.
An army wearing it wouldn’t win wars.
It would make the concept of war obsolete.
The plan she’d been proud of five minutes ago—save the duke, earn his patronage—now looked like a child stacking wooden blocks.
(Patronage? I don’t need anyone’s protection.)
The thought cut clean and cold.
I will become the power.
Because only she knew the recipe.
Amanda drew a long, shaking breath. She wrestled the wildfire in her chest until it burned steady and white.
“Good,” she croaked. Then louder, to the cavern, to the mithril, to the universe itself: “Let’s play for keeps.”
(First: find the stabiliser for orichalcum. Prove my genius. Gain access to the alloy.)
(Then… we’ll see what the two of you can do together.)
The darkness was no longer hostile. It was complicit. The mithril’s glow wasn’t illuminating stone—it was cutting a path through tomorrow.
She wiped her face brutally with her sleeve. Tears, weakness, hesitation—gone.
What remained was fanatic, unrelenting purpose.
This was no longer a goal.
This was a crusade.
Rewrite the laws of war.
Redefine the essence of magic.
Turn the world upside down and shake it until the future fell out.
First step: discover the stabiliser first.
Monopolise both metals.
Guard the synthesis like a monk guards the last copy of a forbidden scripture—until the rest of the world still believes it’s impossible.
With ritual reverence she wrapped the mithril shard and tucked it into the hidden pocket directly over her heart.
The piles of gold in the corner might as well have been gravel.
When she stepped out of the cave, the first ray of sunlight struck her full in the face. In that razor line between light and shadow she died and was reborn.
She was no longer an advisor building a career on clever lies.
No longer a fugitive saving her skin.
No longer even a reader trying to game the plot.
She was the key.
The only key to a door no one else knew existed.
And with a colossal act of will she turned it in the lock that lived only inside her mind.
Click.
A bright, clean sound rang through her soul alone.
Resolve—sharp as a blade, unbreakable as mithril—sliced away yesterday’s darkness and opened the way to her own merciless, blinding tomorrow.