Only moments ago, this world had been screaming. The memory of the violence was still etched into the air itself—the thunderous roars that had split the sky, the blinding fissures of mana that had torn through space, the sickening sound of reality fracturing under the weight of the battle. The echoes of that chaos seemed to linger in the heavy atmosphere, vibrating against their skin.
But now, the noise was gone. The screaming had been scrubbed away by the indifferent breeze, replaced by a silence so heavy it felt physical. The only thing that remained was the cold, green scent of crushed vegetation and the metallic tang of drying sweat.
Claval lay motionless on the ground. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow, fragile rhythm, each breath a small victory against the silence. She looked smaller than usual, stripped of her adventurer’s bravado, reduced to a pale figure swallowed by the dark grass.
Beside her, Roa knelt in the dirt, her posture rigid with desperation. Her hands hovered inches above Claval’s chest, trembling slightly. A pale, milky light pulsed from her palms—[Holy Glory,] flowing into the wounds. But the flow wasn't smooth. It sputtered, flickering like a dying candle in a draft. Sweat beaded on Roa’s forehead, collecting in the furrows of her brow before sliding down her temple to drip onto the dry soil. She didn’t wipe it away. She couldn’t. Every ounce of her focus was clamped down on the magic, her mind acting as a dam against the exhaustion threatening to wash her away.
“…Still unstable,” Roa whispered. The words were thin, brittle things, meant for no one but herself. “I can’t stop here. If I stop…” She bit her lip, tasting iron, and forced more power out of her depleted reserves. It felt like wringing water from a dry stone.
A short distance away, Naz stood like a statue. He had driven the tip of his massive greatsword deep into the soil, the heavy steel acting as a crutch to keep him upright. His massive shoulders heaved, rising and falling like overworked bellows. Every ragged exhale bloomed into a puff of white mist that swirled for a second in the chill night air before vanishing.
“Hell…” His voice was a low growl, scraped raw by fatigue. “What a fight.” Despite the exhaustion dragging at his limbs like lead weights, his instincts refused to shut down. His eyes remained sharp, darting across the encroaching shadows, searching for any movement in the dark.
Hanara did not relax, either. She stood perfectly still, her silhouette blending with the night. Her eyes traced every ripple in the grass, tracking the shift of the wind as if expecting the darkness to bite back. She watched the way the blades of grass bent, decoding the language of the wind.
“Don’t drop your guard, Naz-kun.” There was no tension in her tone—only the flat, unwavering calm of someone who had survived a thousand nights like this. It was the voice of a professional who never failed her role, even when her body screamed for rest.
Rize sat on the ground beside Yu. Her pulse was still hammering against her ribs, the adrenaline of the battle slow to fade. Her gaze swept the field, checking the perimeter, checking Claval, checking the stars. Then, she softened her gaze and turned to the boy beside her.
“Yu… are you okay?” The question hung in the air, gentle and terrifying.
Yu couldn’t answer. He sat with his knees pulled up, his head bowed low. He tried to open his mouth. He tried to force his vocal cords to shape a word, a sound, anything. But his throat had seized. It felt as though a jagged stone had been jammed into his windpipe, choking off the air, blocking the words.…I called them here. The thought looped endlessly in the hollow, echoing space of his mind. It wasn't just a thought; it was a verdict. He was the one who had pulled the battle into this world. He was the one whose voice had reached the Returnee—a catastrophic mistake that might have cost him everything. His hands rested on his knees, fists clenched so tight that his knuckles turned the color of bone. They trembled violently, a spasm he couldn't control. The wind brushed over them again, indifferent to their survival, indifferent to his guilt.
The party members carried out their roles in the quiet aftermath. Roa healed. Naz guarded. Hanara watched. The adrenaline was slowly bleeding out of the air, replaced by a tentative relief. But for Yu, that silence was not a relief. It felt like iron chains tightening around his chest, link by link, crushing the breath out of him under the sheer weight of his sin.
?
Above the field, the air shimmered. It was a faint, unnatural distortion, like heat rising from asphalt, though the night was freezing. No one noticed it. The distortion didn't make a sound. It didn't emit mana that the adventurers could sense. It was simply a glitch in the fabric of the location. Like an invisible "lens" snapping open, a translucent net sliced a rectangular frame out of the world. It captured the swaying grass, the moonlight, and the broken figures on the ground.
Far away—across the dimensional divide, back on Earth—the notification systems of the EWS platform flared to life.
[CHANNEL STATUS: LIVE.]
Claval held a Gold Badge—a high-tier streamer— with a massive following. She already had a large number of followers, but the impact of her recent live broadcast in the real world had caused her subscriber numbers to skyrocket. The moment the signal went live, the alert propagated through the network instantly. Phones buzzed in pockets. Smartwatches lit up. Browser tabs refreshed. Viewers flooded in, the concurrent viewer count spiking at an abnormal velocity.
The camera focused on the ground. The image quality was crystal clear, capturing the high-definition texture of the wild grass. It panned slightly, settling on Claval. She lay flat on her back. Sweat plastered her bangs to her pale brow. Her lips were parted slightly, leaking shallow, misty breaths. Her silver hair swayed gently in the night wind, glowing faintly under the pale moonlight, ethereal and vulnerable. And right next to her—a second silhouette. A boy. He was sitting slumped forward, his back partially turned to the camera. His shoulders shook in rhythmic spasms, a silent portrait of breakdown. His face was hidden in the shadows, but the build, the short dark hair, the clothing—it was undeniably not Claval.
The high-sensitivity microphone picked up the ambient sound: the wind hissing through the grass, the distant rustle of Naz’s armor. And then, a voice. It was faint, cracked, sounding like dry leaves being crushed.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“…I… called them…” Yu whispered. Digital static swallowed the rest of the sentence, chewing up the audio, but those three words cut through the noise with chilling clarity.
In the other world, no one noticed the broadcast. Roa was entirely consumed by the weaving of her healing trait, her eyes locked on Claval’s wounds. Naz rested his weight on his blade, eyes scanning the horizon. Hanara watched the wind. Only Rize sat beside Yu—watching him with deep concern, her hand hovering near his shoulder. But the stream continued. The invisible eye remained open, indifferent and unblinking.
It broadcasted everything. A sleeping hero, vulnerable and broken. A collapsing boy, crushed by guilt. A stranger beside the famous Claval. And the world saw it all.
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The moment the red LIVE tag lit up on screens across the real world, the reaction was instantaneous. Claval’s fans surged into the chat room. Fans arrived expecting a post-adventure update, or perhaps a casual "Just waking up" stream. Instead, they were met with silence and a grim tableau. The mood in the chat room shattered instantly. The comment stream, usually a flow of emojis and greetings, flooded with confusion and rising fear. The text scrolled so fast it became a blur of neon letters.
<<…Is she sleeping?>>
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The camera held steady on the devastated field. Light flickered from Roa’s healing trait at the edge of the frame—a soft, pulsing glow that looked alien to the viewers on Earth. They had no context for the magic. They couldn’t understand the mechanics of mana. They only saw Claval, their idol, defenseless on the cold ground in the middle of a dark wilderness. And beside her—the anomaly.
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Digital hands moved fast. Clips were recorded instantly. Within seconds, cut videos were being ripped from the stream, uploaded, and shared across SNS platforms. The algorithms picked up the surge in engagement.
The trends updated in real-time, filling with frantic tags: #Claval #SomeoneIsThere #VoiceHeard #EWStoday
?
In a dimly lit control room far away in Japan, Kaori Mamiya sat surrounded by walls of monitors. The room hummed with the low drone of cooling fans and servers, a stark contrast to the wind-swept field on the screen. She was watching the trending window on her side monitor, sipping lukewarm coffee.
“…Claval is down?” She froze. The pen slipped from her numb fingers. It hit the desk with a sharp clack, then rolled off the edge and clattered loudly across the floor. She didn't look down. Her eyes were locked on the main monitor. The boy’s silhouette shook beside Claval. The audio clip of his faint voice played again on a loop in a separate analysis window, the waveform spiking on the screen.
“I… called them…” someone said.
Mamiya’s heartbeat spiked, slamming against her ribs. The blood drained from her face. This wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t a trick of the audio or a random NPC. She knew that cadence. She knew that pitch.
“…That was Shiro Yu.” Her voice trembled, barely audible over the hum of the servers. And still—the stream continued. The chaos on the screen mirrored the chaos erupting online, a feedback loop of confusion and revelation spiraling out of control.
?
Night covered the field in a heavy, suffocating stillness. The grass brushed against itself, whispering secrets under the wind. But to those present in the other world, the only sounds that filled their ears were their own ragged breathing and the thudding of their hearts.
Roa kept her hands steady, fighting the fatigue that clawed at her consciousness.
“…Almost… Just a little more…” Her voice cracked with strain. A drop of sweat dripped from her chin, landing on Claval’s skin. The healing light flickered, then stabilized, glowing with a desperate warmth.
Yu still couldn’t lift his head. The shame was a physical force, a gravity that pressed his face toward the dirt. The darkness behind his eyelids was filled with the memory of the Returnee. Only Rize’s silent, anchoring presence next to him kept him from falling apart entirely.
Time passed quietly in the other world. The wind blew. The stars shone. None of them knew that their most vulnerable, private moment was being projected across dimensions, watched by thousands of unblinking digital eyes.
?
Rows of monitors glowed with cold blue light, casting long shadows across the floor. One screen in the center was spiking with abnormal viewership numbers, a red line shooting vertically up the graph.
“Claval’s feed is active!” an operator shouted from the back row, his voice cutting through the hum. “Damm it! Viewership is up 400% in thirty seconds!”
On the main theater screen: Claval unconscious. A mysterious boy. An unknown voice. The comments were exploding, scrolling too fast for the human eye to read. It was a waterfall of text.
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Kaori Mamiya leaned forward sharply, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the edge of her desk. She stared at the shaking back of the boy on the screen.
“…Shiro Yu.” It was almost a whisper, but it carried the weight of absolute certainty. The realization hit her like a physical blow. He was there. He was alive. And he was breaking down. “Cut the stream. Now.” Mamiya tapped her headset, her voice snapping into command mode, turning to ice.
“But the recording—we need to analyze the surrounding—” The operator hesitated, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
“Keep the internal recording! But shut the public live feed down immediately!” Mamiya barked, slamming her hand on the desk. “We can’t let the public see this!”
“Un—Understood!” The operator typed a furious sequence of commands.
On ten thousands of screens the real world, the image of the grassy field flickered once, distorted by artificial pixels, and then vanished. The screen flashed grey. The EWS logo appeared in the center. A cold, standardized administrative notice overlaid the chaos:
[This broadcast has been suspended due to an ethical guideline violation.] [No further details will be provided.]
The chat room didn't stop. It erupted into fury.
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It was too late. The clips were already flooding the net. The secret was out. Silence settled in the control room, heavy and suffocating. The technicians took off their headsets, looking at each other in confusion.
“…Yu Shiro… What happened to you?” Mamiya stared at the black screen, her reflection staring back at her. Her eyes were trembling. She touched the cold surface of the monitor, right where the boy’s back had been.
[LitRPG] [Cultivation] [Crafting] [Smart MC]
Synopsis (Click to Expand)
To transcend the heavens, one must first forge the ladder.
He is a Cultivator who values volume over speed.
He is a Chronicler who will not stop at the sky.