The sea wind howled between the masts of the Capitano, as if cheering for the grand ambition these arrogant pirates had just sworn.
Giovanni's highly incendiary speech had only just drawn to a close, yet the atmosphere on deck remained so fever-hot it seemed capable of igniting the air. Just as the crew were boiling with passion and preparing to face the unknown, Giovanni suddenly put away that fanatic expression, the corner of his mouth curling into a mysterious smile.
He slowly turned and pointed a white-gloved finger toward the shadows behind the mainmast.
"However, before our great voyage officially sets sail, it's necessary for everyone to re-acquaint themselves with one of our 'old friends.' Or rather… a new friend who's been hidden for a long time."
Accompanied by heavy, oppressive metal footsteps—clang, clang, clang—Tin Man's tall, powerfully built silver-white body slowly emerged from the shadows into the blinding afternoon sunlight.
Yet what drew everyone's eyes was not his signature metal shell, but what he was holding in his hand.
It was a dagger of strange design, brimming with a futuristic technological feel. Its blade was not metal, but a layer of high-density deep-azure plasma bound into shape, emitting a faint "hmmmmm" vibration.
Miguel rubbed his eyes, staring in disbelief at the dagger's hilt—there was unmistakably a fluffy little white wing ornament there, still twitching slightly.
"That is… Ollie?" Miguel's eyes widened. "That white steamed bun turned into a weapon?!"
Tin Man ignored Miguel's shouting. He walked to the center of the deck and swept his gaze across the crowd. The electronic eyes that always flickered with cold red light now seemed to carry a trace of human weariness.
"Hello, everyone."
Tin Man spoke. His voice was no longer that deliberately disguised, flat synthetic tone. Instead, through his vocal module, he simulated the low, steady voice of a middle-aged man, carrying a scholar's particular rigor and fatigue.
"My original name is Klein. Dr. Klein."
At that name, Miguel and Faith—standing near the front—both jolted. Faith snapped his head up; in those eyes that were usually still as an old well, extreme shock flashed. Miguel, meanwhile, instinctively tightened his grip on the sword hilt at his waist, as if he were seeing an unbelievable ghost.
Tin Man—no, Dr. Klein—took in their reactions. He dipped his metal head slightly.
"My apologies. For certain reasons, and because I couldn't find a suitable opportunity, I was unable to tell everyone my true identity earlier. But since Captain Giovanni has asked me to introduce my past here, I'll take this chance to explain."
Dr. Klein raised the plasma dagger that Ollie had become. The deep-azure glow reflected off his silver mask.
"Unlike most of you, I was neither born in this mechanical world of steam and gears, nor was I someone unfortunate enough to fall into this world by accident during a voyage or journey."
His gaze pierced through the crowd and landed precisely on Miguel and Faith.
"I left the world and universe I once lived in by my own will. Yes—just like the two newest scholars and warriors among you… to be exact, Miguel, Faith, I come from the same world as you. I once served the same country. I recognize the insignia on your shoulder."
An uproar rippled across the deck; other crew members began whispering among themselves. Miguel and Faith were utterly stunned.
"However, that was twenty years ago." Dr. Klein's voice turned faint and distant, as if sinking into far-off memories. "At the time, as chief scientist, I was swept into a sudden, top-secret dimensional physics crisis. In that catastrophic incident, due to an out-of-control accident in the experimental core, my physical body was instantly vaporized, and my consciousness—my soul, if you like—lost its 'strong causal coupling' with the real world."
"Simply put… from that moment on, as far as our original world was concerned, I was dead. Originally, I should have remained detached from the dimensional layer of reality, becoming a true ghost wandering in an imaginary-number space until my awareness completely dissipated."
He looked down at the heavy, cold metal shell of his body now and let out a complicated metallic sigh.
"But fortunately, in that endless abyss beyond worlds, I found this 'tin skin.' At the time, it was only a soulless metal mech abandoned in the void by some unknown civilization; and I was a wild ghost without a body capable of bearing causality."
"It was the most perfect match in the universe. Through it, I anchored myself again to physical law and stabilized my existence; and it, relying on me as an 'awareness core,' regained the capacity to absorb abyssal energy and function again."
Dr. Klein lifted his head, gazing toward the far sea horizon.
"In that abyss where time had no meaning, I ultimately gathered enough energy and initiated a dimensional jump capable of escaping it. Only, by then I had been away from my original world for far too long… so long that my weak beacon for returning home had already been ground away by the storms of the void. I had no way to specify where I would appear after the jump."
"But the result is exactly what you see. Wearing this tin skin, I fell like a meteor into your absurd and wondrous world."
"And along with my arrival came a user manual for an ultimate weapon belonging to some lost civilization."
As he finished, Dr. Klein slowly opened his other hand. With a faint sensation of space warping, a softly glowing blue holographic orb appeared in his palm. Within the orb, dense geometric patterns and indecipherable alien script streamed at high speed.
"Although as a physicist, I've never believed in any goddamn fate." Dr. Klein looked at the blue orb, then at the dagger Ollie had become. "But after falling into this deformed world sealed by a high wall, perhaps I vaguely understood something. This weapon… it has a task it is meant to complete."
"That is—to sever that calamity wall spanning the sea, threatening all of us!"
The crew were deeply shaken by this speech, so filled with science-fiction color and epic weight that even their breathing turned cautious.
Yet right in this solemn moment, Dr. Klein abruptly shifted his tone and turned toward Giovanni, who was listening with relish.
"So, in order to test the weapon's cutting frequency and complete the final data calibration… Captain, lend me your 'Heart of Gold.'"
"Huh?" Giovanni's smile froze instantly.
"W-what? You're not… you're not seriously going to use that to test the blade, are you?!" Giovanni sprang up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. The great captain aura from moments ago vanished without a trace; his face was full of miserable resistance. "That's an unrivaled treasure I went through hell to get! It's priceless!"
"Anyway, you wouldn't sell it for money, would you?" Dr. Klein asked in a flat tone that permitted no refusal. "You just like collecting shiny stones with historical significance. In your hands it's just decoration."
"I… th-this…" Giovanni choked.
"…Fine." Giovanni covered his face in pain as if someone were carving off his flesh. "In any case, even the best rough stone is ultimately meant to be cut and polished. Y-you… cut it a bit prettier, okay?! Don't chop it into dust!"
A few minutes later.
With several strong sailors straining to carry it, a massive uncut natural diamond—tall enough to reach half a person—was carefully placed at the center of the deck. Under the sunlight, the giant diamond called the "Heart of Gold" radiated a dazzling brilliance that left people dizzy.
Everyone held their breath.
Dr. Klein stepped forward. The "hmmmmm" of the plasma dagger in his hand grew sharper and higher. He made no extraneous preparation—only calculated the angle precisely, then gently, without resistance, slid the dagger into the unimaginably hard diamond!
"Hiss—" Giovanni sucked in a breath, eyes squeezed shut in pain.
A pure pale-blue light spread from the cut surface where dagger met diamond, instantly flooding the deck. Then Dr. Klein's wrist trembled at a high frequency beyond the limit of human sight. The blade traveled through the diamond as smoothly as a hot knife through butter. There was no harsh grinding sound—only fine diamond dust dancing in the glow.
For Giovanni, this terrifying "surgical cut" lasted a full five minutes. Every second felt like someone dancing on his heart.
When Dr. Klein finally withdrew the dagger and the deep-azure glow faded, there was a soft click. A few pieces of waste flaked off the surface of the huge rough stone, revealing a perfectly symmetrical dazzling core inside, with hundreds of reflective facets!
"Hm…" Dr. Klein looked at his work and nodded with satisfaction. "I'm not a professional cutter. I only know how to use geometric principles to preserve its maximum size and refractive index. I hope it didn't depreciate."
Giovanni opened his eyes. Seeing the reborn "Heart of Gold," even more radiant than before, he was so excited he threw his arms around it and even kissed it twice without caring how ridiculous he looked.
"Oh! My baby! It's a perfect work of art! Tin Man—what a pity you're not a jeweler!"
Several hours later.
The afterglow of sunset filtered through the carved glass windows of the captain's cabin and fell onto the dark red carpet.
Giovanni sat behind his wide desk with a magnifying glass in hand, still unable to put down the flawlessly cut "Heart of Gold," admiring it lovingly.
"Aiya, Dr. Klein—no, Tin Man." Giovanni praised without lifting his head. "That performance on deck was simply magnificent. To be honest, the moment you made the cut, I really did worry you'd split the 'Heart of Gold' in half."
Dr. Klein—seated in the guest chair—let out a low metallic chuckle. (At this moment, he had already turned Ollie back into its chubby white-bird form; it was sprawled on his metal shoulder, snoring.)
"Heh. If you wouldn't claim damages afterward, or cry and threaten to dock my wages for the rest of my life, I'd quite like to do that." Dr. Klein shot back without courtesy. "From a physics perspective, testing a perfect fracture plane under extreme stress is far more interesting than carving a rock."
"You really are a devil," Giovanni muttered.
"Back to the point." Dr. Klein didn't continue indulging the captain's antics. He rotated his heavy metal neck and aimed those red electronic eyes at the other two sitting on the sofa.
Ever since hearing that name on deck hours ago, Miguel and Faith had been in an intensely shocked and complicated mental state. Now they stared at the "Tin Man" before them with a gaze mixed with reverence, confusion, and disbelief.
"To the two compatriots over there." Dr. Klein's tone grew serious. "From the beginning you've looked like you wanted to speak but couldn't. Holding it in this long must be uncomfortable, right? There are no outsiders here now—let's speak openly."
Miguel swallowed and sat up straight. Those rough hands that always gripped a greatsword now awkwardly rubbed his knees.
"…Even though I haven't read much, and I'm just a brute who knows how to roll around in the mud." Miguel spoke first, his voice carrying a rare respect and excitement. "But when I served in the special forces, I heard our officers who did tactical simulations, and those senior technical advisors, mention you. You're that… that 'Dr. Klein,' right? The legendary scientist who proposed that famous hypothesis?!"
"Oh, that." Dr. Klein sounded oddly uninterested, as if he were talking about something trivial. "To ordinary people like you, the most famous thing about me is that boring thought experiment. How ironic. No one remembers the dimensional engine I designed, but a hypothesis became my epitaph."
"Huh? Boring?" Miguel froze. In his mind, a theory revered by the top brass of special forces couldn't possibly be boring.
Faith finally couldn't help speaking. He pushed up his glasses; a feverish light flared in his eyes—the look of a scholar meeting an academic idol.
"But Doctor, that hypothesis about 'causality and parallel observers' is indeed extremely popular in both academia and the military! It even directly influenced the later shape of our wars and the construction of our intelligence networks. How can you call it boring?"
"Sigh…" Dr. Klein released a long breath. "It's not that I can't understand why it became popular. It caters to humanity's fear and curiosity toward 'agnosticism.' But politicians and warlords only treated it as a theoretical tool for making new weapons."
He waved his metal palm, cutting off Faith before he could dive deeper into academic debate.
"Enough. Think what you like about the past. In our world, whether that hypothesis was right or wrong has nothing to do with me anymore. Now what matters is solving the problem in this deformed world under blockade. We're in the same boat."
Then Dr. Klein's gaze locked onto Faith again. The red glow in his electronic eyes flickered, suddenly a little rapid.
"Faith, you once said that when your former Director was discussing the nature of this world with you, he mentioned concepts like the 'White Crow Planet' (an underage, immature closed world) and the 'Anchor of Elsewhere' (a tentacle maintaining this world's connection to other higher-dimensional spaces), correct?"
"In a sense, his seemingly mystic explanation is correct in dimensional physics." Dr. Klein said in a deep voice. "This planet—or rather, the region enclosed by the wall—really is in an 'underage,' pathological, closed state."
He stood. His tall metal body cast a huge shadow across the captain's cabin.
"So, combining my recent observations of this world's physical constants with some incomplete records in Ollie's core database… I've formed a very frightening suspicion. But I think it's better to tell you in advance, so you can prepare yourselves."
Miguel and Faith both held their breath. Even Giovanni set down the diamond in his hand and lost his smile.
"I suspect that the so-called 'White Crow Planet' we are on has an extremely strict limit on its lifespan." Dr. Klein's voice was like a heavy ancient bell striking everyone's chest. "Especially compared to other 'White Crow Planets' in the endless void, its natural evolutionary lifespan is far shorter. It isn't growing naturally—it's being artificially 'forced to ripen' and then 'squeezed dry.'"
"If that's really the case…" Faith's face turned pale at once. "Then that wall…"
"Exactly. Then we must act quickly." Dr. Klein nodded, his tone filled with unquestionable urgency. "The wall's existence isn't only to separate inside from outside—it's more like an hourglass countdown. Once the time is up, this world will be discarded like a shriveled fruit."
"And judging from the long-standing arrogant indifference of the wall's owner—meaning the 'emperor' from the legend who came ashore at midnight—we can draw a bone-chilling inference."
Dr. Klein pointed toward the sky outside the window.
"Perhaps, in that emperor's eyes, he has already found a way to seize the 'Anchor of Elsewhere' firmly into his own hands, or move it into an absolutely secure core region. As for the world outside the wall, Port Alexandra, this ocean, and all the people who live here…"
"To him, they are expendable consumables. Once the world collapses, he can leave safely with the anchor point, while we will be buried along with this world."
The captain's cabin fell into dead silence. Only the sound of waves striking the hull remained.
"Of course." Dr. Klein added at last, his metal shoulders lifting slightly. "For now, this is only an intuition based on dimensional observation—there is neither affirmative data nor negative proof. But as a scientist who has already died once, I never doubt my intuition."