As the stranger reached this part of his story, Ethan couldn’t hold back any longer.
"You’re from the ΩA001 Universe? And here to pick up this generation of Earth’s humans?"
The man shook his head.
"I said I ca here for help. But... I’ve been asleep for too long. It might already be too late." He glanced at the sleek, high-tech watch strapped to his wrist. "Converted to Earth’s ti, I left the ΩA001 Universe about six thousand years ago. According to the records preserved back ho, your generation should still have been in the Mythic Age when I departed. I ca to seek their aid... but after all this ti, I suspect the ΩA001 Universe no longer exists."
His eyes dimd as he said it, as though the weight of that failure had just settled onto his shoulders.
"You an the myths we have on Earth—those gods who could soar through the skies, tunnel into the ground, or ascend to immortality after endless trials—those were all real?" Ethan was stunned.
He knew that growing one’s Energy was almost impossible on Earth. There was no foundation for it there. Even in the barren expanse of the Sea of Death, he could faintly sense various types of energy floating through the air. But Earth had nothing like it.
That energy—what people here called the Energy of Heaven and Earth—was the key to breaking through from the Sovereign rank to the Transcendent rank. Below Sovereign, one could advance through sheer physical training. But to step into the Transcendent rank required consuming enormous amounts of stored nutrients and energy, awakening the power a person had accumulated over the years, or drawing directly from the Energy of Heaven and Earth found in beast cores and demon cores.
Earth had no such energy. No magical beasts. No demon beasts. That ant the highest anyone could hope to reach there was the peak of Sovereign rank.
"They did exist," the man said. "According to the data, every human era on Earth experiences a Mythic Age. Or rather, the first generation of humans lived during a rare revival of Earth’s spiritual energy. To put it bluntly, if you had the thod back then, even a pig could have beco a god. But... humans are greedy. Their endless consumption drained the energy, leaving nothing for later generations. By your ti, there should be no spiritual energy left at all.
"But..." He tilted his head. "I’m curious. How did you get to the ΩA002 Universe? And how did you end up in this artificial pocket dinsion?"
Ethan’s mind raced. "I’m not entirely sure," he said, weaving half-truths together. "I was just walking, then out of nowhere lightning struck . When I woke up, I was in a place called the Umbral Star. I started training there, joined sothing called the Sacred Assembly that’s held once every hundred thousand years, and eventually, I ca here."
He expected disbelief. Instead, the man simply nodded.
"I see... that’s fairly common. According to the data, the origins of humans across starfields almost always involve accidents like that. After billions of years, humanity has managed to spread and carve out a place in the cosmos. But there’s only one true origin point for humanity—Earth."
This guy... Ethan thought, suppressing a sigh. Was everything on high-tech worlds decided purely by data and equations?
"Na’s Ethan," he said aloud, walking forward. With a casual wave of his hand, a table and two chairs appeared. "And you?"
The man sat without hesitation. Ethan only dared to get this close because he’d already gauged the man’s strength—Sovereign rank. The real threat was the hulking ch standing behind him.
’If I had one of those...’ Ethan couldn’t stop himself from glancing at it. He’d been a sci-fi fan since childhood, and the sight of an actual battle ch sent a thrill through him—though this one’s design was frankly ugly.
"My designation is KH3106," the man replied.
Ethan blinked. "That’s... your na?"
The man gave a faint, self-deprecating smile. "Where I co from, every newborn is given a number, not a na."
Ethan leaned forward. "Why did you co for help?"
He rembered what Morzan had told him: in five years, Earth would face a catastrophe that would wipe it out. By now, that left only four and a half years. What kind of catastrophe could it be? Resource depletion? Destruction? Or was it connected to KH3106’s mission?
"Let show you sothing."
KH3106 tapped a series of commands into his wristwatch. A holographic projection flared into existence above the table—a rotating, four-dinsional image shaped like a diamond, larger at the top and tapering at the bottom. Fine dividing lines cut across it, each marked with identifiers from ΩA001 to ΩA009.
Ethan stared. "Is this... a map of the universe?"
"Close. It’s a cosmic division map," KH3106 said. "I’m from the topmost layer—the ΩA001 Universe. Right now, we’re here, in the ΩA002 Universe. This red dot is our exact location." The image zood in, racing past countless stars until it stopped in a patch of dark void.
"This," KH3106 continued, "is a spatial rift in the ΩA002 Universe. That’s where this artificial pocket dinsion is hidden."
Ethan couldn’t see anything in the projection, but the sheer level of technology left him speechless. Inter-universal positioning? On Earth, GPS signals could barely survive a trip into dense mountains.
"Where’s Earth?" he asked. "Which universe is it in?"
"Earth isn’t in any universe," KH3106 said. "Its location is what we call the Desolate Domain. About here." He pointed to the very tip of the diamond’s lower point.
The na sent a jolt through Ethan. Morzan had ntioned it more than once—most morably the ti he’d gotten drunk at the Orange Tavern and ranted about "those ungrateful old bastards" who hadn’t even spared the Desolate Domain. But Morzan had never explained what it ant.
"What’s that?" Ethan pointed to a thin channel that appeared in every universe on the map. They were misaligned, drifting slowly, occasionally overlapping before shifting apart again.
"That is the cosmic channel linking ΩA001 through ΩA009," KH3106 said. "We call it the Path of Ethereal. You made it here because, for a brief mont, the channels overlapped at just the right place and ti—and you were there to be pulled through. I, on the other hand, calculated the exact convergence between ΩA001 and ΩA002 and teleported through."
Boom.
It felt like a sledgehamr had struck Ethan’s skull. The second half of KH3106’s explanation barely registered. Two words had lodged themselves in his mind, echoing over and over:
The Path of Ethereal.
Ethereal...
A dawning realization began to take shape.
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