Ethan’s fingers tapped lightly against the armrest of his throne, his impatience growing more obvious by the second.
Everyone in the hall could feel his mood shift. Their voices naturally dropped, quieter and more careful—but no one dared stop. They could only grit their teeth and keep reporting.
Then hurried footsteps pounded in from outside.
Feylora rushed in.
She didn’t do her usual slow, formal salute. Instead, she went straight to the center of the hall and spread a map on the floor. The instant it unfolded, Ethan’s lazy gaze finally sharpened.
"Master—we found that civilization from before."
Feylora looked up, speaking fast.
"It’s at The Karvoss Strait!"
Ethan was on his feet almost instantly.
He strode down the steps and snatched up the map.
A narrow, remote strait was marked on it—ten thousand miles from Erald Castle. Long and thin, tucked away at the edge of the chart, surrounded by wide stretches of water and several key shipping routes.
The Karvoss Strait.
Ethan stared at the na, excitent flaring in his eyes.
Finally.
At that point, he couldn’t have cared less about the tedious city affairs. Right there in the throne room, Ethan issued the order to assemble an expeditionary force and prepare to move on The Karvoss Strait.
This ti, the people following him weren’t many—thirty thousand at most, and most of them were regular soldiers.
He didn’t mobilize all of Erald Castle’s core combat power. The castle had just co out of a massive war, and they still needed enough strength to hold the main city and their scattered outposts.
But for Ethan, it was more than enough.
Before long, the expedition fleet finished assembling.
The Sky Fortress rose slowly above the main city, its massive hull blotting out the sun. Below, formations snapped into place. Soldiers boarded. Energy cores lit up one after another.
When the main engines let out a deep, rolling roar, the entire fleet pulled away from Erald Castle and surged toward The Karvoss Strait in a mighty, unbroken line.
Inside the Sky Fortress’s main control room, Ethan stood at the front, eyes fixed on the shifting sky and the endless ocean rolling beneath them.
He was practically vibrating with anticipation.
The voyage stretched on.
The fleet pierced through vast cloud banks and crossed unbroken seas. The light shifted from bright to dim, then back to blinding again as ti dragged forward. Sea wind hamred the Sky Fortress’s outer shields, producing a low, constant grind.
On the control room display, the projected map updated without pause. The marker crept closer and closer to their target.
Finally, the ocean ahead began to narrow.
Faint landmasses erged on both sides in the distance. Between them lay a massive strait—dark water cutting through like a wound.
The air currents above the waves were more chaotic here than anywhere else. The sound of tides rose from below, smashing into cliffs and hidden reefs, throwing up sheets of white spray.
The fleet slowed.
They’d arrived.
The Karvoss Strait.
Ethan stood at the edge of the Sky Fortress’s deck, looking down at the Karvoss Strait. His brows drew together, inch by inch.
The strait was long, narrow, and dead quiet. On both sides, sea wind had scoured the cliffs until they’d turned black. In the middle, dark water churned nonstop, waves smashing into hidden reefs and exploding into sheets of white foam.
The fleet’s shadow pressed across the surface. The Sky Fortress hung in the high sky like a floating mountain—but down below, there was nothing. Just tides, rocks, and the empty howl of wind.
No matter how you looked at it, this was an uninhabited strait.
No city. No energy barrier. No teleport array. No sign of an entrance to an independent world. Even the spatial fluctuations were thin—so thin it felt like a stretch of sea that no powerhouse had ever bothered to touch.
Ethan’s gaze cooled.
If the map wasn’t wrong, then the only explanation was that the entrance here was hidden deep.
But that raised a problem. An independent world capable of hiding in a place like this shouldn’t be able to erase every trace of power so perfectly.
He was about to ask—
When Feylora appeared at the deck’s edge with a few people in tow.
She didn’t explain. She only glanced back at Ethan once, then jumped straight off the Sky Fortress. The others followed, one after another, bodies dropping through the high-altitude wind toward the strait below.
In the next mont, they vanished in midair.
Ethan’s eyes sharpened instantly.
He opened the System at once, locking onto the point where Feylora had disappeared. Scanning screens spread across his vision, sweeping layer after layer over that "empty" stretch of sky.
A few extrely faint energy ripples surfaced—like rings pressed beneath water, only visible from a certain angle.
Before Ethan could pin it down further, a small head suddenly popped out of nowhere.
Feylora erged from that blank region as if she were poking through an invisible curtain of water—half her body still on the other side.
"Master, the world is hidden in midair." She pointed behind herself at that nearly transparent patch. "We had to work like hell to find this entrance. It’s not very big, though—only a few people can pass through at once. I’m taking a team in first to scout."
Ethan stared at the entrance that was almost impossible to see. The chill in his eyes faded, replaced by pure interest.
There was no way he was missing an adventure like this.
He didn’t wait for Feylora to finish scouting. He lifted a hand and issued orders. Within monts, several hundred accompanying soldiers had assembled on the Sky Fortress deck.
Ethan jumped first.
Transparent lightning flashed under his feet as he plunged into that faintly warped patch of air.
The edge of the entrance felt like a cold, thin mbrane sliding over his skin.
A brief, weightless drop—
And the world snapped into sothing else entirely.
Ethan had seen plenty of independent worlds. Space pockets. Broken Plane Worlds. Hidden secret realms. Special zones sealed by powerhouses—every kind of entry thod you could imagine.
But the camouflage on this one was genuinely clever. If Feylora hadn’t found the coordinates in advance, a normal search would’ve had almost no chance of catching it.
The mont they landed, the first thing Ethan saw was a scene completely unlike the bleak strait outside.
The sky was bright. The air was damp and clean. In the distance, grassland rolled outward, forests growing in thick stretches. Dim specks of light drifted between branches and leaves. A breeze ca from the woods carrying the scent of flowers and crushed greenery... and underneath it, an energy richness so strong it almost tasted tallic.
Ethan’s gaze slid past the scenery and fixed on the depths of the forest.
Heavy energy waves pulsed from there.
Layer after layer of power surged up from underground, threading through roots, rock, and the mountain itself—then pooling above the canopy as a thin, glowing mist.
That wasn’t the kind of aura a normal resource point gave off.
That was the breathing of a massive vein.
A mine.
Ethan’s interest snapped into place.
If there was a mine here, it ant huge reserves of energy ore buried below.
If he could haul that ore back to Erald Castle, it would feed everything—Sky Fortress upgrades, Powered Combat Armor, the Fallen Star Guard, summon developnt.
With a prize sitting right in front of him, not taking it would be insanity.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He charged into the forest with a dozen goblins at his heels.
The goblins’ eyes lit up the mont they sensed the vein. They moved even faster than the human soldiers—because to them, a mine was walking wealth.
But before they could truly reach it, sothing blocked their way.
A castle.
It wasn’t enormous, but it was built with unnerving precision.
It sat right across the mountain pass like a cork in a bottle, the main wall fused to the slopes on both sides. Behind it, a second ring of walls extended outward, locking the entire mining region inside like a cage.
Anyone who wanted into the ore zone would have to break through this castle first.
User Comments
0 comments from readers