One fruit had boosted Ethan’s mental energy by almost ten percent. That alone made him fixate on it like it was a life-saving drug.

If he could find ten of them...

His mental energy pool would practically double.

After that, the whole team turned into a treasure-hunting squad, combing the mountains and forests like prospectors.

They searched for an entire day.

But the fruit was insanely rare. After the first one, they only found one more—all day.

Ethan ate that one too.

Fallen Star Squad had an unspoken rule: anything that directly benefited the boss went to Ethan first.

And right now, nobody needed mental energy more than Ethan did. Every one of his abilities was a mental-energy guzzler, and his toolkit was the kind of thing that only got scarier the more fuel you poured into it.

So the fruit naturally ended up with him.

But after the second one, Ethan frowned.

The effect... wasn’t quite as good as the first.

Not by a lot, but enough that it set off alarms.

Resistance?

If his body started adapting, then "eat ten and double my pool" wasn’t going to be nearly that clean.

He stared at the darkening treeline and let out a breath.

"Whatever. I’ll take what I can get." He shook his head. "This was a bonus to begin with."

When the sky finally dimmed, they didn’t even argue about it—they left the forest immediately.

It was already deadly in there during the day.

At night, it would be suicide.

Random vine ambushes. Poison-gas plants. Flowers that could swallow you whole...

Even for them, it had been a miserable grind.

So once it got dark, they pulled out without hesitation.

Back in Fallen Star City, Miles found Ethan almost immediately—and he brought a piece of news that made the air in the room change.

"The Void Realm entrances are gone."

Ethan’s eyes snapped wide. "You’re sure?"

"Positive." Miles nodded hard. "Atlas City noticed first. To confirm it, I had our people stationed near the Riverton City entrance move in close and observe directly. It’s gone. Completely disappeared."

Ethan went quiet.

Void Realm entrances disappearing was, for humanity, the kind of good news you didn’t dare hope for.

After seeing what Void Realm creatures were capable of, Ethan had never stopped treating the Void Realm like a loaded gun aimed at Earth.

A blade hanging overhead.

Hearing it was gone—gone for now, at least—made even him breathe easier.

But why would the entrances suddenly close?

He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

"Is it because The Crimson Star showed up again?" Ethan asked, thinking aloud.

"The apocalypse started because of The Crimson Star," he continued. "And the Void Realm passages appeared after the apocalypse. So those passages should be tied to The Crimson Star too."

"Then why would The Crimson Star returning make the passages disappear?" He frowned. "It doesn’t add up."

Miles hesitated, then said slowly, "Maybe the passages closing wasn’t The Crimson Star at all."

He looked around the room, voice dropping.

"Maybe... something is buying Earth time to grow."

Ethan’s gaze sharpened. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"This mysterious energy surge," Miles went on, "I couldn’t shake the feeling that some existence sensed a threat and forced Earth’s power level up—no matter the cost."

Ethan’s expression turned strange.

It sounded insane on the surface.

But... he’d felt something like that too. Something uncanny beneath it all, like the world had been pushed—deliberately.

"If that’s true..." Ethan said quietly, "then the entrances closing is probably temporary."

He looked at everyone. "But temporary is still time. We use it. We squeeze every advantage we can and keep climbing."

"Yeah." The others nodded.

Then someone frowned. "But Captain... the zombies got stronger, sure, but they’re still not that useful to us. Their crystal cores are too low-tier. Are we just supposed to rely on stargazing every night and slowly absorb mysterious energy?"

Ethan shook his head. "Absorbing energy is only one piece. If we only cultivate like that, it’s too slow. We need other paths."

He started counting them off.

"First: the Infernals in the Yamato Empire. We’ll check soon whether they came out. If they did—and they caught the energy surge—their Tier won’t be low."

"Second: I don’t think it’s just the Atlas Federation and Yamato. Other countries probably have Void Realm creatures running around too. We’ll scout and hunt."

"Third: the Mindfruit in the forest." He tapped his temple. "That’s a real power-up item. The more, the better."

He looked at the group, voice steady.

"So yeah. We’re not short on work."

"...Right." The speaker exhaled, half convinced, half overwhelmed. "Yeah, fair."

That night, after they ate and took a short break, everyone got back up and started absorbing energy again.

The Crimson Star had vanished after that one appearance. Up in the sky, only the nine stars of the Nine-Star Dipper still hung there.

Ethan wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but the Nine-Star Dipper felt... dimmer than before.

And the mysterious energy tonight also felt thinner than it had right before the surge. Not by much, though, so Ethan didn’t dwell on it.

They trained through the night. When it was time to stop, Ethan didn’t even bother going back to sleep. Instead, he had Henry pull out the runic disk so they could keep absorbing energy.

At their current strength, they didn’t need much rest. Time was more valuable than sleep.

But the moment the runic disk activated, Ethan frowned.

If last night had only been a vague feeling, this time it was obvious.

The concentration of mysterious energy had definitely dropped.

"Huh," Sean said, blinking as he sat there. "Am I crazy, or did the mysterious energy get way weaker?"

"It’s not just you," someone else said. "I feel it too."

"It really did drop," Ethan said. "If I had to guess, it’s the after-effect of that energy surge."

"Like Earth burned through too much mysterious energy all at once," he continued. "It probably needs time to recover."

He waved it off. "Doesn’t matter. We’ve got the energy crystal."

Ethan reached into his spatial storage ring and pulled out the head-sized energy crystal.

Instantly, the mysterious energy around them thickened—like someone had turned the world’s saturation back up.

"Keep going," he said.

"Yeah!"

With the energy crystal, their training speed still couldn’t compare to those peak surge days, but it was at least several times faster than everyone else’s.

Around their residence, the outer ring of housing belonged to the Fallen Star Guard.

Once Ethan brought out the energy crystal, the increased concentration spread outward too. Even when the Nine-Star Dipper faded later, it didn’t matter—people could still absorb energy.

The Fallen Star Guard members didn’t go back to sleep either. They chose to keep training.

They didn’t stop until a little after nine in the morning.

After a quick breakfast, Ethan and the others headed straight for another forest.

After the mysterious energy surge, primeval forests were everywhere now.

The problem was, the forests were massive—overgrown, tangled, and full of danger. Finding a cherry-sized Mindfruit in that mess was brutally hard.

Honestly, without Ethan’s [True Sight], it would’ve taken insane luck. Otherwise, it would be basically impossible.

The next few days fell into a rhythm.

Train at night.

Search forests for Mindfruit during the day.

It was busy, but at least it felt productive.

And compared to everyone else... they were practically taking it easy.

Once the major compounds got a taste of the payoff, their enthusiasm for killing zombies went through the roof.

Almost every morning, high-Tier Enhanced from each compound stormed out like they were on stimulants, hunting zombies at daybreak.

Hit them while they’re weak.

With zombie intelligence shattered, this was the window humanity had been praying for.

If your strength wasn’t enough, you brought bodies.

High-Tier zombies got dogpiled to death... or ambushed and taken out dirty.

A zombie without a brain was a lot easier to kill than a zombie that could think.