Eccar flew high above the ruined city after that, while the destroyed streets and corrupted remains stretched beneath him across the district.

The expedition below had finally resumed moving after the battle ended and the atmosphere among them had changed completely compared to earlier. Of course they still felt the fear remained inside them, but now it no longer dominated their expressions.

Instead, excitement and admiration had begun replacing it.

Several knights suddenly raised their weapons into the air while shouting loudly toward Eccar above them. Some of the younger mages waved enthusiastically while others yelled praises toward the Dragonborn without even trying to hide their excitement anymore.

"Dragonborn!"

"That was incredible!"

"We’re alive because of you!"

"Don’t go anywhere else until this expedition is done, please..."

Eccar heard every single one of them clearly.

A wide grin immediately spread across his face afterward.

He raised one arm high into the air while flying above them before shouting back loudly toward the expedition below.

"I’m here. Don’t you worry!"

The response became even louder afterward.

The expedition members erupted into cheers while several knights slammed their fists against their armor repeatedly in excitement. Even the exhausted mages who had looked terrified earlier now appeared energized again after witnessing Eccar’s overwhelming strength firsthand.

Eccar honestly enjoyed this.

He liked being admired. He liked the excitement in people’s eyes whenever they looked toward him. He liked hearing them praise him like this.

But deeper inside his heart, the feeling of relief also existed alongside that satisfaction.

Because more than the admiration itself, he genuinely felt happy seeing that these people were still alive because of him.

They had survived. None of them died during the attack. For Eccar that mattered far more than the cheers.

However, the happiness on his face slowly weakened when his thoughts drifted toward the situation surrounding them.

This was only the beginning but the corruption had already reached this level.

This entire city had become alive. The land itself had changed and turned. Even the sky no longer behaved properly. This was just like the terrifying disaster with Zerathul that time.

So what exactly would appear once things became even worse?

Eccar quietly released a slow breath afterward.

Worry slowly pressed against the back of his mind, but he immediately buried it beneath his usual confidence. He could not allow the expedition to notice uncertainty from him right now.

To them, he needed to remain the Dragonborn standing above the chaos. The protector keeping them alive. If their morale collapsed inside a situation like this, then the slightest fear alone might destroy them before the corruption ever could.

So Eccar forced the grin onto his face again before lowering himself slightly closer toward the expedition.

"I’m going to survey the surrounding area from above for a while," Eccar shouted toward them while hovering in the air. "So keep moving and don’t panic over every little thing. As long as I’m nearby, nothing’s going to reach you."

The reaction came immediately afterward.

Several knights shouted back confidently that as long as the Dragonborn stayed with them, they no longer feared anything this world could throw at them.

The younger mages nodded enthusiastically while looking toward him with complete trust.

Eccar laughed loudly after hearing that before soaring upward into the sky again.

But the moment he climbed high enough that the expedition could no longer clearly see his expression, the smile slowly disappeared from his face.

His eyes swept across the distant horizon and what he saw immediately made his expression turn solemn.

The corruption had spread much farther than they originally believed.

From above, Eccar could now clearly see enormous streams of strange Magic energy spreading across the entire region like veins beneath the world itself. Crimson-black energy seeped downward into the land continuously while the forests, rivers, ruins, and even mountains slowly absorbed it.

Nature itself was being rewritten. The corrupted Magic did not merely infect living creatures anymore. It was also invading the foundation of the world.

Eccar’s eyes narrowed slightly while the wind roared around him high above the ruined city.

"This isn’t good..."

The thought lingered heavily inside his mind. If they delayed too long, this world might eventually reach a point where saving it would become impossible.

—

Far across the other expedition routes, Aesa, Erend, Sylven, and even Erend’s clone and Erend himself had already begun noticing the exact same thing.

Aesa saw enormous currents of corrupted Magic flowing beneath the frozen wastelands while black ice slowly spread deeper into the mountains beyond the expedition route.

Even the snowstorms themselves had begun carrying traces of foreign energy that should not naturally exist within the world.

Sylven observed corrupted Magic spreading silently beneath the roots of entire forests while living ecosystems slowly changed into something unnatural and hostile.

The infection had already reached deep beneath the surface rather than remaining isolated to visible anomalies alone.

Erend watched the skies above his own expedition darken further while enormous invisible waves of corrupted energy pulsed across the horizon repeatedly. Even the air itself had begun carrying traces of instability.

At the distortion route, Erend’s clone witnessed entire sections of reality slowly weakening as the corruption continued spreading out from the largest fractures in space.

The realization immediately unsettled all of them.

The corruption had invaded the world far deeper than they initially estimated.

And almost immediately after that, the Dragonborns began exchanging information through telepathy across the vast distances separating their expeditions.

Thoughts, observations, warnings, and concerns flowed rapidly between them while they compared what each of them had discovered.

The more information they shared, the heavier the situation became because every report confirmed the same terrifying truth that the corruption was no longer spreading slowly, it had already spread into the world itself on a large scale.

Erend thinking with worried expression, the Void Architect had never contacted him again. He must already know where he needs to go in this world to obtain his creation.

If so, then they need to be faster.

—