*BOOM!*

All the artifacts simultaneously imploded!

One moment, Ezra stood in the treasure vault, surrounded by an army of cerulean-glowing artifacts.

A dome of energy erupted from every direction, imploding in on itself with a thunderous boom that tore the very air asunder.

The next moment, Ezra stumbled back into the Sovereign Universe with a warped shimmer of space—though not unscathed.

"GAAAH—!"

His body emerging lay like a wounded beast thrown through rails of fire.

Smoke and steam hissed from his left side, trailing behind like an ominous cloak.

But it is doused within seconds as no air pockets exist in space.

His garments were shredded—tatters hanging off his frame, revealing blistered, charred skin that hissed and crackled with residual energy.

The entire left half of his torso bore the violent wrath of the explosion, his arm limp and blackened at the fingertips.

He staggered, breath caught between wheezes and growls.

<Gatekeeper> had saved him—but not completely.

It hadn’t even been a full second after his fingers brushed the glowing artifact before it detonated in a crescendo of condensed energy.

And with it, every other artifact in the chamber.

They’d been primed. Booby-trapped.

A cruel failsafe.

Ezra gritted his teeth and dropped to one knee.

The artifact’s energy residue coursed through his veins like molten fire, making his limbs twitch involuntarily.

His breathing grew ragged. For a brief moment, everything went white with pain.

But his body—no, the monstrosity he had become—refused to stay broken.

His regenerative factor kicks in, his internal healing factor weaving around the threads of his veins and charred flesh.

Cellular regeneration surged beneath his ruined skin, beginning the slow process of healing the burns and mending the seared muscle.

Still, Ezra could feel it—these weren’t normal wounds.

The energy embedded within was refined. It was meant to cling. The healing was slow. Painfully so.

He exhaled slowly.

"Vorath..." Ezra’s voice was a mere rasp. "You son of a—"

He didn’t finish.

Instead, he vanished in a blink, a pulse of <Sovereign Movement> firing as his form flickered through space.

In the next instant, he arrived on Ketta—the Red Planet.

Crimson skies churned overhead, lightning and crackled faintly in the far-off storms.

Ezra didn’t care.

With a roar born of raw fury, he slammed his right fist into the crust.

BOOM!

The impact tore into the surface with seismic force, sending a shockwave rumbling outward.

Dust and rubble exploded into the air.

The ground cratered beneath him, fissures spiderwebbing outward for kilometers.

He stood there, fist buried deep in scorched earth, chest heaving.

"Vorath..." he hissed, his voice low, guttural. Venomous.

The name tasted like poison on his tongue.

The bastard had known. Of course he knew.

Ezra had not been too careful the first time, thinking <universal concealment> would keep him from being detected all through—but Vorath hadn’t become a ascendant through carelessness.

He’d sensed something, and in his infinite spite, he arranged a nasty little gift for the intruder the next time he tried to steal from him.

Ezra slowly rose, pulling his hand from the crater.

The burns on his body were beginning to fade, but the pain lingered like phantom echoes.

He chuckled.

It was dry, humorless, laced with rage.

"What a bastard..." Ezra muttered, eyes glowing faintly from the residual flare in his core. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

But as quickly as the laugh came, it died.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to think clearly.

He couldn’t afford to spiral into vengeance—not now.

Vorath was out of reach. Beyond the large amount of protective measures he must have layered over his body, protecting him, the gap in strength at their present made the prospect of a head-on confrontation suicide.

In the first place, wasn’t taking revenge on Vorath part of the reason he was seeking to grow stronger

Having taken more than a lifetime to learn the lesson, Ezra knew he couldn’t let what just transpired make him lose sight of what he ought to do next.

It would take more than righteous fury to kill someone like Vorath after all.

So, his thoughts shifted back to his critical need:

Money. The exact reason he got blown up in the first place.

The explosion had wiped out his hopes.

The artifacts were mostly completely destroyed or severely damaged at best.

All the wealth he’d hoped to gain—vanished in a flash of cerulean light.

Even if some of the artifacts remained, Ezra didn’t dare seek to return there to check.

As much as the thought grated him to his core, he would need to wait. Bide his time.

This event was a wake up call for him to pull his guard up and heighten his vigilance.

Therefore, Ezra finds that he’s back at square one.

He exhales and began pacing along the crater’s rim.

His fingers twitch, alternating between clasping behind his back and stroking his chin.

One billion Cryst.

That was the adequate amount required for a Class-A spacecraft suitable for solo exploration in the Astral Sea.

The kind that could survive warps, deal with spatial storms, house an energy field generator strong enough to repel most ambushes, and navigate anomalies without a crew..

A one-man mission into the unknown required top-tier tech.

He paused, mind racing.

What now?

He didn’t have time to build a business empire or hunt down galactic nobles for patronage.

’What to do, What to do...’

And then — like a burst of static in the fog of his thoughts — the solution hit him.

AlphaNova.

Ezra straightened, his pulse kicking up

He had dismissed it before, thinking it too difficult, too formal, too draining of time and attention.

But thinking back to it now—this was an opportunity.

An extremely valuable one!

The financial puzzle suddenly felt solvable.

His thoughts spiraled, fast but focused.

The main of utilizing the AlphaNova company which lay billions of miles away is the Sovereign Universe!

Specifically, it’s ability to shorten the distances between places using <Gatemark> as a conduit.

Yes! Because he has already made Sidal—now the CEO of AlphaNova—his subordinate, it is now easy for him to utilize the sovereign universe by bringing Sidal into it to hand him or to receive goods, this cutting the distance of billions of miles to basically zero!

Ezra had thought the usefulness of AlphaNova ended the moment he left the Zeta Galaxy.

But now?

His eyes lit up with fervent excitement.

The real treasure wasn’t AlphaNova’s empire of personnel and contracts. It was its infrastructure. And better yet—his Sovereign Universe completely bypassed the single obstacle that made such intergalactic ventures unfeasible for most.

Distance.

Billions of miles across vast, disconnected star clusters didn’t matter to him.

As such, by utilizing this unique advantage to make use the exchange of good and services between these two star cluster extremely far from one another.

With AlphaNova’s backing—and a proper business plan—his earning wouldn’t stop at ’just’ one billion!

This made Ezra’s voice crackle as he lips spread into a wide grin.

’It turns out I was thinking too small till now’ he quipped.

After all, once successfully setup, it wouldn’t only serve to bridge the gap in his current funds but lay the groundwork for a passive, semi-autonomous funding pipeline that would successfully bar all his future money problems.

Because why not? Why just 1 billion? What was barring him from earning more?

If he utilized this advantage in tandem with expanding the AlphaNova company to generate maximum profit, what was to say he couldn’t eventually reach a trillion Cryst?!

Ezra could already imagine the loads and loads of money!

Although it would probably be a string of numbers on his communicator in the end...

Regardless! Excitement filled his veins as his blood pumped ferociously.

Gaining such inspiration, Ezra dared not delay a moment longer, activating <Gatemark>, he heads straight for Zeta Galaxy to discuss said plans with Sidal and push it into it into motion as fast as possible.

As he did this, a thought comes to mind.

’It seems something has skipped my mind...whatever’

Ezra would send goods and resources directly into the Sovereign Universe.

Then Sidal would turn around and re-sell them through AlphaNova’s channels to black markets or to legitimate buyers—at higher prices due to the sheer exotic rarity of the materials within said economy.

It was a closed loop.

A self-sustaining income stream.

Infinite scalability. Zero delay.

And, most important of all—

Completely untraceable.

Ezra’s laughter echoed in vast empty lands of planet Ketta as his figure vanished.

It wasn’t loud or unhinged—but calm, pleased, and electric with ambition.

Reappearing, Ezra is not in the Zeta Galaxy as expected....but rather in his room in the Kingsmere castle....

What? He certainly wouldn’t barge into the AlphaNova headquarters with his currently tattered clothes, so Ezra has no choice to take his good time changing clothes again.

This time, he notices that the clothes feels much tighter than before, proof of Ezra’s physical growth after infusing the red dragon bloodline into his body.

It seemed in a short while, he would be forced to go shopping for new clothes to stash in his wardrobe.

Mentally noting that down, Ezra completes his new look and without a minute longer, he vanishes.

Heading to Zeta Galaxy, Ezra brainstorms a few other objectives to mark off beyond meeting Sidal.

For instance, checking up on the Rosvellar Foundation to determine how their excavation of the secret realm is going.

Gaining more insights as to the entry points in the Astral Sea located across different galaxies and gleaning more knowledge on the nuances involved in such changes.

For his expedition into the Astral Sea, no matter what, Ezra dare not be careless.

By the time all these thoughts concluded, the strenuous pull on Ezra’s body as a result of the considerable distance between his previous and current location finally subsided.

Taking a glance, Ezra confirms he had arrived at the set destination.