"May you find your own path. Farewell."

A smile flickered beneath the paladin's visor. The youth seemed to be doing just fine. There was no need to fret too much over whatever troubles he might have encountered.

"My own path? Of course."

The white-haired youth murmured softly. He parted ways with the knight, then slipped into a narrow side alley. With scarcely a ripple of displaced air, his form dissolved in seamless teleportation. He vanished from the domain of the Church of Light.

Back in Skyborne City, even ten days after the Utopia disappeared into the void, the research into what had happened remained at an impasse. The problem of enabling a sapient being to enter the void itself had ground the inquiries of both wizards and scholars to a standstill. Countless theories filled their minds, yet none could be realized when the most basic prerequisite could not be fulfilled.

After reviewing every archive, they found no age, ancient or modern, that possessed a method for a sapient creature to act freely within the void. The omnipresent corrosive power that dwelled there simply could not be withstood by human strength alone.

Within the material world, the realm itself served as both shield and anchor to dissipate the erosion of the void.

But the moment one stepped into the void away from the protective shielding of the material world, that erosion would become absolute. Anything that entered would be devoured. Sapient beings would transform into chaotic voidspawn; inert matter would be absorbed into the fabric of the void.

Magicians and knights stood no chance of influencing the void whatsoever. Even wizards, who could only affect it to some extent, acted only by indirect interference. It was a far cry from anything resembling true alteration of the void itself.

Just how the Utopia had managed large-scale alteration of the void remained the crucial key to breaking this deadlock. Whatever knowledge they held must contain the answer.

Day and night, scholars of the Skyborne City and the Alliance pored over old records, analyzing every trace the Utopia organization left behind. Yet no matter how diligently they worked, they made not the slightest trace of progress. The void's immutability—its ancient, stable, unyielding presence—seemed impenetrable.

Morningstar, the bomb that had once changed the fate of the world, appeared to contain an answer. But the knowledge required to construct it had long been destroyed—erased so that no one might turn such a weapon against anything other than the abyssal creatures for which it had first been forged. Even the Skyborne City retained only a sparse, incomplete description of the device.

"Morningstar was forged in ancient times. Our technology today far surpasses that of the old era. We should absolutely be able to retrace the method from first principles. Somewhere within its structure lies the key to how it influenced the void."

So declared Icarus, head of the Council of the Arcane and sitting member of the Central Assembly of the Skyborne City, to the scholars participating in the void-research initiative.

His reasoning echoed the very argument once used to justify the destruction of all Morningstar data. The bomb had originally been devised from the ground up by alchemists and wizards; its erasure served only to stabilize the fragile recovery period following the Abyssal War.

They firmly believed that, should another need for it arise, the races would be capable of recreating such a miracle with the more advanced technology of the era.

The reality, however, was a different story. From time to time, small groups had attempted to reconstruct Morningstar, but all had failed. Still, these were only scattered efforts. Considering that the original weapon had required the support of the entire continent to create, those research groups who had tried eventually abandoned their attempts. And so, even to the modern day, Morningstar remained shrouded in mystery.

One of the Skyborne City's major undertakings during these ten days had been to reverse-engineer and fully analyze Morningstar. Regrettably, however, the researchers had almost nothing to show for their efforts. Every stage of the research ran into insurmountable obstacles. No matter how they approached the problem, they could not proceed.

"It makes no sense... Everything I know tells me this parameter should not behave this way. And yet the results insist it does. None of my theories can be extended to the next step."

Such was the report one scholar delivered to Icarus. It was not the first time he had heard similar complaints. The contradictions were piling up. The growing mismatch between theory and experiment told him something was fundamentally wrong.

"Abandon all current formulas and theories. Begin again from the ground up. Start from the most fundamental knowledge of wizardry and alchemy. Re-derive everything from scratch."

Faced with a mounting impasse, Icarus made a decision. This approach would be ruinously time-consuming, but without such a gamble, they would forever remain mired in place. Without destruction, there could be no creation; without risk, no advancement.

He issued this directive on the seventh day. In the three days that followed, new results began to appear. Certain previously intractable problems were resolved once limitations of some formulas were discovered and corrected.

In addition to revealing that several existing formulae had hidden constraints that few were aware of, the process also produced real forward momentum. Each new day's progress exceeded the total gains of the previous week combined. Confidence surged among the scholars and wizards.

But time remained the greatest enemy. Their adversaries would not sit idle while they worked. And sooner—far sooner—than the Alliance had predicted, the Utopia made its move. They assaulted the continent. The power they displayed was a surprise to all who witnessed it.

At dawn on the tenth day following the Utopia's descent into the void, the Lady of the Night delivered a warning to Wang Yu and Avia. The message raced through the Prayer Network to the entire Church of Nightfall, then swiftly to the Alliance at large.

"I have detected the return of the Utopia. They are ascending from the depths of the void, with far greater power than when they departed.

"They've split up. The single stream of power rising toward the surface has diverted. Some are breaking away and heading for different regions of the continent: the Ashen Wastes, the dwarves' Ironforge Bastion, the Stellar Groves..."

The Lady of the Night spoke calmly as she relayed the movements of the Utopia. They had not chosen to concentrate their assault on a single point. Instead, midway through their rise from the depths of the void, they had split up, opting for a dispersed offensive across multiple regions of the material world.

"Can you tell how their power is divided?"

Avia's question carried a tension she couldn't quite hide. It was hard to rule out the possibility of feints, small assaults meant to distract and mask the enemy's true objective.

"I can. Their forces are evenly divided. Each substream is identical in scale."

The Lady of the Night reassured Avia that this was no misdirection. Utopia had divided all its forces equally; this was a genuine multi-front assault on the material realm.

"So they really did grow stronger after entering the void... Strong enough to wage a war on this scale."

Wang Yu's attention shifted to the floating continent map Avia had sketched with magic. Red points marked the locations toward which the enemy forces were headed. The map would be sent directly into the Prayer Network, allowing both the Church of Nightfall and the Alliance to confirm their engagement points.

Most of the marked places were nothing more than names to him, places he had never visited. But one of them was different, tied to memories and bonds he had not forgotten.

"Liaheim, hm? I'll take that one. Madam Moira, Mr. Gewen, and Miss Sif are all there. And we still can't be sure whether these fragments of the Utopia's power are enough to threaten them. Better to play it safe. Let's wipe them out before they cause trouble."

He tapped one of the red points on the map, the elven capital where he had once lived for a time. His relationship with the elves was solid, and even the Tree of Life was on friendly terms with him. There was no reason to hesitate. He would go lend a hand.

"Let's move out. They're ascending rapidly. It'll be ten minutes at most before they breach the material realm. We need to hurry."

Avia nodded and followed Wang Yu out of his void domain. They headed toward the transportation device prepared for him, something that could take him to any point on the continent in mere moments... though no ordinary person could ever hope to operate it.

"Aurelian, Miselyx, leave Liaheim, its two neighboring zones, and the surrounding airspace to me. You two help the Alliance cover the areas they can't reach in time. These pests are going to become a continental problem sooner or later."

Through the Prayer Network, Wang Yu contacted Aurelian and Miselyx, two of the dragons' leaders, and confirmed that he would personally handle three of the Utopia organization's scattered forces, including the one descending upon Liaheim.

"Understood. We'll assist wherever we can."

The dragons answered without objection. They didn't question Wang Yu's decision, though, frankly, his claim did sound absurd.

Utopia had divided its power into a total of twenty-one units. Wang Yu intended to take on three by himself. The Alliance had to confront far more—but he was only one man. Well... one man and Avia. Between the two of them, it wasn't even clear who was the more dangerous.

But absurd claim or not, they trusted him implicitly. No one truly knew how strong he had become, but no one doubted him.

Ten minutes wasn't much time to prepare, but it was far better than none. The Alliance reacted instantly to the Lady of the Night's warning, mobilizing according to the map of the Utopia's soon-to-land forces.

A thunderous hum rolled through the land as the single-use large-scale teleportation arrays flared to life, transporting the nearest assembled Alliance units to their designated points. Over the past ten days, the Alliance and Skyborne City had spread an intricate lattice across the continent. At each carefully calculated node lay a one-shot teleportation array.

The Alliance armies were stationed and distributed relatively evenly along this enormous network. While they couldn't secure every inch of land, they could certainly make the most efficient use of every soldier they had.

If an invasion force appeared anywhere on the net, nearby units could be pulled instantly toward the nearest node and deployed directly into combat.

And as the Alliance's troops arrived at their respective battlegrounds, the Utopia began to re-emerge. Colossal towers rose up from the smooth boundary between the void and the material realm, meeting a rain of spells, alchemical explosives, and shockwaves of fighting spirit hurled down from the sky.