“How did things go then?”

Deep underground, a majestic citadel crafted completely of stone was illuminated by a giant crystal embedded into the cavern’s ceiling. Its bountiful light allowed the mixtures of stone used throughout the citadel’s construction to be seen and their overall beauty to be recognised. Its architecture could be described best as ‘gothic’ with large indentations up and down the grandest buildings of the citadel.

That is not to say only those of extreme status resided within its walls. The great buildings were constructed on the backs of many ordinary folks, whose simplistic homes were given simple trims and garnishes so as to not be a disgrace to the citadel’s design.

However, it was in the grandest spire, a tower towards the edge such that it did not blot out the crystal’s light, that a Primordius warrior who sat cross-legged spoke aloud. He was talking to a standing attendant who looked similar to himself, but very notably appeared far less impressive.

For the greater of the two, his silver markings were not merely art, but runes of a great language formed into exquisite art and compressed many times over for incredible effects. While the weaker eternal simply possessed tens of flowing designs, a beauty in their own right, but nothing so special as a great language embedded onto his body.

The weaker of the two replied, “All pawns have been used where possible. Their controllers have now cut off all lines of contact, and traces of their presence should be invisible to any below Sages.”

“Good… Execute all the remaining pawns. Transfer the controllers away, and promote those who performed admirably. Any additional assassinations successful?”

“None, however, no reinforcements from the other worlds have come through,” it was not an ideal response, but as anyone in his place would know, one did not sugarcoat facts to an emperor.

This did not anger him though. As a Primordius, he knew that even a sneak attack with divine relics can only work so well. “Ignore it then. Have the elves agreed to neutrality?” They still had time for this matter, but the sooner it came to be, the higher their confidence.

“There has been no response. However, we have rumours that they are waiting for us to prove that we might win.”

There was no response this time round. The eternal closed his eyes once more and returned to his thoughts. A quiet contemplation on how the wars above were likely to end and where to distribute their forces. But more importantly, he continued to strive for greater power, as one eternal such as himself couldn’t truly make a difference in this matter.

Ten like him?

What a joke. Humanity would’ve never claimed a whole continent if that was the extent of their power. Such things only offered stability and safety once the war was over. What they feared in battle were the machines of war which did not grow tired like flesh and blood.

And for that, they could only depend on other humans.

* * *

In a nice turn of events, they were all able to stay in Avril Port for a week and a half without any further problems. Unless Icy having to teleport into a room every night was considered one. But besides that, progress hadn’t been small. Not just for him as well, since most of the group approached Gold rank with every passing day.

But Mala evolved to a Sapling wizard as well! An incredibly important stage for wizards as she wasn’t just picking one of a few targeted evolutions, but rather from a list of over 15! This evolution is often considered the biggest for wizards, as it defined their future paths completely through an analysis of several factors.

The spells a wizard uses, the spell structures they knew, skill in various subfields like alchemy, arrays, or scroll making, but most importantly, how their bodies had changed over years of practice for all these things!

Like warriors, to a wizard it became inevitable that their bodies transformed in certain ways, and in their cases, it was an elemental deposition which occurred over the length of years!

…Except Mala’s elements couldn’t be described as anything but whacky.

She never focused on a single element or spellcasting structure, which meant she frankly just knew a bit of everything. However, general purpose wizards really aren’t that strong, and that evidence comes from how only one actually became a Sage and her testimony over the weakness of the path. One could train to be a jack-of-all-trades, but her regret became one of the best examples to never choose it for your evolutions.

So, the class Mala ended up choosing slotted in with her attitude to magic more than her actual skills in it.

Magical Library was a weak-sounding bloodline which didn’t seem to prioritise strength, and this was slightly true as most of its Nexus boosts were even geared towards increased learning speeds of spells and various subfields…

However, the name was literal. It came with a library that attached itself to her mental space, in a way becoming a quasi-Mind palace! But more importantly, its special existence actually increased in power simply based on the amount of unique knowledge within, and the Nexus provided a boost to magic damage using some sort of knowledge calculating function. Icy even gave her eighteen Intermediate true spells to learn just as a starting point, all of them going straight into the library. Realistically, Mala could have picked a more offensive or utilitarian evolution to better support the group and survive.

But it betrayed her love of magic, and so a library to store it all was precisely what she needed to make up for the limited time in her life. A way to study more than just spell structures and have time to train at the end of it all!

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And on the topic of such mental spaces, Icy finally went through a transformation himself as the supports to his second building had been completely finalised. Finishing the upgrade to an Apprentice Mind palace, much to his excitement.

Out came a title he’d been waiting for as well!

[Obtained title ‘Apprentice Mind palace’. Title requisite - Upgrade Mind palace to Apprentice level]

That was to be expected, and interestingly, there was no delay on this prompt.

[Apprentice Mind palace: Reduce chaos of mana inside mental space by 50%]

Such an immensely useful title absolutely had to be made use of anytime he wanted to decorate or produce metal objects in the future. The chaos this title spoke of was simply the way mana moved about naturally and, in turn, required a fair bit of control to maintain specific orientations when he made the things earlier. Obviously, there was the general upgrade to his Mind palace, which meant that resisting most Apprentice tier psychic spells was rather easy now, although enough of them could whittle away those defences in time.

One final bout of improvement was that Raccelline completed yet another training manual for children, this one directed at using spears and halberds. Before long, he’d probably run out of basic weapons for her to use, and then run out of blocking manuals too…

“You didn’t all have to come, you know?” The whole group stood in Breakhead’s office once more, arriving as told to find out which ship would be theirs. But even so, he carried on talking, “Departure is in two days at dawn. You’re on ‘The Kalian’. I trust you’ve all been informed about the Stormwall?”

Icy spoke up quickly, seeing that the last part related to him. “I don’t actually have many notes on it… that I could find.” With memories so vast, unless there was an obvious book about the topic, he’d struggle to locate anything precise without scouring everything about the Third world.

“The Stormwall is split into three sections. These are mirrored at the centrepoint. The first is ignorable, a warning zone with some waves and rain. But then the ‘wall’ itself, a thickened wall of fog that most ordinary ships would be stranded in, if not for the whirlpools which sporadically appear as well as a constant rainfall which will soak a non-magical vessel in seconds. Lastly, what we call the Stormzone. Guess where the name comes from… Just stay inside and wait while we pass through it. Nothing goes wrong, usually.” Given why this wall was set up, there’s probably a good reason he rarely gave out information on that Stormzone. Namely that most groups lose their shit.

Unperturbed by the information, Korridan simply asked, “How long does it take to pass through?”

“Approximately 30 hours on a good day. 40 or so if the ship needs to be repaired or recharged fully after a single pass. It’s a three-week journey as well. There are rations, but bring your own stuff which doesn’t taste like crap.” Nothing too tough for their group, given they carried around a month of food and water between them, and they stocked up on a couple weeks’ extra right after leaving the office.

There wasn’t exactly anything else for Breakhead to tell them. And they wanted to learn more about the wall to avoid confusion or worry, but the actual process didn’t matter too much to them so long as it was a safe trip across.

Two more days passed without any trouble, the group now with more than enough food amongst them. However, while most of the group spent several hours a day going around Avril and finding anything they may need for this trip, Mala stuck to her room and focused on learning more Intermediate true spells. The additional ring on each of these made each one take a few days to learn at a minimum, and so far, she’d already managed to fully understand two in the last eight days.

Simply the fact that she learnt new spells of a previously inaccessible tier so quickly was impressive, but at this point, her repertoire had to be so large that she quickly related them to simpler spells to ease the learning procedure.

She also spent a lot of time writing her knowledge into the library as well, the Nexus reporting a 5% boost in magic damage based on the several books she’d filled so far.

But, interestingly, when she tried to add references to the Exeter bloodline actually being an exception to the Nexus’ bloodline standardization… She passed out for the rest of the day.

And that line vanished from her library.

Fortunately, she’d been in the room with Icy and Raccelline at the time, allowing him to gather the others and watch over her for a few hours, but the implication that she physically could not store such information was a major concern. Just as a test, Icy even provided her with some information about supreme tier dragons and even divinity… Both of which were stored like any other fact.

So, it would seem there was a reason even the Nexus couldn’t set Raccelline’s bloodline to that of a standard human. Something which had to even exceed gods… An idea that even Great sages would scoff at normally.

Just as a test, they tried to write down this information onto a piece of paper as well, but the moment she wrote ‘Exeter bloodline’, it crumbled into fine ash without any hopes of being reconstructed.

As it turns out, Raccelline broke more than one of the basic magical laws Mala thought were true.

Besides that little problem, they stood at the port before dawn as told and saw the fleet of 29 Stormbreakers, all in the water not too far from the dock. They saw Breakhead in his signature hat and boots rather quickly, and from there, climbed aboard as he pulled the ship over, literally in his case. They also noticed at least ten parties like their own, with different compositions, as well as quite a few better dressed individuals with guards at Gold rank. Lastly, some elves actually boarded the last few ships, likely individuals finally returning home after their visit.

However, they clearly didn’t like the attention and remained cloaked the whole time.

Speaking of Stormbreakers, they quite literally made use of sharp-headed ships with metal bows to literally cut through the storm, and this was a requirement simply to move through the Stormwall. It’s actually where such ships even got their name in the Third world.

With a rather narrow beam, the majority of the ship remained below water whilst at sea, and thus did its best to ride waves instead of hopelessly cutting through them. While a small metal cabin covered the captain while steering, it clearly wasn’t used for more than keeping the rain off them.

However, this missed out on other key points of the ship.

Firstly, its core was made entirely of metal, then overlaid with a spongy layer for impact resistance, with a final layer of metal on top to redirect lightning and keep the inner layer safe. However, the top layer also existed to protect the arrays which were engraved on the ship’s core, those being the most important part of each Stormbreaker. The crew members were required to wear rubber-lined clothing for the whole trip, both for waterproofing and due to a single lightning bolt being anywhere from a nuisance to fatal. The range of magical power in the Stormwall was rarely consistent.

And so, with all the ships loaded, they set off from the Port as sunlight shone over the quiet waves. Everyone noticed how a final, thirtieth ship joined up with them not too far out and took place at the head of their formation. This ship was not only twice the size of the Stormbreakers they occupied, but also far more well-defended, with thicker plating and even metal spikes for ramming other vessels.

Amusingly enough, it was called the ‘Breakhead’. Perhaps that’s why the fleet commander liked to go by that name… But they didn’t really worry about it. It was just over a week before they approached the Stormwall, and after that, a new, safer continent awaited.