The three of them spent much of the time on the way back to the home base in palpable silence. Without having said a single thing, the lot of them had decided to leave each other alone with their musing.

Thinking it through, Sett still felt a light grasp on his heart. He had done his very best to appear calm and not understanding during the time the aerial guard had accosted them, but beneath the surface, rapid and raw emotions made it hard for him to appear calm. It was only sheer luck that the sheer gloriousness of the wyvern had left all his other emotions paralysed for a few moments.

Now, a couple of minutes after they had sped away from the dragon knights that still looked at them with great suspicion, Sett realised just how close he had gotten to being discovered. It was not just a considerably small crusader order, but the ruling government of all magical activity on Gliese Prime.

If his uniqueness were to be discovered by the crusader order Sett had hope that he would be able to lead a somewhat free life, but if discovered by the council he was sure that his life would be hell.

Even then, Sett still could not help but feel compassion for the two girls, especially Adina. They had clearly not taken the whole thing well. Despite their considerably high officer ranks, they were quite young, as far as Sett could tell, and they had been forced to lie to the top office on an entire planet on their very first mission in command. If Sett had been in a better position, he would surely have wanted a few harsh words with their superiors for putting them in such a grim situation.

Sett could only shake his head and massage his temples. Surely, he would be able to leave behind some of the worries he had when they arrived at the crusader’s home base.

At some point in time, the two sisters had left for the main hold to inform the platoon of the command’s decision. From where Sett was seated, he could faintly hear the words that were spoken. The crusaders had quite a few questions, but in the end, the platoon’s crusaders decided to simply go with the flow.

Sett had been rather surprised that none of them made any kind of uproar at the unjust situation that they were being shoved into, but upon further thought, it actually made a lot of sense. After all, in the end, strength was all that mattered. The average crusader might be stronger than the humans commonly found on Gliese Prime, but if compared to their commanders they were clearly subpar.

In other words, the crusaders in the platoon were a dime a dozen. They were easily replaceable if push came to shove.

This once again cemented the fact that Sett had to get stronger and fast if he wanted any kind of say in his own future. But once again, that was a thing for the future.

“Departure of realm Prime Material Plane imminent, please prepare for slight instability.”

The robotic voice once again brought Sett out of his thoughts. It had only been around thirty minutes since they departed the strange space known as the in-between, but in the time they spent flying they had almost passed an entire continent.

Sett, who had never even had the privilege of flying in even a commercial airplane, felt fascinated with the change. He had seen how the civilization on Gliese Prime had given way to far more rural lands.

Gliese Prime, despite being colonized over a hundred years ago, was mostly undeveloped. The sectors, in which ninety-nine percent of all inhabitants of Gliese Prime lived in, only accounted for something like five percent of the planet's habitable surface area. The reason was that the planet was simply too damn big. Even with the government chose expansion as their foremost priority, the task was nonetheless mind-numbingly large.

A small part of the rest of the surface area was rural places like this, where much of the planet's nonsynthetic foodstuff were produced. Yet, despite this, most of the planet was still covered with unconquered wildlands, where countless undiscovered species thrived.

Sett fell into thought. Why would the crusaders bring him into this uncivilized place?

“Corvette, you are entering restricted airspace, return now or be shot down.”

A communication sounded near Stella.

Restricted airspace? Out here? Sett felt the gears in his head begin to tick.

“Den mother, the house cat is returning with prey.”

Static filled the air.

“Corvette Seventh Bulwark, you are cleared to approach.”

Silence returned as the warship slowed to a crawl.

“Do you know why there exist so many restricted airspaces, Sett?”

Seeing Sett’s confused gaze, Stella asked him a question.

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“Because the government doesn’t want random civilian aircrafts entering their airspace?”

Sett answered, uncertain what Stella wanted him to explain.

“That is true, yes, but why would a restricted airspace exist out here in the middle of nowhere?” Seeing Sett’s clueless gaze, Stella continued. “It is because there is something here that mortals should not stumble upon. Specifically, it is our home base.”

Sett looked down, scanning the surface below them for any signs of a base. Let alone a glorious base, Sett did not even see a shack big enough to house the corvette.

“You are thinking like a mortal again. We will have to do away with that if you wish to survive in this world, Sett.” Stella play-acted the mannerisms of a teacher. “Realms are far more common than you think, and the restricted airspace is to ensure that mortals do not stumble upon them.”

That explained a lot. The crusader’s home base was in a realm much the same as the vampire’s abode had been. But why were they concerned that mortals would stumble upon their home base? To Sett, it seemed pretty much impossible to enter one of those places by accident.

“You’ll see.”

Explaining his confusion to Stella, she simply replied casually with a smirk.

In the distance, Sett noticed that they were flying directly towards a small spherical object.

“Vice-captain,” Stella spoke to her sister. “Please provide entry credentials.”

Adina nodded and went to a terminal of some sort and began to enter numbers. With the last digit entered, the spherical orb that Sett had discovered earlier began to transform. It began to split into four distinct pieces, each floating away from the centre. The void between them was not empty but was filled a mysterious substance that resembled static electricity.

Soon, Sett’s entire viewpoint was filled with blue electricity substance. As the formerly spherical object grew to a size that was about double the width of the corvette, it suddenly stopped. For a split second, nothing happened, but then with a large flash of essence that Sett could see with his bare physical eyes, the blue electricity substance was replaced with a completely different scene.

What they could see was a different world. It was a portal. A portal to a different world, or rather another realm as Stella would have called it. Honestly, Sett would have thought that he would be numb to whatever the crusaders could throw at him after all that had happened, but he still found himself enthralled at the phenomenon that was appearing before his eyes.

The portal. Another thing that was a stable of the fantasy world had appeared before his eyes.

They approached the portal and Sett braced himself to face the discomfort he had felt earlier when they entered and exited the in-between.

Yet, nothing happened. No discomfort. No vertigo. Nothing. Only a slight difference in the essence in the air and the gravity that dragged on his body. In the long run, it was barely noticeable.

“Why was it so easy?”

Sett could not help but ask about his misgivings to Stella.

“Do you now see why we hide behind regulated airspaces?” Stella seemed slightly smug. “The place that we rescued you from was far detached from the Prime Material Plane and incredibly unstable. Had it not been for the gigantic energy spike from earlier we would never have known where to look for the place, let alone how to get there. In comparison, getting into this place is like a walk in the part. Even if we didn’t have the portal frame installed, it would still be theoretically possible for any normal human to access the realm in their confusion.”

“I see.”

Sett nodded his head along with Stella’s words. It did make a lot of sense to regulate the airspace unless they wanted to have a passenger jet with thousands of people suddenly appearing in the heart of their base of operations.

With that out of his mind, Sett turned to look at the realm that was the crusader’s home base. He was glad to find that it was far more pleasing to the eye than the vampire’s place had been.

“Welcome to the garden of the seventh Gliese Eden, Sett”

Sett certainly felt that the name was fitting for this place. It really did look like how he would have imagined Eden to have looked like based on the old scriptures, the only deviation being that it had buildings speckled all over the garden.

The most apparent thing about this realm was its size. Unlike the vampire’s place that seemed to go on forever, this one was considerably limited in size. If Sett had to do eye estimations, he would wager that the diameter of the realm was somewhere around ten kilometres. Still large, but also not at the same time.

On the other hand, the most distinguishing feature of this place was the way the land looked. Unlike every other place Sett had been to in his life, this place had multiple landmasses dotted in the sky. It was as if they were simply floating in the sky, completely defying gravity. It was the single greatest magical display that Sett had seen in his time among ascendants, perhaps only sharing the spot with Selt’s own realm.

As for how these gigantic floating landmasses managed to stay afloat, Sett would have to guess that it was the massive blue glowing crystals that sat at the base of each of the landmasses. Sett did not even want to guess how much essence had to be contained within the gigantic crystals for them to staying afloat.

The land that sat atop the landmass did not lose out much to the lustre of the magnificent crystals that sat at the bottom. The grass was beyond green. Almost freakishly so. It was as if every single blade of grass was carved from a piece of emerald. The trees and plants that dotted the landscape were not much worse off. Every single tree and plant felt as if they had been carved by master carvers, perfectly capturing the essence of each plant with a precision that was unheard of.

Even the air in the garden felt as if it was leagues better than the outside world. A fact that Sett would not refute nor disbelieve. It truly felt as if he was breathing life back into his lungs with each breath.

Among the plant life were many big and small buildings. It seemed as if utmost care had been used in placing these buildings to ensure that the natural beauty of the place was not disrupted.

All in all, it was a magnificent place beyond anything Sett had ever seen.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Sett could only nod at Stella’s words. Beautiful. It was plain and simply the best word used for the place.

“This place is among a collection of thirteen different realms that have been discovered on Gliese Prime, with the seventh being in the middle of the pack in terms of size and quality. It is thought that these realms originated from the remains of a long-dead god of nature, though how much of that is true is unknown. The first and biggest among the Edens are under the control of the Western Gliese Church. The Seventh Eden was gifted by the church to the current grandmaster and the order during his inauguration.”