Chapter 216: The Abyss’s purpose, Entering the smokey zone! The movement of Upper Expanse
"We’ll take the flying ship," Caelus said.
No one had a problem with that.
They set off at once.
---
Far away, in the upper expanse.
Hao Shu sat on his throne with a face carved from ice.
This was the man who had wiped out the entire population of Jason’s world without so much as blinking.
A servant burst through the doors, panic written all over his face.
"Trouble, boss," he gasped.
"What happened?" Hao Shu asked, calm as still water.
"Smoke. It’s rising from the edge of our cluster. I think... I think it has something to do with The Watcher."
"The Watcher?"
For the first time in a very long while, Hao Shu’s eyes lit up.
He had been waiting a long time for a name like that to land on his ears.
"We’re leaving. Now." He rose from his throne in one smooth motion. "Get the flying ship ready."
"Aye!"
The servant nearly tripped over his own feet rushing out the door.
----
Planet Cymatica.
The leader pulled the empty injection from his arm and let out a long sigh of relief.
This was his medicine.
This was the only thing keeping him breathing.
The greatest minds on Cymatica had built it for him and him alone, just to squeeze a few more years out of a body that should have crumbled long ago.
The injection forced his Ascended Body to overclock, burning bright in exchange for borrowed time.
It worked on an Ascended Body and nothing else.
That was how he had clung to life for almost 20,000 years.
This is what helped him become the ruler and leader of this planet.
Just then, as if he was musing, a man rushed, breathless.
"Leader Ken! That smokey region, we finished scouting it."
He swallowed hard.
"There’s no doubt about it. It’s abyssal energy. That is a portal to somewhere in the abyss."
"The Abyss..." Ken grinned.
He had always known this day would come.
He knew about the Abyss. He knew about the endless power sleeping at the bottom of it.
He knew the Ender’s Tale by heart.
This was the pit the Enders were cast down into by the Axiom Origin.
A place that made it impossible for them to crawl back out of under normal circumstances.
This was where the Enders rotted away if they were too slow to escape.
That was the rule carved by the Axiom Origin, put in place to stop another war from ever tearing through the real world again.
And right now, the Abyss was ticking.
A countdown to erase every new Ender trapped inside it.
The system ran on its own. It activated the instant all the enders reached Crown-Rank.
After that, the Enders were left with exactly one choice. Force their way out, or be swallowed by the abyssal reset.
"Enders," Ken murmured. "I wonder what kind of power you have with you."
He didn’t know whether there was an ender in this part of the abyss or not.
But he was certain of one thing. Sooner or later, he would stand face to face with one.
But his real goal sat far higher than any single Ender.
He wanted the power the Abyss used to run the rule that kept the enders at bay. The power it used to wipe out the Enders all on its own.
If he could tear that out and make it his...
He would become invincible.
That was his ancestor’s wish.
That was his wish too.
---
Caelus and the others boarded the ship.
The flying ship looked like something you’d have seen sailing the open ocean a few hundred years ago, all wood and sails and a great wheel up front.
"I’ll be the one steering this thing!" Caelus declared, slapping both hands onto the wheel.
The instant his palms touched it, the knowledge poured straight into his head. He simply knew how to fly it.
No one bothered to stop him.
He was old enough for a driver’s license, after all.
He spun the wheel. The ship lifted clean off the ground. He leaned forward, fed it a little pressure, and it lurched ahead.
Swoosh!
Its speed was monstrous.
It tore across the planet’s skies and punched straight out into open space.
This was nothing more than an artifact. Yet it laughed in the face of every rocket and every long year of research humans had ever poured into reaching the stars.
Caelus glanced back over his shoulder at the moon and frowned.
"Huh. Strange," he muttered. "Why do I feel like someone’s watching me?"
Inside the moon, a girl strolled into a cold, desolate hall lined with heavy binding chains.
Tap! Tap! Tap!
Her footsteps rang out as she came to a stop before the behemoth chained in the dark.
"Yo~" she greeted, flashing an easy smile. "I’m Faust. Nice to meet you, Jormungandr."
The chains shifted with a low, grinding groan.
"I’m here to break you out and drag you up to the real world." She tilted her head and grinned. "Of course, I’ll be needing your help for that. Heh."
"Let’s start simple. We snap these chains, we reach the southern gate." Her grin stretched wider. "Caelus should be there waiting too."
---
Caelus reached the smokey region Jamal from the domain had pointed them to.
To his surprise, ships from other planets were already circling the area.
He didn’t spare a single one of them a glance.
For some reason, the moment his eyes landed on the smoke, his breathing quickened.
A bad feeling crawled up the back of his neck.
"I’m reading dense spatial fluctuations," Lyra said, her brow tight. "This is a portal. No question about it."
Caelus nodded. "Then we go in."
"Brace for impact."
"Got it." The others nodded and grabbed onto whatever they could.
One by one, they drove the ship into the swirling smoke.
Boom!
The flying ship rattled hard as it crossed the fluctuation. When it punched through to the other side, they found themselves inside what looked like a wormhole, thick purple miasma coiling on every side.
Each time the ship brushed the miasma, it shuddered down to its frame.
Then a tendril of miasma reached out and touched Caelus directly.
"Seventh Ender... so you’ve come."
A deep voice rolled through his skull, and his consciousness began to slide loose.
He gritted his teeth and shook it off in an instant.
The next moment, the distortion hit him.
He knew this feeling well. It was the exact same twist in the world he’d felt the day he threw himself into Jason’s dungeon.
"Huh? Did we just cross into the upper expanse?" He caught the shift at a single glance.
Then a light bloomed in the void and came screaming straight at them.
"Who’s there?" Caelus barked, unleashing Ferera, his spell.
A golden barrier snapped up around the entire ship, and the incoming attack burst apart against it.
He fired up his Chaos Perception Eyes on the spot, hunting for whoever had thrown it.
A symbol appeared in his vision, and he recognized it the second he saw it. It was the same mark branded onto the Cymatica soldiers who had invaded only yesterday.
"Oh?" Caelus’s eyes turned to ice.
"Ruyi, get bigger!"
He hurled his staff. It ripped through the void and slammed dead center into the enemy ship, flinging the whole thing off into the purple miasma until it vanished without a trace.
-----
Satisfied, Caelus focused back as he stared ahead, waiting for whatever was coming next.
He didn’t have to wait long.
A ray of light came creeping in through the haze. Every single person aboard held their breath.
Just then, the voice from before returned.
"Ender..."
"Why must you wage war?"
"Why must you kill?"
Caelus’s expression turned strange.
And in the very next breath, a man stepped into his sight.
