Alma 148 The Silvermoon Grasslands

When the Spirit of Bountiful Charity, Velvund's personal warship, reached the Helani region of the East, it slowly and carefully decelerated until it made a full stop. It had reached its destination, two hundred kilometers away from what seemed like a remote stretch of grassland.

It was a wholly unremarkable plot of undeveloped land that had been left untouched for millennia in service of nature. That was what the report in Reed's hands described it as but the truth was quite different... these days.

Well, that would have been the case, but he did not know if the concept of days even existed ahead. After all, time and space were no longer in accord with the world here.

The carefully woven threads of space had come undone here along with the guiding clock-hands of time. Unmanaged chaos existed beyond where the Spirit of Bountiful Charity had stopped at.

.....Fuck.

Reed let out a low groan of dissatisfaction and said, "You weren't lying when you said that this one was going to be harder than the last... I mean, just look at that mess out there."

"It's not that bad; It just looks bad, Dear. In fact, I think that we might be able to fin—"

Lu'um's voice suddenly trailed off into silence when she saw a flaming warship hurtle towards the ground below and turn into a scorching miniature star of pure death when its Anima drive went critical and exploded.

The infernal explosion immediately vaporized everything around it for more than three dozen kilometers in tremendous shockwaves of fire and heat. A sea of flames and molten earth depicted the horrors of the past for all to see.

And in the next moment... it was gone. The nightmare that had suddenly occurred in front of the Spirit of Bountiful Charity disappeared in less than the blink of an eye.

All that lay before them now was a scenic grassland along with... an immense, glowing fissure — an evil upon the earth — to accompany it, like a festering wound.

A great wound made of rotting space and time — that was what the fissure on the Silvermoon Grasslands was. The sins of the past had come to haunt those who lived in the present...

"...You were saying?"

Reed stared at the grasslands with an expression of dread. He had a growing feeling that this was going turn into a shitshow very, very fast...

Time and space were completely out of order on the Silvermoon Grasslands to such a great extent that it had become a forbidden hazard zone, under orders of the Goldentree family.

Not that the order ever stopped interested parties from investigating it on their own terms, even if it meant getting on the East's bad side. There had been many Chosen from all across the continent who had attempted to breach into the mysterious spatiotemporal anomaly, which was known as the Gate of Null.

Many had come out of pure curiosity, some had come in pursuit of unknown treasure, and others had come seeking answers within the forbidden area that could not found in the present...

It was a place that was interconnected with the distant past. As such, some saw an immense opportunity in their hands. If one could exploit the Gate of Null properly, that person would have a rare chance to possibly gleam upon the secrets of advanced temporal and spatial manipulation.

And as if that were not enough, they would also have the opportunity to delve into the past itself. Although the Four Empires were unified under the threat of the Greatest Evil, the Infestation, there were some people who were not above the allure of possibly changing the course of history for the... benefit of their empire or perhaps, their race.

Extremists still existed within the Four Empires, even in the modern era, as unbelievable as it was. Maligned people who still bore the grudges of their ancestors with them. These radicals would pay any price to see the designs fulfilled with the Gate of Null, which seemed to promise infinite possibilities should it ever be fully comprehended and made to submit.

"Some people are incorrigible, aren't they? Lost causes. Who in their right mind would even think about exploiting this festering disaster for their own personal benefit? From what I've read, there are some who have ventured into the anomaly seeking to 'correct' history?

Here we are, on the verge of death, besieged by an unstoppable force of evil on the outside and a crowd of idiots from the inside," said Reed. He wanted to hurl every idiot who had entered into the anomaly into a pit of fire.

Lu'um chuckled and said, "They won't live in long in there, if at all. Chances are that all of them already died, which is why we haven't noticed anyone returning back, let alone any changes to the timestream. These idiots

Velvund sighed deeply. "It has started to grow beyond our abilities. The prototype stabilizers we have built have kept the growth of the anomaly at bay for a little more than half of a year, but it has started to flare up dramatically as of recent.

The on-site technicians and scholars have informed me that it will not be long before the anomaly will outgrow the prison we have built for it..."

After the Gate of Null was discovered, the Four Empires swiftly acted and contained it to the best of their abilities. They utilized what little they comprehended of the Heavenly Barrier's inner mechanics and created a paltry imitation of it.

A large dome of faint light was all that stood between the normal world and whatever madness lay within the disordered Silvermoon Grasslands. Had it not been built, over half of the East would have been affected by the spatiotemporal decay.

An unspeakable hell would have been born. Of course, this was not something that the mortal world was privy about. This calamity-in-waiting was a secret that could not be revealed to them, for fear of the hysteria that would follow.

Heaven forbid they ever learn about what happened in Centlani Deep or rather, any of part of this terrible affair...

Reed clenched his fists as if to prepare himself for what he was about to get involved with and said, "What about the other fissures? How bad are they compared to this one?"

"They're not as bad as the one here, but they're getting worse, too. I've been getting reports from the ground teams on the fissure sites and it's all been consistent with everything that Maya has told me. It's getting much worse.

Hell, we didn't even know that there was a fissure below the sea until a couple of days ago when the two of you... fixed it? I still don't understand how you two did that or even knew one of them was down there in the first place, though..."

Velvund was at a loss for words when he heard about Reed and Lu'um's exploits in Centlani Deep, to the point that he almost did not believe them until they proved themselves. When they accurately described the scene below at the bottom of the trench and the epicenter of the massive underwater tremor, he knew that they had been telling the truth.

Still, he knew better than to not trust them. Given everything he knew about Reed and what he had done in the past, nothing seemed too impossible to believe. He also possessed a certain... secret history with particular events and people.

There were things that Velvund had witnessed over the course of his life that could not be spoken aloud for fear of the hidden karma buried within them. Ancient secrets that could set the Four Empires aflame in chaos and destroy the millennilong era of peace the continent has enjoyed overnight.

Truth be told, one of those secrets concerned Reed himself. Not that Velvund would ever divulge such an important piece of knowledge to his precious grandchild. At the very least, not until he proved himself capable enough...

Chapter end

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