After an unknown amount of time, Ethan opened his eyes from his meditation.
The ubiquitous wood-element energy particles, which had been flowing slowly through the air like a gentle stream, were now jumping, colliding, and surging irregularly as if disturbed by something.
The disturbance forced him to stop his meditation.
"Look at the sky!"
A wave of exclamations rose from the crowd.
Ethan followed their gaze.
The sky had split open.
A crack spanned the entire horizon from east to west, its edges jagged and irregular, as if torn open from the inside by some terrifying force.
The interior of the crack was pure darkness, filled with countless tiny points of light flowing slowly like an inverted starry sky.
Then, a castle appeared.
It descended slowly from the rift.
The first part to emerge was the top of the castle.
The tips of the towering spires pointed downward, aimed straight at the earth.
The surface of the towers was covered in a dark gray material—neither stone nor metal—that gave off a cold, eerie glint under the reflection of the light points.
Next came the main body of the castle.
It was a massive complex of buildings beyond imagination.
The portion that had already emerged from the rift alone obscured nearly half the sky.
Walls, bastions, domes, and bell towers were piled atop one another, forming an inverted city.
The tops of the buildings pointed down, while the broad foundations of the city walls faced the sky.
The entire castle emerged from the rift in a completely counter-intuitive manner, inverted as it descended slowly and steadily.
Suppressed gasps of shock echoed throughout the plaza.
"What the hell is that thing?"
"It's upside down?"
"Why doesn't it flip over?"
The inverted castle continued its descent.
The rift stretched wider as it moved, the jagged tear marks at the edges extending outward as the area of darkness continued to expand.
Then, Ethan witnessed something even more bizarre.
There were people inside the castle.
On those inverted walls, within the tower windows, and upon the domed platforms, dense clusters of figures could be seen walking, standing, and talking.
Their feet were planted firmly on the inverted "ceilings," their bodies perpendicular to the ground, yet they stood perfectly steady with no sign of falling.
No, that wasn't right.
It wasn't that they were upside down.
It was that inside the castle, the direction of gravity was reversed.
"Some kind of gravity system," the thought flashed through Ethan's mind.
The inverted castle didn't descend quickly, but it was extremely stable.
It was like a mountain floating in the sky, slowly and inexorably pressing down toward the ground.
The shadow it cast grew larger and larger, spreading from the edge of the plaza toward the center, swallowing the dense crowds of apprentices, slaves, and the cannon fodder legions of enslaved beasts.
Just then...
The space at the edges of the rift began to distort.
It was an incredibly eerie sight.
As the castle descended, fine black lines began to appear at the edges of the already torn sky.
These lines spread in all directions like a spiderweb; wherever they passed, space itself trembled, buckled, and shattered.
The noise on the plaza suddenly spiked.
"Space is shattering!"
"It can't hold!"
"It's going to collapse!"
Cries of terror erupted from every direction. Some people instinctively backed away, some stood frozen in place, and others began running toward the edge of the plaza.
Ethan didn't move.
If the sky was falling, as these panicked people suggested, the taller people would be the first to hold it up.
Besides, looking at the scene, it was clearly the emergence of the castle that was causing the space to break.
What was the point of running?
Ethan stared at the expanding spatial rift, his pupils constricting slightly.
Four gargantuan creatures had emerged from the rift.
They appeared simultaneously, each occupying one of the four cardinal directions of the rift.
These were four massive beings, each over a thousand meters in length.
Their bodies had a dark brown, leathery texture, covered in fine wrinkles and dark red patterns.
Their heads were flat and broad, with eyes positioned on either side, their pupils vertical golden slits.
They looked somewhat like catfish.
Flat heads, wide mouths, and long, thick barbels near their muzzles. But their size and aura were entirely different from any catfish.
The four giant beasts hovered around the rift, their massive bodies completely sealing the four corners.
They opened their mouths at the same time.
Long tongues shot out from their moral cavities.
The long tongues precisely coiled around the spreading black lines at the edges of the rift.
Then, they began to lick.
The moment the fleshy bumps on their tongues touched the spatial rift, the trembling, shattering space actually began to stabilize.
The spreading speed of the black lines slowed significantly, and the areas that had already shattered began to close bit by bit under the licking of the tongues.
The rift was shrinking.
The four giant beasts each guarded a side, their long tongues constantly licking the edges of the rift. With every pass, the shattered space grew a bit more stable and closed a bit further.
Their movements were slow and rhythmic, carrying a sense of almost pious focus.
The noise on the plaza gradually died down.
Everyone looked up at the scene.
Some had their mouths hanging open, some had eyes wide as saucers, and others had expressions frozen in comical angles of disbelief.
Those four giant beasts were licking the spatial rift.
Every time their tongues passed over, they left behind a layer of translucent mucus.
The mucus covered the edges of the rift and quickly solidified into a pale gray film.
Where the film covered, the spatial tremors ceased entirely, and the rift closed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The inverted castle was still descending.
The four giant beasts moved along with the castle, remaining at the four corners of the rift.
Long tongues licked, mucus covered, and the rift continued to close.
The entire process lasted about an hour.
By the time the inverted castle had completely cleared the rift and was floating steadily in the sky, the massive crack that had spanned the horizon had been licked down to half its original size.
The four giant beasts retracted their tongues, and their massive bodies slowly retreated into the rift, vanishing into the darkness.
The rift continued to close.
Starting from the edges, it shrank toward the center bit by bit.
The pale gray films gradually faded and became transparent after the rift closed, eventually merging completely into space as if they had never existed.
A few breaths later, the last trace of the rift vanished.
The sky returned to its original state.
Blue sky, white clouds, and sunlight.
It was as if everything that had just happened was merely an illusion.
The plaza remained silent for a few breaths.
Then, it exploded into a frenzy.
"What the hell were those things?"
"Catfish? Were those catfish?"
"What kind of catfish is a thousand meters long? Those are Void Beasts! Space-element Void Beasts!"
"Four Void Beasts just to lick a rift?"
"What do you know? They were stabilizing the spatial tunnel! The descent of a War Fortress tears through the world barrier. Without Void Beasts to stabilize the rift, this entire space would have collapsed!"
"What exactly is that upside-down castle?"
"A War Fortress. Only Wizards at the Star Rank or above are qualified to own a War Fortress."
"Are we going to the World War on that thing?"
"Otherwise, what? You want to walk there?"
"What are we eating later?"
"Yeah, what's for dinner?"
Ethan blinked. Were these people's nerves really that thick?
Rate on N.U.
