As the blade sliced through the muscle layer, the Amons began to convulse violently.
Its limbs thrashed in a frenzy, making the vines creak under the strain. The skin around its wrists and ankles had already been bruised a deep purple from the constriction.
Its chest heaved frantically, every breath coming with a wheezing hiss like a pair of worn-out bellows.
“Don’t move,” Ethan said without looking up. “The more you struggle, the more it hurts.”
He didn't care whether the creature could understand him or not.
The blade cut through the pectoral muscles, peeling them back to either side.
He painstakingly separated the connective tissue between the muscle and the ribs, bit by bit, revealing the pale bone beneath.
The Amons's ribs were entirely different from a human's.
While human ribs are individual curved bars of bone, the Amons's ribs formed a complete bone cage.
Twenty-four ribs met at the front of the chest, fusing into a sternal plate about the size of a palm. The entire thoracic cavity was completely encased by this solid bone cage, without a single gap.
“Rib structure: Twenty-four ribs, fused at the front into a complete sternal plate, forming a closed bone cage. No intercostal spaces; entry into the thoracic cavity through the ribs is impossible.”
After finishing his notes, he picked up the small hammer.
The Amons's eyes bulged.
The shadow of the hammer was reflected in its amber pupils. A series of broken roars squeezed out of its throat as its body began to struggle with unprecedented violence.
Ethan pressed his left hand against the sternal plate, aimed the hammer at the center of the bone with his right, and struck down hard.
Crack!
A fracture appeared in the bone plate.
Crack!
The crack widened, spreading outward from the center like a spiderweb.
Crack!
On the third strike, the sternal plate shattered completely.
...
Finally, he opened the skull.
The small hammer broke through the pale green cranial plate, revealing the grayish-white brain beneath.
The surface of the brain was densely packed with sulci and gyri. The frontal lobe was a size larger than a human's, and the proportions of the parietal lobe and cerebellum were also different.
Ethan used a probe to gently push aside the pia mater on the brain's surface, observing the vascular distribution beneath.
“Brain: Well-developed frontal lobe, explaining its potential for strong mental power or intelligence. The parietal lobe is relatively small, and the cerebellum's proportions are similar to a human's. Further study of its mental power operation mechanism is required.”
He set down the probe and made the final entry in the parchment ledger.
Then, he looked up.
The Amons had stopped moving.
Its amber eyes were still open, but the pupils had completely dilated, and a grayish-white film had clouded the surface of the eyeballs.
Its chest no longer heaved. The organs that had been pulled from its abdominal cavity lay exposed to the air, losing their luster at a visible rate.
【Life Energy +27. Current Life Energy: 6,875.】
“Hmm, its vitality was quite resilient.”
With a casual wave of Ethan's hand, several vines sprouted from the gaps in the floorboards, coiling around the remains and the bloodstains before pulling them into his ring.
The treehouse’s conscious ripple emitted a comfortable tremor.
“Clean, clean!”
After clearing away the corpse, Ethan took the knowledge crystals from his storage ring.
A massive influx of information flooded his consciousness.
Microscopic Energy Particle Control discussed how to use mental power to guide energy particles for more precise operations. Ethan closed his eyes, his mind racing at high speeds. One by one, he absorbed them.
Advanced Energy Output Stability, Synergistic Effects of Mental Power and Mana, Complex Energy Structure Analysis, Energy Particle Compression Techniques, and the Principles of Multi-Elemental Particle Coexistence.
...
One month later.
“All Wizards have entered the fortress. In thirty minutes, the fortress will be sealed. All Wizards and apprentices, please return to your rooms.”
Ethan opened his eyes.
“Is it finally time to depart?”
The fortress took flight.
There were no new spatial rifts, no awe-inspiring sights of Void Beasts licking the heavens. This inverted behemoth simply rose steadily, passing through the clouds and the atmosphere, climbing higher and higher.
Ethan stood by the treehouse window, looking out through the semi-transparent wooden membrane.
The sky shifted from azure to deep blue, and then from deep blue to a dark, inky navy.
The clouds drifted further and further below his feet, eventually shrinking into a white carpet before even that carpet vanished from sight.
The fortress continued its ascent.
The surrounding air had thinned to a near-vacuum, yet the plants and trees inside the fortress remained vibrant. The glowing vines wrapped around the treehouse railings even seemed a bit brighter than usual.
Then, the world barrier appeared.
It was a membrane nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, pale gold in color, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other, enveloping the entire Wizard World.
Countless tiny runes flowed across the membrane's surface, interwoven in layers to form the outermost shield of the Wizard World.
Then, the fortress's protective shield lit up.
A semi-transparent, ghostly green light film rose from the edges of the fortress, enveloping the entire castle like a giant bubble.
The castle collided directly with the pale gold membrane.
At the moment of contact, a ripple spread across the membrane's surface.
The ripple expanded from the point of contact in all directions, traveling further and growing larger until the entire heavens seemed to tremble.
The floor beneath Ethan’s feet jolted violently.
The view outside the window changed abruptly.
The pale gold light vanished, replaced by absolute darkness.
The Void.
The fortress had entered the Void.
Just then, a voice echoed throughout the interior of the fortress.
“Ascent complete. Everyone is now free to move about. Time remaining until arrival at the target world: one year, three months, and thirteen days.”
After the voice faded, the entire fortress fell silent for a moment.
Then, the doors of the treehouses began to open one after another.
Ethan pushed open his door and walked down the wooden steps.
The cobblestone paths were already crowded with people.
Wizards emerged from the towers deep within the fortress, and apprentices poured out of their respective treehouses.
Everyone looked up at the protective shield overhead.
Beyond that ghostly green light film, the darkness of the Void and the light of countless world bubbles were interwoven, creating a scene that no artist could ever hope to depict.
It was not the darkness of night.
The night sky at least had starlight, the faint reflection of clouds, and the glow of distant city lights on the horizon.
The darkness of the Void was absolute.
There was no light source, no point of reference, and even the concept of “direction” became blurred.
Darkness surged from all sides, swallowing the entire fortress.
Dense runic patterns flowed across the surface of the light film, emitting a soft green glow that illuminated a small area of the surrounding Void.
The Void was not empty.
Points of light emerged from the darkness, each one representing a world bubble.
Some were pale blue, some were dark red, some were multicolored like soap bubbles, and others were a dull gray, devoid of life.
Large and small, near and far, they were densely distributed throughout the endless Void.
The world bubbles moved slowly.
The outlines of the worlds within could be faintly seen.
Some were complete planets, some were flat continents, and others were clusters of broken floating islands—various and strange in form.
The fortress glided past these world bubbles.
At the closest point, Ethan could even make out the general outline of a pale green world bubble.
It was a world completely covered by forests, with no oceans on its land, only dense vegetation and crisscrossing rivers.
Beside it was a dark red world bubble, its surface flowing with magma-like patterns, with the red glow of volcanic eruptions faintly visible inside.
Further away, a grayish-white world bubble was slowly shrinking, with tiny points of light constantly dissipating from its edges. It was dying.
In the Void, worlds were born and worlds perished at every moment.
Those points of light were the final remains of worlds, dissipating into the Void to become part of the energy particles—the nourishment for the birth of new worlds.
The fortress continued to pass through world bubble after world bubble.
Sometimes the distance was extremely close, close enough to see the mountains and rivers inside the world bubble.
Sometimes it merely swept past in the distance, appearing only as a blurred point of light.
Sometimes the fortress would pass between two world bubbles that were about to collide.
After watching for about ten days, Ethan returned to his treehouse.
“Boring. Meditation is much more satisfying.”
Rate on N.U.
